Irvine Bulloch - Postbellum Influence and Collaboration With Nephew Theodore Roosevelt

Postbellum Influence and Collaboration With Nephew Theodore Roosevelt

Denied amnesty, Irvine remained in Liverpool after the war, working as a cotton merchant with his brother as the Bullochs realized that they could not return to the U.S.

In 1869, when his sister Mittie and the Roosevelt family toured Europe, the first port they reached was in Liverpool where a joyous reunion took place. Although TR at first seem to show no interest in his uncle's exploits, he was no johnny-come-lately to naval topics and history. In fact, Bulloch's nephew's childhood had been filled with stories told him by Bulloch's sister, Mittie. TR would write that his mother used "to talk to me as a little shaver about ships, ships, ships and the fighting of ships, until they sank into the depths of my soul."

Filled with his mother and uncle's stories, by the time TR went to Harvard, he was already dreaming of writing a book on a neglected aspect of American Military History, role played by the US Navy during the War of 1812. Indeed, right in the middle of classes on mathematics at Harvard, (Morris TR Vol 1, 565) TR's mind would wander from his tedious mathematics classes to the accomplishments of the infant US Navy, the clash of the "fighting tops".

When TR's father took the family on what they called their "grand tour" in 1869, TR spent time with those uncles in Liverpool, their first stopping port on their trip. When TR graduated from Harvard, he published his first book, the excellent story of the US Navy's origins and actions in the War of 1812 called The Naval War of 1812, which, in part, was an outgrowth of the influence of his two Bulloch uncles and the more direct influence of Irvine's brother, James.