Tom Woods on Theodore Roosevelt

Philosophically [Theodore Roosevelt] was the consummate Progressive, determined to bring efficiency and coordinated intelligence to bear against the trusts, against despoilers of the natural environment, and against international disorder.  He was, as one historian put it, "the first great president-reformer of the modern industrial era."  He therefore had little patience with federalism and indeed with most of the constitutional impediments that stood between him and the construction of a new American state.  Politically he was a committed nationalist.  He thus could barely bring himself to speak of Thomas Jefferson, whom he loathed; and as late as the 1880s he was still condemning Jefferson Davis as a traitor.  The Confederate cause, since it denied that a large consolidated nation was its own justification, enraged him.

~ Thomas Woods, "Theodore Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency," Mises.org, June 2, 2010