What role did President Theodore Roosevelt think the United States should have in Latin America?

On November 15, 1864, three years into the American Civil War, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army cut the last telegraph wire that connected him to his superior officers, putting in motion a maneuver at odds with the set rules of war. Over the next five weeks, his army moved from Atlanta to the coast, employing a “scorched earth” campaign across Georgia: burning crops, killing livestock, and destroying any supplies that might support the Confederate Army. For civilians still in Georgia, mostly women and children, Sherman’s March to the Sea was their worst nightmare. Entire cities were burned, railroads taken apart, homes demolished, and livestock shot down, “hunted as if they were rebels themselves,” wrote Dolly Sumner Lunt, a resident of Covington. Finally on December 22, General Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln: “I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.”