In 1898, Theodore Roosevelt resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, volunteered for service in the Spanish-American War, and became Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry. On July 1, 1898, he led the Rough Riders up Cuba’s Kettle Hill and returned home a national hero, after which his name was put forth for New York’s governorship. At age 42, following President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Roosevelt was inaugurated in Buffalo as the 26th and youngest president of the United States. Building upon programs created while governor of New York State, he established a model for the modern presidency, mediated a labor dispute, championed legislation regulating railroads, interstate commerce, labor, and the food and drug industries, advanced a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to help protect the Americas from European invasion, began construction on the Panama Canal, negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War, became in 1908 the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and built up the Navy as the “big stick” of international diplomacy.