The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  At the end of the meeting he drew the young man aside and told him that he, too, was opposed to the renomination of Trimble. Casually, the Irishman said that he had been “looking around” for another candidate and thought his search might be over.

  “No, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” Theodore said. “It would look as if I had selfish motives in coming around to oppose this man.”

  Murray could interpret a coy expression as well as anybody. “Well, get me a desirable candidate.”

  “Oh, you won’t have any trouble,” replied Theodore, and offered to look for one himself.75

  The following evening they met again, and Theodore had to admit that he had not found a candidate. But he was still sure he could do so. With only three days to go before the convention, Murray grew impatient.

  “Mr. Roosevelt, in case we can’t get a suitable candidate, will you take the nomination?”

  Theodore hesitated. “Yes, but I don’t want it.” He was privately suspicious of Murray’s motives, and went to seek the reassurance of a mutual friend, Edward Mitchell. “Joe is not in the habit of making statements that he cannot make good,” Mitchell told him. “You have fallen in very good hands.”76

  On 28 October 1881, the Assembly Convention met at Morton Hall. Murray sat patiently through a forty-five-minute speech nominating Assemblyman Trimble. Then he rose and simply said, “Mr. Chairman, I nominate Theodore Roosevelt.” The convention voted in his favor on the first ballot, with a majority of sixteen to nine.77 Theodore was just twenty-three years and one day old.

  Late that night the nominee wrote in his diary, “My platform is: strong Republican on State matters, but independent on local and municipal affairs.” Thus, at the very outset of his political career, he managed to balance party loyalty with personal freedom. The platform he chose was an unstable one, yet he had already found its center of gravity. For the next four decades he would occupy that motionless spot, while the rest of the platform tipped giddily backward and forward, Left and Right.

  CONFRONTED WITH Theodore’s nomination as a fait accompli, the Roosevelt family rallied to his support with varying degrees of enthusiasm.78 Wealthy friends of his father offered to help with campaign expenses and published an open letter testifying to his “high character … honesty and integrity.” The list of signatures on this document, which read like a combination of the Social Register and Banker’s Directory, included that of the eminent lawyer Elihu Root, yet another of Theodore’s future Secretaries of State.79

  Press comment on the nomination was mostly favorable. “Every good citizen has cause for rejoicing,” declared The New York Times, “that the Republicans of the Twenty-first Assembly District have united upon so admirable a candidate for the Assembly as Mr. THEODORE ROOSEVELT.… Mr. Roosevelt needs no introduction to his constituency. His family has been long and honorably known as one of the foremost in this city, and Mr. Roosevelt himself is a public-spirited citizen, not an office-seeker, but one of the men who should be sought for office.”

  The newspaper went on to note that as Theodore’s district was “naturally Republican,” he could look forward to “a handsome majority” in the election.80 This fact may also have been realized by the Democrats. Their candidate was a Dr. W. W. Strew, recently fired from the directorship of Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum.81

  Theodore himself had no doubt that he would be elected. His campaign circular, dated 1 November 1881, was so brief, and bare of promises, as to seem almost arrogant:

  Dear Sir,

  Having been nominated as a candidate for member of Assembly for this District, I would esteem it as a compliment if you honor me with your vote and personal influence on Election Day.

  Very respectfully,

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT82

  After decades of flowery political appeals, this simple message came as a welcome surprise to the electorate.

  For all the favorable trends, Theodore’s eight-day campaign was not without its anxious moments. Joe Murray and Jake Hess (who had philosophically agreed to support the Assembly Convention’s decision) soon discovered that their candidate had an alarming tendency to speak his mind. It was fortunate that they accompanied him on a personal canvass of the saloons of Sixth Avenue, or, as Theodore recalled in his autobiography, the “liquor vote” might have been lost.

  The canvass … did not last beyond the first saloon. I was introduced with proper solemnity to the saloon-keeper—a very important personage, for this was before the days when saloon-keepers became merely the mortgaged chattels of the brewers—and he began to cross-examine me, a little too much in the tone of one who was dealing with a suppliant for his favor. He said that he expected that I would of course treat the liquor business fairly; to which I answered, none too cordially, that I hoped I should treat all interests fairly. He then said that he regarded the licenses as too high; to which I responded that I believed that they were really not high enough, and that I should try to have them made higher. The conversation threatened to become stormy. Messrs. Murray and Hess, on some hastily improvised plea, took me out into the street, and then Joe explained to me that it was not worth my while staying in Sixth Avenue any longer, that I had better go right back to Fifth Avenue and attend to my friends there, and that he would look after my interests on Sixth Avenue.

  I was triumphantly elected.83

  Theodore received the news of his victory—3,490 votes to Strew’s 1,989, almost double the usual Republican margin—distractedly. After voting on the morning of 9 November, he had retired to the library at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street and busied himself with his book, which was due at Putnam’s by Christmas. Not until an admirer called, “wishing to meet the rising star,” did he accept the fact that he was now a professional politician.84 This sudden change in status seems only to have increased his determination to become, simultaneously, a professional writer. He spent the rest of November working with total absorption on his manuscript, and by 3 December it was in the hands of the publisher.85

  The Naval War of 1812, which appeared some five months later, was the first and in some ways the most enduring of Theodore Roosevelt’s thirty-eight books. Reviewers were almost unanimous in their praise of its scholarship, sweep, and originality. It was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as “the last word on the subject,” and a classic of naval history. Within two years of publication it went through three editions, and became a textbook at several colleges. In 1886, by special regulation, at least one copy was ordered placed on board every U.S. Navy vessel.86 Eleven years later, when Great Britain was preparing her own official history of the Royal Navy, the editors paid Theodore the unprecedented compliment of asking him to write the section of that work dealing with the War of 1812. For almost a century, Naval War would remain the definitive work in its field.87 Considering the author’s youth (he was twenty-one when he began it, and just twenty-three when he finished), his frequent ill health, and many distractions, the book may be considered an extraordinary achievement.

  Its merits are as simple as those of any serious piece of academic writing: clarity, accuracy, and completeness, backed by massive documentation. The density of research is such that Theodore often quotes a different authority for every sentence. His impartiality in weighing facts and reaching conclusions is remarkable in view of his burgeoning Americanism. Sentiment is never allowed to interfere with statistics. Admittedly, the first chapters do not make for fascinating reading:

  The 32-gun frigates … presented in broadsides 13 long 12’s below and seven 24-pound carronades above; the 38-gun frigates, 14 long 18’s below and ten 32-pound carronades above; so that a 44-gun frigate would naturally present 15 long 24’s below and twelve 42-pound carronades above, as the United States did at first.…88

  And so on, for dozens of pages. Clearly he is out to inform, not entertain. And it must be admitted that his own criticism of it as “dry” is justified. The first two chapters, however masterly in their compilation and assortment of figures,
are unreadable by all except the most dedicated naval strategists, and the other eight are almost as severe. There is something almost inhuman about the young author’s refusal to swashbuckle, taste the triumphs of victory and the pain of defeat, and dramatize character where well he might. Yet there twinkles, every now and again in its gray pages, a flash of sarcastic humor, usually at the expense of historians less scholarly than he:

  James states that she [the United States] had but one boy aboard, and that he was seventeen years old—in which case 29 others, some of whom (as we learn from the “Life of Decatur”) were only twelve, must have grown with truly startling rapidity during the hour and a half the combat lasted.89

  Elsewhere he observes that James’s remark on the similarity of language spoken by both sides is “an interesting philological discovery that but few will attempt to controvert.”90

  In his search for truth, he does not hesitate to crush such sentimental legends as that of the Battle of Lake Erie. “The ‘glory’ acquired by it most certainly has been estimated at more than its own worth,” he declares, in the course of a long and brilliantly detailed analysis. “The simple truth is … the side which possessed the superiority in force, in the proportion of three to two, could not well help winning.” Dismissing “stereotyped” arguments that the United States fleet was underarmed and undermanned, he went on to prove, with incontestable figures, that its weight of ammunition—i.e., fighting effectiveness—was superior, “as the battle was fought under very short sail, and decided purely by gunnery.”91

  Theodore’s very scrupulousness, however, led him to the conclusion that the Naval War of 1812 was a deserved victory for America. Having so decided, he felt no desire to gloat, for a far more important theme preoccupied him: that if the conflict were to be repeated in 1882 the result would undoubtedly be the reverse. The small, efficient, and technically advanced Navy of 1812 was now large, unwieldy, and obsolescent. Writing his preface to the first edition, the young author suddenly cast aside his cloak of academic impartiality and revealed that he was wearing military uniform underneath.

  “It is folly,” thundered Theodore, “for the great English-speaking Republic to rely for defense upon a navy composed partly of antiquated hulks and partly of new vessels rather more worthless than the old.” He urged his compatriots “to study with some care that period of our history during which our navy stood at the highest pitch of its fame … to learn anything from the past it is necessary to know, as near as may be, the exact truth—if only from the narrowest motives.”92

  Strategic experts pondered his message at least as far away as Washington, D.C. The Naval War of 1812 was to have a profound effect upon the attitude of the country to its Navy, not to mention Theodore’s future career.93

  WITHIN THREE DAYS after delivering his manuscript to Putnam’s, Theodore was caught up in the whirl and glitter of the new social season. “The going out has fairly begun,” he noted on 6 December. “All are at it, from dinners to Balls.” He saw that Alice, who had no doubt felt rather neglected in recent months, had her fill of the festivities. She would be seeing even less of him in the New Year, when the legislative session began at Albany. Until his election, they had been thinking of moving into their own house sometime that winter; but now the prospect of leaving her alone for weeks at a time (although he would try to get married digs in Albany, so she could come north occasionally) convinced him they should stay on at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street. The session would be over in the spring, and they could look for a new home then.94 As to his future beyond that, Theodore professed to be as vague as ever. “Too true, too true; I have become a political ‘hack’,” he wrote to an ex-classmate. “But don’t think I am going into politics after this year, for I am not.”95

  “I intended to be one of the governing class.”

  Theodore Roosevelt at the time of his election to the New York State Assembly. (Illustration 5.1)

  CHAPTER 6

  The Cyclone Assemblyman

  Through the streets of Drontheim

  Strode he red and wrathful,

  With his stately air.

  ASSEMBLYMAN THEODORE ROOSEVELT arrived in Albany in 17-degree weather, late on the afternoon of Monday, 2 January 1882.1 Alice had gone to Montreal with a party of friends, and would not be joining him for another two weeks. They could look for lodgings then. In the meantime he checked into the Delavan House, a rambling old hotel with whistly radiators, immediately opposite the railroad station. Apart from the fact that it was conveniently located, and boasted one of the few good restaurants in town, the Delavan was honeycombed with seedy private rooms, of the kind that politicians love to fill with smoke; hence it functioned as the unofficial headquarters of both Republicans and Democrats during the legislative season.2

  The Assembly was not due to open until the following morning, but Roosevelt had been asked to attend a preliminary caucus of Republicans in the Capitol that evening, for the purpose of nominating their candidate for Speaker.3 He thus had only an hour or two to unpack, change, and prepare to meet his colleagues.

  “He was a perfect nuisance in that House, sir!”

  The New York State Assembly Chamber in 1882. (Illustration 6.1)

  Dusk came early, as always in Albany, for the little city straggles up the right bank of the Hudson, and is screened off from the plateau above by a two-hundred-foot escarpment of blue clay. But the western sky was clear, and lit by a rising full moon, when Roosevelt emerged from the Delavan House, and began his walk to the Capitol.4

  At first he could not see “that building,” as it was locally known, for he had to walk south along the river for a block or two before ascending State Street. Yet already he was moving in its monstrous shadow. Roosevelt had probably read, in his Albany Hand Book, that the new Capitol was, by common consent, “one of the architectural wonders of the nineteenth century.”5 Whether it was a thing of beauty or not was questionable, but there was no doubt, as the Hand Book said, that it was “the grandest legislative building of modern times.” Roosevelt’s first glimpse of the eleven-million-dollar structure, as he rounded the corner of State and Broadway, and focused his pince-nez uptown, was a thrilling one.

  Still not quite finished, the stupendous pile of white granite towered out of mounds of construction rubble at the very top of the hill. The Old Capitol, a Greek Revival hall awaiting demolition, stood a little farther down, obscuring some of Roosevelt’s view, yet its dark silhouette merely accentuated the brilliantly lit massiveness looming behind. Jagged against the skyline rose an improbable forest of steeples, turrets, dormers, and gables, all gleaming in the moonlight, for a snowfall the day before had exquisitely etched them out.6 An architect surveying the Capitol’s five stories could successively trace the influence of Romanesque, Italian Renaissance, and French Renaissance styles, with layers of arabesque in between; but to an untutored eye, such as Roosevelt’s, the overall effect was of Imperial Indian majesty.7 Perhaps for the first time the young Assemblyman realized that, as a New York State legislator, he now represented a commonwealth more populous than most of Europe’s kingdoms, rich enough and industrious enough to rank alongside any great power.8

  Inspiring as the sight of his destination was, Roosevelt had to concentrate, for the moment, on the tricky business of getting up there without falling down. The steep sidewalks of State Street, when slicked with frozen snow, were notoriously dangerous, and that night blasts of icy air over the escarpment made them doubly so. All sane Assemblymen, of course, were taking horsecars in this weather, but any such indulgence was abhorrent to Roosevelt. Although the wind-chill factor was well below zero, he wore no overcoat.9 A man thus unprotected, yet well stoked with Delavan House coffee, might be able to negotiate two or three blocks of State Street without pain; but he will begin to throb before he is halfway to the top, and Roosevelt was undoubtedly hurting in every extremity by the time he crested the hill and ducked into the warmth of the Capitol lobby.10

  As the pain faded to a glow,
and his lenses defrosted, he could make out a labyrinth of stone passages and ground-glass doors through which came the busy clacking of typewriting machines. He was standing on the clerical floor. The halls of power, presumably, were somewhere overhead. To his left the Assembly staircase beckoned. One hundred rapid steps elevated him to the second floor, and the famous Golden Corridor opened out before him. Unquestionably the most sumptuous stretch of interior design in the United States, it formed a dwindling perspective of gilded arches and gorgeously painted pillars. High gas globes picked out the filigree on walls of crimson, umber, yellow, and deep blue, and cast pockets of violet shadow into every alcove. Jardinieres of “exotics,” freshly planted to mark the beginning of the legislative season, perfumed the air.11 Roosevelt might well have imagined himself in Moorish Granada, were it not for a very American hubbub coming from a door at the far end of the corridor. Here fifty-two other Republican Assemblymen awaited him in caucus.12

  TO SAY THAT Theodore Roosevelt made a vivid first impression upon his colleagues would hardly be an exaggeration. From the moment that he appeared in their midst, there was a chorus of incredulous and delighted comment. Memories of his entrance that night, transcribed many years later, vary as to time and place, but all share the common image of a young man bursting through a door and pausing for an instant while all eyes were upon him—an actor’s trick that quickly became habitual.13 This gave his audience time to absorb the full brilliancy of his Savile Row clothes and furnishings. The recollections of one John Walsh may be taken as typical: