The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  The jangling of the gongs gave way to silence, broken only by a general hum of automatic machinery. (It was the constructor’s boast that almost nothing on the Iowa was done by hand “except the opening and closing of throttles and pressing of electric buttons.”)97 A surgeon distributed ear-plugs to the Acting Secretary and his party.98 “Open your mouth, stand on your toes, and let your frame hang loosely,” he advised.

  “Two thousand yards,” called a cadet monitoring the ship’s course. A few seconds later there was a silent flash of fire and smoke from the 8-inch guns, followed by a thunderous report that shook the Iowa from stem to stern. Plumes of spray indicated that the shells were fifty yards short of target. A second salvo landed on range, but slightly to one side. Bugles announced that the Iowa’s main battery of 12-inch guns was now being aimed at the floating speck. There was an apprehensive pause, followed by such vast concussions of air, metal, and water that a lifeboat was stove in, and several locked steel doors burst their hinges. Two members of Roosevelt’s party, who had forgotten to assume the necessary simian stance, were jerked into the air, and landed clasping each other wordlessly. They were escorted below for ear ointment, while Roosevelt continued to squint at the target through smoke-begrimed spectacles. Had it been a Spanish battleship, and not a shattered frame of wood and canvas, it would now be sinking.

  The exercises lasted another two days, and Roosevelt returned to Washington profoundly moved by what he had seen. “Oh, Lord! If only the people who are ignorant about our Navy could see those great warships in all their majesty and beauty, and could realize how well they are handled, and how well fitted to uphold the honor of America.”99

  THE HOT WEATHER CONTINUED until mid-September, and Roosevelt, showing concern for the Secretary’s health, suggested that he extend his vacation through the beginning of October. This, however, even John D. Long was unprepared to do, and he sent word that he would be back on 28 September. Roosevelt took the news philosophically, for by then he had realized his ambition to consult with the President as Acting Secretary—not once, but three times.100

  Hitherto their meetings had been pleasantly impersonal, but now, for some reason, McKinley seemed anxious to flatter him. On 14 September he requested Roosevelt’s company for an afternoon drive.101 He confessed that he had not looked at the Naval Policy of the Presidents pamphlet until he saw what press interest it aroused, whereupon he “read every word of it,” and was “exceedingly glad” it had been published. McKinley then made the astonishing remark that Roosevelt had been “quite right” to criticize Japan’s Hawaiian policy at Sandusky. Finally, he congratulated him on his management of the Navy Department during the past seven weeks. Roosevelt took all this praise with a pinch of salt (“the President,” he told Lodge, “is a bit of a jollier”), but he detected nevertheless a “substratum of satisfaction.”

  Swaying gently against the cushions of the Presidential carriage, relaxed after a day of stiff formalities, William McKinley appeared to best advantage. Locomotion quickened his inert body and statuesque head, and the play of light and shade through the window made his masklike face seem mobile and expressive. Roosevelt could forget about the too-short legs and pulpy handshake, and concentrate on the bronzed, magnificent profile. From the neck up, at least, McKinley was every inch a President—or for that matter, an emperor, with his high brow, finely chiseled mouth, and Roman nose. “He does not like to be told that it looks like the nose of Napoleon,” the columnist Frank Carpenter once wrote. “It is a watchful nose, and it watches out for McKinley.”102

  Not until the President turned, and gazed directly at his interlocutor, was the personal force which dominated Mark Hanna fully felt. His stare was intimidating in its blackness and steadiness. The pupils, indeed, were at times so dilated as to fuel suspicions that he was privy to Mrs. McKinley’s drug cabinet. Only very perceptive observers were aware that there was no real power behind the gaze: McKinley stared in order to concentrate a sluggish, wandering mind.103

  Taking advantage of the President’s affable mood, Roosevelt touched delicately on the possibility of war with Spain and Japan. McKinley agreed that there might be “trouble” on either front. Roosevelt made it clear that he intended to enlist in the Army the moment hostilities began. The President asked what Mrs. Roosevelt would think of such action, and Roosevelt replied, “this was one case” where he would consult neither her nor Cabot Lodge. Laughing, McKinley promised him the opportunity to serve “if war by any chance arose.”104

  Three days later Roosevelt received an invitation to dine at the White House, and three days after that went for another drive in the Presidential carriage. This time he made so bold as to present McKinley with a Cuban war plan of his own devising. It proposed a two-stage naval offensive, first with a flying squadron of cruisers, then with a fleet of battleships—all dispatched from Key West within forty-eight hours of a formal declaration. If the Army followed up quickly with a small landing force, he doubted that “acute” hostilities would last more than six weeks. “Meanwhile, our Asiatic Squadron should blockade, and if possible take Manila.”105

  BY 17 SEPTEMBER, Roosevelt was beginning to feel guilty about “dear” Secretary Long rusticating in New England, especially when the Boston Herald printed a mocking story about his desire to replace the old man altogether. He wrote to Long in quick self-defense, protesting his loyalty and subservience rather too vehemently, and ending with a rueful “There! Qui s’excuse s’accuse.”106 But the Secretary took no offense, and proclaimed his entire satisfaction with Roosevelt at a dinner of the Massachusetts Club in Boston. “His enthusiasm and my conservatism make a good combination,” Long said, adding with a twinkle, “It is a liberal education to work with him.”107

  Had Long known what Roosevelt was up to on the eve of his return to Washington, he might have employed stronger terminology. On Monday, 27 September,108 the Acting Secretary intercepted a letter from Senator William E. Chandler to Long, recommending that Commodore John A. Howell be appointed commander in chief of the Asiatic Station—the very post Roosevelt wanted for Dewey.109 Howell, though senior, was in his opinion “irresolute” and “extremely afraid of responsibility”;110 the prospect of such an officer leading an attack upon Manila was too depressing to contemplate. With Long due back the following morning, rapid action was necessary.

  Roosevelt sent an urgent appeal to Chandler. “Before you commit yourself definitely to Commodore Howell I wish very much you would let me have a chance to talk to you … I shall of course give your letter at once to the Secretary upon his return.”111

  Presumably Senator Chandler could not be persuaded, for he withdrew neither his recommendation nor his letter. Throwing all caution to the winds, Roosevelt called in Dewey. “Do you know any Senators?” The Commodore mentioned Redfield Proctor. Roosevelt was delighted, for Proctor had expansionist tendencies and was known to be influential with the President. Dewey must enlist his services at once.112

  Senator Proctor obligingly went over to the White House and spoke to McKinley in behalf of the little Commodore. He might have made discreet reference to the fact that Roosevelt also favored Dewey. The President, who took little interest in naval affairs, accepted his advice without question and wrote a memorandum to Secretary Long requesting the appointment.113

  Long returned to the Navy Department on 28 September and was greatly annoyed to find what political intrigues had been going on in his absence. Tradition required that he appoint the senior officer, and besides he personally favored Howell. But McKinley’s memo could not be ignored; and so, to quote the sonorous words of Theodore Roosevelt, “in a fortunate hour for the Nation, Dewey was given command of the Asiatic Squadron.”114

  The Secretary was still in an irritable mood when Dewey called to thank him and apologize for using the influence of Senator Proctor. It had been necessary, Dewey explained, to counteract Senator Chandler’s recommendation of Howell. “You are in error, Commodore,” snapped Long. “No influence has been b
rought to bear on behalf of anyone else.”

  A few hours later Long, in turn, sent apologies to Dewey. It appeared that Senator Chandler had indeed recommended his rival, but the letter “had arrived while he was absent from the office and while Mr. Roosevelt was Acting Secretary and had only just been brought to his attention.”

  The culprit was serenely unrepentant about his delay in forwarding Senator Chandler’s letter, and saw nothing wrong in Dewey’s enlistment of senatorial aid. “A large leniency,” Roosevelt wrote, “should be observed toward the man who uses influence only to get himself a place … near the flashing of the guns.”115

  BY 30 SEPTEMBER, Roosevelt was free to go north for a fortnight’s rest at Sagamore Hill. Before leaving he asked the Secretary’s permission “to talk to him very seriously about the need for an increase in the Navy.” He proceeded to urge the instant construction of six battleships, six large cruisers, seventy-five torpedo-boats, and four dry docks, together with the modernization of ninety-five guns to rapid fire, the laying in of nine thousand armor-piercing projectiles, and the purchase of two million pounds of smokeless powder.

  Long could only suggest that Roosevelt list these demands in a memorandum. The Assistant Secretary was eventually persuaded to settle for one battleship.116

  ROOSEVELT WAS BACK in Washington on 15 October, accompanied by his wife and family. Installing them at 1810 N Street, “a very nice house, just opposite the British Embassy,” he set off almost immediately on the campaign trail, stumping in Massachusetts for local candidates, and in Ohio for Senator Hanna.117 On 27 October he turned thirty-nine.

  With November came the familiar, seasonal quickening of his activity, as the days shortened and crisp winds stimulated his blood. The ground of Rock Creek Park grew hard under his hobnailed boots, as he and Leonard Wood strolled their endless visionary miles, talking of Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.118

  Roosevelt’s duties as Assistant Secretary were not numerous enough to divert him, and he began to show signs of intellectual restlessness. He plotted four more volumes of The Winning of the West, took Frederic Remington to task for rendering badgers “too long and thin,” and yearned for a war with Spain “within the next month.”119 Long sympathetically appointed him president of a board investigating the Navy’s most chronic ailment: friction between line and staff personnel.120 The resultant work load was heavy, yet Roosevelt now toyed with the idea of writing “a historical article on the Mongol Terror, the domination of the Tartar tribes over half of Europe during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.”121

  Early in the morning of 19 November he sent joyful news to Bamie: “Very unexpectedly Quentin Roosevelt appeared just two hours ago.” Pausing only to enter the boy for Groton, he marched off to work and dictated his most bellicose letter yet, to Lt. Comdr. W. W. Kimball, author of the department’s original war plan.122 “To speak with a frankness which our timid friends would call brutal, I would regard a war with Spain from two standpoints: first, the advisability on the grounds both of humanity and self-interest of interfering on behalf of the Cubans … second … the benefit done our military forces by trying both the Navy and Army in actual practice.”123

  On 8 December, he heard that Dewey had sailed for the Far East, but by now he was so busy writing the report of his Personnel Board that he paid little attention. The eight-thousand-word document, submitted the following day, proposed a bill for the prompt amalgamation of line and staff, on the grounds that engineers, in an industrial age, could no longer be held separate from or inferior to officers above deck. Roosevelt inserted one of his typical historical parallels, showing how in the mid-seventeenth century sailormen and sea-soldiers had to unite and resolve their differences in much the same way. “We are not making a revolution,” he wrote, “we are merely recognizing and giving shape to an evolution.”124

  Secretary Long complimented him highly on the report,125 as did many naval academics and newspaper editors. The New York Evening Post expressed “admiration” for his “grasp and breadth of view” of highly complicated material. “If profound study, evident freedom from bias, and command of the subject could place a report above criticism … nothing would be left to do but the enactment by Congress of the proposed bill.”126

  Shortly before Christmas the mammalogist C. Hart Merriam announced that a new species of Olympic Mountain elk had been named Cervus Roosevelti in honor of the founder of the Boone & Crockett Club. “It is fitting that the noblest deer of America should perpetuate the name of one who, in the midst of a busy public career, has found time to study our larger mammals in their native haunts and has written the best accounts we have ever had of their habits and chase.”127

  And so the year ended with a crescendo of praise for Assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt, who was now recognized to be one of the best-informed and most influential men in Washington.128 He was also, as the Boston Sunday Globe pointed out, by far the most entertaining performer in “the great theater of our national life.” But “it would never do … to permit such a man to get into the Presidency. He would produce national insomnia.”129

  “From the neck up, at least, McKinley was every inch a President.”

  President William McKinley at the time of the Spanish-American War. (Illustration 22.2)

  CHAPTER 23

  The Lieutenant Colonel

  “What was that?” said Olaf, standing

  On the quarter-deck.

  “Something heard I like the stranding

  Of a shattered wreck.”

  THE NEW YEAR was not twelve days old when a riot disturbed the uneasy peace of Havana, Cuba. Spanish officers smashed the presses of four local newspapers critical of the occupying army. The violence lasted about an hour, long enough to convince the nervous U.S. Consul-General, Fitzhugh Lee, that the lives of American residents were in danger. He sent home some urgent dispatches, and the State Department flashed a message to Captain Charles D. Sigsbee of the U.S.S. Maine, at Key West, Florida: “TWO DOLLARS.”1

  While Captain Sigsbee pondered that cryptic cable—a prearranged code alerting him to be ready to steam for Cuba at a moment’s notice2—Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt pondered the first press reports of the riot. Next morning, Thursday, 13 January, he went into John D. Long’s office and shut the door.3

  The Secretary was amusedly aware that his subordinate intended “to abandon everything and go to the front” in the event of war with Spain. Roosevelt had said so at least twice already, but today he was in such fierce earnest that Long wondered if he had not gone “daft in the matter.”

  “Now, Senator, may we please have war?”

  Wreck of the Maine in Havana Harbor,

  February 1898—Old Glory still flying. (Illustration 23.1)

  Attempting to jolly him back to his senses, the Secretary called him a “crank” and ridiculed his desire to get involved in some “bushwhacking fight” with Cuban mosquitoes. But Roosevelt would not be diverted, as Long noted somewhat pettishly in his diary.

  The funny part of it all is, that he actually takes the thing seriously … he bores me with plans of naval and military movement, and the necessity of having some scheme to attack arranged for instant execution in case of an emergency. By tomorrow he will have got half a dozen heads of bureaus together and have spoiled twenty pages of good writing paper, and lain awake half the night.… Happily, the latest dispatches of this afternoon are to the effect that everything is quiet again.4

  Roosevelt soon realized that the “flurry in Havana” was no real threat to American security, but he volunteered his services, just in case, to his friend General C. Whitney Tillinghast II, Adjutant General of New York.

  I believe I can get a commission as a major or lieutenant colonel in one of the National Guard regiments, but I want your help and the Governor’s … I have served three years in the State Militia (not to speak of having acted as sheriff in the cow country!) and I believe that I would be of some use.…5

  Meanwhile, Edith was
lying alarmingly ill at 1810 N Street, having collapsed with suspected typhoid fever nine days before.6 Roosevelt was “exceedingly put out” by this inconvenience, for it obliged him to cancel a trip to the annual Boone & Crockett dinner in New York. To make matters worse, little Ted was suffering from nervous exhaustion.7 Roosevelt’s own attitude to disease and frailty was the same now, in his fortieth year, as it had been in his fourteenth: if one ignored them long enough, presumably they would go away. No illness, not even the mortal kind, must deter him from leaving for the front at the first hint of war.8

  But the trumpets did not blow for him that freezing January day. He worked off his frustrations, as the Secretary had predicted, by “spoiling twenty pages of good writing paper,” in the form of a memorandum on naval preparedness, and deposited it on Long’s desk the following morning.9 The document was signed Yours respectfully, but in its urgency and peremptory statement of facts it read more like a curt set of orders.

  Roosevelt warned of “serious consequences” for the Navy Department if it allowed itself to drift unprepared into war. “Some preparation can and should be undertaken, on the mere chance of having to strike … the saving in life, money, and reputation by such a course will be very great.” He advised—insisted—that vulnerable U.S. cruisers and gunboats currently “scattered about the high seas” be concentrated at strategic points for possible blockade duty in Cuba and the Philippines. This redeployment must begin “at once,” since even a fast cruiser like the Cincinnati would take thirty days to steam north from South America and would arrive home without any coal. “In other words for the first five or six most important weeks of the war these vessels will be absolutely useless,” Roosevelt wrote, temporarily forgetting that war had not yet been declared. Such ships should be recalled “tomorrow,” and assembled at Key West, where they could fill up with coal and be ready for instant battle orders.