The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  For the rest of the day the convention was anticlimactic and boring. A blight of listlessness, to quote Harper’s Weekly, hung over the proceedings, intensified by steamy, cabbage-smelling heat wafting from the slums of West Philadelphia. Yet much aggressive activity was going on behind the scenes. Hanna, lobbying like a man possessed, bullied every delegate he could find into promises of support for John D. Long, or Representative Jonathen Dolliver of Iowa—anybody but Theodore Roosevelt. White House observers, fearful that the Chairman would split the party in two, telephoned Washington for advice on Tuesday night. The result was another request for decorum from McKinley: “The President’s friends must not undertake to commit the Administration to any candidate. It has no candidate … The Administration wants the candidate of the Convention, and the President’s friends must not dictate the Convention.”67

  But the true dictators of the convention were not McKinley’s friends. Senator Platt, nursing a broken rib, was so confident about the preliminary arrangements he had made in behalf of Roosevelt’s nomination that he beat a wheezy retreat on Tuesday night. He left the task of actually creating the nomination in the hands of his old friend, Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania—in Platt’s judgment, “the ablest politician this country ever produced.”68

  Quay was happy to undertake the work, not out of any especial love for Roosevelt so much as a deep desire to hurt Mark Hanna. Quay was an ex–United States Senator, and wanted to regain office, but Hanna had blocked his efforts.69 To strike the Chairman down in front of the National Convention would therefore be sweet revenge; and Platt, by turning Roosevelt over to him, had supplied Quay with an ideal missile.

  Few delegates, least of all Roosevelt, took any notice of Quay on Wednesday morning, as he sat short, squat, silent, and Indian-eyed70 in his light suit at an inconspicuous place in the Pennsylvania delegation. He waited until Roosevelt had escorted Henry Cabot Lodge to the podium as elected chairman of the convention—a moment of great pride to both men—before rising to offer an amendment to the rules. Amid puzzled silence, Quay read a resolution to equalize, and where necessary reduce, the size of delegations at the convention, at a ratio of 1 to every 1,000 votes cast in their home states.71

  Just what this had to do with nominating Roosevelt for Vice-President none of Platt’s aides could tell. But for the first time since the convention opened, there was real noise in the hall.72 The majority of the delegates from East and West roared approval, while those from the South howled with fear. They realized that Quay’s amendment would cut their ranks in half. Republican voting was traditionally light in Dixie. And since most of Chairman Hanna’s supporters hailed from the South, “equalization” would in effect neutralize his power over the convention. Quay’s true motive dawned on the politically astute: he was not remotely interested in delegate representation; he wanted something from Hanna. Sure enough, the Pennsylvanian suggested that a vote on the amendment be postponed overnight so that “the delegates would have ample time to become familiar with it.”73

  Shortly afterward Hanna was seen crossing over and resignedly asking Quay what his price was. “If you will nominate Roosevelt,” said Quay, “I will withdraw the resolution. If you won’t, I shall insist upon its coming to a vote, and you know what will happen there.”

  Hanna did. The resolution would pass on the grounds of simple fairness. He would lose his Southern delegates, and lose control of the convention; there would be no guarantee then even of President McKinley’s renomination.

  That night Hanna, grimacing at the taste of wormwood, announced that in view of “strong and earnest sentiment … from all parts of the country,” he would support the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for Vice-President.

  “The best we can do,” he told his supporters, “is pray fervently for the continued health of the President.”74

  Roosevelt, meanwhile, sat alone in his hotel room. He had already bowed to the inevitable, and would accept the nomination for what it was worth. Having finished one of the Histories of Josephus over the weekend, he was now reading Thucydides.75

  SHORTLY AFTER TEN O’CLOCK the following morning the icy tones of Cabot Lodge announced that the business before the convention would be the nomination of candidates for President of the United States.

  Senator Foraker spoke for an eloquent quarter of an hour on the glories of the McKinley Administration, and was awarded with an ovation that reminded one observer, Murat Halstead, of “the halcyon days of the Plumed Knight.” Then eighteen thousand voices joined in the singing of “The Union Forever”—an “incomparably moving” sound even to the dignified correspondent of Harper’s Weekly. “When one hears that sound one must either sing or cry.”76

  Almost before the delegates resumed their seats, Governor Roosevelt had leaped up beside Lodge to second the nomination. He stared briefly into the eyes of his best friend, while applause rolled around them. Sixteen years before, as young delegates to the convention in Chicago, they had felt the pain of defeat together, and heard predictions of their political ruin; now they were two of the most powerful men in the country, and the party was shouting homage to them. It was a sweet moment—but Lodge’s face was distorted with “almost agonized anxiety,”77 and Roosevelt turned quickly to address the audience.

  “Mr. Chairman and my fellow delegates, my beloved Republicans and Americans …” An accomplished orator now, he moved confidently through his prepared text, speaking at a torrential speed unusual even for him, his body trembling with the force of his gestures. A man in the audience was reminded of “a graduate in a school of acting”;78 a woman sighed that “he would make a first-class lover … from the stage point of view.” Here was no soft, hesitant wooer, she felt, “but one who would come at once to the question, and, if the lady repulsed him, bear her away despite herself, as some of his ancestors must have done in the pliocene age.…”79

  While Rose Coghlan dreamed, so did Theodore Roosevelt.

  We stand on the threshold of a new century big with the fate of mighty nations. It rests with us now to decide whether in the opening years of that century we shall march forward to fresh triumphs or whether at the outset we shall cripple ourselves for the contest. Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work of the great world-powers? No. The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.…80

  He gazed through his tossing lenses at the thousands of banners, the streamers, the bright balloons, the tricolored bunches of pampas grass, the hanging Stars and Stripes. The whole auditorium looked, said a nearby reporter, like a kaleidoscope.81

  MCKINLEY AND ROOSEVELT were nominated by votes of 926 and 925 respectively—the Governor casting the convention’s only vote against himself.82 After that final gesture to his lost independence, he proclaimed himself a loyal member of the team, and offered his services to Hanna for the duration of the campaign.

  The Chairman told him that it would be, as far as McKinley was concerned, a repetition of the campaign of 1896. While the Democratic nominee—William Jennings Bryan, again—stumped the country on behalf of the disadvantaged classes, the President would remain at home in Canton, Ohio, and hold his customary front-porch receptions to visiting deputations. Roosevelt would have to do most of the traveling, and most of the speechmaking; fortunately he was good at both.

  The candidate was cheerfully agreeable. “I am as strong as a bull moose,” he assured Hanna, “and you can use me to the limit, taking heed of but one thing and that is my throat.” He did not wish to seem to be neglecting his duties as Governor of New York, but fortunately “July, August, September, and October are months in which there is next to no work.”83

  All through that quarter of a year, accordingly, Roosevelt crossed and recrossed the country, with such numbing frequency, and such an incessant outpouring of his familiar political philosophy, as to blur the sensibilities o
f all but a cataloger. Suffice to say that he traveled farther and spoke more than any candidate, presidential or vice-presidential, in nineteenth-century history, with the exception of Bryan himself, four years before. But Bryan in 1900 could not match Roosevelt. By 3 November the Governor had made a total of 673 speeches in 567 towns in 24 states; he had traveled 21,209 miles and spoken an average of 20,000 words a day to 3 million people.84 The following timetable of one undated campaign day survives from the diary of an aide:

  7:00 A.M. Breakfast

  7:30 A.M. A speech

  8:00 A.M. Reading a historical work

  9:00 A.M. A speech

  10:00 A.M. Dictating letters

  11:00 A.M. Discussing Montana mines

  11:30 A.M. A speech

  12:00 Reading an ornithological work

  12:30 P.M. A speech

  1:00 P.M. Lunch

  1:30 P.M. A speech

  2:30 P.M. Reading Sir Walter Scott

  3:00 P.M. Answering telegrams

  3:45 P.M. A speech

  4:00 P.M. Meeting the press

  4:30 P.M. Reading

  5:00 P.M. A speech

  6:00 P.M. Reading

  7:00 P.M. Supper

  8–10 P.M. Speaking

  11:00 P.M. Reading alone in his car

  12:00 To bed.85

  Inevitably, there were moments of ugliness, as when a mob of hired “muckers” assaulted him near Cripple Creek, Colorado, with rocks big enough to crush the iron guards on the caboose. A flying wedge of Rough Riders rescued the candidate from serious harm. William Jennings Bryan haughtily disbelieved reports of the incident, but said it was an outrage “if true.”86

  The Rough Riders, of course, were not above staging a little playful violence themselves, as when a member of the Campaign Special shot a Populist editor for presuming to criticize “mah Colonel.” The editor survived,87 but stories like this revived Roosevelt’s forgotten “cowboy” image in the East, much to the delight of cartoonists and humorists. On 13 October, Finley Peter Dunne’s barroom philosopher “Mr. Dooley”88 summarized the campaign thus:

  “Well, sir,” said Mr Dooley, “if thayse anny wan r-runnin’ in this campaign but me frind Tiddy Rosenfelt, I’d like to know who it is. It isn’t Mack, f’r he wint away three weeks ago, lavin’ a note sayin’ that he’d accipt th’ nommynation if twas offered him, an’ he ain’t been heerd fr’m since. It ain’t Bryan … ‘Tis Tiddy alone that’s r-runnin’, an’ he ain’t runnin’, he’s gallopin’.”

  Mr. Dooley went on to parody a local account of one of Roosevelt’s bipartisan meetings out West.

  At this moment Gov’nor Rosenfelt bit his way through th’ throng, an afther bringin’ down with a well-aimed shot th’ chairman iv th’ Dimmycratic commity … he spoke as follows: ‘Scoundhrels, cowards, hired ruffians, I know ye all well, an’ if e’er a wan iv ye comes up to this platform I’ll show ye how I feel to’ord ye, an’ fellow Raypublicans: This is th’ happiest moment iv me life. [A voice: “Kill him.”] Nivir bifure have I injiyed so much livin’ undher a Constitootion that insures equal r-rights an’ no more to wan an’ all, an’—excuse me, gents, while I get th’ r-red-headed man in th’ gal’ry. Got him!

  Thanks—an’ spreads over the country… (Editor’s Note: here our rayporther was sthruck on th’ back iv th’ head with a piece iv castin’ … But we undherstand that Gov’nor Rosenfelt completed a delightful speech amid grreat enthusyasm an’ was escorted to th’ train be a large crowd. th’ list iv kilt an’ wounded will be found in another part iv this paper.)89

  Comparisons between this piece and, say, the Chicago Times-Herald account of Roosevelt’s visit to Deadwood, South Dakota, on 3 October prove that Mr. Dooley’s imagination was not wholly without basis in fact.90

  The trip also had its moments of poignancy, as when Roosevelt’s train snaked down into the Badlands of North Dakota and stopped at Medora. “The romance of my life began here,” said Roosevelt, to nobody in particular. Then, jumping down into the sagebrush, he looked around at the gray buttes, the Little Missouri, and what was left of Medora itself. “It does not seem right,” he said sadly, “that I should come here and not stay.”91

  ON 6 NOVEMBER 1900, the Republican party won its greatest victory since the triumph of Grant in 1872. McKinley’s popular plurality was well over three-quarters of a million, and he swamped Bryan in the Electoral College, 292–155.92 Much of this favorable vote could be ascribed to the nation’s booming economy, and satisfaction with the successful conduct of the war; but the Vice-Presidentelect was entitled to much of the credit. Party professionals agreed that by his selfless exertions he had earned himself the Presidency in 1904.

  If not earlier. “I feel sorry for McKinley,” said one Republican campaign worker, as he perused the election results. “He has a man of destiny behind him.”93

  ROOSEVELT DIVIDED the rest of November and December between Albany and Oyster Bay. On the last day of the year his Governorship came to an end. “I think I have been the best Governor of my time,” he claimed, “better either than Cleveland or Tilden.”94 His record had indeed been impressive, seen in the context of history, although the Evening Post sneered at his record of “partial and leisurely reform.”95 A wide disparity of other editorial comments indicates that contemporary critics found it difficult, if not impossible, to analyze Governor Roosevelt objectively.

  Much of this difficulty arose out of the Roosevelt/Platt relationship, so subtle a combination of enmity and friendliness, clashes and compromise. Conservatives on the one hand, and radicals on the other, simply could not see how two such men could, in effect, be merged into one Governor, and produce legislation so puzzlingly satisfactory to both their traditional constituencies (although of course both regulars and reformers complained that it was neither). The evidence is that Platt himself was confused, and merely trying to make the best of an awkward alliance, whereas Roosevelt, as time would show, knew very well what he was about.

  In brief summary, he was responding, along with such other leaders as John P. Altgeld of Chicago, Hazen Pingree of Detroit, and Samuel Jones of Toledo, to the progressive movement then developing in various parts of the country.96 He had been responding to it, indeed, throughout his career, as a reform Assemblyman in 1882, a reform Civil Service Commissioner in 1889, and a reform Police Commissioner in 1895; but aristocratic paternalism had dominated his thinking until 1898. The war, which brought him confessedly closer to his men than his officers,97 also awakened his conscience to the needs of those less fortunate, less virile, less intelligent than himself. Having achieved his own military catharsis on San Juan Hill, he was now a politician again, and found himself less interested in battles than in treaties. As such, his two gubernatorial messages could be viewed as social contracts acknowledging the continuing, though waning power of the Old Guard, and promising new powers to the progressives.

  If not the first, Theodore Roosevelt was certainly one of the first politicians to act responsibly in view of the changing economics and class structure of late-nineteenth-century America. As such he deserves to be ranked only slightly behind Altgeld and Pingree and Jones. If his governorship, which lasted only two years (and was subject to enormous distractions in the second), was less spectacular than some, it was spectacular enough in terms of his own membership in the social and intellectual elite. One thinks of his early contempt for unions, for Henry George, for the unwashed Populists, for the rural supporters of William Jennings Bryan. Yet as Governor, Roosevelt had shown himself again and again willing to support labor against capital, and the plebeians in their struggle against his own class.

  After 1900, as progressivism rated a capital P and reform governors began to crowd the political landscape, Roosevelt’s legislative record would look more and more modest, even cautious. But as a modern historian asks, “who in office was more radical in 1899?”98

  WITH THE TURN of the century came private citizenship again, in preparation for the life of “a dignified nonen
tity” in his new job.99 Gratifying though it was to see a collected edition of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt put out by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, there was also something distressingly final about the fifteen volumes, as if he had already been tombstoned, a strenuous relic of the past.

  Apart from boning up in a few issues of the Congressional Record, to see how to preside over the Senate, there was really little he could do. The frightening specter of inactivity loomed ahead. To fend it off, he left on 7 January for his first extended hunting trip in years—a chase after cougar in Colorado—and did not get back to Sagamore Hill until 23 February. A week later the Roosevelts headed southward en masse for the Inauguration on 4 March 1901. So did a party of maliciously amused organization men, headed by Senator Platt and the new Governor, Benjamin B. Odell. “We’re all off to Washington,” said Platt, “to see Teddy take the veil.”100

  EPILOGUE: SEPTEMBER 1901

  A strain of music closed the tale,

  A low, monotonous, funeral wail,

  That with its cadence, wild and sweet,

  Made the long Saga more complete.

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S FORMAL SERVICES to the nation as Vice-President lasted exactly four days, from 4 March to 8 March 1901.1 The Senate then adjourned until December, and Roosevelt was free to lay down his gavel and return to Oyster Bay. Before doing so he asked Associate Justice Edward D. White for advice on resuming his long-abandoned legal studies in the fall2—a sure sign of confusion and pessimism about the future.

  It was pleasant, all the same, to relax with his numerous children after so many busy years. Sagamore was at its most beautiful that spring, with spreading dogwood, blooming orchards, and the “golden leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes chanting their vespers” down below.

  An old friend, Fanny Smith Dana, visited him that spring. “As always, Theodore was vital and stimulating, but there was a difference. The spur of combat was absent.”3 In May he escorted Edith north to the opening of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and in July and August made two further restless trips West, to Colorado and Minnesota. “I always told you I was more of a Westerner than an Easterner,” he explained, rather vaguely, to Lincoln Steffens.4 In early fall his social schedule began to pick up, and on 4 September 1901, he arrived in Rutland, Vermont, for a short series of speaking engagements.