The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  “He has a man of destiny behind him.”

  The second Inauguration of William McKinley, 4 March 1901. (Illustration epl.1)

  Sometime that day Roosevelt’s eastbound train crossed the tracks of the Presidential Special, bearing William McKinley north to the exposition in Buffalo.5

  TWO DAYS LATER, on Friday, 6 September, the Vice-President attended an estate luncheon of the Vermont Fish and Game League on Isle La Motte, in Lake Champlain.6 With a thousand other guests he sat under a great marquee and ate and drank leisurely until about four o’clock. Then, leaving the crowd to follow him, he strolled across the lawns to the home of his host, ex-Governor Nelson W. Fisk. An impromptu reception was planned inside, at which any member of the league might come forward and shake the Vice-President’s hand.

  Inside the house a telephone shrilled. While Fisk answered it, Roosevelt stood in the sun chatting to one or two companions. Then Fisk appeared at the door and beckoned him in wordlessly. To the puzzlement of other people on the lawn, the door was locked as soon as the Vice-President had stepped through it. Keys were heard turning in all the other doors in the house, and volunteer guards stood at the windows. They would answer no questions as to what was being discussed on the telephone. Yet somehow a realization swept through the crowd that the President had been shot, perhaps killed.

  Meanwhile Roosevelt had put down the receiver and was addressing the house company. “Gentlemen, I am afraid that there is little ground for hope that the report is untrue. It comes now from two sources and appears to be authentic.” He gave them the facts. A young anarchist had approached the President in Buffalo’s Temple of Music with a handkerchief wrapped around his right hand. McKinley, thinking it a bandage, had reached to shake his left hand, whereupon a revolver concealed in the handkerchief blasted two bullets into the President’s breast and belly. He was now undergoing exploratory surgery, and the assailant, whose name was Leon Czolgosz, had been apprehended. “Don’t let them hurt him,” McKinley had murmured before lapsing into deep shock.7

  While Senator Redfield Proctor apprised the crowd of the details, Roosevelt and his aides left immediately for Buffalo.

  McKinley’s condition next morning, Saturday, 7 September, gave encouragement to his attending physicians. The breast wound was no more than a gash on the ribs, but the abdominal penetration was deep and serious. Both walls of the stomach had been torn open; the bullet was buried somewhere irretrievable. The most dangerous threat was of gangrene; however there were no visible signs of sepsis.8

  McKinley was a man of strong constitution, and he rallied amazingly over the weekend. By Tuesday, 10 September, his condition was so improved that Roosevelt (who had comported himself with extraordinary dignity and concern throughout) was told he no longer need remain at the presidential bedside. In fact it would be best, from the point of view of publicity, if he quit Buffalo altogether.9

  The Vice-President left that afternoon for a short vacation in the Adirondacks, where Edith and the children were waiting for him in a mountain cabin.

  HE COULD NOT HAVE CHOSEN a destination more likely to reassure the American people that the national crisis was over, and that his services would not be required in some dread emergency. The cabin stood at Camp Tahawus, “the most remote human habitation in the Empire State,” on the slopes of Mount Marcy, highest peak in the Adirondacks. Half a century before, Tahawus had been a little mining community; now, thanks to the enterprise of Roosevelt’s wealthy friend and fellow conservationist James McNaughton, it had been transformed into a luxury resort for hunters, fishermen, and climbers.10

  On arrival at the camp Roosevelt stopped at Tahawus Club, the old village lodging-house, and arranged for two ranger guides to accompany him on an ascent of the mountain, beginning on 12 September.11 This done, he went on up the slope to his cabin in the trees.

  By nightfall on the twelfth, Roosevelt and his climbing party, consisting of Edith, Kermit, ten-year-old Ethel, a governess, James McNaughton, three other friends, and the two rangers, were at Lake Colden, altitude 3,500 feet, where they spent the night in two cabins. The next morning, Friday the thirteenth, was cold and gray: an impenetrable drizzle screened off the mountain above them, and the women and children elected to return to Tahawus. But Roosevelt, who could never resist the highest peak in any neighborhood, in any weather, exhorted his elder male companions to continue climbing with him. Leaving one guide to escort the downward party, he ordered the other to lead his own up into the mists. At about nine o’clock they set off along the cold, slippery trail.12

  AT 11:52 A.M. ROOSEVELT found himself on a great flat rock, gazing out (could he but see it!) across the whole of New York State. Rolling fog obscured everything but nearer grass and shrubs, yet the sense of being the highest man for hundreds of miles around, cherished by all instinctive climbers, was no doubt pleasing to him. As if in further reward, the clouds unexpectedly parted, sunshine poured down on his head, and for a few minutes a world of trees and mountains and sparkling water lay all around, stretching to infinity.13

  Roosevelt was not a reflective man, nor was he prone now in his early middle age (he would be forty-three in six weeks’ time) to long for the past as much as he used to. But the news of President McKinley’s accident, and the unavoidable horrid thrill of being, if only for a few hours, the likely next President of the United States, seems to have temporarily awakened his youthful tendency to nostalgia. Writing to Jacob Riis a few days before, he had said that “a shadow” had fallen across his path, separating him from “those youthful days” which he would never see again.14

  Here, if ever, was an opportunity to look around him at all these lower hills, and to think of the hills he had himself climbed in life. Pilatus as a boy; Katahdin as an underclassman; Chestnut Hill as a young lover; the Matterhorn in the ecstasy of honeymoon; the Big Horns in Wyoming, with their bugling elks; the Capitol Hill in Albany, that freezing January night when he first entered politics; Sagamore Hill, his own fertile fortress, full of his children and crowned with triumphant antlers; the Hill in Washington where he twice laid out John Wanamaker; that lowest yet loftiest of hills in Cuba, where like King Olaf on Smalsor Horn he planted his shield; now this. Would he ever rise any higher? Or was McKinley’s recovery a sign that the final peak he had so long sought would after all be denied him?

  Mists rolled in again, and Roosevelt descended five hundred feet to a little lake named Tear-of-the-Clouds, where his party unpacked lunch. It was about 1:25 in the afternoon.15

  As he ate his sandwiches he saw below him in the trees a ranger approaching, running, clutching the yellow slip of a telegram.16 Instinctively, he knew what message the man was bringing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BEFORE LISTING THOSE WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED in various ways to the writing of this biography, I must single out a few names for special mention. Dr. John Allen Gable, Executive Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, minutely scrutinized my manuscript, corrected errors of fact and judgment, and made no attempt to influence my interpretations of TR’s character—beyond constructing some logical arguments which I was free to accept or reject. In most cases I accepted them. Those which I rejected are nevertheless so valid that I have incorporated them in my Chapter Notes. My debt to Dr. Gable is large.

  So, too, is my debt to Joseph Kanon, who honed the manuscript with the elegant precision of a born editor. To Carleton Putnam, a man I have never met, I express gratitude and admiration for his Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years (Scribner’s, 1958), an essential source for students of TR’s youth. It is a tragedy of American biography that this grave, neglected masterpiece was never followed by other volumes. Peggy Brooks and Ann Elmo were the first to suggest, on the basis of a few articles and a screenplay, that I should write a book about TR; if the result bulks somewhat larger than the “short” work they envisioned, my thanks to them have increased proportionately.

  I also thank the following, in alphabetical order: John Alsop of Avon, Con
necticut, for permission to study his valuable collection of Roosevelt and Robinson papers, now transferred to Harvard; Georges Borchardt, my agent; John C. Broderick, Chief of Manuscripts at the Library of Congress; the Hon. Alan Clark, M.P., of Saltwood Castle, Kent; Mr. Sheffield Cowles for reminiscences of his uncle TR; Barbara Dailey for hospitality to a starving, snowbound researcher in the Great Blizzard of February 1978; Wallace Dailey for his amazingly efficient work as Curator of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard, not to mention his performances of Bach after hours; the late Mrs. Ethel Roosevelt Derby, TR’s younger daughter; the European-American Bank, for not blanching at the sight of the word “Writer” on a loan application form; John J. Geoghegan, my publisher, for his patience and generosity; Kathleen Jacklin, Archivist of the Cornell University Libraries; Peter Lacey, artiorum patronus; Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, TR’s elder daughter, for contributing many bright fragments of memory to the mosaic of my Prologue; Linda and Noel Rae, for the use of a peaceful house in the country; Larry Remele, Historian/Editor of North Dakota’s excellent State Historical Society; Mr. Archibald Roosevelt, son of TR, for uncannily and unconsciously recreating TR’s smile for me; Mrs. Philip Roosevelt for showing me letters by and about Alice Lee; Mr. and Mrs. P. James Roosevelt for encouragement, advice, and hospitality; Gary Roth, Curator of Sagamore Hill National Historical Site; Guy St. Clair of the Union League Club; James Terleph, for a psychological critique of my earlier chapters; Angus Wilson for tolerantly answering yet another letter about Rudyard Kipling; and Mitchell York, a highly capable editorial assistant.

  Finally I would like to invoke the name of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who composed the most inspiring of literary aphorisms, “Every word that you write is a blow that smites the Devil.”

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY LISTS ONLY THE MAJOR SOURCES of information and quotations in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. The abbreviations preceding each item will be used in the Chapter Notes below. Unpublished sources are coded in capitals, published sources in combined capitals and lower case. Thus ADA. signifies Henry Adams in manuscript, and Ada. Henry Adams in print. All other sources, including dissertations, documents, periodical articles, and minor books, will be cited in full when they first appear in the Chapter Notes. Listings are alphabetical by surname except for Theodore Roosevelt, who appears throughout as TR.

  Unpublished material: Papers, Memoirs, and Scrapbooks

  ADA. Adams, Henry. Papers in Massachusetts Historical Society, Cambridge.

  AND. Andrews, Avery. Citizen in Action: The Story of TR as Police Commissioner (typescript) in TRC.

  AND.SCR. Andrews, Avery. Scrapbooks of the New York City Police Department, 1895–97, 3 vols., in TRC.

  BEA. Beale, Howard K. Papers in Mudd Library, Princeton University.

  FEN. Fenwick, J. E., compiler. The White House Record of Social Functions, 13 vols., in National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  FDR. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.

  GEO. George, Henry. Mayoralty Campaign Scrapbooks, 4 vols., in New York Public Library.

  HAG.BLN. Hagedorn, Hermann. “Bad Lands Notes” (research for his Roosevelt in the Bad Lands in TRC.

  HAY.BR. Hay, John. Papers, Hay Library, Brown University.

  LOD. Lodge, Henry Cabot. Papers, including complete TR-Lodge correspondence, in Massachusetts Historical Society. Typed copies of the correspondence, prepared for publication by Lodge and Edith Roosevelt (see Lod. below), reveal occasional blue-penciled bursts of Rooseveltian invective, which I have chosen to restore.

  LON. Long, John D. Papers, including diaries, in Massachusetts Historical Society.

  PRI.N Pringle, Henry F. Notes for his TR: A Biography (see Pri., below).

  TRB. Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, New York City. Unsorted but often valuable collection of Rooseveltiana, including the complete correspondence of TR with his sister Bamie, in photostats and typed copies. This collection was judiciously edited for publication in Letters from TR to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 1870–1918 (Scribner’s, 1925). Many important letters, such as that of 20 September 1886, describing TR’s qualms about remarrying, and a long series to do with the alcoholism and death of Elliott Roosevelt, never saw print. I have preferred to cite the copies, rather than the published versions. TRB also contains many files of interviews, clips, notes, and photographs collected by the indefatigable Hermann Hagedorn. All Roosevelt biographers are indebted to this gentleman, although his hero-worship of TR occasionally got the better of him. To take one small but significant example, the description of TR as an Assemblyman quoted by Isaac Hunt, “He’s a brilliant madman born a hundred years too soon” (see Chapter 9), is altered in Hagedorn’s stenographic record so that “madman” appears shorn of its offending first syllable.

  TRC. Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Mass. By far the biggest Roosevelt archive, including most of his 150,000 letters (only 10% of which have been published) either in originals or copies. The voluminous papers of TR’s two sisters are also on deposit here, along with stacks of scrapbooks and photographs and an extensive book collection.

  TRP. Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (L.C.). Mainly incoming and outgoing official correspondence, skimpy for the earlier years covered by this volume, but waxing enormous after 1898.

  The above three collections contain the following diaries:

  TR.PRI.DI. Theodore Roosevelt: Private Diaries, 1878–1885. The most revealing Roosevelt documents to survive. (TRP)

  TR.LEG.DI. Theodore Roosevelt: Diary of Five Months in the New York Legislature, 1882. (TRB photostat) Reprinted in Mor. (see below).

  TR.1886.DI. Theodore Roosevelt: Diary for 1886. Enigmatic and fragmentary. (TRC)

  TR.WAR.DI. Theodore Roosevelt. Diary of the Spanish-American War, 1898. Terse but fascinating. (TRC)

  And the following scrapbooks:

  TR.HAR.SCR. Theodore Roosevelt. Harvard Scrapbook, 1879–80. Stripped of all relics of Alice Lee, but otherwise useful. (TRC)

  TR.SCR. Theodore Roosevelt. Scrapbooks, 1881–1898. Disorganized and crumbling, but rich in contemporary clips and reviews, which are by no means all flattering. (TRC)

  TR.PRES.SCR. Theodore Roosevelt. Presidential Scrapbooks, 1901–1909. A prodigious source, used only for the Prologue to this volume. (TRP)

  Interviews and Reminiscences

  Conversations between the author and Roosevelt’s surviving children are cited where relevant in the Chapter Notes, as are interviews conducted by Mary Hagedorn with various members of the Roosevelt family in the 1950s for the Columbia Oral History Project.

  COW. Cowles, Anna Roosevelt. Four letter/memoirs to her son Sheffield Cowles, recalling her youth and TR’s childhood at 28 East Twentieth Street, plus random recollections of later years. (TRB and TRC)

  FRE. French, J. F., interviewer. A collection of verbal reminiscences, mainly political, recorded in the 1920s with TR’s old New York Republican Associates. (TRB)

  HUN. Hunt, Isaac, and Spinney, George. Verbal reminiscences, mainly of TR’s Assembly years, recorded during a dinner with Hermann Hagedorn at the Harvard Club, New York, on 20 Sept. 1923. Typed memorandum, including a supplementary Hunt statement, no date. (TRB)

  Published Works

  Ada. Adams, Henry. Letters, 1892–1918, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford. Boston, 1938.

  Alex. Alexander, DeAlva S. A Political History of New York State. Vol. 4: “Four Famous New Yorkers.” New York, 1923.

  Azo. Azoy, A.C.M. Charge! The Story of the Battle of San Juan Hill. New York, 1961.

  Bea. Beale, Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power. Johns Hopkins Press, 1956.

  Bee. Beer, Thomas. Hanna, Crane, and the Mauve Decade. Knopf, 1941.

  Ber. Berman, Jay Stuart. Police Administration and Progressive Reform: Theodore Roosevelt as Police Commissioner of New York. Greenwood, 1987.

  Bis. Bishop, Joseph Bucklin. Theodore Roosevelt and Hi
s Time. Scribner’s, 1920.

  Bur. Burton, David H. Theodore Roosevelt, Confident Imperialist. Philadelphia, 1968. Excellent and illuminating.

  But. Butt, Archie. The Letters of Archie Butt, Personal Aide to President Roosevelt, ed. Lawrence F. Abbot. Doubleday, 1924. A classic.

  Cha. Chanler, Mrs. Winthrop. Roman Spring. Little, Brown, 1934.

  Che. Chessman, G. Wallace. Governor Theodore Roosevelt. Harvard U. Press, 1965.

  Cly. Clymer, Kenton J. John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat. U. of Michigan Press, 1975.

  Cro. Croly, Herbert. Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Works. Macmillan, 1912.

  Cut. Cutright, Paul Russell. Theodore Roosevelt the Naturalist. Harpers, 1956. A long overdue addition to the Roosevelt bibliography. Its final pages contain the most moving of all eulogies to TR.

  Den. Dennett, Tyler. John Hay: From Poetry to Politics. Dodd, Mead, 1933.

  Dun. Dunn, Arthur Wallace. From Harrison to Harding: A Personal Narrative, 1888–1921. 2 vols. Putnam, 1922.

  Gar. Garraty, John A. Henry Cabot Lodge. Knopf, 1953.

  Gos. Gosnell, Harold F. Boss Platt and His New York Machine. U. Chicago Press, 1924.

  Gou. Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of William McKinley. Regents Press of Kansas, 1980. A policy-oriented study, importantly supplementing Leech (see below).