The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  Gwy. Gwynn, Stephen, ed. The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring-Rice. 2 vols. Houghton Mifflin, 1929.

  Hag.Boy. Hagedorn, Hermann. The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt. Harpers, 1918. Written in cooperation with TR.

  Hag.LW. Hagedorn, Hermann. Leonard Wood: A Biography. 2 vols. Harpers, 1931.

  Hag.RBL. Hagedorn, Hermann. Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. Houghton Mifflin, 1921.

  Hag.RF. Hagedorn, Hermann. The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill. Macmillan, 1954.

  Har. Harbaugh, William H. Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961.

  Hay. Hay, John. Letters and Extracts from his diaries, ed. Henry Adams and Mrs. Hay. 3 vols., privately printed, 1908, with initialed names penciled in by Worthington Chauncey Ford, in New York Public Library Rare Book Division.

  Her. Herrick, Walter R., Jr. The American Naval Revolution. Louisiana State U. Press, 1966.

  Igl. Iglehart, Ferdinand Cowle. Theodore Roosevelt: The Man as I Knew Him. New York, 1919.

  Joh. Johnson, Walter. William Allen White’s America. New York, 1947.

  Jos. Josephson, Matthew. The President Makers. New York, 1940. Best account of Henry Cabot Lodge’s lifelong career as TR’s mentor.

  Lan. Lang, Lincoln. Ranching with Roosevelt. Lippincott, 1926.

  Las. Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin. Norton, 1971.

  Lee. Leech, Margaret. In the Days of McKinley. Harpers, 1959. An unsurpassed presidential biography.

  Lod. Lodge, Henry Cabot. Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918. Scribner’s, 1925.

  Loo. Looker, Earle. The White House Gang. New York, 1929. A hilarious classic.

  Lor. Lorant, Stefan. The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. Doubleday, 1959.

  Mc.C. McCormick, Richard L. From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893–1910. Cornell U. Press, 1981. Essential background to TR’s police commissionership and governorship.

  May. May, Ernest. Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power. Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.

  Mil. Millis, Walter. The Martial Spirit. New York, 1931.

  Morg. Morgan, H. Wayne. McKinley and His America. Syracuse U. Press, 1963.

  Mor. Morison, Elting E. and Blum, John, eds. The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. 8 vols. Harvard U. Press, 1951–4. A work of formidable scholarship, indispensable to all students of TR.

  Morr. Morris, Edmund. Theodore Rex. Random House, 2001.

  Morr.EKR Morris, Sylvia Jukes. Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady. Modern Library edition, 2001.

  Nev. Nevins, Allan. Grover Cleveland. Dodd, Mead, 1932.

  Par. Parsons, Mrs. James Russell (Fanny Smith Dana, née Frances Theodora Smith). Perchance Some Day. Privately printed memoir, 1951. Copy in TRC.

  Pla. Platt, Thomas Collier. The Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt. Edited (and, one suspects, largely written) by Louis J. Lang. New York, 1910. Should be used in conjunction with Gos., above.

  Pra. Pratt, Julius W. The Expansionists of 1898. Baltimore, 1935.

  Pri. Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1931. Highly prejudiced and selective, but still the best one-volume life of TR.

  Put. Putnam, Carleton. Theodore Roosevelt. Vol. 1: The Formative Years, 1858–1886. Scribner’s, 1958. A neglected masterpiece. See Acknowledgments, above.

  Rho. Rhodes, James Ford. The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations, 1897–1909. Macmillan, 1923.

  Rii. Riis, Jacob A. Theodore Roosevelt the Citizen. Johnson, Wynne Co., 1904.

  Rob. Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt. My Brother Theodore Roosevelt. Scribner’s, 1921. Sentimental and inaccurate, but of prime importance nevertheless.

  Sew. Sewall, William Wingate. Bill Sewall’s Story of TR. New York, 1919.

  Ste. Steffens, Lincoln. Autobiography. Harcourt Brace, 1936.

  Sto. Stoddard, Henry L. As I Knew Them. Harpers, 1927.

  Sul. Sullivan, Mark. Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925. Vol. II: America Finding Herself. New York, 1927.

  Tha. Thayer, William Roscoe. The Life and Letters of John Hay. Houghton Mifflin, 1915.

  TR.Auto Theodore Roosevelt. An Autobiography. Macmillan, 1913. I have used the illustrated reprint of March 1914. For all its sins of omission, a fairly complete portrait of TR the man: alternately tender, preachy, humorous, boring, boastful, inspiring, cozy, and sad.

  TR.DBY. Theodore Roosevelt. Diaries of Boyhood and Youth. New York, 1924. Delightful.

  TR.Wks. Theodore Roosevelt. Works, ed. Hermann Hagedorn. National Edition, 20 vols. Scribner’s, 1926.

  Twe. Tweton, D. Jerome. The Marquis de Morès, Dakota Capitalist, French Nationalist. North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, Fargo, N.D., 1972.

  Wag. Wagenknecht, Edward. The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt. Longmans, Green & Co., 1958. Succeeds more than any other work in capturing the size and complexity of TR. Contains a magnificent bibliography.

  Wes. Westermeir, Clifford P. Who Rush to Glory: The Cowboy Volunteers of 1898. Caldwell, Idaho, 1958. Some interesting Western sources.

  Whi. White, William Allen. Autobiography. Macmillan, 1946.

  Wis. Wister, Owen. Roosevelt—The Story of a Friendship, 1880–1919. Macmillan, 1930.

  Woo. Wood, Fred S., ed. Roosevelt as We Knew Him: Personal Recollections of 150 Friends. John C. Winston Co., 1927.

  NOTES

  References to such general sources as Mor. and TR.Auto are made throughout the Notes. In addition, most chapters refer to sources relevant only to themselves, for example childhood diaries in Ch. 1 and naval studies in Ch. 22. Important sources are cited in full at the beginning of each Note, and are short-listed thereafter. Except where otherwise indicated, all citations of TR’s collected letters (Mor.) refer to vols. 1 and 2, which are consecutively page-numbered. Other sources are cited in full passim; they, too, are then short-listed. Customary abbreviations like N.Y.T. for The New York Times are used wherever possible. The following initials identify persons frequently mentioned in the text: TR Sr. and MBR for Theodore’s parents; B, E, and C for Bamie, Elliott, and Corinne; EKR for Edith Kermit (Carow) Roosevelt; HCL for Henry Cabot Lodge; CSR for Cecil Spring-Rice; BH, GC, and McK for Presidents Harrison, Cleveland, and McKinley; TCP for Thomas Collier Platt, JDL for John D. Long, and MH for Mark Hanna. The abbreviation “pors.” refers to photographs and portraits.

  PROLOGUE

  Important sources not in Bibliography: Interviews with members of the Roosevelt family. Mrs. Alice Longworth, Nov. 9, 1954, June 2, 1956 (TRB mss.), and in July 1976 with author; Mrs. Ethel Derby, April 1976, with author; Mr. Archibald Roosevelt, Feb. 6, 1976, with author.

  Because of the impressionistic nature of this prologue, there are occasional citations from sources dating later than January 1, 1907—but never unless the material quoted is chronologically authentic. For example, William Bayard Hale’s A Week in the White House was published in 1908, but Hale, as a New York Times reporter, had been writing similar descriptions of TR since at least 1903, many of which he transferred verbatim to his book. He may therefore be reliably quoted. On the other hand, all the intimate observations of Archie Butt (see Bibl.) have had to be left out because Butt did not meet TR until after the 1907 Reception.

  1. Washington Herald, and Post, Jan. 2, 1907; Town & Country, Jan. 5; clips in Fenwick, 1907. Stoker, Bram, Reminiscences of Sir Henry Irving (NY 1906) 237; N.Y.T., Jan. 2, 1907.

  2. Fenwick, 1907.

  3. Evans, Robert D., An Admiral’s Log (D. Appleton, 1910) 412.

  4. W. Her., Jan. 2, 1907.

  5. Ib.; 2 clips. n.d., in Fenwick, 1907.

  6. Collage from W. Her., W. Post, W. Evening Star, N.Y. Sun, N.Y.T., Jan. 1 and 2, 1907. Town & Country, Jan. 5.

  7. Ib.

  8. Ib.; Fenwick, 1907, qu. W. Eve Star, n.d.

  9. Eve Star, Jan. 2, 1907.

  10. Ib., Dec. 31, 190
6; Sun, same date; Philadelphia Public Ledger, Dec. 3, 1906; Eve. Star, Jan. 2, 1907.

  11. Message to Congress, Dec. 1906, reprinted in TR.Wks.XV. See Dun. II. 3–14 for a list of the legislative achievements in this, “the greatest year in Theodore Roosevelt’s life.”

  12. Eve. Star, Dec. 31, 1906; James Thayer Addison to Hermann Hagedorn, Apr. 26, 1921 (TRB).

  13. See TR.Auto. 526ff.

  14. Speeches at Cuelbra and Colon, Panama, Nov. 16 and 17, 1906.

  15. Qu. Har.260.

  16. St. Louis Censor, Dec. 27, 1906.

  17. TRB memo.

  18. Mor.6.1605; de Voto, Bernard, ed., Mark Twain in Eruption, Harpers, 1940, 8.

  19. Qu. Har.303.

  20. Literary Digest, Dec. 22, 1906; Bea.306–8.

  21. Bea, 451; Pri.298. For a full account of the Cuba incident, see Scott, James B., ed., Robert Bacon: Life and Letters (NY, 1923) 113 ff.; also Bur. 105–8.

  22. Bis.I.431.

  23. Eve. Star, Dec. 31, 1906; Mor.5. 535; W. Her., Jan. 2, 1907; Har.306. See Lane, Ann J., The Brownsville Affair (NY, 1971) for an exhaustive and highly critical account of TR’s role in this evident miscarriage of justice. The presidential message on the incident, quoted by Joseph Foraker in his Notes of a Busy Life (Stewart & Kidd, 1917) is one of TR’s most regrettable effusions. He chose not to mention Brownsville in his Autobiography.

  24. Speech at opening of Pan-American Exhibition, Buffalo, May 20, 1901.

  25. Jusserand, Jules, What Me Befell (London, 1933) 346; Pri.387.

  26. Harper’s Weekly, July 14, 1906. “Congress has evidenced almost phonographic fidelity to the wishes of the President”—N.Y. World, July 2, 1906.

  27. Crook, W. H., Memories of the White House (Boston, 1911) 298; Scr., TRB; N.Y. World, Dec. 30, 1906; Gene Tunney in Women’s Roosevelt Association Bulletin, 5.6; Phil. Pub. Ledger, Dec. 3, 1906.

  28. Gwy.1.483.

  29. Rensselaer Independent Republican, Jan. 1, 1907; London Times, Dec. 5, 1906. The message, TR’s sixth and longest at 30,000 words, was written throughout in Simplified Spelling. It contained such characteristic Rooseveltisms as “It is out of the question for our people to rise by treading down any of their own number,” and the declaration that “wilful sterility,” i.e., birth control, “is the one sin for which the penalty is national death.… a sin for which there is no atonement.” There were at least two discreet suggestions that the Constitution needed amending. “The dominant note,” remarked the Literary Digest on Dec. 15, 1906, “is a demand for a greater centralization of power.”

  30. See Schoenberg, Philip E., “The American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Mar. 1974; also Straus, Oscar S., Under Four Administrations (Houghton Mifflin, 1922).

  31. Unidentified clip, dated June 27, 1907, in TRB.

  32. For TR’s telegram of acceptance, see Mor. 5.524. He separately announced, not without some pangs, that the prize money would be used to establish “a permanent Industrial Peace Committee” in Washington. “Would anybody but Theodore Roosevelt,” asked the Brooklyn Times, “ever think of dedicating a Christmas windfall of $40,000 for such a purpose?” (Lit. Dig., Dec. 22, 1906).

  33. Eve. Star, Jan. 1, 1907; W. Her., W. Post, N.Y. Her., Jan. 2; Florida Times, Jan. 1, 1907.

  34. Hag.RBL.468.

  35. W. Post, Jan. 2, 1907; Loo.208–13.

  36. W. Her., Jan. 2, 1907; Moore, J. Hampton, Roosevelt and the Old Guard (Phil., 1925) 176–7.

  37. Eve. Star, Jan. 1, 1907; Fenwick, passim; Rand McNally Pictorial Guide to Washington, 1909.

  38. Ib.; Willets, Gilson, Inside History of the White House (Christian Herald, 1908) 49, 195–202; Harper’s Weekly, July 14, 1906.

  39. Storer, Maria Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt the Child (privately printed, 1921) 27. See Sinclair, David F., “Monarchical Manners in the White House” in Harper’s Weekly, June 13, 1908.

  40. Ib.; Rob.230–3; But.53, 160, 246.

  41. Lewis, William D., The Life of Theodore Roosevelt (John C. Winston, 1919) 181; Hale, A Week, 52; Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 29, 1906; Edel, Leon, Henry James: The Master (London, 1972) 275–6.

  42. TR to William Roscoe Thayer (TRB mss.).

  43. Bea.7; TRB mss.

  44. Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 29, 1906; “How the President is Protected from Cranks,” in Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1907.

  45. Eve. Star, Jan. 1, 1907; Willets, Inside History, 184; TR to Kermit Roosevelt, Oct. 2, 1903.

  46. Pri.475, Wag.61; TRB memo.

  47. Mor.3.392; see also “K” in The American Magazine, LXV.6. Apr. 1908.

  48. Qu. Wag. 224. See also “Cleveland’s Opinions of Men” in McLure’s, XXXII, Apr. 1909: “… the most ambitious man and the most consummate politician I have ever seen.”

  49. Hale, A Week, 56; “K” (pseudonym), “The Powers of a Strenuous President,” The American Magazine, April 1908; James to Edith Wharton, qu. Edel, James, 276.

  50. W. Post, Jan. 2, 1907; un. clip in Fenwick.

  51. Hale, A Week, 16, 44, 57. For an example of the sort of thing TR found funny, see the account by a White House secretary (N.Y. Sun, Jan. 27, 1927) of a letter sent to the President by the former heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan. Requesting leniency for an erring nephew in the U.S. military, Sullivan wrote apologetically, The boy was always a little wild, he even took to music once. At this, wrote the secretary, “Roosevelt let out a whoop of laughter and almost had a choking spell. He … had to leave his chair and go to the window for air. I never saw a man so convulsed with laughter.”

  52. Cha.201; Davenport in Phil. Public Ledger, n.d., TRB clip.

  53. Jusserand, What Me Befell, 330.

  54. Ib.; also in Memorial Lecture, Oct. 27, 1919, TRB mss. For other anecdotes of TR’s Rock Creek Park expeditions, see, e.g., Miles, Nelson M., “Ambassadors at the Court of Theodore Roosevelt,” Mississippi Historical Review, Sept. 1955; But.119–23, 229.

  55. Amos, James, Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet (John Day, 1927) 39–41.

  56. Egan, Maurice, Recollections of a Happy Life (NY, 1924) 219–220; Loo.152. Others who thought the President insane: Henry Adams (Ada.587) and Marse Henry Watterson (Pri.371).

  57. N.Y. Tribune, Jan. 2, 1907; Gwy.1.437.

  58. Amos, Valet, 11; Loo.115; Wag. 173.

  59. Trib., Jan. 2, 1907.

  60. Bea.5, 13; NYS Legislature, A Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt (Feb. 21, 1919) 22; Wag.112. See also TR’s Annual Message, Dec. 5, 1906: “Good manners should be an international no less than an individual attribute … we must act uprightly to all men.”

  61. Mrs. Harper Sibley in TRB mss. (Aug. 10, 1955, interview); Wag.116, 154; But.160.

  62. Wag.153, 4; Mor.3.392; Rii.9.

  63. Fenwick, 1907; Willets, Inside History, 198; Eve. Star, Jan. 1, 1907; N.Y. Her., Jan. 2.

  64. Bis.1.338.

  65. Hale, A Week, 116.

  66. The only authoritative measurement of TR’s height (5′9″) is that given in his passport application, 1881 (National Archive). Six years earlier, at age seventeen, he measured himself at 5′8” (see Ch. 2).

  67. Physical description from (select list) ib.; Whi.297, also William Allen White, Masks in a Pageant (Macmillan, 1928), 284–5; N.Y. World, May 17, 1895; But. 18 and Amos, Valet, 101 (the former estimates TR’s shoe size as “4 or 5”); Loo.15; Mike Donovan, Phys. Ed. Director, N.Y. Athletic Club, qu. Colman, Gossip, 287–8; pors.

  68. Willey, Day Allen, “When You Meet the President,” The Independent, June 30, 1904; Brooks, Sidney, in The Reader, Jan. 12, 1907; Hale, A Week, 15–16; N.Y. World, May 17, 1895; Wag.8.

  69. Hale, A Week, 15.

  70. Pors; White, Masks, 285.

  71. Wis.68. The greatest photograph ever taken of TR, by Edward Steichen in 1908, captures all of these subtleties. See A Life in Photography: Edward Steichen (Doubleday, 1963) pl.56.

  72. White, Masks, 284; Julian Street in TRB mss.; Smith, Ira, Dear Mr. President: The Story of Fifty Years in
the White House Mail Room (NY, 1949) 50.

  73. Wag.9–10; Smith, Dear Mr. President, 64; Hale, A Week, 26–41; see Chs. 4 and 6 for references to this impediment.

  74. N.Y. World, May 17, 1895; HUN.5.

  75. But.7; Outlook, Dec. 21, 1895; Chicago Times-Herald, July 22, 1895.

  76. Loo.17; Street, Julian, The Most Interesting American, 10; Ada. 419.

  77. John J. Milholland, int. FRE. (TRB).

  78. Loo.21.

  79. Wells, H.G., Experiment in Autobiography (Macmillan, 1934) 648–9.

  80. Wells in Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 6, 1906.

  81. Yet see Wag. 81 ff. for evidence that TR was on the contrary sensitive to, and not without taste in, the fine arts. Samuel Eliot Morison, in The Oxford History of the American People (NY, 1965), praises TR’s beautification of Washington during his administrations, his commissioning of Augustus St.-Gaudens to design a new gold coinage, and his sponsorship of the classically elegant postage stamps of 1908 (816). See also the illustrated article “Roosevelt and our Coin Designs,” in Century, Apr. 1920, for a full account of TR’s efforts to give the United States “one coinage at least which shall be as good as that of the Ancient Greeks.” The resultant $10 and $20 gold pieces are still regarded as the most beautiful ever produced by the American mint. A $20 coin recently sold for $3,600 at a numismatics auction (N.Y.T., 7.24.77).

  82. Wells, Autobiography, 649.

  83. Howard of Penrith, Lord Esmé, Theatre of Life (London, 1936) 2.110.

  84. Wag.35; Curtis, Natalie, “Mr. Roosevelt and Indian Music,” Outlook, CXXI.399–400 and CXX-III.87 ff. (1919); C. Hart Merriam, qu. Sul.3.157; Cut. passim; Rob.232.

  85. Wag.7. For a modern assessment of TR’s mind, see Blum, John M., in Michigan Quarterly Review, 1959: “He was, to begin with, perhaps the most learned of all modern residents of the White House … He was an intellectual, and he was proud of it.”

  86. Wag.7.

  87. But. 87; Wag. 8; Amos, Valet, 62–3; Booth Tarkington at TR Medal Award ceremony, 1942, TRB mss.

  88. HUN.64; Wag.120; Washburn, Charles G., Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of his Career (Houghton Mifflin, 1916) 205; Wag.119; Kipling, Rudyard, Something of Myself (London, 1936) 134; TR to Brander Matthews, Dec. 9, 1894.