LINCOLN STEFFENS, WHO HAD NOT yet left the Commercial Advertiser for McClure’s, joined the throng of friends and reporters at Montauk to greet Roosevelt upon his return from Cuba. They buttonholed Roosevelt, Steffens reported, and “one by one they whispered to him: ‘You are the next Governor of New York.’ ” Drawing Steffens aside, Roosevelt sought his gauge of the situation. “Should I run?” Aware that the Colonel was debating aloud rather than posing a question, Steffens nevertheless offered a resounding “yes” and, furthermore, predicted victory.
Political conditions in New York were not so simple, as Roosevelt well understood. Without the support of Senator Thomas Collier Platt, head of the state Republican machine, he would never secure the Republican nomination. Although Platt detested reformers like Roosevelt, the powerful old boss was in a bind. The party’s image was seriously damaged in the aftermath of an exposé of corruption in the current Republican administration in Albany. The hero of San Juan was perhaps the antidote, the sole candidate who could save the party from defeat in the fall.
Steffens and his reformer friends in the Citizens’ Union and the Good Government Clubs believed Roosevelt could outwit the Republican machine by running as an independent. Two leading reformers made the pilgrimage to Montauk to offer Roosevelt the independent nomination. “Take an independent nomination, and the machine will have to support you,” they maintained. “You are of us, you belong to us. If you don’t, you are a ruined man.” With the machine weakened, reformers believed that this was the moment to crush Platt. “He’s down now,” they crowed. “One more blow will end him.” Steffens himself had long since forsworn allegiance to either party, convinced both were irredeemably dishonest. “I am not a Republican,” he told his father. “I am also not a Democrat. I am a mugwump or independent.” He believed that the independent vote represented the best hope for dismantling the system of governmental corruption, perpetuated by machine control of both the Democratic and Republican parties. If Roosevelt won as an independent, his victory would fundamentally alter the political culture of New York.
Roosevelt disputed Steffens’s analysis. Even in the unlikely event of victory without the organization’s endorsement, he would still have to work with the legislature in order to accomplish anything, and the legislature was absolutely controlled by the machine. “I’m a practical man,” he insisted. If the Republican nomination were offered to him, he confided to Steffens, he would happily accept and work to reconcile disillusioned independents with the Republican Party, proving that “good public service was good practical politics.” His goal was “to strengthen the party by bettering it,” to build a decent progressive record for the good of both the state and the Republican Party.
Never content until he had exhausted every angle of a matter, Steffens pressed Roosevelt for further elaboration. Would he approach Platt or wait for the boss to make an overture? “What’s the difference?” Roosevelt countered: “Can you see how it matters whether I call on Platt or Platt calls on me? I can’t.” He had small patience for points of etiquette: “I have to see the leaders. I want to, anyway. . . . I mean to go as far as I can with them. Of course I may have to break away and fight, and in that case I will fight hard, as they know.” To the question of whether he would initiate a meeting with Platt, Roosevelt replied confidently. “Yes I’ll see him now,” he told Steffens, “and I’ll see him after election; I’ll see him when I’m governor.”
Accordingly, on September 17, 1898, four days after the Rough Riders were mustered out of service, Roosevelt went to meet with Platt at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Emerging from their session, Platt announced that he would support Roosevelt for the nomination. Later the same day, a machine spokesman declared that “Roosevelt most positively will not accept the independent nomination” for governor. “Oh, what a howl there was then!” Steffens recalled. Reformers felt betrayed, certain that a deal had been struck, that in return for Platt’s endorsement, Roosevelt had agreed to reject the independent nomination. Rumors surfaced that the Colonel had bowed before the boss. One newspaper suggested that he had “received with becoming meekness the collar that marks him serf and regular, and that all talk of a people’s candidate is rubbish.” Democrats leaped at the opportunity: “Rough Rider Roosevelt made a charge up the backstairs of the Fifth Avenue Hotel,” the Democratic paper jeered, adding that on this occasion, unlike his famous charge up San Juan Hill, “he was taken prisoner.”
Platt relished being portrayed as “the master mind playing with the simple foolish soldier, who could lead a regiment into the jaws of death, but could not alone stand up against a domineering politician.” Asked what had transpired in the meeting, the old boss cryptically remarked that “the conversation was interesting and satisfactory.” Realizing that these “damning words” would convince independents that a sordid deal had indeed been struck, Roosevelt invited Steffens to his sister Corinne’s Madison Avenue house for a confidential conversation. “He was pacing, like a fighting man, up and down the dining room,” Steffens recalled. “His pride up, his jaw out, and his fist clenched,” Roosevelt insisted that no deals had been made, no concessions exacted outside a reasonable promise to consult regularly with the organization and consider their views concerning decisions and appointments. Repeatedly, he emphasized that not “one iota of his independence” had been yielded.
The following day, Commercial Advertiser readers perused “an inspired account” of the secret meeting with Platt. Steffens revealed that “no one asked or even suggested to the Rough Rider” that he reject the independent nomination, a decision which was the Colonel’s alone. Upon shaking hands with Platt, Steffens reported, Roosevelt made his position clear. “Before you say anything, Mr. Platt,” he declared, “let me say this: that if I accept the nomination of the Republican organization I will stand with the ticket. Any support that is not for the rest of the ticket I will not seek, and an independent nomination of myself without my colleagues I will refuse. Now I am ready to listen.” Roosevelt had concluded, Steffens explained, “that he would be unable to accomplish as much as he would wish unless he had a majority of the legislature. To insure that, he must do all in his power to discourage separate tickets that would divide the Republican vote for legislators.”
While Steffens’s account of the meeting satisfied some independent reformers, many who would naturally have been Roosevelt’s allies sulked on the sidelines and refused to help in the canvass. Grudgingly admitting that they would probably have to vote for him against Augustus Van Wyck, the Democratic candidate chosen by Tammany Hall boss Richard Croker, they remained disaffected. “It is hard,” they complained, “and we cannot advise others to follow our example.”
Encumbered by such grumbling, doubt, and rancor, the campaign got off to a cold start. “It looked as though defeat were ahead of Mr. Roosevelt,” Steffens reported, “and he was bitterly disappointed.” Unwilling to accept failure without putting forth his utmost effort, Roosevelt demanded a statewide push. Machine leaders, who customarily controlled the entire campaign, initially resisted his requests; candidates rarely took the stump on their own behalf. Amid troubling reports of widespread apathy in the final weeks, however, the bosses realized that “the Rough Rider personally would have to win it, for he alone would be able to warm the rank and file to enthusiasm. So Mr. Roosevelt was allowed to go his way.”
“He stumped the State up and down and across and zigzag,” Steffens wrote, “speaking by day from the end of his special train and at night at mass meetings, in the towns and cities.” Immense crowds greeted his train at every station along the way. “The fire and school bells rang,” the New York Times reported, “and the children were dismissed from the schools so that they could see the hero of San Juan. Cannon fired and a band played, while the people cheered.” Some spectators were disappointed, puzzled by their first impression of the Colonel. Newspaper accounts of his startling exploits in Cuba had led them to imagine a colossus, “seventeen feet high and his teeth a foot lo
ng.” Nevertheless, his old friend William O’ Neil reflected, when Roosevelt began to speak, his “presence was everything. It was electrical, magnetic.” Before he was done, listeners discovered “that indefinable ‘something’ which led men to follow him up the bullet-swept hill of San Juan.”
Jacob Riis joined Roosevelt as the train sped home from the western part of the state during the final night of the canvass. Over a belated midnight supper, they debated the “probable size” of the impending triumph or defeat. Riis predicted a Roosevelt victory margin of more than 100,000 votes. Roosevelt was less sanguine, believing that if he won, it would be by a mere “ten or fifteen thousand votes.” While they sat together at the table, a knock was heard on the door, “and in came the engineer, wiping his oily hands in his blouse, to shake hands and wish him luck.” Roosevelt rose, grabbing the engineer’s hands with eagerness. “I would rather have you come here,” he assured the man, “than have ten committees of distinguished citizens bring pledges of support.” Roosevelt, Riis noted with admiration, was “genuinely fond of railroad men, of skilled mechanics of any kind, but especially of the men who harness the iron steed and drive it with a steady eye and hand through the dangers of the night.” The engineer’s enthusiasm seemed to Riis “an omen of victory.”
When the votes were tallied the following day, Roosevelt’s forecast proved more accurate than Riis’s projection of sweeping victory. He had been elected governor by a relatively narrow margin of fewer than 18,000 votes.
As Steffens contemplated Roosevelt’s successful campaign, he recalled the yardstick set forth by his reform-minded political science professor at Berkeley. “Young gentlemen,” he had told the class, “you can get the measure of your country by watching how far Theodore Roosevelt goes in his public career.” An honest man trying to work in a dishonest system, Roosevelt would never survive the machine politicians, the professor mournfully predicted.
CHAPTER NINE
Governor and Governor General
Governor Roosevelt at work in Albany, New York, ca. 1900; Governor General Taft at his desk in Manila, ca. 1901.
A FOOT OF SNOW COVERED THE streets of Albany on January 2, 1899, the day Roosevelt was inaugurated as governor of New York. The thermometer registered several degrees below zero, but the bright sun and jingling sleigh bells lent a jubilant air to the thousands gathered at the statehouse. “There never was such a mass of people out to see a Governor installed,” the New York World reported. In the assembly chamber where the ceremony would take place, “the desks and seats of the members had been removed, and in their places were hundreds of camp chairs for the accommodation of the audience.”
“A deafening outburst of applause” greeted Roosevelt as he reached the flag-draped platform. He “stood for a moment in stern-faced dignity,” one journalist observed, “but the cheers continued, and then, like a sunburst the familiar Roosevelt smile broke forth.” His gaze was drawn to the Ladies’ Gallery where Edith and his six children stood, the boys desperately flapping both hands to attract his notice. When he threw his family a kiss, the “touch of human nature” spurred another round of thunderous applause.
Roosevelt’s brief inaugural address sketched out the creed he would follow as governor. “He is a party man,” a New York Tribune editorial remarked, one who “intends to work with his party and be loyal to it in all things that belong to it.” Nevertheless, he made it clear that he would “never render to party what belongs to the State, and the State is the first consideration.” Addressing fellow reformers who demanded renunciation of Boss Platt and the machine, Roosevelt emphasized that nothing would be accomplished “if we do not work through practical methods and with a readiness to face life as it is, and not as we think it ought to be.” Yet Mr. Platt would have to accept that “in the long run he serves his party best who helps to make it instantly responsive to every need of the people.”
“It was a solemn & impressive ceremony,” Edith told her sister Emily, confessing, “I could not look at Theodore or even listen closely or I should have broken down.” That afternoon, she stood by her husband’s side to greet more than 5,000 guests attending the festive reception in the executive mansion. But as soon as her public duties were fulfilled, she escaped to her room, where she could quietly read, write letters, and keep her diary. For this inordinately private woman, who seemed “physically to cringe” in the glare of “the public searchlight,” the prospect of life in Albany was intimidating. Reporters had already intrusively chronicled every aspect of the “general exodus” that carried “Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Roosevelt, and the five little Roosevelts, the governesses, the nurses, the maid and the coachman, the mongrel but gentlemanly dog Susan, a new French Bulldog El Carney, the war horse Texas, and the other horses and the pony, as well as the guinea pigs” from Oyster Bay to the governor’s three-story mansion. Fanny Smith, who visited her old friend soon after her arrival, noted that Edith, “usually an extremely calm and self-controlled person,” paced “nervously up and down the room.”
Faced with the imposing task of transforming the cavernous governor’s mansion into a comfortable family home, Edith was understandably anxious. After securing the admittance of twelve-year-old Theodore Junior and ten-year-old Kermit to a local boys’ academy, she established a schoolroom in the basement for the younger children, Ethel and Archie. A nursery was created for little Quentin, a governess hired for fifteen-year-old Alice, and a third-floor billiard room remodeled to become the gymnasium. A competent staff orchestrated drawing-room receptions, musical entertainments, and large dinner parties, but Edith remained ill at ease on such elaborate occasions. She much preferred the sort of dinner parties and literary discussions she had once enjoyed with her intimate Washington circle. “If only I could wake up in your library,” she told Henry Cabot Lodge, “how happy I would be.” Edith soon began to adjust to her new role, however, just as she had settled into her new home. “Edith will never enjoy anywhere socially as much as she enjoyed Washington, nor make friends whom she cares for as much as she did for you and a few others,” Roosevelt confided to Maria Storer, “but she enjoys the position here greatly and has made some very good friends and is altogether having an excellent time. She is picking up in health and is looking very pretty.”
In February, a candid photograph of Edith appeared in newspapers. The image reveals a slender woman of medium height, dressed in plain but “perfect taste.” Although she had steadfastly refused interviews and declined to furnish a photograph for publication, reporters considered her neither “haughty, nor excessively modest.” She simply disliked personal publicity and proved as intractable as her husband once “her mind is made up.” Despite her habitual reticence, she never made reporters feel unwelcome in her home. Her family life was just not an appropriate subject for their stories. “Everything about her speaks of grace,” an Iowa journalist remarked. “There’s honor even among reporters, or at least there’s gratitude,” another explained. “We knew Mrs. Roosevelt’s wish to keep herself and the children out of the papers, and after her courtesy to us we were glad to respect that wish.”
Yet she was always prepared to entertain reporters and friends with humorous stories about the new governor. In a special scrapbook, she meticulously assembled every caricature relating to her husband, whether they “represented him as riding a hobby-horse or dispensing peanuts in paper bags from a corner stand.” While other wives were known to burn papers and magazines that burlesqued their husbands, Edith had perfect confidence in Theodore’s good humor and relished the laughter they shared over the cartoons.
NEWSPAPER READERS SOON LEARNED THAT Theodore Roosevelt was unlike any governor New York had known. He arrived in his office long before the usual hour of nine o’clock to begin the baffling task of sorting through his mail. Three or four hundred letters arrived each morning, a far larger volume than any previous governor had contended with. At 10 a.m., his official day commenced, with an hour reserved for assemblymen and senators, followed by rapi
d-fire meetings with political delegations, members of his administration, and individual petitioners. Roosevelt was “ever on his feet” during these sessions, ranging restlessly as he talked, laughed, or scowled. He punctuated sentences with his fists, “filling the entire room with his presence.” The stately desk, where his staid predecessors had “judicially” received visitors, might as well have been removed, one observer noted, for “it hardly knows the Governor.”
Despite Roosevelt’s often combustible and seemingly impulsive nature, he maintained a schedule so precise that he could reliably meet an individual slated for 12:20 to 12:25 and conclude business just in time to usher in his 12:25 appointment. Visitors were encouraged to “plunge at once” into their subject, for the governor deftly yet positively closed the interview after the allotted time. Roosevelt’s official day ended at 5 p.m., though he frequently remained in his office until seven o’clock. Once the governor departed the capitol for the short walk to the executive mansion, he was “not to be disturbed” unless by an emergency. “These evening hours,” wrote a correspondent who profiled the governor, “are set apart for his literary work, his reading and social converse with his family, the Roosevelt youngsters having a decided claim, even in the midst of the most pressing affairs of the State.”
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 35
