ROOSEVELT BROUGHT HIS trust remarks to an indecisive end, suggesting that if Congress felt debarred from passing a law regulating interstate commerce, it should consider a Constitutional amendment to that effect. He called for a new department to regulate commerce and industry, and new laws to improve conditions for American workers. He granted labor’s right to combine for self-advancement, as corporations did, on condition neither threatened the larger rights of society.
By now it was past one o’clock. Bottles of bourbon stood tall and cool in the Senate saloon, and white bean soup bubbled in the restaurant. Members began paging through their copies to see how much Message was left. The survey was discouraging—almost twice as much again. But some of the upcoming issues were too important to walk out on. Roosevelt had shrewdly intermixed them with others of less consequence.
He demanded reform of immigration laws, including a threefold ban on persons of low intellect, low morals, and low wage requirements. He analyzed tariff protectionism and trade reciprocity at length, if not in depth. Clearly, neither subject interested him; he was happy to leave them to Senator Aldrich, their virtual proprietor. He launched an attack on railroad rebates and rate-fixing. “The railway is a public servant. Its rates should be just to, and open to, all shippers alike.”
Then, striking a note altogether new in presidential utterances, Roosevelt began to preach the conservation of natural resources. He showed an impressive mastery of the subject as he explained the need for federal protection of native flora and fauna. Urgently, he asked that the Bureau of Forestry be given total control over forest reserves, currently parceled among several agencies, and demanded more presidential power to hand further reserves over to the Department of Agriculture.
The theme of “water-storing” infused his rhetoric as he appealed for the reclamation of arid public lands. He said that the interstate irrigation program he had in mind was so ambitious that only the national government could undertake it. It must not risk the fate of the countless private schemes that Western water speculators had tried, and failed, to get rich on in recent years. Nor should the reclaimed lands benefit anyone other than the settlers willing to farm them. “The doctrine of private ownership of water apart from land cannot prevail without causing enduring wrong.”
Action on all fronts must begin immediately. Yet—a typical Rooseveltian hedge—it must proceed cautiously: “We are dealing with a new and momentous question, in the pregnant years while institutions are forming, and what we do will affect not only the present but future generations.”
FOR ANOTHER HOUR, the Message droned on, while clerk after clerk read himself hoarse, and somnolence gathered in the air like fog. Roosevelt was impassioned on the Navy’s need for more battleships and heavy armored cruisers, firm in his defense of the Monroe Doctrine, galvanic in his call for a canal across Central America. He praised the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress as national treasures—something no previous President had thought to do. He was silent on Negro disfranchisement and lynchings, optimistic for the future of free Cuba, and pessimistic about early independence for the Philippines. He was dogged to the point of dullness on rural free mail delivery, national expositions, merchant-marine subsidies, and the need for a permanent census bureau.
By two o’clock, many senators could stand it no longer, and left the chamber to fortify themselves. Even Henry Cabot Lodge showed impatience as he and sixty-six other holdouts waited for the President’s peroration.
Roosevelt returned at last to the subject of death, with which he had begun two and a half hours before. He noted that William McKinley had been preceded to the grave by Queen Victoria of England and the Dowager Empress Frederick of Germany. He seemed to be reminding his older auditors that nineteenth-century cobwebs were blowing away all over the world. The twentieth century looked bright for all Americans, yet they would not abandon traditional values.
“In the midst of our affliction we reverently thank the Almighty that we are at peace with the nations of mankind; and we firmly intend that our policy shall be such as to continue unbroken these international relations of mutual respect and good will.”
ALDRICH, ALLISON, SPOONER, and Platt emerged from the chamber smiling like Wagnerites after a slow performance of Siegfried. Each had an approving adjective for the President’s Message. It was “able,” “excellent,” “admirable,” and “intrepid.” Their satisfaction was not surprising, since its caveats and circumlocutions had been dictated by themselves.
Democratic leaders, too, were mostly complimentary, although Senator James K. Jones of Arkansas pointed out that the President’s trust control proposals were so nonspecific as to be legislatively worthless. “The Message is in every respect disappointing.”
Members of the House reacted with general approbation, as did the nation’s press. The adjective conservative was used often, as if in relief that the young President had matured so quickly. Only 12 percent of editorial comments were critical of him; a mere half of one percent condemnatory.
That night, Roosevelt entertained the Republican leadership to dinner. He had reason to celebrate. Not since the time of Lincoln had a President’s first thoughts received such public attention; congratulatory telegrams were pouring in, and the stock market was surging. Even as he feasted, eighteen of his proposals were being drafted into bills.
Aldrich and Allison saw no immediate threat to the legislative status quo. Yet they sipped Roosevelt’s sauterne with a vague sense of unease. Walter Wellman, White House correspondent of the Chicago Record-Herald, caught their mood:
It is not so much what he has done as what he may do that fills [them] with anxiety.… They have been accustomed to a certain way of playing the game. They know all the rules.… Naturally the question arises in many minds: What of the future? What will it all come to? The significance of this great Message, this remarkable piece of writing, is that it has raised up a new intellectual force, a new sort of leader, against whom the older politicians are afraid to break a lance, lest he appeal to the country … and take the country with him.
THE WINTER DAYS shortened toward solstice. Roosevelt returned home from his afternoon rides in ever-thickening darkness. Whether he came from Rock Creek or the Potomac flats, sooner or later L’Enfant’s perspectives disclosed the Capitol ahead of him, high and remote on its wooded hill, twinkling with lights as Congress worked late.
On 7 December, he received his first piece of legislation from the Senate. It was a minor customs waiver, and he signed it impatiently. A bill authorizing construction of the Isthmian Canal would have been more to his taste, but the Senate had yet to ratify the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. When it eventually did, on 16 December, congressmen were already turning their thoughts toward Christmas. Roosevelt gave up hope of a canal bill before the new year, and turned his energies to building up political strength.
The quickest way to do this was through patronage, so he began to bombard the Hill with as many as thirty appointments a day. A surprise choice was fifty-three-year-old Governor Leslie Mortier Shaw of Iowa to replace Lyman Gage as Secretary of the Treasury. Gage resigned with understandable chagrin, having stayed on—at Roosevelt’s request—to give Wall Street a sense of continuity. Now, with stocks rising, he found himself dispensable. Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith also felt a presidential chill, and stepped aside for Henry C. Payne of Wisconsin.
It did not escape notice that the new Cabinet recruits were protégés, respectively, of Senators Allison and Spooner. Those two Republican stalwarts were plagued by party insurgencies back home; Iowa and Wisconsin were notoriously fickle states, receptive to new ideas. Roosevelt’s nominations seemed to align him with the Old Guard against reform.
There was further significance in his appointment of Payne, a “Roosevelt Republican” with no love for Mark Hanna. Payne was one of the GOP’s top political managers. Life had been lean for him during the McKinley years. At fifty-eight, he hungered for a salaried office with spoils. Roosev
elt gave him both, in good measure: the Postal Service was the richest source of patronage in Washington. Mark Hanna’s effulgence as party boss began to dwindle with the December light.
Almost simultaneously, Senator Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio proclaimed himself a Roosevelt Republican, too. Foraker resented his colleague’s domination of the Ohio party, and gave notice that he would endorse the President in 1904. Yet another anti-Hanna recruit was Senator Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania. Roosevelt turned a blind eye to Quay’s semicriminal record, gave a consulship to one of his cronies, and flattered his intellectual pretensions: “So you’re fond of De Quincey, Senator?”
Night after night, he gazed more cheerfully at the Capitol, knowing that some of its lights, at least, twinkled for him.
ONE UNSEEMLY INCIDENT marred the week before Christmas: the President’s public scolding of Nelson A. Miles, Commanding General of the United States Army. His treatment of the old soldier was by most accounts brutal. “It is a horrible thing,” wrote a former aide to Benjamin Harrison, “to realize that we have a bully in the White House.”
Roosevelt had developed an antipathy for the Commanding General during the Spanish-American War, dismissing him as nothing more than “a brave peacock.” Miles still loved to parade before admiring eyes. At sixty-one, he was a splendid specimen of bristling military masculinity. If he wore more gold braid, silver stars, and polished leather than seemed necessary for national security, few begrudged him his glitter. He was, after all, a hero of the Indian Campaigns.
What angered Roosevelt now was not so much the preening and strutting as signs that the Commanding General wished to become Commander-in-Chief. He was not particular as to which party should nominate him, but the latest signs were that he was courting the anti-imperialist vote, with a view to running as a Democrat in 1904.
As Commanding General, Miles had access to all classified dispatches sent to the Secretary of War. Secrets embarrassing to Elihu Root’s management of the war in the Philippines were being leaked to senators in the opposition. Roosevelt and Root were sure that he was responsible.
Miles played into their hands on 17 December by telling an interviewer that he disagreed with a naval court investigating a dispute between two admirals. Root informed him, on behalf of the President, that the senior officer of one service had “no business” criticizing legal proceedings in another. Miles hurried to the White House to explain that his remark had been merely “personal.” Roosevelt was in the middle of an open reception, and jumped at the chance to humiliate him. His voice rose to a shout, accompanied by jabs of the presidential forefinger: “I will have no criticism of my Administration from you, or any other officer in the Army. Your conduct is worthy of censure, sir.”
“You have the advantage of me, Mr. President,” Miles said, controlling himself. “You are my host and superior officer.” He bowed and left the room. On 22 December, his reprimand was made official. There was much sympathy for him, and criticism of the President for going beyond normal disciplinary decencies. “Mr. Roosevelt,” commented The Army and Navy Register, “approached General Miles in a manner which, without exaggeration, may be described as savage.”
PURGED, PERHAPS, by his outburst, Roosevelt radiated contentment at pre-Christmas appearances. The approach of the festive season always delighted him. Now that he inhabited the house of his highest desire, his excitement was childlike. “The President,” a visitor remarked, “seems to get whole heaps of fun out of the Presidency.”
Yet there was something about Roosevelt that gave close observers pause. Was he as naïvely impulsive as he seemed? Why was he so cheerfully equivocal on every possible issue? Why had he sent Philander Knox down to Florida for a month’s “rest,” and why was the Attorney General carrying such a suspiciously fat briefcase?
“I should say,” the last reporter to interview the President in 1901 wrote, “that he has something up his sleeve.”
HOWLS OF MIRTH, mixed with music and hand-claps, were heard in the East Room after dinner on 25 December, as the President led his family and friends in a Virginia reel. The tempo quickened until even Senator Lodge shed his solemnity and joined in. Roosevelt, beaming like a boy, performed a variety of buck-and-wing steps to loud applause. Edith collapsed in tears of laughter, while his children exhorted him to further display. “Go to it, Pop!”
The band swung into the tune the Rough Riders had adopted at training camp in San Antonio. Seizing another partner, Roosevelt stomped out a joyous cakewalk, and the sound of singing voices rolled out into Lafayette Square:
When you hear dem-a bells go ding, ling, ling,
All join round, and sweetly you must sing,
And when the verse am through,
In the chorus all join in,
There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!
CHAPTER 5
Turn of a Rising Tide
Divvle a bit do I care whether
they dig th’ Nicaragoon Canal
or cross th’ Isthmus in a balloon.
WALTER WELLMAN, REPORTER, was strolling beside the Potomac one day early in 1902 when a horsewoman rode past at a sedate clip. Presently, another rider followed, cantering to catch up with her. The stiff beard and haughty posture identified him as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Then came the noise of a big stallion moving at full gallop. Wellman stepped out of the way as it drummed by in a spray of gravel. The bespectacled rider was waving an old campaign hat and laughing with pleasure. “Ki-yi!” he screamed, galloping on. “Ki-yi!”
To Wellman and other Washington correspondents, Roosevelt’s recreational antics were a welcome diversion from politics. The President was variously reported to have marched twenty miles through heavy rain (in Norfolk jacket, corduroy knickers, yellow leggings, and russet shoes), swum nude across the freezing river, and climbed with fingers and toes up the blast holes of a disused quarry. His habit of forcing luncheon guests to accompany him on afternoon treks did not endear him to those who would have preferred to remain behind with the wine and walnuts.
Foreign offices in Britain and Europe worried that their representatives might not be up to the physical hazards of dealing with Theodore Roosevelt. Junior diplomats campaigned for postings to his court, on the basis of common youth and strength. The essential qualification was perhaps best expressed by Cecil Spring Rice, Roosevelt’s former best man and now a British Commissioner in Egypt: “You must always remember that the President is about six.”
Charles William Eliot of Harvard University confirmed that Roosevelt “had always been a boy.” A former Secretary of State, Richard Olney, was reminded of the prophecy of Ecclesiastes: Woe to thee, O land, when thy King is a child and thy princes eat in the morning. He copied the words out, adding, “The last part of the sentence may be regarded as an extraordinary forecast of the present White House lunches.”
It was the lunches, indeed, that made Roosevelt exercise so hard. He enjoyed entertaining as much for the food as for the conversation, and shamelessly hogged both. Talking relieved his mind, but eating had no such purgative effect. The Washington social season was at its height, and whatever fat he burned off during the afternoon was restored, even added to, at nightly receptions and gala dinners. The presidential shirtfront continued to swell with flesh and animal vitality. Roosevelt’s monologues grew so uninhibited that some guests wondered what the stewards were serving him. “Theodore is never sober,” Henry Adams observed, “only he is drunk with himself and not with rum.”
Adams was back in town from Europe, gossipy and peevish as ever after a long stay abroad. He was more saddened than amused by a reunion of the old Hay-Adams circle around Roosevelt’s table. “None of us have improved,” he wrote afterward. Hay seemed slower and more formal, Lodge looked dangerous with ambition, while the President had become increasingly dogmatic. “He lectures me on history as though he were a high school pedagogue.”
The Fifty-seventh Congress, Adams predicted, would not reward Roosevelt with any worthwhile l
egislation. Other, less grudging observers were not so sure. The President was obviously an adroit politician. Speed was his most astonishing characteristic, combined improbably with thoroughness. Four naval officers gave him an oral briefing, then found, on returning to work, that he had forwarded detailed summaries of their testimony for signature.
Roosevelt made it a point of honor to answer all letters upon receipt, dictating with such rapidity that his stenographers had to operate in shifts. Often he did so while hand-correcting documents already in typescript. (“It makes the letter more personal.”) He hesitated only when he had replied to someone in anger. Usually, a milder version went forth, while the original was filed for posterity.
The President was also a cornucopia of policy notes, press releases, instructions, and memoranda. A joke went around that if the mutilated remains of his grandmother were discovered in his cellar, Roosevelt would immediately produce written evidence that he was elsewhere at the time of the crime. His documentary caution extended to tracking down letters of his youth, and asking owners to keep them private. Again and again, White House reporters were reminded that the President must never be quoted. Even paraphrases of his remarks had to be submitted for approval.
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