Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  It was just eleven o’clock. “Gentlemen,” Black roared, “I nominate for President of the United States … Theodore Roosevelt of New York!”

  An elemental din built and built, and for twenty-one minutes the convention rocked in pandemonium. Three sergeants at arms carried in Roosevelt’s portrait, crudely rendered in crayon, yet big enough to blot out most of Mark Hanna’s. They swung the President from side to side, while he gazed with waxy eyes at the party he could at last call his own.

  THE REAL ROOSEVELT received the news of his nomination, along with that of Fairbanks for Vice President, and confirmation of Cortelyou as Chairman, just after lunch, as he sat with Edith and Alice on the White House portico. His secretary, Loeb, brought the telegram. The vote had been unanimous, but every state from Alabama to Wyoming had insisted on recording its tally separately, making 994 votes out of 994.

  With kisses on his cheeks, he walked happily to his office and met a congratulatory crowd of newsmen. He invited them in for “an Executive session,” and tilted back laughing in his big chair as they fired questions at him. Prophecies, jokes, reminiscences, and indiscretions poured out freely, enchantingly. Roosevelt asked that nothing he said be printed. And nothing ever was.

  THAT EVENING, Mr. Perdicaris strolled for the last time on the village green at Tsarradan. His hurt leg had long since healed. Yesterday’s messages, to the effect that “His Chereefian Majesty was most graciously pleased to accede to the demands” of Raisuli, had come too late for quick departure. But the ransom caravan was definitely on its way, and a descent from the mountains was planned for the morning.

  Mr. Perdicaris slept no better than he had on his first night, five weeks before. At 4:00 A.M. on 24 June, horses and pack mules were made ready, and soon a long cortege was snaking north to Mount Nazul. Raisuli rode beside the hostages on a gray charger. Dark cords of camel hair twisted about his turban, and a cartridge belt slapped his broad chest: “Every inch,” Mr. Perdicaris thought enviously, “a man of daring deeds.”

  They crested Nazul just as the sun did, and in the bursting light, all the peaks and ridges around them, wreathed in lower mists, turned amethyst and rose, crimson and lilac. The old man reined to a halt, enraptured by one of the most gorgeous displays of color he had ever seen. Raisuli, grinning, asked if he “regretted” his involuntary mountain vacation.

  Keeping to the ridge, they continued north and eventually sighted a white fleck in the blue distance, which Raisuli said was Tangier. Around noon they found themselves looking down on the town of El Zellal, where the meeting with the Sultan’s emissaries was to take place.

  Many hours later, when the last stacks of silver coin had been counted and the political prisoners handed over and two ceremonial luncheons eaten, Raisuli took Mr. Perdicaris aside and said good-bye. He promised that if anyone tried to harm him, “I … will come with all my men to your rescue.”

  Mr. Perdicaris was more inclined to cry than laugh. Affectionately drawn to Raisuli even as he rejoiced for himself, he mounted his black horse and rode off with the Sultan’s party. Other emotions struggled in his breast toward midnight, when Tangier came into view, and he saw in the harbor the mastheads of Admiral Chadwick’s ships, twinkling the news of his return.

  As a youth, Mr. Perdicaris had thought little of his American citizenship, and bartered it away to avoid taxation during the Civil War. Too much money and travel had made him complacent and careless of formalities; there would be many awkward questions asked soon enough, before the State Department decided to forgive him; but he had no doubt now where, and to whom, his allegiance belonged.

  “Thank Heaven,” he said to himself, “it is that flag, and that people—aye, and that President, behind those frigates, thousands of miles away, who have had me dug out from amongst these kabyles! That flag and no other!”

  CHAPTER 22

  The Most Absurd Political Campaign of Our Time

  I think a lot iv us likes Tiddy Rosenfelt that wuddn’t

  iver be suspected iv votin’ f’r him.

  THE DIFFICULTY OF MOUNTING a serious challenge to Theodore Roosevelt’s candidacy in 1904 became apparent when the Prohibition Party gave its backing to a man named Silas Swallow. To the regret of satirists and cartoonists, Mr. Swallow was unable to choose Ezra Tipple, the General Secretary of the Methodist Conference, as his running mate. Tipple was a Roosevelt supporter.

  So, by late June, were such reluctant converts as J. P. Morgan and E. H. Harriman. James J. Hill remained adamantly opposed, as did George F. Baer of coal-strike infamy. But many conservative Democrats, including George J. Gould, James Speyer, and Jacob H. Schiff, let Cornelius Bliss (who had agreed to serve as Republican campaign treasurer) know that he could rely on them for money. For such men, memories of William Jennings Bryan’s two disastrous “Free Silver” campaigns were worse than their apprehensions of Roosevelt’s Square Deal.

  There was no chance that the Democratic National Convention—assembling in St. Louis as Roosevelt headed home from Washington in early July—would nominate Bryan again. When Bryan himself arrived at the local Coliseum, he found himself seated about two thirds of the way down the aisle, about where he had sunk in party esteem. Yet faded as the Commoner now seemed, with his balding head and resonant, empty voice, he was more vivid a personality than the likely nominee. Alton Brooks Parker, Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals, was gray enough to defeat the new science of autochrome photography. Drably decent, colorlessly correct at fifty-two, Parker dressed by habit in a gray cutaway coat and gray cutaway trousers. He lived in a gray house overlooking the gray waters of the Hudson, and was the author of many gray legal opinions, so carefully worded that neither plaintiffs nor defendants knew what he really felt on any given issue. Even the heart of Alton B. Parker was a gray area.

  Roosevelt had foreseen the judge’s candidacy for years. He knew Parker from gubernatorial days, and feared him precisely because he was colorless. “The neutral-tinted individual,” he wrote George Otto Trevelyan, “is very apt to win against the man of pronounced views and active life.”

  Personally, he liked Parker very much. The judge was attractive on close acquaintance. Big and solid as an upstate lumberman, he exuded healthy, untroubled self-confidence. No furrow of doubt marred the smooth brow; his jaw was forceful; and his mustache (graying, but still tinged with auburn) curved easily and often into a thick-lipped grin. If his conversation was bland, tending toward boring, that was no novelty in a politician—and Parker was a politician, for all his judicial demeanor.

  Eighteen years of public nonpartisanship had not erased Republican memories of Parker managing David B. Hill’s landslide campaign for Governor in 1884. Even Hill, the arch-Democrat, had jibbed against supporting Bryan in 1896; yet Parker had tranquilly voted for Free Silver and “toilers everywhere” before accepting the most privileged seat on the New York bench. As a result, he could look Western miners in the eye and say that he had never deserted them, and behave with equal complacency at Gold Dollar banquets hosted by August P. Belmont. No wonder Hill—still state boss, and anxious to return old favors—saw him as the potential unifier of the Democratic Party.

  And so did most of the 962 other delegates who took their seats in St. Louis on Wednesday, 6 July. About one hundred conservatives would have supported Grover Cleveland, had the former President agreed to run, and about two hundred radicals were pledged or beholden to William Randolph Hearst. All Hill had to do was marshal a majority that was two thirds greater than these minorities to nominate Parker. But first, all factions had to agree on a platform.

  ON FRIDAY, a little knot of newsmen gathered outside Parker’s house in Esopus, New York, waiting for the hall telephone to ring with good news for him. It remained silent all day. Around sunset, a press dispatch arrived, saying that ideological squabbling in St. Louis was preventing any progress toward the judge’s nomination. William Jennings Bryan had waged such a fanatic battle against any mention of gold in the platform that the C
ommittee on Resolutions might recommend no currency plank at all.

  There was an instant clamor for Parker. He came onto the porch, genial and impassive, and listened to the dispatch. “I thank you, gentlemen, for the opportunity to comment.” Pencils bristled eagerly, and he pointed at a sailboat on the Hudson. “It’s a pretty sight, isn’t it?”

  With this witticism he retired for the evening. A reporter called after him, asking sarcastically when he would be available, if more news came. “The usual hour,” said Parker, and waved good-night.

  That meant early the next morning, when he took his regular swim. Fog rolled up from the river and blanketed the moon. The newsmen smoked and dozed in rocking chairs. Eventually the fog began to whiten, but it did not burn away with dawn. Dew dripped from three thousand apple trees.

  At 6:35 A.M., the New York Times man saw Parker slip out of the back of the house bare-legged, in an old rubber raincoat. He was tempted to follow him downhill, but decided to stick near the telephone. It shrilled just thirteen minutes later. Parker’s secretary came out to announce that the judge had been nominated unanimously, on the first ballot.

  Only one reporter knew where Parker was. He ran down the slope and encountered a big wet man at the water’s edge. “Judge, you’ve got it!”

  “Oh, is that so?”

  A foghorn bleated on the river. Parker pulled on his raincoat and walked up the hill, shivering slightly. The other reporters saw him coming, and took off their hats. He shook hands with them all. Somebody handed him the telephone message, and he read it with drops of water trickling down his face.

  Even at this moment, Parker could not express his emotions. “No,” he said, “I will reserve anything I have to say until I am officially notified.”

  He stepped onto the porch, tall, cold, glowing with health, clutching the achievement of his life in his hand. Inside, breakfast awaited him, and the Democratic newspapers. They were full of disapproving accounts of Bryan’s currency-plank abandonment. One especially angry editorial caught his eye:

  At this hour of writing, before the taking of the ballot, we are assuming the nomination of Judge Parker. He must at once declare, sound-money Democrats will demand that he declare, that the gold monetary standard, as now established by law, is permanent.… Judge Parker must understand that, making his canvass on this platform without a public profession of his personal belief, … he cannot expect to receive the support and votes of the sound-money Democrats of the East. They will desert him by the tens of thousands.… Better another term of Roosevelt, better Roosevelt indefinitely, than one term of a President incapable of yielding in the slightest degree to the dangerous demands of a party which confesses itself to be still insane and unsafe.

  Parker ate and drank and thought, then changed into riding clothes and went out alone on horseback. Shortly before noon he returned, summoned his secretary, and dictated a telegram to William F. Sheehan, leader of the New York delegation at St. Louis.

  The telegram was so blunt that Western Union called for verification. It reached the convention hall just as delegates were assembling to nominate a vice-presidential candidate. Sheehan instantly suppressed it, but he and Hill could not hide their panic, and a wave of rumor swept the Coliseum. Had Judge Parker refused to run? “The Democratic party,” Senator Tillman shouted, “can always be relied on to make a damn fool of itself at the critical time.”

  After four hours, the telegram was finally read aloud from the rostrum:

  I REGARD THE GOLD STANDARD AS FIRMLY AND IRREVOCABLY ESTABLISHED, AND SHALL ACT ACCORDINGLY IF THE ACTION OF THE CONVENTION SHALL BE RATIFIED BY THE PEOPLE. AS THE PLATFORM IS SILENT ON THE SUBJECT, MY VIEW SHOULD BE MADE KNOWN TO THE CONVENTION, AND IF IT IS PROVED TO BE UNSATISFACTORY TO THE MAJORITY, I REQUEST YOU TO DECLINE THE NOMINATION BEFORE ADJOURNMENT.

  ALTON PARKER

  Parker’s words were rather less surprising than his tone, which came as a cold slap in the convention’s hot, weary face. Sheehan and other leaders worked desperately to assure delegates that the judge meant no “dictation.” He was just merely behaving like a man “of rectitude and honor.” There was no move to withdraw the nomination, but the rest of the proceedings were anticlimactic. An eighty-year-old multimillionaire, Henry G. Davis of West Virginia, was endorsed for Vice President, in hopes that he might contribute to the campaign. Then a thousand uninspired Democrats headed for their hotel rooms.

  ROOSEVELT WAS FULL of admiration for Parker’s telegram. “It was a bold and skillful move,” he wrote Henry Cabot Lodge. He doubted that the judge had any personal principles on the subject of gold. In waiting until the last minute to instruct the convention, Parker had “become a very formidable candidate and opponent.”

  Professionals in both parties were similarly impressed. As Roosevelt predicted, the New York Evening Post endorsed Parker in near-adulatory terms. Other New York newspapers to support him were the Times, Herald, World, and Staats-Zeitung. The Brooklyn Eagle, Boston Herald, Detroit Free Press, Milwaukee Journal, and—worryingly—the Springfield Republican followed suit. Every one had supported McKinley in 1900.

  Time would tell if the Parker wave represented a temporary swell, or some real shifting of the political current. Many warm, placid weeks lay ahead, before political activity picked up again in September. Almost all of the official campaigning would be done by the two national committees and their treasurers and copywriters and speakers. Roosevelt and Parker were required to do nothing, except make one acceptance speech and write one acceptance letter apiece.

  Both candidates were expected to sit out the planning phase of the campaign in their respective retreats—although Roosevelt had scheduled a midsummer visit to Washington, to confer with party tacticians. In the meantime, clams were spouting in Cold Spring Harbor, and the corn was green on Sagamore Hill; distant picnic spots beckoned, and the waters of the bay cried out for the splash of oars.

  Even from the austere heights of Esopus, New York, the Hudson showed more than a hint of blue.

  ON 27 JULY, fifty-four solemn Republicans creaked up Sagamore Hill in a dusty procession of buggies. Despite the heat, they all wore neckties and stiff collars, and their trousers were ironed to knife-edges—even, incredibly, those of Speaker Cannon. One and all were solemn, for they were enacting the party’s most hallowed ritual: a formal notification of nomination to its presidential candidate.

  “FIFTY-FOUR SOLEMN REPUBLICANS.”

  Roosevelt being notified of his nomination, 27 July 1904 (photo credit 22.1)

  Roosevelt awaited them on the broad porch, surrounded by his wife and a clutch of children. He wore a frock coat and white waistcoat. The visitors respectfully banged the dust from their hats before mounting the steps to shake his hand. William Loeb brought out a low stool for Cannon to stand on. The Speaker teetered awkwardly, and drew a typed speech from his pocket. “It’s seven minutes long,” he apologized.

  As he read a condensed version of the Chicago platform, the sea breeze brought up scents of hay. Flags snapped on the house’s high roof. Roosevelt swayed with pleasure, patting one of his nephews on the head. He kept glancing toward Edith, aloof in filmy white lace. “That’s perfectly true,” he interrupted at one point, “perfectly true.”

  When the President’s turn came, Alice Roosevelt, unnoticed till now, eased through the crowd and stood slightly behind him, where he could not see her. Her eyes never left his face. He spoke for twelve minutes, and used the word power a lot. She laughed with delight at every burst of applause. Later, as the younger Roosevelts served croquettes, ice cream, and lemonade on the lawn, she moved gracefully about, beguiling man after man with her twenty-year-old body and gray-blue, almost phosphorescent eyes. Something flickered at her wrist. A bright green snake twined round her fingers and wriggled up the front of her dress.

  Roosevelt paid no attention. He was more interested in checking whom Governor Odell was talking to, on a secluded bench in the garden. Alice was not the only one of his children to wear r
eptiles next to the skin. She was, however, the only one who resented him—though loving him with equal violence. Her attitude toward herself was equally confused. “I feel that I want something, I don’t know what.” At times, in her padlocked diary, she fantasized symbols of escape: a roadster, a rich husband, a world tour, a London season. Roosevelt’s “political” reasons for refusing to indulge her drove her to such paroxysms of rage that her handwriting degenerated into a near-maniacal scribble. At other times, like this, she luxuriated in his aura of power, much as the snake enjoyed the warmth of her own bodice.

  “When I come down to bed rock facts,” Alice told herself, “I am more interested in my father’s political career than anything in the world. Of course I want him re-elected … but there again, I am afraid it is because it would keep me in my present position.”

  ROOSEVELT’S THOUGHTFUL OBSERVANCE of Governor Odell (parchment-pale, rumpled, and glowering) in the garden betrayed his worry that the dour politico might prove a liability in the election. Since both presidential candidates happened to be New Yorkers, the Empire State’s vote was bound to be unusually partisan.

  “BEGUILING MAN AFTER MAN WITH HER TWENTY-YEAR-OLD

  BODY AND … ALMOST PHOSPHORESCENT EYES.”

  Alice Roosevelt, 1904 (photo credit 22.2)

  Odell had proved to be a gifted administrator, pushing through wider reforms than Roosevelt himself had done, saving more money, and overhauling the party machinery. Politically, however, the Governor was being overtaken by accelerating trends that he was powerless to understand, much less control. He still thought that labor should defer to capital, that New York City and New York State had more things in common than not, that party discipline guaranteed straight-ticket voting. These nineteenth-century notions were challenged by evidence that New York State’s independent vote was growing and might well return a Democrat to Albany, if not to Washington, D.C.