Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  90 “Well, thank” Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 17.

  91 Seattle neither “The Day Teddy Roosevelt Arrived, 1903,” Puget Sound Enetai, 18 Mar. 1983; Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 20.

  92 the issue which Mark Hanna to TR, 23 May 1903 (TRP).

  93 “a knockdown” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 482.

  94 Fate—or Joseph B. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt, 172.

  95 Roosevelt saw James Garfield interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 14 Feb. 1906 (MHM). Hanna wanted TR to recognize that opposition to the endorsement did not signify opposition to the nomination. As Chairman of the GOP, Hanna could not favor any candidate against any other, present or future. However, as John M. Blum points out, “He had not been so patient in McKinley’s behalf in 1895 or 1896.” Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 41.

  96 YOUR TELEGRAM TR to Hanna, 25 May 1903 (TRP). He adroitly refrained from giving out the text of Hanna’s telegram, thus giving the impression that it had been less than respectful. Beer, Hanna, 613–14.

  97 Hanna had no Mark Hanna to TR, 26 May 1903. The question remains, Did Hanna have any lingering presidential ambition in the spring of 1903? There is no evidence that he did, and plenty that he did not. On 20 Mar., he had sent TR a published interview in which Ohio Congressman Charles H. Grosvenor emphatically stated that the President’s nomination was certain, and that anyone opposing him was committing political suicide. “That settles me,” Hanna joked. Just two days before TR’s annihilating telegram, he had stated publicly, “I am not, and I will not be, a candidate for the presidential nomination.” Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 424. See also John S. McCook to TR, 22 May 1903 (TRP).

  98 Thus the President Washington Evening Star, 27 May 1903; Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 51; G. Thomas Edwards, “The College, the Town, and Teddy Roosevelt,” Whitman Alumnus, Nov. 1977; Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 20, 23. Having humbled Hanna, TR made an elaborate and not very convincing attempt on 29 May to explain himself. See Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 427, and also Beer, Hanna, 609–16; Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 50–53; and Gould, Reform and Regulation, 40–42.

  99 ROOSEVELT ARRIVED TR, Letters, vol. 3, 558–59. See also Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, chap. 13. (Mr. Pickwick: “It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do.” Mr. Snodgrass: “But suppose there are two mobs?” Mr. Pickwick: “Shout with the largest.”)

  100 He waited until Eyewitness account, by the Australian, in unidentified news clip, “Comment” scrapbook. See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 558–59.

  101 “a square deal” Ibid., TR’s famous political image, although hinted at in Jamestown, N.D., on 7 Apr., had first been articulated during his Grand Canyon speech of 6 May. In that case, he applied it to American Indians, but square deal quickly became a metaphor for his whole domestic political program of mediation between forces. It was the rhetorical inspiration of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal.” John Allen Gable, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Square Deal,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 17.3 (1991).

  102 “My address was” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 559–60.

  103 Roosevelt left Ibid., 561.

  104 the concept of equilibrium See Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 151–52, for TR’s search for a fulcrum on his very first night in politics.

  105 Justice separating good Kerr, Bully Father, 126; TR, Letters to Kermit, 61; New York Sun, 5 June 1903. The phrase, translated into Latin, was engraved on TR’s inaugural medal in 1905.

  106 “Envy and arrogance” New York Sun, 4 June 1903. “Evidently the new [twentieth-century] American would need to think in contradictions, and in spite of Kant’s famous four antinomies, the new universe would know no law that could not be proved by its anti-law” (Education of Henry Adams, 497–98). TR’s ability to “think in contradictions” both fascinated and infuriated Adams. See below, Interlude.

  107 Roosevelt was sitting The following account comes from Editor & Publishers, 13 June 1903.

  108 “Guests who find” Ibid. Beveridge and Fairbanks were arch-rivals for control of Indiana’s state Republican organization in 1903, and for TR’s favor as possible Vice Presidential candidates in 1904.

  CHAPTER 16: WHITE MAN BLACK AND BLACK MAN WHITE

  1 Th’ black has “Mr. Dooley” in Salt Lake City Daily Tribune, 10 Nov. 1901.

  2 SENATOR BEVERIDGE AND Washington Evening Star, 5 June 1903; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 June 1903 (JJ); Cleveland Plain Dealer, 28 May 1903. On 10 June 1903, Mark Hanna privately promised TR that he would “support him for renomination.” Both men apparently regarded this pledge as “a contract.” Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 363.

  3 Roosevelt now enjoyed The Washington Post, 6 June 1903. His current pledges gave him 496 committed, and possibly 730, convention votes. He needed only 493 votes to clinch the nomination.

  4 “I thank you again” The Washington Post, 6 June 1903.

  5 Although the President EKR to William Loeb, 21 Apr. 1903 (TRB); EKR to Kermit Roosevelt, 29 Apr. and 10 May 1903 (KR); Washington Times, 3 May 1903.

  6 Perhaps Edith had The following catalog of calories is drawn from “Comment” scrapbook.

  7 There would be The New York World, which for some reason was perennially interested in TR’s weight, reported it at two hundred pounds on 14 June 1903, seventeen pounds more than at the start of his tour. The newspaper suggested that he should weigh no more than 195 pounds for his height (five feet nine inches) and frame. Modern medical opinion would put his ideal weight at about 145 pounds, and define his actual weight as obese.

  8 A younger, slimmer Homer Davenport in San Francisco Examiner, 3 May 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 391. The Encke portrait now hangs at the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, Oyster Bay, N.Y. The famous Sargent, painted between 14 and 18 Feb. 1903, is still at the White House.

  9 He never failed Maria Longworth Storer, Theodore Roosevelt the Child (privately printed, 1921), 24; TR to John Hay, John Hay diary, 8 May 1904 (JH); see, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 3, 422. (“The Sewalls were here.… They came to the Congressional reception, and altogether they showed to great advantage. I was very proud of them.”) See also chap. 9 notes, above.

  10 Although political Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 151–52; TR, Works, vol. 17, 39.

  11 Yet his wife EKR to Nannie Lodge, 14 June 1903 (HCL); Speck von Sternburg to John C. O’Laughlin, 30 June 1903 (JCOL); The Wall Street Journal, 8 July 1903.

  12 He would receive Jusserand, What Me Befell, 240.

  Chronological Note: The Post Office investigation, quietly ordered by Postmaster General Henry C. Payne six months before, had become a press sensation during TR’s Western trip, in part because of rumors that its conclusions would embarrass certain high-placed veterans of the McKinley Administration. TR was confident that his own Administration would escape unscathed (the charges were more than three years old), but he was annoyed by editorial suggestions that Payne was trying to delay and downplay the investigation. The Postmaster General had, in fact, been overeager to cooperate with reporters at twice-daily briefings. Even TR complained that Payne “talked too much,” and was inviting “a newspaper trial” before all the evidence was in (James Garfield diary, 17 June 1903 [JRG]).

  To that end, the President prevailed upon Payne’s chief investigator, Assistant Postmaster General Joseph L. Bristow, to release at least some preliminary findings. He said he “wished nothing but the truth,” and “cared not a rap who was hit.” Bristow hesitated, having turned up proof that Senator Mark Hanna’s closest aide at the Republican National Committee, Perry C. Heath, had used the District of Columbia Post Office as a clearinghouse for political favors.

  TR promised to “protect” Bristow, and an interim report was released on 18 June. It gave Payne enough ammunition to dismiss four bureau heads, and accept many subordinate resignations. Hanna remained silent, and Heath left for a long vacation in Japan.

  TR resisted renewed Democratic calls for Payne’s resignation, praising him as “a singular
ly sweet-tempered and upright man.” (He might have added that Payne had influenced his selection as McKinley’s running mate in 1900.) On 22 June, he announced the appointment of two respected special counsels, Holmes Conrad and Charles Joseph Bonaparte, to assist Bristow in his probe. Bonaparte was later to become an important figure in the Roosevelt Administration.

  For more details of the Post Office scandal, see Dorothy Canfield Fowler, The Cabinet Politicians: The Postmasters General, 1829–1909 (New York, 1943), 273–77; James Garfield diary, 1903, passim (JRG); William W. Wight, Henry Clay Payne: A Life (Milwaukee, 1907), 123–41; A. Bower Sageser, Joseph L. Bristow: Kansas Progressive (Lawrence, Kans., 1968); Washington Evening Star, 18 June 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 494–99 and passim.

  13 John Hay cautioned John Hay to William Loeb, 7 June 1903 (TRP); DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 222. The Colombian Congress had not actually convened since 1898, Marroquín having seized power in 1900 by deposing another dictator, M. A. Sanclemente. TR therefore never believed that he was dealing with a republic. “[Marroquín] embodied in his own person the entire government of Colombia.” TR, Autobiography, 532–34.

  14 There was no Story of Panama, 339; Foreign Relations 1903, 143. See also Marks, Velvet on Iron, 100–101. Not one of the letters Hay sent TR on tour mentions Colombia or the treaty, although he covers lesser matters conscientiously (TRP). Hay did, however, confide his forebodings to Mark Hanna. 14 May 1903 (TD).

  15 Hay, a poet’s Elihu Root interviewed by Philip C. Jessup, 23 Jan. 1934 (ER); Jusserand, What Me Befell, 262, 264–65; Thompson, Party Leaders, 280–81; Mrs. Dewey diary, 21 Mar. 1905 (GD); Bemis, American Secretaries of State, vol. 9, 116–17.

  16 Roosevelt moved Washington Evening Star, 8 June 1903; Jules Jusserand sagely observed that Hay, a man of “more vivacity than force,” was “better able to banter than decide.” What Me Befell, 265.

  17 THE COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT Foreign Relations 1903, 146.

  18 Hay acted Thompson, Party Leaders, 261–62; John Hay to George Smalley, 10 July 1903 (TD); Robinson, My Brother, 9.

  19 At sixty-four Hay portrait file (FBJ); John Hay profiled by James Creelman in New York World, 10 May 1903.

  20 The Secretary was Ibid. Infinitely complex, graceful and cruel, warmhearted yet aloof, Hay awaits a definitive biography.

  21 With very little Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 June 1903 (JJ). See also Jusserand, What Me Befell, 236–40, and Morison, Cowboys and Kings, x. Morison credits William H. Moody as the instigator of TR’s monologue. But Jusserand’s report, written only four days afterward, specifically states that he and Mme. Jusserand were Hay’s only other guests.

  22 After dinner Jusserand, What Me Befell, 240; TR to John Hay, 9 Aug. 1903 (TRP). Hay said of TR’s transcript (which he bound in leather for his children), “It is a genuine nugget of life and literature, almost too valuable for any one man to own.… It will not lack companionship in a case which holds the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address.” Hay to TR, 12 Aug. 1903 (TRP).

  23 THE COLOMBIAN MINISTER Foreign Relations 1903, 150–51; John Hay to John A. Leishman, 24 May 1904, and Hay qu. in an unidentified profile, n.d., Hay scrapbook (JH).

  24 That same day Story of Panama, 344.

  25 For a half hour White House diary, 13 June 1903 (TRP); New York Herald, 14 June 1903. The following account is based on William Nelson Cromwell to TR and John Hay (enclosing draft “decaration”), 14 June 1903 (JH). Supplementary details from Cromwell’s easily identifiable news leaks to the New York World, 14 June 1903; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 266; Dennett, John Hay, 375.

  26 Roosevelt told New York World, 14 June 1903.

  27 White sails crept The Washington Post, 14 June 1903.

  28 Instead, he briefed Roger L. Farnham spoke to the World on condition of anonymity. Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 293.

  29 NEW REPUBLIC MAY New York World, 14 June 1903. A slightly garbled version of this article appears in Story of Panama, 345. Notwithstanding Cromwell’s desire to keep a low profile, the World reported meaningfully, “William Nelson Cromwell, general counsel of the Panama Canal Company, had a long audience with the President today.”

  30 One detail missing Walter F. McCaleb, Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1931), 157.

  31 Roosevelt issued Washington Evening Star, 12 June, and New York Sun, 15 June 1903; Story of Panama, 280. Note that the “official” White House newspaper scooped the World by two days, suggesting that TR was not averse to a little leaking himself, even before he saw Cromwell.

  32 ON 15 JUNE Dennett, John Hay, 397. See also John Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 310; Schoenberg, “American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom.” Clymer, John Hay, 75–81, argues that Hay found Jews more amusing than threatening, unlike the virulently phobic Henry Adams. Hay made an unpublicized gift of five hundred dollars to the Kishinev relief fund.

  33 “Would it do” TR to Hay, 25 May 1903 (TRP); John Hay to Jacob H. Schiff, 20 May 1903 (TD).

  34 Leo Levi White House press release, 15 June 1903 (TRP); Schoenberg, “American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom.” Russian-American relations had been cordial for most of the nineteenth century, but always fragile because of the Jewish problem. See Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry, chap. 1.

  35 Having thus expressed White House press release, 15 June 1903 (TRP).

  36 Hay responded first Ibid. At the end of his remarks, Hay brought tears to the eyes of the committee by reciting, “He that watches over Israel does not slumber.… The wrath of man now, as so often in the past, shall be made to praise him.” Simon Wolf, The Presidents I Have Known from 1860–1918 (Washington, D.C., 1918), 193, 236.

  37 “I have never” White House press release, 15 June 1903 (TRP).

  38 “You may possibly” Simon Wolf to TR, 3 July 1903 (TRP). Jew policemen was accepted usage in 1903. See in the same letter: “not a Jew petition.”

  39 It was a story TR, Autobiography, 191–92; Nancy Schoenberg, “Officer Otto Raphael: A Jewish Friend of Theodore Roosevelt,” American Jewish Archives 39.1 (1987). TR particularly admired “what I might call the Maccabee or fighting Jewish type.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 78. See also Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 186, 230.

  40 After an hour The Washington Post, 16 June 1903. Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 198. A follow-up anecdote may be appended here: Later that day, TR invited Simon Wolf to join him, Ambassador von Sternburg, and Senator Louis McComas of Maryland on a trip to the German Singing Festival in Baltimore. Dense crowds surrounded their carriage, and someone slammed its door on Wolf’s hand. “When the President saw what had happened he immediately put a cold bandage on my hand, went to the locker and gave me a good swig, bathed my hands and forehead like a trained nurse, and then turned round to Senator McComas and said, ‘Inasmuch as Wolf has been wounded in the public service, I suggest that you introduce a bill in the Senate, pensioning him.’ ” Ibid., 281.

  41 HIS EXCELLENCY Arturo The Washington Post, 16 June 1903.

  42 “Princess Cassini” William H. Taft to Helen Taft, 5 Apr. 1904 (WHT); Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 578. In her memoir of the Roosevelt era, Marguerite Cassini explains that due to social objections on the diplomatic circuit, her mother, the singer Stefanie von Betz, was obliged to remain in Russia as Cassini’s “legal but unacknowledged wife.” Never a Dull Moment, 6, 224; Thompson, Party Leaders, 344.

  43 Cassini’s assurances Education of Henry Adams, 439; Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry, 90–91; Foreign Relations 1903, 153–54; Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 357–58.

  44 “Dealing with a” John Hay to TR, 12 May 1903 (TRP).

  45 Roosevelt cared little Edward B. Parsons, “Roosevelt’s Containment of the Russo-Japanese War,” Pacific Historical Review, Feb. 1969. TR remarked contemptuously of Korea that it had “an utter inability to stand by itself.” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1116.

  46 If the Open Door Lucius B. Swift to TR, 2 Jan. 1904 (GBC); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 501.

  47 “legitimate aspirations” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 497; F
rederick Holls to TR, 9 May 1903 (TRP). Russia had a twenty-five-year lease on Port Arthur, not due to expire until March 1923.

  48 “Try to understand” Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 43. “Liaotung” is modern Kwangtung.

  49 He played Cecil Spring Rice to Elizabeth Cameron, 3 June 1891 (MHS). See also Sir Mortimer Durand to Earl Grey: “The President … is not good at games. His eye and hand do not go together. He is very energetic and full of keenness, but not skilful. He is conscious of the fact, and deplores it.” British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print. Series C: North America, 1837–1914, ed. Kenneth Bourne (Frederick, Md., 1986–1987), vol. 12, 49 (hereafter British Documents on Foreign Affairs).

  50 “To the left” John L. McGrew, former TR aide, to Hermann Hagedorn, 29 Jan. 1958 (TRB).

  51 Roosevelt’s favorite James Garfield diary, 19 and 24 June 1903 (JRG); Wister, Roosevelt, 167.

  52 ON 22 JUNE TR, Letters, vol. 3, 501; Review of Reviews, Aug. 1903. Despite all indications that Jones had an earnest desire to stamp out peonage, his sentences were usually very lenient, with the accused often being “punished” by the levying of fines. Even those that he did jail received short sentences and often had their sentences suspended and their fines modified. In one 1903 case, on the advice of Judge Jones, TR pardoned two men that Jones himself had sentenced to a year and a day in jail. It is no surprise that this method of “pardoning everyone on a general promise of good behavior” failed to eliminate peonage. Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana, Ill., 1990), 43–64.

  53 One hundred miles northeast The following account is indebted to the reporting of the New York Sun, 23–27 June 1903, and in particular its exemplary investigatory article, “A Modern Lynching,” on 28 June. White had confessed to the murder of Helen Bishop, the daughter of a local clergyman, just a few days before.

  54 Vendors hawked them New York Sun, 24 June 1903. See also George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: A Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York, 1971).