ONE THING THE COLONEL had not lost was his power over audiences.
Carnegie Hall was crammed to the door when he rose to speak there on the night after the North Dakota primary. It was his first public appearance in almost a month. Arcs of women in evening dress glittered in the first and second tiers (Edith and Ethel looking down from box 61), standees crammed even the upper levels, and the stage behind him groaned with representatives of the New York Civic Forum. Outside in the street, five thousand disappointed attendees milled around, hoping he would address them later.
Noticing William Barnes, Jr., and a henchman, Timothy L. Woodruff, in the orchestra section, Roosevelt began by remarking that if Lincoln’s formula of government by the people was to be abandoned for minority rule, he knew who its chief exponents would be in New York State. “It will be Brother Barnes and Brother Woodruff.”
Barnes glared at him from the parquet, but the audience rose in a standing ovation when Roosevelt continued, “I prefer to govern myself, to do my own part, rather than have the government of a particular class.” For the rest of the evening he was in complete control. He rephrased, but at the same time reaffirmed, all the points he had made at Columbus, emphasizing that he was advocating the recall only of judicial decisions that took elite advantage of the Constitution. “The courts should not be allowed to reverse the political philosophy of the people.” He named Taft as the nation’s top reactionary in favor of oligarchy rule.
Roosevelt’s sharp voice scratched every sentence into the receptivity of his listeners, and his habit of throwing sheet after sheet of manuscript to the floor seemed to mime points raised and dealt with. His peroration brought even Barnes to his feet in applause:
The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won. In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us is “Spend and be spent.”
We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men.
Afterward in one of the political clubs, Barnes was defensive. “Roosevelt, confound him, has a kind of magnetism that you cannot resist when you are in his presence!”
BARNES RECOVERED from the magnetism in time to hand the Colonel another defeat in the New York primary on 26 March. Republicans amenable to Party discipline voted two to one for Taft. Those of more independent temper appeared to have stayed home.
It turned out that hundreds of Roosevelt supporters had gone to the polls in New York County, only to be frustrated by mysterious equipment failures and closings. Others had been handed preposterously long ballots folded like concertinas, with up to three feet of blank space separating the Roosevelt ticket from its emblem. People tore off what they thought was waste paper, then found themselves unable to vote for the Colonel. The sole delegate he won in the city of his birth was an unopposed candidate in Brooklyn. Statewide, he netted seven delegates to Taft’s eighty-three. Every winner of a state committee seat or district leadership was a machine man. And when, later that same evening, the Indiana and Colorado GOP conventions elected their delegates-at-large, all were instructed for Taft.
The net results were so damaging that it availed Dixon little to complain that the New York vote was “a joke.” Taft now had a roster of 265 pledged delegates, with 539 needed to win. Roosevelt had 27.
He received the news of his triple defeat while traveling west aboard the Chicago Limited. Already he had concluded that his only chance of avoiding catastrophe was to forget about ex-presidential dignity and campaign in person, as strenuously and widely as possible.
“They are stealing the primary elections from us,” he said. “All I ask is a square deal.… I cannot and will not stand by while the opinion of the people is being suppressed and their will thwarted.”
If the eight thousand people who awaited him in the Chicago Auditorium that evening were voyeurs expecting a valedictory, what they got was a battle cry. Roosevelt roared against “fraud” in New York, “brutal and indecent” exclusion of his delegates in Indiana, and “outrageous” machine tactics in Denver. He called upon Illinois voters to insist on a direct primary, so they could register their personal preferences. Without saying so, he made it clear that if the RNC continued to thwart the will of progressives, he would bolt the Party and fight under a new banner.
He was back in New York at the end of the month, after a five-day swing through Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, and Michigan. Almost immediately he was off again, on an itinerary reminiscent of his marathon tours as president. At the top of his fraying voice, he preached progressive Republicanism at municipal receptions, church socials, chautauquas, spring festivals, and rallies huge and small. He zigzagged south through West Virginia and Kentucky, then eastward via Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania to New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Another flying visit home, and he was off across the Midwestern states to Iowa and Nebraska and Kansas, then down into Oklahoma, Arkansas, and North Carolina. From dawn until long after dusk, sometimes in pajamas from the back of his caboose, he harangued the citizens of Albia, Amboy, Ashland, Auburn, Aurora, Ayer, Beatrice, Blairsville, Clinton, Coatesville, Crete, Danville, Dixon, Hinton, Latrobe, Mattoon, Minonk, Mount Sterling, Nashua, Olive Hill, Osceola, Ottumwa, Ozark, Pawnee City, Peru, Point Pleasant, Polo, Ronceverte, Salisbury, Shelbyville, St. Albans, Tecumseh, Tuscola, Urbana, Wymore, and a hundred other places, until the names blurred into Anytown and the faces became the single face of Everyman.
On 9 April, just as he was preparing to deliver a major address on judicial reform in Philadelphia, he was rewarded with the first really good news of his campaign. Republicans in Illinois had coaxed a direct primary out of the legislature, awarding him a two-to-one-plus victory over Taft. Fifty-six of the state’s fifty-eight delegates were his, and a popular majority of 139,436. The dispatch hit with especial force in Washington, where most political gossips had already renominated the President.
“No one can explain it,” Henry Adams marveled, “and I think no one expected it.”
Six days later, Roosevelt scored an even bigger win in Pennsylvania. It coincided with the first wire report of a catastrophe beyond belief in the North Atlantic. “The Titanic is wrecked,” Adams wrote aghast. “So is Taft; so is the Republican Party.”
The President, nearly frantic as the extent of the tragedy became known, spent most of that evening in the White House telegraph office. He wanted to learn the fate of one passenger in particular: his indispensable aide, Major Archibald Willingham Butt.
Roosevelt claimed to be as bereaved as Taft when survivor testimony confirmed that Butt had helped women and children escape before going down with the ship. “Major Butt was the highest type of officer and gentleman,” he said while campaigning in Lindsborg, Kansas. “I and my family all loved him sincerely.”
His syntax did not escape the attention of E. W. Kemble, the great cartoonist working for Harper’s Weekly and, by extension, for the Democratic Party. As Roosevelt continued to rack up primary wins, trumpeting each victory as a personal triumph, Kemble began a savage series of caricatures portraying him as a self-obsessed spoiler. Grinning toothily, “Theodosus the Great” crowned himself with laurels; he toted a tar-bucket of abuse and splattered it, black and dripping, across the Constitution, Supreme Court, and White House. He emboldened every capital I in a screed reading:
I am the will of the
people I am the leader
I chose myself to be
leader it is MY
right to do so. Down with
the courts, the bosses
and every confounded thing that opposes
ME. I AM IT
do you get me?
I will ha
ve as many terms
in office as I
desire. Sabe!*
T.R.
TAFT SUPPORTERS BECAME seriously alarmed when Roosevelt went on to take Nebraska and Oregon. They did what they could to discredit him. Rumors that “Teddy” was a toper—what else could explain his exuberant animation and rapid-fire speech?—spread to such an extent that he had to issue an order that no alcohol be served on his campaign train. Lyman Abbott issued a wry statement that the Colonel indeed imbibed excessively, being addicted to milk.
Roosevelt did not know whether to be amused or irritated. “Since I have been back from Africa, I have drunk an occasional glass of madeira or white wine, and at big dinners an occasional glass of champagne. That is literally all.” But when hints of alcoholism began to appear in print, he looked for an open libel that would enable him to sue “for the heaviest kind of damages.”
On 23 April, Taft won New Hampshire, an Old Guard fiefdom that Roosevelt had written off. One week later, the Massachusetts primary loomed. Legislators there had bowed to popular pressure and agreed to a direct vote. Roosevelt had so far won every preferential contest he entered, but the power of the Massachusetts Republican leadership made him doubt his luck this time. “I think Taft will carry the state, because ours is only a fight of minute-men under sergeants and corporals, and all the generals are against us.”
Taft was nervous enough to travel to Boston on the twenty-fifth and say out loud what he thought about his opponent. No president had ever campaigned for his own renomination. “I am in this fight to perform a great public duty,” he told a reporter, “—the duty of keeping Theodore Roosevelt out of the White House.” At every stop en route, he played for sympathy, saying that he had never wanted to take his predecessor on. “This wrenches my soul.” But he felt entitled to defend himself against the false charges of a political turncoat—“one whom in the past I have greatly admired and loved, and whose present change of attitude is the source of the saddest disappointment.”
That night in the Boston Arena, Taft was greeted by a capacity audience so welcoming as to disprove the notion that he was loved only by the Old Guard. His opening words promised a speech of unusual frankness: “The ordinary rules of propriety that restrict a President in his public addresses must be laid aside, and the cold, naked truth must be stated in such a way that it shall serve as a warning to the people of the United States.”
Taft proceeded to attack Roosevelt in lawyerly fashion, reading for more than an hour from a typescript. As he did so, the enthusiasm around him cooled to respectful silence. Unlike La Follette, he did not lose his place or ramble. There were no Rooseveltian riffs, no high-pitched jokes, no fist-smacks, only the steady strong voice of an aggrieved man. His performance was boring, yet persuasive in its relentless accumulation of detail.
He itemized eleven specific charges the Colonel had laid against him, and in denying or correcting them, kept asking how a man could allege such things and yet pretend to stand for a square deal in politics. Disingenuously, he defended his use of White House patronage by saying that 70 percent of federal officeholders were still Roosevelt appointees. This was a false argument, because no customs clerk or farm inspector dared to risk the wrath of a sitting president. Moreover, Taft was either lying or in a state of ignorance when he insisted that “not a single” person had lost his job for political reasons. Dismissals of progressives had been going on since February.
In the manner of counsel holding up exhibits for adjudication, the President read some friendly letters that had passed between him and the Colonel during their rapprochement in the winter of 1910–1911. He cited the addresses and dates of each letter, and even the superscriptions “Personal” and “Confidential.” He claimed to be Roosevelt’s faithful follower, and reviewed his own, professedly liberal executive and legislative record at such length as to cramp the hand of any shorthand scribe. The crowd in the Arena became listless, but livened up as Taft, trembling and sweating, swung to a powerful conclusion:
Mr. Roosevelt ought not to be nominated at Chicago because in such a nomination the Republican Party will violate our most useful and necessary government tradition—that no one shall be permitted to hold a third presidential term.… (Loud applause)
Mr. Roosevelt would accept a nomination for a third term on what ground? Not because he wishes it for himself. He has disclaimed any such desire. He is convinced that the American people think that he is the only one to do the job (as he terms it), and for this he is prepared to sacrifice his personal comfort. (Laughter) He does not define exactly what the “job” is which he is to do, but we may infer from his Columbus platform it is to bring about a change of the social institutions of the country by legislation and other means.… I need hardly say that such an ambitious plan could not be carried out in one short four years.[sic] … There is not the slightest reason why, if he secures a third term, and the limitation of the Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson tradition is broken down, he should not have as many terms as his natural life will permit. If he is necessary now to the government, why not later?
One who so lightly regards constitutional principles, and especially the independence of the judiciary, one who is naturally so impatient of legal restraints, and of due legal procedure, and who has so misunderstood what liberty regulated by law is, could not be safely entrusted with successive [sic] presidential terms. I say this sorrowfully, but I say it with the full conviction of truth. (prolonged applause)
After returning to his train, Taft put his head in his hands and cried.
THE COLONEL WAS in Worcester, Massachusetts, the next day, and responded in tones of outrage. It was “the grossest and most astounding hypocrisy,” he said, for the President to claim that he had always been a faithful Rooseveltian. The words sent a momentary shiver through his audience, unused to such lèse-majesté. Then cheers and catcalls broke out. “He has not merely in thought, word, and deed been disloyal to our past friendship, but has been disloyal to every canon of ordinary decency and fair dealing.… Such conduct represents the very crookedest type of a crooked deal.”
Roosevelt said that the President had set the tone of their rivalry early on, calling him a “neurotic” and “demagogue,” and then, pathetically, pretending that it hurt to do so. “No man resorts to epithets like these if it really gives him pain,” Roosevelt scoffed. No gentleman, moreover, would read out another’s private correspondence without permission.
Responding to Taft’s charge that he had no right to a third term in the White House, he emphasized that he was not an incumbent seeking to perpetuate himself with patronage. He was a private citizen with the rights of any other. He went on for an hour and twenty minutes, using the personal pronoun 181 times, not admitting a single mistake or error of judgment. At the end, he managed to convey a kind of contemptuous sympathy for the President as a good-natured misfit dominated by stronger men: “He means well, but he means well feebly.”
Later he spoke at the Boston Arena, as Taft had twenty-four hours before. A boxing match had been held there in the interim, and the ropes were still in place. This enabled Roosevelt to make a stooping, straightening, fist-pumping entrance that touched off a seven-minute roar of applause. He had become, literally, the Man in the Arena.
“Now you have me,” he shouted, after yet another statement of his recall philosophy. “Am I preaching anarchy?”
The answer was a roof-raising, “NO!”
As Elihu Root remarked to a friend, “He is essentially a fighter and when he gets into a fight he is completely dominated by the desire to destroy his adversary.”
THE EXTRAORDINARY VEHEMENCE with which Taft and Roosevelt defended themselves in Massachusetts indicated that the nomination battle had entered its critical stage. Taft was not as far ahead as his late-April total of 432 delegates seemed to imply. All had been pledged or instructed in states where the Party still controlled its own representation. Consequently they were less reflective of the vox populi than Roose
velt’s 208 delegates, elected for the most part in direct primaries. Massachusetts, a conservative state about to mount its own primary for the first time, offered Taft his best chance yet to demonstrate that ordinary voters were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
VOTE OF BAY STATE MAY BE DECISIVE, The New York Times proclaimed before the election, suggesting that it might end the brief Roosevelt boom. Taft was reportedly hoping to sweep all thirty-six delegates. If so, he was disappointed. The vote, on 30 April, was indecisive. He won a small statewide majority of 3,622, but that allowed him no more delegates than Roosevelt, at eighteen each. The draw was broken by eight delegates-at-large, who pledged themselves to the Colonel.
Roosevelt, overjoyed but noting Taft’s larger vote, was quick to take moral advantage of it. “In this fight,” he announced, “I am standing for certain great principles.… Foremost of these is the right of the people to rule.” He said he would order his delegates-at-large to switch their allegiance to the President.
By early May, with only four weeks of active campaigning left and 540 delegates needed to win the nomination, The New York Times estimated Taft’s complement at 468, Roosevelt’s at 232, and La Follette’s at 36. Senator Cummins of Iowa had a favorite-son slate of 10. The newspaper forecast that Taft would soon capture Nevada and Arkansas, followed by the primary states of Maryland and New Jersey. These, plus a swath of far-western states—Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming—should yield him over a hundred more delegates, and eliminate his challengers well before June.
Colonel Roosevelt Page 24
