Colonel Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  59 “I will accept” TR, Letters, 7.511. “The Colonel made a mistake when he said he would ‘accept’ the nomination,” George Harvey remarked in Harper’s Weekly, 20 Apr. 1912. “What he meant to say was that he would ‘intercept’ it.”

  60 Grant thought Robert Grant’s letter to James Ford Rhodes, 22 Mar. 1912, on which the rest of this chapter is based, is printed as an appendix in TR, Letters, 8.1456–61. See also White, Autobiography, 451–52.

  61 William Roscoe Thayer See his account of this evening in Thayer, TR, 351–55.

  62 Dante’s phrase “Vidi e conobbi l’ombra di colui / Che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto” (I saw and recognized the shade of him / Who through cowardice made the great refusal), Dante, The Inferno, canto 3, line 60. In TR’s time, this was believed to refer to Pietro da Morrone, later Pope Celestine V.

  63 feeling saddened Thayer, TR, 354.

  CHAPTER 9: THE TALL TIMBER OF DARKENING EVENTS

  1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 62.

  2 The contrary forces Alexander Lambert address to the Roosevelt Memorial Association, 20 Sept. 1923, transcript in HP; Boston Globe, 29 Feb. 1912. See also Dr. Lambert’s account in TR, Works, 3.xix. Either he or TR misidentified Hallowell as “General.”

  3 “I am alone” Quoted in TR, Works, 3.xix. Notwithstanding his assertion to Robert Grant that he felt “as fine as silk,” TR was evidently under considerable stress during his Boston visit. Twice, he turned and snapped at reporters and photographers badgering him. (Boston Globe, 29 Feb. 1912.) This was in such contrast to his normal bonhomie as to suggest deep doubt about the course he had chosen.

  4 In a cultural essay TR, “Productive Scholarship,” The Outlook, 13 Jan. 1912, reprinted in TR, Works, 14.340–48. TR was proud of this essay, and sent a copy to Edith Wharton. The novelist had visited Sagamore Hill in the fall of 1911 and been charmed. “The house was like one big library, and the whole tranquil place breathed of the love of books and of the country.… I felt immediately at home there.” TR to Edith Wharton, 5 Jan. 1912, EW; Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (New York, 1933, 1985), 316–17.

  5 “We made” White, Autobiography, 458.

  6 “Gentlemen, the first” Ibid., 453.

  7 Bourne had been “I am keenly aware,” TR wrote Henry L. Stimson on 2 Feb. 1912, “that there are not a few among the men who claim to be leaders in the progressive movement who bear an unpleasant resemblance to the lamented Robespierre and his fellow progressives of 1791 and ‘92.” TR, Letters, 7.494.

  8 “I move that” White, Autobiography, 453.

  9 “This rebellion” Ibid., 452.

  10 “He aims” James H. Morse diary, 29–30 Mar., 27 Apr. 1912 (JHMD); Elihu Root quoted in Adams, Letters, 6.515.

  11 “I never thought” Lodge, Selections, 2.423–24; Putnam, TR, chap. 25. As senior senator from the Bay State, Henry Cabot Lodge had been embarrassed by TR’s aggressive defense of judicial recall, in a speech before the Massachusetts legislature on 26 February: “All I ask is that the people themselves … shall be given a chance to declare whether they will stand by the Supreme Court of the nation when it stands for human rights, or by the chief court of their own state when it stands against human rights. If that be revolution, make the most of it.” Boston Globe, 27 Feb. 1912.

  12 I am opposed Ibid., 2.423.

  13 “My dear fellow” TR, Letters, 7.515.

  14 “He will either” Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 846–47.

  15 Butt listened Ibid., 844.

  16 “If the old” Ibid., 848.

  17 By early March, The New York Times, 27 Feb., 2 Mar. 1912.

  18 a $50,000 startup budget See Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 399.

  19 Roosevelt, in contrast The Washington Post, 1 Mar. 1912. It must be understood that opinion polls, in 1912, were local rather than national. They were conducted mainly by newspapers soliciting readers.

  20 “You understand” TR, Letters, 7.506.

  21 One day he allowed The following paragraphs derive from the account, dated 2 Mar. 1912, in Baker, notebook N, 16 (RSB).

  22 men like Ward and Flinn Flinn, like many of Roosevelt Republican insiders in 1912, was less interested in “social and industrial justice” than in self-advancement.

  23 charms of Ormsby McHarg Mowry, TR, 200, 238. TR was not initially aware that McHarg, an energetic turncoat who had worked for and against him in the past, had gone south in his aid. But he heard enough about McHarg’s methods to send him a “posterity letter” on 4 Mar. 1912, stating that he would appreciate “your personal assurance that you never endeavored by promises of patronage or by use of money … to try to influence any man to support me.” (TR, Letters, 7.516.) McHarg was glad to supply the assurance, and glad to continue supplying delegates.

  24 seven Harvard men TR, Letters, 7.517.

  25 It followed that The New York Times, 21 Mar. 1912; Mowry, TR, 230–32.

  26 a progressive enthusiast Mowry, TR, 232.

  27 On 19 March, Morris, The Rise of TR, 200; The New York Times, 20 Mar. 1912; TR, Letters, 7.525; Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 402. The truth, as so often in the grassroots squabbles of 1912, was almost comically petty, with overtones of the great battle of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. TR was in fact the preference of conservatives in the North Dakota GOP, if only because their leader, whose name was Hanna, was opposed to a progressive rival, whose name was Gronna. After Hanna and Gronna, egged on by La Follette, had flailed each other to exhaustion, the forces of reform prevailed. See Mowry, TR, 231.

  28 “The prairies” Bourne, British Documents, pt. 1, ser. C, 15.81.

  29 “I tend to get” TR, Letters, 7.526–29, 532.

  30 A childhood friend Frances Theodora Parsons, Perchance Some Day (privately printed, 1951), 238. For the teenage relationship of Fanny Parsons and TR, see Morris, The Rise of TR, 50–52.

  31 Carnegie Hall was crammed The New York Times, 21 Mar. 1912; TR, Letters, 7.529.

  32 “It will be” The New York Times, 21 Mar. 1912.

  33 “The courts should” Ibid.; TR, Works, 19.206–8. William Draper Lewis of the University of Pennsylvania Law School suggested in a scholarly article that TR was clearly talking about judicial opinions on the constitutionality of acts, rather than decisions on practical points of law. (Stagner, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions.”) See also William Draper Lewis, The Life of Theodore Roosevelt (Philadelphia, 1919), 340–42.

  34 sheet after sheet The New York Times, 21 Mar. 1912.

  35 The leader for TR, Works, 19.222–23. See also Abbott, Impressions of TR, 80–83, and for an affecting account of how this speech was written, Lewis, TR, 444–46. The latter source makes plain that Corinne Roosevelt Robinson erred in assuming that TR improvised his peroration. (My Brother TR, 267.) It was in fact carefully written out in pencil on “several soiled sheets of gray tissue manuscript,” which TR kept separate from the text he intended to give out to the press. Evidently he did not want to blunt the drama of viva voce delivery of one of his most eloquent utterances.

  36 “Roosevelt, confound him” Abbott, Impressions of TR, 82–83. The political oratory of TR and WW in 1912 has been collected in two complementary anthologies: Lewis L. Gould, ed., Bull Moose on the Stump: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence, Kan., 2008) and John W. Davidson, ed., A Crossroads of Freedom: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Woodrow Wilson (New Haven, Conn., 1956).

  Historiographical Note: Since few stenographic records of what TR actually said on the campaign trail in 1912 are available in TRC or TRP, Gould’s anthology relies much on contemporary newspaper reports. So does this biography. Journalistic transcripts, however, often vary considerably one from another. They may simply reproduce TR’s own typed speech scripts, handed out in the form of press releases (but he was inclined to reshuffle or even toss aside such scripts on the podium, talking off the cuff when the mood struck him). Throughout his public career, he could be cavalier, even with the scripts of his major addresses printed as urtext in TR, Works. The impr
ovisational humor he used to temper his seriousness can only be imagined—along with the radiance of the personality that infused these frequently dull texts with life. For a rare example of TR interacting with his audience, see Gould, Bull Moose, 18–30.

  37 Republicans amenable The New York Times, 27 Mar. 1912.

  38 It turned out that Ibid., 27, 28 Mar. 1912.

  39 The net results Ibid., 27, 31 Mar. 1912.

  40 He received the news TR took a three-day swing to Portland, Maine, after his Carnegie Hall speech, then campaigned in the Midwest from 26 to 30 Mar.

  41 “They are stealing” The New York Times, 28 Mar. 1912; Pringle, Taft, 771.

  42 Roosevelt roared Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, 28 Mar. 1912.

  43 He was back On 2 Apr., Republicans in Wisconsin, a progressive primary state that TR had ceded to its favorite son, awarded 133,354 votes to La Follette and 47,514 to Taft. TR netted 628.

  44 At the top Owen Wister, who had not seen TR for several years, briefly traveled with him during this campaign swing. “The energy, the action, the hammered words, the blaze of genial, jocund power, the prompt and marvelous application of some special sentence to some special place—I can call it nothing but gigantic.” Wister, Roosevelt, 307.

  45 a major address In this uncompromising speech, TR castigated the august Joseph Choate and other Wall Street lawyers who had united in opposition to the referendum and recall, and compared their conservatism to that of New Yorkers defending the Dred Scott decision of 1857. See TR, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions” in TR, Works, 19.255ff., and, for a rare expression of contemporary legal support, Peter S. Grosscup, “Recall of Judicial Decisions Approved,” Ohio Law Bulletin, 22 Apr. 1912.

  46 “No one can explain” Adams, Letters, 6.532. Under intense pressure from TR and Medill McCormick’s Chicago Tribune, Governor Charles Deneen had followed the example of Governor Hughes of New York in 1910, and called a special session of the Illinois legislature to authorize a direct, preferential presidential primary. It did so on 30 Mar., undeterred by William B. McKinley’s ban on “changes in the rules of the game while the game is in progress.” Other legislatures were encouraged to move just as fast, and do the same. Matthew James Glover, “Theodore Roosevelt Wins Illinois’ First Presidential Primary,” unpublished ms. (AC).

  47 “The Titanic is wrecked” Adams, Letters, 6.534. For the next few days Adams obsessedly drew comparisons between the great shipwreck and the blow that TR, iceberg-like, had inflicted on the GOP. The former called into question the efficiency of modern mechanics; the latter, the smooth workings of the American political system. “We are drifting at sea in the ice, and can’t get ashore.… Our Theodore is not a bird of happy omen. He loves to destroy.” Adams, Letters, 6.534–38.

  48 The President, nearly frantic The New York Times, 16 Apr. 1912.

  49 “Major Butt was” Ibid., 20 Apr. 1912. According to local survivors, Butt had handled the catastrophe as if on army duty, controlling crowd hysteria and helping women and children aboard lifeboats. Marie Young, who had taught music to Archie and Quentin Roosevelt in the White House, was reportedly the last woman to catch a glimpse of him, waving to her from an upper deck as her boat pulled away. (Ibid.) Walter Lord, in A Night to Remember (1955), doubts the legend of Butt’s heroism on the ground that the accounts of it by Ms. Young and another Washington woman sound over-embellished. As quoted in the Times, they certainly sound so. But the two women nevertheless corroborated each other, and the behavior they describe is consistent with the punctilio and physical forcefulness self-evident in Butt’s three volumes of correspondence. A memorial fountain to him and his traveling companion, the Washington artist Frank Millett, survives on the Ellipse south of the White House.

  50 “Theodosus the Great” Alice Hooper to Frederick Jackson Turner in Turner, Dear Lady, 123.

  51 I am the will See Lorant, Life and Times of TR, 560–61 and 571.

  52 They did what they could TR, Letters, 7.542–43; The New York Times, 21 May 1912.

  53 “Since I have been” TR, Letters, 7.507–8.

  54 “I think Taft” Ibid., 7.537.

  55 “I am in” Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known, 220. The following account is based on reports in the Boston Globe and The New York Times, 26 Apr. 1912. All quotations are taken from the former source.

  56 Moreover, Taft was Mowry, TR, 226–27.

  57 Mr. Roosevelt ought not Boston Globe, 26 Apr. 1912.

  58 After returning Pringle, Taft, 781–82. The New York Times, annoyed that Taft should stoop to the level of a personal attack, called his Boston appearance “one of the most deplorable occasions in the history of our politics.” Sullivan, Our Times, 4.482.

  59 a momentary shiver The image of the shiver comes from the Boston Globe’s report of this meeting (27 Apr. 1912), as do the words of TR’s speech quoted here. See also Sullivan, Our Times, 4.482–85.

  60 Roosevelt said that TR’s criticism was well founded. One of WHT’s self-quotations was to the effect that reciprocity would make Canada “only an adjunct of the United States.” These words caused an explosion of outrage both in Canada and Britain, where on 4 May the Pall Mall Gazette remarked that the President’s “blazing indiscretion” might cause embarrassed Americans “to turn to Roosevelt after all for political sobriety.”

  61 Later he spoke The New York Times, 28 Apr. 1912.

  62 “Now you have me” Ibid.

  63 “He is essentially” Harbaugh, TR, 402.

  64 “VOTE OF BAY STATE” The New York Times, 27, 30 Apr., 2 May 1912. In TR’s own wry summing-up of the vote, “Apparently there were about eighty thousand people who preferred Taft, about eighty thousand who preferred me, and from three to five thousand who, in an involved way, thought they would vote for both Taft and me.” TR, Letters, 7.539–40.

  65 “In this fight” The New York Times, 2 May 1912; TR, Letters, 7.539–40.

  66 By early May The New York Times, 4 May 1912.

  67 Over the next week The Michigan state convention in April managed to elect two delegations simultaneously from the same platform, after reaching such a pitch of violence that Governor Osborn was compelled to deploy the state militia against Taft goons supplied by the sugar beet industry. Louise Overacker, The Presidential Primary (New York, 1926, 1974), 205.

  68 “If I am defeated” Pringle, Taft, 757.

  69 “I am a man” The New York Times, 5 May 1912. In another speech, WHT compared himself to “a man of straw.”

  70 Their vocabulary The Washington Post, 15 May 1912.

  71 “honeyfugler” A now extinct word, meaning one who seduces or cheats by sweet talk.

  72 their Pullmans parked The New York Times, 15 May 1912.

  73 “the hypocrisy, the insincerity” Pringle, Taft, 787.

  74 a compromise candidate The first politician to suggest Hughes was William Barnes, Jr., citing the “grave” condition of the Republican Party. Barnes bitterly blamed progressivism for the plague of preferential primaries spreading across the nation. “This so-called reform has done more to confuse and corrupt legislators than anything in politics for fifty years.” The New York Times, 17 May 1912.

  75 “I will name” The New York Times, 21 May 1912. The satirical magazine Life remarked, “The popular demand for Colonel Roosevelt is steadily increasing, but however great the demand may become, it can never be as great as the supply.” Sullivan, Our Times, 4.491.

  76 “TRnadoes” Alice Hooper to Frederick Jackson Turner in Turner, Dear Lady, 123. For a documentary account of how hard TR worked (and was worked) on the campaign trail, see William H. Richardson, Theodore Roosevelt: One Day of His Life (Jersey City, 1921). The day in question was 23 May 1912.

  77 “Your judgment” Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 24.446.

  78 more popular votes The precise size of this vote is difficult to calculate, because authorities are divided on how many, and which, states contributed to it. Mowry, e.g., cites “thirteen,” without naming them, and gives th
e candidate totals as TR, 1,157,397; WHT, 761,716; and La Follette, 351,043. Bishop lists 13 states, including Georgia but not New York. Lewis L. Gould lists 12 states, excluding both Georgia and New York. His resultant figures are TR, 1,164,765; WHT, 768,202; and La Follette 327,357. (Mowry, TR, 236; Bishop, TR, 2.322; Lewis M. Gould, ed., Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics [Lawrence, Kan., 2008], appendix B.) In a letter to the author (1 Aug. 2008), Gould disqualifies New York as a primary state in 1912 because of heavy-handed manipulation of the vote by Boss Barnes, and because delegates were elected locally rather than apportioned on the basis of a statewide vote, which mysteriously was never recorded. But these criteria might also disqualify, say, Boss Flinn’s Pennsylvania or Boss Walter F. Brown’s Ohio, or Washington State, whose mix of local primaries and district mini-conventions became a vexed issue at the national convention. New York’s election, which netted WHT 83 delegates to TR’s 7, was widely referred to as a “primary” at the time, despite the lack of a statewide total. See Overacker, The Presidential Primary, 13, 135. On 4 June 1912, The New York Times did at least compute the popular vote in New York County at 33,492 for WHT and 16,933 for TR, or a 2-for-1 majority for the President. If the total GOP state vote in 1912 was about the same as it was in 1916, i.e., 147,038, and if WHT and TR divided it much as they did the New York County vote, we may estimate their respective primary vote shares at 97,633 and 49,404. These figures, added to Gould’s for the other twelve primary states, project the grand totals given here. Whichever set is preferred, TR’s absolute popular majority among GOP voters is clear. See below, 638–39.