The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Page 42
But the roundup was never held. The Little Missouri Stockmen’s Association, meeting on 16 April with Roosevelt in the chair, decided that losses were too heavy to merit a general mobilization. There were so few cattle left on the range, ranchers might as well sort them out individually. One search party was dispatched to Standing Rock, in the hope that some thousands of cattle may have migrated south, and returned after three weeks, with exactly two steers.18
No official figures, therefore, survive as to the effect of the winter of 1886–87 on the Badlands cattle industry as a whole, nor on Roosevelt in particular. Estimates of the average loss sustained by local ranchers range from 75 percent to 85 percent.19 Gregor Lang, who began the winter with three thousand head, ended it with less than four hundred. Thanks to the thickly wooded bottoms on both of Roosevelt’s properties, his loss was probably about 65 percent. Even so, it was catastrophic.20 “I am bluer than indigo about the cattle,” he wrote Bamie from Medora. “It is even worse than I feared. I wish I was sure I would lose no more than half the money ($80,000) I invested here.21 I am planning to get out of it.” And on 20 April, after attending another gloomy stockmen’s meeting in Montana, he wrote Lodge, “The losses are crippling. For the first time I have been utterly unable to enjoy a visit to my ranch. I shall be glad to get home.”22
THE SPRING AIR WAS WARM, and blades of grass had begun to stipple the bare hills, when Roosevelt left Medora a few days later. But an air of wintry lifelessness still hung over the little cow-town. Already most of its citizens had departed to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Arthur Packard had abandoned the Bad Lands Cowboy, and his office was now a fire-blackened ruin. E. G. Paddock had moved to Dickinson, taking the old Pyramid Park Hotel with him on a flat-car. “Blood-Raw John” Warns offered no more “choice Western cuisine” in his Oyster Grotto, and Genial Jim’s Billiard Bar had run dry of Conversation Juice. Sad clouds of steam still floated out of Yach Wah’s Chinese Laundry, but he, too, would soon pack up his washboards and go.23
Most symbolic of all was the shuttered-up bulk of the Marquis de Morès’s slaughterhouse. Its doors had closed in November 1886, never to reopen. Even when Medora was booming, the Marquis had been unable to run his giant scheme at a profit. The supply of local steers was simply insufficient, and rangy, refrigerated beef had never appealed to the Eastern consumer.24 Impatiently shrugging off an estimated loss of $1 million, de Morès had gone off to dig a goldmine in Montana. When last seen—heading East as Roosevelt came West—he had been planning to build a railroad across China.25
In less than two years, Medora would become a ghost town, while Dickinson flourished, and a checkerboard of small, fenced-in ranches spread west across the prairie.26 Roosevelt had foreseen the destruction of Dakota’s open-range cattle industry in Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,27 but he had not expected it to come so soon, nor that Nature would conspire to accelerate the process.
Although his Dakota venture had impoverished him, he was nevertheless rich in nonmonetary dividends. He had gone West sickly, foppish, and racked with personal despair; during his time there he had built a massive body, repaired his soul, and learned to live on equal terms with men poorer and rougher than himself. He had broken horses with Hashknife Simpson, joined in discordant choruses to the accompaniment of Fiddlin’ Joe’s violin, discussed homicidal techniques with Bat Masterson, shared greasy blankets with Modesty Carter, shown Bronco Charlie Miller how to “gentle” a horse, and told Hell-Roaring Bill Jones to shut his foul mouth.28 These men, in turn, had found him to be the leader they craved in that lawless land, a superior being, who, paradoxically, did not make them feel inferior.29 They loved him so much they would follow him anywhere, to death if necessary—as some eventually did.30 They and their kind, multiplied seven millionfold across the country, became his natural constituency.31 “If it had not been for my years in North Dakota,” he said long afterward, “I never would have become President of the United States.”32
ROOSEVELT’S ASSERTION, on stepping off the S.S. Etruria, that he had no political plans “at present” impressed nobody. Yet for once the protestation was true. With a Democratic President in Washington, a Democratic Governor in Albany, and a Democratic Mayor in New York, his prospects for any kind of office were nil, at least through the election of 1888. And there was no guarantee that the Republican party would fare any better then than it had in 1884.
Every day saw a further strengthening of the opposition’s grip upon every lever of government.33 Quietly, ruthlessly, the Civil Service was being purged. Cleveland had promised, upon assuming office, that only those Republicans who were “offensive, indolent, and corrupt” would be dismissed. But the President’s aides saw fit to interpret such adjectives loosely: already two-thirds of the entire federal bureaucracy had been replaced.34
Although Cleveland was as stiff as ever in public, and openly contemptuous of the press, he had to a certain degree become popular. Labor respected him as the most industrious Chief Executive in living memory. Often as not his was the last light burning on Pennsylvania Avenue, as many a night watchman could testify. Capital admired his conservative attitude to all legislation, from multimillion-dollar appropriations to private pension bills; every Cleveland veto (and there were literally hundreds)35 meant more wealth in the nation’s coffers. Meanwhile that largest and most powerful voting bloc in America, Parlor Sentiment, had canonized the President for his sudden marriage to a pretty debutante half his age—and about one-third of his weight.36 Mrs. Cleveland was now the country’s sweetheart, and would undoubtedly prove a formidable campaign asset in 1888.
Indeed, at this midway point in Cleveland’s Administration, the Democratic party seemed assured of another six years in power. For an impatient and idealistic young Republican like Roosevelt, the spring of 1887 was a time of complete frustration.
The message was clear: he must once again forget about politics and seek surcease in literature. For the foreseeable future, he would have to earn a living with his pen.
ONE FINAL POLITICAL HURRAH was permitted him, at Delmonico’s Restaurant on 11 May, and he made the most of it. The occasion was the Inaugural Banquet of the New York Federal Club. This organization had been founded in the New Year by some of Roosevelt’s mayoral campaign supporters, with the object of keeping Reform Republicanism alive. Its membership consisted largely of young “dudes” from his old brownstone district.37 They were men he had, on the whole, grown away from, but he could not ignore their support, nor their invitation to be guest of honor.
Originally the dinner was planned as a semiprivate affair of some fifty covers, but when it was announced in the papers an unusual number of ticket applications poured in from Republicans all over the state. The event, remarked The New York Times, “bade fair to assume as wide political significance as any this year.”38 A limit was set at 150 admissions, but when Roosevelt arrived at Delmonico’s he found over 200 guests sitting at six lavishly appointed tables. The company was, in the words of a Sun reporter, “brilliant and distinguished enough to have been a compliment to a veteran statesman.”39
Roosevelt was introduced after the coffee and cigars as “the man who, had the Republicans stood to their guns last fall, would now be the Mayor of this city.” Loud cheers greeted him as he stood up—looking, as he always did when preparing to speak, grim, resolute, tense as a bundle of wire.40 The knowledge that Edith was watching from the Ladies’ Gallery no doubt made him extra conscious of his dignity.
If his fellow diners expected a relaxed and humorous speech—for Charles Delmonico had not stinted on the champagne, and they were in a convivial mood—Roosevelt soon disillusioned them. He began by remarking sardonically that during the mayoralty campaign he had been praised as a party faithful; now, however, he was regarded as a member “of the extreme left.” (Here there was some uneasy laughter among senior Republicans.) He proceeded to attack such a wide variety of targets that his listeners must have wondered if there was anything in the State of the Union that he
approved of. President Cleveland was castigated for his clumsy English and “sheer hypocrisy” in the cause of Civil Service Reform;41 the Independent press for its “thoroughly feminine” waywardness and “high-pitched screechings”; the Immigration Department for its unrestricted admission of “moral paupers and lunatics”; the Anti-Poverty Society for being “about as effective as an Anti-Gravitation Society”; anarchists and socialists for inciting labor demonstrators to violence (“there is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb, and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle”). For nearly an hour Roosevelt’s voice grated through the cigar-smoke. Again and again he hurled insults at the “hysterical and mendacious party of mugwumps,” even managing, somewhat anachronistically, to include Presidents Tyler and Johnson in that number “—and they were the most contemptible Presidents we have ever had.”
He sat down to considerable applause, although the faces of his listeners registered rather more shock than approval—as if they had been witnessing a bloody prizefight, and were relieved the punishment was over. For all the savagery of Roosevelt’s language, his personal force awed the gathering. Chauncey Depew rose to make some flattering follow-up remarks. “Buffalo Bill said to me in the utmost confidence, ‘Theodore Roosevelt is the only New York dude that has got the making of a man in him.’ ” Depew waggishly announced that the evening’s other scheduled speakers had all submitted their manuscripts to Roosevelt for checking, “so that when he runs for President no case of Burchard will interfere.”42 This was a reference to the unfortunate preacher whose gaffe had cost James G. Blaine the 1884 election.
Waggish or not, Depew was the first person ever to suggest in public that Roosevelt might be harboring presidential ambitions.43 The young man’s speech made nationwide headlines, and the question of his future was taken up seriously by several Republican newspapers. The Harrisburg Telegraph recommended him for Vice-President in 1888, on a ticket headed by Governor Foraker of Ohio;44 the Baltimore American went so far as to nominate him for President. “Mr. ROOSEVELT,” the paper commented, “has a stainless reputation and great personal magnetism. He is a tireless worker, an advocate of real reform in politics, and his speech before the Federal Club fairly reflects his ability to handle the political puzzles with which both parties must deal next year. It may be that the Federal Club have builded wiser than they intended by thus prominently drawing the attention of the country to this vigorous young Republican.”45
Few out-of-town editors, evidently, realized that Roosevelt was still only twenty-eight, and constitutionally debarred from the greatness they would thrust upon him. The New York Sun felt obliged to point out that, “owing to circumstances beyond his control, he will not be able to take the office of President of the United States before 1897.”46
Major newspapers, of course, paid no attention to such preposterous endorsements. They were (with the single exception of Whitelaw Reid’s Tribune) harshly disapproving of Roosevelt’s “vehement chatter.”47 He was “an immature and poorly posted thinker,” wasting “a good deal of breath which he may want someday” on “strained criticism” of the government.48 Even the Times, hitherto his most fervent supporter, admitted the speech had been “most unfortunate and disagreeable.”49 E. L. Godkin of the Post wrote that the Republican party no longer had any use for Theodore Roosevelt. “It was a mistake ever to take him seriously as a politician.”50 And on 25 May, Puck published a final valedictory:
Be happy, Mr. Roosevelt, be happy while you may. You are young—yours is the time of roses—the time of illusions … You have heard of Pitt, of Alexander Hamilton, of Randolph Churchill, and of other men who were young and yet who, so to speak, got there just the same. Bright visions float before your eyes of what the Party can and may do for you. We wish you a gradual and gentle awakening … You are not the timber of which Presidents are made.
THE SPRING OF 1887 settled down on Oyster Bay. Bloodroot and mayflower whitened the slopes around Cove Neck; on Sagamore Hill, the saplings were feathery green against the sky, noticeably taller than last year. Two woolly horses began to plow the fields behind the house.51
Inside, Theodore and Edith unhooked shutters, pulled dust-sheets off beds and sofas, and distributed the latest batch of hunting-trophies from Dakota (already the walls were forested with antlers, and snarling bear-jaws caught the unwary foot). They crammed some very big pieces of oak furniture into the very small dining room, and Edith, insisting that at least one corner of the house should be allowed to look feminine, arranged some rather more delicate furniture in the west parlor.52
Theodore’s own retreat, which none could visit without his permission,53 was a pleasantly cluttered room on the top floor, full of guns and sporting books and photographs of his ranches. There was a desk rammed against a blind wall, so that when he sat down to work he would not be distracted by the sight of Long Island Sound brimming blue in the window. Here, sometime early in June, he dipped a steel pen into an inkwell and began to write his fourth book. By the time the nib needed recharging he was already 135 years back in the past, in the New York City of his forebears—
a thriving little trading town, whose people in summer suffered much from the mosquitoes that came back with the cows when they were driven home at nightfall for milking; while from the locusts and water-beeches that lined the pleasant, quiet streets, the tree-frogs sang so shrilly through the long, hot evenings that a man in speaking could hardly make himself heard.54
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS, WHICH Roosevelt worked on steadily throughout the summer of 1887, was a companion biography to his Thomas Hart Benton in the American Statesmen series. The critical success of the earlier book had prompted Houghton Mifflin to commission another study of a neglected historical figure. Only one life of Morris had hitherto been published—a ponderous tome now half a century out of date. It was time, the editors felt, for their breezy young author to blow the dust off Morris’s letters and diaries, and subject the great New Yorker to a fresh scrutiny.55
With his powdered wig and peg-leg, his coruscating wit and picaresque adventures, Morris (1752–1816) was a biographer’s dream. There was about him, Roosevelt remarked, “that ‘touch of the purple’ which is always so strongly attractive.”56 Well-born, well-bred, charming, literate, and widely traveled, he had been a strong believer in centralized government, an aggressive moralist, and a passionate patriot. All these characteristics were shared, to varying degrees, by Roosevelt himself. Yet, as with Benton, there were enough antipathetic elements to keep the portrait objective.
Unfortunately a major obstacle loomed early in Roosevelt’s research. “The Morrises won’t let me see the old gentleman’s papers at any price,” he complained to Cabot Lodge. “I am in rather a quandary.”57 Being in no position to pay back his advance, he resolved to make what he could of public documents. Fortunately these were copious,58 and the complete manuscript was ready for the printer by 4 September.59
AS HISTORY, the first five chapters of Gouverneur Morris are adequate but unrewarding; as biography they are tedious. Roosevelt’s lack of family material forces him to weave the thread of Morris’s early life (1752–86) into a general tapestry of the Revolutionary period. The resultant cloth is drab, for he seems determined, as in The Naval War of 1812, to avoid any hint of romantic color. Only a couple of pages devoted to Morris as the founder of the national coinage are worth reading for their lucid treatment of a complex subject.60 Matters become more interesting in chapter 6, “The Formation of the National Constitution.” Now the author has access to official transcripts, and can ponder the actual speeches of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, and the two Morrises (Gouverneur and Robert). “Rarely in the world’s history,” he concludes, “has there been a deliberative body which contained so many remarkable men.”61
Morris is presented as the Constitution’s most brilliant intellect, as well as its dominant conservative force. Yet the narrative clearly shows why he was doomed never to rise to the first rank of statesmen:
Nevertheless Morris is commended for his “thoroughgoing nationalism,” and for his prophecy of an emergent America whose glories would make the grandest empire of Europe seem “but a bauble” in comparison. Roosevelt also praises his early espousal of the doctrine of emancipation. There are flashes of dry humor, as in the following explanation of Morris’s acquisitiveness: “He considered the preservation of property as being the distinguishing object of civilization, as liberty was sufficiently guaranteed even by savagery.”63
The book comes brilliantly to life in its penultimate section, describing Morris’s ten years in London and Paris, 1789–98, and his not-so-neutral participation in the major events of the French Revolution. Roosevelt was doubtless inspired by his own recent stays in those same cities, and his prose sparkles with true Gallic éclat. Chapters 7 through 11 are the best stretch of pure biography he ever wrote. Morris’s courtly flirtations with Mmes. de Staël, de Flahant, and the Duchesse d’Orléans; his plot to smuggle Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette out of Paris after the fall of the Bastille; the bloody riots of 10 August 1792, when he was the only foreign diplomat left in Paris, and gave sanctuary to veterans of the War of American Independence—all these episodes read like Dumas. Only the occasional jarring reference to municipal corruption in New York City, and sideswipes at the “helpless” Jefferson and that “filthy little atheist” Thomas Paine remind us of the true identity of the writer.64