The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  As always, he found it difficult to marshal his superabundant thoughts on paper. A perusal of the manuscript of Volume One shows what agonies its magnificent opening chapter, “The Spread of the English-Speaking Peoples,” cost him. A veritable thicket of verbal debris—interlineations, erasures, blots, and balloons—clogs every page: only the clearest prose is allowed to filter through.109

  DURING ALL THE SPRING and summer of 1888 Roosevelt complained about the slowness of his progress on The Winning of the West: “it seems impossible to write more than a page or two a day.”110 As if from another land, another century, he heard distant shouts that General Benjamin Harrison of Indiana had been nominated by the Republicans for the Presidency—James G. Blaine having withdrawn on the grounds that a once-defeated candidate might, after all, be a burden to the party. Other shouts, even more distant, told him that Grover Cleveland had been renominated by the Democrats. But he paid little attention, and hunched closer over his desk. “After all,” he told a friend, “I’m a literary feller, not a politician these days.”111

  To maintain the Sagamore household and bolster Edith’s constant sense of financial insecurity, Roosevelt had to earn at least $4,000 in fees and royalties that year.112 This meant a considerable amount of hackwork over and above his labors on The Winning of the West. Scarcely a month, accordingly, passed without at least one book or article from his pen. Although some of these had been written before—or published in a different form—merely to edit and proofread them made heavy inroads upon his time.

  A survey of their various titles justifies his growing reputation as a Renaissance man. In February the North American printed his “Remarks on Copyright and Balloting,” while Century put out the first of six splendid essays on ranch life in the West. This series, which included his long-delayed account of the capture of Redhead Finnegan, continued through March, April, May (a month which also saw the publication of his Gouverneur Morris), and June. The essays attracted the admiring attention of Walt Whitman, who wrote, “There is something alluring in the subject and the way it is handled: Roosevelt seems to have realized its character—its shape and size—to have honestly imbibed some of the spirit of that wild Western life.”113

  Roosevelt was silent in July and August, but came back resoundingly in September with “A Reply to Some Recent Criticism of America” in Murray’s Magazine. The piece was a brilliant and erudite attack upon Matthew Arnold and Lord Wolseley (“that flatulent conqueror of half-armed savages”) and became the talk of Washington and London. In October, Putnam’s put out his Essays in Practical Politics, being a reissue, in book form, of two long polemics on legislative and municipal corruption, “Phases of State Legislation” (1884) and “Machine Politics in New York City” (1886). Finally, in December, his six Century articles were revised and republished as Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, in a deluxe gift edition, illustrated by Frederic Remington. It was greeted with enthusiastic reviews.114

  ROOSEVELT’S NONLITERARY ACTIVITIES through 1888 can be briefly summarized. The family man played host to Cecil Spring Rice and “delicious Cabotty,” piggybacked little Alice downstairs to breakfast every day, and noted approvingly that young Ted “plays more vigorously than any one I ever saw.” He worried sporadically about his brother Elliott, whose health was beginning to deteriorate from too much hard drinking and hard riding with the “fast” Meadowbrook set.115

  The end of August found Roosevelt the hunter in Idaho’s Kootenai country. He spent most of September in the mountains, sleeping above the snow-line without a jacket and feasting lustily on bear-meat. Returning East via Medora, Roosevelt the rancher was able to make some respectable sales of his remaining cattle. But Roosevelt the author was still so hard pressed for money that he rashly accepted an invitation to write a history of New York City for a British publisher. He begged for “a little lee-way … to finish up some matters which I must get through first.”116

  This referred to The Winning of the West. Its text was beginning to drag alarmingly: with six months to go on his contract, he had written only half of Volume One. Vowing to “fall to … with redoubled energy,” he returned to Sagamore Hill on 5 October117—but Roosevelt the politician would not let him sit down at his desk.

  The presidential campaign was well under way, and with Cleveland crippled by the tariff controversy, there seemed to be a real chance of a Republican victory. Duty required that he make at least a token appearance for Benjamin Harrison. Actually Roosevelt was more than willing, for he considered the little general an excellent candidate.118 Despite a total lack of charisma, Harrison was a magnificent orator, capable of enthralling thousands—as long as he did not shake any hands afterward. It was said that every voter who touched his icy flesh walked away a Democrat.119 Party strategy, therefore, called for maximum public exposure, minimum personal contact, and support appearances by fiery young Republicans like Roosevelt, who could be guaranteed to thaw anybody Harrison had frozen.

  On 7 October, after only one day at home, Roosevelt answered the call. Jumping back onto the Chicago Limited, he set off on a speaking tour of Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota. The sight of crowds and bunting worked its usual magic on him, and he canvassed with great zest. His performance was good enough to establish him, within a week, as one of the campaign’s most effective speakers. “I can’t help thinking,” he wrote Lodge, “that this time we have our foes on the hip.”120

  On 27 October, Theodore Roosevelt turned thirty. Nine days later he heard that his party had won not only the Presidency but the Senate and House of Representatives as well. “I am as happy as a king,” he told Cecil Spring Rice, “—to use a Republican simile.”121

  AT LAST, as winter settled down on Sagamore Hill, a measure of tranquillity returned to Roosevelt’s life. The sight of snow tumbling past his study window, and the sound of logs crackling in the grate, combined to produce that sense of calm seclusion a writer most prizes—when the pen seems to move across the paper almost of its own accord, and the words flow steadily down the nib, drying into whorls and curlicues that please the eye; when sentences have just the right rhythmic cadence, paragraphs fall naturally into place, and the pages pile up satisfyingly … Roosevelt’s characteristic interlineations and scratchings-out grew fewer and fewer as the pace of his narrative increased, and inspiration grew.122

  He worked steadily all though December, finishing Volume One before Christmas.123 Early in the New Year he moved his family to 689 Madison Avenue. (Bamie, who was traveling in Europe, had placed her house at Edith’s disposal.)124 Seeking refuge from the children, Roosevelt set up a desk at Putnam’s, on West Twenty-third Street. For some reason the publishers were in a hurry to get the book out by the middle of June. Chapters of Volume Two were sent upstairs to the composing room as fast as Roosevelt could write them. Meanwhile Volume One was printed and bound on the topmost floors. Later, stacks of both volumes would be cranked downstairs for sale in the retail department at street level—permitting George Haven Putnam to boast that The Winning of the West had been in large part written, produced, and marketed under one roof.125

  Roosevelt scrawled his last line of text on 1 April 1889, and spent the next couple of weeks blearily checking the galleys. With a touch of sadness he wondered “if I have or have not properly expressed all the ideas that seethed vaguely in my soul as I wrote it.”126 But he had little leisure to indulge in self-doubts, for on 27 April Cabot Lodge came up from Washington127 with a message from the White House.

  ONLY A FEW DAYS BEFORE, Roosevelt had written, “I do hope the President will appoint good Civil Service Commissioners.”128 Lodge fully understood the plaintive tone of that remark. Since the beginning of the year he had been trying to get his friend a place in the incoming Administration. Roosevelt had affected nonchalance at first, yet while still engaged on the final chapters of The Winning of the West, confessed, “I would like above all things to go into politics.”129 Lodge had tried to persuade Harrison’s new Secretary of State—who was n
one other than James G. Blaine—to appoint Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary, but the Plumed Knight gracefully demurred. In words that proved prophetic, he wrote:

  My real trouble in regard to Mr. Roosevelt is that I fear he lacks the repose and patient endurance required in an Assistant Secretary. Mr. Roosevelt is amazingly quick in apprehension. Is there not danger that he might be too quick in execution? I do somehow fear that my sleep at Augusta or Bar Harbor would not be quite so easy and refreshing if so brilliant and aggressive a man had hold of the helm. Matters are constantly occurring which require the most thoughtful concentration and the most stubborn inaction. Do you think that Mr. T.R.’s temperament would give guaranty of that course?130

  Lodge had reported only the polite parts of this rejection. “I hope you will tell Blaine how much I appreciate his kind expressions,” Roosevelt replied.131

  Lodge had then begun to negotiate directly with the President, urging him to appoint Roosevelt to some federal position, no matter how minor, in recognition of his help during the campaign. Several influential Republicans advised the same. Harrison was “by no means eager.”132 Perhaps he remembered the screeching, strawhatted young delegate at Chicago in 1884, and winced at the idea of having him within earshot of the White House. Eventually he thought of a dusty sinecure that paid little, and promised less in terms of real political power. Ambitious men invariably turned it down; if Roosevelt was crazy enough to want it, he might be crazy enough to make something of it.

  Lodge hurried to New York, and, amid the din of the U.S. Government Centennial celebrations,133 told Roosevelt that Harrison was willing to appoint him Civil Service Commissioner, at a salary of $3,500 per annum. He doubted, however, that his friend would want the post. Such a pittance could only plunge him deeper into financial difficulties; bureaucratic entanglements would interfere with his upcoming book contracts; besides, the work was bound to make him unpopular, for everybody in Washington was heartily sick of the subject of Civil Service Reform.

  Roosevelt accepted at once.

  A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER the Centennial came to an end with the biggest banquet in American history, held at the Metropolitan Opera House. About eleven o’clock, after the speeches were over, and $16,000 worth of wine had been drunk, the guests filed out into the crisp spring night. Most were tired and satiated, but one young man seemed anxious to dawdle and talk. His high, eager voice, as he stood on the sidewalk with a group of friends and pointed at the sky, sounded “quite charming” to a passerby, although he occasionally squeaked into falsetto. “It was young Roosevelt,” reported the observer. “He was introducing some fellows to the stars.”134

  CHAPTER 16

  The Silver-Plated Reform Commissioner

  On the deck stands Olaf the King,

  Around him whistle and sing

  The spears that the foemen fling,

  And the stones that they hurl with their hands.

  WASHINGTON, D.C., IN THE SPRING of 1889 was, for those who could afford to live there, one of the most delightful places in the world.1 Seen from various carefully-selected angles, it was a beautiful city, with its broad, black, spotless streets, its marble buildings and sixty-five thousand trees, its vistas of “the silvery Potomac” by day and the illuminated Capitol by night. A visiting Englishman remarked on its air “of comfort, of leisure, of space to spare, of stateliness … it looks the sort of place where nobody has to work for his living, or, at any rate, not hard.”2

  This was true above a certain bureaucratic level. Senior clerks and Cabinet officers alike breakfasted at eight or nine, lunched with all deliberate speed, and laid down their pens at four.3 They then had several hours of daylight left for strolling, shopping, drinking, or philandering (Washington was reputed to be “the wickedest city in the nation”)—hours which lengthened steadily as the warm weather approached, and Government prepared to shut down for the summer.

  “Rich and talented people crowded Adams’s salon.”

  Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, by John Singer Sargent, 1890. (Illustration 16.1)

  While peaceful, the capital was by no means provincial. Indeed, the decade just ending had seen its transformation from rather shabby respectability to the heights of social splendor. People who spent their summers at Newport and Saratoga were spending their winters in Washington.4 Some had been drawn by the magnetism of Mrs. Cleveland, now regrettably departed (although imitations of her famous smile lingered on a thousand homelier faces, reminding one correspondent of so many cats chewing wax).5 Most of Washington’s fashionable newcomers, however, were drawn by the desire to be at the power center of an increasingly powerful country. Power, not breeding, was the basis of protocol in this democratic town: there was something wickedly exciting about it. Knickerbockers and Brahmins vied for the company of Western Senators at dinner, laughing at their filthy stories and tolerating their squirts of tobacco-juice; debutantes and newsboys swayed side by side in the horsecars with Supreme Court Justices; the President of the United States could often be seen, a small, bearded, buttoned-up figure, sipping soda in a corner drugstore.6

  Another significant difference between Washington and most major American cities was the apparent contentment of its working class—particularly now the party of Lincoln was back in control. A thriving demimonde offered blacks opportunities for advancement in such government-related industries as prostitution, vote-selling, and land speculation. Here, indeed, were to be found the nation’s wealthiest black entrepreneurs, and “colored girls more luscious than any women ever painted by Peter Paul Rubens.” They could be seen on a Saturday afternoon strolling in silks and sealskins on the White House lawn, to promenade music by Professor Sousa’s Marine Band.7

  Apart from the several thousands of shanty-dwellers, whose slums could be smelled, if not seen, in the vacant lots behind the great federal buildings, Washington society was prosperous, and graded more by occupation than color. Its unique feature was an ephemeral upper class which turned over every four years, according to the vagaries of politics. Hardly any member of this class, be he diplomat, Congressman, or Civil Service Commissioner, expected to settle permanently in the capital; sooner or later his government would recall him, or his campaign for reelection fail, or a whim of the President leave him jobless overnight.

  Servicing the upper class was a middle-to-lower class of realtors, caterers, couturiers, landladies, and servants—all determined to profit by the constant comings and goings of their clients. After every Congressional election, prices rose; after every change of Administration, they soared. But federal pay scales remained fixed at levels set in the 1870s. By 1889 the city had grown so expensive that anybody accepting a fairly senior government job had to have independent means to survive.8 On the Sunday before Roosevelt’s arrival, eight-room houses in the obligatory Northwest sector were being advertised for sale at around $6,500, almost twice a Commissioner’s salary. But this was nothing: a thirteen-room house on Pennsylvania Avenue near Nineteenth was $12,500; something more the size of Sagamore Hill, albeit with a much smaller garden, was available on Vermont Avenue for $125,000.9 Rents were proportionately exorbitant; the pokiest little furnished house would cost him $2,400 a year.10 Allowing a conservative $1,000 for food, $300 for servants, and $200 for fuel, he could spend every cent of his salary without so much as buying a new suit.11 On top of that there was Sagamore Hill to maintain, and Edith was pregnant again.

  The baby was not due for another five months, but it served as an excuse to keep his family at Oyster Bay at least through November. Meanwhile he could lead a cheap bachelor life in Washington—rent-free, as the vacationing Lodges had placed their house on Connecticut Avenue at his disposal.12

  So when Roosevelt arrived in town on the morning of Monday, 13 May 1889, he was alone, just like thousands of other hopeful newcomers in the early days of the Harrison Administration. Unlike them, however, he had a desk waiting for him, and a commission, signed by the President of the United States, lying upon it.13


  IT WAS NOT YET ten o’clock, but the sun was bright and strong. A cool breeze blowing off the Potomac tempered the seventy-degree heat. All Washington sparkled, thanks to torrential rainstorms over the weekend. Fallen locust-blossoms carpeted the sidewalks, rotting sweetly as pedestrians sauntered to and fro. Straw hats and silk bonnets were out in force: summer, evidently, was considered to be a fait accompli in the nation’s capital, regardless of what the calendar said.14

  Roosevelt found the Civil Service Commission impressively located in the west wing of City Hall, at the south end of Judiciary Square. Tall Ionic columns rose above a flight of seventeen stone steps, which he could not resist taking at a run.15 By the time he had crossed the portico and burst into the office beyond, his adrenaline was already flowing.

  “I am the new Civil Service Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt of New York,” he announced to the first clerk he saw. “Have you a telephone? Call up the Ebbit House. I have an engagement with Archbishop Ireland. Say that I will be there at ten o’clock.”