The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  If John Wanamaker had had his way, Roosevelt’s tenure would have been the shortest in the history of the Civil Service Commission. The Postmaster General was reluctant—and the President even more so—to fire Postmaster Paul for abuse of the merit system, even though that individual was a Democratic holdover. The precedent thus established would mean that Roosevelt, in future, could demand the dismissal of Republican postmasters for the same reason. In any case, Wanamaker did not like being told what to do in his own department by a junior member of the Administration. His chance for revenge came at the beginning of July, when Roosevelt came to him in great agitation to report that Paul had dismissed Hamilton Shidy for treachery and insubordination. Wanamaker curtly refused to intervene.58

  This placed Roosevelt in a highly embarrassing position. As Shidy’s promised protector, he was in honor bound to find him another federal job. But as Civil Service Commissioner, he was in honor bound to enforce the law. How could he give patronage to a confessed falsifier of government records? How could he, in all conscience, not do so? Wanamaker, of course, understood his dilemma, and knew that the best way out was for him to resign. “That hypocritical haberdasher!” Roosevelt exploded. “He is an ill-constitutioned creature, oily, with bristles sticking up through the oil.”59

  On 10 July a telegram summoned the three Commissioners to the White House. Roosevelt may have wondered if he was about to go the same way as Shidy, but he was pleasantly surprised by Harrison’s attitude. “The old boy is with us,” he told Lodge. “The Indianapolis business gave him an awful wrench, but he has swallowed the medicine, and in his talk with us today did not express the least dissatisfaction with any of our deeds or utterances.”60

  Fortified by these signs of Presidential approval, Roosevelt was able to persuade the Superintendent of the Census to find a place for Hamilton Shidy in his bureau.61 Wanamaker philosophically agreed to the transfer, and Roosevelt, feeling that he had settled a gentlemanly debt, doubtless thought no more about it.

  DAILY THE SUN GREW hotter, softening the asphalt in the streets and glaring on marble and whitewash. Slum dwellers began to sweep out their shanties, filling the air with acrid dust. Pleasure-boats on the Potomac hoarsely encouraged office-workers to play hooky. Every evening millions of mosquitoes left the marshes south of the White House and fanned out in search of human blood. As August approached, the city’s population decreased by almost one-third, and the tempo of government business slowed almost to a standstill.62

  Roosevelt was unable to prevent the Civil Service Commission from lapsing into what he called “innocuous desuetude.” The evidence is he did not try very hard, for his own duties were light. “It is pretty dreary to sizzle here, day after day, doing routine work that the good Lyman is quite competent to attend to himself.” He tried to begin his history of New York, but found he could not write. He spent $1.50 on a new volume of Swinburne, read a few voluptuous lines, then threw it away in disgust. “My life,” he mourned, “seems to grow more and more sedentary, and I am rapidly sinking into fat and lazy middle age.”63

  Clearly he was in need of his annual vacation in the West. If President Harrison would only hurry up and announce the dismissal of Postmaster Paul, he could take the next train out of town “with a light heart and a clear conscience.”64 But the White House preserved an enigmatic silence. Then, as Roosevelt chafed at his desk, a thunderbolt struck him.

  FRANK HATTON, editor of the Washington Post, was an ex–Postmaster General and an enemy of Civil Service Reform.65 He was also a shrewd promoter who knew the value of a running fight in boosting circulation. On 28 July he suddenly decided to launch an attack on Roosevelt. His lead editorial derided the Commissioner as “this young ‘banged’ (and still to be banged more) disciple of counterfeit reform.” He accused Roosevelt of personally condoning many violations of the Civil Service Law, and of misappropriating—or misspending—large sums of federal money. Without being specific as to any recent crimes, Hatton said that “the Fifth Avenue sport” had bribed his way into the New York mayoralty campaign, and made “disreputable” deals with machine politicians.66

  Nostrils dilated, Roosevelt rushed to the podium to deny these “falsehoods.” He was tempted, he said, to use “a still stronger and shorter word.”67 Hatton’s reply, published the following day, shrewdly played upon that temptation.

  THE POST regrets that this spangled and glittering reformer, if he is bound to get mad, should not do so in more classic style. You are not a ranchman now, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt … Banish your cowboy manners until the end of your trip, which the evening papers announce you are to take in a few days. And, by the way … have you made the proper application for a leave of absence, or have you ordered yourself West, that you may have the Government pay your ‘legitimate’ travelling expenses?

  THE POST had an idea that it would bring to the raw the surface of the callow Roosevelt … For you to say that the [Civil Service] law has not been violated is to advertise yourself as a classical ignoramus, and the sooner you hie yourself West to your reservation, where you can rest your overworked brain, the more considerate you will be to yourself.

  Now, Mr. Commissioner Roosevelt, you can mount your broncho and be off. Personally, THE POST wishes you well. It enjoys you.

  On the same day this editorial appeared, Roosevelt bumped into President Harrison, who had doubtless read it with amusement over breakfast. Psychologically the moment was unsuitable for a speech in Western dialect, but Roosevelt, hoping he could persuade Harrison not to take Wanamaker’s side in the Paul case, made one anyhow. He quoted the prayer of a backwoodsman battling a grizzly: “Oh Lord, help me kill that b’ar, and if you don’t help me, oh Lord, don’t help the b’ar.”68 But Harrison reserved the Almighty’s right of no reply, and walked on, leaving Roosevelt no wiser than before.

  July ended, and August began, with the offending postmaster still in office. Roosevelt vented his frustration in an interview with the New York Sun, accusing “a certain Cabinet officer” of working against the cause of Civil Service Reform.69 Hatton reprinted his words in the Post, and commented that if this charge by “the High, Joint, Silver-Plated Reform Commissioner” was true, it reflected upon the entire Cabinet, and upon President Harrison himself. “It is all very well for this powdered and perfumed dude to be interviewed every day, but what the public would like to know is whom he meant, what Cabinet officer he referred to, when he said that the Civil Service law was being evaded … This is a very serious charge for you, Mr. Commissioner Roosevelt, to make against the Administration.”70

  Hatton sent a squad of reporters to ask all the Cabinet members whom they thought Roosevelt was accusing. “I would have to be a mind-reader to guess,” said John Wanamaker smoothly.71

  On 5 August Roosevelt was summoned to the White House and told that God had decided in favor of the grizzly. Rather than dismiss Postmaster Paul outright, Harrison had merely accepted a letter of resignation. “It was a golden chance to take a good stand; and it had been lost,” Roosevelt wrote bitterly.72

  That night he headed West to clear his mind and recondition his body. With unconscious symbolism, he proclaimed himself “especially hot for bear.”73

  JUST AS THE SUN sank behind the Rockies, and dusk crept down into the Montana foothills, he came across a brook in a clearing carpeted with moss and kinni-kinic berries.74 He spread his buffalo-bag across a bed of pine needles, dragged up a few dry logs, and then strolled off, rifle on shoulder, to see if he could pick up a grouse for supper.

  Walking quickly and silently through the August twilight, he came to the crest of a ridge and peeped over it. There, in the valley below, was his grizzly. It was ambling along with its huge head down—a perfect shot at sixty yards. Roosevelt fired. His bullet entered the flank, ranging forward into the lungs. There was a moaning roar, and the bear galloped heavily into a thicket of laurel. He raced down the hill in pursuit, but the grizzly disappeared before he could cut it off. A peculiar savage whining told him
it had not gone far. Unwilling to risk death by following, he began to tiptoe around the thicket, straining for a glimpse of fur through the glossy leaves. Suddenly they parted, and man and bear encountered each other.

  He turned his head stiffly toward me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom. I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes so that it was hard to aim. I waited till he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at that moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onward … his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over and over like a shot rabbit.75

  Next morning Roosevelt laboriously hacked off the grizzly’s head and hide. Somehow, en route back to Oyster Bay, he lost the skull, and had to replace it with a plaster one before proudly laying the pelt at Edith’s feet. Of all his encounters with dangerous game, this had been his most nearly fatal; of all his trophies, this—with the possible exception of his Dakota buffalo—was the one he loved best.76

  ROOSEVELT FOUND HIMSELF something of a literary celebrity in the fall of 1889. His Winning of the West was not only a bestseller (the first edition disappeared in little more than a month)77 but a succès d’estime on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, where it rated full-page notices in such periodicals as the Spectator and Saturday Review, Roosevelt was hailed as a historian of model impartiality; the Athenaeum went as far as to call him George Bancroft’s successor.78 In America, scholars of the caliber of Fredrick Jackson Turner and William F. Poole praised The Winning of the West as a work of originality, scope, and power. Turner called it “a wonderful story, most entertainingly told.” He commended the author for his “breadth of view, capacity for studying local history in the light of world history, and in knowledge of the critical use of material.”79 Dr. Poole, representing the older generation of historians, wrote a rather more balanced criticism in The Atlantic Monthly:

  The Winning of the West will find many appreciative readers. Mr. Roosevelt’s style is natural, simple, and picturesque, without any attempt at fine writing, and he does not hesitate to use Western words which have not yet found a place in the dictionary. He has not taken the old story as he finds it printed in Western books, but has sought for new materials in manuscript collections … Few writers of American history have covered a wider or better field of research, or are more in sympathy with the best modern method of studying history from original sources; and yet … we have a feeling that he might profitably have spent more time in consulting and collating the rich materials to which he had access.…

  It is evident from these volumes that Mr. Roosevelt is a man of ability and of great industry. He has struck out fresh and original thoughts, has opened new lines of investigation, and has written paragraphs, and some chapters, of singular felicity … Mr. Roosevelt, in writing so good a work, has clearly shown that he could make a better one, if he would take more time in doing it.80

  But the review which, paradoxically, gave Roosevelt the most satisfaction was a vituperative and error-filled notice in the New York Sun. Its pseudonymous author accused him of plagiarism and fraud: Theodore Roosevelt could not have written The Winning of the West alone. “It would have been simply impossible for him to do what he claims to have done in the time that was at his disposal.” Another scholar, at least, must be responsible for the book’s voluminous footnotes and appendices.81

  Roosevelt had no difficulty in guessing the critic behind the pseudonym: James R. Gilmore, a popular historian whose own works had been rendered obsolete by The Winning of the West.82 He sent the Sun a long and humiliating rebuttal, identifying Gilmore by name and demolishing his charges, one by one, with ease. In conclusion he offered a thousand dollars to anybody who could prove he had a collaborator. “The original manuscript is still in the hands of the publishers, the Messrs Putnams, 27 West 23rd Street, New York; a glance at it will be sufficient to show that from the first chapter to the last the text and notes are by the same hand and written at the same time.”83

  Gilmore was forced to issue an answer over his own signature.84 Unable to substantiate any of his charges, or refute any of Roosevelt’s answers, he desperately accused the latter of pirating certain “facts” hitherto published only by himself. Roosevelt annihilated him in a letter too long and too scholarly to quote here—unfortunately, for it is a classic example of that perilous literary genre, the Author’s Reply. He begged Mr. Gilmore to identify the “facts,” if any, that he had unwittingly plagiarized from him, for he did not wish The Winning of the West to contain any fiction. In passing he noted that the critic had not taken up his challenge to examine the manuscript. “It makes one almost ashamed to be in a controversy with him. There is a half-pleasurable excitement in facing an equal foe; but there is none whatever in trampling on a weakling.”85

  ROOSEVELT HAD NO SOONER blotted the last line of this letter, in his Washington office on 10 October, than a telegram from Oyster Bay announced the premature birth of his second son, Kermit.86 He left at once for Sagamore Hill, chartering a special train in order to be at Edith’s bedside that night. For the next two weeks he stayed home while she “convalesced,” reading to her and trying to conceal his renewed worries about money.87 The time for their general move to Washington was approaching; how he would finance it he simply did not know.

  What was worse, for the first time he felt really insecure in his job. A “scream for his removal”88 was gathering in the capital. Inevitably, word had gotten out that he had found a favored place for Hamilton Shidy, the Milwaukee informer. Frank Hatton of the Post was going to demand a House investigation; the majority of spoilsmen would undoubtedly agree; it was not farfetched to imagine himself being humiliated in a Congressional witness-box just when his wife arrived in town and began to receive Washington society.

  Roosevelt put all his faith in the Annual Report of the Civil Service Commission, which would soon become due. It must be so incisive, so powerfully worded, that President Harrison dare not find fault with it; it must serve notice on Congress that Theodore Roosevelt was no mere publicist, but a solid, authoritative Commissioner.

  He spent the last days of his thirtieth year working on the report at Sagamore Hill. There was no attempt to consult his colleagues on the Civil Service Commission: he “hardly dare trust” nice, dim Hugh Thompson with such work, and “as for Lyman, he is utterly useless … I wish to Heaven he were off.”89 One can almost hear Henry Cabot Lodge sigh as he read those words. After only five months on the Civil Service Commission, Theodore’s hunger for absolute power was already asserting itself.

  At the end of October, Roosevelt returned to Washington and rented the nearest thing to a decent house he could afford. It was about one-tenth the size of Sagamore Hill, but that could not be helped. At least the location was good—at 1820 Jefferson Place, off Connecticut Avenue. The Lodges, who were at last back in town, lived only a stone’s throw away. Until Edith joined him at the end of the year, they would see that he did not starve.

  He sent his report to the White House on 14 November,90 and plunged into the final rounds of a political battle which had involved him, on and off,
since early summer. Two formidable rivals—Thomas B. Reed of Maine and William McKinley of Ohio—were fighting for the Speakership of the House. Roosevelt campaigned for the former, having assured the latter he would one day vote for him as President of the United States.91 McKinley “was as pleasant as possible—probably because he considered my support worthless.”92 When Congress convened on 2 December, Roosevelt had the satisfaction of seeing Reed elected. In the event of a House investigation, he could now count on the support of the most powerful man on Capitol Hill. A few days later, President Harrison added to his sense of security by approving his report and recommending that the Civil Service Commission’s budget be increased.93

  Christmas found Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill with “Edie and the blessed Bunnies,” wondering, as he unwrapped his presents, if Bamie was going to give him Motley’s Letters or Laing’s Heimskringla.94 After the holiday he brought his excited family to Washington, installed them at Jefferson Place, and on 30 December read a paper on “Certain Phases of the Westward Movement in the Revolutionary War” to the American Historical Association.

  What funnily varied lives we do lead, Cabot! We touch two or three little worlds, each profoundly ignorant of the others. Our literary friends have but vague knowledge of our actual political work; and a goodly number of our sporting and social acquaintances know us only as men of good family, one of whom rides to hounds, while the other hunts big game in the Rockies.…95

  BENJAMIN HARRISON’S HANDSHAKE was, in the words of one recipient, “so like a wilted petunia”96 that only a Roosevelt could react warmly to it. The Civil Service Commissioner was noticeably the most ebullient guest at the White House reception on 1 January 1890. He crushed the petunia heartily, and insisted, at some length, that his Chief have a Happy New Year.97