20. Spectator, Sep. 5, 1891. Other reviews in TR.Scr.
21. The Nation, May 14, 1891.
22. TR.Wks.X.512ff., 514, 529.
23. TR to B, Mar. 22, 1891.
24. Mor.284, 283.
25. W. Post, Mar. 30, 31, and Apr. 3, 1891. These amounts were by no means trivial in the 1890s, when clerks like Hamilton Shidy earned $720 per annum, or $14 a week.
26. Mor.284.
27. Ib.; Williams, Cleveland, “TR, Civil Service Commissioner,” U. Chicago dissertation, June 1955, 43.
28. House Report 2, 1. TR went down for a preliminary investigation on Mar. 28 but seems to have kept his plans to return a secret. The press was taken completely by surprise—see W. Post, Mar. 31 and Apr. 3, 1891.
29. Baltimore Report, 7 and passim. TR was still rejoicing in the primary’s Dickensian aspects a year later—see W. Post, May 26, 1892.
30. Charles Joseph Bonaparte, president of the Maryland Civil Service Reform League, assisted TR in these interviews, and also took a part in the drafting of the final report. See Eric F. Goldman’s unfinished “Charles J. Bonaparte, Patrician Reformer: His Earlier Career,” Johns Hopkins U. Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series LXI, No. 2 (1943).
31. Baltimore Report, 2, 4.
32. Boston Post, Apr. 1, 1891; W. Post, qu. Sun, Apr. 14; Civil Service Chronicle, May 1891.
33. Goldman, Bonaparte, 25. See TR. Scr. for nationwide reaction.
34. W. Post, Apr. 3, 1891.
35. Metaphor taken from C. S. Chronicle, May 1891.
36. During the session of Apr. 6, TR sent out for some sandwiches, and was puzzled when the office boy delivered them without a bill. “But I want to pay for them,” said the Commissioner, holding out a dollar. “You can keep the change.” The boy backed off in terror. “No, sir, I am not receiving any money on Government property.” W. Post, Apr. 7, 1891.
37. Baltimore Report, 3.
38. Ib., 4–5.
39. Ib., 126, 3, 139; C. S. Chronicle, Apr. 1891; Baltimore Report, 16.
40. Not to be confused with TR’s earlier report on the Baltimore Post Office (Aug. 1, 1889) reprinted in Mor. 177 ff.
41. See n. 69 below for sample reactions when it did appear. Har.78 implies, incorrectly, that it was President Harrison who pigeon-holed the report—no doubt because TR himself (Mor.242) was at pains to give that impression. Actually the document, dated May 1, was not even sent to Harrison until early in August (C. S. Chronicle, May 1892). BH approved its release in mid-August. N.Y. Tribune, Aug. 17, 1891.
42. TR to B, May 5, 1891.
43. Ib., passim, and Apr. 26, 1891.
44. Mor. 243.
45. TR to B, n.d., 1891.
46. Ib., May 10.
47. Undated, mutilated letter from TR to B, probably early May 1891; another, probably late June.
48. TR to B, June 7, 1891; Las.36–7.
49. TR to B, June 14, 1891.
50. TR to E, June 24, 1891.
51. The letter has not survived, but its contents can be inferred from references in subsequent letters from TR to B and E.
52. TR to B, n.d., probably late June 1891.
53. See TR to B, June 17, 1891; also July 12.
54. Ib., June 20, 1891; June 17; later letters, passim.
55. Ib., June 17, 1891.
56. He was currently spending at the rate of $1,500 a month, or $18,000 a year, against an estimated $15,000 in income. Las.34 and 21.
57. TR to E, June 14, 1891. The uncle was James K. Gracie, husband of Aunt Annie.
58. TR to B, June 20 and July 2, 1891.
59. Ib., July 12 and 2, 1891. Hall Roosevelt drank himself to death in 1941 at the age of fifty.
60. Ib., July 2, 1891.
61. Goldman, Bonaparte, 25; Mor.255. HCL was now in his third term at Congress, and was one of the most influential members of the House. Sto.183 and Gar. passim.
62. TR to HCL, July 1, 1891 (edited version in Mor.256).
63. TR to B, July 8, 1891.
64. Ib.
65. TR to B, July 8, 21, 12, 1891. Apparently TR also went to look at the baby, with Douglas Robinson, on July 13.
66. Ib., July 12, 1891. How B managed to get E shut up is unclear. He seems to have consented at first (ib.), but afterwards claimed he had been “kidnapped.” (Las.37.)
67. TRB mss.
Postscript: In a letter prompted by the first edition of this biography, Katy Mann’s granddaughter reported that Katy never married. She took no pains to conceal the parentage of her son, who was named Elliott Roosevelt Mann. Money left in trust for the child by Elliott Senior apparently never reached the family, which has remained bitter for generations. Eleanor Mann Biles to author, July 6, 1981.
68. C.S. Chronicle, May 1892; W. Post, Sep. 2, 1891 (Wanamaker was on vacation).
69. See, e.g., N.Y. Tribune and Times, Aug. 17, 1891. Sample editorial quote, from N.Y. Evening Post, same date: “All that he says is true, and furnishes the most startling picture yet presented to the President of the fruits of his policy in violating his Civil Service Reform pledges.”
70. W. Post, Sep. 1, 1891; Mor.259.
71. Sun, Aug. 17, 1891; see also N.Y.T., World, Trib., same date.
72. TR to Douglas Robinson, Aug. 6, 1891; TR to B, Aug. 22.
73. At the time of writing, December 1977, Ethel Roosevelt Derby has just died at Oyster Bay.
74. TR to B, Sep. 1, 1891.
75. Mor.261. Cut.58 says that the excessive butchery of this trip was to prove an embarrassment to TR in later years. It was, nevertheless, the only recorded instance of the mature TR breaking his own controlled-hunting rules. “The horror about poor Elliott” may have had something to do with it. As can be seen in a passage deleted from his letter to HCL of Oct. 10, 1891 (LOD.), the worry was still very much with him when he returned to Washington.
76. N.Y. T., Nov. 29, 1891; W. Post, Sep. 2, 1891.
77. N.Y. T., Nov. 29, 1891.
78. W. Post, Sep. 2, 1891.
79. Foulke, William D., Fighting the Spoilsmen (Putnam, 1919) 25–6.
80. TR to B, Oct. 28, 1891; Goldman, Bonaparte, 26; Mor.265–6 (the reports turned out to be false); ib., 258; Williams, “TR, CSC,” 85.
81. EKR to TR, passim (Derby mss.); Hay to Adams, Jan. 6, 1892, ADA.
82. Las.38; TR to B, passim; N.Y. Herald, Aug. 22, 1891.
83. TR to B, Sep. 1, 1891.
84. TR to B, Nov. 27 and Dec. 13, 1891.
85. Ib., Dec. 22, Jan. 3, 1892.
86. E (age 15) to TR Sr., Mar. 6, 1875, qu. Las.7.
87. E’s sporting notes (1873), TRC.
88. TR to B, Jan. 21, 1892.
89. Las.38–39; TR to B, Feb. 13, 1892.
90. Author’s surmise, based on TR’s letter announcing departure plans, Jan. 21, 1892.
91. Fragment in Anna Hall Roosevelt papers, FDR.
92. The exact dates of TR’s trip to Paris have long been uncertain, due to an extraordinary combination of misdatings in the surviving correspondence. For example, his letter to B announcing the trip is dated “January 3, 1891” in the TRB typed transcripts, and his next letter to her from Paris, quoted above, is dated “June 21st 1891.” To make matters more complicated, his letter to Spring-Rice, beginning “When I was in Paris,” is dated in Mor.270 as “Jan. 25, 1892.” The correct dates should be, consecutively, Jan. 3, Jan. 21, and Feb. 25, 1892. Recently discovered letters of EKR to her mother, Gertrude Tyler Carow, confirm that TR left New York on Jan. 9, and arrived back home on Feb. 7, 1892. TRC.
93. See Mor.270.
94. House Report 2, 1–3. See also TR to Bonaparte, Jan. 4, 1892: “My devoted friend, Mr. Wanamaker, has not dared to have published the report of his inspectors.”
95. Before giving vent to this imprecation, he checked to see there were no reporters in the room.
96. George Haven Putnam in Century Association, TR Memorial Addresses, (NY, 1919) 40–3; also in Putnam, Memories of a Publisher (NY, 1915) 141–2. Putnam does not giv
e the date, but since the incident obviously occurred in the period preceding the House Investigation, March 8 seems most likely. TR paid a visit to NY on that date, arriving in the evening, as Putnam remembers. He remained in NY on Mar. 9 and 10, but was otherwise engaged on those nights. (TR to B, passim.)
97. Las.39; TR to B, Feb. 13, 1892.
98. See “A Peccary-Hunt on the Nueces,” TR.Wks. 275–84. One of TR’s best pieces, full of visual and auditory details. Note how few lines are devoted to the actual chase, the rest being taken up with zoological observations and some beautiful nature-writing.
99. House Report 2, 1; Putnam in Memorial Addresses, 43.
100. House Report 2, 12.
101. Ib., 2.
102. Ib., 5, 7, 9
103. Ib., 25; W. Post, May 3, 1892.
104. House Report 2, 25–6.
105. See ib., 25–36, 27, 36
106. W. Post, May 3, 1892.
107. House Report 2, 60; N.Y.T., May 26, 1892; Mor.281–2; Sun, May 13.
108. See Mor.281–2 for complete text. TR sent a copy of this letter to BH, “with the utmost confidence that you will recognize the propriety of my action.”
109. House Report 2, 59; W. Post, May 26, 1892.
110. House Report 2, 60, 63.
111. N.Y.T., May 26, 1892. See TR.Scr. for more reactions, and Bis.II.48–9; House Report 2, iii–v.
112. W. Post Extra Edition, June 23, 1892.
113. BH won on the first ballot, due largely to the support of thousands of his own appointees. Foulke, Spoilsmen, 31–2.
114. Sageser, “Two Decades” (cited in Ch. 16, n. 2) 150 and passim confirms that publicity was the CSC’s main weapon during the Harrison Administration. Sun, qu. Foulke, Spoilsmen, 32. As Har.78 points out, in matters other than Civil Service Reform, Wanamaker’s was the most distinguished Postmaster Generalship since the Civil War. The man was an imaginative innovator, and “a near administration genius.” (Ib.) He has suffered much from TR’s shrewd attacks upon him, even allowing for the fact that right was on the younger man’s side. Today Wanamaker’s handling of the Baltimore affair would be construed as obstruction of justice. It is interesting to note that he, at least in later life, bore TR no ill-will. He tried once to analyze the latter’s “masterful greatness,” and wrote that its secret lay “in the fact that no insincerity lurked behind his ever-welcoming smile.” Qu. Appel, J. H., A Business Biography of John Wanamaker (NY, 1930) 255.
115. See Mor.293; TR.Wks.XIV.141.
116. Mor.275–7.
117. Ib., 277, 290; Lod.122. For a description of TR the polo player, see Harper’s Weekly, July 20, 1892.
118. Mor.289; TR to B, Aug. 11, 1892.
119. See Mor.3.547–63 for an account of the exquisite dialogue between Jones and Ferris. Their “lunatic story” became one of TR’s favorite after-dinner recitations. John Hay was so charmed by this and other Rooseveltian stories of the Old West that he begged him to commit it to paper. The result was a 9,000-word letter which, along with two other classic examples of TR the raconteur, have been separately published under the title Cowboys and Kings (Harvard U. Press, 1954).
120. Mor.290; ib., 3.553. The sheriff’s name was Seth Bullock. He later became one of the more exotic members of TR’s “Tennis Cabinet.”
121. Williams, “TR, CSC,” 51.
122. Un. clip, Sep. 15, 1892, TR.Scr. See also Herbert Welsh, Civilization Among the Sioux Indians (Philadelphia Office of the Indian Rights Association, 1893) 4–7.
123. USCSC, 11th Report, 164–5.
124. The text of this magnificent speech is in TR.Wks.XIV.156–68. See also Hagan, William T., “Civil Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt and the Indian Rights Association,” Pacific Historical Review, 44.2 (May 1975) 187 ff. Hagan protests that TR’s contribution to the improvement of the Indian Service as CSC “has been ignored too long.” He shows how TR acted in concert with Herbert Welsh, of the I.R. Association, to root out injustice and corruption on the reservations, and offer more government employment to Indians. Later Welsh recommended TR to President McKinley as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. “His hold upon the public, his knowledge of the subject, would make him, perhaps, the most valuable man in the country.” As a result of his CSC work, TR was “the best-informed man on Indian affairs to occupy the White House since the Civil War.” Ib., 199–200.
125. Sto.179.
126. Mor.295.
127. Gar.129ff.; see, e.g., the Charleston News & Courier, qu. N.Y.T., Nov. 27, 1892.
128. Foulke, Spoilsmen, 24.
129. Ib., 33.
130. Las.44.
131. See Foraker, Julia, I Would Live It Again (Harpers, 1932) 188.
132. See Gar.150.
133. Foraker, Again, 188.
134. Mor.304.
135. See Carl Schurz to TR, Jan. 4, 1893, qu. Bis.I.52; Pri.131; Har.79; Mrs. Bellamy Storer in Harper’s Weekly, June 1, 1912.
18: THE UNIVERSE SPINNER
1. Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1893. The following description of the opening of the World’s Fair is taken largely from this newspaper, supplemented by the World and Sun of the same date; Northrup, H. D., The World’s Fair as Seen in a Hundred Days (Philadelphia, 1893) and Rand McNally’s The World’s Columbian Exposition Reproduced (Chicago, 1894).
2. Nineteenth-century Americans unhesitatingly accepted the Discoverer as Spanish, just as today he is generally believed to have been an Italian. For what appears to be the last word on the subject, see Morison, Samuel Eliot, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (NY, 1974) 6–8.
3. TR to B, Apr. 26, 1893.
4. Wis.36.
5. Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams (Houghton Mifflin, 1974) 340.
6. Mor.320.
7. Adams, Education, 343.
8. Mor.317. TR had recently been retained by Cleveland as Civil Service Commissioner, after handing in his formal resignation at the beginning of the new Administration. Although he explained the act was prompted by his desire “to relieve the President any embarrassment and … to get back to his books,” he did not need much persuading to stay. See New York Times, May 4, 1893, and Mor.314.
9. Morley in 1903, qu. TRB mss.
10. TR.Wks.VII.3.
11. Ib., 3, 7.
12. Ib., 111.
13. Mor.440.
14. TR.Wks.VII.108.
15. Ib., 380, 403–4, 377–9, 331, 279
16. Ib., 57.
17. Ib.
18. See Cut.36–7 and Bur.14 on TR’s observations of the rule of tooth and claw in nature.
19. Ib., 58.
20. Ib., 57–8.
21. See Bea.31.
22. For examples of Commissioner Roosevelt’s abhorrence of racial discrimination in hiring practices, see Mor.373, 381, 402; also TR.Wks.XIV. 165. In 1954, Edmund Wilson, reviewing Vols I and II of Mor., remarked: “It is impossible to go through the correspondence of Roosevelt’s early official life without being convinced that he pretty consistently lived up to this principle.” Wilson, “The Pre-presidential TR” in Eight Essays (NY, 1954) 211.
23. TR.Wks.X.479–509.
24. See Billington, Ray Allen, Frederick Jackson Turner (Oxford U. Press, 1973) passim for the genesis and presentation of Turner’s great thesis.
25. The Dial, August 1889 (see p. 462). See also Jacobs, Wilbur R., The Historical World of Frederick Jackson Turner (Yale, 1968) 4. Jacobs says that Turner wrote an unpublished essay, “The Hunter Type,” in 1890, “based almost entirely upon the early volumes of The Winning of the West.” The essay depicted a Rooseveltian warrior-hero of the border, represented as an evolutionary American type. Massive, scholarly reading went into the subsequent preparation of “Significance,” but it may well be, as Jacobs suggests, that WW “provided the inspiration for his frontier thesis.” For a full account, see Billington, Turner, 83–4, 108–25.
26. Qu. ib., 127. See also Knee, Stuart E., “Roosevelt and Turner: Awakening in the West,” Journal of the West 17 (1978)
2.
27. Lasch, Christopher, ed., WW by TR (NY, 1963) xii; qu. Billington, Turner, 128.
28. Turner, Frederick Jackson, Frontier and Section: Selected Essays, ed. Ray Allen Billington (Prentice-Hall, 1961) 61.
29. Ib., 37.
30. Ib., 62.
31. See Billington, Turner, 129–30.
32. Mor.363.
33. Ib.
34. See Billington, Turner, passim for further details of the TR/Turner relationship.
35. See Wag.44.
36. Forum, Apr. 1894; TR.Wks.XIII. 13–26, 151.
37. Ib., 13–26.
38. Qu. Wag.63.
39. TR.Wks.XIII.20; James, Henry, The American Essays, ed. Leon Edel (Vintage Books, 1956).
40. Edel, Leon, Henry James: The Master (London, 1972) 275–76. Overhearing TR characterize an unidentified contemporary novelist, possibly James, as “a malignant pustule,” George Kennan reflected, “If this young Civil Service Commissioner fully develops his capacity for hatred and his natural gift for denunciation, he will be, in the maturity of his powers, an unpleasant man to encounter.” Kennan, Misrepresentation in Railroad Affairs (Garden City, NY, 1916), 49.
41. Reprinted in TR.Wks.XIII.200–222.
42. Ib., 203.
43. Ib., 206.
44. Ib., 208–9.
45. Ib., 214.
46. Ib., 216.
47. Ib. For TR’s enlightened interpretation of Social Darwinism, see his review of Benjamin Kidd’s Social Evolution (NY, 1894), published in North American Review, 161.94–109 (July 1895) and reprinted in TR.Wks.XIII. John M. Blum exhaustively and brilliantly discusses this and other aspects of TR’s intellectual development in an essay, “TR: The Years of Decision,” printed as Appendix IV to Mor.2.1484–94.
48. TR.Wks.XII.219.
49. Ib., 222.
50. Space does not permit an extended description of this richly detailed, sweet-natured book. Suffice to say it has all the freshness of observation of Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, even less slaughter than Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, and an abundance of original zoological information. The chapter on the life habits of the grizzly bear marked a definite contribution to science: TR was by now recognized as the world authority on this and other large Western species. There are several delicious comic episodes, notably the story of Fowler and the Turk, and the dialogue overheard by TR on the Brophy ranch in 1884, as well as one of his finest lyrical pieces, inspired by the all-night song of a Tennessee mockingbird. See TR.Wks.II.330–4, 327–30, and 52–5. For sample reviews in 1893, see Nation, Aug. 14; St. Paul Press, Aug. 22; Edinburgh National Observer, Dec. 30.
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