The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  24. Ib., Aug. 13, 1896.

  25. TR to B, Aug. 15, 1896.

  26. Mor.558; Herald, Aug. 20, 1896.

  27. N.Y.T., July 13, 1896.

  28. Sun, Aug. 21, 1896; N.Y.T., World, same date. The Times editorially accused Parker of “intolerable impudence and bravado,” and said he had “wrought inestimable harm on the Police Department and to the whole cause of municipal reform in this city.” Aug. 21, 1896.

  29. TR to B, Sept. 13, 1896.

  30. Ib.

  31. See Boorstin, Primer, II.581.

  32. TR to B, Sep. 13, 1896; to HCL, Mor.559; N.Y.T., Sep. 11. There were two GOP headquarters, one in Chicago and one in New York.

  33. TR to Evening Post reporter, c. Sep. 11, 12, 1896 (TR.Scr., n.d.)

  34. R. of Rs., XIV.4 (Oct. 1896). This periodical gives good monthly summaries of the campaign. See also ib., 5 (Nov. 1896).

  35. Ib., see also Cro.; Rho.20 ff.

  36. Cro.209; TR to B, Sep. 13.

  37. See also TR to B, Aug. 2, 1896; Pri. 162–3.

  38. TR.Wks.XIII.153.

  39. To the Sound Money League, Sep. 11, 1896. Text in TR.Wks.XIV.25–7. The Chicago platform contained a plank “which condemned the use of the injunction in labor disputes and deplored the judicial invalidation of the income tax.” Pri.163.

  40. Lod.236–7; TR to B, Oct. 4, 1896.

  41. Ib. The visit probably occurred on Oct. 2 (Lod.237). Cro.215.

  42. Lee.88; Cro.215–6; Rho.25.

  43. See Ch. 16. TR to B, Oct. 4, 1896.

  44. Ib., Oct. 11, 1896.

  45. R. of Rs., XIV.4 (Oct. 1896); Cro.217–8.

  46. For a good recent account of the campaign, see Morg.209–248. Lod.237.

  47. Pri.163–4; TR.Wks.XIV.258–79.

  48. Chicago Tribune, Oct. 16, 1896; TR.Wks.XIV.258.

  49. Ib.; also 265, 264–5.

  50. Chicago Tribune, Oct. 16, 1896.

  51. Ib.

  52. Ib.; see also Ch. 4.

  53. TR to Sun reporter, Oct. 28, 1896. On Oct. 17, TR and Bryan addressed simultaneous meetings in Detroit.

  54. Sun, ib.

  55. N.Y.T., Oct. 18, 1896. Sun, Oct. 28.

  56. TR to B, Oct. 22 and 26, 1896; ib., Nov. 1; Mor.566.

  57. Rho.29; Stoddard, Henry L., Presidential Sweepstakes (Putnam, 1948) 110.

  58. Rho.28.

  59. Bee.552.

  60. Whi.292.

  61. Mor.566; Bee.523. Hanna had, for better or worse, laid the foundations of modern campaign spending by systematically assessing banks and large corporations at ½ of 1% of their capital. Cro.220. His largest benefactor—John D. Rockefeller—gave $250,000. The total GOP campaign cost $3,350,000, a staggering sum in those days. Pri.163.

  62. Mor.566. TR, in this letter, uses the adjective “Jew” when describing the bankers. It is the only hint, if hint it be, of anti-Semitism in his vast correspondence, and it pales into insignificance beside the remarks typical of his class and kind, for instance those constantly exchanged by John Hay and Henry Adams. See Wag.230. TR later appointed at least one of his “Jew” fellow-guests at the Victory luncheon, Isaac Seligman, to high state office (Mor.566), and as President he relied much on the counsel of another, Jacob Schiff.

  63. TR to B, Aug. 2, 1896.

  64. Lod.240; ib., 241.

  65. Ib., 242.

  66. Storer, “How TR Was Appointed.”

  67. Ib. For an insight into McK’s true feelings about the Storers, see Mott, Herrick, 72–4.

  68. As late as 1921, Mrs. Storer was convinced McK had said, “I will do this to please you,” but, as will be seen, he could not have said anything of the kind.

  69. Mor.569.

  70. Storer, Child, 25.

  71. Mor.570.

  72. TR’s negotiations with and around TCP during the next three months are fully described in Lod.244–66. Gos.172; Morg.267; Lod.244. When HCL asked what “war” TCP had in mind, the Easy Boss replied that TR would interfere with his patronage in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Ib., 245.

  73. Ib., 247; see also Mor.569.

  74. Ib., 572.

  75. Gos.171–2.

  76. See Mor.34; 55–58; Choate to TR, Oct. 31, 1881 (facsimile in Lor.192). Mor.59.

  77. Lod.249; Pri.169; Her., Dec. 17; Mor.572. In fairness to TR it must be said that he would have come out for Choate if forced to a decision—see ib. Nevertheless, his refusal to speak for his old patron, and his tacit endorsement of TCP, must be regarded as proof of his ruthless ambition and invariable policy of working with the organization whenever possible and expedient.

  78. TR to B, Dec. 20, 1896; ib., Nov. 29; ib., Dec. 26.

  79. Morning Advertiser, Dec. 31, 1896.

  80. Eve. Post, Jan. 1, 1897; Her., Dec. 31, 1896.

  81. Qu. Her., Jan. 9, 1897; qu. Pri.169.

  82. Eve. Post, Jan. 8, 1897.

  83. Ib.; Gos.171. Fourteen years later, when TCP came to write his Autobiography, the memory of those seven dissenters still rankled. Pla.348.

  84. TR to B, Jan. 24, 1897; ib., Feb. 28.

  85. The Royal Navy, 7 vols. (London, 1897–1903). TR’s volume, which he finished writing during the first week of March (TR to B, Mar. 7, 1897), was published under the title The War with the United States, 1812–1815. For a complimentary British review, see The Atheneum, Dec. 28, 1901.

  86. Lod.255.

  87. Mor.582.

  88. TR to B, Feb. 28, 1897.

  89. Ib.

  90. TR to T. R. Lounsbury, Mar. 9, 1897, qu. Brant, Donald Birtley, Jr., “TR as New York City Police Commissioner,” unpublished dissertation (Princeton, 1964) 66.

  91. See, e.g., Eve. Post, Mar. 1, 1897; World, Commercial Advertiser, Mar. 4; Her., Mar. 6; see also TR in Mor.662.

  92. Sun, Mar. 2, 1897.

  93. Ib.; Her., Mar. 18, 1897.

  94. TR/HCL correspondence in Lod. passim: Lod.253.

  95. Bee.525 (wrongly dated after Ambassador Cassini’s arrival in Washington, June 1898).

  96. Lod.253. There were, of course, other objections to TR’s appointment. Senator Chandler of New Hampshire, for example, considered him over-qualified. Secretary Long concurred with this view. Morg.262.

  97. Tabouis, Geneviève, Jules Cambon: Par l’un des Siens (Paris, 1938), 84 (author’s translation).

  98. Rho.41; Bee.529.

  99. Lod.I.262.

  100. Long had been a Congressman during TR’s CSC days, and was a regular guest with TR at Thomas B. Reed’s dinner table. McCall, Samuel W., Thomas B. Reed (Houghton Mifflin, 1914) 143. For TR’s first respectful impression of him as an orator at the 1884 Chicago Convention, see Ch. 10.

  101. HCL in Woo.43; E.G.R. in un. clip, Aug. 31, 1919, TRB; Lee.137.

  102. Mott, Herrick, 74. Pri.169 says that TCP was “singularly dull” not to have seen this before. The Easy Boss may have been many things, but he was not dull. His reasons for objecting to TR’s appointment were perfectly logical, and he made no secret of them. In the first place he felt that TR, as Assistant Secretary, would interfere with his powers of patronage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In the second, he was annoyed that McK’s previous New York appointments—Secretary of the Interior Cornelius Bliss and Ambassador to France Horace Porter—were both of them anti-organization men. TR would make a third; and since McK was unlikely to give any more appointments to the Empire State, TCP felt that his organization, which had worked so hard on behalf of the President, had been slighted. Hence he refused to approve of TR. Of course TCP had other, less public reasons. He hoped (vainly) that TR would buy his approval by persuading Mayor Strong to replace him with a Commissioner friendly to the organization. Finally, this writer would suggest that TCP was simply exercising his political muscle. Not many Senators get a chance to say “no” to a President in the early days of their relationship, and the Roosevelt affair gave TCP an ideal opportunity to bully McK a little. “Anybody but that fellow!” he exploded when the President mentioned TR to him. Myron Herrick’s account (Mott, 72–74) shows h
ow deferentially McK was forced to treat the old man. TCP was further soothed with a series of prize plums, including the Collectorship of New York. His own account of the affair, in Pla.540 ff., is patently untruthful. See Lod.244–5, 261, 263–4, and Lee.137.

  103. Paullin, Charles O., Paullin’s History of Naval Administration, 1775–1911 (U.S. Naval Institute, 1968) 369; Lod.266.

  104. N.Y. World, Apr. 9, 1897.

  105. N.Y.T., Apr. 18, 1897.

  106. Ib. See also Eve. Sun, Apr. 17, 1897, and Rii.29.

  107. World, Apr. 8, 1897. Mayor Strong, for one, did not publicly regret TR’s departure. But see N.Y.T., Apr. 16 for the eulogies of those who did.

  108. N.Y.T., Apr. 8, 1897.

  109. AND.144; Brant, “TR, PC,” 31; TR in his resignation letter to Strong, Mor.595; AND.40–1; Mail & Express, May 1, 1897; AND.86–8; World, May 22, 1895. See also TR’s very funny compilation of specimen entrance examination answers in Mor.578–81, and Wis.51–2 for a good Civil Service List anecdote.

  110. New York Police Department, Annual Reports, 1895 and 1897; Richardson, James F., The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901 (Oxford U. Press, 1970) 91; AND.86–89; Mor.600. See also “Who’ll be a Blue-coat?” in World, August 1, 1895, for TR’s recruitment policies, and Ber. 60–62 on “the military analogy.”

  111. Mor.596; TR to Strong, ib., 594; Richardson, Police, 260 ff.; AND.44, 65–6,144–56; Brant, “TR, PC,” 31, 76; Trib., Sep. 12, 1895. See also Hurwitz, Howard L., TR and Labor in New York State (Columbia U. Press, 1943) 116 and passim. Not all of these achievements can be ascribed directly to TR, but as president of the Board, and member ex officio of all its committees, he undoubtedly deserves principal credit. In moral achievement, certainly, he stood alone. See E. L. Godkin to TR, modestly quoted in TR.Auto.408, Ber. 120–21, and Avery Andrews’s last word: “It may truthfully be said that Theodore Roosevelt at no time in his career fought more effectively for the basic principles of free government than he fought for them as New York Police Commissioner.” AND.9.

  112. See, e.g., N.Y.T. ed., Apr. 8, 1897: “We cannot consider it [the Assistant Secretaryship] in any sense a promotion.”

  113. The actual date of TR’s resignation was Apr. 19, 1897. Mor.594. Igl.121., quoting TR.

  114. Harper’s Weekly, May 2, 1897.

  115. AND. passim.

  116. Municipal Archives, Strong mss. Most newspapers, and many eminent lawyers, concurred with this verdict, while still urging Parker to resign. See, e.g., N.Y.T., July 13, 1897.

  117. AND.207; Mor.660–1.

  118. Che.14–15; Pri.150–1; see Mor. 711 for TR’s disgusted reaction.

  119. Ste.275.

  22: THE HOT WEATHER SECRETARY

  Important sources not in Bibliography: 1. Grenville, John A. S., “American Preparations for War with Spain,” in Journal of American Studies (GB) 1968.2(1). 2. Karsten, Peter, “The Nature of ‘Influence’: Roosevelt, Mahan, and the Concept of Sea Power,” in American Quarterly, 1971.23(4). A convincing reassessment of the early TR/Mahan relationship; required reading for all students of TR’s political methods. (See also Turk, Richard W., The Ambiguous Relationship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan (Greenwood Press, 1987). 3. Nicholson, Philip Y., “George Dewey and the Expansionists of 1898,” in Vermont History, 1974.42(3). 4. Paullin, Charles Oscar, Paullin’s History of Naval Administration 1775–1911 (U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, 1968). 5. Spector, Ronald, Admiral of the New Empire [Dewey] (Louisiana State U., 1974). 6. Sprout, Harold and Margaret, The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776–1918 (Princeton, 1966). In this revised version of their classic history, the authors anticipate Karsten op. cit. by lowering their assessment of Mahan’s influence vis à vis TR’s.

  1. Mor.599; TR.Auto.12; But.291; Igl.121–2.

  2. New York Times, May 2, 1897. (This desk is now preserved at TRB.)

  3. Harper’s Weekly, May 7, 1897.

  4. LON. Apr. 9, 1897; Mor.588; But. 40.

  5. “Rightly or wrongly Uncle John [Sherman, Secretary of State] and Long are considered and treated as senile.”—Elizabeth Cameron to Henry Adams, Mar. 4, 1898 (ADA).

  6. Mor. 604.

  7. “I make it a point not to trouble myself overmuch to acquire a thorough knowledge of the details pertaining to any branch of the service … the range is so enormous I could make little progress, and that is a great expense of health and time, in mastering it.” Long, Journal, Feb. 2, 1897.

  8. Pau.428; Intro to Lon; LON. passim; pors.

  9. Pau.369, 429; Mor.608.

  10. Chicago Times-Herald, Apr. 7, 1897; Washington Post, Apr. 8.

  11. London Times, Apr. 8.

  12. Clip dated “May 1897” in TR.Scr.; Mor. 602–3.

  13. Cullom int. N.Y. World news clip, n.d. [1897], in Pratt Scrapbook (TRB).

  14. Mor.626; Nicholson 217.

  15. See Pra. for a negative but invaluable account of the movement.

  16. Bea.22–3; Gar.182; Mor.608, 621; Sam.3.161–3; Millis, Walter, Arms and Men (N.Y., 1956), 169; Jos., Chapter 2; Nicholson, 217; Mor.621; Her.197.

  17. Spr.225; Nicholson, passim.

  18. TR.Works.XIII. 182–99.

  19. Mor.601.n. Japan had despatched the cruiser Naniwa Kan to Hawaii in mid-April, fearful that an annexation move by the U.S. would threaten the rights of some 25,000 Japanese citizens in the islands. See also Pra.217–220, May.127.

  20. TR.Wks.XIII.185–6.

  21. Pittsburgh Dispatch, Sep. 12, 1897; Sun, May 22.

  22. TR.Wks.XIII. 199.

  23. Bis. 1.77; TR.Scr. passim.

  24. W. Post, n.d., TRB; Sun, June 3, 1897; Herald, ib.; Daily Picayune, June 7; Harper’s W., June 19.

  25. L.E.Q. to H. L. Stoddard, Feb. 15, 1919, TRB.

  26. Millis, Arms, 169–70; Spr.226; Lee. 149.

  27. Spr.202 ff.; Bur.44. See also Millis, Arms, 166–7; Pra.212 ff.

  28. This para. based largely on Grenville.

  29. Pau.416; Grenville. (Herbert was not against naval expansion per se; his scruples were in the area of foreign policy. See Spr.218–20.)

  30. Mor.617–8.

  31. Mor.607. (Mahan had recently retired from NWC, but continued to influence it.)

  32. Bea.57, Mor.622; Pra.217–9; Morg.295; Mor. 627–8.

  33. For details of this international race, see Bur.28 ff., Bea.14 ff.

  34. Mor.623.

  35. Mor.622–3.

  36. The following account of the early relationship between TR and Mahan is based largely on Karsten, passim.

  37. Millis, Arms, 155–6 (the adjective “workmanlike” is his).

  38. Luce to TR, Feb. 13, 1888, qu. Karsten, 588; see also ib., 225–6.

  39. See, e.g., TR.Wks.XII.264–72; ib., 372–79; XIV.309.

  40. Karsten, 591.

  41. Bur. points out that despite their earlier similarity of views, Mahan was always the nautical professional, arguing that the Navy was the engine of national greatness, whereas TR was the political professional, arguing that national greatness necessitated a strong Navy. See also Turk, Richard L., The Ambiguous Relationship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan (Greenwood, 1987).

  42. Mor.627–8.

  43. Ib., 628–9. (But TR was not above “confiscating and filing” documents himself—for example a list of official complaints that threatened to slow his pet torpedo-boat construction program. See Mor.630.)

  44. Mor. 628. It will be remembered that this was just where Boss Platt had worried that TR might interfere with organization patronage.

  45. Mor.629–631; see also TR to B, Apr. 30, 1897.

  46. Bea.57–60.

  47. Mor.624, 635.

  48. Reprinted in TR.Wks.XIII.

  49. Qu. Sul.389.

  50. Literature, Apr. 23, 1898, qu. Edel, Leon, Henry James: The American Essays (N.Y., 1956). (For a favorable review of Ideals, see Harvard Grad. Mag., March 1898.)

  51. See Bea.474 for a sample list of TR’s contributions; also Pra.222; also, e.g., Mor.622.<
br />
  52. Grenville 36–7; Mor.627. The entire next para. based on Grenville. He prints the war plan as an appendix, 41–47.

  53. Grenville, 43. (He notes that this plan also contained the first known war plan against Japan, anticipating War Plan Orange by some sixteen years.)

  54. TR to EKR, June 18, 1897, qu. Hag. LW. 1.138; see also TR.Wks.XI. xiii.

  55. Mor.652.

  56. Descr. taken from Hag.LW. passim; Holme, John G., Life of Leonard Wood (N.Y., 1920), 6; pics. and pors. in TRB.

  57. See N.Y. Tribune, May 10, 1894.

  58. Lod.285. Wood had come to Washington in Sep. 1895 as Assistant Attending Surgeon to President Cleveland. Hag.LW.1.133.

  59. Descr. taken from Spector, passim; Nicholson, passim; pics. and pors.

  60. Nicholson, 214; Spector 30–39 for background.

  61. Qu. Clemens, Will M., The Life of Admiral GD (N.Y., 1899), 73.

  62. TR.Auto.216.

  63. Nicholson, 221 (but Spector disagrees).

  64. Spector, 32.

  65. Ib., 36.

  66. TR to B, Aug. 17, 1897.

  67. Mor.620, 649. (See Roosevelt, Nicholas, TR: The Man as I Knew Him (Dodd, Mead, 1967) for one child’s memory of these summers at Sagamore Hill.)

  68. Mor.625; Las.118–9, 167; Asbell, B., The FDR Memoirs (NY, 1973). Like TR, FDR went to Harvard, edited a college newspaper, studied at Columbia Law School, entered the State Legislature in his twenties, and then became successively Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, and President of the United States. He also married TR’s niece.

  69. TR to B, July 10, 1897.

  70. These Rooseveltian comments actually date from a similar torpedo-boat ride in the second week of May (Sun, May 22), but seem quite relevant here. For admiring press comments on his report on the torpedo-boats, see ib., and W. Post, May 23.

  71. Mor.635; see Sun, Aug. 10, for TR’s report of this tour.