American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Morgan-Knox-Roosevelt dialogue and Roosevelt’s subsequent reflections]: quoted in Joseph B. Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time (Scribner’s, 1920), vol. 1, pp. 184–85.

  333 [Coalstrike, 1902]: Robert J. Cornell, The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 (Catholic Universityof America Press, 1957); Robert H. Wiebe, “The Anthracite Strike of 1902: A Record of Confusion,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 48, no. 2 (September 1961), pp.229–51; Harbaugh, ch. 10.

  [Baer on the rights of laboring men]: quoted in Harbaugh, p. 173.

  [Roosevelt on behavior at White House conference]: quoted in Pringle, p. 272.

  [Campaign of 1904 ]: William E. Harbaugh, “Election of 1904,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 3, pp. 1965–2046.

  334 [Roosevelt and the admission of three new states]: George E. Mowry, The Era of TheodoreRoosevelt (Harper & Bros., 1958), p. 126.

  334 [Harbaugh on campaign shenanigans]: Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, p. 217.

  [Roosevelt on no third term]: quoted in ibid., p. 232.

  [Blum on “central issue”]: Blum, The Republican Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 86.

  [Roosevelt on transportation]: Congressional Record, 59th Congress, 1st Session (vol. 40, part 1), December 5, 1905, pp. 91–105, quoted at p. 93.

  335 [Rail reform legislation]: Blum, Republican Roosevelt, ch. 6.

  [Roosevelt to Lodge on Holmes]: reprinted in William M. Goldsmith, ed..The Growth of Presidential Power (Chelsea House, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 1160–62; see also John Garraty, “Holmes’ Appointment to the Supreme Court,” New England Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 3 (March 1949), pp. 291–303; Max Lerner. ed., The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes (Little, Brown, 1943), pp. xxxi–xxxvi, 217–31.

  [Roosevelt on Holmes’s lack of “backbone”]: quoted in Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, p. 162.

  Foreign Policy with the TR Brand

  336 [Correspondence, Roosevelt-style]: Morison, Letters, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 651, 625, 599, respectively. See also Wagenknecht, op. cit., p. 9.

  337 [Interview with Roosevelt]: Diary of Sir Mortimer Durand, quoted in Eugene P. Trani, The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in American Diplomacy (University of Kentucky Press, 1969), pp. 15–16.

  [Panama Canal diplomacy]: Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 9th ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1974), ch. 33; Lawrence O. Ealy, Yanqui Politics and the Isthmian Canal (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), chs. 4–6; Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1978), ch. 2; David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas (Simon and Schuster, 1977), chs. 10–14.

  [Hay on “ignorance and spite”]: quoted in Bailey, p. 488.

  338 [Volcanic inscription]: ibid., p. 489.

  [Herrán’s fear of Roosevelt]: quoted in McCullough, p. 332.

  339 [Roosevelt on Panamanian independence]: Roosevelt to Albert Shaw, October 10, 1903, in Morison, Letters, vol. 3, p. 628.

  [Denunciations of U.S. role in Panama insurrection ]: quoted in McCullough, p. 381, and Ealy, p. 61. See also Bailey, p. 495.

  340 [Republican platform on canal success]: quoted in Ealy, p. 65.

  [Roosevelt on Colombian canal banditry]: quoted in G. Wallace Chessman, Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power (Little, Brown, 1969), pp. 99–100.

  [Roosevelt Corollary]: quoted in Bailey, p. 505. See also Cecil V. Crabb, Jr., The Doctrines of American Foreign Policy (Louisiana State University Press, 1982), pp. 38–40.

  [Roosevelt on the superiority of fighting men]: quoted in Wagenknecht, p. 248.

  [Competition of races ]: see Robert Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), pp. 6–7.

  341 [Roosevelt’s preference for Japan]: letter of February 10, 1904, in Morison, Letters, vol. 4, p. 724.

  [Roosevelt’s annoyance with the Russians]: ibid.; and Roosevelt to Cecil A. Spring Rice, December 27, 1904, ibid, vol. 4, p. 1085.

  342 [Roosevelt on Japanese contempt for “white devils”]: ibid., pp. 1085–86.

  [Portsmouth negotiations]: Trani, passim, and sources cited therein.

  [Roosevelt’sfrustration with Portsmouth negotiators]: Roosevelt to Kermit Roosevelt, August 25, 1905, in Morison, Letters, vol. 4, pp. 1316–17.

  342–43 [Morning Post on Roosevelt as diplomatist]: quoted in Trani, p. 61.

  [Roosevelt’s fear of disorder]: Morison, Letters, vol. 5, p. xvi.

  [Roosevelt’s mastery of “uncontrollable forces”]: Dallek, p. 51.

  [Roosevelt on work]: Roosevelt to Frederic René Coudert, July 3, 1901, in Morison, Letters, vol. 5, p. xv.

  [Roosevelt at the Canal]: McCullough, pp. 492–502.

  [Roosevelt on “one of the great works of the world”]: quoted in Ealy, p. 66.

  [California school segregation]: Bailey, pp. 521–23, Roosevelt quoted at p. 522.

  344 [Tour of the “Great White Fleet”]: Robert A. Hart, The Great White Fleet (Little, Brown, 1965), fleet commander (Adm. Robley D. Evans) quoted at p. 45; see also Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, op. cit., pp. 300–301; Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), pp. 328–32.

  Reform: Leadership and Power

  345 [The new breed of reformers]: Louis Filler, Crusaders for American Liberalism (Harcourt, Brace, 1939), esp. chs. 5–7.

  [Mr. Dooley on reform magazines]: Finley Peter Dunne, “National Housecleaning,” in Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley: Now and Forever, Louis Filler, ed. (Academic Reprints, 1954), pp. 244–45.

  [Roosevelt’s personal relationships with reformers]: Morison, Letters, op. cit., passim.

  346 [White on Roosevelt as “reform in a derby”]: quoted in Eric F. Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny (Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), p. 165.

  [Rise of the “ten-cent magazine”]: Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines (Harvard University Press, 1957), vol. 4, chs. 1, 4.

  [Profusion of magazines]: ibid., vol. 4, p. 11.

  [Comment of Philosophical Review]: quoted in ibid., vol. 4, p. 10.

  [“Magazines, magazines, magazines.’“]: National Magazine, November 1897, quoted in ibid., p. 11.

  [Rise of McClure’s]: Harold S. Wilson, McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers (Princeton University Press, 1970); Mott, vol. 4, pp. 589–607.

  [McClure’s philosophy]: quoted in Mott, vol. 4, p. 594.

  [Goldman on McClure]: Goldman, p. 172.

  347 [Steffens]: Steffens, Autobiography, op. cit.; Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens (Simon andSchuster, 1974).

  [Tarbell and Standard Oil]: Filler, Crusaders, ch. 9.

  347–48 [Filler on Tarbell’s Standard Oil series]: ibid., p. 104.

  348 [Aldrich on food and drug regulation]: quoted in Sullivan, Our Times, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 532.

  [Sinclair]: Upton Sinclair, The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (Harcourt, Brace, 1962).

  [Roosevelt to Sinclair on the perils of socialism]: March 15, 1906, in Morison, Letters, vol. 5, pp. 178–80, quoted at pp. 178, 180.

  [Food and drug legislation]: Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, op. cit., pp. 255–60.

  349 [Roosevelt’s proposals of December 1906]: Annual Message of the President to the Congress,in Congressional Record, 59th Congress, 2nd Session (vol. 41, pt. 1), December 4, 1906, pp. 22–36, quoted at p. 26.

  [Roosevelt trying to keep the left center together]: Mowry, op. cit., p. 211.

  [Conservation]: William D. Lewis, The Life of Theodore Roosevelt (John C. Winston, 1919), ch. 19.

  [Cannon on “scenery”]: quoted in Harbaugh, p. 321.

  350 [Roosevelt’s refusal of 1904 Standard Oil contribution]: Harbaugh, pp. 228–29.

  [Roosevelt and corporate heads]: see, e.g., Roosevelt to Charles Joseph Bonaparte, January 2, 1908, in Morison, Letters, vol. 6, pp. 883–90, and ibid., vol. 5, pp. 755, 797, 845, 856, 859.

  [Panic of 1907
and the merger]: Harbaugh, pp. 311–16.

  [Roosevelt s assurance to Gary and Frick]: Roosevelt to Charles Joseph Bonaparte, November 4, 1907, in Morison, Letters, vol. 5, pp. 830–31.

  351 [Roosevelt’s congratulations to “conservative and substantial businessmen”]: Roosevelt to George Bruce Cortelyou, October 25, 1907, in ibid., vol. 5, pp. 822–23.

  [Annual Message, 1907]: in Congressional Record, 60th Congress, 1st Session (vol. 42, pt. 1), December 3, 1907, pp. 68–84.

  [Roosevelt’s special message of January 1008]: Message of the President to the Congress, in Congressional Record, 60th Congress, 1st Session (vol. 42, pt. 2), January 31, 1908, pp. 1347–53, quoted at pp. 1349, 1353, 1350, 1351, respectively; Harbaugh, p. 343; see also Mowry, p. 220.

  352 [Roosevelt’s denunciation of “muckrakers”]: quoted in Mowry, p. 206.

  [Roosevelt’s confrontation with senators at the Gridiron Club]: ibid., p. 213.

  352–53 [Roosevelt on not being able to restrain himself]: Roosevelt to John Burroughs, March 12, 1907, in Morison, Letters, vol. 5, p. 617.

  353 [The “fakir” on Roosevelt as “naturalist”]: Rev. William J. Long, quoted in Harbaugh, p. 309.

  [Brownsville ]: John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (W. W. Norton, 1970); Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Kennikat Press, 1971)

  [Roosevelt’s altitude toward blacks]: Roosevelt to Owen Wister, April 27, 1906, in Morison, Letters, vol. 5, pp. 221–30; Wagenknecht, op. cit., pp. 230–36; see also Seth M. Scheiner, “President Theodore Roosevelt and the Negro, 1901–1908,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 47, no. 3 (July 1962), pp. 169–82; Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Louisiana State University Press, 1980), ch. 5.

  354 [Mr. Dooley on American people “batin’ a carpet”]: Dunne, “National Housecleaning,” in Dunne, pp. 246, 248.

  10. THE CAULDRON OF LEADERSHIP

  355 [Eve of March 4, 1909, at the White House]: William Manners, TR and Will (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), ch. 1; Philip Jessup, Elihu Root (Dodd, Mead, 1938), vol. 2, pp. 137–38.

  [Roosevelt and Taft “at one”]: Roosevelt to George Otto Trevelyan, June 19, 1908, in Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard University Press, 1951–54), vol. 6, p. 1085.

  355–56 [Roosevelt to Sullivan on Taft]: quoted in Mark Sullivan, Our Times (Scribner’s, 1926–35), vol. 4, pp. 331–32.

  356 [Taft on “my storm”]: quoted in Paolo Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft (University Press of Kansas, 1973), p. 47.

  Taft, TR, and the Two Republican Parties

  [Taft as party man]: Donald F. Anderson, William Howard Taft (Cornell University Press, 1973). pp. 99–104, 162–67.

  [Taft and the two Republican parties]: James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy (Prentice-Hall, 1963), ch. 5; I have borrowed occasional sentences and paragraphs in this section from this earlier work; I have also used the sources cited therein (pp. 354–55)

  357 [Party developments during progressive era ]: James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, rev. ed. (Brookings Institution, 1983), ch. 8; Paul T. David, Party Strength in the United States, 1872–1970 (University Press of Virginia, 1972); David Burner, “The Democratic Party, 1910–1932,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History of U.S. Political Parties (Chelsea House, 1973), vol. 3, pp. 1811–1936; William H. Harbaugh, “The Republican Party,1893–1932,” in ibid., pp. 2069–255.

  [The struggle over Cannonism]: Blair Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois (W. W. Norton, 1951), chs. 13–15; Alfred Lief, Democracy’s Norris (Stackpole, 1939), ch. 4; Randall B. Ripley, Majority Party Leadership in Congress (Little, Brown, 1969), pp. 136–44.

  [Roosevelt on Taft’s “bungling leadership”]: Coletta, op. cit., pp. 106–7; see in general, Morison, Letters, op. cit., vol. 7, passim.

  358 [Taft’s stubbornness]: quoted in Henry Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft (Farrar & Rinehart, 1939), vol. 2, p. 762.

  [Taft’s indolence and corpulence]: Judith Icke Anderson, William Howard Taft (W. W. Norton, 1981), ch. 1.

  [Mowry on TR’s “catlike touch”]: George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt (Harper & Row, 1958), p. 245.

  [Taft’s “love letters” to Hale and Aldrich]: quoted in Pringle, vol. 1, p. 415.

  [Taft-Depew exchange]: quoted in Judith Anderson, p. 28.

  [Taft’s early legislative victories]: see Coletta, chs. 3, 6.

  [Roosevelt’s return home, June 1910]: Joseph L. Gardner, Departing Glory (Scribner’s, 1973), ch. 9.

  [Lodge on Pinchot]: Lodge to Roosevelt, January 15, 1910, in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge (Scribner’s, 1925), vol. 2, p. 358.

  [Roosevelt to Root on unpleasant summer]: letter of October 21, 1910, in Morison, Letters, vol. 7, p. 148.

  [Roosevelt’s indignation against Taft]: George E. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (University of Wisconsin Press, 1947), pp. 137–42; see also Morison, Letters, vol. 7, pp. 93–156.

  359 [Roosevelt’s dismissal of Taft as good first lieutenant]: see, for example, Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, April 11, 1910, in Morison, Letters, vol. 7, p. 69.

  [Grass-roots calls on Roosevelt to run for the presidency]: reels 96–97, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress (January 1911); reel 122, ibid. (January 1912).

  [Roosevelt’s “noncandidacy” but possible availability in 1911]: Morison, Letters, vol. 7, passim; Roosevelt to Benjamin Barr Lindsey, December 5, 1911, in ibid., pp. 450, 451.

  360 [Root on Roosevelt as a “thirsty sinner”]: Root to Roosevelt, February 12, 1912, in ibid.,vol. 7, p. 504, footnote 1.

  [La Follette and his progressives]: David P. Thelen, Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit (Little, Brown, 1976); Kenneth W. Hechler, Insurgency (Columbia University Press, 1940); Belle Case La Follette and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La Follette (Macmillan, 1953), vol. 1; Robert M. La Follette, La Follette’s Autobiography (Robert M. La Follette Co., 1913).

  [Norris to Roosevelt on Roosevelt’s noncandidacy]: Norris to Roosevelt, January 5, 1912, reel 122, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress.

  [La Follette’s Philadelphia speech ]: La Follette’s version of the text is in the appendix of his Autobiography, pp. 762–97.

  362 [Taft’s forcing of the issue with Roosevelt, 1911]: Norman M. Wilensky, Conservatives in the Progressive Era, University of Florida Monographs, Social Sciences, no. 25 (Winter 1965), esp. ch. 2.

  [Taft on Roosevelt as surrounded by sycophants]: Taft to Horace Taft, February 15, 1912, quoted in Donald Anderson, p. 182.

  [Taft on judicial recall as causing anarchy]: quoted in Mowry, Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, p. 216.

  [1912 Republican primaries]: Gardner, pp. 228–35, primary results given at p. 235 (figures have been rounded off).

  363 [Demagogue and fathead]: quoted in Mowry, Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, p. 234.

  [Roosevelt on Root as “representative of reaction”]: quoted in Sullivan, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 498.

  [Mr. Dooley on the forthcoming Republican convention]: quoted in Mowry, Roosevelt and theProgressive Movement, pp. 243–44.

  [1912 Republican convention]: Gardner, ch. 12; Burner in Schlesinger, vol. 3, pp. 2090–91.

  [“We stand at Armageddon”]: quoted in Sullivan, vol. 4, p. 509.

  Wilson and the Three Democratic Parties

  [Wilson at New Jersey Democratic convention, 1910]: Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton University Press, 1947), pp. 166–68; John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest (Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 164–66.

  364 [Wilson’s address to New Jersey convention]: quoted in Link, p. 167.

  [ Wilson on influencing public opinion]: John Morton Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality (Little, Brown, 1956), p. 21.

  [“All the renewal of a nation”]: quoted in Cooper, p. 128.

  3
64–65 [Wilson on leadership]: Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton University Press, 1966–83), vol. 6, pp. 646–71 (“Leaders of Men” address dated June 17, 1890); vol. 12, p. 365 (“A Memorandum on Leadership,” May 5, 1902); T. H. Vail Motter, ed., Woodrow Wilson, Leaders of Men (Princeton University Press, 1952), esp. pp. 41–42.

  365 [Wilson’s childhood and youth]: Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, WoodrowWilson and Colonel House (John Day, 1956), chs. 1–2; Sigmund Freud and William C.Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson (Houghton Mifflin, 1967); Robert C. Tucker, “The Georges’ Wilson Reexamined: An Essay on Psychobiography,” American Political Science Review, vol. 71, no. 2 (June 1977), pp. 606–18.

  [Georges on Wilson’s leadership]: George and George, p. 320.

  [Wilson’s transformation of Princeton]: Cooper, p. 101; Henry W. Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Harvard University Press, 1967), part 3.

  366 [Governor Wilson]: Link, Road to the White House, chs. 7–9.

  [Bryan’s shift to the left]: David Burner, The Politics of Provincialism (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. 7; Paul W. Glad, The Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy, 1896–1912 (University of Nebraska Press, 1960), esp. ch. 5.

  367 [Democratic party divisions]: Ralph M. Goldman, Search for Consensus: The Story of the Democratic Party (Temple University Press, 1979); Wilfred E. Binkley, American Political Parties:Their Natural History (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947); Herbert Agar, The Price of Union (Houghton Mifflin, 1950), chs. 27–33; Sundquist, op. cit., chs. 6, 7.

  [Cleveland on silver Democrats]: Cleveland to Charles S. Fairchild, April 2, 1897, Grover Cleveland Papers, New-York Historical Society.

  [Response of Democratic party to industrialization]: Everett Carll Ladd, American Political Parties: Social Change and Political Response (W. W. Norton, 1970), ch. 4.

  [Ladd on the Republicans]: ibid., p. 150.

  [Populist “outcries”]: quoted in ibid., p. 152.

  368 [Socialist party, early twentieth century]: Nathan Fine, Labor and Farmer Parties in the United States, 1828–1928 (Rand School of Social Science, 1928), esp. ch. 8; David A. Shannon,The Socialist Party of America (Macmillan, 1955), ch. 3; Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897–1912 (Columbia University Press, 1952), chs. 6–11, 16.