Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  “When I was Police Commissioner I once and for all summed him up by quoting the close of Macaulay’s article about Barère* as applying to him.” The fights of 1895 between the World and Roosevelt, especially those when he sought to enforce the city’s blue laws, were never far from Pulitzer’s thoughts either. “Roosevelt as Police Commissioner was very much like he is in the present time,” Pulitzer had warned Cobb earlier in the year. “The child is father of the man.”

  Roosevelt wanted revenge for years of abuse from the World, and he was willing to use the federal government’s prosecutorial powers in his personal vendetta. But to do so would require invoking a rule of law that had its roots in the notorious fifteenth-century English Star Chamber. Even though American common law was based in great part on that of England, the use of criminal proceedings for libel had long fallen into disfavor except in cases that involved a breach of peace. Not since the discredited Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 had a president so brazenly sought to stifle criticism of the government. If Roosevelt had his way, Pulitzer would spend his final years behind bars.

  Stimson found the envelope from the White House on his desk the next day. A highly competent attorney, though one with political ambitions, he knew that the president was overreaching his powers. “Without having yet had the time to look it up in connection with this case I am of the very strong impression that there is no Federal law punishing criminal libel,” he told Roosevelt, in a letter marked “Personal.” In an earlier case involving attacks against a federal judge, Stimson explained, the only remedy that could be found was in state courts. “But as I said before, I will have the matter thoroughly investigated and will report to you.”

  Impatient, Roosevelt looked for other ways to bring the might of the federal government down on Pulitzer. In hopes of getting a congressional committee to pursue the matter, the president contacted a Republican senator, Philander Chase Knox, who had served as his attorney general when the United States fostered a revolution in Panama so as to gain control of the Canal Zone. “Oh Mr. President,” Knox had said at the time, “do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”

  “It seems to me,” Roosevelt told Knox, “at least well worth considering whether it would not be wise once and for all to nail the infamous and slandering falsehoods of Mr. Pulitzer, published in his paper, the New York World, and of those who have taken their cue from the Pulitzer publications.”

  Next, Roosevelt composed a 4,800-word “special message” to the Senate and the House, attached a stack of documents, and sent the packet to Capitol Hill. When members of the Lake to Gulf Waterways Association visited the White House, Roosevelt publicly tipped his hand. “We have cause to be ashamed of a certain set of Americans in connection with the canal, and that is of those Americans who have been guilty of infamous falsehood concerning the acquisition of the property and the construction of the canal itself,” he told the group. “If they can be reached for criminal libel, I shall try to have them reached.”

  On December 15, 1908, the secretaries of the Senate and the House began reading the president’s message to their respective chambers. Because accusations of corruption surrounding the canal had once again surfaced, Roosevelt told the lawmakers, he was submitting to them a complete rebuttal. At that, the few senators who were on the floor broke into laughter. The merriment grew when Roosevelt added that no one believed anything published in Pulitzer’s newspaper. The House was more circumspect, especially as one of its members had introduced a motion to investigate the canal matter.

  Two minutes into the message, it became clear that Roosevelt had far more in mind than a simple refutation of the accusations. “The real offender is Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, editor and proprietor of the World,” Roosevelt said. These libelous actions, he claimed, were so egregious that Pulitzer should be prosecuted by the government. “It is therefore a high national duty to bring to justice this vilifier of the American people, this man who wantonly and wickedly and without one shadow of justification seeks to blacken the character of reputable private citizens and to convict the Government of his own country in the eyes of the civilized world of wrongdoing of the basest and foulest kind, when he had not one shadow of justification of any sort of description for the charge he had made.” To that end, Roosevelt announced that the attorney general was considering by what means to prosecute Pulitzer.

  Roosevelt did not mention Stimson’s estimation that there were no applicable federal laws. In state court, both the president’s brother-in-law and the brother of the president-elect had grounds to pursue a civil libel case. For that matter, so would Cromwell, if he were willing to have a court examine his conduct during the acquisition of the canal. The president, as a public figure, would have a harder time winning a libel case. But that was not his goal. By his public declaration and his behind-the-scenes orders to the Justice Department, Roosevelt made it clear he wanted to use the Federal Government as a club to silence Pulitzer.

  Congress returned the documents without comment. Its silent but mocking response only further aggravated the president. If the legislature didn’t care about his reputation, he would make sure those who worked for him did.

  While Roosevelt was seeking help from Congress in punishing Pulitzer for his affront to the presidency, the Liberty docked in New York. In the soundproof underground room of Pulitzer’s house on East Seventy-Third Street, it fell to Norman Thwaites to read aloud an account of Roosevelt’s message appearing in the evening papers. The secretary steeled himself for an angry outburst, but none came. “Go on,” Pulitzer said quietly, and Thwaites continued reading. “Suddenly,” Thwaites said, “he rose from the couch on which he was taking his afternoon rest and smote the coverlet with clenched fist.”

  “The World cannot be muzzled! That’s the headline,” Pulitzer burst out. Then, dictating at a clip that strained the capacity of Thwaites’s shorthand, he dictated an editorial. “Send for Cobb. Tell him to be here in a half-hour.” Pulitzer also summoned his managing editor, Van Hamm. They took a carriage ride around Central Park. Van Hamm brought Pulitzer unwelcome news. “We have no conclusive evidence to establish those statements which the President charges us with making,” he told Pulitzer. Reviewing the course of events, he insisted that the World was not at fault. Robinson and Taft were linked to the scandal by Cromwell’s public relations man, who had named them in his statement about the alleged blackmail that triggered the whole affair.

  This didn’t satisfy Pulitzer. He ordered the paper to stop printing any more articles about Panama and the missing money. “It is idiotic, as we have no proof whatever of any of these charges. Impress this upon Mr. Van Hamm. I want accuracy, truth, and restraint,” he told Seitz. “The honor and truthfulness of the paper is my honor. Much of what Roosevelt says is true. The World ought not have made that charge.”

  There was nothing Pulitzer could do about that now. Instead, he talked with Cobb about mounting the paper’s defense. Pulitzer wanted to follow up his editorial with a selection of Roosevelt’s previous denunciations to illustrate the president’s extreme verbal intemperance. “Now, I hope this is clear and that you will put every single one of the editorial writers to work,” he told Cobb. “Tell the editorial gentlemen to dine downtown at my expense and have a good bottle of wine. Let them stay down till midnight. I consider this an emergency.”

  By nightfall, Pulitzer also released a statement for the reporters, who had been calling all day. “So far as I am personally concerned,” he said, “I was at sea during the whole of October, and, in fact, practically for two years I have been yachting on account of my health.” He claimed never to have read any of the offending articles and said he had nothing to do with them. “Mr. Roosevelt knows all this perfectly well. He knows I am a chronic invalid and mostly abroad yachting on account of my health.”

  It was a half-truth. Although Pulitzer had been unaware of the escalation of the stories about Panama, he knew that the paper was pursuing the matter. In fac
t, as early as June he had discussed it with Cobb. He liked to claim that his only domain was the editorial page, but he frequently called for news coverage of issues that interested him. In September, for instance, he had provided lengthy instructions for the World to go after Roosevelt’s moneyman Cortelyou.

  Yet Pulitzer did not choose to escape blame entirely. He said that the paper was his and he took general responsibility for its continual attacks on Roosevelt and the president’s policies. “I am really sorry he should be so very angry but the World will continue to criticize him without a shadow of fear even if he should succeed in compelling me to edit the paper from jail.”

  Aid came from a surprising quarter. In Lincoln, Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan published a defense of Pulitzer in his newspaper, the Commoner. “Mr. Pulitzer is on solid ground when he resists the President’s attempt to convert newspaper criticism of officials into criticism against the government itself,” said Bryan. “The President’s message is indefensible in so far as it asserts the right of the government to prosecute the World or Mr. Pulitzer.”

  Pulitzer believed prison was a real possibility, and he said so to his friends, though he put on a brave face. “We are treating the thing with some hilarity,” he wrote to one friend a few hours after Roosevelt’s intentions became known. “I think it simply an effort to shut up the paper’s criticism just as Congress and Senate have been shut up.” Still, Pulitzer wanted to escape New York as soon as he could. But as the object of a possible government prosecution, he couldn’t make a move without checking with the U.S. attorney. The next day, Pulitzer sent Seitz to see Stimson.

  “How long will Mr. Pulitzer be away?” Stimson asked Seitz.

  “A few days,” he replied.

  “I will not need Mr. Pulitzer for a few days,” Stimson said ominously, concluding the conversation.

  On December 16, 1908, as the Liberty sailed out of New York harbor, Pulitzer’s editorial appeared in the World. Greatly massaged by Cobb, and improved by research, it was an eloquent defense of the newspaper and the rights of the press. “Mr. Roosevelt is mistaken. He cannot muzzle the World,” the editorial began. It urged Congress to investigate the transactions involving the Panama Canal and cheekily said that the World felt complimented by the president’s prosecution.

  “This is the first time a President ever asserted the doctrine of lèse-majesté, or proposed, in the absence of specific legislation, the criminal prosecution by the Government of citizens who criticized the conduct of the Government or the conduct of individuals who may have had business dealings with the Government.” Neither the king of England nor the German emperor, the editorial noted, had such power. “Yet Mr. Roosevelt, in the absence of law, officially proposes to use all the power of the greatest government on earth to cripple the freedom of the press on the pretext that the Government itself has been libeled—and he is the Government.

  “So far as the World is concerned, its proprietor may go to jail, if Mr. Roosevelt succeeds, as he threatens; but even in jail the World will not cease to be a fearless champion of free speech, a free press and a free people. It cannot be muzzled.”

  The Liberty’s southerly course prompted unfounded rumors that Pulitzer was on his way to Panama to obtain vindicating evidence. A blind publisher was hardly the person to conduct the necessary research. From Norfolk, Virginia, where the Liberty paused briefly, Pulitzer ordered a reporter for the World in England to leave for Paris and “dig twelve hours a day on who really got the money” he also told Seitz to hire Wall Street investigators to conduct a similar investigation on this side of the Atlantic. All the work had to be coordinated by one editor, said Pulitzer. “Tell him to be scrupulously careful weighing every word,” he said, repeating his old refrain. “But accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.”

  Summoned, Cobb raced by train to meet the yacht at Old Point Comfort at Norfolk. On board he found a highly disquieted Pulitzer, worried about the possibility of prison but still capable of seeing the irony of his potential fate. “For years we have asked Roosevelt to send somebody to jail, so he begins on the editors of the World,” Pulitzer said. He now believed that Roosevelt would seek to prosecute him in state court.

  “My opinion is that if anything comes out of this Roosevelt Panama matter it will be through Jerome,” he told Cobb, referring to New York’s district attorney William Jerome. The World had long supported Jerome but had recently aroused his ire by criticizing his prosecutorial decisions. It was an attack that now seemed ill-timed. “We pitched into Jerome because he did not do anything about wealthy lawbreakers; now he turns against the World.” Pulitzer asked Cobb to convey a private message to Jerome that though he took responsibility for everything in his newspaper, he had known nothing of the articles and had been out of touch when they appeared. In effect, he was throwing his editors to the wolves.

  Legally, Pulitzer’s guess was on the mark. Stimson had already told Attorney General Charles Bonaparte that he had found no law, precedent, or means to charge Pulitzer in federal courts. Stimson met at his house with Jerome. “He is ready and anxious to cooperate in any way, and he has told me he considers the movement of the utmost importance,” Stimson said, adding that such an approach would benefit the president. “This would tend to minimize the danger of the Panama prosecution being criticized as personal to President Roosevelt.”

  Despite Stimson’s hesitance to pursue the president’s plan to prosecute Pulitzer in federal court, Roosevelt felt confident. On January 30, 1909, he lunched with Douglas Robinson, one of the supposed victims of the libel; his sister Corinne Roosevelt Robinson; and the treasurer of the Republican Party. Roosevelt and his brother-in-law reviewed the case. “Both the President and Mr. Robinson,” said an aide who sat in on the lunch, “think they will put Pulitzer in prison for criminal libel.”

  Later that night, Roosevelt attended the Gridiron dinner—an annual press gathering, characterized by bawdy humor and skits—in Washington’s Willard Hotel. The one representative of the World who attended reported privately to New York that he had overheard the president promising to make an example of Pulitzer for crooked journalism in deceiving people about government. “I mean to cinch these men, the ringleaders and not their hired men or agents for the damage they have done.”

  With the clock ticking on his term of office, Roosevelt stepped up the pressure on the Justice Department to get Pulitzer. The intensity of the investigation was felt at the World. Pulitzer and others on the paper became convinced that federal agents were snooping through the mail and examining the documents carried by hired messengers between Washington and New York. The fear made the use of Pulitzer’s codebooks an even greater imperative. Soon a new code word, “Charlotte,” was added to the 5,000 entries already in the book. It meant extradition, and Pulitzer wanted to know if he could be extradited from Bermuda should he go there.

  Pulitzer could not restrain his anxiety. He repeatedly asked Cobb to play up his infirmities to “dispel the general myth and assumption that a totally blind man and confirmed invalid can be the editor of a paper like the World in any responsible sense whatsoever.” At the same time, Pulitzer knew that the stakes were more than personal. If Roosevelt were to win, he told his editors, “it will stop all criticism and free thought in the majority of papers and absolutely abolish opposition of any kind—and it will give the government—nay not the government but the administration—the party in power—complete license and make it more powerful than even Roosevelt has been.”

  The Justice Department’s attorneys convened two grand juries—one in Washington, D.C., and another in New York City—and began issuing subpoenas to a wide cast of characters that included editors in New York and a boy who sold newspapers on the streets of Washington. Government lawyers, however, remained mum on the purpose of the proceedings. Attorney General Bonaparte refused all comment when reporters caught up with him in Baltimore. “I must, therefore, ask my good friends of the press to exercise the great virtue of patience just now, promisin
g to soon let them know all there is to be known or at all events all that I can tell them,” he said.

  Stimson was convinced that this approach was a mistake. If the government remained silent, he told Bonaparte, newspapers would use the secrecy surrounding the case as proof that it was on a fishing expedition. He was right. “This action by the Government is said to be without precedent in the history of American jurisprudence and lawyers regarded as authorities in libel actions are puzzled as to the exact course the Government will adopt,” reported the New York Times, a newspaper not known for hyperbole, even then. “It is said that all the proceedings are being personally supervised by President Roosevelt.” The secrecy even prompted a U.S. senator to seek a resolution to compel Bonaparte to disclose whether the president had ordered the prosecution and, if so, under what statute.

  Ralph, who feared he might also be indicted, met with his father’s legal team. It consisted of the reform-minded lawyer De Lancey Nicoll, who had remained loyal since 1887, when Pulitzer had backed him in a contentious election; and John Bowers. Reviewing the subpoenas and other documents, the two lawyers noticed a pattern that led them to consult a federal law book so old that it was musty and its typeface used what looked like an “s” for an “f.” There they at last uncovered the legal strategy that Roosevelt’s lawyers planned to use in the government’s pursuit of Pulitzer.

  Since there was no current applicable law, the Justice Department was dusting off an obscure law of 1825. Under its terms, the federal government retained the right to prosecute a crime committed on federal property, such as West Point, using state law in the absence of a federal criminal statute. Astonishingly to the lawyers, this law required that the prosecution be based on state laws that existed prior to 1825. In other words, the government was planning to prosecute Pulitzer by using century-old state laws that might no longer be in force.