The Wilderness Warrior

by Douglas Brinkley

  With a gift that fine writers often possess, Roosevelt was sometimes able to size men up—and he didn’t like what he saw in William Jennings Bryan. Ever since William Kent had donated Muir Woods to the federal government, Roosevelt corresponded with him about politics. Now, when many reporters were saying that Roosevelt was being too brutal in his public attacks on Bryan as a left-wing demagogue, claiming that the Democrats were sympathetic to the IWW and Russian radicals, the president explained his sledgehammer tactics to Kent. “I felt it was imperative to put aggressive life into the campaign,” Roosevelt wrote. “It seems to me incredible that people should fail to understand Taft’s inherent worth.” By contrast, Roosevelt said, Bryan was the “cheapest faker we have ever had proposed for President.”86

  From Roosevelt’s perspective, the difference boiled down to this: he himself was a champion of Darwinism, agricultural science, conservationism, and irrigation. By contrast, Bryan was promoting silver, the Russian Revolution, and a half-baked Christianity. But not everybody in the Taft campaign was happy with Roosevelt’s presenting himself as a hunter-conservationist. During the fall of 1908, for example, at the Irrigation Congress held in Albuquerque, Roosevelt and Pinchot’s forestry ethos was itself taken as demagoguery. Western Republicans at the Irrigation Congress accused extremist forestry policies of possibly costing them the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming in the November presidential election. At issue were the Crowded Hour Reserves. “No policy of recent years has done so much to alienate the friends of Government as the mistaken policy of the forest service, and if any of the mountain states shall go Democratic this fall, it will be chiefly for that reason,” D. C. Beaman of Denver told the gathering in New Mexico. “If a State Government had treated its people in such a manner it would have been ousted at the next election. Shall we stop mining coal, shut down our steel works, gas and electric plants and go back to the blacksmith shop and the tallow candle?”87

  Election day was a relief to Roosevelt. He had been occupied by politics throughout the fall, and even as he planned his African safari he had been coaching Taft on how to win Catholic votes, state by state, away from the “small Protestant bigots.” He had also tried promoting conservationism to American farmers. Few major politicians had ever advocated keeping religion out of politics with quite the fervor of Roosevelt. In his role as coach during the campaign, Roosevelt had always wanted Taft to attack Bryan with more fury, to skin him like a skunk. That was eventually Roosevelt’s general attitude toward Bryan. Taft, disregarding Roosevelt, played his cards just right. November 3 was Taft’s day, not Bryan’s. The electoral count was 321 to 162: a landslide. The election couldn’t have turned out better for the Republicans, all around. According to the French ambassador, Jean-Jules Jusserand, Roosevelt’s “joy” over Taft’s victory was “overflowing.” Roosevelt deemed it a vindication of his own policies. “We beat them,” Roosevelt gloated, “to a frazzle.”88

  Even though Taft had won, the general public seemed more enamored of Roosevelt—a rare American political leader who willingly turned his back on power. Excerpts of from the Country Life Commission report now ran in rural newspapers all over the country. And (with the exception of Colorado) virtually all the western states where Roosevelt had created national forests, national monuments, and federal bird reservations voted for Taft. Roosevelt’s far-reaching conservation policies were winning over what he called “the base and sordid materialism” of Bryan’s evangelical buffoons.89

  VII

  Nobody that holiday season in America could really envision T.R. as a private citizen. Life after the White House has always been entirely a matter of personal preference. John Quincy Adams, for example, became a U.S. congressman for eighteen years. Ulysses S. Grant barnstormed around the country for some time. For Roosevelt, stepping down meant returning to his life as a big game hunter, wilderness wanderer, and faunal naturalist. But he hoped that his conservationist acolytes—including his fourth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was a die-hard advocate of forestry—would continue fighting the crusade in Washington.

  “Every now and then solemn jacks…tell me that our country must face the problem of what it will do with its ex-Presidents,” Roosevelt wrote to Ted Jr. after Thanksgiving, “and I always answer them that there will be one ex-President about whom they need not give themselves the slightest concern, for he will do for himself without any outside assistance; and I add that they need waste no sympathy on me—that I have had the best time of any man my age in all the world, that I have enjoyed myself in the White House more than I have ever known any other President to enjoy himself, and that I am going to enjoy myself thoroly [sic] when I leave the White House and what is more, continue just as long as I possibly can to do some kind of work that will count.”90

  As 1908 wound down, Roosevelt noted that despite his activist progressive agenda he had left America’s finances in better shape than they were in 1901. He had cut taxes slightly and reduced the interest-bearing debt. He had also reduced the amount of interest paid on America’s debt. His administration had a net surplus of $90 million, and receipts over expenditures for all seven and a half years. “I am especially pleased, because the average reformer is apt to embark on all kinds of expenditures for all kinds of things,” he wrote to the historian George Otto Trevelyan, “good in themselves, but which the nation simply cannot afford to pay for.”91

  Thinking about his own presidential legacy had a tendency to set Roosevelt spinning. Insisting that he was sure to be a winner in the contest of history, he churned out letter after letter extolling his successes in Cuba, Panama, Santo Domingo, and Venezuela. Internationally, his primary worry was Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, whose militarism bothered Roosevelt’s sense of decency. “The German attitude toward war,” Roosevelt lamented to the British editor John St. Loe Stachey, “is one that in the progress of civilization England and America have outgrown.”92 As for Russia, it was guilty of “appalling…well-nigh incredible mendacity.” 93

  Roosevelt, of course, was full of praise for his foreign policy advisers. Besides Root as secretary of state, Roosevelt had relied on Taft as secretary of war; Senator Lodge of Massachusetts; the ambassador to Russia, George Von Lengerke Meyer; the ambassador to Britain, Whitelaw Reid; and the troubleshooting diplomat Henry White. There were three foreigners living in Washington D.C. whom Roosevelt treated like cabinet members: Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice and Arthur Lee of Great Britain, and the French ambassador to the United States Jean-Jules Jusserand. Working with these men, Roosevelt had developed his “big stick” diplomacy, based on what we would now call American realpolitik and a huge modern navy. Other Rooseveltian principles included always acting justly toward other countries; never bluffing; striking only if prepared to strike hard; and, finally, always allowing an adversary to save face in defeat.94

  But Roosevelt’s conservation activism didn’t die-out merely because of an election. On December 7, 1908, he created a national monument in Colorado. It was called Wheeler, after Captain George Wheeler, who had explored the area in 1874 for the U.S. Army, and its eroded outcropping of volcanic ash geologically resembled the badlands of North Dakota. Roosevelt was intrigued by the jagged spires, reminiscent of organ pipes, and he also deemed Wheeler a scientific site of great importance. But as it turned out, Coloradans weren’t good custodians of this unique 30-million-year-old area, and in 1950 Wheeler lost its monument status. It was transferred from the National Park Service to the U.S. Forest Service. (Currently it’s called the Wheeler Geologic Area and is part of the La Garita Wilderness Area.95)

  Next, inspired by Muir Woods, the Pinnacles, Cinder Cone, Lassen Peak, and other California sites that he had recently saved, Roosevelt began strategizing to make the six Farallon Islands off the coast of California a federal bird reservation, safe from human predation. The Farallons were a favorite roosting area for the common murre, black oystercatcher, and Leach’s storm petrel, but the Farallones Egg Company had plundered these
islands by raiding nests and had taken an estimated 14 million eggs. Studying photographs of the islands, and enjoying the charming intimacy of seals and otters at play, Roosevelt decided to have the Biological Survey draw up documents for him to sign in early 1909. Even though San Franciscans were used to ransacking the islands, Roosevelt was going to cut them off as an act of charity and wisdom.

  Roosevelt, however, let California’s preservationists down in one profound way. For all of his thoroughness, he didn’t back Muir’s wise opposition to flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite. Instead, he favored the short-term need for water rather than the long-term aesthetic value of Hetch Hetchy. In contrast to his self-congratulatory boasts during December, Roosevelt’s letter to the Century’s editor, the prominent conservationist Robert Underwood Johnson, exuded self-doubt. Was it smart to have approved a petition by San Francisco to convert Hetch Hetchy into a reservoir, following the earthquake of 1906? Had he let the Sierra Club and John Muir down with regard to this conservation issue? “As for the Hetch Hetchy matter,” Roosevelt explained to Johnson, “it was just one of those cases where I was extremely doubtful; but finally I came to the conclusion that I ought to stand by Garfield and Pinchot’s judgment in the matter.”96 Neither Johnson nor Muir held a noticeable grudge against Roosevelt for his disastrous decision concerning Hetch Hetchy (although they did hold a grudge against both Garfield and Pinchot).

  And Roosevelt took his conservationism global that December. At the Joint Conservation Congress he rallied against the disease of global deforestation. Roosevelt invited Canada and Mexico to participate in the North America Conservation Congress on February 18, 1909, in Washington, D.C., for a simple reason: nature didn’t recognize artificial boundaries. If Mexico polluted the Rio Grande River, that would hurt the citizens of Texas. Similarly, if Canada overfished Lake Superior, the effect on Minnesota would be horrific. Roosevelt wanted Arbor Day to be international, because deforestation was a global curse. Also, every country needed tough antipollution laws to regulate the handling of sewage and industrial waste. Migratory birds needed protection like the Lacey Act everywhere from the Arctic to Antarctica, from Lassen Peak to the Himalayas. Roosevelt’s hope was that his conference of February between the United States, Canada, and Mexico might be the precursor to a global conference. “It is evident that natural resources are not limited by the boundary lines which separate nations,” Roosevelt said, “and that the need for conserving them upon this continent is as wide as the area upon which they exist.”97

  A final 1908 brouhaha occurred when Roosevelt declared Loch-Katrine in Wyoming a federal bird reservation, to protect a wide range of aquatic fowl as well as nesting bald eagles and peregrine falcons. Congressman Frank W. Mondell protested that Loch-Katrine Federal Bird Reservation was undemocratic. Wyoming had so sparse a population that it had only one congressman—Mondell, who with his long face, pointed eyebrows, and handlebar mustache, served in that capacity for twenty-six years. Mondell was the champion of Wyoming’s oil fields and coal mines. Imposing one of T.R.’s federal bird reservations on his state—not far from Teapot Dome—was, to him, nothing short of an act of war. On February 11, 1909, Mondell, a member of the committee on Public Lands (he would later be its chairman), wrote a scathing letter to Dr. Merriam, which was published in the Congressional Record. “I desire to dissent most emphatically,” he wrote about Loch-Katrine, “and to register my protest against the order in question.”98

  By January 1909 Roosevelt felt a great thirst rising in him. The idea of being a lame-duck president, sitting in a chair and letting his paunch expand, when he had nine weeks to achieve American things, was ludicrous. Roosevelt believed that instead of pardoning people, outgoing presidents should compile a list of social ills in need of solving. There would be no idling in the White House corridors. When the editor of Saturday Review asked Roosevelt how to sum up his executive modus operandi, the president’s answer was revealing. “My business was to take hold of the Conservative [Republican] Party and turn it into what it had been under Lincoln,” Roosevelt wrote, “that is, a party of progressive conservatism, or conservative radicalism; for of course wise radicalism and wise conservatism go hand in hand.”99

  As ex-president, Roosevelt hiked the canyonlands of the American Southwest, many of which he had saved by designating them as national monuments.

  T.R. hiking the canyonlands of Utah. (Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  DANGEROUS ANTAGONIST: THE LAST BOLD STEPS OF 1909

  I

  To some, President Roosevelt looked tired during his last days in the White House; his exhausted face seemed to consist of only the two eyes, with dark shadows like a raccoon’s mask. Unapologetic for riding roughshod over Congress, Roosevelt seemed to enjoy being an all-around nuisance on the Hill. In fact, he had developed a sense of mischievousness in early January 1909. While reporters were gossiping about William Howard Taft’s cabinet appointments, the fifty-one-year-old Roosevelt started to put into motion his last bold conservationist acts as president. Owing to his intense connection with the outliers of America, he seemed to feel immune from the disapproval of Washington’s opinion-makers. The people were with him. Conjuring up the ghost of Grover Cleveland—who had set aside 7 million acres of forest reserves as a parting gesture in 1897—Roosevelt was ready to trump his predecessor. “Ha ha!” Roosevelt had written to Taft on New Year’s eve: “While you are making up your Cabinet, I, in a lighthearted way, have spent the morning testing the rifles for my African trip.”1

  Playing kingmaker, Roosevelt had selected the fifty-one-year-old Taft over the more senior Charles Evan Hughes, Elihu Root, and Joe Cannon to be his successor as the Republican candidate for president. The voters agreed that Taft was the logical choice; his experience as the chief civil administrator of the Philippines and as secretary of war qualified him to be the commander in chief. Keep in mind, though, that whoever was chosen by Roosevelt in 1908 would have been likely to defeat William Jennings Bryan, so Taft clearly owed his good fortune to Roosevelt. One evening during his second term, following his surprise announcement that he wouldn’t be a presidential candidate in 1908, Roosevelt invited Taft (and Taft’s wife, Nellie) to a private dinner at the White House. After dessert Roosevelt and the Tafts repaired to the library for serious conversation. Leaning back in his leather armchair Roosevelt began to pretend that he had prophetic powers. Squeezing his eyes shut, gazing upward, he jokingly chanted: “I am the seventh son of a seventh daughter. I have clairvoyant power. I see a man before me weighing three hundred and fifty pounds. There is something hanging over his head. I cannot make out what it is; it is hanging by a slender thread. At one time it looks like the presidency—then again it looks like the chief justiceship.”

  Roosevelt enjoyed chopping his own firewood and clearing his own paths in the wild.

  T.R. chopping firewood. (Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library)

  “Make it the presidency!” Nellie burst out excitedly.

  “Make it the chief justiceship!” Taft quickly interjected, not wanting history to record that he had asked to be president.2

  Of course, Taft welcomed Roosevelt’s nod. But already in January 1909, Roosevelt was becoming lukewarm about his handpicked successor. Taft wasn’t offering administrative jobs to young, progressive Republicans as T.R. had hoped. Many holdovers from Roosevelt’s administration, in fact, were being dismissed. And Taft didn’t even seem to know what the Biological Survey and the Forest Service were. On a number of occasions Taft treated Pinchot like someone to be brushed aside. Roosevelt, still only middle-aged, perhaps realized that he was going to miss wielding power. “I should like to have stayed on in the Presidency, and I make no pretense that I am glad to be relieved of my official duties,” he wrote to Cecil Spring-Rice. “The only reason I did not stay on was because I felt that I ought not to.” 3

  Adding to Roosevelt’s disc
omfort with president-elect Taft was that Taft dismissed James R. Garfield as secretary of the interior in January 1909. Roosevelt kept his composure. But in his eyes Taft now had two strikes against him. “No one knows exactly why Taft chose to drop Garfield,” historian M. Nelson McGreary writes in Gifford Pinchot, “but many of the various explanations boil down to a general feeling on the part of Taft that Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior was a bit overzealous in his support of conservation and was inclined to stretch the exact letter of the law on occasion in order to protect what Garfield felt was the public interest.” 4 Moreover, Roosevelt worried that Taft would be too frightened to initiate antitrust suits.

  Some of Roosevelt’s friends, sensing an impending rift between the outgoing and incoming presidents, scrambled to find a meaningful position for Roosevelt; the possibilities included becoming a U.S. congressman and becoming president of Harvard University. Civic organizations also sought ways to memorialize him in plaques, bas-reliefs, and newsletters. Only half-jokingly, Senator Philander Knox declared that Roosevelt “should be made a Bishop.” And magazines offered Roosevelt substantial sums of money to write for them. He declined the offers from major magazines, on the principle of not selling out the presidency, but he did sign on with Outlook, a minor but important periodical for which he would write approximately a dozen long articles a year (like those that now appear on op-ed pages), for $12,000.5

  Roosevelt’s big money came from an arrangement with Scribner’s Magazine to write a series of articles that would eventually become the book African Game Trails. Determined that his specimen collecting not be written up as a “game butchering trip,” and wanting to frame his adventure as Wildlife Conservation, Roosevelt had Andrew Carnegie donate $75,000 for the presumably scientific expedition. With reporters, in fact, Roosevelt incessantly stressed that he was working for the Smithsonian Institution; only a few duplicate trophies would be kept for his wall at Sagamore Hill. And with due diligence Roosevelt started reading everything on such African explorer-hunters as Gordon Cummins and Cornwallis Harris.6 Instead of mocking the thirty-four-year-old Winston Churchill as he had done in the fall, Roosevelt now carefully read Churchill’s My African Journey (1908) and was impressed that the author had bagged a white rhinoceros.7 Roosevelt also wanted to hunt a rhinoceros, because America couldn’t let the indefatigable Britons have the edge in natural history anymore.