Instead, he planned a journey of his own that day—a train trip to Villanova, Pennsylvania, to deliver the commencement address at the Catholic university, followed by a visit to the small town of West Chester, and a second commencement address at a celebrated black institution, Lincoln University. “When you are being hammered,” Taft explained, “not only by the press, but by members of your own party in Washington, and one feels there isn’t anything quite right that he can do, the pleasure of going out into the country, of going into a city that hasn’t seen a president for twenty years, and then makes a fuss over him to prove to him that there is somebody that doesn’t know of his defects, is a pleasure I don’t like to forego.”
He boarded the train at Union Station in Washington for a departure to Philadelphia at 7 a.m., the very hour at which Roosevelt’s ocean liner reached New York. Before the train left, it was noted that he “read with deep interest the latest news of the homecoming of Col. Roosevelt.” Arriving at Philadelphia shortly before ten thirty, he was taken by special locomotive to Villanova, where he was met by a delegation of over five hundred professors and students. The college had arranged to bring all “the members of the faculty, the entire student body and all the townspeople that could get to the station in traps, autos and on foot.” As the president stepped from the locomotive, “the Villanova band played ‘Hail to the Chief’ and the college boys let out one concentrated, prolonged and tremendous yell.” Charmed by the rousing welcome, Taft broke into a beaming smile.
The entire visit to Villanova proved a gratifying relief from the besieging trials of the presidency. The commencement exercises took place in the college auditorium, gaily decorated with bunting and flags. Since the auditorium held only 2,500 invited guests, arrangements had been made for Taft to deliver his address outside, so that an overflow crowd of 5,000 people who had been gathering on the grounds since early morning might hear him. “The Roosevelt luck” that graced the former president’s celebration in New York with sunny skies did not hold for Taft, however; the sky blackened with thunderclouds just as he was set to start his address, prompting a reluctant decision to speak indoors.
Despite the sudden change, Taft’s address was received with enthusiasm. He applauded the Augustinians’ missionary work in the Philippines and spoke wistfully of his years as governor general—perhaps the most fulfilling of his political career. An outburst of applause greeted every positive reference to the Catholic Church, and when he finished his speech, the entire audience rose in loud acclamation.
With lifted spirits, Taft boarded a special train to West Chester, home to Republican congressman Thomas S. Butler. Butler had remained loyal to Taft through all the difficult days of his presidency. Now Taft graciously repaid him by making a “flying visit” to the little town to deliver two short speeches extolling his steadfast supporter. “He came to me at the beginning of my administration,” Taft said of Butler, “and declared he was going to stand by me to the end—he probably didn’t know how much that meant.” The townspeople were thrilled to see the president. “Banks, office buildings, residences and the post office were a mass of colors,” one correspondent wrote, “while displayed on a number of buildings were the ten foot high letters T-A-F-T.”
The president continued on to the campus of Lincoln University, arriving just as “a terrific electrical storm raged overhead.” Undeterred, 2,000 people patiently stood on the grounds in the pouring rain without even the protection of umbrellas. “I thank you sincerely for coming out to greet me,” he humbly told the cheering crowd. “I understand that it is to the President of the United States, and I accept it as such.” In his well-received address, Taft referred to Booker T. Washington as “one of the greatest men of the century” and called on the black community to develop its own educated leaders to help solve the nation’s racial problems.
Despite Taft’s heartfelt reception all along his route, the press could not resist drawing comparisons between the outright jubilation that marked Roosevelt’s sunlit homecoming on the seacoast and the decorous approval accorded the president in the rain-drenched interior. Furthermore, while Roosevelt seemed as fresh and buoyant at day’s end as when he disembarked, Taft was “travel-stained” and exhausted when he boarded the train back to Washington. One reporter went so far as to portray the overweight Taft “in a free state of perspiration . . . suffering from so much prickly heat that it pushes his clothes out from him,” making it impossible for him to keep his shirt buxom in place. On his way home, Taft read the afternoon newspaper accounts of Roosevelt’s homecoming reception, doubtless taking note of the Colonel’s remark that he stood “ready and eager” to do his part in solving the country’s ills.
When the president reached the White House shortly before ten o’clock, his weariness abruptly vanished with news that his bill to expand the federal government’s power to prevent arbitrary increases in railroad rates had passed Congress that day and was awaiting his signature. Even in the worst of times, when bombarded by criticism in insurgent newspapers for his willingness to deal with the conservative bloc in the Congress, Taft had retained “an abiding faith” that if he could secure legislation the country needed, “the credit would take care of itself ultimately.” Now, with the passage of his railroad bill, he could allow himself a bit of optimism. In the previous session, he had secured a corporation tax bill, hailed as “the first positive step toward the National supervision of great corporations,” as well as an amendment to the Interstate Commerce Act that gave the commission “for the first time, the power to prevent stock-watering.”
In addition to the railroad bill, two important progressive measures were about to receive his signature: the first confirmed presidential authority to withdraw millions of acres of land for conservation; the second, a postal savings bill “fought at every step by powerful interests,” provided the poor a secure place to deposit their money. That very afternoon, in fact, the lead editorial in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin suggested that Taft “had unquestionably strengthened his position in the public esteem, within the last thirty days,” as the country was “beginning to realize more clearly the essential force that lies behind his quiet, persistent methods. . . . His policy throughout has been that of a resolute defender of the public interest who preferred to work without parade or ostentation.”
As he went to sleep that night, Taft could take heart that Roosevelt, too, would recognize the necessity that led him to deal with the conservatives. He was working in his own, unspectacular way to accomplish the progressive goals that both shared with equal fervor. That morning, he had dispatched Captain Butt to deliver a second handwritten letter to Roosevelt as he landed in New York. He warmly reiterated the invitation tendered to Roosevelt three weeks earlier, to join him at the White House. Once reunited, despite the swirling tensions and innuendo, they might enjoy the camaraderie of the old days, when, as Roosevelt’s sister Corinne recalled, they had so enjoyed one another’s company that “their laughs would mingle and reverberate through the corridors and rooms, and Edith would say, ‘It is always that way when they are together.’ ”
The restoration of their old friendship—a matter more in Roosevelt’s hands than in Taft’s—was not simply a private concern: “No other friendship in our modern politics has meant more to the American people,” William Allen White wrote, “for it has made two most important and devoted public servants wiser, kindlier, more useful men.”
“The whole country waits and wonders,” the Baltimore Sun noted in a prescient editorial. Roosevelt “seems to hold the future of his party in the hollow of his hand. Taft looks to him for succor. The Insurgents know if they can win his support the Regulars will be swept away. Old leaders tremble, new aspirants take hope. His decision is important to the country, and even more important to himself. Many another has risen to the heights of popularity to be dethroned in a day. Has Roosevelt reached the pinnacle of his fame, or is he to move forward to fresh conquests? It rests with him. He is at the heig
ht of his mental and physical powers. He possesses a great influence over the masses of his countrymen. Such power is a tremendous weapon for good or evil. How will he wield it?”
To understand the complex contours of this consequential friendship, however, we must go backward in time to analyze the similarities in experience that initially drew Roosevelt and Taft together and the differences in temperament that now threatened to split them apart.
CHAPTER TWO
Will and Teedie
“Teedie” Roosevelt, age four, and Will Taft, age seven.
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT WAS BORN on September 15, 1857, in a two-story yellow brick house in a fashionable neighborhood on Mt. Auburn, one of the hills surrounding Cincinnati. Six days after his birth, his father, Alphonso, proudly noted to a friend: “Louise is getting along astonishing well and the baby is fat & healthy.” In the hours after the birth, he explained, Louise “had a fair prospect of milk and on the 3d day the boy had plenty,” but a few days later, the infant’s “clamorous appetite” necessitated a wet nurse to supplement his mother’s milk supply. The plump, ravenous new baby provided welcome relief to his parents. Their first child, Samuel, had been frail from birth and had died of whooping cough at fourteen months, the year before Will was born.
At two months, his mother recorded, Will was “very large for his age, and grows fat every day.” Indeed, she noted with amazement and pride, “he has such a large waist, that he cannot wear any of the dresses that we made with belts.” While his rapid growth kept her busy making ever larger clothes, she “took great comfort” in his “perfect good health” and his fullness of flesh. “The care of him fills in some measure the void left by Sammy’s death,” she wrote her mother, “but I am constantly thinking how interesting [Sammy] would be now if he had lived and how pleasant to have two little boys growing up together.”
Will’s sweet, open nature was evident from infancy. “He spreads his hands to anyone who will take him and his face is wreathed in smiles at the slightest provocation,” Louise told her sister, Delia Torrey. His parents admired his cherubic face, “a solitary dimple in one cheek,” his eyes “deeply, darkly, beautifully blue.” Finding great pleasure and solace in her “healthy, fast-growing boy,” Louise happily acquiesced to his insistence “upon being held whenever he is awake,” even if she felt her “hands and feet were tied” to the child. “Mother would think it poor management,” she confided in Delia, “but I do not understand making him take care of himself.” Her torment at losing her firstborn had convinced her that children “are treasures lent not given and that they may be recalled at any time.” Parents, she firmly believed, could never “love their children too much.”
Louise Torrey came from a line of strong, intelligent women. Her mother, Susan Waters Torrey, had studied philosophy and astronomy at Amherst Academy and possessed a vibrant intellectual curiosity, an interest in antislavery politics, and an appreciation for art. After her marriage to merchant Samuel Torrey, they settled in Boston, where she relished the rich culture and lively debates over the critical issues of the day. To her “great disappointment,” her husband, hopeful that country air would improve his health, moved the family to the small town of Millbury, Massachusetts. In Millbury, her spirits plummeted. “She has great mental and physical activity,” her daughter Delia noted, “and there is not a man or woman in town with whom she can have any satisfactory intellectual conversation.” Lacking any immediate outlet for her talents and energy, she shared the frustration of many educated women in the mid-nineteenth century. “Mother, you know, is very ambitious,” Delia dryly wrote Louise, “and ambition in a woman is synonymous with unhappiness.”
Resolved to give her daughters opportunity for intellectual development and involvement in a broader world, Susan Torrey exposed Louise and Delia to good literature, lyceum lectures in Boston, theatre in New York. They studied for a time in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Cherishing their freedom, they taught at Monson Academy in Maine, studied music, attended opera, and traveled together through Canada, New England, and New York. Both rejected eligible suitors in favor of their own liberated lives. When one disappointed young man upbraided Delia for willfulness, she retorted: “If ‘ladies of strong minds seldom marry,’ I suppose the reverse proves true and ladies with weak minds usually do. I prefer to belong to the first class even though it precluded me from marrying.”
Louise was twenty-six when she was introduced to forty-three-year-old Alphonso Taft at the home of her uncle, Reverend Samuel Dutton, pastor of North Church in New Haven, a meeting that would alter her existence in an unexpectedly domestic direction. Alphonso had grown up on a small farm in West Townsend, Vermont, the only child of Peter Rawson Taft and Sylvia Howard. “One day in an oat field,” he later recalled, he “first told his father of his dream of going to college.” The expense would be a hardship for the family, but “to the boy’s intense delight,” his parents decided to support his education. To help out, Alphonso taught school in Vermont for several years before entering Yale. He made the 140-mile trek from Vermont to New Haven on foot. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa, he taught in a boarding school for two years and then returned to Yale, where he became a tutor and studied law. “He had sacrificed so much and had been so earnest in his pursuit of an education,” his youngest son Horace observed, “that everything that he learned in college was sacred in his eyes.”
Although Alphonso had initially hoped to practice law in New York, a short stay there changed his mind: “I feel well assured I might make a living in that city, but I dont think it the place for me,” he concluded. “I dislike the character of the New York Bar exceedingly. . . . Money is the all in all . . . nothing else brings honor.” He decided instead to go west, finding “the Queen City” of Cincinnati a far more congenial place. “There are no such high partition walls here, between different classes,” he wrote his mother. “Here & there a family is beginning to stiffen up & assume consequential airs, but they are comparatively few.” Perhaps most significant to a man who had striven so hard for his own education, Alphonso found Cincinnati “honourably famous for its free schools,” as the visiting Charles Dickens noted, “of which it has so many that no person’s child among its population can by possibility want the means of education.”
While studying for the Ohio bar, Alphonso clerked in the office of a fellow Vermonter with an established practice. In these early years, he depended for his livelihood on the small sums his parents could send. “I have not spent one dollar,” he assured them in 1839, “not a farthing for any amusement, or for anything which was not a matter of immediate, & necessary use.” With hard work and untiring discipline, he succeeded in building a successful practice that allowed him to buy the substantial two-story house on Mt. Auburn set back from the street on a stretch of green lawn. There he lived with his first wife, Fanny, an intelligent, scholarly young woman, until tuberculosis took her life at twenty-nine. She left him with two sons, Charley, ten, and Peter, six.
Though Alphonso was seventeen years older than Louise Torrey when they met in New Haven, his handsome face, muscular physique, and abundant energy bridged the years between them. She agreed to marry in 1853 and moved with him to Cincinnati, where she grew to love her “noble husband” with a heart “full of a deep and quiet joy.” For his part, Alphonso rejoiced in the affection Louise showed his two older sons, who came to love her as if she were their own mother. “I do feel under the greatest obligation to you, my dear Louise, for the great care and attention you have given to the lads,” he wrote to her several years before Will’s birth.
Within months of her marriage, Louise confided to Delia that she had “the best husband in the United States.” For Delia, the loss of her sister’s companionship was devastating. “Oh, Louise, Louise how can I live the rest of my life without you?” she lamented. “I am but half of a pair of scissors.” As the months passed, however, the gentle Alphonso made Delia an integral pa
rt of her sister’s new family.
The family expanded rapidly after Will’s birth, eventually containing six children including Charley and Peter. Henry Waters (always called Harry) was born two years after Will, followed quickly by Horace Dutton, and finally by a long-desired girl named Fanny in honor of Alphonso’s first wife. As the children grew, good-natured Will remained the center of his parents’ affection. “I had more pride in Willie than in all the rest,” Louise acknowledged. “Willie is foremost,” agreed Alphonso, “and I am inclined to think he will always be so.” Rather than displaying the jealousy this favored status might easily have provoked, Will’s siblings responded to his “simplicity, courage, honesty, and kindliness”—qualities he shared with his father—with devoted affection. “If flattery or admiration could have spoiled him he would have been ruined before he emerged from childhood,” Horace recalled, but “his personality made him a favorite everywhere.” The younger brother’s fond dedication to Will never wavered. “It was very hard for anybody to be near him without loving him,” Horace recollected when he had passed his eightieth birthday.
Even as his family grew and his career flourished, Alphonso Taft was rarely able to relinquish the rigid self-discipline that had enabled him to forge a comfortable existence. “Scarcely a night would pass that he was not bent over a table deep in papers or books he had brought from his office,” William’s biographer Henry Pringle notes. “We might almost as well ask a train of cars to go out of its course to carry a passenger,” Delia lovingly observed, “as to expect Mr. Taft to turn aside from his business for the pursuit of pleasure.” To Alphonso, work and family were paramount, and in that order.
Living on the wooded slope of Mt. Auburn with the entire city below “spread out before you like a map” gave the children “the advantages of both city and country,” Horace recalled. Left to their own devices, the children rambled and explored. In the nearby pond, “we learned to swim, but not because anybody taught us. . . . We went fishing or on long hikes . . . we had plenty of games, but they were not organized.” Looking back years later, Horace wished that they “had been taught to sail, or to rough it,” been exposed more to the woods, been challenged by experiences that would have broadened their education. If not adventurous, the life he remembered seemed “wholesome and natural.”
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 4