6. Teedie and Edith’s adolescent romance came to an abrupt end in August 1878. Just eight weeks later the young Harvard student met Alice Hathaway Lee. For Teedie, pictured here with Alice (seated) and Corinne, “it was a real case of love at first sight.”
7. Tranquility, the Roosevelts’ summer retreat on Long Island
8. As young girls, both Edith Carow and Nellie Herron hungered for intellectual stimulation. Edith formed an all-girl literary society with Teedie’s sister, Corinne (seated center).
9. Nellie Herron, shown here to the left of twenty-six-year-old Will Taft, organized a lively Saturday night debate society among her circle of friends. Taft’s brother Horace is at far right and Nellie’s sister Maria at far left (standing). Nellie’s salon flourished for three years. “Nobody is absent when he can help it,” Taft enthusiastically remarked.
10. Seen here as a twenty-four-year-old New York State legislator, Roosevelt found the state assembly to be a “great school” for learning the rough-and-tumble of politics and how to cooperate with colleagues far removed from his patrician background.
11. The years Roosevelt spent visiting this Badlands cabin and working as a cattle rancher would become critical to his evolving public image—as in this 1889 cartoon, where Thomas Nast emblazons Roosevelt as a cowboy in the popular imagination.
12. Theodore Roosevelt as a cattle rancher
13. An 1889 Thomas Nast cartoon of Roosevelt
14. As New York City police commissioner, Roosevelt, seen here in his office on Mulberry Street circa 1896, would traverse the city streets at night. Concealing his evening clothes beneath a long coat, he made a series of surprise inspections, checking if policemen on the beat were faithfully safeguarding their posts. He was accompanied on some of these night rambles by Lincoln Steffens, then an enterprising crime reporter for the New York Evening Post, but who later joined the celebrated team at McClure’s magazine.
15. Lincoln Steffens
16. Samuel S. McClure, the indomitable and visionary founder of McClure’s magazine, faced obstacles unimaginable to Roosevelt or Taft. Raised in poverty in northern Ireland in a thatched cottage, McClure emigrated to America as a young child. Though penniless, his charismatic personality and extraordinary mental abilities earned him a place at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He is pictured here as an undergraduate circa 1878.
17. The thatched cottage where McClure was raised
18. In 1893, McClure launched the magazine that would become the engine of progressive reform.
19. At the time he headed the magazine, McClure was capable of wild bursts of creativity, punctuated by periods of exhaustion and depression. His staff, considered by many the most brilliant gathering of journalists ever assembled, included Ida Tarbell (shown here), Ray Stannard Baker, and William Allen White, as well as Lincoln Steffens.
20. Ray Stannard Baker
21. William Allen White
22. “I am having immense fun running the Navy,” Assistant Secretary Roosevelt boasted from his office in the Navy Department.
23. While President McKinley vacillated about intervening in Cuba, TR could not contain his excitement at the prospect of conquest, as this 1898 cartoon suggests.
24. A more skeptical Ida Tarbell, covering the developing story for McClure’s, derided Roosevelt’s martial enthusiasm as that of “a boy on roller skates.” Even before war had been declared, she wrote, Roosevelt “saw himself an important unit in an invading army.”
25. Far from dreading the challenge of moving her three children over 8,000 miles from home, Nellie Taft—shown here en route to Manila—“knew instantly” that she “didn’t want to miss a big and novel experience.”
26. At the Malacañan Palace, she blazed a trail by opening her guest lists to Filipinos and Americans on an equal basis. “Neither politics nor race,” she insisted, “should influence our hospitality in any way.”
27. In Albany, Edith Roosevelt turned a cavernous governor’s mansion, pictured here, into a comfortable home for her six children, adding a nursery, a schoolroom, and a gymnasium.
28. Will and Nellie Taft seated in the Philippine governor’s residence circa 1901 with their children, four-year-old Charlie (standing in rear), ten-year-old Helen (seated), and twelve-year-old Robert (standing at right).
29. Governor Taft in 1902, somewhat awkwardly riding a carabao, the breed of water buffalo relied upon by Filipino farmers to till fields and haul timber.
30. Nellie Taft, a tireless hostess during her husband’s tenure as governor general of the Philippines, wore a Spanish costume for one official reception.
31. After his widely publicized Rough Rider heroics in Cuba, Roosevelt—as seen in this Harper’s Weekly cartoon from 1900—was an obvious choice for vice president on the Republican ticket.
32. Stumping for McKinley, Roosevelt became “the central figure, the leading general, the field marshal” of the entire Republican campaign; yet the prize of victory was a do-nothing office that Roosevelt himself believed “ought to be abolished.”
33. On September 6, 1901, the kaleidoscope turned: an assassin’s bullet made him at forty-two years of age the youngest president in the country’s history. Roosevelt is pictured below in 1901, conferring with reporters shortly after McKinley was shot.
34. During whistle-stop speaking tours across the country in 1902 and 1903, Roosevelt began to test the phrase “the square deal”—the slogan that would come to characterize his entire domestic program.
35. After visiting a majestic grove of giant sequoias in California, Roosevelt exhorted an audience “to protect these mighty trees, these wonderful monuments of beauty.”
36. Roosevelt’s inauguration: After weeks of cloudy skies and heavy snow, the morning of March 4, 1905, broke “blue, flecked with lazily floating white clouds.”
37. To audiences who gathered at the Capitol to watch him take the oath of office, the new president appeared “supremely happy.” Roosevelt’s election, the journalist William Allen White predicted, was a clear signal that “the Republican party has turned the corner and is now on a new road.”
38. President Roosevelt’s dynamic, often collaborative, relationship with a rising class of progressive journalists resulted in a wave of public enthusiasm for political and social reforms. “The Crusaders,” a cartoon from the February 21, 1906, edition of Puck magazine, portrays Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, S. S. McClure, and others as medieval knights in shining armor, with shields and weapons, waving banners emblazoned with the names of their publications, crusading against corruption and injustice.
39. The Roosevelt children, ranging here from five to nineteen years of age, unabashedly made the White House their own. Not since Willie and Tad Lincoln scampered through the halls had there been such a din in the executive mansion. “Places that had not seen a human being for years were made alive by the howls and laughter of these newcomers,” observed the chief usher at the White House.
40. The Tafts, shown here circa 1904, traded their exotic life in the Malacañan Palace for a house on K Street in Washington. Their daughter Helen joined Ethel Roosevelt at the National Cathedral School, and seven-year-old Charlie became great friends with Quentin Roosevelt.
41. “Thank Heaven you are to be with me!” Roosevelt exclaimed in 1903, when Taft agreed to return home from the Philippines and become his secretary of war. Taft is pictured here at is desk in the War Department.
42. The president knew that he could rely on Taft as “a needed and valuable corrective to his own impetuosity.”
43. The 1906 schism that ended McClure’s magazine’s glorious era shocked the publishing world. John Phillips, Ida Tarbell, Albert Boyden (seated left to right), Ray Stannard Baker, and John Siddal (standing left to right) were no longer able to continue working with the mercurial S. S. McClure. Together they pooled their talents and resources to buy The American Magazine, which they recast as a writers’ collective. “This is undoubtedly the most notable comb
ination that has ever launched any publication,” one journal commented.
44. After deciding not to seek a third term, Roosevelt told journalists that “he would crawl on his hands and knees from the White House to the Capitol” to secure the election of Taft as his successor.
45. Turning the candidate’s oversized physique into a metaphor for his inability to take Roosevelt’s place, one cartoonist showed Taft vainly trying to stuff himself into Teddy’s Rough Rider garments.
46. A cartoon from 1907 captured the president’s determination. Its caption has Roosevelt asking: “Uncle Sam, can’t you take him for my third term?”
47. Charley Taft’s colonial mansion in Cincinnati, with its white pillars and sweeping green lawns, provided a perfect setting for his brother Will to officially accept his nomination as the Republican presidential candidate on July 28, 1908.
48. During the election campaign Roosevelt watched over Taft, one political correspondent observed, “like a hen over her chickens.” Exultant over Taft’s victory, Roosevelt is pictured here with his old friend at the White House on the morning of the new president’s inauguration.
49. Defying inaugural tradition, Nellie decided to do what “no President’s wife had ever done”—accompany her husband from the Capitol to the White House on March 4, 1909. “That drive was the proudest and happiest event of Inauguration Day,” she recalled. “I was able to enjoy, almost to the full, the realization that my husband was actually President of the United States.”
50. As first lady, Nellie, pictured with Taft and his military aide Captain Archie Butt (far left), introduced a series of Friday afternoon garden parties that quickly became, as one reporter observed, “the most popular form of official hospitality yet seen in Washington.” But only ten weeks into her husband’s administration, Nellie’s career as a social leader in Washington was cut short by a devastating stroke that permanently robbed her of the ability to speak intelligibly.
51. She spent months recuperating in a seaside mansion in Beverly, Massachusetts. Surrounded by “parklike lawns” and adjacent to a country club, this residence was a favorite retreat of President Taft and quickly became known as “the Summer White House.”
52. Roosevelt displayed no interest in what critics called “devil wagons,” far preferring his horses, but Taft fell in love with automobiles “on the first whirl.” As president, Taft converted the White House stables into an oversized garage for his collection of motorcars.
53. Nellie and President Taft in one of the his many automobiles
54. Taft exercised regularly while in the White House and worked with doctors to improve his diet, yet his weight remained a constant issue, affecting both his health and energy level, and skewing the public’s perception of him. The bathtub, easily holding four workmen, was specially designed to accommodate his huge frame.
55. Despite Roosevelt’s caution that the working class looked upon golf as a “rich man’s game,” Taft loved nothing more than to spend the afternoon on the green.
56. Taft better served his public image when, on June 9, 1910, accompanied by the ever present Archie Butt, he threw out a ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Nationals game, establishing a tradition that has continued ever since.
57. In April 1910 Roosevelt met with the deposed forester Gifford Pinchot on the Italian Riviera. After receiving a full briefing from Pinchot about his battles with Taft over conservation, Roosevelt for the first time expressed open disappointment at the course of his successor’s presidency.
58. The anguish that Taft (shown here signing a bill) felt over Roosevelt’s disapproval would be temporarily dispelled by the nearly complete triumph of his administration’s legislative agenda. “We never had such a towering wood pile of work from the congressional saw mill,” one newspaper editorial observed.
59. When Roosevelt returned from Africa, he established a base of operations at the offices of the weekly public affairs magazine, The Outlook.
60. On August 23, 1910, Roosevelt boarded a private railroad car secured by The Outlook to begin a speaking tour through the West. One political question was on every reporter’s mind: “On which side will the Colonel now align himself? What changes have taken place in his philosophy?”
61. Before every speech President Taft was beset by grave misgivings, acutely aware that his texts remained “infernally long” despite his efforts to prune his words. “Never mind if you cannot get off fireworks,” Nellie consoled him. “That is not your style, and there is no use in trying to force it.”
62. When he threw his hat into the ring in the 1912 race for the presidential nomination, Theodore Roosevelt’s personal popularity had never been higher. Drawing enthusiastic crowds, he scored impressive victories in states where direct primaries were held.
63. “If they are anxious for a fight, they shall have it,” thundered Roosevelt during the 1912 Republican campaign. Crowds cheered Roosevelt as if he were a boxer, urging him to attack Taft: “Hit him between the eyes!” and “Put him over the ropes!” Political cartoonists were quick to seize on the phenomenon, as in this cartoon of prizefighter Roosevelt working over a Taft-shaped punching bag.
64. Despite his popularity with rank-and-file Republicans, Roosevelt failed to capture his party’s support for president at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in June 1912. The old system prevailed, and Taft was nominated to pursue a second term. The disappointed candidate is shown here arriving in New York after the convention with Edith Roosevelt at his side, firmly resolved to form a third party.
65. On October 14, 1912, a would-be assassin shot at Roosevelt while he campaigned in Milwaukee. The candidate’s bundle of notes for his speech, stored in his coat, helped save his life: the bullet penetrated no farther than the ribcage, and Roosevelt, though in pain, was able to deliver his speech on schedule. Returning home after the shooting, he descends from the train in Oyster Bay, assisted by aides and doctors.
66. In later years, the members of the old McClure’s magazine staff gathered to celebrate their birthdays. For Tarbell (seated between Willa Cather and Will Irwin), these gatherings represented the “unbreakable quality in friendship” that healed old wounds. “We sat enthralled as in the old years while Mr. McClure (at left) enlarged on his latest enthusiasm, marveling as always at the eternal youthfulness in the man, the failure of life to quench him.”
67. Theodore and Edith Roosevelt shared an enduring love affair over three eventful decades of marriage. They are pictured here in 1917, two short years before Roosevelt’s death at age sixty. He repeatedly declared that she remained as pretty as on the day he married her.
68. In 1921, William Howard Taft finally achieved his life’s ambition when he was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The position was perfectly suited to his temperament: no professional assignment ever made him happier.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At the outset, I wish to acknowledge my debt to a remarkable circle of biographers and historians whose studies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, the muckraking journalists, and the Progressive era provided the background I needed to begin thinking about this project.
Dedicated staff members of numerous libraries have provided invaluable help in my search for primary sources and pictures. I particularly want to thank Joshua Caster, Heather Cole, Wallace Finley Dailey, Zachary Downey, Mary Haegert, E. Ray Henderson, Isabel Planton, Jane Westenfeld, and Cherry Williams.
In Massachusetts, I am grateful to the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard University; the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, Northampton; and the Jones Library at Amherst. In Ohio, the Cincinnati History Library and Archives at the Cincinnati Museum Center, and the William Howard Taft National Historical Site, National Park Service. In Washington, D.C., the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. In Pennsylvania, the Pelletier Library, Allegheny College, Meadville. In New York, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. A
nd in Indiana, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 108