Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  From that viewpoint, the path to the presidency looked clear. Returning home a hero, Roosevelt had been elected Governor of New York within two weeks of his fortieth birthday. He had toured the Midwest and been greeted everywhere as if he was a presidential candidate. Dutifully supporting William McKinley for renomination in 1900, he had begun to assemble his own campaign organization for 1904. Everything in his hard philosophy assured him that the White House would be his one day. He had fought all his life for supreme power, for “that highest form of success which comes … to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil.”

  Yet just when his momentum seemed irresistible, there had come that sickening sideways pull into the Vice Presidency, followed by a political dead halt. And now this even more violent lurch back on course!

  His path ran, appropriately, past a cemetery: the churchyard of Minerva. Wet gravestones gleamed as the buckboard raced through the village. Beyond, slopes gave way to swamps, and the road began to flatten out. A pallor in the mist signaled dawn. At five o’clock, Cronin announced that they were only two miles from North Creek. Roosevelt ordered a stop “to let the horses blow.” He straightened his tie and smoothed his suit, saying there might be some “notables” waiting at the station.

  The final dash was dramatic enough to satisfy Roosevelt’s love of stagy arrivals. Sun-reddened cliffs disclosed the racing floodwater of the Hudson River, and Cronin’s horses, refreshed by their brief pause, thundered thrillingly over the bridge into town. The noise acted as a drumroll, heralding their entrance onto Main Street. Voices shouted “There he comes!” The buckboard flew past darkened housefronts and stoops still bare of the morning milk. Its wheels had hardly come to rest at the depot when Roosevelt jumped down to discover, if not “notables,” at least a small crowd of local citizens and the neat, bespectacled figure of his secretary, William Loeb, Jr. A special train stood waiting. The time on the station clock read twenty-two minutes past five.

  Loeb wordlessly handed over John Hay’s telegram from Washington. Roosevelt unfolded it. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the impatient hissing of the locomotive. He stared at the eight words in his hand:

  THE PRESIDENT DIED AT TWO-FIFTEEN THIS MORNING

  Looking suddenly worn and weary, he pocketed the paper and strode across the wet platform. A private car was ready for him. He darted up the steps, turned, and waved once. Loeb followed him inside. The train began to move before the door swung shut behind them.

  ROOSEVELT’S FIRST WORDS, as he settled into his plush seat, were that he wanted to get to Buffalo “as soon as possible.” Loeb had anticipated this wish, and secured the fastest locomotive on the Delaware & Hudson Railroad. Three years of experience had taught him that his boss was always in a hurry. That dart up the train steps was typical: he could remember Governor Roosevelt doing the same up all seventy-seven stairs of the State Capitol in Albany.

  Mount Marcy’s cloud banks began to lift, and the other peaks glowed in the sun as the special raced south toward Albany. But fog lingered in the Hudson Valley, and the crew of the locomotive could only trust in its emergency right-of-way. Roosevelt dictated a series of telegrams, including one to Edith that was as terse as Hay’s to himself. “Darling Edie” always knew what to do. She and the children would find their own way down the mountain and home to Oyster Bay. His work finished, he dismissed Loeb and sat staring out into the flying mists.

  At about seven o’clock there was a scream of brakes, and a crash that shook the whole train. It jarred to a halt. Word came back that the locomotive had collided with a handcar in the fog: two men were nearly killed.

  Roosevelt did not need to be told what might have happened had the handcar been another train. For fifteen minutes, while a gang cleared the track, he had leisure to ponder the mortal vulnerabilities of power. This accident was nothing compared to the threat of another Czolgosz lurking in wait for him. Anarchism, that plague of European government, was a virulent strain in America, fed by social unrest, and fear of it was spreading. Just the other day an old black man had taken him by the hand and said, “Look out they don’t get you, Mr. Vice-President.”

  Personally, Roosevelt was not worried about assassination. If a bullet came from behind, he could do nothing about it, and would “go down into the darkness,” that being his fatalistic image of death. If the attack was frontal, as on McKinley, he had confidence in the abnormal speed of his reflexes, and the power of his 185-pound body. Last winter, in Colorado, he had leaped off his horse into a pack of hounds, kicked them aside, and knifed a cougar to death. What a great fight that had been!

  His larger concern was the effect of morbid micro-organisms like Czolgosz on the American body politic. As President he intended to “war with ruthless efficiency” against them, just as he had warred against his own diseases in youth. Roosevelt had never hesitated to identify himself with the United States. Personal and patriotic pride throbbed as one in his breast. When, accepting the vice presidency, he saluted “a new century big with the fate of mighty nations,” it was clear which nation, and which leader, he believed would ultimately prevail.

  Is America a weakling to shrink from the world work of the great world-powers? No. The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks in the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.

  Youth, size, and strength: these things, surely, would render America proof against the anarchic strain. At forty-two, he, Theodore Roosevelt, was the youngest man ever called upon to preside over the United States—itself the youngest of the world powers. The double symbolism was pleasing. He refused to look at the future through “the dun-colored mists” of pessimism. Even now (as his train jerked into motion again), the fog outside was evaporating into a clear sky, and light flooded the Hudson Valley. Black night had given way to bright morning. Soon he would take the oath as President of “the mightiest Republic upon which the sun has ever shone.”

  AT TWO MINUTES before eight, the train stopped briefly at Albany. Loeb emerged to tell waiting reporters that Roosevelt was “very tired,” and would have no statement to make until after his inauguration. Breakfast was whisked aboard, along with the morning newspapers. Within five minutes, the special was on its way again, accelerating to sixty miles an hour.

  Roosevelt, sucking down some badly needed coffee, had as much to learn from DEATH EXTRA dispatches as millions of other Americans that morning. The President’s last hours were chronicled in poignant detail. Here was Senator Mark Hanna, who loved McKinley like a brother, dropping onto gouty knees and pleading, “William, William, speak to me!” Here were doctors squirting stimulants into the dying man’s heart, to shock him into momentary recognition of his wife. And here, framed in black, were the President’s last words, pious enough to heave all the bosoms in Christendom: “Nearer, my God to Thee … His will be done!”

  In rude contrast, other columns celebrated the “Tremendous Energy,” “Superb Health,” and “Strenuous Life” of McKinley’s successor. Roosevelt did not need to read these, nor the potted biographies listing his many qualifications for office. He was more interested in analyses of his political situation.

  The New York World announced that he had already “definitely fixed in his mind the nomination for 1904.” His old foe Senator Hanna, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, would have to be gotten out of the way somehow. The newspaper was silent as to Roosevelt’s chances of election. No Vice President succeeding to the presidency through death had yet won another term in his own right.

  The New York Press predicted that John Hay would resign as Secretary of State, followed by Treasury Secretary Lyman J. Gage. Roosevelt did not like this forecast. No matter how genuine the desire of both Secretaries—ailing, old, and bereaved—to retire, he could not afford to have them decamp before he reached the White House. It would look like a vote of no confidence. There
might be serious repercussions on Wall Street, where Hay was seen as an aggressive promoter of American commercial interests abroad, and Gage as guardian of Republicanism’s holiest grail, the protective tariff.

  A remarkable consensus of Democratic and Republican editorial writers held that Roosevelt would be as “conservative” as McKinley. The very unanimity of this opinion seemed contrived, as if to soothe a nervous stock market. The financial pages reported that “Severe Shocks,” “Feverish Trading,” and “Heavy Declines” had hit Wall Street on Friday, when the Gold Dollar President began to die. Roosevelt knew little about money—it was one of the few subjects that bored him—but even he could see that one false move this weekend might bring about a real panic on Monday.

  AS THE NEWS of McKinley’s death flashed around the world, members of Roosevelt’s circle of acquaintance could reflect with grim satisfaction on the many times they had predicted the presidency for him. In Dresden, his German tutor claimed first honors. “He will surely one day be a great professor,” she remembered telling his mother. “Or who knows, he may even become President of the United States.”

  In Albany, an old girlfriend mused on the “strange prophetic quality in Theodore.” Ever since her first crush on him, Fanny Parsons had felt a “mystical” certainty that he would lead his country to world power. In Dickinson, North Dakota, the editor of a cowboy newspaper recalled the young Roosevelt’s complete lack of surprise at being told that he was destined for the White House. In Indianapolis, Benjamin Harrison’s son reread a memo by the late President: “Should Mr. Roosevelt aspire to become President of the United States, I believe that he will be successful.” In London, a Member of Parliament checked his diary entry for the day Roosevelt had been elected Vice President: “This can only mean one thing—that the Almighty has decided to promote the good McKinley to the vale of tears.” And in arctic Norway, a traveling Henry Adams stared aghast at the wire dispatches from America. “So Teddy is President! Is not that stupendous! Before such a career as that, I have no observations to make.”

  Minds less fatalistic could view Roosevelt’s career only as a crazy trajectory, like that of a bee smacking against many surfaces before buzzing into the open air. Some ward heeler’s notion to nominate the young aristocrat for the New York Assembly; the freak tragedy that drove him west; the chance encounter that brought him back; the overnight war that made him Governor; his entrapment into the vice presidency, his liberation by an assassin … Horatio Alger could not get away with such a story.

  Yet there was no doubt that Theodore Roosevelt was peculiarly qualified to be President of all the people. Few, if any Americans could match the breadth of his intellect and the strength of his character. A random survey of his achievements might show him mastering German, French, and the contrasted dialects of Harvard and Dakota Territory; assembling fossil skeletons with paleontological skill; fighting for an amateur boxing championship; transcribing birdsong into a private system of phonetics; chasing boat thieves with a star on his breast and Tolstoy in his pocket; founding a finance club, a stockmen’s association, and a hunting-conservation society; reading some twenty thousand books and writing fifteen of his own; climbing the Matterhorn; promulgating a flying machine; and becoming a world authority on North American game mammals. Any Roosevelt watcher could make up a different but equally varied list. If the sum of all these facets of experience added up to more than a geometric whole—implying excess construction somewhere, planes piling upon planes—then only he, presumably, could view the polygon entire.

  THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE were milling on the platform of Exchange Street Station, Buffalo, when Roosevelt’s train approached at 1:30 P.M. But the engineer, obeying security instructions, did not slacken speed. He continued west at full steam. Four minutes later, the train drew up at Terrace Station, where a private carriage and twelve mounted policemen stood waiting in the sunshine. Roosevelt was down the steps of his car before the wheels stopped rolling. An hour’s rest had cleared the tiredness from his face, but his eyes were troubled. Some onlookers shouted, “Hurrah for Teddy!” He silenced them with a glare, and climbed into the waiting carriage. One of the policemen reached after him. “Colonel, will you shake hands with me?” Roosevelt recognized, and briefly embraced, a veteran of his regiment. Within thirty seconds, the cavalcade was on its way.

  Roosevelt’s companion in the carriage was Ansley Wilcox, a Buffalo friend who had put him up on earlier, happier visits. Wilcox suggested that they go to his home at 641 Delaware Avenue for a quick lunch. McKinley’s body, attended by a quorum of the Cabinet, lay in the Milburn House, one mile farther uptown.

  The cavalcade moved too fast for crowds to form, so the sidewalks of Delaware Avenue were practically empty when they reached number 641. Roosevelt remembered the Wilcox Mansion as one of Buffalo’s most elegant houses, but today its white pillars were hideously swathed in black, drapes blinded every window, and veils of fading wisteria hung from the walls like widow’s weeds. Averting his gaze, he hurried inside.

  Over lunch, he said that he had decided where he wanted to be sworn in: “Here.” Wilcox protested that arrangements had been made to hold the ceremony at the Milburn House, in a room below McKinley’s corpse. “Don’t you think it would be far better to do as the Cabinet has decided?” Roosevelt was adamant. “No. It would be far worse.”

  He would go there, he said, only to pay his respects. First he must make himself presentable. By a fortunate coincidence, Wilcox was of similar size and build, so Roosevelt was able to borrow a frock coat, waistcoat, and striped trousers. His bull-like neck presented no problem, as he had brought a fresh shirt and collar. The Rooseveltian head, however, proved too large for any of Wilcox’s tall silk hats. John S. Scatchard, a macrocephalic neighbor, entered the annals of history by lending his own capacious topper. A satin tie, fine watch chain, gloves, and gold-topped cane completed Roosevelt’s furnishings. Bootblacks polished away the last traces of Adirondack mud from his person, and he emerged onto the porch at 2:30, lustrous from head to foot.

  “ITS WHITE PILLARS WERE HIDEOUSLY SWATHED IN BLACK.”

  The Wilcox Mansion, Buffalo, September 1901 (photo credit prl.2)

  Even now, the only spectators in Delaware Avenue were two platoons of mounted police, a knot of reporters, and a teenage girl. Roosevelt exploded with rage at the sight of the troopers. “I told you I did not want an escort!” he roared at the State Inspector General. He was clearly overwrought, and had to be coaxed to accept a few troopers around his carriage.

  To swelling cries of “Roosevelt is coming! Roosevelt is coming!” the carriage sped north to Milburn House. He jumped out in precipitate fashion, then, recollecting himself, advanced across the lawn with bowed head. The dapper figure of George Bruce Cortelyou, McKinley’s secretary, came out to meet him. Roosevelt removed his hat. They talked gravely for a few seconds. Cortelyou, whose normally sleek, fortyish features were ravaged with grief and exhaustion, explained that an autopsy was being performed upstairs. Roosevelt would not be able to see the body. Mrs. McKinley was too prostrated to receive him. Senator Hanna was nowhere to be seen—he had limped off mumbling something about possible “misconstruction” if he attended the inaugural ceremony. Secretaries Hay and Gage were in Washington, looking after the government. The rest of the Cabinet was waiting in the parlor. Hat in hand, Roosevelt followed Cortelyou inside.

  SIX SOLEMN FIGURES rose to greet him. A voice called out, “The President of the United States.” It was the first time he had heard the phrase in reference to himself. But its drama did not register, so intent was he upon behaving correctly.

  After formal handshakes, he stood listening to the familiar hoarse murmur of Elihu Root, Secretary of War. How often had this authoritative figure, this severe face under the ridiculous fringe, bent over him in fatherly advice! Root—“the brutal friend to whom I pay the most attention”—had been one of the group of eminent New Yorkers that supported his entry into politics, seventeen years ago. Root, l
awyer without peer, had hornswoggled the Saratoga convention into overlooking his technical ineligibility for the gubernatorial nomination. Time and again, the rising politician had submitted hot speeches to Root’s icy scrutiny, always with bracing results. He even enjoyed the deadly Root wit, though it bruised his ego.