Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  Now, however, Roosevelt was senior. He politely rejected Root’s recommendation of an inauguration on the spot, saying it would be “more appropriate” elsewhere. The Secretary bowed assent.

  Returning to his carriage, Roosevelt was driven back the way he had come. Root and the other Cabinet officers followed in separate carriages, with reporters running behind them.

  A STRANGE HOTHOUSE glow filled Ansley Wilcox’s green library as Roosevelt entered it alone. From now on, he would have to get used to deference whenever he crossed a threshold. The luminescence came from a stained-glass window, fringed with sunny ivy. He chose this bright spot for himself, and watched the Cabinet officers filing in. Cortelyou arranged them in arcs to left and right, while a federal judge, John R. Hazel, stood in the center of the room. Loeb, acting as doorman, admitted a selection of local dignitaries. Among them Roosevelt recognized Senator Chauncey Depew (R., New York), looking humble for once, doubtless regretting how he used to tease “Teddy” about wanting to be President. Next, Loeb beckoned in representatives of the three press agencies, and, in a final relaxation of proprieties, a small party of women.

  Some constitutional documents were given to Judge Hazel, who shuffled them into order. Roosevelt gazed around the library. A glint in his spectacles betrayed displeasure. Loeb came up inquiringly, and there was a whispered conversation in which the words newspapermen and sufficient room were audible. Hurrying outside, Loeb returned with two dozen delighted scribes. They proceeded to report the subsequent ceremony with a wealth of detail unmatched in the history of presidential inaugurations.

  The library clock struck 3:30. Elihu Root muttered something urgent to Roosevelt, then took up his position. There was a moment of extreme quietness, broken only by the chirp of a sparrow in the window. Roosevelt half turned, and gazed almost yearningly through the glass, a boy trapped in school. Root’s voice reclaimed his attention.

  “Mr. Vice President, I—”

  The Secretary of War choked, sobbed, and for a full minute struggled to control himself. Roosevelt’s face was stern, but as the suspense mounted his cheek muscles began to twitch, and his right foot pawed the floor. At last, Root managed to continue. “I have been asked, on behalf of the Cabinet of the late President … to request that, for reasons of weight affecting the administration of the government, you should proceed to take the constitutional office of the President of the United States.”

  Roosevelt bowed, cleared his throat, and said waveringly, “I shall take the oath at once.” He, too, seemed to be fighting tears, but his voice grew rapidly stronger: “And in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement I wish to state that it shall be my aim—” (here he shook his shoulders and pulled back his head) “—to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, the prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country.”

  This speech, the shortest inaugural anybody could remember, created a profound impression. It struck all present as “pledge, platform, and policy all in one.” Roosevelt spoke with characteristic passion, punctuating his words with dental snaps, as if biting the syllables out of the air. He seemed to vibrate with force, sincerity, and reverence for the memory of his predecessor. To one observer, he symbolized “the magnificent moral and mental balance of the nation.” His statement “instantly solved the political and commercial crisis.” Finance, in the person of John G. Milburn, grew calm. Industry, in the person of Chauncey Depew, was comforted. And Government, in the persons of the Cabinet officers, breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  Roosevelt was to receive worldwide praise for his few words. Yet they were not original. Elihu Root had suggested, sotto voce while the clock was chiming, that he “declare his intention to continue unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and honor of the country.” Roosevelt’s parrot memory had preserved the words intact.

  Judge Hazel clutched an inscribed parchment. “Please raise your right hand and repeat after me: I, Theodore Roosevelt…” Roosevelt’s arm shot up, fully extended. Throughout the oath, his hand remained high and steady, as if carved from marble. His face was drawn, and his eyes glittered. Depew was struck by the “terrible earnestness” with which he articulated every word. Yet even at this moment of ritual fidelity to the text of the Constitution, Roosevelt could not resist adding a personal flourish. “And thus I swear,” he concluded, ejaculating the words like bullets. Then he bowed his head.

  Two minutes ticked by. The room filled with an almost unbearable tension. Beads of sweat stood on Roosevelt’s brow. Not until a third minute elapsed did he look up.

  “Mr. President,” the judge said, holding out the certificate of oath, “please attach your signature.”

  Roosevelt’s pen scratched across the parchment. Forty-three persons stood in thrall until he dismissed them with a kingly nod. They trooped out dreamy-eyed, as from a perfect theatrical performance. “I have witnessed many of the world’s pageants in my time,” Senator Depew said afterward, “—fleets and armies, music and cannon, … but they all seemed to me tawdry and insignificant in the presence of that little company in the library of the Wilcox house in Buffalo.”

  ROOSEVELT REMAINED BEHIND to shake hands with members of his Cabinet. Asking them to prepare for an immediate meeting, he went into the hall to receive the farewells of departing guests. “God bless you, Mr. President.” “The whole country will pray for you, Mr. President.” There were tears on many faces, but he seemed unmoved.

  A reporter was struck by Roosevelt’s “curious nervous tension,” so at odds with his usual boyish good cheer. “The cause of it was not at all any sense of the weight of his new position … but the reaction of a strong man to the idea that he was entering a domain where assassins lurked in the shadows and the ground might open at any moment under his feet.”

  The Cabinet meeting proceeded behind closed doors. Afterward Roosevelt came out onto the porch to announce that all six officers had agreed to remain in their positions, “at least for the present.” He had similar “assurances” from his two absent Secretaries, John Hay and Lyman Gage. This was true, in the sense that both men had wired messages of support. But until he saw them in Washington, he hardly knew what their “assurances” were worth.

  Business completed, Roosevelt put on his borrowed silk hat. “Let’s take a walk,” he said to Elihu Root. “It will do us both good.” A quartet of policemen fell into line behind him on the gravel path. Irritatedly, he shooed them away. “I do not want to establish the precedent of going about guarded.” The policemen touched their helmets, retreated a yard or two, and followed as before. Roosevelt headed for the gate like an escaping bull, but found Delaware Avenue blocked by cordoned-off crowds. He was forced to take leave of Root in the street, and marched back to the mansion in frustration.

  Refuge was at least available in the morning room, where Cortelyou had laid a desk with pencils, an exercise book, and a copy of Messages of the Presidents. Turning to a proclamation of President Arthur, Roosevelt drew the rough pad toward him. He began to scrawl his first presidential order, making 19 September a day of official mourning. God in his infinite wisdom … The pencil hovered, then slashed back through the cliché. A great and terrible bereavement, it wrote instead, has come upon our nation. Roosevelt tried to make the last words more personal: has befallen our people. The President of the United States has been struck down.… How to describe the act of assassination? A foul and dastardly crime … the basest of all crimes … a crime so dastardly …

  He struggled to reconcile his love of strong language with the need for dignified expression. It had always been thus with him: conflict between belligerence and civilized restraint, between animal brutality and human decency, between pessimism and optimism, or, as his perceptive friend Owen Wister put it, “between what he knew, and his wish not to know it.” In youth, the aggressive impulse had predominated, but in maturity he had strengthened himself to a state of containment, like a volcano sheathed in h
ardened lava. For three years there had been no serious fissures. At any rate, his struggle today was brief. The sentences began to shape themselves into statesmanlike prose, and soon the pencil was moving confidently. Now, therefore I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States …

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK, word came that Mark Hanna’s carriage was outside. Roosevelt hurried onto the porch and watched the old man descend, trembling on a cane. Hanna was clearly broken by the death of his adored “William.” He was pallid and stooped, and his piggy feet dragged in the gravel. “The Senator,” a reporter scribbled, “seems to have aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours.” With spontaneous grace, Roosevelt ran down to meet him, hand outstretched. Hanna was surprised and moved. Shifting his soft white hat and cane, he returned the gesture. “Mr. President, I wish you success and a prosperous administration, Sir. I trust that you will command me if I can be of service.” Roosevelt smiled and murmured a few sympathetic words about McKinley. He helped Hanna up the steps, and said, “I want your friendship.”

  Seated inside, Hanna resisted further blandishment. He said that he would support the Roosevelt Administration only as long as it remained an extension of McKinley’s. As to the question of the Republican presidential nomination in 1904, that was “something for the future to decide.” Roosevelt replied, “I understand perfectly,” and escorted the Senator back to his carriage. Hanna drove away without so much as a wave.

  That evening, George Cortelyou announced that there would be a private memorial service for McKinley at the Milburn House the next morning, Sunday. Roosevelt and his Cabinet officers would attend, and remain in Buffalo until Monday morning, when a funeral train would depart for Washington. On Tuesday, there would be further memorial exercises at the Capitol, followed by an interment ceremony Wednesday in Canton, Ohio. Mrs. McKinley would vacate the White House at her convenience. In the meantime, Roosevelt would stay at his sister’s house on N Street.

  While Cortelyou talked, Roosevelt ate an early dinner, then went exhausted to bed.

  SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT in New York City, three hundred miles away, John F. Schrank began to dream. He was twenty-six years old, short, and reclusive. He lay above a saloon that had employed him once, before the Sunday-closing crusade of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Since that crusade (and because of it, Schrank believed), he had been unable to get a job.

  Now, as he dreamed, his shabby surroundings were transformed into a funeral parlor full of flowers. An open coffin stood before him. President McKinley sat up in it and pointed to a dark corner of the room. Schrank, peering, made out a man in monk’s raiment. Under the cowl were the bespectacled features of Theodore Roosevelt.

  “This is my murderer,” said McKinley. “Avenge my death.” Schrank woke, and checked his watch. 1:30 A.M. Almost immediately, he went back to sleep. McKinley did not speak to him again that night. Indeed, the appeal would not be renewed for another eleven years—until the same hour of the same night of the week, in another gruesome September.

  Sunday

  ROOSEVELT AWOKE REFRESHED early the next morning. “I feel bully!” He went out onto the porch for some air, unaware that he was being minutely observed through the fence. His tanned skin stretched over his jutting jaw. His teeth gleamed through thick, half-parted lips. His neck, too squat for a standing collar, merged with weight-lifter shoulders, sloping two full inches to the tip of his biceps, and his chest pushed apart the lapels of his frock coat. He tugged at his watch chain with short, nervous fingers, shifting his small, square-toed shoes. Here, palpably, was a man of expansive force. When he breathed, the porch seemed to breathe with him.

  Breakfast, laced as usual by vast infusions of caffeine, served only to stoke Roosevelt’s energy. A sheaf of congratulatory telegrams further stimulated him: one read simply, VIVE LE ROI. He managed to look solemn on the way to Milburn House, but his mind was seething with politics. During the memorial service, he caught sight of Herman H. Kohlsaat, publisher of the Chicago Times-Herald, and whispered urgently, “I want to see you.”

  Kohlsaat followed him back to the Wilcox Mansion. He was shown into the library, and found Roosevelt exchanging compliments with a beaky, fortyish professor from Princeton. “Woodrow, you know Kohlsaat, don’t you? Mr. Kohlsaat, let me introduce you to Woodrow Wilson.” The professor bowed out. Roosevelt got straight to the point.

  “I am going to make two changes in my Cabinet that I know will please you,” he said. Kohlsaat began to preen. He was a journalist of large influence, and even larger vanity. But what he heard next did not please him at all. “I am going to let John Hay go, and appoint Elihu Root Secretary of State,” Roosevelt said. “I am also going to ask Lyman Gage for his resignation.”

  Actually, Roosevelt had no intention of firing either Hay or Gage. On the contrary, he was worried by continued reports that they would resign as soon as he got to Washington. The presence in Buffalo of Kohlsaat, who knew both men well, came as a godsend. Roosevelt had long since perfected the art of manipulating newspapermen. Kohlsaat rose to his herring like a trained seal.

  KOHLSAAT John Hay is an old friend of mine.… What have you against Lyman Gage?

  ROOSEVELT (teeth snapping) He always gets his back up against the wall, and I can’t get around him.

  KOHLSAAT Don’t you know I am responsible for Mr. Gage being in the Cabinet? … Yesterday, when you were sworn in, you issued a statement that you were going to carry on McKinley’s policies, and now you propose to fire his Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury!

  ROOSEVELT (after a pause, falsetto) … Old man, I am going to pay you the highest compliment I ever paid any one in my life. I am going to keep both of them!

  Compounding the flattery, he invited Kohlsaat to accompany him to Washington the next day. “The only other friend I have on the train is Elihu Root.” Then, casually: “Gage does not like me. I want you to wire him to meet you at your hotel on our arrival and tell him he must stay for a while, at least, and I want you to see the Associated Press man and ask him to send a dispatch that when we reach Washington tomorrow night I am going to ask Hay and Gage to remain in the Cabinet.”

  Kohlsaat bustled off feeling he had managed to sway the rods of power. Had he understood the subtleties of Rooseveltian press relations, he might have seen that he had been tricked into making a personal appeal to Gage. The AP dispatch would also forestall any possible resignation statement by Hay. Neither man could then quit without appearing disloyal to Roosevelt, and to the unfinished agenda of William McKinley.

  Roosevelt’s move was well-timed. Even now, in Washington, the Secretary of State was composing a letter that read like a valedictory.

  SEPT. 15, 1901

  My dear Roosevelt: If the Presidency had come to you in any other way, no one would have congratulated you with better heart than I. My sincere affection and esteem for you, my old-time love for your father—would he could have lived to see where you are!—would have been deeply gratified. And even from the depths of the sorrow where I sit, with my grief for the President mingled and confused with that for my boy, so that I scarcely know, from hour to hour, the true source of my tears—I do still congratulate you, not only on the opening of an official career which I know will be glorious, but upon the vast opportunity for useful work which lies before you. With your youth, your ability, your health and strength, the courage God has given you to do right, there are no bounds to the good you can accomplish for your country and the name you will leave in its annals. My official life is at an end—my natural life will not be long extended; and so, in the dawn of what I am sure will be a great and splendid future, I venture to give you the heartfelt benediction of the past.

  God bless you.

  Yours faithfully,

  JOHN HAY

  Monday

  16 SEPTEMBER DAWNED so bright that Buffalo’s heavy black drapery looked inconsequential, even tawdry, against the overwhelming blueness of lake and sky. A stiff breeze snapped thousands of half-m
ast flags. At shortly after 8:15, Roosevelt, escorted by a small troop of mounted policemen, rolled down Delaware Avenue on his way to Exchange Street Station. Presently, windblown fragments of music heralded the approach of McKinley’s cortege from City Hall. Roosevelt ordered his procession to follow at a respectful distance. He stood watching at the station entrance as soldiers unloaded the coffin and carried it inside. “Nearer My God to Thee” sounded inevitably from the band. Mrs. McKinley was escorted onto the platform, a frail figure almost hidden by black-clad relatives. Then Roosevelt stepped forward. He seemed surprised at the sight of a huge, mute crowd. Unthinkingly, he waved his hat. Before boarding the train, he groped for Herman Kohlsaat in the press party and hissed again in his ear. “Did you send that telegram to Gage?”

  THE FUNERAL TRAIN, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Railroad, consisted of two black-draped locomotives—one, with a particularly sad whistle, to steam ahead as pilot for the other—plus a baggage car, a saloon car, and five sumptuous Pullmans. Reporters were assigned to the first of these, Senator Hanna and other dignitaries to the second, Roosevelt and his Cabinet to the third. The fourth carried George Cortelyou and members of the McKinley family. Officially speaking, Cortelyou was now Roosevelt’s personal secretary, but as long as Mrs. McKinley depended on him, he was pleased to defer to Loeb. The fifth and final car, a glass observation parlor, acted as a catafalque: McKinley’s coffin rode inside on a bed of flowers.

  At 8:57, the train began to move. Church bells tolled across the city. Thousands of onlookers crowded every platform, stairway, bollard, and bridge. From sheds and warehouses along the track, grimy workmen emerged to squint and stare. The avid scrutiny of all these eyes was too much for Roosevelt. He ordered his blinds drawn—but not so soon as to miss the sight of workmen hurrying back to their jobs after the train had passed them by. For a while he sat alone, waiting for the liberating sense of acceleration into open country.