Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  144 He felt at home Leopold, Elihu Root, 9, 18; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 503. For another example of TR’s willingness to identify himself with Root’s conservative rhetoric, see his remark at the Minnesota State Fair: “It is probably true that the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have been amassed not by injuring our people, but as an incident to the conferring of great benefits upon the community” (TR, Works, vol. 15, 332).

  145 More conservative rhetoric New York World and The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901; H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse, 1963), 249.

  146 McKinley had chosen For a profile of the American conservative at the turn of the century, see Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 38–45. See also James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State (Boston, 1969), and Norman Wilensky, “Conservatives in the Progressive Era,” University of Florida Monographs, no. 25 (1965).

  147 They were accustomed The official letter-books of Gage, Hay, and Knox, e.g., are replete with acknowledgments of favors received. Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 204; Lewis L. Gould, Reform and Regulation: American Politics, 1900–1916 (New York, 1978), 18.

  148 They were prepared Edward C. Kirkland, Dream and Thought in the Business Community, 1860–1900 (Madison, 1956), 121; Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York, 1963), 58–59.

  149 He tended toward Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 45.

  150 Years of sweaty See TR’s review of Kidd’s Social Evolution (1894) in TR, Works, vol. 14, 107–28. This volume also contains other literary essays revelatory of TR’s late-nineteenth-century thought: “National Life and Character” and “The Law of Civilization and Decay.” For intellectual analyses of the prepresidential TR, see John M. Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision,” in TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1484–94; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 462–71; and Edmund Morris, “Theodore Roosevelt, President,” American Heritage 32.4 (June–July 1981). The best overall analysis remains chap. 2, “The World of Thought,” in Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 31–84.

  151 In a fundamental TR, qu. in Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision” in TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1487; TR, Works, vol. 15, 109–10.

  152 The United States Terence Powderley, U.S. commissioner of immigration, in Collier’s, 14 Dec. 1901. For a selection of relevant social and economic statistics, see Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 30–39.

  153 Somehow he must TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1487; vol. 3, 105.

  154 “a bully pulpit” TR, qu. by Lyman Abbott in “A Review of President Roosevelt’s Administration: IV,” Outlook, 27 Feb. 1909.

  155 The fine white Edward W. Bok, in The Americanization of Edward Bok (New York, 1922), describes in detail his relationship with TR. See also Salme H. Steinberg, Reformer in the Marketplace: Edward W. Bok and The Ladies’ Home Journal (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), and Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), vol. 4, 539, 547, for Bok as editor, and Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 69–72, 75–76, for TR’s views on the social usefulness of literature.

  156 Girls softly pelted Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901.

  157 Thickening crowds New York World, New York Herald, and Buffalo Express, 17 Sept. 1901.

  158 Governor William Stone Review of Reviews, Sept. 1901; Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1901; J. Hampton Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard (Philadelphia, 1925), 195; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 136.

  159 A messenger ran Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 105; New York Evening Post and New York Evening World, 16 Sept. 1901; Commercial & Financial Chronicle, 21 Sept. 1901. Frederick Holls met TR the next day, and wrote Albert Shaw: “He is highly gratified at the Wall Street boom and Kohlsaat has persuaded him [sic] to agree and keep Gage on till 1905. That is fixed” (17 [AS]).

  160 Roosevelt was relieved Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 105.

  161 The tolling of Harrisburg Patriot and Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 102–4.

  162 Ahead, in the New York Evening World, 17 Sept. 1901.

  163 THE SUN WAS Buffalo Express, and Clarke in New York Herald, 17 Sept. 1901.

  164 Though such families Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 12, 18–19; Review of Reviews, Sept. 1901; Fred A. Shannon, “The Status of the Midwestern Farmer in 1900,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 37.3 (Dec. 1950).

  165 Technological progress Shannon, “Status.”

  166 Roosevelt could see Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901; Walter Wellman in McClure’s, Sept. 1901; Shannon, “Status”; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 13. Peter J. Hill, “Relative Skill and Income Levels of Native and Foreign-Born Workers in the U.S.,” Explorations in Economic History 12.1 (1975), shows that the general impression in 1901 of the inferiority of immigrant labor was fallacious.

  167 Not surprisingly John Higham, Strangers in the Land (New Brunswick, N.J., 1955), 137–40; White editorial, qu. in Kenneth S. Davis, “The Sage of Emporia,” American Heritage 30.6 (Oct.–Nov. 1979).

  168 Roosevelt was not See Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision,” in TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1488, and TR, “True Americanism,” Works, vol. 15, 15–31. Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge, 1980), is the latest attempt to interpret TR’s racial thought in the light of modern sensibilities, mentioning Booker T. Washington only twice.

  169 One of his favorite Nancy Schoenberg, “Officer Otto Raphael: A Jewish Friend of Theodore Roosevelt,” American Jewish Archives 39.1 (1987); TR, “Ethnology of the Police,” Munsey’s, June 1897; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 86; Higham, Strangers, 105–12, 149. The League was the pet project of TR’s best friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. See Barbara Miller Solomon, “The Intellectual Background of the Immigration Restriction Movement in New England,” New England Quarterly 25 (1952).

  170 Several thousand Chicago Tribune and New York World, 17 Sept. 1901.

  171 THE CONSISTENT FEATURES The image of the fault line is borrowed from Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt. See ibid., 1–105, for an overall survey of the American landscape (material, intellectual, political, social, and ideological) at the turn of the century.

  172 “The extremes of” Qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 243.

  173 Roosevelt thought he TR, Works, vol. 15, 314. For a survey of at least some of Everyman’s feelings at the time of TR’s accession, see Louis Galambos, The Public Image of Big Business in America, 1890–1940 (Baltimore, 1975), chap. 4.

  174 “Bob” and “Tom” These two candidates were Robert M. LaFollette and Tom L. Johnson.

  175 Far-flung and lonely TR, aside from being precociously sensitive to American public opinion, had read Henry George, Edward Bellamy, and Henry Demarest Lloyd, all premature voices of Progressive protest. Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 369.

  Historical Note: The word progressive had not yet acquired a specific political meaning in 1901. At the moment of TR’s accession, the Atlantic Monthly predicted the rise of a new party, founded on opposition to privilege and concentrated power, “anti-corruption, anti-spoliation, dedicated to public ownership of utilities and railroads, and telegraph systems” (“The Future of Political Parties,” Sept. 1901). For a concise survey of the origins of Progressivism, see Stanley P. Caine’s essay in Lewis L. Gould, ed., The Progressive Era (Syracuse, 1974).

  176 ROOSEVELT’S REVERIE Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 104; Statistical History of the United States (New York, 1976). For an analysis of the political, social, and economic differences between Northern and Southern blacks in 1901, see W.E.B. Du Bois, The Black North in 1901: A Social Study (New York, 1902; repr. 1969).

  177 Census statistics such as Southern blacks contributed one third of the total convention ballot. The Washington Post, 12 Mar. 1902.

  178 The South was Herbert Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna (New York, 1912), 298; Richard B. Sherman, The Republican Party and Black America: From McKinley to Hoover, 1896–1933 (Charlottesville, 1973), 19–20; Horace and Marion Merrill, The Republican Command, 1897–1
913 (Lexington, Ky., 1971), 74–75; The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan (Urbana, 1972–1989, vol. 6, 336 (hereafter Booker T. Washington Papers).

  179 “burly, coarse-fibered” TR to William Allen White, 27 Aug. 1901 (WAW). The compound adjective is incorrectly transcribed as “unterrified” in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 135.

  180 To consolidate his TR, Letters, vol. 3, 149. TR reportedly talked at length about his Southern strategy on the train. H. H. Kohlsaat to editor, The Atlanta Constitution, 7 June 1903.

  181 “Theodore” Rhodes, McKinley and Roosevelt, 218. Rhodes got this quotation from Hanna, who was his brother-in-law. By 1905, TR was denying that the train meeting took place. But Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 102–3, and Joseph L. Bristow interview, 6 Dec. 1938 (HKB), confirm it, as does Lincoln Steffens in McClure’s, July 1905. TR’s reply to Steffens suggests that he was denying the substance of the conversation, not its occurrence. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1254.

  182 at twenty past Buffalo Express, 17 Sept. 1901.

  183 There was neither Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and New York Sun, 17 Sept. 1901.

  184 As usual in moments The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901; John Hay, Letters and Extracts from His Diary, ed. Henry Adams (privately printed, 1908), vol. 3, 232.

  185 “Divide off” The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901.

  186 “Something should be” Ibid.

  187 For a moment New York Sun, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901. EKR recorded TR’s arrival at the Cowles house that evening “looking very grave and older, but not at all nervous. All the country seems behind him” (Diary, 16 Sept. 1901).

  CHAPTER 1: THE SHADOW OF THE CROWN

  1 I see that “Mr. Dooley” [Finley Peter Dunne], 28 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP). See also Mr. Dooley on Ivrything and Ivrybody, ed. Robert Hutchinson (New York, 1963), 169–70.

  2 on the morning Waldon Fawcett, “President Roosevelt at Work,” Leslie’s Weekly, n.d. Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Washington Evening Star, 20 Sept. 1901.

  3 As the President New York Journal, 24 Sept. 1901.

  4 A pall of EKR, speech to children at TRB, 26 Oct. 1933 (TRB); Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 222–23; The New York Times Magazine, 12 Jan. 1919.

  5 At eleven o’clock Unidentified Cabinet officer in Boston Transcript, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).

  6 “I need your advice” Harry Thurston Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885–1905 (New York, 1906), 667.

  7 He interrupted Boston Transcript, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).

  8 The President’s hunger TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1346; New York Herald, 21 Sept. 1901.

  9 “This being my” David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston, 1924), 267.

  10 A certain code Ibid., 267–68.

  11 Boynton and Barry Ibid., 268–69.

  12 MUCH LATER THAT EVENING TR’s sister lived at 1733 N Street. Her home—soon known as “the Little White House”—was to become a social hideaway for the President and his family over the next seven years. See Lilian Rixey, Bamie: Theodore Roosevelt’s Remarkable Sister (New York, 1963).

  Chronological Note: On Tuesday, 17 Sept. 1901, TR had attended McKinley memorial services in the Capitol. He then followed the dead President’s coffin to Canton, Ohio, where it was interred on the nineteenth. TR was accompanied by his entire Cabinet, with the exception of John Hay, whom he ordered to remain in Washington, “on the avowed ground,” Hay wrote a friend amusedly, “that he did not want too many eggs in the same Pullman car” (William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay [New York, 1915], vol. 2, 267). The presidential party returned on an overnight train, arriving back in Washington early on 20 Sept.

  13 “My great difficulty” TR, qu. by William Allen White, “Remarks at the Roosevelt Memorial Association Dinner, 27 Oct. 1933” (HH). The following account is based on this source, with extra details from White, Autobiography, 338–39, and Rixey, Bamie, 172–76. The date of the dinner is fixed by William Allen White to TR, 17 Sept. 1901 (TRP), and the Washington Times, 21 Sept. 1901.

  14 Commander Cowles, replete White, “Remarks.”

  15 “I shall be” Ibid. TR would in fact be fifty come March 1909.

  16 “I don’t want” White, Autobiography, 339.

  17 Undisturbed by the Ibid; Nicholas Murray Butler, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections (New York, 1939), vol. 1, 312–13.

  18 QUIET SETTLED Washington Evening Star, 25 Sept. 1901; Review of Reviews, Nov. 1901.

  19 “You ought to” New York World, 23 Sept. 1901. For a man who relished publicity, TR had an odd dislike of being photographed. For a considerable time he refused even to pose formally with his Cabinet. Photo editors were reduced to exhuming group portraits of the McKinley Administration and pasting TR’s head and shoulders onto those of his predecessor (Washington Evening Star, 5 Nov. 1901). The results were grotesque enough to persuade him eventually to relent. To the end of his life he had difficulty relaxing in front of the camera; “candid” news-reels show how quickly he froze at the sight of a lens. Consequently, his iconographic record is grim. Only a dozen or so shots survive to show that he was the most genial of men.

  20 Later, on a Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), 503.

  21 “Here is the task,” TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, 23 Sept. 1901, Letters, vol. 3, 150.

  22 The presidential suite The New York Times, 24 Sept. 1901; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 161; Robinson, My Brother, 206–7.

  23 Later, when decorations Robinson, My Brother. Mrs. Robinson misdates this dinner by one day.

  24 TWO EVENINGS LATER John Barrett (dinner guest) to Caroline S. Barrett, 28 Sept. 1901 (JB); New York Herald and New York Journal, 26 Sept. 1901. See also Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, chap. 18.

  25 Kermit and Ethel New York Herald and New York Journal, 26 Sept. 1901.

  26 “It is understood” The Washington Post, 28 Sept. 1901.

  27 The White House police Ibid.

  28 Alice, naughtily Teague, Mrs. L., 62; Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Crowded Hours: Reminiscences of Alice Roosevelt Longworth (New York, 1933), 43.

  29 distracted as the George Cortelyou to Booker T. Washington, 27 Sept. 1901 (BTW); Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP); Louis J. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York, 1983), 307. Washington and TR had known each other since 1898. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1072; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 441.

  30 Washington’s resistance Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 439, 441; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 23; Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 215. See also Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 128ff.

  31 State by state C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York, 1955), 66–68; World’s Work, Oct. 1901. While expressing sorrow over the death of President McKinley, Washington reminded the editor of the Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser that an estimated 125,000 Americans had participated in the lynching of Negroes. Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 305–6.

  32 Washington, whose Washington was not unaware of the power he would acquire as TR’s race adviser. “I presume that for the mere asking I could get from President Roosevelt almost any political office within reason,” he wrote privately. Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 216.

  33 after leaving the Booker T. Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP); Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 12.

  34 As his mother Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 1.

  35 Blacks and whites See, e.g., Harry Thurston Peck in International Monthly, 1 July 1901, and W.E.B. Du Bois, qu. in Francis L. Broderick, W.E.B. Du Bois.

  36 “We can be as” Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 218.

  37 Washington’s philosophy Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 385; vol. 1, 220; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 112; Harlan, “The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington,” Journal of Southern History 37.3 (1971)
; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 227.

  38 Roosevelt, gazing at Donald J. Calista, “Booker T. Washington: Another Look,” Journal of Negro History 49.4 (1964).

  39 NO SOONER HAD Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 308; Booker T. Washington to TR, 2 Oct. 1901, in Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 222–23.

  40 “[He] wanted to” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 224.

  41 Washington was forced Ibid., 229.

  42 Scott delivered Ibid.

  43 “Because my experience” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 163–64. TR promised to defer further questions of Southern patronage until Hanna came back to town.

  44 Hanna wrote back Mark Hanna to TR, 12 Oct. 1901 (TRP).

  45 Despite Hanna’s concern Literary Digest, 19 Oct. 1901; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 31; Washington Evening Star, 14 Oct. 1901; Review of Reviews, Nov. 1901. The appointment of Judge Jones bore fruit in the spring of 1903. See below and TR, Letters, vol. 3, 501.

  46 Encouraged, the President Washington Evening Star, 10 Oct. 1901. TR’s equipage eventually comprised a landau, a brougham, a basket surrey, a buggy, a phaeton, and a victoria—but no automobiles, which he felt lacked presidential dignity. He owned two carriage teams and six riding horses, including two Kentucky Thoroughbreds for himself and his wife. With three additional office horses, and four more belonging to William Loeb, the White House stables were soon at capacity. See Herbert Ridgeway, Presidents on Wheels (Washington, D.C., 1971).

  47 He scrapped Philander Knox to George Cortelyou, 15 Oct. 1901 (GBC); Washington Evening Star, 30 Oct. 1901; Stuart P. Sherman in The Nation, 9 Nov. 1919; Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 345.

  48 Roosevelt in any case Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 369; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 164–70. See also TR’s personal enunciation of Hay’s “Open Door” policy on 27 Feb. 1902 (TRP). Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 34, notes how frequently, from now on, Hay invoked TR’s authority in his diplomatic correspondence.

  49 “Teddy said” John Hay to Henry Adams, 13 Oct. 1901 (TD).