50 Most observers felt 14 Oct. 1901 news clips, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
51 “For the moment” Frederick A. McKenzie in unidentified news clip, ca. Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
CHAPTER 2: THE MOST DAMNABLE OUTRAGE
1 Thousan’s iv men “Mr. Dooley” in Salt Lake City Daily Tribune, 10 Nov. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
2 ON 16 OCTOBER Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 318–20; Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Booker T. Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP).
3 Roosevelt had a TR, Letters, vol. 3, 190.
Historiological Note: The question of whether TR was the first President to break the White House’s color bar was exhaustively discussed in newspapers of the day. Research indicated that Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, and possibly Frederick Douglass, had attended large receptions there, and probably partaken of refreshments with the general company. But neither black man ever dined with the President in intimate surroundings, as Booker T. Washington did on this occasion. Indeed, the only non-Caucasian guest to do so was Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii, during Grover Cleveland’s first administration. Cleveland himself indignantly denied, in the fall of 1901, that he had ever entertained a guest of darker hue than Her Majesty. Chicago Tribune, 18 Oct. 1901; The Charlotte Observer and Chattanooga News clippings, n.d., Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
4 He received Washington Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 311, errs in saying that Alice Roosevelt attended the dinner. She was still out of town.
5 Dinner proceeded James E. Amos, Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet (New York, 1927), 54; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 472.
6 The President felt TR to Carl Schurz, qu. by Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 313; see also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 182; Maurice Francis Egan, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York, 1924), 213.
7 Here, dark and Archibald W. Butt, The Letters of Archie Butt: Personal Aide to President Roosevelt (New York, 1924), 68; Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 77; Charles Willis Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents (Indianapolis, 1929), 24. Ten years after their famous dinner, TR concluded that Washington was “the highest type of all-round man I have ever met.” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 439.
8 For those blacks Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt, 97–98; TR, Autobiography, 11; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1066; Wister, Roosevelt, 259; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 226.
9 Yet Roosevelt believed Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt, 92, 97; TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1364–65; TR in Review of Reviews, Jan. 1897.
10 Sometime during the Memphis Commercial Appeal, 18 Oct. 1901, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP); The Washington Post, 17 Oct. 1901. Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 218–19, goes to extravagant lengths to describe this news leak as involuntary, and dismisses as “contemptible slander” any suggestion that TR may have authorized the announcement “for political effect.” But his book, published in 1904, was a campaign biography, and Leupp himself was known to be a “mouthpiece” for the Roosevelt Administration (John Bassett Moore to J. W. Bayard, 28 Oct. 1901 [JBM]). For obvious reasons, TR would want Southern voters to think, in an election year, that the famous dinner had been an impulse on his part, never to be repeated. But in 1901 he was keen to attract what support he could from moderate Southern Republicans unbeholden to Mark Hanna. His early words to heads of press agencies quoted on pp. 44–45 make plain his strong intent to control all White House news.
11 NEITHER ROOSEVELT NOR The Washington Post and New York Tribune, 17 Oct. 1901; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 313; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 264; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 257; The Washington Post, 18 Oct. 1901. See also August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideology in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor, 1988).
12 Whites, too, “I thank you—I congratulate you—I pity you,” a typical correspondent wrote. “I think you have done an act as brave as [the Christian martyr Hugh] Latimer’s and of the same sort. You will be roasted like him, too, and like him ultimately justified with personal earthly immortality.” Albion W. Tourgée to TR, 21 Oct. 1901 (TRP).
13 But during the The Atlanta Constitution, 17 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
14 “The most damnable” Memphis Scimitar, 17 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
15 The word nigger New York Tribune, 25 Oct. 1901.
16 ROOSEVELT DINES A Richmond Dispatch, 18 Oct. 1901; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge, 1970), 36; The Atlanta Constitution, 18 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
17 Some of the more Undated news clips and Presidential scrapbook (TRP). See also Theo Miller, “Booker T. Washington and Some American Writers,” Research Studies 39.4 (1970), and Takahiro Sasaki’s detailed study “Race or Individual Freedom: Public Reactions to the Roosevelt-Washington Dinner at the White House in October, 1901” (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina, 1984).
18 The storm squalled William H. Lewis, TR’s black classmate from Harvard, spent a night in the gubernatorial mansion, as did a stranded black baritone denied admission to local hotels. TR also entertained Booker T. Washington at Oyster Bay. Presidential scrapbook, Oct. 1901 (TRP); Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 230.
19 Hate mail The Washington Post, 19 Oct. 1901; Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 136; St. Louis Mirror, 31 Oct. 1901. The most recent Tillman biography is Stephen Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (Chapel Hill, 2000). But see also Francis B. Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman (Baton Rouge, 1944), 1–32.
20 “At one stroke” Richmond News, 18 Oct. 1901. See also Edgar G. Murphy to Booker T. Washington, 19 Oct. 1901 (BTW).
21 BY TACIT AGREEMENT New York Tribune, 25 Oct. 1901; Springfield Republican, n.d., Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
22 ON 21 OCTOBER New Orleans Times-Democrat and St. Louis Republic, 22 Oct. 1901; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 317; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 262; Charles P. Taft to William H. Taft, 24 Oct. 1901 (WHT).
23 Roosevelt looked calm New York Herald, 22 Oct. 1901; Platt qu. in Louis Coolidge, An Old-Fashioned Senator: Orville H. Platt (New York, 1910), 512; “Precautionary” [security] file, Oct. 1901 (TRP). Leon Czolgosz approached McKinley with what looked like a bandaged right hand. McKinley reached to shake his left, whereupon the “bandage” spit bullets.
24 Shocked by this New Hampshire Evening Register, 23 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Rhodes, McKinley and Roosevelt, 228.
25 Degrees were awarded Longworth, Crowded Hours, 43; The New York Times and New York Journal, 24 Oct. 1901. TR was awarded an LL.D.
26 Notwithstanding this Frederick S. Wood, Roosevelt as We Knew Him (Philadelphia, 1927), 98.
27 Twain’s private Bernard De Voto, ed., Mark Twain in Eruption (New York, 1940), 30–31.
28 A LARGE CROWD New Orleans Times-Democrat, 21 Oct. 1901; New York Herald and Washington Evening Star, 25 Oct. 1901.
29 ROOSEVELT’S QUERULOUSNESS Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 274–75; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 181, 184. In late October, Senator John L. McLaurin of South Carolina wrote a sympathetic statement explaining TR’s action in terms calculated to reassure the South. But TR refused to approve it. “The President said he did not want anyone to make any explanation for him” (George Cortelyou superscript on original draft [TRP]).
30 “My dear Mr. President” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 274.
31 Sensing Roosevelt’s need Ibid., 263, 283.
32 Some good, certainly John M. Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 44; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 305, 324.
33 “the infinite capacity” “TR and the Press,” unpublished ms. (HH).
34 He dutifully announced New York Journal, 30 Oct. 1901.
35 “I have not been” TR to Albion W. Tourgée, 8 Nov. 1901, Letters, vol. 3, 190–91.
36 As the famous See, e.g., TR to Carl Schurz, qu. in Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 321; Wister, Rooseve
lt, 254; M. A. De Wolfe Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer: His Life and Public Services (New York, 1919), 416, 420; TR, Letters, vol. 8, 981–82.
37 And when Washington Booker T. Washington to George Cortelyou, 20 Dec. 1901 (TRP).
CHAPTER 3: ONE VAST, SMOOTHLY RUNNING MACHINE
1 A hard time Finley Peter Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley (New York, 1902), 175.
2 THE NIGHT OF MONDAY Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is based on Ray Stannard Baker, “The Great Northern Pacific Deal,” Collier’s Weekly, 30 Nov. 1901; Commercial & Financial Chronicle, 1902, 843, 1011, 1062; and Martin, James J. Hill, 495ff. Additional atmospheric details from New York Sun, 12 and 13 Nov. 1901.
3 three financiers conferred The standard biographies are Martin, James J. Hill; Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman (Chapel Hill, 2000); Strouse, Morgan; and John A. Garraty, Right-Hand Man: The Life of George W. Perkins (New York, 1960).
4 This common need Isaac F. Marcosson, Before I Forget (New York, 1959), 221–24.
5 huge damp mustache “I never could figure out how he drank his coffee” Averell Harriman interview, 14 Feb. 1981.
6 Decent, driven men TR, First Annual Message to Congress, Works, vol. 17, 101; Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 24–25, 92–93.
7 Yet they had Martin, James J. Hill, 505; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 347.
8 Their meeting tonight Balthazar H. Meyer, “A History of the Northern Securities Case,” Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin Economics and Political Science Series 1.3 (1904–1906): 229–36; Martin, James J. Hill, 394–504. The panic occurred on 9 May 1901.
9 Right now, Hill Martin, James J. Hill, 504–8. Harriman had acquired the Southern Pacific earlier in the year. He also had interests in the Santa Fe.
10 What lay before Meyer, “Northern Securities Case,” 236; Martin, James J. Hill, 509.
11 Anybody could see Meyer, “Northern Securities Case,” 240; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 370.
12 The flaw in New York World, 15 Nov. 1901, quotes an unnamed trust expert as saying that Hill’s charter was “unquestionably … a violation of the spirit of the law against combinations.”
13 But Hill was New York World, 15 Nov. 1901; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 445; Martin, James J. Hill, 511.
14 THE NEXT DAY, Tuesday TR to Albert Shaw, 12 Nov. 1901; TR, First Annual Message draft (TRP). See Waldon Fawcett, “How President Roosevelt Wrote His First Message,” Success, Jan. 1902.
15 Roosevelt worked Washington Evening Star, 12 Nov. 1901.
16 ROOSEVELT HAD TAKEN The following profile of Philander Chase Knox is based on descriptions and photographs in Edward G. Lowry, Washington Close-Ups: Intimate Views of Some Public Figures (Boston, 1921), 194–96; New York Herald, 7 Apr. 1901; The Historical Register (New York, 1921), 54; Philadelphia Press, 10 June 1904; Thompson, Party Leaders, 310ff.; and Samuel Flagg Bemis, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy (New York, 1927–1929, vol. 9, 302–10.
17 In the words of Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 194. Kate Carew in New York World, 10 Mar. 1904, satirizes Knox’s impenetrability.
18 Knox was the By the late 1890s, Knox was said to be charging $250,000 for a case. A. T. Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University, 1959), 10. See also Minneapolis Times, 17 Jan. 1903, in Knox Scrapbook (PCK).
19 The Attorney General New York Herald, 7 Apr. 1901; Kate Carew in New York World, 10 Mar. 1904; Knox to Delmonico’s, 13 Jan. 1902 (PCK); photographs of 1527 K Street NW (FBJ); Knox qu. in New York Herald, 20 June 1901.
20 His languid, laissez-faire Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 686; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 232. Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 404–5, notes that Knox showed little spontaneous inclination to activate antitrust enforcement until galvanized by TR.
21 A friend remarked Thompson, Party Leaders, 318.
22 Roosevelt was quick TR qu. in Samuel Leland Powers, Portraits of Half a Century (Boston, 1925), 218; Washington Evening Star, 18 Oct. 1901; Henry Loomis Nelson, “Three Months of President Roosevelt,” Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1902.
23 Knox, Roosevelt discovered Philadelphia Press, 10 June 1904; Knox scrapbook (PCK); Bemis, American Secretaries of State, vol. 9, 309–10; Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 25–26, 32; Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 201; White, Autobiography, 342.
24 Such a truce Hill had visited Washington at the beginning of November, and asked himself to dinner at the White House (Washington Evening Star, 2 Nov. 1901). Martin, James J. Hill, speculates: “It was time, Hill felt, to explain what the new railroad arrangements meant for the West they loved so much.” For Harriman’s and Morgan’s early relationship with TR and Hill, see Klein, Life and Legend, 361–63.
25 Perkins was the TR, Letters, vol. 3, 159–60.
26 “Perkins may just” Ibid., 159–60, 177.
27 MORGAN, HILL, AND Washington Evening Star, 13 Nov. 1901; New York Sun, 14 Nov. 1901.
28 The New York Journal 14 Nov. 1901.
29 “They are smoothing” Ibid.
30 “To me there is” George Perkins to TR, 15 Nov. 1901 (GWP).
31 In due course New York Sun, 15 Nov. 1902.
32 “Can I get some” Mark Hanna to George Perkins, 27 Nov. 1901 (GWP).
33 Lesser citizens Statistician and Economist (New York, 1901–1902); Baker, “Great Northern Pacific Deal.”
34 “Is it possible,” Baker, “Great Northern Pacific Deal.”
35 As if in answer New York Sun, 12 Nov. 1901.
36 “I see dynamite” Mark Hanna to TR, 10 Nov. 1901 (TRP).
37 He objected in TR, First Annual Message draft (TRP); Mark Hanna to TR, 10 Nov. 1901 (TRP). Elihu Root also took “serious exception” to this part of the Message. TR to St. Clair McKelway, 21 Nov. 1901 (TRP).
38 Other senators Message drafts in TRP; Orville H. Platt to TR, 13 Nov. 1901 (TRP); TR to Mark Hanna, 21 Nov. 1901 (TRP). Sample language deleted: “I am firmly of the belief that a law can be framed that will enable the National Government to exercise control over the trusts.… It should be treated … as an effort, not to destroy or disarrange business, but to continue the upbuilding of our interest on foundations of justice to all.… This Government must recognize the need of change.”
39 RESTRAINED AS HE Washington Evening Star, 15 Oct. 1901; World’s Work, Dec. 1901. See Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 473–74, on how the speed of TR’s reactions exasperated Philander Knox.
40 “Mr. President” Boston Transcript, 18 Nov. 1901. The Senator was William J. Deboe of Kentucky.
41 He would whirl George William Douglas, The Many-Sided Roosevelt: An Anecdotal Biography (New York, 1907), 249–56; Walter Hines Page in World’s Work, Dec. 1901. Both these accounts describe Roosevelt’s receptions in Nov. 1901. TR was then making an average of thirty appointments a day. One alone—for Collector of Customs in Fort Worth—generated twenty-eight pounds of documents. Washington Evening Star, 11 Nov. 1901.
42 Those other White Walter Hines Page in World’s Work, Dec. 1901; Chauncey M. Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years (New York, 1922), 169.
43 There were days Washington Evening Star, 23 Nov. 1901; Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time: Shown in His Own Letters (New York, 1920), vol. 1, 156; James Morse diary, 24 Nov. 1901 (NYHS). See also L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay (copy in HKB).
44 “How many men” William Dudley Foulke, Fighting the Spoilsmen (New York, 1919), 55–56; The Cincinnati Enquirer, 25 Dec. 1901.
45 “In El Paso” Foulke, Fighting, 56.
46 ON 18 NOVEMBER See John A. S. Grenville, “Great Britain and the Isthmian Canal, 1898–1901,” American Historical Review 61 (Oct. 1955); New York Journal, 21–22 Nov. 1901; Miles P. DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay: The Story of the Long Struggle for a Waterway across the American Isthmus (Stanford, 1940), 154.
47 It was a big McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 262. See ibid., passim, for background to the Isthmian Canal situation in 1901.
48 “There are certai
n” Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, 1899–1901, 58 Cong., 2 sess., 1904, S. Doc. 222, 174–75.
49 Minus that extra Maurice Hutin to TR, 30 Nov. 1901, and John G. Walker to TR, 6 Dec. 1901 (TRP). On 4 Nov., John Hay, a Nicaragua partisan, wrote to Luis F. Corea, that country’s Washington minister, warning him that “very powerful influences are at work against the Nicaragua Canal” (TD).
50 ROOSEVELT FINISHED John Hay to Joseph Bucklin Bishop, qu. in Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 160. Printing a Message to Congress was an innovation. TR saw no reason to perpetuate the laborious nineteenth-century custom of copying such documents in ornamental script. In a further break with tradition, he made galleys available to the press, under guarantees that the Message would be neither quoted nor summarized before it went to Congress. This gave editors plenty of time to typeset the text themselves, and TR’s Message was rewarded with five times as much comment as any had enjoyed before. TR also made sure that a summary of the Message was released to European journals. See First Annual Message box and Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
51 Twelve days still Washington Evening Star and New York Tribune, 23 Nov. 1901.
52 back in minnesota Hill qu. in Martin, James J. Hill, 510–11.
53 WHILE THE SYLPH Washington Evening Star, 25 Nov. 1901; The New York Times, 21 Nov. 1901. A copy of the latter article was sent to the White House. Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
54 The astrologist-author The New York Times, 21 Nov. 1901.
55 Although Roosevelt Ibid.
56 The President need Ibid.
57 The President, he Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 326; Thayer, Hay, vol. 2, 266.
58 Although Hay was John Hay to Mrs. Hay, 15 Nov. 1901 (WF).
CHAPTER 4: A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
1 On th’ wan “Mr. Dooley” qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 411.
2 shortly before noon The Washington Post, 4 Dec. 1901.
3 Octavius L. Pruden Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901; New York Tribune, 4 Dec. 1901.
4 A Secret Service The practice of presidential addresses to Congress, as opposed to messages, had ended with John Adams, and would not be revived until 1913 by Woodrow Wilson.
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