Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  19 “He is not safe” The New York Times, 4 Feb. 1904; Review of Reviews, Mar. 1904; speech copy in GBC.

  20 When Root used Whitelaw Reid to TR, 9 Feb. 1904 (TRP); Franklin Murphy to TR, 9 Feb. 1904, and TR to Root, 4 Feb. 1904 (ER). One week after this speech, Governor Odell of New York came out strongly for TR. “It was time to set a back fire,” Root wrote TR. “I do not think that I realized how far down the disaffection had gone” (15 Feb. 1904 [TRP]).

  21 Late on the evening George Cortelyou, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 Apr. 1906 (MHM); Washington Evening Star, 5 Feb. 1904.

  22 “My dear Mr.” Mark Hanna to TR, 5 Feb. 1904, facsimile in Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 452.

  23 The Senator lay Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 May 1905 (MHM).

  24 HALF A WORLD Foreign Relations 1904, 413. The image of “claps of thunder” is Hay’s.

  25 Minister Kogoro John Hay diary, 11 Feb. 1904 (JH); Foreign Relations 1904, 32–35; Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 201, 215–16; James Garfield diary, 10 Feb. 1904 (JRG); Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 Feb. 1904 (JJ). Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry, 103–4, points out that not only did Washington favor Japan at this stage of the war, but that Japan, heavily financed by American loans, was in effect “fighting the battle of the United States” in the Far East. As far as the Roosevelt Administration was concerned, a victorious Japan might be easier to deal with than a victorious Russia, already “overbalancing” dangerously in Manchuria. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 724.

  26 UNCONSCIOUS The following account of the death of Mark Hanna is based on J. B. Morrow’s interviews with Mrs. Hanna (18 May 1905), John Coit Spooner (10 Mar. 1905), and George Cortelyou (18 Apr. 1906), all in MHM; medical bulletins, 12–15 Feb., in Presidential scrapbook (TRP); The Washington Post and Washington Evening Star, 12–16 Feb. 1904; and Beer, Hanna, 622–24.

  27 The cosmopolitan curiosity The book TR was reading was E. de Michelis’s L’Origine degli Indo-Europei (Turin, 1903). Its Italian text gave him much difficulty, but he read it through to the end. “I have been much impressed with it, owing to the clear grasp of the author of the … relations between languages and races—his understanding, for instance, that Aryan is a linguistic and not a biological term.” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 795.

  28 He had not done Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 554; John T. Flynn, “Mark Hanna: Big Business in Politics,” Scribner’s, Aug. 1933. These sources give the low estimate of Hanna’s wealth. According to Alfred H. Lewis in Saturday Evening Post, 26 Dec. 1903, “He is worth every splinter of 30 millions.”

  29 “May you soon” Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 454–55.

  30 Governors, generals TR did, however, cross the square later that night to pay his respects to Mrs. Hanna. For two modern, sympathetic assessments of the great Senator, see Harvey Ploster, “Mark Hanna and the Republican Hierarchy, 1897–1904” (M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1964), and Gerald W. Wolff, “Mark Hanna’s Goal: American Harmony,” Ohio History 79.3–4 (1970).

  31 By now, most Foreign Relations 1904, 543–51; John Hay to Elihu Root, 12 Mar. 1904 (TD). For modern support for this view, see Friedlander, “Reassessment,” and Marks, Velvet on Iron, 96–105.

  32 The little republic McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 398; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 304–5.

  33 Roosevelt and his successors Foreign Relations 1904, 544. Colón and Panama City were excluded from the zone, although the United States undertook to provide their sanitation, water supply, and security services. Panamanian independence was guaranteed; compensation was fixed at a ten-million-dollar initial payment, plus annual rent of $250,000, to begin after nine years.

  34 But Bunau-Varilla Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla.”

  35 “for the honor” Philippe Bunau-Varilla to Manuel Amador Guerrero, 23 Feb. 1904 (PBV). Amador had been inaugurated four days before.

  36 AN ENORMOUS MAP Dorwart, Office of Naval Intelligence, 81–82; New York World, 27 Feb. 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 721; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 277.

  37 Cecil Spring Rice Spring Rice to EKR, 29 Dec. 1903 (received 4 Feb. 1904) (TRP). During the Russo-Japanese War, Spring Rice deliberately addressed some of his more outspoken letters to EKR, in order to avoid surveillance and suspicion at either end. Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 286.

  38 Roosevelt, replying TR, Letters, vol. 4, 760–61.

  39 “very drastic” C. S. Mellen to TR, 19 Feb. 1904 (TRP).

  40 “All I can do” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 750.

  41 During the Alaska New York Sun, 15 Mar. 1904; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to TR, 19 Feb. 1904 (TRP).

  42 Justice William Rufus Day The following short biographical sketches are based on Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions (New York, 1969–1978), vols. 2 and 3.

  43 (“the last of the”) Ibid., vol. 2, 216.

  44 By noon, the The following account is based on a detailed story (with group portrait) in the New York Herald, 15 Mar. 1904, and another in the Philadelphia Press, same date. The decision is published in U.S. Reports, vol. 193, 197ff. The best analysis of the proceedings remains that of Meyer, “Northern Securities Case,” chap. 8.

  45 his clear, sharp voice Fuller described Holmes’s voice as “incisive as the edge of a knife” (Novick, Honorable Justice, 271). The Library of Congress preserves a sound recording of Holmes broadcasting to the American people, in tones unblunted by time, on his ninetieth birthday.

  46 “No scheme or” U.S. Reports, vol. 193, 320–22, 327; New York Herald, 15 Mar. 1904.

  47 It was five Philander Knox scrapbook (PCK); New York Sun, 15 Mar. 1904. TR’s other lunch guests were James Cardinal Gibbons, Austrian Ambassador Baron von Hengervár Hengelmüller, and the writer William Roscoe Thayer. Thayer, John Hay, vol. 2, 351.

  48 The dimensions of Lamoreaux, Great Merger Movement, 169.

  49 “Great cases,” The following quotations are from U.S. Reports, vol. 193, 400–411. Other details from New York Sun and Philadelphia Press, 15 Mar. 1904.

  50 “I am happy” This was the first of the great High Court dissents for which Holmes was to become famous. “The trouble with Wendell,” an exasperated Bostonian friend complained, “is that he likes to play with his mind” (M. A. De Wolfe Howe, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1841–1882 [Cambridge, Mass., 1957–1963], vol. 1, 255). As John Blum points out, TR miscalculated in thinking Holmes a reformer. The justice was “a profound skeptic” who “deeply distrusted popular passion.” In this case, Holmes felt that most of his brethren had been carried away by the temporary, and unreasoning, antitrust mood of the times. His decision not to go along was therefore “entirely in character.” Blum, Progressive Presidents, 35.

  51 So by a margin Knox, after leaving the Justice Department later that year, reacted dismissively to a question about the historical significance of his Northern Securities suit. The case was regarded as “of surpassing importance” by the press, he said, but had proved “of less real value to the government than many others that attracted no general attention.” It had been, “in a sense, a test case” (Philadelphia Ledger, 12 June 1904). Knox’s use of the phrase real value reflects his essentially pragmatic nature. What mattered to TR was its symbolic value, reaffirming the right of a federal democracy to regulate big business. Modern historical assessments, however, tend to agree with Knox. See the cynical words of Albro Martin in James J. Hill, 520, or the more balanced assessments in Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 473–74 and 562–63. Chandler, Visible Hand, 499, argues that Northern Securities led, paradoxically, to more, not less, corporate consolidation.

  52 “I could carve” John Hay diary, 15 Mar. 1904 (JH); Harbaugh, Life and Times, 161–62; Lodge, Selections, 518. See also Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 564.

  53 “I have such” Novick, Honorable Justice, 272. TR was writing affectionately to Holmes again by the fall of 1904 (TR, Letters, vol. 4, 989). Many years later, the Justice claimed that TR �
�looked on my dissent as a political departure (or, I suspect, more truly, couldn’t forgive anyone who stood in his way).” When these words were written, TR was dead, and Holmes’s tone conveys a certain octogenarian crotchetiness. Mark De Wolfe Howe, ed., Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874–1932 (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), vol. 2, 61–62.

  54 Knox and Taft John Hay diary, 15 Mar. 1904 (JH); A. B. Farquhar to TR, 8 Mar. 1904 (TRP); New York World (front page, lead article), 15 Mar. 1904; New York Evening Post, 15 and 16 Mar. 1904. See the vast selection of clips in Philander Knox scrapbook (PCK); also Literary Digest, 26 Mar. 1904. For a sample of critical opinion, see The New York Times, 15 Mar. 1904.

  55 The New York World New York World, 15 and 20 Mar. 1904.

  56 The three men New York World, 15 Mar. 1904; Pyle, Life of James J. Hill, vol. 2, 377; Martin, James J. Hill, 519; New York Herald, 15 Mar. 1904; A. B. Farquhar to TR, 8 Mar. 1904 (TRP).

  57 “As far as I” Joseph Bucklin Bishop to TR, 15 Mar. 1904 (TRP).

  58 BY 1 APRIL John Hay diary, 19 Mar. 1904 (JH); EKR to Cecil Spring Rice, 7 Feb. 1904 (CSR); Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, From Pinafores to Politics (New York, 1923), 83; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 134.

  59 “He is a very” William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 18 Mar. 1904 (WHT).

  60 Even so, Roosevelt’s Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 554; Literary Digest, 2 Apr. 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 749.

  61 It was virtually Literary Digest, 2 Jan. 1904. Santo Domingo and Dominican Republic were interchangeable terms in the Roosevelt Era.

  62 “Your unlimited power” Wilhelm II to TR, 1 Feb. 1904 (TRP).

  63 The Kaiser could Review of Reviews, Mar. 1902; Julius W. Pratt, Challenge and Rejection: The United States and World Leadership, 1900–1921 (New York, 1967), 29–30.

  Historical Note: The current situation was complicated by the fact that on 1 Feb. Santo Domingo insurgents fired upon the United States cruiser Yankee, killing one Marine. On 5 Feb., TR ordered Rear Admiral Wise to proceed to Santo Domingo with cruisers of the Atlantic Squadron and protect United States citizens and property (Review of Reviews, Mar. 1904). There is no direct evidence that the United States feared European interference (Italy, Britain, and Belgium were owed money as well as Germany), but the circumstantial evidence, as with the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903, is suggestive. At the time of the German warship scare, the State Department was under intense pressure from the Navy Department to allow the Mediterranean Squadron to take part in “maneuvers” in the Caribbean (William N. Still, American Sea Power in the Old World: The United States Navy in Europe and Near Eastern Waters, 1815–1917 [Westport, Conn., 1980], 163–64). Looking back on the crisis afterward, Elihu Root said, “We went into Santo Domingo for the sole purpose of keeping Germany from taking it” (interview, 10 Nov. 1930 [PCJ]). Ironically, Santo Domingo’s financial mess had been largely caused by an American investment firm, the Santo Domingo Investment Company, in 1903. See Douglas R. Gow, “How Did the Roosevelt Corollary Become Linked to the Dominican Republic?” Mid-America 58 (1976).

  64 “I have about” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 734. TR was so pleased with this image he repeated it viva voce to his Cabinet—only then the boa constrictor was an anaconda. John Hay diary, 18 Mar. 1904 (JH).

  65 TWO MONTHS AFTER TR, Letters, vol. 4, 772; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 419; Gould, Reform and Regulation, 44; TR, Letters, vol. 7, 615; James O. Wheaton, “The Genius and the Jurist: The Presidential Campaign of 1904” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1964), 583; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 785–86.

  66 In the meantime The Washington Post, 3 Mar. 1904; TR, introduction to Francis Curtis, History of the Republican Party (New York, 1904); TR, Letters, vol. 4, 771, 773; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 3, 5–8.

  67 Cleveland fumed with Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland (New York, 1932), 750–51. The President, unabashed, was still circulating Cleveland’s letter in the fall. See, e.g., TR to C. Riggs, editor of the New York Sun, 2 Sept. 1904 (TRP).

  68 “Theodore thinks of” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 570.

  69 Old Guard Republicans James S. Clarkson to William Loeb, 5 Apr. 1904.

  70 Reluctantly, in view Kerr, Bully Father, 149. Marguerite Cassini recalled that her father, Speck von Sternburg, and Jules Jusserand were “very much worried” by the comings and goings of mysterious Japanese visitors to the White House. Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 198.

  71 HIS SIGNATURE FINGERS William A. Day and Charles W. Russell to Philander Knox, 26 and 28 Apr. 1904 (PCK). The extraordinary series of letters and telegrams in Knox’s papers concerning the canal-rights transfer counters the doubt expressed by revisionist historians (e.g., Henry Pringle) as to whether the Roosevelt Administration was conscientious in obtaining good title to the Canal Zone, and in ensuring that all payments were distributed properly.

  72 the supreme adjective Philippe Bunau-Varilla to Poultney Bigelow, 26 Feb. 1926 (PB).

  73 “I HAVE TAKEN” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 788.

  74 By terms of treaty Miles P. DuVal, And the Mountains Will Move (Stanford, 1947), 136–37; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 770.

  75 He sent Taft TR, Letters, vol. 4, 786–93; the other Commission members were William B. Parsons, Benjamin M. Harrod, William H. Burr, Carl E. Grunsky, and Frank J. Hecker. DuVal, And the Mountains, 130.

  76 Roosevelt ordered Taft TR, Letters, vol. 4, 790.

  77 Sanitary reform Ibid., 791–92.

  78 ON 10 MAY Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 583. The following account is based primarily on Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 114–17.

  79 “You might as” Ibid., 460.

  80 Shadows stole Ibid., 117.

  81 Senator Matthew Quay Quay’s final decline had begun on 8 May.

  82 “The last consignment” Review of Reviews, June 1904; New York Sun, 11 May 1904.

  83 businesslike light The names of these products are taken from contemporary magazines. The shadow-free lamp of 1903 caused a revolution in American lighting.

  84 George Cortelyou Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 267; Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 57–58, 70.

  85 “Go see Cortelyou” Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 117.

  Historiographical Note: The date of this interview cannot be established with certainty. But internal evidence proves Moore was wrong in remembering it as taking place after the death of Quay (28 May 1904). His mission on behalf of Senator Penrose must have come after Bliss’s rejection of the GOP chairmanship on 10 May, and before TR’s announcement of the appointment of Cortelyou on 17 May.

  TR’s reverence for Quay, which has often embarrassed his apologists, was perfectly in character. He owed his Vice Presidency (hence, his Presidency) to him. He also admired very strong men, even if their morals were doubtful. Quay’s erudition (he introduced TR to Finnish literature) was another bond. TR was so impressed by the Senator’s deathbed speech that he devoted 1,500 words of his autobiography to it. See Kehl, Boss Rule, 226–29, TR, Autobiography, 158–61, and Steffens, Autobiography, 419–21. For more on the death of Quay and the controversy caused by TR’s description of him as “my staunch and loyal friend,” see Contemporary Literature, July 1904.

  CHAPTER 21: THE WIRE THAT RAN AROUND THE WORLD

  1 “I hope ye’re” Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, 87.

  2 AT SIXTY-FOUR Ion Perdicaris, “In Raisuli’s Hands: The Story of My Captivity and Deliverance, 18 May to 26 June 1904,” Leslie’s Monthly Magazine, Sept. 1904.

  3 This did not Bowen, Recollections, 34; Leslie’s Weekly, 23 June 1904; Outlook, 11 June 1904. For the diplomatic and strategic background to the story here beginning, see William J. Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans: The United States Navy in the Mediterranean, 1904” (Ph.D. diss., Northeastern University Press, 1975).

  4 He sat there New York Sun, 14 June 1904; Perdicaris, “In Raisuli’s Hands”; H. E. Davis, “The Citizenship of Ion Perdicaris,” Journal of Modern History 8 (1941); Outlook, 11 Jun
e 1904. Ion Perdicaris was the son of a wealthy, naturalized Greek American who was appointed United States Consul General in Athens in 1837. In 1840, just after Ion’s birth in that city, Perdicaris Senior returned to the United States and made a fortune in natural-gas companies. Ion was raised and educated in Trenton, N.J. After a year at Harvard, he began his divided life on both sides of the Atlantic, writing, painting, and studying the occult. Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans,” 45–47.

  5 The other male Except where otherwise indicated, the sections of this chapter detailing the kidnapping of Ion Perdicaris are based on his own three narratives: a letter written while he was being held captive, reproduced in the New York Sun, 14 June 1904; “Morocco, ‘The Land of the Extreme West,’ and the Story of My Captivity,” National Geographic, March 1906; and “In Raisuli’s Hands.” Supplemental details come from Cromwell Varley, “Captured by Moorish Brigands,” The Independent, July 1904.

  6 Just before eleven Samuel Gummeré to Francis B. Loomis, 20 May 1904, “Dispatches-Tangier,” State Department files (NA). Gummeré was an old friend of Perdicaris from Trenton, and owed his appointment to him.

  7 MR. PERDICARIS Samuel Gummeré to John Hay, 19 May 1904 (NA).

  8 Conveniently, Roosevelt Still, American Sea Power, 164–65; Francis B. Loomis to Samuel Gummeré, 19 May 1904, “Instructions,” State Department files (NA).

  9 The last seven Charles H. Darling to Francis B. Loomis, 19 May 1904 (NA).

  10 “It is not” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 801 (italics added).

  11 “If a nation” Ibid.

  12 “jingoism run mad” New York World, 28 May 1904; John W. Blassingame, “The Press and American Intervention in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, 1904–1920,” Caribbean Studies 9.2 (1969); Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 65; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 9–10, 146–47. Douglas R. Gow, “How Did the Roosevelt Corollary?” argues that Root’s first enunciation of the Corollary was a political, vote-getting gesture. But he errs in saying that it had no immediate diplomatic relevance. Walter Wellman noted in Review of Reviews (Dec. 1904) that “the [Cuba Society] letter was written wholly as a warning to Santo Domingo.” Havana also was being put on notice, as it discovered in 1906. TR enunciated the Corollary again in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress.