Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  19 On 30 September Cheney, Personal Memoirs, 122–23.

  20 The President approached New York Sun, 1 Oct. 1905.

  21 Two articles of his Scribner’s, Oct. and Nov. 1905.

  22 It supplemented TR, Works, vol. 24, 559–62. TR’s income from his writings in 1905 was $18,487, about $341,000 in modern dollars. Checks came from five different publishers (TRP, passim).

  23 livre broché A small, sewn paperback. Léon Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt (Paris, 1905). Copy in TRB.

  24 Bazalgette admitted Ibid., 25–26. All translations are by the author, who has occasionally repunctuated Bazalgette’s ornate sentences for contemporary clarity.

  25 Perhaps the most Ibid., 39, citing in particular the famous passage about the moonlit mockingbird in chap. 4 of The Wilderness Hunter. See TR, Works, vol. 2, 62–63.

  26 “He was able” Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 29.

  27 “the supreme political” Ibid., 5.

  28 “that most dangerous” Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 193.

  29 “The tone is resolute” Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 21.

  30 “Such is the magnetism” Ibid., 24.

  31 “When, for example” “Lorsque l’outrance qui est dans sa nature lui fait coté le spread-eaglism.” Ibid.

  32 “He has only one” Ibid., 25.

  33 an attribute Bazalgette Another attribute that escaped Bazalgette was TR’s extraordinary political caution. See Marks, Velvet on Iron, 144–47.

  34 the worst-beaten candidate The phrase is Henry Pringle’s, as is much of the political information in this paragraph. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 367.

  35 Having found Ibid., 360–61; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 147–52. See John M. Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Legislative Process: Tariff Revision and Railroad Regulation, 1904–1906,” in TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1333–42.

  36 The most he John M. Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act: Toward an Orderly System of Control,” in TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1560.

  37 Another law he Charles C. Goetsch, Essays on Simeon E. Baldwin (West Hartford, Conn., 1981), 82–185; TR, Works, vol. 17, 253–54.

  38 That call had Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 158; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 34. The nation’s biggest news story in the fall of 1905 was an investigation by New York State authorities into attempts by E. H. Harriman and other financiers to speculate with the Equitable Life Assurance Company’s giant pool of cash. See Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, chap. 3.

  39 ONE OF THE FIRST TR, Works, vol. 3, xxix–xxx. Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter contained much rewriting but only one essay previously unpublished, “At Home.” This charming piece was written in the summer of 1905, no doubt as a respite from the strains of peacemaking. Unquotable out of context, its deeply disturbing last line communicates the strange blend of love and cruelty with which hunters “kill the thing they love.” See Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 363–64.

  40 “I am hurt” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 86.

  41 “the real spirit” Ibid., 69.

  42 Kermit had found TR, Letters to Kermit, 285; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 1303; Mezey, Poetry of E. A. Robinson, xxix–xxx. According to Robinson, TR cogently proffered the Custom House job in six words: “Good salary. Little work. Soft snap!” Ibid., 196.

  43 In further generosity TR, Works, vol. 14, 360–64; Outlook, 12 Aug. 1905; Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 22. Interestingly, TR had rejected a suggestion that he appoint Robinson to a position in Britain, on the grounds that “our literary men are always hurt by going abroad.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 1155.

  Historical Note: TR’s review (and strong-arming of Scribner’s into acquiring and republishing The Children of the Night) proved something of an embarrassment to him. He was chastised by outraged literary critics for trespassing on their territory and neglecting affairs of state. Robinson’s sales and professional reputation were not much enhanced. The poet spent the next four years doing nothing at the Customs House except reading the newspaper every morning. Relieved of financial worry, he continued to drink, and wrote hardly any verse. Robinson was of the poetic ilk that finds inspiration in privation. In 1910, he dedicated one of his finest collections, The Town Down the River, to TR, and went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes. When Robinson lay dying of cancer in 1935, Kermit Roosevelt came regularly to sit with him.

  44 Tensions were high Josephus Daniels, Editor in Politics (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941), 494–95; speech typescript, 19 Oct. 1905 (TRP).

  45 The floors were Clarence Martin, A Glimpse of the Past: The History of Bulloch Hall (Roswell, Ga., 1987), 11.

  46 “It is my very” Speech carbon, 20 Oct. 1905 (TRB). See also John Allen Gable, “My Blood Is Half Southern: President Theodore Roosevelt’s Speeches in Roswell and Atlanta, Georgia on October 20, 1905,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 17.4 (1991).

  47 The farther south Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 144; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Theodore Roosevelt in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 3.3 (1973).

  48 He avoided Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 238; TR on 12 Oct. 1905, qu. in Gable, “My Blood Is Half Southern.” See also Ziglar, “Decline of Lynching in America.” TR proceeded to New Orleans, whence he sailed for Washington on the USS West Virginia, celebrating his forty-seventh birthday at sea.

  49 ROOSEVELT WAS SO M. A. De Wolfe Howe, James Ford Rhodes: American Historian (New York, 1929), 119, citing Rhodes’s own memo of the evening.

  50 “two hundred thousand” Rendered as digits in ibid., 120.

  51 (At least Alice) Howe, James Ford Rhodes, 120–21. Alice’s engagement was announced on 13 Dec. 1905. Stacy A. Rozek, “ ‘The First Daughter of the Land’: Alice Roosevelt as Presidential Celebrity, 1902–1903,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 19.1 (1989).

  52 l’outrance qui Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 24. See the collection of imprecations amassed by Wagenknecht in Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt, 119–29.

  Historical Note: As TR and Taft sat together on the night of 16 November 1905, Japanese guards surrounded the imperial palace in Seoul, Korea. Emperor Kojong capitulated to them. Then, in Philip Jessup’s words, “the Korean Legation in Washington transferred its archives to that of Japan, and Korea passed out of the family of nations.” Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 6.

  53 A SURPRISE RESULT Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1919), 96; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 70–71.

  54 “We are at this moment” McClure’s, Nov. 1905 (emphasis added).

  55 “Out of hopelessness” Ibid.

  56 “In our industrial” TR, Works, vol. 17, 315–16.

  57 The Department of Justice Ibid., 318.

  58 the law should be positive In calling for the enactment of his program, TR used the phrase affirmative action. Ibid.

  59 Its prime focus Ibid., 322.

  60 The President kept Ibid., 321.

  61 To Aldrich, Depew Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1561.

  CHAPTER 26: THE TREASON OF THE SENATE

  1 But now whin “Mr. Dooley” qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 87.

  2 “YOU AND I” George Baer to Stephen B. Elkins, ca. Nov. 1905, memo in PCK.

  3 The railroads were weary Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 123–24; Oscar D. Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins (Pittsburgh, 1955), 266–67. For the complex (and ultimately inconclusive) story of TR’s previous “trial run” at tariff and railroad rate reform in 1904–1905, see Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Legislative Process,” and TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1028–29. See also Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 147–53. At that time, TR traded away his demands for tariff reform in 1905 in order to gain support for rate regulation in 1906.

  4 “the most popular” Washington Evening Star, 17 Jan. 1906.

  5 “The newspapers are” Ibid. Tillman is here creatively misquoting Julius Caesar, I.ii.

  6 Another weapon Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 202; Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 420; Gould, Presidency o
f Theodore Roosevelt, 166.

  7 In consequence of Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 159.

  8 He was fifty The author owes much to Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 213ff., for this description of LaFollette. Other sources are Ray Stannard Baker, Notebook no. 2 (RSB); Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 72–73; and Thelen, Robert M. LaFollette, which reveals among other things that the Senator subsisted on a diet of “granose biscuits, English walnuts, zwieback, butter and milk” (36). See also LaFollette’s Autobiography, ed. Allan Nevins (Madison, 1960 [1913]).

  9 “Mr. Roosevelt is” Twain to Albert B. Paine, 9 Jan. 1906, in Mark Twain, Autobiography (New York, 1924), vol. 2, 290–91.

  10 the outdated system On the same day that TR welcomed LaFollette to Washington, the banker Jacob Schiff was warning the New York Chamber of Commerce that the booming American economy was destined to collapse if something was not done about the currency question. Kolko, Triumph of Conservatism, 152ff.

  11 Elihu Root, a These sentences closely paraphrase Root’s language in an interview with N. W. Stephenson, 26 Jan. 1925, on the subject of TR v. Nelson Aldrich in early 1906. Copy in NWA.

  12 “the radical elements” Ibid. The New York Herald, early in 1906, estimated that seventy Americans were worth more than $35 million, or $630 million apiece in contemporary dollars, untaxed. Along with five thousand lesser multimillionaires, they controlled one sixteenth of the nation’s wealth. The Herald darkly predicted “billionaires” by mid-century, unless some redistribution took place. Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 16–17.

  13 “He told me” Sir Mortimer Durand to Sir Edward Grey, 11 Jan. 1906 (HMD).

  14 “study of Cromwell” TR had written a biography of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell (New York, 1889). See Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 705–7.

  15 The trouble with George E. Mowry and Judson A. Grenier, introduction to David Graham Phillips, The Treason of the Senate (Chicago, 1964), 23; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 131.

  16 As if on Mowry and Grenier in Phillips, Treason, 28.

  17 Roosevelt was not Ibid., 26; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 131; Baker, American Chronicle, 184–85. TR looked with particular displeasure on the Cosmopolitan series because, six months before, Phillips had published a book of essays, The Reign of Gilt, mocking him for monarchical behavior.

  18 IN ALGECIRAS Marks, Velvet on Iron, 67; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 145.

  19 White was under Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 162–63.

  20 SENATOR ELKINS TOOK Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 268–70.

  21 On 27 January Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 159.

  22 Tall and stately Powers, Portraits of Half a Century, 219; Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 2, 6. See also John Ely Briggs, William Peters Hepburn (Des Moines, 1919).

  23 the greatest challenge Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 267–68.

  24 More precisely Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1563; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 226.

  25 At one o’clock The following account is taken from Ray Stannard Baker, Notebook no. 2 (RSB). See Steffens, Autobiography, 509–11, for another such interview.

  26 (as Elkins preferred) Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 275.

  27 “I do not represent” Baker repeated these words to Lincoln Steffens that night, and Steffens said, “I gave him that yesterday” (Baker notebook no. 2 [RSB]). This is entirely possible: TR had previously borrowed the phrase fetish of competition from Baker. However, there is no record of Steffens visiting the White House for at least a week prior to 8 Feb. 1903, and readers of his memoirs will be familiar with his need to trump every conversational exchange. Steffens also claimed to have given TR the phrase a square deal in the White House: “ ‘That’s it,’ he shouted.… ‘I’ll throw that out in my next statement.’ And he did” (Steffens, Autobiography, 506). But see p. 233 for TR’s apparent coining of the phrase, with variations, on tour in the West.

  28 Even as he spoke Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 203; LaFollette’s Autobiography, 174.

  29 One of the Senator’s Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1560, 1564.

  30 “The one thing” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 56.

  31 THE COSMOPOLITAN’S SERIES March issue, on sale 15 Feb. 1906; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 45; La Follette’s Autobiography, 176. For a contemporary group portrait of the progressives of 1906, see Allen, America’s Awakening.

  32 Perhaps the fiercest The New York Times, 22 Aug. 1988. The original, pre-Doubleday text has been reissued as The Lost First Edition of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” ed., Gene DeGruson (Memphis, 1988).

  33 Now, at last The Jungle sold more than one hundred thousand copies in 1906, and was read by an estimated one million Americans. Christine Scriabine, “Upton Sinclair and the Writing of The Jungle,” Chicago History 10.1 (1981).

  34 Senator Beveridge sent John Braeman, Albert J. Beveridge: American Nationalist (Chicago, 1971), 101–10.

  35 “I recommend” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 381.

  36 In requesting Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 483ff. This chapter of Sullivan’s great saga is an exquisitely detailed piece of social history.

  37 Sinclair was but Ibid., 479; Upton Sinclair, The Jungle [1906 version], ed. James R. Barrett (Chicago, 1988), 2, 334.

  38 ALICE ROOSEVELT HAD Teague, Mrs. L., 128; Carol Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (New York, 1988), 102–3.

  39 frenzied press activity There are 415 large scrap albums of wedding reportage in the archives of the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, D.C.

  40 Roosevelt seemed Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 106; Rozek, “ ‘The First Daughter of the Land’ ”; Teague, Mrs. L., 122–23. Alice’s train was arranged by her cousin Franklin, who was good at that sort of thing and consequently known, among the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, as “Featherduster,” and “Miss Nancy.” Alsop, “Autobiography,” 2; Rixey, Bamie, 92.

  41 “I want you” Teague, Mrs. L., 128. Alice Roosevelt Longworth frequently repeated this remark to family members, always emphasizing that it was only half humorous.

  42 “Alice—Alice” Washington Evening Star, 23 Aug. 1908.

  43 ROOSEVELT READ TR, Letters, vol. 5, 156–57. John E. Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’: A Reassessment,” Mid-America 46.2 (1964), shows that TR’s reaction to muckraking in 1906 was consistent with his views as early as 1901.

  44 “I need hardly” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 156; see also vol. 3, 142. In 1906, Hearst was not only contesting his recent defeat as a candidate for the mayoralty of New York, but preparing to run for Governor.

  45 The pity was Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 531–34. Aldrich also yielded to pressure from TR and the American Medical Association.

  46 “The tone” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 19.

  47 If so, the Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 273–74; Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1564; The New York Times, 24 Feb. 1906.

  48 four other Republicans Aldrich, Foraker, John Kean of New Jersey, and the former Governor of Massachusetts, Winthrop Murray Crane, appointed to the Senate in 1904 after the death of George Frisbie Hoar. Senator Tillman, who voted in favor, was the ranking Democrat on the committee.

  49 Now began Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 244–45; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 204–5.

  50 The issue of Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1565–66.

  51 So, amid For an alternative metaphor, see Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 242: “So the battle raged until the wind-batteries had literally blown themselves out.”

  52 WAS ONE TO Sinclair, Jungle [1906], 36.

  53 (“Eik! Eik!”)“Eik! Eik!”) Ibid., 4. See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 178–79, for his letter to Sinclair about The Jungle. He wrote that, in his opinion, the author’s brand of socialism would result in “the elimination by starvation” of the poor people it was supposed to save.

  54 “I would like” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 176. TR’s desire for secrecy proved sho
rt-lived. See James Harvey Young, “The Pig That Fell into the Privy,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59.4 (1985).

  55 Roosevelt’s was a TR, Letters, vol. 5, 176.

  56 Sinclair’s description Sinclair, Jungle [1906], 124.

  57 squab stuffed Washington Evening Star, 18 Mar. 1906. The menu featured no beef or pork items.

  58 “… the Man with” Qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 94. Many sources mistakenly state that TR’s first “muckrake” speech took place on 27 Jan. 1906. On that earlier date, he spoke about the beginning of the construction on the Panama Canal. The dinner of 17 March was a special celebration hosted by Speaker Joseph Cannon.

  59 Roosevelt’s subsequent Ibid.; Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’ ”; Victor Murdock interview, 31 Mar. 1940 (HKB); Thompson, Party Leaders, 160. Thompson, who was present at the dinner, records that guests were so impressed that they urged TR to print his speech “as a public duty.”

  60 Nor was it Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’ ”; Baker, American Chronicle, 201–2; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 96.

  61 THE LAST THING The following account is condensed from those in Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 374–86, and Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 167–210.

  62 With some asperity Interview qu. in Jusserand, What Me Befell, 323.

  63 Roosevelt repeated Ibid.; Jusserand to M. Bourgeois, Documents diplomatiques, series 2, vol. 9, 725.

  64 Senator Knox had A superscript on William Loeb to Philander Knox, 3 Mar. 1906 (PCK), indicates that Knox was summoned to the White House from the Belasco Theater, where he had been attending a matinee, and offered Justice Brown’s seat. TR made clear that the Senator was his first choice. Knox declined (no reason given). For subsequent events, see Paul T. Heffron, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Appointment of Mr. Justice Moody,” Vanderbilt Law Review 18.2 (1965) (hereafter Heffron, “Mr. Justice Moody”).