Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  67 ON 29 SEPTEMBER Ibid., 424–26; Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 18; Minger, “William H. Taft,” 85.

  68 In his last TR, Letters, vol. 5, 435, 438.

  69 Color had become Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 460; Review of Reviews, Oct. 1906; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 239.

  70 Only those with Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 13 Oct. 1906 (TRP); TR, “Legislative Actions and Judicial Decisions,” Works, vol. 18, 83; David H. Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Harrisburg Speech: A Progressive Appeal to James Wilson,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Oct. 1969.

  71 “If I am” James Wilson, “On the Law of Nature,” in The Works of James Wilson, ed. Robert G. McCloskey (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 132–33. The author is indebted to David H. Burton for relating TR’s speech to this essay. Burton argues that TR, in the fall of 1906, feared that his recent sheaf of progressive legislation might be challenged by the judiciary, which was traditionally biased in favor of property rights. Be that as it may, historians may detect in the Harrisburg speech the first signs of what was to become one of the most controversial demands of Progressivism: popular recall of judicial decisions.

  72 Propelled by Summary Discharge, 178. TR’s order, transmitted by the War Department, was dated 4 Oct. 1906, the day of his visit to Harrisburg. As the quoted paragraph makes clear (see the complete order for repetitive emphasis), he had already decided that the men of the Twenty-fifth were guilty.

  73 His old friend arrived The following account is taken from Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 323–27.

  74 Lee remembered Alan Clark, ed., “A Good Innings”: The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham, P.C., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.B.E. (London, 1974), 69–71. See 1–7 for a biographical sketch of Lee.

  75 Lee left Lee, in A Good Innings, glosses over the redundancy of his visit, and is at pains to represent himself as having had to perform a painful duty in getting rid of Sir Mortimer. If he had come when TR had first summoned him, on 27 July, he might indeed have administered the coup de grâce, but illness delayed his departure until 3 October. Grey’s letter recalling Durand was dispatched the following day (Durand diary, 21 Oct. 1906) (HMD). Durand subsequently heard that “the President has been complaining of me through Henry White” (ibid., 12 Nov. 1906). See also Nevins, Henry White, 224–25, and, for TR’s “appointment” letter, TR, Letters, vol. 5, 458. When Lee reprinted this letter, he omitted the names of two alternative ambassadors suggested by TR: Cecil Spring Rice and Munro Ferguson.

  76 Sir Mortimer was Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 6 Dec. 1906, and to Madge Durand, 15 Dec. 1906 (HMD).

  77 Edith Roosevelt had Durand to “Nell,” 9 Aug. 1904, and to Coutts Bank, 16 Dec. 1904 (HMD).

  78 “I must try” Durand diary, 21 Oct. 1906 (HMD). For a full account of Durand’s recall, see Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 111–13.

  79 BY NOW, TAFT Magoon, former Governor of the Panama Canal Zone, was sworn in on 13 Oct. 1906. Although TR had told Taft to announce that elections would be held immediately, the corruption of Cuba’s political process was found to be so extreme that representative government was not restored until 1908. Magoon was a popular and gentle executive who issued no death sentences and was even criticized for his leniency. The United States withdrew from Cuba by TR’s outside deadline of 28 Jan. 1909. David A. Lockmiller, Magoon in Cuba: A History of the Second Intervention (Chapel Hill, 1938). See also Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 18–19; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 141.

  80 “It is important” Weaver, Senator, 113.

  81 Ignoring him The extraordinary care with which TR prepared for Moody’s appointment belies his reputation for hasty decision making. See Heffron, “Mr. Justice Moody,” and, for a parallel example at the lower federal level, Elting E. Morison, “Theodore Roosevelt Appoints a Judge,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historial Society 72 (1963). Moody proved to be a distinguished but sadly short-tenured Justice, of mostly conservative opinions, whose lucid powers of expression earned the praise of both Oliver Wendell Holmes and Felix Frankfurter. A collapse of the central nervous system forced his retirement from the Supreme Court in 1910. He died, after years of torment, in 1917.

  82 General Garlington’s Brownsville See Summary Discharge, 178–83.

  83 He stated Ibid., 179.

  84 Garlington had then Ibid., 180–82.

  85 On 30 October Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 309; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 232–35; Review of Reviews, Dec. 1906.

  86 Charles Evans Hughes Hughes, forty-four in the summer of 1906, had come to national attention the previous fall, when he acted as counsel to a state committee investigating the major life-insurance companies of New York. In the course of fifty-seven public hearings, he proved himself a “mental colossus,” investigating fairly but with such mastery of detail that many potential witnesses left town in order to avoid his examination. His success in winning the indictments or resignations of some of New York’s most powerful top executives won the admiration of TR, and propelled Hughes into public life. Even as he ran for governor, he was already being spoken of as a potential Supreme Court Justice or President. See also Robert F. Wesser, “Theodore Roosevelt: Reform and Reorganization of the Republican Party in New York, 1901–1909,” New York History 46.3 (1965).

  87 Washington listened Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 9, 118–19.

  88 “There is some” Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 309–10.

  89 one syllable Root, speaking in Utica, had quoted the passage in TR’s First Annual Message to do with journalistic rabble-rousers who “sowed the wind” of anarchy. “I say by the President’s authority that in penning these words, with the horror of President McKinley’s murder fresh before him, he had Mr. Hearst specifically in mind.” Outlook, 10 Nov. 1906.

  90 Root’s statement had As Mark Sullivan notes, the speech destroyed any chance Root had of being nominated for the presidency himself. He had incurred the enmity of Hearst in his own home state. Our Times, vol. 3, 280.

  91 “You can not” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 9, 118.

  92 With that, he Emma Lou Thornbrough, “The Brownsville Episode and the Negro Vote,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (Dec. 1957); Summary Discharge, 183; Weaver, Senator, 116; The New York Times, 21 Nov. 1906. Among the few empirical certainties in American history is that “Princess Alice” would not long have tolerated life in Cincinnati, Ohio.

  Historical Note: The disparity between the date of TR’s order and its actual release on 7 Nov. has caused confusion in some sources. See Thornbrough, “Brownsville Episode,” and Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 309, for contemporary anger at TR’s manipulation of the election.

  93 Across the nation Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 236; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 488–89.

  94 “Well, we have” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 488. Optimistic as always, TR did not choose to see a conservative backlash against progressivism developing in the Republican Party, as evinced by the antilabor vote and increased majorities for Foraker and Cannon (499).

  95 “By direction of” Summary Discharge, 183. See Lewis N. Wynne, “Brownsville: The Reaction of the Negro Press,” Phylon 33 (1972).

  96 There followed Weaver, Senator, 68–72; Summary Discharge, 183–84.

  97 For the last Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 446.

  98 arrogance of tone and language This phrase was used by Sir Mortimer Durand in a dispatch of 19 Oct. 1906. The Ambassador also quoted one of TR’s friends: “He feels his time is short.” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 128.

  99 “The order in” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 490. TR’s addressee was Governor Curtis Guild, Jr., of Massachusetts.

  100 Roosevelt’s name For black reaction to TR’s order, see Thornbrough, “The Brownsville Episode,” passim; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 446; Weaver, Brownsville Raid, 98–102.

  101 HE HAD SEEN Ibid., 496; Harper’s Weekly, 8 Dec. 1906.

  Historical Note: TR arrived off Colón on the afternoon of 14 Nov. 1
906. Accompanied by his wife, doctor, and a small party of aides and press, he crossed the Isthmus the next day to inspect the Pacific approaches to the Canal Zone at La Boca. He spent the night in Panama City as the guest of President Amador. On 16 Nov., he explored the Culebra Cut, and the next day returned to Colón via Gatun (see text). The Louisiana left Limón Bay that evening. En route back to the United States, TR visited Puerto Rico. He arrived in Washington on 26 Nov.

  102 Imaginations less vivid For the intensely stimulative effect of Panama on TR’s fancy, see his two letters to Kermit in ibid., 495–98. See also his extraordinary, illustrated Special Message of the President of the United States Concerning the Panama Canal, 17 Dec. 1906 (Washington, D.C., 1906), which shows a concern for human welfare (“I inspected between twenty and thirty water closets”) never before seen in presidential documents.

  103 Roosevelt heard Panama Star and Herald, 17 Nov. 1906; Palmer, With My Own Eyes, 266–67. For comprehensive accounts of TR’s three days in Panama, see Panama Canal Review, Roosevelt Centennial supplement, 7 Nov. 1958, and McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 492–99.

  104 Food was The author is indebted to Palmer, With My Own Eyes, 267–68, for the following story. Palmer accompanied TR through Culebra Cut. Extra details (including TR’s “rapid-fire volley” interrogation style) come from The New York Times, 17 Nov. 1906, and Panama Star and Herald, 17 and 18 Nov. 1906.

  105 Taking the hint TR, Letters, vol. 5, 498.

  106 Much of it Ibid., 499, 504; Panama Canal Review, 7 Nov. 1958; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 501.

  107 He could not wait TR, Letters, vol. 5, 496; Panama Star and Herald, 18 Nov. 1906. The precipitation accompanying TR’s visit was the heaviest in fifteen years.

  108 “STEVENS AND HIS” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 497.

  109 “a big fellow” Ibid., 495, 497.

  110 “so hardy, so efficient” Ibid., 497. See also TR’s Special Message of the President of the United States Concerning the Panama Canal (Washington, D.C., 1906).

  111 NEW YORK William H. Taft to TR, 17 Nov. 1906 (TRP). This cable, sent to Colón, missed TR’s departure for Ponce and had to be relayed there.

  112 If press reports The reports were accurate. But on 20 November, Taft, worried at TR’s unexplained failure to reply to his cable of three days before, ordered the discharges to proceed. Taft to Mrs. Taft (“The President is worked up on the subject”), 21 Nov. 1906 (WHT); Weaver, Senator, 118; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 498.

  113 While he continued Weaver, Senator, 118–19. The last man discharged was also the longest to live. See passim, for the story of Dorsie Willis.

  114 BY NOW, A Ibid.; Lane, Brownsville Affair, 226–28.

  115 This case was Constitution League pressure had been the indirect cause of Taft’s suspension order. See Lane, Brownsville Affair, chap. 2.

  116 At the end Charles [illegible] of IRS, New York, to William Loeb, Jr., 30 Nov. 1907, warning that Stewart was likely to be “impertinent” to the President (TRP). The “communication” of Stewart to TR cited in Lane, Brownsville Affair, 28 and 32, is not in TRP.

  117 Beyond ambition Joseph Benson Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life (Cincinnati, 1916), vol. 1, 178. See also Weaver, Senator, 32 and passim.

  118 He was so Foraker, I Would Live It Again, 277.

  119 “The members of” TR, Works, vol. 17, 414–15.

  Historical Note: At thirty thousand words (printed “thruout” in simplified-spelling style), the Message was his longest yet. The progressive themes he had sounded a year before emerged more insistently, in calls for extended employers’ liability, stronger regulation of corporations, a mandatory eight-hour day, and a drastic law against child labor. He condemned the uncontrolled killing of seals in Alaska in language of great zoological precision, and added an income tax as well as an inheritance tax to his suggested (but not requested) revise of internal-revenue law. Elsewhere, invocations of family values and naval might represented the old Theodore Roosevelt, as did an eccentric final suggestion that rifle clubs should be established across the country, in emulation of “the little republic of Switzerland.” TR, Works, vol. 17, 401–80.

  120 Unfortunately for Weaver, Senator, 121. It was extraordinary, indeed discourteous, for such a proposal to be made before the traditional reading of the President’s Message. But Foraker’s hand had been forced when Senator Boies Penrose offered a weaker resolution immediately after the convening of Congress on 3 Dec. Both resolutions were approved, forcing both Taft and TR to document their actions. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 240.

  121 The resolution Weaver, Senator, 121; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 240.

  122 Roosevelt remained TR, Letters, vol. 5, 521.

  123 ALL IN ALL Ibid., 524. TR was the first American to win a Nobel Prize. The award was announced on 10 Dec. 1906, but he appears to have been informed at least five days earlier (521).

  124 He added Ibid.

  Historical Note: This project never materialized. The foundation, constituted by an act of Congress in 1907, let TR’s prize money lie unused for ten years. In July 1917, TR asked Congress to return it to him, and distributed it to various charities offering relief to victims of the Great War. By then, the sum had grown to more than $45,482, or $818, 676 in contemporary dollars. Straus, Under Four Administrations, 240–42.

  125 To Kermit, he TR, Letters, vol. 5, 520–21.

  126 laughter seemed strained Sir Mortimer Durand to Sir Edward Grey, 14 Dec. 1906 (HMD). TR could hardly be expected to find funny a blackface skit in which an old Negro from Tuskegee allowed, “I had a boy in dem colored troops down at Brownsville, but I ’spect he’s on his way home now.” Weaver, Senator, 125.

  127 “Now don’t” The author takes the liberty of inferring damn from the four hyphens in Sir Mortimer’s above-cited report.

  128 “It is not” Durand diary, 10 Dec. 1906 (HMD).

  Chronological Note: Another probable reason for TR’s strain this evening was a current sensation in the press over his dismissal, earlier in the year, of the United States Ambassador to Austria, Bellamy Storer. Mrs. Storer, an aunt of Nicholas Longworth, had for years been monomaniacally lobbying every person of influence in the Northern Hemisphere in behalf of a red hat for her favorite archbishop, John Ireland of St. Paul. Her willingness to use TR’s name, and even private letters from him, in efforts to cow the Pope, ended her husband’s somewhat somnolent diplomatic career. The “ ‘Dear Maria’ Affair,” as it came to be known, reached its climax on 8 Dec. 1906, after Bellamy Storer’s own self-pitying account of his dismissal, quoting other Roosevelt letters, was leaked to the Boston Herald. TR, more amused than annoyed, issued a devastating public response on 10 Dec. He would have been less amused if he had known that the paper’s informant was Joseph B. Foraker. For full accounts, see Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 128, and Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, chap. 6.

  129 A good motto Sir Mortimer Durand, “Report on the United States of America for the Year 1906,” in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 159. The noun rem in Horace’s epigram is often inaccurately given as “money.”

  130 a special message The quotations from TR’s first Brownsville message are taken from Richardson, Compilation, vol. 10, 7710–11.

  131 As to the Ibid., 7712.

  132 “WHEN YOU TURNED” The following dialogue is taken from Wister, Roosevelt, 225–26. Wister does not give the date of this walk, but says that it occurred “just in the middle of the Brownsville disturbance. This, plus TR’s invitation of 5 Nov. 1906, “Do let me see you as soon as possible after I come back from Panama,” suggests a White House visit before the end of the year (264).

  133 “And then jump” According to Isabel Anderson, Presidents and Pies (Boston, 1920), 29, a popular riddle in Washington at this time was:

  Q: Why is Roosevelt like a grasshopper?

  A: Because you never know which way he’ll hop, but when he does, he hops like hell.

  CHAPTER 28: THE CLOUDS T
HAT ARE GATHERING

  1 “We’ve been” “Mr. Dooley” in Washington Evening Star, 30 Dec. 1906.

  2 luxuriate in his Nobel TR’s Nobel Prize now glitters on the mantelpiece in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

  3 note of grimness New York Sun, 2 Jan. 1907. For a detailed account of this reception, see the Prologue to Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. TR’s handshake record still stands in the Guinness Book of World Records, 2001.

  4 quarter of a century See Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt, 249–51.

  5 Then, as ever Ibid., 255. The dominant note of TR’s Sixth Annual Message, Literary Digest (15 Dec. 1906) remarked, had been “a demand for greater centralization of power.”

  6 On 14 January The New York Times, 15 Jan. 1907. TR also withdrew his order that dischargees be denied civil employment in the government.

  7 a full investigation Authorized by the Senate on 22 Jan. 1907.

  8 “this belief in” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 631.

  9 Such an opportunity Ibid.; Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46–47.

  10 Judge Gary praised Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46–47. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 563.

  11 This was a Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46–47.

  12 a giant trust Strouse, Morgan, 469–70.

  13 IF MEMBERS OF Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is based on a reminiscence by Samuel G. Blythe, ca. Jan. 1932, in HBP and a letter of Joseph Foraker, 29 Jan. 1907, qu. in Foraker’s own Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 249–57. Other accounts appear in Arthur Wallace Dunn, Gridiron Nights (New York, 1915), 182–87; Watson, As I Knew Them, 70–73; and Clark, My Quarter Century, vol. 2, 443–49.

  14 a table perpendicular The evening’s seating arrangements, confused in all written accounts, are mapped out by the Washington Herald, 27 Jan. 1907, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

  15 All coons look Blythe reminiscence (HBP).

  16 “I would like” Ibid.

  17 “the mob” The Washington Post, 29 Jan. 1907.