69 Roosevelt listened and watched TR, Works, 22.365–67.
70 the unstoppable mockingbird See TR’s rapturous description in Works, 2.61–62. Grey wrote years later that he “had one of the most perfectly trained ears for bird songs that I have ever known.” Cutright, “TR Listens to the Music.”
71 “the woods and fields” TR, Works, 22.369. The Forest Park Hotel, where TR and Grey stayed, still operates in Brockenhurst, Hampshire.
72 “Take care of him” Kipling to Brander Matthews, 10 June 1910, quoted in Bishop, TR, 2.259.
73 Similar imagery The New York Times, 9 June 1910; The New Age, 16 May 1910; Literary Digest, 18 June 1910.
74 eight thousand letters Chicago Tribune, 10 June 1910. Most of these letters were mailed after TR’s Guildhall speech.
75 a spokesman for The New York Times, 5 June 1910.
76 “I have had” WHT to TR, 26 May 1910 (WHTP). TR replied evasively to WHT, in a letter unlikely to reach America before he did. “As to your more than kind invitation that I should visit the White House, I shall ask you about this to let me defer my answer until I reach Oyster Bay, and to find out what work is in store for me.” TR, Letters, 7.88–89.
77 passengers saw little of him The phrase, and all other details in this paragraph, come from The New York Times, 19 June 1910.
78 But she knew him well enough In Mar. 1898, TR had been ready to go to war in Cuba, even as EKR lay at the point of death with an abdominal abscess. “I shall chafe my heart out if I am kept [sic] here instead of being at the front,” he wrote. Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 170–71.
79 “I love Father” ERD to Edith Gregori, 8 Aug. 1910 (ERDP).
80 He agreed to speak William Bayard Hale, “The Colonel and John Bull,” World’s Work, Aug. 1910.
81 Later in the day Ibid.
CHAPTER 4: A NATIVE OYSTER
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 359.
2 Joseph Youngwitz Youngwitz identified himself and described his purchase to a reporter during the course of the day. (The New York Times, 18 June 1910.) His name appears in the U.S. Census for 1910.
3 Straw boaters undulated Some of the boaters, sold by street vendors, were banded with the word “DEE-LIGHTED.” New York World, 19 June 1910; Eleanor Butler Roosevelt, Day Before Yesterday: The Reminiscences of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 49.
4 At 7:30 A.M. The following description of TR’s return to New York is based on accounts in The New York Times, New York World, and New York Evening Post, 18, 19 June 1910; “TR’s Return to New York,” newsreel in Theodore Roosevelt on Film, Library of Congress; and photographs in Lorant, Life and Times of TR, 538–39. The World estimated the total crowd at one and a half million. By all accounts, it was the greatest individual welcome ever accorded by New York City, until the parade for Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
5 “He was smiling” EKR quoted in Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, 143.
6 “Will you kindly” Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 396.
7 “Think—for the first” Ibid., 399.
8 Roosevelt embraced his sisters Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt Cowles (1855–1931); Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (1861–1933).
9 Ted presented Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 339–40; Eleanor B. Roosevelt, Day Before Yesterday, 13–14.
10 Franklin Delano Roosevelt “Franklin ought to go into politics,” TR wrote, after FDR’s campaign as a Democrat for the New York State Senate was announced. “… He is a fine fellow.” (To Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 10 Aug. 1910 [ARC].) For the intertwined history of the Oyster Bay (Republican) and Hyde Park (Democratic) branches of the Roosevelt family, see Stephen Hess, America’s Political Dynasties (New York, 1966, 1996), 167ff.
11 “my original discoverer!” The New York Times, 19 June 1910. See Morris, The Rise of TR, 131–33.
12 latest issue of The Outlook TR, “Our Colonial Policy,” The Outlook, June 1910.
13 He had to turn New York World, 19 June 1910.
14 “I am ready” The New York Times, 19 June 1910.
15 [We] figured it Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 396.
16 Just above Franklin The New York Times, 19 June 1910.
17 “about five years ago” Ibid.
18 That evening The wording of this paragraph closely follows that of TR’s own account in TR, Works, 22.369.
19 He and his first wife For TR’s marriage (1880–1884) to Alice Hathaway Lee, see Putnam, TR; Morris, The Rise of TR; and Michael Teague, “Theodore Roosevelt and Alice Hathaway Lee: A New Perspective,” Harvard Library Bulletin, 32.3 (Summer 1985).
20 Being a young widower For a short account of TR’s tenure as squire of Sagamore Hill, 1880–1919, see Natalie Naylor, “Understanding the Place: Theodore Roosevelt’s Hometown of Oyster Bay and His Sagamore Hill Home,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, 30.1–2 (Winter–Spring 2009). The most extended study is Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill (New York, 1954).
21 “One thing” The New York Times, 19 June 1910.
22 a vow of political silence TR’s vow was transmitted to WHT twice on 18 June, verbally by Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and in a note delivered by Archie Butt. (Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 404; Pringle, TR, 534.) For TR’s literary ambitions at this time, see Henry L. Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), 327.
23 During the next TR, Works, 22.370–71.
24 Birds of Oyster Bay A copy of this extremely rare paper, printed in Mar. 1879, is in TRC.
25 Over the weekend New York World, 19 June 1910; New York Evening Post and Literary Digest, 18 June 1910. A veteran journalist rated TR’s current candle-power as higher than that of Jack Johnson. Charles Willis Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents (Indianapolis, 1929), 27.
26 the right to doze For Taft’s somnolence, see Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 18, 504 (“I have never seen a man with such capacity for sleep”), and Irwin H. Hoover, Forty-two Years in the White House (Boston, 1934), 269.
27 were convinced Morris, Theodore Rex, 508.
28 The letters Archie Butt For the diplomatic role played by Archibald Butt in the writing of these letters, see Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 388–92. WHT made a show of reluctance over them (“I do not want to say anything at first which might mislead Roosevelt into thinking that I expect of desire advice”), but the querulous tone of the first letter speaks for itself. WHT declined to address TR as “Colonel” in his second communication, saying that plain “Mr.” was good enough.
29 “I do not know” WHT to TR, 26 May 1910 (TRP).
30 Taft took credit for Ibid.
31 “[They] have done” Ibid. Henry Cabot Lodge was of the same angry opinion. Lodge to TR, 30 Apr. 1910 (TRP).
32 He mentioned WHT to TR, 14 June 1910 (WHTP).
33 Now, my dear TR, Letters, 7.89.
34 Two days later Joseph H. Choate (eyewitness) to Carrie Choate, ca. 1910 (HKB); Robinson, My Brother TR, 262–63.
35 “I am like Peary” Charles G. Washburn, Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of His Career (Boston, 1916), 166. A copy of the exquisite dinner program is preserved in SUL.
36 “I am very much pleased” Thomas Dreier, Heroes of Insurgency (Boston, 1910), 30. Quoted in Pringle, TR, 535. Actually, La Follette was far from being pleased. Ambitious to run for the presidency on a progressive platform, he got the feeling, during this visit, that TR had similar designs. For the political pas de deux now embarked on by both men—full of courtly gestures, solo variations, and teetering levées (with La Follette constantly afraid that he would be dropped), see Herbert F. Margulies, “La Follette, Roosevelt and the Republican Presidential Nomination of 1912,” Mid-America, 58.1 (1976).
37 Most of the pilgrims In private, the progressives were not so circumspect. “Glorious to have him back and ready to lead the great fight against special interest and for the common weal,” Garfield wrote in his diary. TR was reportedly “in absolute agreement” with the aims o
f Garfield and Pinchot, and asked them to work out for him a declaration of principles that he could publicly espouse. This would appear to be the nucleus of TR’s “New Nationalism” speech. James Garfield diary, 23 June 1910 (JRGP).
38 “He says he will” Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 416.
39 Colonel Roosevelt is now New York World, 20 June 1910.
40 “democracy of the heart” Mowry, TR, 52.
41 a fifth of the general populace The population of the United States in 1910 was 91,972,266, or 93,402,000 if Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico were included (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. [1911]).
42 Roosevelt had been wary Morris, Theodore Rex, 144–45 and passim; Sullivan, Our Times, 4.351.
43 “hideous human swine” TR, Letters, 5.264. TR complained to Owen Wister, who as a young writer showed Zolaesque inclinations, “I think that conscientious descriptions of the unspeakable do not constitute an interpretation of life.… There’s nothing masculine in being revolting.” Wister, Roosevelt, 34.
44 From infancy, he had Leary, Talks with T.R., 208–9. “I have never known that wonderful experience of being ‘flat broke,’ ” TR told his old Rough Rider friend Jack Greenaway. Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 341.
45 His radicalism In June 1910, TR was offered the presidency of the National Trades and Workers Association at the enormous salary of $100,000. He turned the job down.
46 Booker T. Washington Ten years after their famous dinner, TR concluded that Washington was “the highest type of all-round man I have ever met.” Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers (Urbana, Ill., 1972–1989), 1.439.
47 If he was less motivated “Roosevelt,” WW sagely remarked, “never works the heart out of himself.” Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, N.J., 1966–1990), 56.
48 During Roosevelt’s absence Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909). TR had ordered a copy of the English edition to be held for him in London. (TR, Letters, 7.76.) Gary Murphy, “Mr. Roosevelt Is Guilty: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for Constitutionalism, 1910–1912,” Journal of American Studies, 36.3 (Dec. 2002) notes, “There is scarcely a theme or a recommendation of the New Nationalism which Roosevelt had not already enunciated before Croly’s work.”
49 “An individuality such” Croly, The Promise of American Life, 174. An odd feature of this book, published nine months after TR’s departure from the White House, was that it consistently spoke of him as if he were still in power. On 4 Oct. 1910, Ray Stannard Baker noticed the book lying on TR’s desk at Sagamore Hill, “with passages heavily scored and pages on the fly-leaf with references.” Notebook K, 153 (RSB).
50 Roosevelt’s Special Message Morris, Theodore Rex, 506–8. Mowry, TR, 34, dates the “rebirth” of progressive reform (after its earlier trial run as populism) to 1902, the annus mirabilis of TR’s first term. Except for Robert M. La Follette, then in his own first term as governor of Wisconsin, “Roosevelt stood virtually alone as a nationally known progressive Republican.”
51 The issues he raised then The complete text of TR’s Special Message of 31 Jan. 1908 is reprinted in TR, Letters, 6.1572–91.
52 The opponents TR, Letters, 6.1587.
53 converging at state and local levels The phrase is taken from John Allen Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, N.Y., 1978), 9.
Historical Note: The summer of 1910 also marked the convergence, within the Republican Party, of insurgency and progressivism, hitherto two separate movements. As Kenneth W. Hechler differentiates them, insurgency was agrarian in its values, and nonetheless narrow for being fought out primarily in Washington’s corridors of power. Progressivism’s typical battleground had been the state capitol or city hall, where “social reformers, champions of the rights of labor, and scions of the business world advocat[ed] a greater sense of responsibility to the public.” (Hechler, Insurgency, 24.) Although the two movements became one for campaign purposes through 1912 and beyond, their Jeffersonian-versus-Hamiltonian differences prevented them from achieving true unity.
54 “Is this not” Literary Digest, 25 June 1910, quoted in Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 9. This was a commentary on a widely publicized prediction, by the chairman of the Roosevelt Club of St. Paul, Minn., that TR, Gifford Pinchot, and James Garfield were destined to lead a new party with a progressive agenda.
55 The fact that Hechler, Insurgency, 217; Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 300–301. For a full account of this purge, and WHT’s role in it, see Mowry, TR, chap. 4.
56 “I might be able” TR, Letters, 7.74.
57 On 29 June Sullivan, Our Times, 4.447. Sullivan was an eyewitness to this encounter.
58 Cannily, he emphasized Davis, Released for Publication, 192.
59 Many times See, e.g., Morris, The Rise of TR, 756.
60 He did not like The satirist Finley Peter Dunne stated flatly, “Nobody liked Hughes—nobody at all.” Philip Dunne, ed., Mr. Dooley Remembers: The Informal Memoirs of Finley Peter Dunne (Boston, 1963), 142.
61 Even Taft supported Pringle, Taft, 560.
62 “Our governor” The New York Times, 30 June 1910.
63 After coffee William N. Chadbourne interview, Apr.–May 1955 (TRB). A modern historian points out that TR had spent so many years in Washington that he had few close contacts in the state GOP. John Allen Gable, “The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party, 1912–1916” (Ph.D. diss., Kenyon College, 1965), 16.
64 “What shall I do?” Chadbourne interview, Apr.–May 1955 (TRB).
65 “I believe” TR, Letters, 7.97. The wording of TR’s telegram allowed for the fact that he did not personally attach much value to the direct primary. He told Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard, that same day that the machine would soon manage to manipulate it. (Lowell to Owen Wister, 8 Aug. 1930 [OW].) Wister writes of TR’s commitment to help Hughes: “In all his life, I see no decision more crucial than this one.” Trifling in itself, it largely determined the future course of his life. Wister, Roosevelt, 280–82.
66 He was bursting Margaret Terry Chanler, Roman Spring (Boston, 1934), 199–201.
67 “I know this man” Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 418.
68 “Jimmy, I may” Ibid., 261.
69 He came out of the house The following account of TR’s reunion with WHT is taken from the only primary record available, in Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 393–431.
70 Before leaving New York Evening Post, 1 July 1910; Lodge, Selections, 2.351; Paul T. Heffron, “William Moody: Profile of a Public Man,” Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society, 1980. TR’s other Supreme Court appointments were Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Rufus Day.
71 He had looked to Moody As early as 26 Sept. 1907, Moody, just appointed to the Supreme Court, had written sarcastically to TR about “those who regard [the Constitution] as a benign gift from the Fathers, designed to protect those of sufficient wealth from the consequences of their misdoing.” He went on: “Above all I dread a reactionary in your place. It is not so much for what he would do within the four years, but for what he could perpetuate … by the power of appointment, which for the next six years is of vital importance to our future development” (TRP).
CHAPTER 5: THE NEW NATIONALISM
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 26.
2 Roosevelt returned home The New York Times headline on 1 July 1910 was DEFY ROOSEVELT IN BOTH HOUSES. TR was denounced in the assembly for interfering in the legislative process.
3 “And the ‘Hundred’ ” Literary Digest, 9 July 1910; New York Sun, 1 July 1910.
4 chairman of the convention In the confusing terminology of 1910, this office (both at the state and national level) was qualified by the adjective temporary before and through most of the convention. It changed to permanent only when the party elected its chairman for the next two or four years. The distinction may now be conveniently ignored.
5 “Archie, I am” Butt, Taft and Roos
evelt, 434.
6 “I could cry” Lucius Burrie Swift to Mrs. Swift, 8 July 1910 (LBS).
7 “Are you aware” Victor Murdock interviewed by Hermann Hagedorn, 10 Nov. 1940 (TRB).
8 Roosevelt was struggling The fairest analysis of TR’s complex political situation in the summer of 1910 remains that of Sullivan, Our Times, 4.443–45.
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