Colonel Roosevelt (139 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
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).
5: T
HE
N
EW
N
ATIONALISM
1
Epigraph
Robinson, C
ollected 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 Roosevelt
, 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.
9
“The greatest service”
TR,
Letters
, 7.102.
10
That meant
Ibid., 7.102–3.
11
“Of course you must”
Ibid., 7.101, 7.95.
12
“He is evidently”
Ibid., 7.96. For some sample vacillations by WHT, see Mowry,
TR
, 56.
13
A poll conducted
World’s Work
, July 1910. Even fewer respondents expressed any concerns about TR breaking the two-term tradition of U.S. presidents.
14
He was in receipt
Lodge,
Selections
, 2.386–87.
15
“My proper task”
TR to Fremont Older, 18 Aug. 1910 (TRP).
16
the
Outlook
offices
At 287 Fourth Avenue, Manhattan.
17
a Haynes-Apperson
EKR to KR, 7 Aug. 1910 (KRP); W. C. Madden,
Haynes-Apperson and America’s First Practical Automobile: A History
(Jefferson, N.C., 2003), 92.
18
On a visit
TR,
Letters
, 7.115–16. Griscom went to Sagamore Hill to confide that while he was still a Taft man, he thought TR had behaved more honorably as leader of the Republican Party.
19
Then Barnes announced
The New York Times
, 17 Aug. 1910; Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 483.
20
But he kept
TR had made his vow of “two months’ ” silence on 18 June, which projected freedom to speak around 18 Aug.
21
“Have you seen?”
Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 481.
22
“It makes me ill”
Ibid., 482.
23
A news flash
Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 483. TR made his vow to “close up like a native oyster” on 18 June 1910. Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.442.
24
“So they want”
Literary Digest
, 3 Sept. 1910.
25
“Teddysee”
The word is a coinage of the humorous poet Wallace Irwin (1876–1959), who later in the year published a Homeric account of TR’s post-presidential wanderings in 1909–1910 entitled
The Teddysee
. This book-length parody, forgotten now, is a classic of American satire, rising occasionally to heights of surreal imagination. See. e.g., 38–43 for an account of TR’s Western tour.
26
“Ugh! I do dread”
TR,
Letters
, 7.80.
27
The truth was
Ibid., 7.111–13; James Garfield diary, 10 Aug. 1910 (JRGP). TR’s left shinbone had been severely damaged in a trolley accident in Lenox, Mass., on 3 Sept. 1902. For an account of this near-fatal accident and its immediate effects, see Morris,
Theodore Rex
, 141–43, 146–49, 150. As will be seen, TR continued to be plagued by bone and malaria problems for the rest of his life.
28
“It is incredible”
Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.449;
Literary Digest
, 10 Sept. 1910.
29
“I don’t care
that
” Davis,
Released for Publication
, 200–201.
30
insurgent candidates were registering
The Iowa state convention earlier in the month dramatized the President’s unpopularity in the Midwest. Boos and catcalls drowned out a resolution to endorse WHT for reelection. A giant portrait of TR was then winched down over the platform, to a roar of applause. (Mowry,
TR
, 128.) See ibid., 129–30 for other progressive triumphs through Sept.
31
his “credo”
The word is that of James Garfield, who worked with Gifford Pinchot on TR’s Osawatomie address. Garfield diary, 11 Aug. 1910 (JRGP). See Davis,
Released for Publication
, 209–11 for TR’s elaborate, and unsuccessful, effort to keep the controversial paragraphs of his address at Denver from reporters.
32
Riding across the prairie
Quoted by Carey in Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 236.
33
Yet it had been there
TR to Cal O’Laughlin in
Chicago Tribune
, 16 Mar. 1910. TR’s dream of leading cavalry volunteers into battle actually predated the Spanish-American War. EKR and Cecil Spring Rice used to call him in the 1890s “Theodore the Chilean volunteer” and “teaze [
sic
] him about his dream of leading a cavalry charge.” EKR to Spring Rice, 25 Mar. 1899 (CSR).
34
“against popular rights”
Bishop,
TR
, 2.301. See also TR, “Criticism of the Courts,”
The Outlook
, 24 Sept. 1910, and Murphy, “Mr. Roosevelt Is Guilty.” TR also attacked the Court’s decision in
U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co
. (1895). The Lochner case remains one of the most controversial in Supreme Court history. See David E. Bernstein, “
Lochner v. New York:
A Centennial Retrospective,”
Washington University Law Review Quarterly
, 85.5 (2005).
35
At 2:15
P.M
.
Nebraska State Journal
, 1 Sep. 1910; Robert S. LaForte, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Osawatomie Speech,”
Kansas Historical Quarterly
, Summer 1996.
36
Addressing himself
The following extracts from TR’s “New Nationalism” address are taken from TR,
Works
, 19.10–30.
37
“The essence of any struggle”
William Harbaugh was the first to note the Marxian nature of these words in his
TR
, 367. He emphasizes, however, that TR’s speech overall was Jacksonian in invoking “equality of opportunity within a propertied framework.… Roosevelt preached no proletarian uprising and envisioned no broad destruction of private property. Nor, significantly, did he call for the upbuilding of labor as a countervailing force.”
38
Gifford Pinchot sat
LaForte, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Osawatomie Speech.” The original draft of the speech appears to have been written by Herbert Croly, author of
The Promise of American Life
, and the final version by Gifford Pinchot. (Miller,
Gifford Pinchot
, 234–35.) TR’s textual contributions were minor, but the ideology of all those who worked on the speech derived so much from the progressive agenda he had himself initiated as President that he may still be considered the
fons et origo
of New Nationalism.
39
Throughout his address
Nebraska State Journal
, 1 Sept. 1910.
40
Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism”
New York Evening Post
, 31 Aug.,
Fort Wayne Sentinel
, 1 Sept.,
The New York Times
, 3 Sept. 1910; Harbaugh,
TR
, 369;
Harper’s Weekly
, 10 Sept.,
Literary Digest
, 10 Sept., New York
Tribune
, 1 Sept. 1910.
41
He never once
New York Evening Post
, 1 Sept. 1910.
42
Roosevelt himself granted
TR,
Letters
, 7.797; Bishop,
TR
, 2.303; Mowry,
TR
, 132.
43
He tried to sound
Proceedings of the Second National Conservation Congress
(Washington, D.C., 1911), 12–34, 82–93; WHT to Charles P. Taft, 10 Sept. 1910 (WHTP). On 24 Sept. 1910, TR published a defensive essay, “Criticism of the Courts,” in
The Outlook
, attempting to show that what he had said in Denver and Osawatomie was less sensational than newspaper reports implied.
44
“when a majority”
James Bryce to Sir Edward Grey, Bourne,
British Documents
, pt. 1, ser. C, 13.381. Bryce was an old friend of TR’s. They first met in 1887, when Bryce was researching his classic
The American Commonwealth
. “He has immense go and quickness—alertness—of mind.” Bryce to Cecil Spring Rice, 19 May 1887 (CSR).
45
“A break between”
Harper’s Weekly
, 10 Sept. 1910.
46
“When I see you”
Lodge,
Selections
, 2.389–90.
47
Roosevelt answered that
TR,
Letters
, 7.123. In “Criticism of the Courts,” TR noted that Stephen A. Douglas, in debate, had attacked Abraham Lincoln for “making war” on the Supreme Court. “If for Abraham Lincoln’s name mine were substituted,” he wrote, “this para [of invective] would stand with hardly an alteration.” Throughout the campaign of 1910, TR did not hesitate to compare himself to the Emancipator.
48
To Edith
EKR to Jules Jusserand, 6 Oct. 1910 (JJJ); Abbott,
Impressions of TR
, 88–89; WHT to Charles P. Taft, 10 Sept. 1910 (WHTP).
49
There was one
By the end of Sept.,
African Game Trails
, published on 24 Aug., had sold 25,000 copies. (Robert Bridges to TR, 4 Oct. 1910.) It went through five printings in 1910 alone. See, however, chap. 13 for its subsequent publishing history.
50
“rather like the diary”
Cecil to Florence Spring Rice, 1 Nov. 1910 (CSR).
51
the author’s movie-camera memory
See, e.g., TR,
Works
, 5.148ff.
Biographical Note:
Anecdotes about TR’s memory are so numerous that it is difficult to select the best examples. He himself described it as “photographic”
to Albert Shaw, editor of the
American Review of Reviews
, while his doctor, Alexander Lambert, noted that “his ear memory was as accurate as his eye memory.” Oscar Straus told James Morse that TR “read books not by lines but by pages, [and] could quote the exact words
and imitate the tones
of all who conversed with him.” Champ Clark once visited him in the White House to plead the case of a cadet who had been court-martialed, along with six others, at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. On this minor matter, TR amazed the congressman by repeating “substantially the entire transcript[s]” of all seven cases, totaling some 49 pages of closely typed legal cap. George Smalley, foreign correspondent of
The Times
, watched the President receiving a series of senators, and was reminded of the omniscience that had made Léon Gambetta a master of French politics. “He knew as much as they did about their districts and candidates and local affairs.” On another occasion, TR learnedly lectured some Chinese diplomats on their society and its problems. He explained afterward that he was remembering a book he had read about China some time before, “And as I talked the pages of the book came before my eyes.” (He said the same in 1910, after treating members of the Hungarian parliament to a surprise flood of rhetoric on the Mongol invasions of the Danube Valley.) His memory for people was contextual as well as visual. In 1912, he recognized a train engineer he had seen ten years before in Lenox, Mass. “Do you wear over-alls?… There’s steam around you. Somewhere in New England.” When a high school graduate said shyly that he would not remember her, TR put his hand in front of his eyes and said, “Yes, you were in a rodeo in Denver two years ago and you were riding on a calico pony.” To an elderly correspondent that same year, he wrote: “I remember you very well, and to show it I will tell you that you were wounded at a battle in the Civil War, and stayed to look on at the fight, and then found your wounds so stiff that you could hardly move.”
TR frequently flattered authors by quoting their work at length—in the case of the essayist Edward S. Martin, “word for word a bit of dialogue … that I suppose was ten lines long.” He astonished the humorist George Ade by recalling in detail a short story Ade himself had forgotten. When he met the poet Edgar Lee Masters, “he talked of [my]
Spoon River Anthology
, and seemed to know it all … some of it by heart.” TR’s memory in later life, however, was not infallible, and throughout his career he suffered from the selective amnesia characteristic of politicians. Albert Shaw, “Reminiscences of Theodore Roosevelt,” ts. (SHA); TR,
Works
, 3.xvi; James H. Morse diary (italics added), 9 Nov. 1911 (JHMD); Champ Clark,
My Quarter Century of American Politics
(New York, 1912), 1.437–38; George W. Smalley,
Anglo-American Memories: Second Series
(New York, 1912), 378;
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
, 5.3 (Summer 1979); Stanley M. Isaacs interviewed by Hermann Hagedorn, ca. 1920s (TRB); TR,
Letters
, 7.477; Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 381, 382, 375, 389, and
passim
. See also Biographical Note below, 661.
