Colonel Roosevelt (144 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
10
“I would much”
Post, “How Roosevelt.”
11
“I am not”
TR,
Letters
, 7.470–71. Norris was a La Follette supporter.
12
Nothing less
Ibid., 7.474. Andrew C. Pavord, “The Gamble for Power,” argues that TR, in Jan. 1912, was not looking for personal glory. Profoundly idealistic, he felt that the radical reform program he had tried to launch in his second term had been thwarted by Congress, then under the control of Speaker Joseph Cannon and Senator Nelson Aldrich, and thereafter by the Taft administration. He now saw an opportunity to transform the desire of some progressives that he reenter politics into a “mass demand of the people” for completion of his presidential legacy. Through the rest of this month and into February, “Roosevelt was presented with a huge amount of evidence that such a demand truly existed.”
13
He was attractive
Harbaugh,
TR
, 385–86.
14
his latest article
TR, “Judges and Progress,”
The Outlook
, 6 Jan. 1912. James Bryce reported to his government that this article “has thrilled with horror minds of a conservative bent, and especially the higher ranks of the legal profession.” (Bourne,
British Documents
, pt. 1, ser. C, 15.66.) Elihu Root, an eloquent representative of both groups, argued before the New York State Bar Association on 19 Jan. that the philosophy of popular recall “abandons absolutely the conception of a justice which is above majorities.… It denies the vital truth taught by religion and realized by the hard experience of mankind, and which has inspired … every declaration for human freedom since Magna Charta [
sic
]—the truth that human nature needs to distrust its own impulses and passions, and to establish for its own control the restraining and guiding influence of declared principles of action.”
The New York Times
, 20 Jan. 1912.
15
“Theodore Roosevelt is”
Baltimore American
, 24 Jan. 1912.
16
“It was the President”
Adams,
Letters
, 6.490.
17
“What can you do?”
La Follette,
Autobiography
, 547.
18
Taft had executive control
Mowry,
TR
, 226–27. In anticipation of a run by TR, WHT had pressured state Republican committees to hold their conventions as early as possible, before his campaign took hold. Ibid., 209.
19
He now began
TR,
Letters
, 7.451.
20
“In making any”
Ibid., 7.481.
21
The only major papers
Mowry,
TR
, 225.
22
Again citing Lincoln
TR,
Letters
, 7.483–84.
23
On 16 January
Mowry,
TR
, 205.
24
“Roosevelt obsession”
Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.472.
25
“I fear things”
Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 814.
26
“as hard as nails”
Hermann Hagedorn, “Some Notes on Colonel Roosevelt from Henry L. Stimson,” 12 Dec. 1923 (TRB). Corinne Roosevelt Robinson told Archie Butt that her brother “could never forgive” Taft’s insult. The breach between him and the President was “irrevocable.” Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 811–13.
27
“It is hard”
Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 804.
28
Major Butt noticed
Ibid., 839.
29
La Follette, too
Gable, “The Bull Moose Years” (diss.), 30–31; La Follette,
Autobiography
, 541–45, 586ff.; Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.473; Margulies, “La Follette”;
The New York Times
, 4 Jan. 1912.
30
He had hoped to
The New York Times
, 6 Jan. 1912. La Follette was an obsessive, but not self-obsessed candidate for the presidency. His primary interest was to advance the cause of progressivism, and his initial reaction to the Roosevelt presidential boom at the end of 1911 had been to offer to withdraw in TR’s favor. But the latter’s indecision made him soldier on. See Harbaugh,
TR
, 392–94.
31
Within two days
Mowry,
TR
, 210; TR,
Letters
, 7.485. Since TR had been so inscrutable on the question of his possible candidacy through Dec. 1911 and the first half of Jan. 1912, and since the governor’s letter was subject to several submissions, withdrawals, and revisions through 10 Feb. 1912, historians have long debated as to when, exactly, he decided to run against Taft and La Follette. The most exhaustive analysis of the available evidence is that of John Allen Gable, who concludes that TR “made up his mind sometime between the Norris letter of Jan. 2 and Jan. 16.” By 18 Jan., TR’s availability was a matter of record. Gable, “The Bull Moose Years” (diss.), 31–32, 66–69. See also La Follette,
Robert M. La Follette
, 1.385–86.
32
All this coordination
Margulies, “La Follette”; TR,
Letters
, 7.487–93.
33
Pandemonium ensued
The New York Times
, 24 Jan. 1912. The convention also endorsed James Harris for the Republican National Committee.
34
“Do not for one”
TR,
Letters
, 7.493. TR’s continuing reluctance to run in Feb. 1912 was proclaimed not only by himself in countless letters, but by friends and intimates who could sense both his doubts and his almost deterministic acceptance of fate. Albert Bushnell Hart remembers being invited to Sagamore Hill on 26 Jan. to listen, with others, to TR reading a proposed statement of candidacy. They felt it was too self-explanatory, and TR withdrew it, as if he was glad to postpone the moment of reckoning. Hart notes that by delaying almost another month before making a very different announcement, TR lost delegates in Colorado and elsewhere whose numbers might have clinched his nomination in June. (Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 254–56.) As late as mid-February, when TR was working on his Columbus speech in Manhattan, a young progressive named John A. Kingsbury took an evening stroll with him. “I remember that I was very genuinely impressed that night that the Colonel meant what he said when he told me that he would much prefer to retire to his home in Oyster Bay to lead the life of a private citizen … but that he could see the drift of events and he felt certain that he was going to be drafted.” (Kingsbury to Hermann Hagedorn, 31 Oct. 1921 [TRB].) See also Nicholas Roosevelt,
TR
, 79–82.
35
By 2 February
The petition was drafted by John C. O’Laughlin of the
Chicago Tribune
, operating, as he often did, on both sides of the media/governmental divide.
36
Woodrow Wilson preceded
La Follette,
Robert M. La Follette
, 1.400; Ray Stannard Baker, “Notes and Memoranda,” 21 (RSB).
37
La Follette, in contrast
La Follette,
Autobiography
, 605–7, 609; Wister,
Roosevelt
, 299–301; William Allen White,
The Autobiography of William Allen White
(New York, 1946), 449. All three authors were eyewitnesses. See also La Follette,
Robert M. La Follette
, 1.399–403, and Margulies, “La Follette.” The various accounts differ only slightly in details.
38
“That was”
TR,
Letters
, 7.499;
The New York Times
, 4 Feb. 1912; La Follette,
Robert M. La Follette
, 1.399; White,
Autobiography
, 448; Benjamin P. De Witt,
The Progressive Movement
(New York, 1915), 39–40. “In my judgment,” Gifford Pinchot wired the Minnesota Progressive Republican League, “La Follette’s condition is so serious that further candidacy is impossible.”
The New York Times
, 12 Feb. 1912.
39
“Politics are hateful”
Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 376.
40
He brushed aside
Margulies, “La Follette.”
41
Roosevelt supporters bolted
The New York Times
, 7 Feb. 1912. There was a similar bolt by progressives in Nebraska on 14 Feb. Ibid., 15 Feb. 1912.
42
On the ninth
For the text of the governors’ petition, see TR,
Letters
, 7.511.
43
A principle is
The New York Times
, 11 Feb. 1912. With the implicit endorsement of Hiram Johnson of California, the total of governors appealing to TR was actually nine.
44
Taft, seriously disturbed
The New York Times
, 13 Feb. 1912.
45
Actually, he meant
This was revealed by Mark Sullivan, writing with some discretion when Taft was still alive. Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.480.
46
“If I were any”
TR,
Letters
, 7.503.
47
He admitted
Ibid., 7.498; Mowry,
TR
, 226.
48
“It seems to me”
Root to TR, 12 Feb. 1912 (TRP).
49
“The time has come”
TR,
Letters
, 7.504.
50
Little more than two
Ibid., 7.495; TR, “Judges and Progress,”
The Outlook
, 6 Jan. 1912. In his letter of reply to Stimson, TR’s professed scruples about the recall of the judiciary, extending all the way up from the state to Supreme Court level, were so hedged with conditionals and veiled threats as to leave little doubt that he would move to implement it if reelected President. (TR,
Letters
, 7.494–95.)
Eleven years later, Stimson was still puzzled as to what made TR change his mind about running for the nomination after his disclaimer of 7 Jan. 1912. Hermann Hagedorn, “Some Notes on Colonel Roosevelt from Henry L. Stimson,” 12 Dec. 1923 (TRB).
51
Roosevelt set
The following quotations from TR’s speech, entitled “A Charter of Democracy,” are taken from
The New York Times
, 22 Feb. 1912. The version printed in TR,
Works
, 19.163–97 is almost identical with the newspaper transcript, except that “I” is usually rendered as “we” (i.e., the Progressive Party), and a few extra passages, apparently written much later, have been interpolated.
Historical Note:
TR has been much criticized by biographers for the alleged impulsiveness and political indiscretion of his Ohio address. But it was one of his most deliberate and long-prepared orations. A sequential line of judicial criticism can be traced back to his article, “Judges and Progress” in
The Outlook
, 6 Jan. 1912, itself essentially a repetition of complaints he had made about the social insensitivity of the New York Court of Appeals at Carnegie Hall on 20 Oct. 1911. That speech in turn harked back through his attacks on Judge Baldwin to his address to the Colorado state legislature on 29 Aug. 1910—inspired, as he admitted, by his conversation with former justice William H. Moody the preceding spring. Whether or not George Mowry and John Allen Gable are correct in calling TR’s Ohio address an “egregious mistake” and “serious blunder,” it was hardly impulsive. He extensively discussed its draft contents with Herbert Croly, James Garfield, Frank Munsey, William L. Ward, Oscar Straus, and other advisers, including a disapproving Gifford Pinchot. Straus was surprised at his inflexible determination to include the recall proposal. (See above, 614; Stoddard,
As I Knew Them
, 395–96; Straus,
Under Four Administrations
, 310–11; Mowry,
TR
, 212–13; Gable, “The Bull Moose Years” [diss.], 35; Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 258–61.) For modern revisionist views, see Pavord, “The Gamble for Power,” and Murphy, “Mr. Roosevelt Is Guilty.” In 1927, Henry L. Stoddard wrote: “No public man ever prepared his speeches so long in advance of delivery as Roosevelt; none ever gave them more careful revision. Those ‘impulsive’ phrases which his opponents by their denunciation made popular, were the most deliberately thought out phrases of all, and usually got the reaction he deserved.”
As I Knew Them
, 311–12.
52
“Shape your constitutional”
The New York Times
, 22 Feb. 1912.
53
“I know of no”
Ibid.
54
The reaction to
Ibid., 5 Mar. 1912; Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.477;
Current Literature
, Apr. 1912. Such comments, however, were all initial, and often reflective of shock. A modern legal historian has shown, in an important corrective article, that as the summer and fall of 1912 wore on, many liberal judicial thinkers inclined to TR’s point of view—Felix Frankfurter, for one, remarking, “Thanks to T.R. there is live thought on the subject.” See Stephen Stagner, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions and the Due Process Debate,”
American Journal of Legal History
, 24.3 (July 1980).
55
It was to be
Heaton,
The Story of a Page
, 299;
Wall Street Journal
, quoted in Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.537, 490–91;
The New York Times
, 23 Feb. 1912.
56
Doubts about
The New York Times
, 28 Feb., 24 Mar. 1912; Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.480–81; William Roscoe Thayer,
Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography
(Boston, 1919), 353–54; Adams,
Letters
, 6.518.
57
An appalled Henry
The New York Times
, 22 Feb. 1912. As early as 5 May 1910, TR had written Lodge from Christiania, Norway, to say there was a need for “very radical change” in the American judiciary. Lodge,
Selections
, 2.380.
