Colonel Roosevelt (47 page)

Otherwise, Root pointed out, any minority could assure control of a deliberative body by bringing in enough rebels, under a surprise resolution, to transform themselves into a majority. He cited as precedent the procedural manual of the House of Representatives. Adopting Hadley’s motion implied that every seat in the Coliseum could be contested, “and there would be no convention at all, as nobody would be entitled to participate.”

As the realization spread that Roosevelt had no hope of seating any more delegates, his dispirited supporters in the galleries streamed out of the hall, not bothering to hear who had been appointed to the various operational committees. They knew now that the White House would control all agenda concerning credentials, permanent organization, rules, and resolutions.

THAT NIGHT THE WOMAN
in white, identified as Mrs. W. A. Davis of Chicago, was brought to the Congress Hotel to meet the Colonel. He emerged briefly from his conference room, where urgent discussions were under way, and acknowledged her contribution. “It was a bully piece of work,” he told her, then hurried back inside.

Had he been under less nervous strain, he might have thanked her more profusely.
But throughout the day Roosevelt had been resisting moves to get him to withdraw in favor of Hadley, or even La Follette or Cummins, along with blandishments to keep him from bolting. He said he would not give way to any candidate unless the temporary roll was purged. And he told some furtive Old Guard emissaries, offering him a face-saving number of delegates if he would stay in the convention, that under no circumstances could he subscribe to the renomination of William Howard Taft.

He seemed convinced that the President was personally responsible for every dubious name on the roll. Thugs every one of them, they had stuck together in vote after vote on the individual state and district slates, completing the organization of the convention and proving that crime did pay in Republican politics. Or so it seemed to Roosevelt, in his red rage against Elihu Root as a “
receiver of stolen goods.” There could be no debate on the subject: his old friend was his mortal enemy. Having won the chair through the machinations of Rosewater, Watson, Barnes, and other
unconvicted felons, Root had shut out the legitimate delegates on Hadley’s list, all of them radiant with righteousness. Convention attendees who thought they had seen a solemn, impartial statesman on the podium were therefore subject to group delusion. Roosevelt did not need to have been there, or even listen down his telephone wire:
he knew what venality looked and sounded like.

Party regulars and progressive rebels crammed his suite until well after midnight, alternately preaching loyalty and revolt. “
I never saw the Colonel so
fagged,” Henry Stoddard wrote afterward. “For hours, his fighting blood had been at fever heat.” At one point, Roosevelt sent for Edith and asked, “I wonder if it would be better for Hadley to head the Party.”

Her reply was unhelpful. “
Theodore, remember that often one wants to do the hardest and noblest thing, but sometimes it does not follow that it is the right thing.”

The last of his visitors was Senator Borah, a man so divided that the cleft on his chin, lining up with his center part and frown, seemed to separate him into halves. He dragged Roosevelt into the bathroom and said, “This far I have gone with you. I can go no further.”

Borah made it clear that many progressives like himself would be loath to risk their political careers by bolting to a third party that might not last. Roosevelt emerged from the bathroom looking furious. But he was plainly wavering.

It was now nearly two o’clock in the morning, and the suite was almost empty. Would-be bolters had gone to the Florentine Room to hold a defiant rally against the GOP organization.
Their cheers and oratory could be heard down the corridor. Three tired intimates remained: Stoddard, Frank Munsey, and George Perkins. They urged Roosevelt to go on with his fight.

“
My fortune, my magazines and my newspapers are with you,” Munsey said. Perkins pledged his own wealth.

Roosevelt’s moment of decision arrived when a delegation from the Florentine Room burst in to request that he present himself. He reached for his campaign hat and turned to Borah. “
You see, I can’t desert my friends now.”

When he arrived at the rally he found it consisted largely of progressive delegates with legitimate seats at the convention. Some of them, indeed, were appointees to the credentials committee, but had vowed not to serve, in solidarity with their banned colleagues. His reception was tumultuous.

“
As far as I am concerned I am through,” he said. “If you are voted down,”—he was referring to the roll call on the committee report, expected later that day—“I hope you, the real and lawful majority of the convention, will organize as such, and you will do it if you have the courage and loyalty of your convictions.”

Roosevelt went on talking for several minutes, berating the callowness of the RNC and the perfidy of Senator Root, but nothing he said matched the impact of his opening statement.

After he left the room, Hiram Johnson jumped on a table and confirmed to dazed delegates what they had just heard. “Gentlemen.… We are prepared for the birth of a new Republican party which will nominate for president Theodore Roosevelt.” Gifford Pinchot thanked God. But Nicholas Roosevelt wrote in his diary, “I am depressed. It spells death.”

AS OFTEN ON
the eve of some climactic battle, there ensued
a period of uneasy calm in downtown Chicago, with no bands playing and traffic in the streets returning to normal. Convention officials announced a twenty-four-hour recess, purportedly because the various committees needed time to complete their work. The real reason was that Taft’s managers dreaded the coming bolt and were hoping that secessionist passions would cool.

If any sightseers were on hand that Thursday to watch the Colonel take his scheduled walk on Lake Michigan, they were disappointed. The weather was hot and damp. He spent most of the afternoon out of sight, conferring with intimates. Ominously, the Illinois delegation, which had been elected in the first great success of his primary campaign, announced that it was 56 to 2 against bolting. Four other states expressed similar qualms. Roosevelt was alarmed enough to issue a statement rejecting reports that he intended to march into the Coliseum and precipitate a riot. But he confirmed that he would bolt if it suited him, no matter how many cowards chose not to follow. “There will probably be a new national convention,” he said, “and we will then build up a new party.”

After that he was so much at leisure that he was able to spend four hours at dinner with his family and Munsey and Perkins. Timothy Woodruff, chafing under Boss Barnes’s iron control of the New York delegation, came over to report a threat from Mrs. Woodruff: “Timmy, if you don’t bolt, I’m going to Reno.”

“The crisis of the convention is at hand,” William Jennings Bryan wrote that evening.

There was no immediate resumption of hostilities when the convention opened for business at midday on Friday. But the report of the credentials committee served only to increase Taft’s majority to 605.
This could not have been achieved without the defection of forty or fifty Roosevelt delegates. Significantly, the day’s warmest applause was for Bryan, when he lumbered in to
take his seat in the press box. Old, bald, and Democratic he may have been, but at least he had once stood for a common cause. “
If you don’t look out,” a fellow correspondent joked, “the Baltimore convention will nominate you for President.”

“Young man,” Bryan said with mock sternness, “do you suppose that I’m going to run for President just to pull the Republican Party out of a hole?”

At the end of the day, it was obvious that the Taft forces were still playing for time, dragging out roll calls in order to exhaust whatever energy was left in the progressive opposition. By now, in any ordinary convention, the candidates should have been nominated. Root remarked, “Evidently there are delegates here who do not wish to go home for Sunday.”
During the umpteenth procedural intermission, the band played “You’ll Do the Same Thing Over and Over and Over Again.”

THE ATMOSPHERE
on Saturday, 22 June, was different and dangerous from the start. Root gaveled the convention to order early, at 10:43
A
.
M
., and at once the fake steamroller whistles shrilled, accompanied by accelerating, chugging puffs and a mocking cry of “all aboard.”
The Roosevelt family box was noticeably empty, with only Alice sitting like Cassandra, sure of coming catas trophe.

She joined in, however, when a group of delegates started chanting, “We want Teddy!” and “Roosevelt, first, last and all the time!” There was no fear of her father storming the hall and imperiling what was left of his presidential dignity. He had simply sent a message expressing the “hope” that his delegates would take no part in the nomination of a tainted candidate.

Since Hadley (secretly
racked with tuberculosis, and running a 103°F fever) had joined Borah in declining to bolt, the Colonel authorized Henry J. Allen of Kansas to read this message aloud. But to general frustration, there were four further hours of roll calls to endure before Root announced that the convention was ready to hear any statement the Roosevelt forces wished to make. Allen rose at 2:54
P
.
M
. He said that all he needed was “ten minutes of quiet attention.”

What he got was forty-four minutes of such bedlam that for much of the time he could not be heard.
But the pertinent phrases of Roosevelt’s message sounded clear, and were telegraphed simultaneously to ten thousand newspapers across the country:
The convention [is] in no proper sense any longer a Republican convention representing the real Republican Party. Therefore, I hope the men elected as Roosevelt delegates will now decline to vote on any matter before the convention
.

From then until shortly before six, when 343 of Allen’s fellow progressives boycotted the adoption of the platform, mutual hatreds seethed. At last Root
ordered each state that had a presidential candidate to present its nomination, in alphabetical order. Iowa, home of Albert B. Cummins, was called first. There was no response, signaling that the governor would join the progressive bolt. An even more deathly silence followed the call for New York. The progressive delegate who would have risen to name Theodore Roosevelt remained in his seat. At four minutes past the hour, Warren Harding of Ohio spoke for President Taft, and delivered an attack on the Colonel that had clearly cost him many hours with a dictionary: