The Everything Theodore Roosevelt Book (40 page)

At the height of his illness, the expedition stopped at a series of waterfalls that seemed impassable to the leaders. TR was of no value to them. He was laid up in the expedition’s one remaining tent. The situation was dire, to say the least.

Eventually, Kermit devised a way to lower the party’s boats over some waterfalls and saved the surviving members of the expedition. As a result, they succeeded finally in mapping a previously uncharted river, which the Brazilian government renamed after TR. He and his colleagues had paid a heavy price for the honor.

Even though TR did not pay for the trip with his life immediately, the illnesses and injuries he incurred certainly played a role in his deteriorating health over the next few years. That was not a concern for him in early 1914, when it came time for him to return home. He had another task: stopping President Woodrow Wilson from leading the United States into danger.

Anti-Wilson

After TR returned from South America, he began filling pages of various publications with articles and editorials on a wide range of topics. Initially, they were narratives of his expedition, some of which he had been writing while traveling. As 1914 wore on, his focus changed to politics, particularly criticizing the president and his policies.

Among the articles TR published in late 1914 were “Women and the New York Constitutional Convention”
(Outlook
, August 8), “The Right of the People to Review Judge-Made Law”
(Outlook
, August 8), “The Danger of Making Unwise Peace Treaties”
(New York Times
, October 10), and “The Navy as a Peacemaker”
(New York Times
, November 11). He was making his views of Wilson’s policies public.

TR was not attacking President Wilson personally, even though he disagreed with him on almost everything. Personal attacks would come later, especially in the presidential election campaign of 1916. In true political fashion, he disguised his messages nicely as he presented opposing views.

In one article, published in the August 8, 1914, issue of
Outlook
, he wrote:

However great our regret that we have not as a nation during the last few years adhered as effectively as we ought to have adhered to the policies which alone can make the United States a real and efficient factor for the peace of righteousness throughout the world …

Then, he wrote, “As regards any actions affecting only our immediate interests in this crisis, I shall, wherever possible, simply support the position the Administration takes.” That was the politically experienced TR talking: take a slap at the president’s policies, but swear to uphold them.

TR was especially critical of what he considered Wilson’s timid response to American involvement in World War I, which began in the summer of 1914. At first, the president encouraged Americans to stay out of it, even in the face of attacks on American ships and citizens, such as the sinking of the
Lusitania
.

The German submarine U-20 torpedoed the
Lusitania
on May 7, 1915, 11.5 miles off the coast of Kinsale, Ireland. The ship sank in eighteen minutes; 1,198 passengers, including 128 U.S. civilians, died in the sinking. Although the event was not the direct cause for the United States’ entry into the war, it did play a role.

The United States’ role in the war played into the presidential campaign of 1916.

The Presidential Campaign of 1916

The Bull Moose Party encouraged TR to head its ticket in the 1916 presidential election. But he declined. He had learned a lesson from his third-party experience in 1912 and recognized that his chances of winning under the Bull Moose banner were small. He wanted the Republican Party nomination.

The Republicans avoided a fight over nominating TR. There were seventeen names in play at the convention in Chicago, including TR’s 1912 rival Robert LaFollette. The party shunted the progressives aside and selected a compromise candidate, Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. The vice-presidential nominee was Charles Fairbanks, who had served in that position with TR during his 1904–1908 term.

The Progressive and Republican parties held separate conventions in Chicago in 1916. TR attended the Progressive meeting. Representatives from both factions tried to arrange a joint meeting to nominate TR, but the Republicans declined and nominated Hughes on the third ballot. TR met with Hughes after his nomination, then withdrew from the race.

TR threw his support to Hughes and campaigned actively on his behalf. His speeches tended to be bombastic and pro-war. Whether that helped Hughes is a matter of speculation. TR did launch direct criticisms against President Wilson, which did not help Hughes’s candidacy in some quarters.

In one campaign speech on Hughes’s behalf in Chicago on October 26, 1916, titled “True Americanism and National Defense,” TR said, “Before entering into power Mr. Wilson announced that he was going to insist on ‘pitiless publicity,’ but as a matter of fact we have never had an Administration where there has been so much furtive and underhand work.” He also attacked the president’s handling of the navy.

Unprepared for War

TR suggested that the Wilson administration had neglected the navy to the point that it had affected “the efficiency of the fleet and the enthusiasm of its officers and men.” Two days earlier, in Denver, in his oration, “Preparedness: Military, Industrial and Spiritual,” he attributed the country’s lack of preparation for war to “evil leadership given our people in high places.” He opined that “Mr. Wilson has not only been too proud to fight, but has also been too proud to prepare.”

TR’s charges were not always accepted unilaterally. People did challenge him on occasion.

In one of his last campaign speeches, on November 4, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he went all out. He criticized Wilson’s foreign policy, rallied for United States intervention in Mexico’s internal political upheavals, and attacked hyphenated citizenship such as Irish-American, Italian-American, etc. TR said there was “no room in this country for those whose loyalty was ‘fifty-fifty.’“

In his October 26, 1916, speech in Chicago, TR included an oft-stated opinion regarding what constitutes an American: “To divide our citizens along politico-racial lines is to be guilty of moral treason to the Republic.” Words like that incurred allegations of racism and anti-ethnic feelings against TR, which are still leveled against him today.

He even took a swipe at Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, who he labeled “a noble gentleman who, I understand, knits well.” That was an apparent slap at Wilson’s reluctance to enter the war. The Bridgeport audience did not take too kindly to TR’s comments. There was some heckling, but it was not the first time political opponents had chided TR.

Possibly, Hughes lost the presidential race because he allegedly snubbed TR’s 1912 running mate, Hiram Johnson. While Hughes was campaigning in Long Beach, California, he and Johnson stayed in the same hotel. Hughes ignored Johnson, though. That may have cost him enough votes to lose California, its thirteen Electoral College votes—and the election. (Wilson carried the Electoral College vote, 277–254.)

If nothing else, his fiery speeches were attracting attention. But, they may not have been conducive to winning support for Hughes. President Wilson won the election, TR and Hughes went back to their private lives, the United States entered the war—and TR had the audacity to petition the president to rejoin the army.

Trying to Return to War

Finally, President Wilson found that he had no choice but to involve the United States in World War I. German submarines were sinking American merchant ships at an alarming rate, and Germany had invited Mexico to join it in the war against the United States.

German Foreign Minister Zimmermann sent the German minister in Mexico an enciphered message on January 16, 1917, that proposed a German-Mexican alliance. Germany offered to Mexico the return of the territory it lost in the Mexican-American War. However, British intelligence intercepted, deciphered, and forwarded the message to American authorities on February 24. Its contents raised some eyebrows in the United States.

Finally, Congress declared war on Germany, only a month after the president—who ran on the slogan that he kept the country out of it—began his second term. Two months earlier TR had requested permission from the president to raise, equip, and lead a division of volunteers for service in France.

TR fully expected that he would become involved in World War I. In a May 18, 1917, letter to President Wilson, he wrote:

I respectfully ask permission immediately to raise two divisions for immediate service at the front under the bill which has just become law, and hold myself ready to raise four divisions, if you so direct. I respectfully refer for details to my last letters to the Secretary of War [Newton D. Baker]
.