The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (120 page)

Secretary Long complimented him highly on the report,
¹²⁵
as did many naval academics and newspaper editors. The
New York Evening Post
expressed “admiration” for his “grasp and breadth of view” of highly complicated material. “If profound study, evident freedom from bias, and command of the subject could place a report above criticism … nothing would be left to do but the enactment by Congress of the proposed bill.”
¹²⁶

Shortly before Christmas the mammalogist C. Hart Merriam announced that a new species of Olympic Mountain elk had been named
Cervus Roosevelti
in honor of the founder of the Boone & Crockett Club. “It is fitting that the noblest deer of America should perpetuate the name of one who, in the midst of a busy public career, has found time to study our larger mammals in their native haunts and has written the best accounts we have ever had of their habits and chase.”
¹²⁷

And so the year ended with a crescendo of praise for Assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt, who was now recognized to be one of the best-informed and most influential men in Washington.
¹²⁸
He was also, as the
Boston Sunday Globe
pointed out, by far the most entertaining performer in “the great theater of our national life.” But “it would never do … to permit such a man to get into the Presidency. He would produce national insomnia.”
¹²⁹

“From the neck up, at least, McKinley was every inch a President.”
President William McKinley at the time of the Spanish-American War
. (
Illustration 22.2
)

T
HE
N
EW
Y
EAR
was not twelve days old when a riot disturbed the uneasy peace of Havana, Cuba. Spanish officers smashed the presses of four local newspapers critical of the occupying army. The violence lasted about an hour, long enough to convince the nervous U.S. Consul-General, Fitzhugh Lee, that the lives of American residents were in danger. He sent home some urgent dispatches, and the State Department flashed a message to Captain Charles D. Sigsbee of the U.S.S.
Maine
, at Key West, Florida: “
TWO DOLLARS
.”
¹

While Captain Sigsbee pondered that cryptic cable—a prearranged code alerting him to be ready to steam for Cuba at a moment’s notice
²
—Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt pondered the first press reports of the riot. Next morning, Thursday, 13 January, he went into John D. Long’s office and shut the door.
³

The Secretary was amusedly aware that his subordinate intended
“to abandon everything and go to the front” in the event of war with Spain. Roosevelt had said so at least twice already, but today he was in such fierce earnest that Long wondered if he had not gone “daft in the matter.”

“Now, Senator, may we please have war?”
Wreck of the
Maine
in Havana Harbor
,
February 1898—Old Glory still flying
. (
Illustration 23.1
)

Attempting to jolly him back to his senses, the Secretary called him a “crank” and ridiculed his desire to get involved in some “bushwhacking fight” with Cuban mosquitoes. But Roosevelt would not be diverted, as Long noted somewhat pettishly in his diary.

Roosevelt soon realized that the “flurry in Havana” was no real threat to American security, but he volunteered his services, just in case, to his friend General C. Whitney Tillinghast II, Adjutant General of New York.

Meanwhile, Edith was lying alarmingly ill at 1810 N Street, having collapsed with suspected typhoid fever nine days before.
⁶
Roosevelt was “exceedingly put out” by this inconvenience, for it obliged him to cancel a trip to the annual Boone & Crockett dinner in New York. To make matters worse, little Ted was suffering from
nervous exhaustion.
⁷
Roosevelt’s own attitude to disease and frailty was the same now, in his fortieth year, as it had been in his fourteenth: if one ignored them long enough, presumably they would go away. No illness, not even the mortal kind, must deter him from leaving for the front at the first hint of war.
⁸

But the trumpets did not blow for him that freezing January day. He worked off his frustrations, as the Secretary had predicted, by “spoiling twenty pages of good writing paper,” in the form of a memorandum on naval preparedness, and deposited it on Long’s desk the following morning.
⁹
The document was signed
Yours respectfully
, but in its urgency and peremptory statement of facts it read more like a curt set of orders.

Roosevelt warned of “serious consequences” for the Navy Department if it allowed itself to drift unprepared into war. “Some preparation can and should be undertaken, on the mere chance of having to strike … the saving in life, money, and reputation by such a course will be very great.” He advised—insisted—that vulnerable U.S. cruisers and gunboats currently “scattered about the high seas” be concentrated at strategic points for possible blockade duty in Cuba and the Philippines. This redeployment must begin “at once,” since even a fast cruiser like the
Cincinnati
would take thirty days to steam north from South America and would arrive home without any coal. “In other words for the first five or six most important weeks of the war these vessels will be absolutely useless,” Roosevelt wrote, temporarily forgetting that war had not yet been declared. Such ships should be recalled “tomorrow,” and assembled at Key West, where they could fill up with coal and be ready for instant battle orders.

He was confident that Dewey, his man in Hong Kong, had enough ships to “overmaster” the Spanish Asiatic Squadron, but just to make sure, the vessels now patrolling Hawaii should add their gunpower to the Commodore’s. On the Eastern seaboard, “a flying squadron composed of powerful ships of speed and great coal capacity” should be readied for instant dispatch to the Canaries, whence it might attack Cadiz, or slip through Gibraltar by night and destroy Barcelona.

The memorandum ended with rapid-fire demands for more
ammunition, men, and colliers. “When the war comes,
it should come finally on our initiative
, and after we have had time to prepare.”

Roosevelt’s fine writing-paper was not altogether wasted. Something about his “impetuosity and almost fierceness” persuaded the Secretary to order the
Cincinnati
and several other South Atlantic cruisers into equatorial waters, and station a small force at Lisbon, where it could monitor Spanish naval movements. Meanwhile the formidable North Atlantic Squadron, which Roosevelt had seen in practice the previous fall, joined the
Maine
at Key West (ostensibly to begin “winter exercises”) and proceeded to fill up with coal.
¹⁰

Long, surprisingly, went even further than Roosevelt in suggesting to President McKinley that the
Maine
should be detached and sent to visit Havana as “an act of friendly courtesy.” McKinley sounded out the Spanish Minister, Enrique Depuy de Lôme, on this subject, and etiquette required His Excellency to express diplomatic delight.
¹¹
The President was, after all, his own accredited host. But de Lôme’s private attitude may be judged from a letter he had written to a Spanish friend a few weeks previously. “McKinley is … weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a would-be politician
[politicastro]
who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.”
¹²

Unknown to de Lôme, the letter did not reach its destination.
¹³

T
HE
M
AINE
DROPPED ANCHOR
in Havana Harbor on the morning of 25 January 1898. Spanish officials went aboard in polite but chilly welcome. Captain Sigsbee, not wanting to exacerbate local feelings, announced that there would be no leave for his crew. Contrary to expectations, no demonstrations of welcome or protest broke out in the city, and a relieved Consul-General Lee cabled: “Peace and quiet reign.”
¹⁴