The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (137 page)
Read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Online
Authors: Edmund Morris
Roosevelt, perhaps remembering his too-rapid boom in the New York mayoralty campaign, announced that he would return to Montauk twelve hours early, on 25 August. He was still an Army officer, not a politician, and “I feel that my place is with the boys.”
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There followed a week of silence and secrecy while the Colonel nursed his regiment back to health and strength, and Boss Platt’s pollsters sounded out opinions on Roosevelt v. Black. One of these pollsters was Isaac Hunt, the gangling reformer of Roosevelt’s Assembly days. He reported that only one Republican delegate in three would vote for Black. “Ike,” said Platt, “I have sent men all over this state; your report and theirs correspond.”
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On 1 September, the Easy Boss allowed the first news leaks indicating that he personally favored Roosevelt’s nomination. E. L. Godkin of the
Post
chortled over the prospect of two such ill-matched bedfellows coyly climbing into their pajamas. “The humorous possibilities of such a situation are infinite.”
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Chapman and Klein hurried to Montauk for reassurances that Roosevelt would not “take our nomination and then later throw us down by withdrawing from the ticket.” The Colonel’s response appears to have been guarded, yet positive enough for Chapman to
write on Sunday, 4 September: “We expect to put Roosevelt in the field [soon] at the head of a straight Independent ticket.”
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O
N THE SAME DAY
at Camp Wikoff there occurred a symbolic incident highly pleasing, no doubt, to the Roosevelt 1904 Club. President McKinley arrived at Montauk railroad station on a mission of thanks to Shafter’s victorious army. As he settled into his carriage with Secretary Alger, he caught sight of a mounted man grinning at him some twenty yards away. “Why, there’s Colonel Roosevelt,” exclaimed McKinley, and called out, “Colonel! I’m glad to see you!”
Secretary Alger manifestly was not, but this did not prevent the President from making an extraordinary public gesture. He jumped out of the carriage and walked toward Roosevelt, who simultaneously tumbled off his horse with the ease of a cowboy. In the words of one observer:
The President held out his hand; Col. Roosevelt struggled to pull off his right glove. He yanked at it desperately and finally inserted the ends of his fingers in his teeth and gave a mighty tug. Off came the glove and a beatific smile came over the Colonel’s face as he grasped the President’s hand. The crowd which had watched the performance tittered audibly. Nothing more cordial than the greeting between the President and Col. Roosevelt could be imagined. The President just grinned all over.
“Col. Roosevelt,” he said, “I’m glad indeed to see you looking so well.”
Before McKinley reentered the carriage Roosevelt made him promise to visit “my boys.”
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T
HE
C
OLONEL CONTINUED
to juggle, expertly but dangerously, with the two balls tossed him by Chapman and Quigg. When, on 10 September, the former publicly praised Roosevelt as one “who in his
person represents independence and reform,” Roosevelt himself announced, by proxy, that he was “a Republican in the broadest sense of the word.” He confirmed for the first time that he would accept, but not seek, nomination by his regular party colleagues. Any subsequent nomination by the Independents would of course be “most flattering and gratifying.”
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To make his position doubly clear, at least to himself, he wrote two letters on 12 September, one to Quigg defining the conditions on which he would accept nomination, the other to the Citizens’ Union saying that a new statement that he was still available as an Independent candidate was “all right.” The warmth and length of the first letter (thirty-six lines) compared with the curt brevity (two lines) of the second left no doubt as to where his true hopes and sympathies lay.
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However neither recipient could make this comparison at the time, and both continued to work for Roosevelt’s nomination.
T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Tuesday, 13 September, was a poignant one for Roosevelt. Demobilization work was complete, and the Rough Riders prepared to muster out, troop by troop. Although the regiment’s life had been short—a mere 133 days from formation to dissolution—its rise had been meteoric, leaving an incandescent glow in the hearts of its nine hundred surviving members. Civilian life seemed a dull, even dismal prospect to those who had clerkships and ranch jobs and law school to return to. Yet the glory had to come to an end. At one o’clock bugles rang through the grassy streets of Camp Wikoff, summoning the Rough Riders to their last assembly.
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Roosevelt, writing in his tent, was surprised to hear his men lining up outside. He had not expected the mustering out to begin until a little later in the afternoon. But now a group of deferential troopers ducked in out of the sunshine and requested his attendance at a short open-air ceremony.
Emerging, the Colonel found his entire regiment arranged in a square on the plain, around a table shrouded with a lumpy blanket. Nine hundred arms snapped in salute as he stood with brown face
flushing. He looked around him and saw tears starting in many eyes; his own dimmed too.
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Then Private Murphy of M Troop stepped forward and announced in a choking voice that the 1st Volunteer Cavalry wished to present their commanding officer with “a very slight token of admiration, love, and esteem.” Murphy struggled to summarize the “glorious deeds accomplished and hardships endured” by the Rough Riders under Roosevelt, while the sound of sobbing grew louder on all sides of the square. “In conclusion allow me to say that one and all, from the highest to the lowest … will carry back to their hearths a pleasant remembrance of all your acts, for they have always been of the kindest.”
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The blanket was whipped away to disclose a bronze bronco-buster, sculpted by Frederic Remington. From thumping hooves to insolently waving sombrero, it was the solid remembrance of a sight seen thousands of times in camp at San Antonio and Tampa, again in Cuba when there were native horses to be rustled, and yet again in Wikoff for the benefit of visitors and envious infantrymen. Roosevelt was so overcome he could only step forward and pat the bronco’s coldly gleaming mane.
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He found his voice with difficulty, forcing the words out:
Officers and men, I really do not know what to say. Nothing could possibly happen that would touch and please me as this has … I would have been most deeply touched if the officers had given me this testimonial, but coming from you, my men, I appreciate it tenfold. It comes to me from you who shared the hardships of the campaign with me, who gave me a piece of your hardtack when I had none, and who gave me your blankets when I had none to lie upon. To have such a gift come from this peculiarly American regiment touches me more than I can say. This is something I shall hand down to my children, and I shall value it more than the weapons I carried through the campaign.
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“Three cheers for the next Governor of New York,” yelled a voice.
“Wish we could vote for him,” came the answering shout.
Roosevelt asked the men to come forward and shake his hand. “I want to say goodbye to each one of you in person.”
Company ranks were formed, and the Rough Riders began to pass by their Colonel in single file. Many cried openly as they walked away.
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“He was the only man I ever came in contact with,” confessed one private, “that when bidding farewell, I felt a handshake was but poor expression. I wanted to hug him.”
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Roosevelt had a compliment, joke, recognition, or a ready identification for every man. As he shook the slender fingers of Ivy Leaguers, the rough paws of Idaho lumberjacks, the heavy dark hands of Indian cowpunchers, Roosevelt doubtless reflected, for the umpteenth time, what a microcosm of America this regiment was—or, to use the
World’s
metaphor, what “an elaborate photograph of the character of its founder.”
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Here were game, bristling Micah Jenkins, “on whom danger acted like wine”; Ben Daniels of Dodge City, with half an ear bitten off; languid Woodbury Kane, looking somehow elegant in battle-stained khaki; poker-faced Pollock the Pawnee, smiling for the first and only time in the history of the regiment; and Rockpicker Smith, who had stood up in the trenches outside Santiago and bombarded “them —— Spaniels” with stones. Here, too, were dozens of troopers whom Roosevelt knew only by their contradictory nicknames: “Metropolitan Bill” the frontiersman, “Nigger” the near-albino, “Pork Chop” the Jew, jocular “Weeping Dutchman,” foul-mouthed “Prayerful James,” and “Rubber Shoe Andy,” the noisiest scout in Cuba.
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After the last tearful good-bye and promise of everlasting comradeship, Roosevelt’s Rough Riders marched off to be paid
$77
apiece and discharged. By early evening the first of them were trooping into New York with wild cowboy yells. Within twenty-four hours the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry was dissolved. “So all things pass away,” Roosevelt sighed to his old friend Jacob Riis. “But they were beautiful days.”
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O
N
S
ATURDAY, 17
S
EPTEMBER
, the Colonel (as he would continue to be called throughout his life as a private citizen) braced himself for a prenomination meeting with Senator Platt. Confident
as he might be of his new political powers, it was noted that he, not Platt, crossed the gulf between them, namely the East River of Manhattan. He sneaked into the Fifth Avenue Hotel via the ladies’ entrance, shortly before three o’clock in the afternoon, looking somber in black and gray, but wearing a defiantly military hat.
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Advance word of the meeting had been leaked to the press, along with rumors that Platt was mistrustful of Roosevelt’s continued flirtation with the Independents; consequently the hotel’s main lobby was thronged with excited politicians and reporters. Anticipation rose as two hours ticked by with no word from the Amen Corner. Some pundits guessed that Platt would insist Roosevelt run as a Republican only, and that Roosevelt would agree, for the very good reason that Platt controlled some 700 of the convention’s 971 votes.
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Others said that the Colonel’s boom was already so great that Platt’s survival as party boss depended on his favor. Betting on Roosevelt v. Black ran $50 to $20 against the Governor.
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