Theodore Rex (141 page)

57
Charles Emory Smith
Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
, 120; Blum,
Republican Roosevelt
, 42.

58
It did not escape
Merrill,
Republican Command
, 34. See Fowler,
John Coit Spooner
, chap. 10 on the LaFollette insurgency in Wisconsin—a phenomenon that was to have enormous, if delayed, consequences for TR’s political career.

59
There was further
Literary Digest
, 28 Dec. 1901; Blum,
Republican Roosevelt
, 43; Merrill,
Republican Command
, 103–5. Attrition among Hanna-backed officeholders in the Postal Service began almost immediately. See the long list of new appointments in
The Washington Post
, 28 Jan. 1902.

60
Yet another anti-Hanna
James A. Kehl,
Boss Rule in the Gilded Age: Matt Quay of Pennsylvania
(Pittsburgh,
1955), 236;
New York
Evening Post
, 10 Dec. 1901; L. Clarke Davis to John Hay, 10 Dec. 1901 (JH).

61
ONE UNSEEMLY INCIDENT
L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay, ca. 24 Dec. 1901 (copy in HKB).

62
Roosevelt had developed
Morris,
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
, 611; James B. Martin, “The Irresistible Force and the Immovable Object: Theodore Roosevelt and Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles,”
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
, spring 1987. There is a comic description in Ambrose Bierce’s
Devil’s Dictionary
of General Miles “passing in review” before two observers and nearly blinding them with his effulgence. See the definition of
story
, example 3.

63
What angered Roosevelt
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 98, 241; Edward Ranson, “Nelson A. Miles as Commanding General, 1895–1903,”
Military Affairs
29.4 (1966).

64
Secrets embarrassing
For more detail, see Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 1, 243ff. In Root’s later words, Miles was “a real difficulty, and must … be eliminated.” To Philip Jessup, 26 Oct. 1934 (PCJ).

65
Miles played into
Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 1, 248. This was the famous Samson-Schley dispute. For details, see Edward L. Beach,
The United States Navy: 200 Years
(New York, 1986), 361–68.

66
His voice rose
Annie Riley Hale,
Bull Moose Trails
(privately printed, 1912), 2–4, qu. two eyewitnesses. Ranson, “Nelson A. Miles,” prints a milder version of this interview. But all contemporary accounts have TR shouting loud enough to be heard outside the White House lawn. “Poor old Miles … it was a brutal thing” (L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay, ca. 24 Dec. 1901 [copy in HKB]).

67
“You have the”
Isabel McKenna Duffield,
Washington in the Nineties
(San Francisco, 1929), 48;
The Army and Navy Register
, 4 Jan. 1902.

68
PURGED, PERHAPS
William Marion Reedy in St. Louis
Mirror
, 19 Dec. 1901. An extra contribution to TR’s
bonhomie
at this time might have been the successful appearance, in Britain, of his latest scholarly work, a chapter on the War of 1812 in the sixth volume of William Laird Clowes’s
The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present
(London, 1901). A lengthy review in
The Atheneum
, 28 Dec. 1901, rated it even higher than his “excellent”
Naval War of 1812
(New York, 1882). “Twenty years ago he was remarkably fair and even-minded; now he writes from the standpoint of scientific neutrality, which conveys no hint of his nationality.… It is not easy to express in measured language our sense of the merit and importance of every line of this admirable essay.”

69
Yet there was
P. C. Knox to TR, 11 Dec. 1901 (TRP). See also Thorelli,
Federal Antitrust Policy
, 423.

70
“I should say,”
William Marion Reedy in St. Louis
Mirror
, 19 Dec. 1901.

71
HOWLS OF MIRTH
Joan Paterson Kerr, ed.,
A Bully Father: Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children
(New York, 1995), 112–13; White House press release (hand-edited by TR), 25 Dec. 1901 (TRP).

72
The band swung
White House press release, 25 Dec. 1901 (TRP).

  
1
Divvle a bit
Dunne,
Observations by Mr. Dooley
, 57.

  
2
WALTER WELLMAN, REPORTER
Chicago
Record-Herald
, 16 Jan. 1902. TR amusedly told Hay that Senator Lodge was “frantic with fury” at press reports that he was “learning to ride, so as to go out with me,” qu. in Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 319.

  
3
To Wellman and
Unidentified news clip, 21 Nov. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Leupp,
The Man Roosevelt
, 311–13.

  
4
“You must always”
Spring Rice to Valentine Chirol, qu. in Wagenknecht,
Seven Worlds
, 11.

  
5
Charles William Eliot
Qu. in Richard Olney to Grover Cleveland, 14 Jan. 1902 (GC); Ecclesiastes 10:16, qu. in ibid.

  
6
It was the lunches
“I feel as though I should bust,” he wrote Nannie Cabot Lodge, “if I am not able to discuss at length and without my usual cautious reserve several questions—Dewey, Schley, Hanna, Foraker, Cuba, Bagehot’s Shakespeare, the Hallstadt culture as connected with Homer’s Acheans, the latest phase of the Monroe Doctrine, and the Boston Mayoralty elections.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1442.

  
7
The Washington social
For descriptions of the 1902 season, which included Alice
Roosevelt’s coming-out ball, see Rixey,
Bamie
, chap. 21, and Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 228–38.

  
8
“Theodore is never”
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 345. See also “Wanted: A President,”
The Washington Post, 1
Jan. 1902.

  
9
Adams was back
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 322–23.

10
The Fifty-seventh
Ibid., 359; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 225–27.

11
Roosevelt made it
Amy Belle Cheney [secretary], memo, n.d. (HH); Robinson,
My Brother
, 229; TR qu. in Messmore Kendall,
Never Let Weather Interfere
(New York,
1946), 130.
Koenig,
Invisible Presidency
, 151, claims that TR dictated as many as two or three hundred letters a day.

12
He hesitated only
See, e.g., TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 239–40, 242. William James wrote approvingly of “the safety of his second thoughts.” Henry James, ed.,
The Letters of William James
(Boston, 1926), vol. 2, 232.

13
The President was
Lewis F. Einstein,
Roosevelt: His Mind in Action
(Boston,
1930), 104;
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 218.

14
“Roosevelt,” declared
George F. Parker,
Recollections of Grover Cleveland
(New York, 1911), 250.

15
ON FRIDAY, 3 JANUARY
The New York Times
, 4 Jan. 1902; McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 263.

16
Hanna said that
Dwight C. Miner,
The Fight for the Panama Route
(New York,
1940), 125.
The reader should bear in mind a distinction, in the story here beginning, between the Isthmian Canal Commission (“Walker Commission”) and Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals (“Morgan Committee”).

17
It had recommended
New York Tribune
, 4 Jan. 1902.

18
At least one
McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 293. Earlier that morning, Hanna had urgently summoned Spooner to a meeting behind closed doors with sympathetic members of the Isthmian Commission (JCS).

19
On the very morning
McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 266.

20
“I want the report”
Qu. in New York
Herald
, 17 Jan. 1902.

21
Morgan hurried
Hanna called to warn TR that Morgan was on his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, breathing fire (George Cortelyou telephone memorandum, 16 Jan. 1902 [TRP]). According to
The Story of Panama: Hearings on the Rainey Resolution Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives
(Washington, D.C., 1913), 166, TR summoned every member of the Commission to his office immediately after the House vote on 9 Jan. in order to canvass their individual views. He then held a full, secret meeting at which he instructed the Commission to think again and issue a “unanimous” recommendation.

22
Shocked and depressed
Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 36; New York
Herald
, 17 Jan. 1902. Lewis M. Haupt, the most pro-Nicaragua of the ICC’s eight members, held out until the report was ready for signing on Saturday. Admiral Walker then led him up and down the corridor outside the meeting room, saying that “the President was extremely anxious to have a unanimous report,” in view of anti-Panama sentiment in the Senate. Haupt reluctantly signed. Haupt to John T. Morgan, 13 Sept. 1903 (JTM).

23
Experience had taught
Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 3, 74, 122; New York
Herald
, 21 Jan. 1902.

24
“The commission thinks”
Ibid. The
Herald
was a pro-Nicaragua paper.

25
A “Panama boom”
DuVal,
Cadiz to Cathay
, 157; New York
Herald
and
The New York Times
, 21 Jan. 1902.

26
Harriman began to buy
Specifically, a total of $166,613, which he later sold for a profit of $88,447.38. Photostats in New York
World
, 17 Oct. 1910. See also Cyrus Adler,
Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters
(New York, 1929), vol. 1, 207–8.

27
of all the well-dressed
Charles D. Ameringer, “The Panama Canal Lobby of
Philippe Bunau-Varilla and William Nelson Cromwell,”
American Historical Review
, 68.2 (1963).

28
Cromwell was the
New York
World
, 4 Oct. 1908; photographs in various publications; Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 2, 318–19; McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 272–73.

29
If Cromwell’s
Bunau-Varilla interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB).

30
It was hard for Americans
Bunau-Varilla, “Confidential for Mr. Lawrence F. Abbott” (PBV); McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 162, 290. John Bassett Moore, who worked closely with Bunau-Varilla in 1903–1904 (see below), observed, “He is one of the cleverest men I have ever met.” Moore to TR, 7 Jan. 1904 (TRP).

31
Now forty-two
McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 400–401; biographical sketch of Bunau-Varilla, ca. 1903, in JBM.

32
Bunau-Varilla therefore
Travail pour la patrie
means
labor for the fatherland
[France], a phrase obsessively repeated by Bunau-Varilla. William Glover Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy: A Study in American Political Geography” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1940), 176. Fletcher interviewed and corresponded with Bunau-Varilla at length.

33
As an engineer
“Arbitrage Entre la Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama et MM. Sullivan et Cromwell,” deposition, 24 Oct. 1907 (PBV); New York
Sun
, 28 Dec. 1901; Edward P. Mitchell,
Memories of an Editor
(New York, 1924), 343.

34
ON 24 JANUARY
The Washington Post
, 26 Jan. 1902. TR’s own gift was a meteorological map of the District of Columbia showing the White House to be an “Area of High Pressure.”

35
AT THE END OF
Story of Panama
, 279;
The Washington Post
, 25 Jan. 1902.

36
It was all very
The Washington Post
, 25 Jan. 1902; McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 263.

37
With new hearings
The House voted for senatorial elections, and the Senate against. Direct election of senators was to become one of the major planks of the Progressive movement.

38
“When you come”
TR to Spooner, 28 Jan. 1902, qu. in Fowler,
John Coit Spooner
, 262. Miner,
Fight for the Panama Route
, 124–25, makes a convincing argument for TR’s sponsorship of the Spooner Amendment.

39
“He really determines”
Wilson,
Papers
, vol. 12, 262.

40
From outer space
Cartoon by Edward Kemble in
Life
, 30 Jan. 1902.

41
A FEW DAYS
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 229. The day before, he had been waited on by members of the Industrial Commission, who were about to publish their final report on the trusts. While favorable toward combination in general, the report did draw attention to the “vicious and intolerable” discriminatory practices of some interstate corporations, and echoed TR’s call for compulsory publicity of trust workings.
Public Opinion
, 20 Feb. 1902.