Theodore Rex (150 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
90
“In a most quiet”
“Each one of the procedures [TR] used, and even those he planned to use … have been utilized by later Presidents confronted with similar situations,” William M. Goldsmith writes. “The country waited almost fifty years
for the Supreme Court to consider the full implications of such a power, and to establish limits in its application.”
The Growth of Presidential Power: A Documented History
(New York, 1974), vol. 2, 1168.
91
At home, Roosevelt
TR to Benjamin Odell, 22 Mar. 1903 (unsent) (ER).
: N
OT A
C
LOUD ON THE
H
ORIZON
1
In this palace
“Mr. Dooley,” in
Collier’s Weekly
, ca. Nov. 1902 (HH).
2
“THE PRESIDENT”
Memorandum to John Hay, 23 Oct. 1902, in TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 367.
3
Harper’s Weekly
Qu. in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel, eds.,
History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968
(New York, 1971), vol. 3, 2009–10. See also “President Roosevelt’s Influence in the Election,”
Literary Digest
, 15 Nov. 1902. Significantly, no prominent Democrat campaigner in the current congressional elections challenged TR’s Philippines policy. Welch,
Response to Imperialism
, 72.
4
Tributes, in the
James Wilson to TR, 21 July 1902 (TRP).
5
At latest count
New York
Commercial Advertiser
, 4 Oct. 1902. Actually, TR now had sixteen states, Rhode Island having pledged to him on 9 Oct. See also Rixey,
Bamie
, chap. 23; Willis Van Devanter to F. E. Warren, 13 May 1903 (WVD).
6
“come to the front”
Willis Van Devanter to F. E. Warren, 13 May 1903 (WVD).
7
Roosevelt’s long-term
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 372; Kehl,
Boss Rule
, 240; Douglas,
Many-Sided Roosevelt
, 89.
8
A guest at
Helen Nicolay qu. in Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 251.
9
Edith was busy
Ibid., 245.
10
ON 4 NOVEMBER
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 374. TR blamed the Philippines scandal for the erosion of his popular support. “The court-martial of General Smith cost me votes—
votes!”
he growled to Herbert Welsh. Welsh to Carl Schurz, 2 Nov. 1902 (CS).
11
Even so
Gould,
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
, 71–72;
Literary Digest
, 15 Nov. 1902; Kenneth J. Martis, ed.,
Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the U.S. Congress, 1789–1989
(New York, 1989), 157.
12
Roosevelt’s hopes
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 373–74; Merrill,
Republican Command
, 126–33. LaFollette was re-elected Governor with a large majority. TR could not have welcomed this result, having earlier congratulated Congressman Joseph W. Babcock for fighting to prevent LaFollette’s nomination. LaFollette sourly quotes this letter in
LaFollette’s Autobiography
(Madison, 1913), 312. TR did, however, arrest the insurgency somewhat by persuading Governor Cummins of Iowa to abandon his “Iowa Idea” for a tax policy less hostile to big business. Gould,
Reform and Regulation
, 35–36.
13
A SIGNBOARD READING
The date was 13 Nov. 1902. Except where otherwise indicated, the following two sections are based on eyewitness reporting by an unnamed correspondent of the Associated Press and Lindsay Denison of the New York
Sun
. TR granted both men exclusive permission to accompany him. The former’s coverage appeared in
The Washington Post
, 14–19 Nov. 1902, and Denison’s daily reports were subsequently republished (with photographs) as “President Roosevelt’s Mississippi Bear Hunt” in
Outing
, Feb. 1903. Supplementary details from Holt Collier interview,
Saturday Evening Post
, 10 Apr. 1909, and Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
14
On one side
TR to John L. McIlhenny, 21 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Washington
Evening Star
, 15 and 12 Nov. 1902.
15
Among the bale-sitters
Edgar S. Wilson in
Booker T. Washington Papers
, vol. 6, 375; Dewey W. Grantham, Jr., “Dinner at the White House: Theodore Roosevelt,
Booker T. Washington and the South,”
Tennessee Historical Quarterly
18 (1958). The repercussions of the Crum appointment (which Dr. Washington had urged upon TR) are discussed below, in chap. 14.
16
he elsewhere favored
On 10 Nov., e.g., TR had replaced Alabama’s Lily White Republican Collector of Internal Revenue with a Booker T. Washington–endorsed Gold Democrat.
The Washington Post
, 11 Nov. 1902. See also Seth M. Scheiner, “President Roosevelt and the Negro, 1901–1909,”
Journal of Negro History
, July 1962.
17
“drawing of the color”
Booker T. Washington in
Booker T. Washington Papers
, vol. 6, 547. Scheiner, “President Roosevelt and the Negro,” claims that “something more than altruism” influenced TR’s Southern race policy. TR always denied that his motives were political (TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 290–91, 387–88), but Scheiner cites evidence to the contrary. It suited him, e.g., to undermine the pro-Hanna Lily Whites of Alabama, whereas he appointed them freely in North Carolina in order to win the support of Senator Jeter Pritchard’s powerful machine. “His main purpose was to receive the support of Republican state organizations, not to aid or appoint Negroes.”
18
Within the depot
The ethnic composition of TR’s welcoming committee—a pair of whites to a score of blacks—reflected that of the Yazoo Delta. Washington
Evening Star
, 18 Nov. 1902.
19
George H. Helm
Gatewood,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy
, 96, 71; Washington
Evening Star
, 14 Nov. 1902; Denison, “President Roosevelt’s Mississippi Bear Hunt”; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 378.
20
Shortly before four
Gregory C. Wilson, “Bagging the First Teddy Bear,” unpub. research paper, 1979, AC; Washington
Evening Star
, 13 Nov. 1902. Charles Snyder, “TR,” paper read to the New England Ophthalmological Society, 13 Apr. 1959 (TRC).
21
He stepped down
The Washington Post
, 17 Nov. 1902.
22
THE NEXT FIVE
Paul Schullery, ed.,
American Bears; Selections from the Writings of Theodore Roosevelt
(Boulder, 1983), 10; Denison, “President Roosevelt’s Mississippi Bear Hunt.”
23
“I am going”
TR to Stuyvesant Fish, 6 Nov. 1902 (TRP). The hunt, organized by Fish, otherwise consisted of seven sporting gentlemen, TR’s personal physician, two Secret Service agents, and sundry guides and retainers.
24
Embarrassingly, he
Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
25
Paradoxically, one
Gregory C. Wilson, “The Birth of the Teddy Bear,”
Bear Tracks: Official Newsletter of the Good Bears of the World
, fall 1979; Holt Collier interview,
Saturday Evening Post
, 10 Apr. 1909.
26
No sooner had
Denison, “President Roosevelt’s Mississippi Bear Hunt.”
27
Back at the
Holt Collier interview,
The Saturday Evening Post
, 10 Apr. 1909. The sex of TR’s bear is a subject of debate. A hunter who has seen the skin judges it to have been that of a 246-pound female. Charles Moose interview with author, 10 Nov. 1988 (AC).
28
“Put it out”
The Washington Post
, 15 Nov. 1902.
29
Whether or not
Clifford Berryman qu. in Marietta Andrews,
My Studio Window: Sketches of the Pageant of Washington Life
(New York, 1928), 172. The version of “Drawing the Line” most frequently reproduced is not the original
Washington Post
cartoon. Berryman seems to have produced a second version (with the bear as a cub), later in 1902—whether for publication or not is unclear. It is sometimes wrongly attributed to the Washington
Evening Star
. The “other” bear cartoon he drew for William E. Chandler is probably a third version, showing a pack of bear cubs joyfully escorting “Teddy” out of the forest (Presidential scrapbook [TRP]). According to Berryman, this one was “a hit.” In later years, the cartoonist so identified
with the Teddy Bear that he used to sign his letters with it. Andrews,
My Studio Window
, 171.
30
Three thousand
Wilson, “Birth of the Teddy Bear”; Peggy and Alan Bialosky, eds.,
The Teddy Bear Catalogue: Care, Repair, and Love
(New York, 1980), 12–21.
Historiological
Note: The most serious study of the TR/Teddy Bear phenomenon is Linda Mullins,
The Teddy Bear Men: Theodore Roosevelt and Clifford Berryman
(Cumberland, Md., 1987). See also the above-cited works of Wilson and Bialosky. Morris and Rose Michtom founded the Ideal Toy Company, largely on the strength of their stuffed-bear sales, in 1903. Family tradition claims that Michtom wrote TR asking for permission to call the bears “Teddy’s Bears,” and TR replied that if his name was worth anything, they were welcome to use it. The story is doubtful. There is no trace of TR’s letter in his conscientiously kept copybooks, and the Michtoms do not seem to have preserved what would be its priceless original. Furthermore, TR disliked being called “Teddy,” and had a strict policy of not endorsing any commercial products, even his own books, when in office. The probable truth is that the Stieff Company produced the first “Teddy Bears” (albeit modeled after bear cubs in the Stuttgart Zoo) in 1902, and that the Michtoms duplicated their design in 1902–1903. By 1904, Roosevelt “Bear Cub” associations were already noticeable in campaign tokens, and in 1906 “The Roosevelt Bears,” a cartoon feature, began to run in
The New York Times
. The strip was soon parlayed by Seymour Eaton into a wildly popular series of children’s books. An original 1903 Michtom thirty-inch-tall bear is now worth at least forty-five thousand dollars. With this note, the author formally withdraws from the field of Teddy Bear studies.
31
EDITH ROOSEVELT RECEIVED
TR returned to Washington on 21 Nov. 1902. For EKR’s extensive work with McKim, Mead & White on restoring the White House, see Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, chap. 19.
32
Gone were the
Restoration of the White House: Message of the President of the United States Transmitting the Report of the Architects
(Washington, D.C., 1903), passim; Charles Moore, “The Restoration of the White House,”
Century
, Apr. 1903; Seale,
President’s House
, vol. 2, 656–84; Ellen Maury Slayden,
Washington Wife: Journal of Ellen Maury Slayden from 1897–1919
(New York, 1963), 46–47.
33
For this improvement
Restoration of the White House
, 17–20, 9; The work, while complete in all essentials by late November 1902, continued for another two months. Washington
Evening Star
, 31 Jan. 1903.
34
The pavilions flanked
Moore, “Restoration”; Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 260.
35
“The first impression”
Moore, “Restoration”; Wister,
Roosevelt
, 108.
36
Roosevelt, marching
Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 253. Contrary to popular impression, only one of the game heads was a trophy of his.
37
Breeding, however
Wister,
Roosevelt
, 107.
38
Upstairs, Edith
All these apartments had en suite bathrooms. Seale,
President’s House
, vol. 2, 679.
39
THE DOCUMENT WAS
TR’s Second Annual Message is reprinted in TR,
Works
, vol. 17, 161–95.
40
the United States and Mexico
The dispute concerned the Pacific Pious Fund, an annual indemnity promised by Mexico “in perpetuity” to Franciscan friars, as compensation for monastic properties appropriated in 1842. Mexico stopped paying this award after the United States took over California. The Hague court found in favor of resumed payments by Mexico.
The New York Times
, 27 Dec. 1902.
41
“As civilization grows,”
TR,
Works
, vol. 17, 175.
42
By this he
The most exhaustive modern analysis of TR’s close-to-home foreign policy is Richard H. Collin,
Theodore Roosevelt’s Caribbean, the Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Latin American Context
(Baton Rouge, 1990).
43
the covert diplomat
Howard K. Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power
(Baltimore, 1956), 452–53; Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, 52. The
secret du roi
involved covert, personal emissaries of the king, operating often at odds with his official diplomacy. See Alfred Cobban,
A History of Modern France
(New York, 1965), vol. 1, 76, 97. TR’s own preferred term was
kitchen ambassadors
. TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 1102.
44
Foreign policy was
TR,
Letters
, vol. 1, 409. See Nelson M. Blake, “Ambassadors at the Court of Theodore Roosevelt,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, Sept. 1955, and Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.” For a French view of TR’s discreet diplomacy, see Serge Ricard,
Théodore Roosevelt: principes et practique d’une politique étrangère
(Aix-en-Provence, 1991).
