Theodore Rex (159 page)

15
Hay, a poet’s
Elihu Root interviewed by Philip C. Jessup, 23 Jan. 1934 (ER); Jusserand,
What Me Befell
, 262, 264–65; Thompson,
Party Leaders
, 280–81; Mrs. Dewey diary, 21 Mar. 1905 (GD); Bemis,
American Secretaries of State
, vol. 9, 116–17.

16
Roosevelt moved
Washington
Evening Star
, 8 June 1903; Jules Jusserand sagely observed that Hay, a man of “more vivacity than force,” was “better able to banter than decide.”
What Me Befell
, 265.

17
THE COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT
Foreign Relations 1903
, 146.

18
Hay acted
Thompson,
Party Leaders
, 261–62; John Hay to George Smalley, 10 July 1903 (TD); Robinson,
My Brother
, 9.

19
At sixty-four
Hay portrait file (FBJ); John Hay profiled by James Creelman in New York
World
, 10 May 1903.

20
The Secretary was
Ibid. Infinitely complex, graceful and cruel, warmhearted yet aloof, Hay awaits a definitive biography.

21
With very little
Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 June 1903 (JJ). See also Jusserand,
What Me Befell
, 236–40, and Morison,
Cowboys and Kings
, x. Morison
credits William H. Moody as the instigator of TR’s monologue. But Jusserand’s report, written only four days afterward, specifically states that he and Mme. Jusserand were Hay’s only other guests.

22
After dinner
Jusserand,
What Me Befell
, 240; TR to John Hay, 9 Aug. 1903 (TRP). Hay said of TR’s transcript (which he bound in leather for his children), “It is a genuine nugget of life and literature, almost too valuable for any one man to own.… It will not lack companionship in a case which holds the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address.” Hay to TR, 12 Aug. 1903 (TRP).

23
THE COLOMBIAN MINISTER
Foreign Relations 1903
, 150–51; John Hay to John A. Leishman, 24 May 1904, and Hay qu. in an unidentified profile, n.d., Hay scrapbook (JH).

24
That same day
Story of Panama
, 344.

25
For a half hour
White House diary, 13 June 1903 (TRP); New York
Herald
, 14 June 1903. The following account is based on William Nelson Cromwell to TR and John Hay (enclosing draft “decaration”), 14 June 1903 (JH). Supplementary details from Cromwell’s easily identifiable news leaks to the New York
World
, 14 June 1903; Bunau-Varilla,
Panama
, 266; Dennett,
John Hay
, 375.

26
Roosevelt told
New York
World
, 14 June 1903.

27
White sails crept
The Washington Post
, 14 June 1903.

28
Instead, he briefed
Roger L. Farnham spoke to the
World
on condition of anonymity. Miner,
Fight for the Panama Route
, 293.

29
NEW REPUBLIC MAY
New York
World
, 14 June 1903. A slightly garbled version of this article appears in
Story of Panama
, 345. Notwithstanding Cromwell’s desire to keep a low profile, the
World
reported meaningfully, “William Nelson Cromwell, general counsel of the Panama Canal Company, had a long audience with the President today.”

30
One detail missing
Walter F. McCaleb,
Theodore Roosevelt
(New York, 1931), 157.

31
Roosevelt issued
Washington
Evening Star
, 12 June, and New York
Sun
, 15 June 1903;
Story of Panama
, 280. Note that the “official” White House newspaper scooped the
World
by two days, suggesting that TR was not averse to a little leaking himself, even before he saw Cromwell.

32
ON 15
JUNE
Dennett,
John Hay
, 397. See also John Hay,
Letters
, vol. 3, 310; Schoenberg, “American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom.” Clymer,
John Hay
, 75–81, argues that Hay found Jews more amusing than threatening, unlike the virulently phobic Henry Adams. Hay made an unpublicized gift of five hundred dollars to the Kishinev relief fund.

33
“Would it do”
TR to Hay, 25 May 1903 (TRP); John Hay to Jacob H. Schiff, 20 May 1903 (TD).

34
Leo Levi
White House press release, 15 June 1903 (TRP); Schoenberg, “American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom.” Russian-American relations had been cordial for most of the nineteenth century, but always fragile because of the Jewish problem. See Zabriskie,
American-Russian Rivalry
, chap. 1.

35
Having thus expressed
White House press release, 15 June 1903 (TRP).

36
Hay responded first
Ibid. At the end of his remarks, Hay brought tears to the eyes of the committee by reciting, “He that watches over Israel does not slumber.… The wrath of man now, as so often in the past, shall be made to praise him.” Simon Wolf,
The Presidents I Have Known from 1860–1918
(Washington, D.C., 1918), 193, 236.

37
“I have never”
White House press release, 15 June 1903 (TRP).

38
“You may possibly”
Simon Wolf to TR, 3 July 1903 (TRP).
Jew policemen
was accepted usage in 1903. See in the same letter: “not a Jew petition.”

39
It was a story
TR,
Autobiography
, 191–92; Nancy Schoenberg, “Officer Otto Raphael: A Jewish Friend of Theodore Roosevelt,”
American Jewish Archives
39.1 (1987). TR particularly admired “what I might call the Maccabee or fighting Jewish type.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 78. See also Wagenknecht,
Seven Worlds
, 186, 230.

40
After an hour
The Washington Post
, 16 June 1903. Wolf,
Presidents I Have Known
, 198. A follow-up anecdote may be appended here: Later that day, TR invited Simon Wolf to join him, Ambassador von Sternburg, and Senator Louis McComas of Maryland on a trip to the German Singing Festival in Baltimore. Dense crowds surrounded their carriage, and someone slammed its door on Wolf’s hand. “When the President saw what had happened he immediately put a cold bandage on my hand, went to the locker and gave me a good swig, bathed my hands and forehead like a trained nurse, and then turned round to Senator McComas and said, ‘Inasmuch as Wolf has been wounded in the public service, I suggest that you introduce a bill in the Senate, pensioning him.’ ” Ibid., 281.

41
HIS EXCELLENCY
Arturo
The Washington Post
, 16 June 1903.

42
“Princess Cassini”
William H. Taft to Helen Taft, 5 Apr. 1904 (WHT); Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 578. In her memoir of the Roosevelt era, Marguerite Cassini explains that due to social objections on the diplomatic circuit, her mother, the singer Stefanie von Betz, was obliged to remain in Russia as Cassini’s “legal but unacknowledged wife.”
Never a Dull Moment
, 6, 224; Thompson,
Party Leaders
, 344.

43
Cassini’s assurances
Education of Henry Adams
, 439; Zabriskie,
American-Russian Rivalry
, 90–91;
Foreign Relations 1903
, 153–54; Dennis,
Adventures in American Diplomacy
, 357–58.

44
“Dealing with a”
John Hay to TR, 12 May 1903 (TRP).

45
Roosevelt cared little
Edward B. Parsons, “Roosevelt’s Containment of the Russo-Japanese War,”
Pacific Historical Review
, Feb. 1969. TR remarked contemptuously of Korea that it had “an utter inability to stand by itself.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 1116.

46
If the Open Door
Lucius B. Swift to TR, 2 Jan. 1904 (GBC); TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 501.

47
“legitimate aspirations”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 497; Frederick Holls to TR, 9 May 1903 (TRP). Russia had a twenty-five-year lease on Port Arthur, not due to expire until March 1923.

48
“Try to understand”
Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, 43. “Liaotung” is modern Kwangtung.

49
He played
Cecil Spring Rice to Elizabeth Cameron, 3 June 1891 (MHS). See also Sir Mortimer Durand to Earl Grey: “The President … is not good at games. His eye and hand do not go together. He is very energetic and full of keenness, but not skilful. He is conscious of the fact, and deplores it.”
British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print
. Series C:
North America, 1837–1914
, ed. Kenneth Bourne (Frederick, Md., 1986–1987), vol. 12, 49 (hereafter
British Documents on Foreign Affairs)
.

50
“To the left”
John L. McGrew, former TR aide, to Hermann Hagedorn, 29 Jan. 1958 (TRB).

51
Roosevelt’s favorite
James Garfield diary, 19 and 24 June 1903 (JRG); Wister,
Roosevelt
, 167.

52
ON 22
JUNE
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 501;
Review of Reviews
, Aug. 1903. Despite all indications that Jones had an earnest desire to stamp out peonage, his sentences were usually very lenient, with the accused often being “punished” by the levying of fines. Even those that he did jail received short sentences and often had their sentences suspended and their fines modified. In one 1903 case, on the advice of Judge Jones, TR pardoned two men that Jones himself had sentenced to a year and a day
in jail. It is no surprise that this method of “pardoning everyone on a general promise of good behavior” failed to eliminate peonage. Pete Daniel,
The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969
(Urbana, Ill., 1990), 43–64.

53
One hundred miles northeast
The following account is indebted to the reporting of the New York Sun, 23–27 June 1903, and in particular its exemplary investigatory article, “A Modern Lynching,” on 28 June. White had confessed to the murder of Helen Bishop, the daughter of a local clergyman, just a few days before.

54
Vendors hawked them
New York
Sun
, 24 June 1903. See also George M. Fredrickson,
The Black Image in the White Mind: A Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914
(New York, 1971).

  
1
I’ll tell ye
Dunne,
Observations by Mr. Dooley
, 167.

  
2
Roosevelt, child of
Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 30 June 1903 (JJ).

  
3
He poured out
Ibid.

  
4
The Delaware affair
The Washington Post
, 23–24 June 1903; 135 Americans had been lynched in 1901, 97 in 1902, but only 20 so far in 1903. The encouraging last figure, however, proved illusory. In the first week after the Delaware riot, six more lynchings occurred in the South. By year’s end, the total had risen to 104. And, as Walter F. White points out, the sadism of lynchings grew steadily worse during TR’s Presidency.
The New York Times
, 24 June 1903;
Public Opinion
, 2 July 1903; White,
Rope and Faggot
(New York, 1929, 1969), 19–35.

  
5
On 24 June
Jusserand,
What Me Befell
, 241–43. The Savoy volumes,
Feldsüge des Prinzen Eugen von Savoyen
(Vienna, 1876–1891), had been presented to TR by the Italian Ambassador (Washington
Evening Star
, 15 June 1903). TR appears to have read, or at least browsed, a French translation of these volumes (now preserved at Sagamore Hill). He also read, in French, Arneth’s three-volume biography of the Prince.

  
6
“Where will it begin”
Jusserand,
What Me Befell
, 243.

  
7
The next morning
Foreign Relations 1903
, 154; Charles W. Bergquist,
Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886–1910
(Durham, N.C., 1978), 216.

  
8
“Out of consideration”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 508. 251
CANNONS CRASHED
The New York Times
, 28 June 1903.

  
9
Only Alice
Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 271–74; New York
World
, 24 May and 13 June 1903; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 484.

10
“Father doesn’t care”
Alice Roosevelt diary, 27 Jan. 1903 (ARL). In extended conversations with Michael Teague toward the end of her life, Alice Roosevelt Longworth spoke often of the ghost of Alice Hathaway Lee. Far from fading, “it became a problem” between them as she grew up. She knew that he felt her resentment of his silence about her mother, but knew also that he “could not or would not” break it. Michael Teague interview, 13 Aug. 1984. Teague’s
Mrs. L.
, consisting largely of transcriptions of Alice’s tea-table monologues, remains the best biographical study of this brilliant, wounded woman.

11
“I wish she”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 408.

12
Ted, now fifteen
Endicott Peabody to TR, 1 Oct. 1903 (TRP); TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 490.