Theodore Rex (2 page)

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The narrative of this book confines itself exclusively to Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, 1901–1909. For compatibility with quotations, many usages current at that time have been retained, particularly with regard to place-names. Hence, e.g.,
Peking
is used for Beijing and
Port Arthur
for modern Lushun. Where necessary, such names are clarified in the notes. A few words spelled differently then, but pronounced the same now, have been modernized. Hence,
Tsar
for
Czar
. “Simplified spellings” adopted by Roosevelt in his second term have been retained as idiosyncratic when quoted. Hence,
thoroly, fixt, dropt
. Ethnic appellations and honorifics reflect the styles of the Roosevelt era, as do occasional references to countries as feminine entities. Superlatives such as
an unprecedented landslide
apply only as of the date cited. Expectations or intimations of “coming events” are those of the period. Historical hindsights are confined to the notes.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
became President of the United States without knowing it, at 2:15 in the morning of 14 September 1901.
He was bouncing in a buckboard down the rainswept slopes of Mount Marcy, in the Adirondacks. Constitutionally, not so much as a heartbeat impeded the flow of power from his assassinated predecessor to himself. Practically, more than four hundred miles of mud and rails still separated him from William McKinley’s death chamber in Buffalo, where preparations for an emergency inauguration were already under way.

For all Roosevelt knew, he was still Vice President, yet he already realized that he would soon assume supreme responsibility.
Yesterday’s telegrams, relayed up the mountain by telephone operators, riders, and runners, had documented the spread of gangrene through his bullet-ridden Chief:

The last telegram to reach Roosevelt’s vacation cabin in Upper Tahawus had been urgent enough to banish all thought of waiting for clearer weather:

So, shortly before midnight, he had kissed his wife and children good-bye and begun the descent to North Creek station—at least a seven-hour drive, even by day.

He was now, at the moment of his accession, halfway through the second stage of this journey, some five miles north of Aiden Lair Lodge, where a new wagon and fresh horses awaited him.
He sat alone on the passenger seat, shrouded against splashes of mud in a borrowed raincoat several sizes too big. His favorite hat, a broad-brim slouch pulled well over his ears, kept some of the drizzle off his spectacles—not that he could see anything beyond the buckboard’s tossing circle of lamplight. Nor had he much to say: since leaving Lower Tahawus, indeed, he had spoken hardly a word to the lanky youth in front of him. From time to time, he muttered to himself.

Sincere, if slight, grief for McKinley—a cold-blooded politician he had never much cared for—struggled in Roosevelt’s breast with more violent emotions regarding the assassin, Leon Czolgosz.
In his opinion, those bullets at Buffalo had been fired, not merely at a man, but at the very heart of the American Republic. They were an assault upon representative government and civilized order. Unable to contain his rage, he leaned forward and blurted an excoriation of Czolgosz into the rain. “If it had been I who had been shot, he wouldn’t have got away so easily.… I’d have guzzled him first.”

MEANWHILE, IN WASHINGTON
, Secretary of State John Hay sat alone, weeping. For hours, he had heard newsboys shrieking outside his library window:
“Extra! Extra! All about the President dying!”
Aging and increasingly hypochondriachal, Hay had once worked for Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield, and seen them both assassinated. This third assassination, compounded by the recent death of his own son, was enough to extinguish all desire to go on living in an alien century. But duty had to be done. When the final knell sounded across Sixteenth Street, he wrote a telegram officially informing Theodore Roosevelt that McKinley was dead. He ordered it sent to North Creek Station.