Theodore Rex (52 page)

Outside, the moon was setting, and the Capitol dome was obscured with shadow. In the tobacco-stale House, legislators snored at their desks. Word of Tillman’s victory came to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He
got to his feet in sudden agitation, a bony, bearded, goatlike figure. “Mr. Speaker, if the House will bear with me …”

Joseph Gurney Cannon was sixty-six, and had been enduring Senate filibusters for nearly half his life. He had seen the House’s power decline steadily, till it functioned as almost a legislative bureau of supply to the Senate, sending money and parchment down the corridor on demand. Only last fall, Roosevelt and the Republican “leaders” had not even bothered to include Speaker Henderson in their tariff conference at Oyster Bay. To Cannon’s proud sensibility, the night just ending marked the nadir of what had once been the greatest deliberative body in the world.

Yet in this dark hour he felt dawn coming for himself. Later today, the retiring Speaker would lay down the gavel, and he—“Uncle Joe” of Danville, Illinois, the tightest wad and toughest talker in Congress—would take it up.
Long years of frustration against the Senate surged in Cannon’s breast. His face reddened, and he began to shout, rousing his colleagues from sleep:

When Cannon lost his temper, he made even Senator Tillman seem tame. His body jerked in spasms, and he grew so hot he would tear off his coat and collar and douse himself with ice water. Now, however, he fought for his dignity, and for that of the House of Representatives:

Applause roared and rolled out of the chamber into the marble hall. Nobody in the Senate heard it: that body had voted itself a short recess. The House followed suit. Congressmen emerged blearily into the chill air and dispersed in quest of beds, breakfast, and fresh clothes. A pallor tinged the sky beyond East Capitol Street. One by one, the naphtha lamps winked out.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S CARRIAGE
rolled up the Hill shortly after 10:00. He found both assemblies back in session. As tradition required, he went to the President’s Room to sign late bills. But the green baize table was bare. He sat waiting in a plump leather chair, his Cabinet officers ringed around him. George Washington and
his
Cabinet looked down from the walls. A black bust of McKinley stared into space. Finally, bills began to come in. He scrutinized and signed them to the ticking of a grandfather clock.
The naval-construction appropriation was satisfying, but he still saw no confirmation of his choice for Collector of Charleston. He was not downcast, having long since decided to put Crum in office, if necessary, by means of interim and recess executive power. Perhaps the next Senate would be less obstructive than this one.

As the hands of the clock narrowed toward noon, his companions tiptoed across the lobby to watch the Fifty-seventh Congress die. Roosevelt sat alone except for his new secretary, William Loeb, Jr. Through the swinging door, in snatches, came the final drones of senatorial oratory—something about
snuffboxes?
The hands of the clock merged. “May God’s benediction abide with you all,” a voice called.

Far away, at the other end of the building, members of the House began singing “God Be with You Till We Meet Again” to the former Speaker, while the next Speaker smiled, a red carnation bright in his buttonhole. Joseph Cannon always looked amused; it had something to do with the cut of his mouth; but his eyes were hooded and hard. In the months and years ahead, Roosevelt would have a new force to reckon with on Capitol Hill.

LATE ON THE AFTERNOON
of 1 April 1903, a stranger in a slouch hat got off a train waterstopping at Altoona, Pennsylvania, and crunched up the wrong side of the track. Six gleaming private cars screened him from the crowd on the platform. Tilting his head back as he approached the locomotive, he called in a harsh, yodeling voice, “
Will you take a passenger in there?”

The fireman stared down stupidly, so the stranger appealed to higher authority. “Mr. Engineer, I’d like to ride with you a few miles.” This time there was no mistaking the command in his voice. A second or two later, Theodore Roosevelt was in the cab, receiving sooty handshakes. He seated himself where he could pretend to be driving, and gazed eagerly ahead at the Alleghenies. The whistle blew, the throttle dipped, and the Pacific Coast Special clanked into motion, while the crowd waved and cried “Godspeed!” at its curtained caboose.

Free at last of Washington and the special session of the Senate (which had taken fifteen days to give him the treaty ratifications he demanded), Roosevelt was embarking on his much-delayed tour of the West. While in postponement, it had grown to the most ambitious presidential itinerary yet undertaken. During the next eight weeks, he was scheduled to travel fourteen thousand miles through twenty-five states, visiting nearly 150 towns and cities and giving an estimated two hundred speeches. Five major addresses, forming a review of his legislative and administrative achievements to date, lay snug in his traveling desk, along with something more formal to say at the dedication ceremonies of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. All the other speeches, unwritten, he would leave to inspirations of time and place. Twenty years of public speaking had taught him that provincial audiences would listen to anything as long as it was seasoned with local references.

The challenge awaiting him beyond the Alleghenies was enough to daunt a fit man, and Roosevelt was far from fit. His long struggle with Congress over race, regul
ation, and reciprocity,
the emotional drain of Edith’s latest miscarriage,
and the stress of entertaining fifteen thousand guests in the White House since last November had brought about a return of his childhood bronchial wheezings. He was further weakened by recent influenza and laryngitis. He longed for the dry healthfulness of the West, which had restored him so often in the past. As soon as he had delivered his five policy addresses, he planned a short vacation in Yellowstone National Park.

Reveling already in feelings of liberation, Roosevelt breathed coal smoke and mountain air for forty-nine miles.
At Seward, he thanked the engineer for a “bully” trip, descended, and marched back down the length of his train.
First, a baggage car; then the
Atlantic
, a club car heavy with wood and leather, plus a fully equipped barbershop; then the
Gilsey
diner, stocked with champagne and cigars; then the
Senegal
, a big Pullman carrying reporters, photographers, telegraphers, and Secret Service men; then the
Texas
, a compartmental sleeper for White House staff, and any guests Roosevelt might ask to ride along.

Last came the President’s own
Elysian
, seventy feet of solid mahogany, velvet plush, and sinkingly deep furniture. It had two sleeping chambers with brass bedsteads, two tiled bathrooms, a private kitchen run by the Pennsylvania Railroad’s star chef, a dining room, a stateroom with picture windows, and an airy rear platform for whistle-stop speeches. Whatever austerities Roosevelt looked forward to at Yellowstone, he would not lack for creature comforts now or afterward.

AT 8:50 THE FOLLOWING NIGHT
, he stood in black tie and silk lapels on the stage of the Chicago Auditorium, waiting for a long roar of welcome to subside. “Mr. Chairman—Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen—” But the roar went on. President McKinley had never been cheered like this. Five thousand people overcrowded the hall. Even when they calmed, another horde outside the doors continued to shout, creating a bizarre echo effect as Roosevelt began to speak. His text, an affirmation of the Monroe Doctrine with special reference to Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia, featured his favorite “West African proverb,” except now the source was obscured, to make it more memorable and quotable:

This generated such loud applause as to suggest that
the audience took his “adage” as aggressive, rather than cautionary.
Actually, Roosevelt was trying to say that soft-spoken (even secret) diplomacy should be the priority of a civilization, as long as hardness—of moral resolve, of military might—lay back of it. Otherwise, inevitably, soft speech would sound like scared speech.

He reiterated his distaste for national “boasting and blustering.” In liberating Cuba and defusing the Venezuela crisis, the United States had proved herself to be idealistic rather than imperialistic, independent yet global-minded. Treaties negotiated by his Administration guaranteed that Americans alone would build and defend the Panama Canal; bills initiated by him had provided the necessary money and warships. But true, hemispheric security in a rearming world would require a much larger fleet than that currently envisaged by Congress. “If we have such a Navy—if we keep on building it up—we may rest assured … that no foreign power will ever quarrel with us about the Monroe Doctrine.”

THE PRESIDENT INVITED
some of his old Chicago cronies to join him for supper at his hotel. Herman Kohlsaat and the financier Charles G. Dawes arrived first, and were at once irradiated in Rooseveltian warmth. But as the reception proceeded and more and more “friends” crowded the room, they found themselves edged toward the crockery and spoons.
Roosevelt continued to beam indiscriminately upon all comers, a searchlight picking out vessels of any size. Later, Dawes the diarist wrote: