NOTES

The names of Theodore and Edith Kermit Roosevelt are abbreviated below as TR and EKR.

Citations of the Washington Evening Star often imply official, if “off-the-record” authority, because that newspaper’s daily “At the White House” column amounted to a court circular for the Roosevelt Administration.

Except where otherwise indicated, all French translations are by the author. Quotations from oral sources—i.e., stenographic transcripts—have on rare occasions been repunctuated for clarity.

PROLOGUE: 14–16 SEPTEMBER 1901

1THEODORE ROOSEVELT became For a day-by-day chronology of TR’s presidency, see the appendix of vols. 4 and 6 of TR, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison (Cambridge, Mass., 1951–1954), 8 vols. (hereafter TR, Letters).

2He was bouncing This account of TR’s descent from Mount Marcy is based on the following sources: TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks (TRC); Orin Kellogg [driver] interview, unidentified news clip (TRB); Mike Cronin [driver] interview, New YorkHerald, 15 Sept., and New York World, 29 Sept. 1901. There are further reminiscences by these men and other contemporary witnesses in Eloise Cronin Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt’s Night Ride to the Presidency (Adirondack Museum, N.Y., 1977), and Christina Rainsford, “A Momentous Ride,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, summer 1981. Richmond B. Williams explains the impromptu communications network that sprang up along the slope of the mountain in “TR Receives His Summons to the Presidency,” Bell Telephone Magazine, autumn 1951. Supplemental details come from The New York Times, New York Press, and New York Sun, 14 Sept. 1901, and from a reconnaissance made by the author in October 1979. Route 28N, resurfaced and renamed “Roosevelt-Marcy Memorial Highway,” now connects many of the places mentioned, so smoothly as to cast doubt on old accounts of the difficulties and dangers TR faced. However, a film of local wet-weather conditions, ca. 1910, preserved in the Adirondack Museum, proves these accounts were not exaggerated. (Rain had been falling continuously for three days preceding TR’s ride.)

3Yesterday’s telegrams Facsimile telegrams (TRB). There has been some confusion about the sequence of fifteen telegrams received by TR on Mount Marcy. A comparison of the originals with medical bulletins issued by McKinley’s secretary, George Cortelyou (in GBC), makes it clear that he read the most urgent message—Elihu Root’s—last. It was dispatched at 10:20 P.M. (William Loeb to Root, 13 Sept. 1901 [ER]). EKR, in her diary of 13 Sept. 1901, states that it came “between 11 and 12 when we were in bed [in the vacation cabin at Upper Tahawus].” See Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady (New York, 1980), 212–14. TR’s reply (in ER) is datelined Lower Tahawus, 14 Sept. 1:32 A.M. This helps explain TR’s curious delay in leaving for Buffalo after receiving the first message, from Cortelyou, near the summit at 1:25 P.M. on 13 Sept. TR twice confirms in An Autobiography (New York, 1913), 364, and in the Leary Notebooks that he realized the President was dying when he saw the messenger approach. Yet the telegram stated only that McKinley’s condition caused “the gravest apprehension.” The next few telegrams, awaiting TR at Upper Tahawus at 5:15 or 5:30 P.M. (Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt’s Night Ride, 18–19, indicated some improvement. Hence his remark, about 9:00 P.M., to EKR: “I’m not going unless I’m really needed” (Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 212). Then the telegrams became too urgent to resist.

Note on timings: An analysis of available data works out thus: dept. Upper Tahawus 11:31 P.M., 13 Sept.; arr. Lower Tahawus (ten miles) 1:31 A.M., 14 Sept.; dept. 1:35 A.M.; arr. Aiden Lair (nine miles) 3:36 A.M.; dept. 3:41 A.M.; arr. North Creek (sixteen miles) 5:22 A.M. Total: thirty-five miles covered in five hours, fifty-one minutes.

4the president appears Facsimile telegram (TRB).

5He was now A bronze tablet on Route 28N, not far north of Aiden Lair, commemorates TR’s accession to the Presidency.

6He sat alone William Allen White, Masks in a Pageant (New York, 1928), 294; “How the President Wears His Hat,” New York Tribune, 29 Nov. 1901; Orin Kellogg in New York World, 29 Sept. 1901.

7In his opinion TR, Letters, vol. 3, 141–42; The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, memorial edition (New York, 1923–1926, vol. 17, 96; Orin Kellogg in Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt’s Night Ride, 21. Czolgosz did not “get away”; he was executed within weeks.

8meanwhile, in washington New York Press, 4 Sept.; Harper’s Weekly, 21 Sept. 1901; Charles Willis Thompson, Party Leaders of the Time (New York, 1906), 261–62, 281–82; New York World, 17 Sept. 1901.

9at about 3:30 A restored version of Aiden Lair Lodge may be seen beside Route 28N. Upper Tahawus is now a ghost town, but the Roosevelts’ cabin survives. Lower Tahawus is maintained by a hunting club. North Creek station has been restored as a state historic site.

10“Any news?” Mike Cronin interview, New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901.

11The new horses Orin Kellogg interview, New York World, 19 Sept. 1901; Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt’s Night Ride, 23; Mike Cronin interview, New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901.

12since puberty In the half-envious words of Henry Adams, “Theodore is one of the brainless cephalopods who is not afraid.” The Letters of Henry Adams, ed. J. C. Levenson, Ernest Samuels, et al. (Cambridge, Mass., 1982–1988, vol. 5, 349.

13From that viewpoint For TR’s presidential aspirations, see, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 3, 104, 114–15, 120. According to William Allen White, Autobiography (New York, 1946), 327, “Even in 1899 we were planning for 1904.” See also William Allen White,Selected Letters, 1899–1943, ed. Walter Johnson (New York, 1947), 126–27, and Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York, 1931), 229–30. TR continued with his plans right through the final illness of McKinley. TR, Letters, vol. 3, 144 (10 Sept. 1901).

14He had fought TR, Works, vol. 5, 267.

15Yet just when See Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1921), 198. TR was “very depressed” as Vice President, his daughter Alice remembered. “He thought …[it] was the end of his career” (Michael Teague, Mrs. L.: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth [New York, 1981], 112). Notwithstanding his plans for 1904, TR talked miserably of becoming a lawyer, or of writing further installments of his multivolume history, The Winning of the West (George Haven Putnam,Memories of a Publisher [New York, 1915], 144; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 31, 72). The most comprehensive account of TR’s prepresidential career is Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1979), to which this volume is a sequel. For a detailed study of TR’s first twenty-eight years, see Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years (New York, 1958). David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (New York, 1981), covers the same period. TR’s family life and second marriage are fully described in Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt.

16His path ran Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt’s Night Ride, 25.

17The final dash The New York Times, New York Press, and New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901. Cronin’s time of 1:41 from Aiden Lair to North Creek beat his own previous record by a quarter of an hour. Later that month, a reporter attempted the same drive, at night and under similar conditions; it took him four hours (New York World, 29 Sept. 1901). The record still stands. Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt’s Night Ride, 29.

18the president died Facsimile telegram, 14 Sept. 1901 (TRB).

19Looking suddenly worn The New York Times and New York World, 15 Sept. 1901; Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt’s Night Ride, 26–27.

20roosevelt’s first words New York World, 15 Sept., and New York Herald, 14 Sept. 1901; William Loeb, Jr., to author, 28 Feb. 1975 (AC).

21Mount Marcy’s cloud banks New York Herald and New York World, 15 Sept. 1901; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 214–21.

22At about seven o’clock New York Sun, 15 Sept. 1901.

23Roosevelt did not need Ibid., 15 and 10 Sept. 1901. For an account of the anarchist phenomenon in Europe and America, 1890–1914, see Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York, 1966), 63–113.

24Personally, Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 3, 2. Later in the year, he dreamed of doing the same with even bigger game. “We could kill a big grizzly or silver tip with our knives, which would be great sport” (ibid., 91). See also Lloyd C. Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking (Boston, 1940), 221–22.

25His larger concern TR specifically cited such social bacteria as William Randolph Hearst, John P. Altgeld, “and to an only less degree, Tolstoy and the feeble apostles of Tolstoy, like Ernest Howard Crosby and William Dean Howells.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 142.

26When, accepting Ibid.; TR, Works, vol. 1, 43–45.

27Youth, size TR was forty-two years and nearly eleven months old on acceding to the Presidency. He remains the youngest President in U.S. history, John F. Kennedy being the youngest President elected. For a classic statement of his views on “the essential manliness of the American character,” as well as his attitudes toward some of the problems confronting the United States at the turn of the century, see “National Duties,” the speech he delivered at the Minnesota State Fair on 2 Sept. 1901, four days before the attack on McKinley. It is a source of the ideology set forth here. TR, Works, vol. 15, 328–41.

28He refused to Ibid., vol. 14, 235; vol. 15, 316.

29Roosevelt, sucking The following survey of press reportage on 14 Sept. 1901 is taken from newspaper clippings preserved in TR scrapbooks (TRP). These volumes, assembled by William Loeb, Jr., and often contributed to by the President himself, form a reliable guide to TR’s own perception of public opinion, 1901–1909.

30A remarkable consensus New York Sun, New York World, New York Herald, The New York Times, and New York Press, 14–15 Sept. 1901 (originals at TRB). A typical reaction of one Wall Street executive, on hearing that TR was about to become President: “When Teddy’s done with America it’ll require another Christopher Columbus to find what’s left of it” (New York dispatch to The Times [London], 15 Sept. 1901). See White, Masks in a Pageant, 295, and Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 237ff., for the “terror” that gripped the financial community that weekend.

31as the news Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 73, 337.

32In Albany, an old Frances Theodora (Smith) Parsons, Perchance Some Day (privately printed, New York, 1951; copy in TRC), 120, 135–36; also Mrs. Parsons to TR, 14 Sept. 1901 (TRB); Russell B. Harrison to TR, 8 Nov. 1901 (TRP); Arthur Lee, Viscount of Fareham, A Good Innings (privately printed, London, 1939), vol. 1, 254; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 295.

33Yet there was All these achievements are described in Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. The best overall survey of TR’s superhuman variety remains Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1958).

34thousands of people The following account of TR’s arrival and inauguration in Buffalo is based on an October 1902 memorandum by Ansley Wilcox, preserved in the Wilcox scrapbook, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, N.Y.; “Story of the Wilcox House,” recollections of Judge John R. Hazel in Buffalo Evening News, 15 Nov. 1963; and dozens of local and national news clips, 14–16 Sept. 1901, in the Wilcox scrapbook and TRB files. Incidental sources are cited below.

35Roosevelt’s companion Wilcox memorandum, Wilcox scrapbook.

36The cavalcade moved Photographs in ibid. Julia Bundy Foraker was in Buffalo that day. “A pall hung over life. The universe lowered its voice.” I Would Live It Again: Memories of a Vivid Life (New York, 1932), 267.

37Over lunch, he said Wilcox scrapbook; The New York Times and New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901.

38He would go there Wilcox scrapbook; Mrs. Nathaniel K. B. Patch interviews, 19 Sept. 1935 and 30 Apr. 1969, t.s. in Wilcox Mansion. Mrs. Patch was the teenage girl outside the house (below).

39Even now Mrs. Patch interviews, Wilcox Mansion. The New York Times and New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901, confirm TR’s burst of temper.

40To swelling cries Buffalo Courier and Buffalo Express, 15 Sept. 1901; Pittsburgh Press, n.d., Wilcox scrapbook. Many years later, Elihu Root recalled that Hanna had snarled to him: “Now, don’t you wish you had taken that Vice-Presidency?” (interview, 2 Sept. 1902, 1935 [PCJ]).

41A voice called out TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks (TRC).

42How often had Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root (New York, 1938), vol. 1, 423; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 677–79; Wallace G. Chessman, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Personal Tax Difficulty,” New York History 34 (1953): 54–63. See also Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, chap. 10.

43Returning to his carriage Buffalo Courier, 15 Sept. 1901; Wilcox scrapbook.

44a strange hothouse glow This library is now the centerpiece of the restored Wilcox Mansion, officially known as the Theodore Roosevelt National Inaugural Site, a public museum.

45The luminescence came Wilcox scrapbook; TR, Letters, vol. 1, 582; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 376.

46They proceeded to report For a typical reminiscence of the ceremony, see Joseph I. C. Clarke, My Life and Memories (New York, 1925), 373.

47The library clock Buffalo Courier, Buffalo Express, and New York Sun, 15 Sept. 1901; Hazel, “Story.” The Secretary of War’s emotional struggle might have been more comprehensible to people in the room had they realized that exactly twenty years before, Root had organized another emergency inauguration—that of Chester Arthur, succeeding the assassinated James A. Garfield (Root interview, 23 Jan. 1934 [PCJ]).

48Roosevelt bowed Wilcox scrapbook; The New York Times and New York Sun, 15 Sept. 1901.

49This speech The New York Times, 15 Sept. 1901; New York World, 17 Sept. 1901.

50Roosevelt spoke with Pittsburgh Press, n.d., Wilcox scrapbook. Milburn was a director of the American Express Company and Chase National Bank. Depew, in addition to being Senator, was chairman of the New York Central Railroad.

51Elihu Root had Root interview, 23 Jan. 1934 (PCJ); Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 238. In his Autobiography, TR failed to mention this debt to Root. Root’s advice had been preceded, earlier in the day, by similar instructions from TR’s brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson, in a letter hand-delivered to the Wilcox Mansion (13 Sept. 1901 [TRP]).

52Judge Hazel clutched Wilcox scrapbook; Depew in New York Sun, 16 Sept. 1901.

53Two minutes ticked by New York World and New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901. During these mute moments, wrote William Allen White, “youth, which he has clung to so fondly, left him, and maturity came.” White, “Theodore Roosevelt,” McClure’s, Nov. 1901.

54“Mr. President,” Buffalo Courier, The New York Times, and Chicago Tribune, 15 Sept. 1901.

55“I have witnessed” New York Sun, 16 Sept. 1901.

56ROOSEVELT REMAINED Wilcox scrapbook.

57A reporter was struck Clarke, My Life, 373.

58The Cabinet meeting Buffalo Courier, 15 Sept. 1901.

59Business completed New York Sun, New York Herald, and Buffalo Courier, 15 Sept. 1901. For a detailed study of TR’s security from this day on, see Richard B. Sherman, “Presidential Protection During the Progressive Era: The Aftermath of the McKinley Assassination,” Historian, Nov. 1983.

60Refuge was The following passage refers to the manuscript of TR’s draft proclamation, preserved in the Wilcox scrapbook.

61It had always been thus Owen Wister, Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship (New York, 1930), 68.

62AT FOUR O’CLOCK Buffalo Courier, The New York Times, and New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901; Elmer Dover, Hanna’s secretary, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, Sept. 1905 (MHM).

63Seated inside Years later, TR still marveled at Hanna’s toughness that afternoon. “Not a particle of subserviency … no worship of the rising sun!” TR interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 17 Apr. 1906 (MHM).

64That evening, George Wilcox scrapbook.

65SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT The New York Times, 15 Oct. 1912. See also Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 505–6, 824n119.

66Now, as he Schrank memorandum, 15 Sept. 1912, qu. in Robert Donovan, The Assassins (New York, 1955), 137.

67“This is my murderer” See ibid., 137–45, for an account of what happened in 1912.

68ROOSEVELT AWOKE REFRESHED Chicago Tribune and New York World, 16 Sept. 1901.

69VIVE LE ROI William Sturgis Bigelow and George Cabot Lodge to TR, 14 Sept. 1901 (TRP).

70Kohlsaat followed him Herman H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents (New York, 1923), 96–97; Arthur Wallace Dunn, From Harrison to Harding (New York, 1922), vol. 1, 135. Wilson, Professor of Jurisprudence and Politics at Princeton, was on his way home from Rosseau Falls, Ont.

Biographical Note: According to one of TR’s classmates, Wilson was an “ardent” admirer of TR as early as 1883. Albert Shaw, “Reminiscences of Theodore Roosevelt,” ms. (AS). Scattered references in Wilson’s early papers indicate that the two men first crossed paths on the academic lecture circuit on 20 Nov. 1890. By the middle of the decade they were corresponding; they appeared on the same platform at a Reform Rally in Baltimore, 3 Mar. 1896 (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link [Princeton, N.J., 1966], vol. 9, 483–85; The Baltimore Sun, 4 Mar. 1896). Surviving correspondence dates from April 1897 (Wilson, Papers, vol. 10, 238). Wilson expressed public admiration for TR (“This popular, this gifted man”) at Harvard on 13 Oct. 1899. TR was equally complimentary about Wilson. As Governor, he hoped the professor would visit him in Albany. “There is much I should like to talk over with you.” In 1900, Wilson consulted TR about his appointment to the chair of politics at Princeton. He valued TR’s advice “as showing … a very sane, academic side of him, not known by everybody … but constituting his hope of real and lasting eminence.” On 18 July 1901, TR invited Wilson, as a man of “constructive scholarship and administrative ability” (TR, Letters, vol. 3, 277), to stay at Oyster Bay. He wished advice “on how to arouse our young college students … to take an active interest in politics.” TR was musing on an academic career himself at this point, and had a scheme to establish student reform committees at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Wilson came, saw, and was conquered by TR’s ebullience. Afterward, he praised the visit as “most delightful and refreshing” (Wilson, Papers, vol. 11, 253, 277, 352, 513–16; vol. 12, 164, 172).

71“I am going to make” Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 97–98, 63; New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901.

72“John Hay is” New York Herald, 15 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 97–98.

73Compounding the flattery Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 99. The ultraconservative Gage was indeed nervous about having to serve under TR. Hay to Henry Adams, 19 Sept. 1901 (TD).

74My dear Roosevelt Hay to TR, 19 Sept. 1901 (TRP). During the course of the day, TR also received a letter from Henry Cabot Lodge, the controlling power of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, beseeching him, “Above all, do nothing which could cause the retirement of Secretary Hay.” Francis E. Leupp, The Man Roosevelt: A Portrait Sketch (New York, 1904), 54.

7516 SEPTEMBER DAWNED The New York Times and New York Sun, 17 Sept. 1901; film, “President McKinley’s Funeral Cortege at Buffalo,” Library of Congress; Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 100.

76THE FUNERAL TRAIN Catalogs illustrating these beautiful vehicles can be seen in GBC.

77Reporters were assigned The New York Times and New York Sun, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 100ff.; TR scrapbooks (TRP). Loeb was subsequently appointed assistant secretary to the President. TR’s decision to retain Cortelyou over him struck many Rooseveltians as opportunistic and unfeeling. McKinleyites, however, were delighted. The well-connected Cortelyou helped smooth out many transition problems between the two camps, and Loeb eventually got his delayed preferment. For a biographical sketch of Loeb, see “The Perfect Stenographer” in Louis W. Koening, The Invisible Presidency (New York, 1960).

78At 8:57 The following narrative of TR’s twelve-hour, 420-mile journey to Washington is based on the firsthand observations of newspapermen who rode on the funeral train, principally Joseph I. C. Clarke (New York Herald) and H. H. Kohlsaat (ChicagoTimes-Herald). Other accounts appeared in The New York Times, New York Sun, New York World, Chicago Tribune, Buffalo Express, and local newspapers—e.g., Harrisburg Patriot, 17 Sept. 1901. Some descriptions of the route traveled come from reconnaissances made by the author. Other sources cited below.

79What he had just Twelve days before, TR had spoken with pride about “this fundamental fact of American life, this acknowledgement that the law of work is the fundamental law of our being” TR, Works, vol. 15, 330.

80This first year London Daily Mail Yearbook, 1902; Collier’s Weekly, 25 Jan. 1902; Mark Sullivan, Our Times (New York, 1926–1935), vol. 1, 31. Contemporary statistics, cited by an English analyst in Collier’s Weekly, 25 Jan. 1902: The United States was the world’s richest nation, worth $88 billion to Britain’s $55 billion, France’s $45 billion, Germany’s $40 billion, and Russia’s $30 billion. See also articles on United States prosperity in Review of Reviews, Sept. and Oct. 1901; Success, Oct. 1901; and New YorkEvening Post, 31 Dec. 1901. The best surveys of material America at the turn of the century are the opening chapters of Harold U. Faulkner, The Decline of Laissez-Faire, 1897–1917 (New York, 1951), and George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York, 1958).

81Indeed, it could consume Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 68–69; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 1, 33; Success, Oct. 1901; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 4; James Ford Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations, 1897–1909 (New York, 1922), 158. August’s export total of $107 million was the largest in United States history (New York Evening Post, 31 Dec. 1901).

82Even if the United States William Woodruff, America’s Impact on the World (New York, 1975), 115–16; Forum, 19 May 1902; product sampling derived from a survey of popular British periodicals, Sept.–Dec. 1901 (LC); Success, Oct. 1901; Frederick A. McKenzie, The American Invaders (New York, 1901); “The American Commercial Invasion of Europe,” Scribner’s, Jan. and Feb. 1902. For the exuberant overseas expansion of American corporations in 1901, see Mira Watkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), chaps. 4 and 5.

83As a result Andrew Carnegie, Triumphant Democracy (New York, 1893), 5; Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 23, 87; Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (New York, 1999), 442–43; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 4.

84It was hard Ray Stannard Baker, American Chronicle (New York, 1945), 89–90. See Sidney Fine, Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State, 1865–1901 (Ann Arbor, 1956).

85Trees soon barred Williams, “TR Receives.” By 1901 the nation was making more than two billion calls annually.

86The foreign papers Clarke in New York Herald, 17 Sept. 1901. Foreign press quoted in New York Sun, 16 Sept. 1901.

87Continental comment was World’s Work, Dec. 1901; TR scrapbooks (TRP). For a presentist French view of TR’s prepresidential character, see Serge Ricard, “Théodore Roosevelt avant la présidence: analyse d’une pensée politique,” Canadian Review of American Studies 12.2 (fall 1981).

88fifth in the world T. A. Brassey, ed., The Naval Annual, 1902 (Portsmouth, U.K.). Great Britain led the naval ranking, followed by France, Russia, and Germany.

89About 9:30 Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 98; Clarke in New York Herald, 17 Sept. 1901.

90For ten minutes Ibid.

91McKinley had marched With the exception of Grover Cleveland (who had family responsibilities), every President since Lincoln had worn a military uniform during the Civil War. Review of Reviews, Nov. 1901.

92Powerful commercial Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 68–69; Foster Rhea Dulles, America’s Rise to World Power, 1898–1954 (New York, 1955), 46ff.

93They had trumpeted Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. Reports 244 (1901). In this decision, the Supreme Court found that the new territories were appurtenant to, rather than part of, the United States. As long as they remained thus “unincorporated” into the body politic, their inhabitants could not expect the full freedoms enjoyed by United States citizens, “only such fundamental rights as were derived from natural law” (Dulles, America’s Rise, 56). These included rights to life, liberty, and property, but did not include guarantees of, say, uniform tariff and excise rates, nor necessarily any of democratic vote (ibid., 57). TR agreed with William Howard Taft that the Supreme Court’s attitude was just: “What does well here would work ruin there [the Philippines]—trial by jury in all cases, for example” (TR, Letters, vol. 3, 105). Cynical observers suggested that the court’s ruling had been affected by the pro-imperialism vote of 1900.

94The old soldiers Frederick H. Harrington, “The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States, 1898–1900,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Sept. 1935; see also Howard C. Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean (Chicago, 1927), 13, and Robert L. Beisner,Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (New York, 1968).

95“World duties,” TR, Works, vol. 15, 332.

96“So they have” Ibid., 333.

97Cuba, for example Upon arrival in Washington, the President stated emphatically that he wanted to get out of Cuba (Francis E. Leupp to Oswald Garrison Villard, 20 Sept. 1901 [CS]). “Never in recent times,” TR asserted, “has any great nation acted with such disinterestedness as we have shown in Cuba” (ibid., 476–77). While repeating these sentiments twelve years later in his Autobiography, he admitted that in 1901 “our own direct interests were great, because of the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and especially because of Cuba’s relation to the projected Isthmian Canal” (214).

98“Sometimes,” Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 3, 105.

99Clearly, a vast World’s Work, Sept. 1901; Richard Leopold, Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition (Boston, 1954), 26–28; Alexander E. Campbell, America Comes of Age (New York, 1971), 94–95; Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence, Kans., 1989), 114–15. TR, in Letters, vol. 3, 209, sneers at “those amiable but very far from wise philanthropists who think that we can … benefit the Filipino by getting out of the Philippines and letting him wallow back into savagery.” Review of Reviews remarked, in an article on the problems confronting Governor-General Taft: “Under the most liberal estimates, there are not over a half-million people in the islands who possess anywhere near the capacity for selfgovernment exhibited by the most ignorant negro in the black belt of our own South” (Aug. 1901). For TR’s intense prepresidential interest in the Philippines (he wanted to be the first Governor-General), see Oscar M. Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines (New York, 1974), chap. 1.

100President McKinley’s Leopold, Elihu Root, 34–35; TR, Works, vol. 15, 337–38. Taft disclaimed some of the rumors in a letter to Root (2 Aug. 1901 [ER]), but admitted others were true. According to Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 226, 230, Filipinos were being exterminated, at the height of the insurrection, at a ratio of five dead to every one wounded. For a contemporary view of the relations between the United States and its new dependencies, see Arthur W. Dunn, “The Government of Our Insular Possessions,” Review of Reviews, Dec. 1901.

101THE TRAIN BEGAN The New York Times, 17 Sept. 1901; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 3, 20, 23; Alexander E. Campbell, Great Britain and the U.S., 1895–1903 (London, 1960), 179–83; A. Northend Benjamin, “Russia in the East,” Munsey’s, June 1901.

102Both powers were Frederick W. Marks III, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (Lincoln, Nebr., 1979), 4–5; Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 8th ed. (New York, 1968), 482; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 3, 20, 26, 112; Raymond A. Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan (Seattle, 1966), 8. See also A. Gregory Moore, “Dilemma of Stereotypes: Theodore Roosevelt and China, 1901–1909” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1978).

103Worldwide, the balance A modern historian redefines this as “an imbalance” favorable to the United States and Great Britain (William N. Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft [New York, 1997], 49). See also Edward H. Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry in the Far East: A Study in Diplomacy and Power Politics, 1895–1914 (Philadelphia, 1946), passim. “I think the 20th century will still be the century of the men who speak English.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 15.

104The United States acknowledged For TR’s wistfulness regarding Canada, see Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 334.

105This was the only TR, Letters, vol. 3, 21, 65–66, 109; see also TR, Works, vol. 15, 335–36.

106Roosevelt could claim Marks, Velvet on Iron, 72; TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1209, 1186–87; Kenton J. Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat (Ann Arbor, 1975), 177–79. See also David H. Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents: A Special Relationship of Friends,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 63, pt. 2 (1973): 39–42.

107Now there was this new David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas (New York, 1977), 256–59.

108Roosevelt privately favored Allan Nevins, Henry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (New York, 1930), 156.

109The stupendous task TR, Works, vol. 15, 273; Senator W. A. Harris to John Tyler Morgan, 29 Oct. 1901 (JTM); TR, Public Papers of Theodore Roosevelt, Governor (Albany, 1899–1900), 298; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 52; Holger Herwig, Politics of Frustration: The United States in German Naval Planning, 1889–1941 (Boston, 1976), 70; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 5–6.

110Even so, Panama McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 264–65; Campbell, Great Britain and the U.S., 71.

111That reluctant appendix Review of Reviews, Sept. 1901; TR, Autobiography, 528–30; The New York Times, 16 Sept. 1901. The first-cited periodical almost wistfully contemplated the day when the United States “should come into full authority” in Panama. “That isthmus is of no practical value to the Republic of Colombia.… It would be to our advantage to purchase [it] at a fair price.” The author of these words was TR’s friend and adviser Albert Shaw.

112THE ALLEGHENY FOOTHILLS Olean, City of Natural Advantages (illustrated commercial guidebook, 1889, NYPL); WPA Guide to New York (1940); Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 1, 28, and vol. 2, 271–99.

113“The party of” Qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 250. The following account of the rise of the trusts prior to 16 Sept. 1901 is based on ibid., vol. 2, 307–37; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 6–10; Fine, Laissez-Faire; Hans B. Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy (Baltimore, 1955); and Naomi Lamoreaux, The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904 (New York, 1985).

114His profits were Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 167–77; Lamoreaux, Great Merger Movement, 159; Charles W. McCurdy, “The Knight Sugar Decision of 1895 and the Modernization of American Corporation Law, 1869–1903,” Business History Review Index, autumn 1979. For a detailed study of the Sherman Act, see Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy. For statistics showing the pace of business combination prior to 1901, see Ralph L. Nelson, Merger Movements in American Industry, 1895–1956 (Princeton, N.J., 1959).

115In 1898, there Olivier Zunz, Making America Corporate, 1870–1920 (Chicago, 1990), 68.

116Ideologically, Roosevelt Nelson, Merger Movements, 33–34, 37; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 411–16. For TR’s attitude toward the trusts, see, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1400, 1493–94 (comments of John M. Blum); vol. 3, 122, 159–60; and TR, Works, vol. 15, 315.

117He saw “grave dangers” This opinion was shared by most turn-of-the-century economists (Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 53). For revisionist views, see Alfred P. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business(Cambridge, Mass., 1977), and Albro Martin, James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (New York, 1976). Martin helps demolish the “Robber Baron” cliché of earlier writers. Elsewhere, he views equably the tendency of a modern, multi-unit corporation to operate beyond government control (“Uneasy Partners: Government-Business Relations in 20th Century American History,” Prologue 11 [summer 1979]). It was this antidemocratic tendency, not the growth of trusts per se, that alarmed TR in 1901.

118America was no longer See H. T. Newcomb, “The Recent Great Railway Combinations,” Review of Reviews, Aug. 1901. By now, nearly all the railroads had been consolidated into the hands of a half-dozen operators (Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 7).

119According to a Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence, Kans., 1991), 28; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 255n; Ray Stannard Baker, “John Pierpont Morgan,” McClure’s, Oct. 1901; New York Herald, 16 Sept. 1901.

120roosevelt liked morgan TR, Letters, vol. 1, 58; vol. 2, 1238, 1450; and vol. 3, 42; Herbert L. Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan (New York, 1975), 363; Lewis Corey, The House of Morgan (New York, 1975), 253.

121Leyland Steamship Lines Baker, “John Pierpont Morgan.” This purchase, made in the summer of 1901, sent shock waves of apprehension through London’s financial community. Morgan sought to soothe local stockbrokers by protesting, “America is good enough for me.” William Jennings Bryan’s Commoner quipped, “Whenever he doesn’t like it, he can give it back to us” (qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 355).

122Control, indeed, was William H. Harbaugh, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, rev. ed. (New York, 1975), 157–58; Baker, “John Pierpont Morgan”; The New York Times, 31 Mar. 1913; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 14; Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 38, 374; Review of Reviews, Apr. 1901.

123To his mind TR, Autobiography, 439–40; Chandler, Visible Hand, 175.

124“The vast individual” TR, Works, vol. 15, 331–32.

125“I owe the public” Corey, House of Morgan, 301.

126If they were Ibid.; Lincoln Steffens, “The Overworked President,” McClure’s 18.6 (Apr. 1902). The latter article describes the United States government in terms of a trust much larger than United States Steel, with “the equivalent of a capital, not of a hundred millions, but a hundred billions,” benefiting some seventy-six million stockholders—in effect, the greatest business organization in the world.

127elsewhere in the train Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 100–101.

128at four minutes past Buffalo Express, 17 Sept. 1901.

129the steep climb The New York Times and New York Herald, 17 Sept. 1901.

130Boys, youths, and old Photographs and text in Peter Roberts, Anthracite Coal Communities: A Study of the Demography, the Social, Educational, and Moral Life of the Anthracite Regions (New York, 1904); John Mitchell, “The Mine Worker’s Life and Aims,” Cosmopolitan, Oct. 1901.

131Roosevelt knew that Mitchell, “Mine Worker’s,” passim; Roberts, Anthracite Communities, 15; David Montgomery, “American Labor, 1865–1902: The Early Industrial Era,” Monthly Labor Review 99.7 (July 1976).

132These boys John R. Commons et al., History of Labor in the United States, 1896–1932 (New York, 1935), vol. 3, 402–5; Roberts, Anthracite Communities, passim; Harold W. Aurand, “Social Motivation of the Anthracite Mine Workers: 1900–1920,” Labor History 18 (summer 1977).

133Roosevelt understood As early as 1897, in his review of Brooks Adams’s The Law of Civilization and Decay, TR had publicly declared that the poverty-stricken mass “constitutes a standing menace, not merely to our property, but to our existence” (TR,Works, vol. 14, 135). By 1901, fewer than 4 percent of United States workers were unionized, and the cost of living was rising at a steady 7 percent. Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 280, 252–54.

134Trade-union membership Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 34–35; TR, Works, vol. 16, 509; George F. Baer, “Statement Regarding the Anthracite Strike,” 10 June 1902 (GWP); Robert J. Cornell, The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 (Washington, D.C., 1957), 54–57.

135Roosevelt had been See TR, Letters, vol. 1, 100–101; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 733; TR, Works, vol. 15, 331. See Howard L. Hurwitz, Theodore Roosevelt and Labor in New York State, 1880–1900 (New York, 1943), for a critical review of TR’s prepresidential labor policies.

136PILLARS OF HEMLOCK Now Elk State Forest.

137Roosevelt was more prone TR, Letters, vol. 1, 122; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 382–85; TR, Diaries of Boyhood and Youth (New York, 1928), 247.

138Qui plantavit curabit “He who has planted will preserve.”

139I am sorry Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 48; WPA Guide to Pennsylvania (1940); World’s Work, June and Nov. 1901; The Forester 7 (1901), passim; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 1, 128; Michael Frome, The Forest Service (New York, 1971), 16.

140Descent via Emporium TR, Autobiography, 325; Frome, Forest Service, chap. 1, passim.

141A town sign Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 31; Frome, Forest Service, 9; Ray Stannard Baker, “What the U.S. Steel Corporation Really Is,” McClure’s, Nov. 1901.

142To him, conservation Stephen R. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston, 1981), 108–9; TR, “How I Became a Progressive,” Outlook, Oct. 1912. See also TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1421–22 (to the National Irrigation Congress, 1900), and TR, Autobiography, chap. 11. For the equally ominous state of the nation’s fauna in 1901, see Maximilian Foster, “American Game Preserves,” Munsey’s, June 1901, and John S. Wise, “The Awakening Concerning Game,” Review of Reviews, Nov. 1901. Michael J. Lacey’s “The Mysteries of Earth-Making Dissolve: A Study of Washington’s Intellectual Community and the Origins of American Environmentalism in the Late Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1979) shows that the conservation movement was in fact some twelve years old, and coming into full philosophical flower in September 1901. But the flower blushed unseen by all but very few. It remained for TR, as President, to popularize this philosophy and make it government policy.

143IT WAS NEARLY time Washington Evening Star, 16 Sept. 1901. New York World and Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901.

144He felt at home Leopold, Elihu Root, 9, 18; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 503. For another example of TR’s willingness to identify himself with Root’s conservative rhetoric, see his remark at the Minnesota State Fair: “It is probably true that the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have been amassed not by injuring our people, but as an incident to the conferring of great benefits upon the community” (TR, Works, vol. 15, 332).

145More conservative rhetoric New York World and The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901; H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse, 1963), 249.

146McKinley had chosen For a profile of the American conservative at the turn of the century, see Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 38–45. See also James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State (Boston, 1969), and Norman Wilensky, “Conservatives in the Progressive Era,” University of Florida Monographs, no. 25 (1965).

147They were accustomed The official letter-books of Gage, Hay, and Knox, e.g., are replete with acknowledgments of favors received. Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 204; Lewis L. Gould, Reform and Regulation: American Politics, 1900–1916 (New York, 1978), 18.

148They were prepared Edward C. Kirkland, Dream and Thought in the Business Community, 1860–1900 (Madison, 1956), 121; Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York, 1963), 58–59.

149He tended toward Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 45.

150Years of sweaty See TR’s review of Kidd’s Social Evolution (1894) in TR, Works, vol. 14, 107–28. This volume also contains other literary essays revelatory of TR’s late-nineteenth-century thought: “National Life and Character” and “The Law of Civilization and Decay.” For intellectual analyses of the prepresidential TR, see John M. Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision,” in TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1484–94; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 462–71; and Edmund Morris, “Theodore Roosevelt, President,”American Heritage 32.4 (June–July 1981). The best overall analysis remains chap. 2, “The World of Thought,” in Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 31–84.

151In a fundamental TR, qu. in Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision” in TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1487; TR, Works, vol. 15, 109–10.

152The United States Terence Powderley, U.S. commissioner of immigration, in Collier’s, 14 Dec. 1901. For a selection of relevant social and economic statistics, see Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 30–39.

153Somehow he must TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1487; vol. 3, 105.

154“a bully pulpit” TR, qu. by Lyman Abbott in “A Review of President Roosevelt’s Administration: IV,” Outlook, 27 Feb. 1909.

155The fine white Edward W. Bok, in The Americanization of Edward Bok (New York, 1922), describes in detail his relationship with TR. See also Salme H. Steinberg, Reformer in the Marketplace: Edward W. Bok and The Ladies’ Home Journal (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), and Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), vol. 4, 539, 547, for Bok as editor, and Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 69–72, 75–76, for TR’s views on the social usefulness of literature.

156Girls softly pelted Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901.

157Thickening crowds New York World, New York Herald, and Buffalo Express, 17 Sept. 1901.

158Governor William Stone Review of Reviews, Sept. 1901; Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1901; J. Hampton Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard (Philadelphia, 1925), 195; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 136.

159A messenger ran Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 105; New York Evening Post and New York Evening World, 16 Sept. 1901; Commercial & Financial Chronicle, 21 Sept. 1901. Frederick Holls met TR the next day, and wrote Albert Shaw: “He is highly gratified at the Wall Street boom and Kohlsaat has persuaded him [sic] to agree and keep Gage on till 1905. That is fixed” (17 [AS]).

160Roosevelt was relieved Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 105.

161The tolling of Harrisburg Patriot and Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 102–4.

162Ahead, in the New York Evening World, 17 Sept. 1901.

163THE SUN WAS Buffalo Express, and Clarke in New York Herald, 17 Sept. 1901.

164Though such families Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 12, 18–19; Review of Reviews, Sept. 1901; Fred A. Shannon, “The Status of the Midwestern Farmer in 1900,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 37.3 (Dec. 1950).

165Technological progress Shannon, “Status.”

166Roosevelt could see Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901; Walter Wellman in McClure’s, Sept. 1901; Shannon, “Status”; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 13. Peter J. Hill, “Relative Skill and Income Levels of Native and Foreign-Born Workers in the U.S.,”Explorations in Economic History 12.1 (1975), shows that the general impression in 1901 of the inferiority of immigrant labor was fallacious.

167Not surprisingly John Higham, Strangers in the Land (New Brunswick, N.J., 1955), 137–40; White editorial, qu. in Kenneth S. Davis, “The Sage of Emporia,” American Heritage 30.6 (Oct.–Nov. 1979).

168Roosevelt was not See Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision,” in TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1488, and TR, “True Americanism,” Works, vol. 15, 15–31. Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge, 1980), is the latest attempt to interpret TR’s racial thought in the light of modern sensibilities, mentioning Booker T. Washington only twice.

169One of his favorite Nancy Schoenberg, “Officer Otto Raphael: A Jewish Friend of Theodore Roosevelt,” American Jewish Archives 39.1 (1987); TR, “Ethnology of the Police,” Munsey’s, June 1897; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 86; Higham, Strangers, 105–12, 149. The League was the pet project of TR’s best friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. See Barbara Miller Solomon, “The Intellectual Background of the Immigration Restriction Movement in New England,” New England Quarterly 25 (1952).

170Several thousand Chicago Tribune and New York World, 17 Sept. 1901.

171THE CONSISTENT FEATURES The image of the fault line is borrowed from Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt. See ibid., 1–105, for an overall survey of the American landscape (material, intellectual, political, social, and ideological) at the turn of the century.

172“The extremes of” Qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 243.

173Roosevelt thought he TR, Works, vol. 15, 314. For a survey of at least some of Everyman’s feelings at the time of TR’s accession, see Louis Galambos, The Public Image of Big Business in America, 1890–1940 (Baltimore, 1975), chap. 4.

174“Bob” and “Tom” These two candidates were Robert M. LaFollette and Tom L. Johnson.

175Far-flung and lonely TR, aside from being precociously sensitive to American public opinion, had read Henry George, Edward Bellamy, and Henry Demarest Lloyd, all premature voices of Progressive protest. Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 369.

Historical Note: The word progressive had not yet acquired a specific political meaning in 1901. At the moment of TR’s accession, the Atlantic Monthly predicted the rise of a new party, founded on opposition to privilege and concentrated power, “anti-corruption, anti-spoliation, dedicated to public ownership of utilities and railroads, and telegraph systems” (“The Future of Political Parties,” Sept. 1901). For a concise survey of the origins of Progressivism, see Stanley P. Caine’s essay in Lewis L. Gould, ed., The Progressive Era (Syracuse, 1974).

176ROOSEVELT’S REVERIE Chicago Tribune, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 104; Statistical History of the United States (New York, 1976). For an analysis of the political, social, and economic differences between Northern and Southern blacks in 1901, see W.E.B. Du Bois, The Black North in 1901: A Social Study (New York, 1902; repr. 1969).

177Census statistics such as Southern blacks contributed one third of the total convention ballot. The Washington Post, 12 Mar. 1902.

178The South was Herbert Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna (New York, 1912), 298; Richard B. Sherman, The Republican Party and Black America: From McKinley to Hoover, 1896–1933 (Charlottesville, 1973), 19–20; Horace and Marion Merrill, The Republican Command, 1897–1913 (Lexington, Ky., 1971), 74–75; The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan (Urbana, 1972–1989, vol. 6, 336 (hereafter Booker T. Washington Papers).

179“burly, coarse-fibered” TR to William Allen White, 27 Aug. 1901 (WAW). The compound adjective is incorrectly transcribed as “unterrified” in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 135.

180To consolidate his TR, Letters, vol. 3, 149. TR reportedly talked at length about his Southern strategy on the train. H. H. Kohlsaat to editor, The Atlanta Constitution, 7 June 1903.

181“Theodore” Rhodes, McKinley and Roosevelt, 218. Rhodes got this quotation from Hanna, who was his brother-in-law. By 1905, TR was denying that the train meeting took place. But Kohlsaat, From McKinley, 102–3, and Joseph L. Bristow interview, 6 Dec. 1938 (HKB), confirm it, as does Lincoln Steffens in McClure’s, July 1905. TR’s reply to Steffens suggests that he was denying the substance of the conversation, not its occurrence. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1254.

182at twenty past Buffalo Express, 17 Sept. 1901.

183There was neither Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and New York Sun, 17 Sept. 1901.

184As usual in moments The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901; John Hay, Letters and Extracts from His Diary, ed. Henry Adams (privately printed, 1908), vol. 3, 232.

185“Divide off” The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901.

186“Something should be” Ibid.

187For a moment New York Sun, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post, 17 Sept. 1901. EKR recorded TR’s arrival at the Cowles house that evening “looking very grave and older, but not at all nervous. All the country seems behind him” (Diary, 16 Sept. 1901).

CHAPTER 1: THE SHADOW OF THE CROWN

1I see that “Mr. Dooley” [Finley Peter Dunne], 28 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP). See also Mr. Dooley on Ivrything and Ivrybody, ed. Robert Hutchinson (New York, 1963), 169–70.

2on the morning Waldon Fawcett, “President Roosevelt at Work,” Leslie’s Weekly, n.d. Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Washington Evening Star, 20 Sept. 1901.

3As the President New York Journal, 24 Sept. 1901.

4A pall of EKR, speech to children at TRB, 26 Oct. 1933 (TRB); Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 222–23; The New York Times Magazine, 12 Jan. 1919.

5At eleven o’clock Unidentified Cabinet officer in Boston Transcript, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).

6“I need your advice” Harry Thurston Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885–1905 (New York, 1906), 667.

7He interrupted Boston Transcript, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).

8The President’s hunger TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1346; New York Herald, 21 Sept. 1901.

9“This being my” David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston, 1924), 267.

10A certain code Ibid., 267–68.

11Boynton and Barry Ibid., 268–69.

12MUCH LATER THAT EVENING TR’s sister lived at 1733 N Street. Her home—soon known as “the Little White House”—was to become a social hideaway for the President and his family over the next seven years. See Lilian Rixey, Bamie: Theodore Roosevelt’s Remarkable Sister (New York, 1963).

Chronological Note: On Tuesday, 17 Sept. 1901, TR had attended McKinley memorial services in the Capitol. He then followed the dead President’s coffin to Canton, Ohio, where it was interred on the nineteenth. TR was accompanied by his entire Cabinet, with the exception of John Hay, whom he ordered to remain in Washington, “on the avowed ground,” Hay wrote a friend amusedly, “that he did not want too many eggs in the same Pullman car” (William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay [New York, 1915], vol. 2, 267). The presidential party returned on an overnight train, arriving back in Washington early on 20 Sept.

13“My great difficulty” TR, qu. by William Allen White, “Remarks at the Roosevelt Memorial Association Dinner, 27 Oct. 1933” (HH). The following account is based on this source, with extra details from White, Autobiography, 338–39, and Rixey, Bamie, 172–76. The date of the dinner is fixed by William Allen White to TR, 17 Sept. 1901 (TRP), and the Washington Times, 21 Sept. 1901.

14Commander Cowles, replete White, “Remarks.”

15“I shall be” Ibid. TR would in fact be fifty come March 1909.

16“I don’t want” White, Autobiography, 339.

17Undisturbed by the Ibid; Nicholas Murray Butler, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections (New York, 1939), vol. 1, 312–13.

18QUIET SETTLED Washington Evening Star, 25 Sept. 1901; Review of Reviews, Nov. 1901.

19“You ought to” New York World, 23 Sept. 1901. For a man who relished publicity, TR had an odd dislike of being photographed. For a considerable time he refused even to pose formally with his Cabinet. Photo editors were reduced to exhuming group portraits of the McKinley Administration and pasting TR’s head and shoulders onto those of his predecessor (Washington Evening Star, 5 Nov. 1901). The results were grotesque enough to persuade him eventually to relent. To the end of his life he had difficulty relaxing in front of the camera; “candid” news-reels show how quickly he froze at the sight of a lens. Consequently, his iconographic record is grim. Only a dozen or so shots survive to show that he was the most genial of men.

20Later, on a Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), 503.

21“Here is the task,” TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, 23 Sept. 1901, Letters, vol. 3, 150.

22The presidential suite The New York Times, 24 Sept. 1901; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 161; Robinson, My Brother, 206–7.

23Later, when decorations Robinson, My Brother. Mrs. Robinson misdates this dinner by one day.

24TWO EVENINGS LATER John Barrett (dinner guest) to Caroline S. Barrett, 28 Sept. 1901 (JB); New York Herald and New York Journal, 26 Sept. 1901. See also Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, chap. 18.

25Kermit and Ethel New York Herald and New York Journal, 26 Sept. 1901.

26“It is understood” The Washington Post, 28 Sept. 1901.

27The White House police Ibid.

28Alice, naughtily Teague, Mrs. L., 62; Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Crowded Hours: Reminiscences of Alice Roosevelt Longworth (New York, 1933), 43.

29distracted as the George Cortelyou to Booker T. Washington, 27 Sept. 1901 (BTW); Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP); Louis J. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York, 1983), 307. Washington and TR had known each other since 1898. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1072; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 441.

30Washington’s resistance Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 439, 441; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 23; Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 215. See also Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 128ff.

31State by state C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York, 1955), 66–68; World’s Work, Oct. 1901. While expressing sorrow over the death of President McKinley, Washington reminded the editor of the Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser that an estimated 125,000 Americans had participated in the lynching of Negroes. Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 305–6.

32Washington, whose Washington was not unaware of the power he would acquire as TR’s race adviser. “I presume that for the mere asking I could get from President Roosevelt almost any political office within reason,” he wrote privately. Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 216.

33after leaving the Booker T. Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP); Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 12.

34As his mother Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 1.

35Blacks and whites See, e.g., Harry Thurston Peck in International Monthly, 1 July 1901, and W.E.B. Du Bois, qu. in Francis L. Broderick, W.E.B. Du Bois.

36“We can be as” Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 218.

37Washington’s philosophy Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 385; vol. 1, 220; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 112; Harlan, “The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington,” Journal of Southern History37.3 (1971); TR, Letters, vol. 5, 227.

38Roosevelt, gazing at Donald J. Calista, “Booker T. Washington: Another Look,” Journal of Negro History49.4 (1964).

39NO SOONER HAD Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 308; Booker T. Washington to TR, 2 Oct. 1901, in Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 222–23.

40“[He] wanted to” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 224.

41Washington was forced Ibid., 229.

42Scott delivered Ibid.

43“Because my experience” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 163–64. TR promised to defer further questions of Southern patronage until Hanna came back to town.

44Hanna wrote back Mark Hanna to TR, 12 Oct. 1901 (TRP).

45Despite Hanna’s concern Literary Digest, 19 Oct. 1901; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 31; Washington Evening Star, 14 Oct. 1901; Review of Reviews, Nov. 1901. The appointment of Judge Jones bore fruit in the spring of 1903. See below and TR, Letters, vol. 3, 501.

46Encouraged, the President Washington Evening Star, 10 Oct. 1901. TR’s equipage eventually comprised a landau, a brougham, a basket surrey, a buggy, a phaeton, and a victoria—but no automobiles, which he felt lacked presidential dignity. He owned two carriage teams and six riding horses, including two Kentucky Thoroughbreds for himself and his wife. With three additional office horses, and four more belonging to William Loeb, the White House stables were soon at capacity. See Herbert Ridgeway,Presidents on Wheels (Washington, D.C., 1971).

47He scrapped Philander Knox to George Cortelyou, 15 Oct. 1901 (GBC); Washington Evening Star, 30 Oct. 1901; Stuart P. Sherman in The Nation, 9 Nov. 1919; Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 345.

48Roosevelt in any case Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 369; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 164–70. See also TR’s personal enunciation of Hay’s “Open Door” policy on 27 Feb. 1902 (TRP). Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 34, notes how frequently, from now on, Hay invoked TR’s authority in his diplomatic correspondence.

49“Teddy said” John Hay to Henry Adams, 13 Oct. 1901 (TD).

50Most observers felt 14 Oct. 1901 news clips, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

51“For the moment” Frederick A. McKenzie in unidentified news clip, ca. Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

CHAPTER 2: THE MOST DAMNABLE OUTRAGE

1Thousan’s iv men “Mr. Dooley” in Salt Lake City Daily Tribune, 10 Nov. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

2ON 16 OCTOBER Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 318–20; Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Booker T. Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP).

3Roosevelt had a TR, Letters, vol. 3, 190.

Historiological Note: The question of whether TR was the first President to break the White House’s color bar was exhaustively discussed in newspapers of the day. Research indicated that Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, and possibly Frederick Douglass, had attended large receptions there, and probably partaken of refreshments with the general company. But neither black man ever dined with the President in intimate surroundings, as Booker T. Washington did on this occasion. Indeed, the only non-Caucasian guest to do so was Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii, during Grover Cleveland’s first administration. Cleveland himself indignantly denied, in the fall of 1901, that he had ever entertained a guest of darker hue than Her Majesty. Chicago Tribune, 18 Oct. 1901; The Charlotte Observer and Chattanooga News clippings, n.d., Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

4He received Washington Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 311, errs in saying that Alice Roosevelt attended the dinner. She was still out of town.

5Dinner proceeded James E. Amos, Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet (New York, 1927), 54; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 472.

6The President felt TR to Carl Schurz, qu. by Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 313; see also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 182; Maurice Francis Egan, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York, 1924), 213.

7Here, dark and Archibald W. Butt, The Letters of Archie Butt: Personal Aide to President Roosevelt (New York, 1924), 68; Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 77; Charles Willis Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents(Indianapolis, 1929), 24. Ten years after their famous dinner, TR concluded that Washington was “the highest type of all-round man I have ever met.” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 439.

8For those blacks Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt, 97–98; TR, Autobiography, 11; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1066; Wister, Roosevelt, 259; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 226.

9Yet Roosevelt believed Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt, 92, 97; TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1364–65; TR in Review of Reviews, Jan. 1897.

10Sometime during the Memphis Commercial Appeal, 18 Oct. 1901, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP); The Washington Post, 17 Oct. 1901. Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 218–19, goes to extravagant lengths to describe this news leak as involuntary, and dismisses as “contemptible slander” any suggestion that TR may have authorized the announcement “for political effect.” But his book, published in 1904, was a campaign biography, and Leupp himself was known to be a “mouthpiece” for the Roosevelt Administration (John Bassett Moore to J. W. Bayard, 28 Oct. 1901 [JBM]). For obvious reasons, TR would want Southern voters to think, in an election year, that the famous dinner had been an impulse on his part, never to be repeated. But in 1901 he was keen to attract what support he could from moderate Southern Republicans unbeholden to Mark Hanna. His early words to heads of press agencies quoted on pp. 44–45 make plain his strong intent to control all White House news.

11NEITHER ROOSEVELT NOR The Washington Post and New York Tribune, 17 Oct. 1901; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 313; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 264; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 257; The Washington Post, 18 Oct. 1901. See also August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideology in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor, 1988).

12Whites, too, “I thank you—I congratulate you—I pity you,” a typical correspondent wrote. “I think you have done an act as brave as [the Christian martyr Hugh] Latimer’s and of the same sort. You will be roasted like him, too, and like him ultimately justified with personal earthly immortality.” Albion W. Tourgée to TR, 21 Oct. 1901 (TRP).

13But during the The Atlanta Constitution, 17 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

14“The most damnable” Memphis Scimitar, 17 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

15The word nigger New York Tribune, 25 Oct. 1901.

16ROOSEVELT DINES A Richmond Dispatch, 18 Oct. 1901; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge, 1970), 36; The Atlanta Constitution, 18 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

17Some of the more Undated news clips and Presidential scrapbook (TRP). See also Theo Miller, “Booker T. Washington and Some American Writers,” Research Studies 39.4 (1970), and Takahiro Sasaki’s detailed study “Race or Individual Freedom: Public Reactions to the Roosevelt-Washington Dinner at the White House in October, 1901” (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina, 1984).

18The storm squalled William H. Lewis, TR’s black classmate from Harvard, spent a night in the gubernatorial mansion, as did a stranded black baritone denied admission to local hotels. TR also entertained Booker T. Washington at Oyster Bay. Presidential scrapbook, Oct. 1901 (TRP); Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 230.

19Hate mail The Washington Post, 19 Oct. 1901; Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 136; St. Louis Mirror, 31 Oct. 1901. The most recent Tillman biography is Stephen Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy(Chapel Hill, 2000). But see also Francis B. Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman (Baton Rouge, 1944), 1–32.

20“At one stroke” Richmond News, 18 Oct. 1901. See also Edgar G. Murphy to Booker T. Washington, 19 Oct. 1901 (BTW).

21BY TACIT AGREEMENT New York Tribune, 25 Oct. 1901; Springfield Republican, n.d., Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

22ON 21 OCTOBER New Orleans Times-Democrat and St. Louis Republic, 22 Oct. 1901; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 317; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 262; Charles P. Taft to William H. Taft, 24 Oct. 1901 (WHT).

23Roosevelt looked calm New York Herald, 22 Oct. 1901; Platt qu. in Louis Coolidge, An Old-Fashioned Senator: Orville H. Platt (New York, 1910), 512; “Precautionary” [security] file, Oct. 1901 (TRP). Leon Czolgosz approached McKinley with what looked like a bandaged right hand. McKinley reached to shake his left, whereupon the “bandage” spit bullets.

24Shocked by this New Hampshire Evening Register, 23 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Rhodes, McKinley and Roosevelt, 228.

25Degrees were awarded Longworth, Crowded Hours, 43; The New York Times and New York Journal, 24 Oct. 1901. TR was awarded an LL.D.

26Notwithstanding this Frederick S. Wood, Roosevelt as We Knew Him (Philadelphia, 1927), 98.

27Twain’s private Bernard De Voto, ed., Mark Twain in Eruption (New York, 1940), 30–31.

28A LARGE CROWD New Orleans Times-Democrat, 21 Oct. 1901; New York Herald and Washington Evening Star, 25 Oct. 1901.

29ROOSEVELT’S QUERULOUSNESS Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 274–75; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 181, 184. In late October, Senator John L. McLaurin of South Carolina wrote a sympathetic statement explaining TR’s action in terms calculated to reassure the South. But TR refused to approve it. “The President said he did not want anyone to make any explanation for him” (George Cortelyou superscript on original draft [TRP]).

30“My dear Mr. President” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 6, 274.

31Sensing Roosevelt’s need Ibid., 263, 283.

32Some good, certainly John M. Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 44; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 305, 324.

33“the infinite capacity” “TR and the Press,” unpublished ms. (HH).

34He dutifully announced New York Journal, 30 Oct. 1901.

35“I have not been” TR to Albion W. Tourgée, 8 Nov. 1901, Letters, vol. 3, 190–91.

36As the famous See, e.g., TR to Carl Schurz, qu. in Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 321; Wister, Roosevelt, 254; M. A. De Wolfe Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer: His Life and Public Services (New York, 1919), 416, 420; TR, Letters, vol. 8, 981–82.

37And when Washington Booker T. Washington to George Cortelyou, 20 Dec. 1901 (TRP).

CHAPTER 3: ONE VAST, SMOOTHLY RUNNING MACHINE

1A hard time Finley Peter Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley (New York, 1902), 175.

2THE NIGHT OF MONDAY Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is based on Ray Stannard Baker, “The Great Northern Pacific Deal,” Collier’s Weekly, 30 Nov. 1901; Commercial & Financial Chronicle, 1902, 843, 1011, 1062; and Martin, James J. Hill, 495ff. Additional atmospheric details from New York Sun, 12 and 13 Nov. 1901.

3three financiers conferred The standard biographies are Martin, James J. Hill; Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman (Chapel Hill, 2000); Strouse, Morgan; and John A. Garraty, Right-Hand Man: The Life of George W. Perkins (New York, 1960).

4This common need Isaac F. Marcosson, Before I Forget (New York, 1959), 221–24.

5huge damp mustache “I never could figure out how he drank his coffee” Averell Harriman interview, 14 Feb. 1981.

6Decent, driven men TR, First Annual Message to Congress, Works, vol. 17, 101; Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 24–25, 92–93.

7Yet they had Martin, James J. Hill, 505; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 347.

8Their meeting tonight Balthazar H. Meyer, “A History of the Northern Securities Case,” Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin Economics and Political Science Series1.3 (1904–1906): 229–36; Martin, James J. Hill, 394–504. The panic occurred on 9 May 1901.

9Right now, Hill Martin, James J. Hill, 504–8. Harriman had acquired the Southern Pacific earlier in the year. He also had interests in the Santa Fe.

10What lay before Meyer, “Northern Securities Case,” 236; Martin, James J. Hill, 509.

11Anybody could see Meyer, “Northern Securities Case,” 240; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 370.

12The flaw in New York World, 15 Nov. 1901, quotes an unnamed trust expert as saying that Hill’s charter was “unquestionably … a violation of the spirit of the law against combinations.”

13But Hill was New York World, 15 Nov. 1901; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 445; Martin, James J. Hill, 511.

14THE NEXT DAY, Tuesday TR to Albert Shaw, 12 Nov. 1901; TR, First Annual Message draft (TRP). See Waldon Fawcett, “How President Roosevelt Wrote His First Message,” Success, Jan. 1902.

15Roosevelt worked Washington Evening Star, 12 Nov. 1901.

16ROOSEVELT HAD TAKEN The following profile of Philander Chase Knox is based on descriptions and photographs in Edward G. Lowry, Washington Close-Ups: Intimate Views of Some Public Figures (Boston, 1921), 194–96; New York Herald, 7 Apr. 1901; The Historical Register (New York, 1921), 54; Philadelphia Press, 10 June 1904; Thompson, Party Leaders, 310ff.; and Samuel Flagg Bemis, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy (New York, 1927–1929, vol. 9, 302–10.

17In the words of Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 194. Kate Carew in New York World, 10 Mar. 1904, satirizes Knox’s impenetrability.

18Knox was the By the late 1890s, Knox was said to be charging $250,000 for a case. A. T. Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University, 1959), 10. See also Minneapolis Times, 17 Jan. 1903, in Knox Scrapbook (PCK).

19The Attorney General New York Herald, 7 Apr. 1901; Kate Carew in New York World, 10 Mar. 1904; Knox to Delmonico’s, 13 Jan. 1902 (PCK); photographs of 1527 K Street NW (FBJ); Knox qu. in New York Herald, 20 June 1901.

20His languid, laissez-faire Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 686; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 232. Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 404–5, notes that Knox showed little spontaneous inclination to activate antitrust enforcement until galvanized by TR.

21A friend remarked Thompson, Party Leaders, 318.

22Roosevelt was quick TR qu. in Samuel Leland Powers, Portraits of Half a Century (Boston, 1925), 218; Washington Evening Star, 18 Oct. 1901; Henry Loomis Nelson, “Three Months of President Roosevelt,” Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1902.

23Knox, Roosevelt discovered Philadelphia Press, 10 June 1904; Knox scrapbook (PCK); Bemis, American Secretaries of State, vol. 9, 309–10; Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 25–26, 32; Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 201; White, Autobiography, 342.

24Such a truce Hill had visited Washington at the beginning of November, and asked himself to dinner at the White House (Washington Evening Star, 2 Nov. 1901). Martin, James J. Hill, speculates: “It was time, Hill felt, to explain what the new railroad arrangements meant for the West they loved so much.” For Harriman’s and Morgan’s early relationship with TR and Hill, see Klein, Life and Legend, 361–63.

25Perkins was the TR, Letters, vol. 3, 159–60.

26“Perkins may just” Ibid., 159–60, 177.

27MORGAN, HILL, AND Washington Evening Star, 13 Nov. 1901; New York Sun, 14 Nov. 1901.

28The New York Journal 14 Nov. 1901.

29“They are smoothing” Ibid.

30“To me there is” George Perkins to TR, 15 Nov. 1901 (GWP).

31In due course New York Sun, 15 Nov. 1902.

32“Can I get some” Mark Hanna to George Perkins, 27 Nov. 1901 (GWP).

33Lesser citizens Statistician and Economist (New York, 1901–1902); Baker, “Great Northern Pacific Deal.”

34“Is it possible,” Baker, “Great Northern Pacific Deal.”

35As if in answer New York Sun, 12 Nov. 1901.

36“I see dynamite” Mark Hanna to TR, 10 Nov. 1901 (TRP).

37He objected in TR, First Annual Message draft (TRP); Mark Hanna to TR, 10 Nov. 1901 (TRP). Elihu Root also took “serious exception” to this part of the Message. TR to St. Clair McKelway, 21 Nov. 1901 (TRP).

38Other senators Message drafts in TRP; Orville H. Platt to TR, 13 Nov. 1901 (TRP); TR to Mark Hanna, 21 Nov. 1901 (TRP). Sample language deleted: “I am firmly of the belief that a law can be framed that will enable the National Government to exercise control over the trusts.… It should be treated … as an effort, not to destroy or disarrange business, but to continue the upbuilding of our interest on foundations of justice to all.… This Government must recognize the need of change.”

39RESTRAINED AS HE Washington Evening Star, 15 Oct. 1901; World’s Work, Dec. 1901. See Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 473–74, on how the speed of TR’s reactions exasperated Philander Knox.

40“Mr. President” Boston Transcript, 18 Nov. 1901. The Senator was William J. Deboe of Kentucky.

41He would whirl George William Douglas, The Many-Sided Roosevelt: An Anecdotal Biography (New York, 1907), 249–56; Walter Hines Page in World’s Work, Dec. 1901. Both these accounts describe Roosevelt’s receptions in Nov. 1901. TR was then making an average of thirty appointments a day. One alone—for Collector of Customs in Fort Worth—generated twenty-eight pounds of documents. Washington Evening Star, 11 Nov. 1901.

42Those other White Walter Hines Page in World’s Work, Dec. 1901; Chauncey M. Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years (New York, 1922), 169.

43There were days Washington Evening Star, 23 Nov. 1901; Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time: Shown in His Own Letters (New York, 1920), vol. 1, 156; James Morse diary, 24 Nov. 1901 (NYHS). See also L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay (copy in HKB).

44“How many men” William Dudley Foulke, Fighting the Spoilsmen (New York, 1919), 55–56; The Cincinnati Enquirer, 25 Dec. 1901.

45“In El Paso” Foulke, Fighting, 56.

46ON 18 NOVEMBER See John A. S. Grenville, “Great Britain and the Isthmian Canal, 1898–1901,” American Historical Review 61 (Oct. 1955); New York Journal, 21–22 Nov. 1901; Miles P. DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay: The Story of the Long Struggle for a Waterway across the American Isthmus (Stanford, 1940), 154.

47It was a big McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 262. See ibid., passim, for background to the Isthmian Canal situation in 1901.

48“There are certain” Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, 1899–1901, 58 Cong., 2 sess., 1904, S. Doc. 222, 174–75.

49Minus that extra Maurice Hutin to TR, 30 Nov. 1901, and John G. Walker to TR, 6 Dec. 1901 (TRP). On 4 Nov., John Hay, a Nicaragua partisan, wrote to Luis F. Corea, that country’s Washington minister, warning him that “very powerful influences are at work against the Nicaragua Canal” (TD).

50ROOSEVELT FINISHED John Hay to Joseph Bucklin Bishop, qu. in Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 160. Printing a Message to Congress was an innovation. TR saw no reason to perpetuate the laborious nineteenth-century custom of copying such documents in ornamental script. In a further break with tradition, he made galleys available to the press, under guarantees that the Message would be neither quoted nor summarized before it went to Congress. This gave editors plenty of time to typeset the text themselves, and TR’s Message was rewarded with five times as much comment as any had enjoyed before. TR also made sure that a summary of the Message was released to European journals. See First Annual Message box and Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

51Twelve days still Washington Evening Star and New York Tribune, 23 Nov. 1901.

52back in minnesota Hill qu. in Martin, James J. Hill, 510–11.

53WHILE THE SYLPH Washington Evening Star, 25 Nov. 1901; The New York Times, 21 Nov. 1901. A copy of the latter article was sent to the White House. Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

54The astrologist-author The New York Times, 21 Nov. 1901.

55Although Roosevelt Ibid.

56The President need Ibid.

57The President, he Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 326; Thayer, Hay, vol. 2, 266.

58Although Hay was John Hay to Mrs. Hay, 15 Nov. 1901 (WF).

CHAPTER 4: A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

1On th’ wan “Mr. Dooley” qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 411.

2shortly before noon The Washington Post, 4 Dec. 1901.

3Octavius L. Pruden Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901; New York Tribune, 4 Dec. 1901.

4A Secret Service The practice of presidential addresses to Congress, as opposed to messages, had ended with John Adams, and would not be revived until 1913 by Woodrow Wilson.

5Actually, the content Douglas, Many-Sided Roosevelt, 251.

6Even so, Congress Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901.

7“The Congress assembles” The following extracts from TR’s Message are taken from TR, Works, vol. 17, 93–160.

8There was an “The sentence fell upon the House like a pall.” Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901.

9“The wind is sowed” TR, Works, vol. 17, 97. TR later confirmed that he was alluding to William Randolph Hearst, yellow-press lord and perennial political candidate.

10The House sat The word rapt is that of the New York World, 4 Dec. 1901. See also The New York Times, same date.

11At this, the spell New York World, 4 Dec. 1901.

12THE SENATE, in Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901.

13For a quarter New York Sun and New York Herald, 4 Dec. 1901.

14Mark Hanna sat Washington Evening Times, 4 Dec. 1901. See John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (New York, 1953), 220–22, for Lodge’s emotions during these early months of TR’s Presidency.

15As Roosevelt swung New York World, 4 Dec. 1901.

16SPOONER, AT FIFTY-EIGHT This profile is based on Walter Wellman, “Spooner of Wisconsin: A Sketch,” Review of Reviews, Aug. 1902; Thompson, Party Leaders, 47–51; Merrill, Republican Command, 32; O. O. Stealey, 130 Pen Pictures of Live Men(Washington, D.C., 1910); Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 426–31; Dorothy C. Fowler, John Coit Spooner, Defender of Presidents (New York, 1961), passim; and photographs in various publications.

17He was equally See, e.g., Spooner versus Senator Benjamin R. Tillman in The Washington Post, 28 Jan. 1902.

18But he had Wellman, “Spooner”; Merrill, Republican Command, 33–34, notes the corruption of Wisconsin politics in 1901. It was difficult at that time even for honest senators to escape the taint of corruption at home, since they were not directly elected, and served at the pleasure of state legislatures.

19His perambulation New York World, 4 Dec. 1901.

20“Allison could run” TR, Works, vol. 17, 103.

21This legerdepied Merrill, Republican Command, 30–31.

22Poised in his See, e.g., Leland L. Sage, William Boyd Allison: A Study in Practical Politics (Iowa City, 1956), 197, 250, 292, 294, 6; David J. Rothman, Politics and Power: The Senate, 1869–1901 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 47.

23“All this is true” TR, Works, vol. 17, 104.

24In the front Nathaniel W. Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader in American Politics (New York, 1930), 136; Coolidge, Old-Fashioned Senator, 61.

25There was something Coolidge, Old-Fashioned Senator, 65–67, 592; Thompson, Party Leaders, 34; George H. Mayer, The Republican Party, 1854–1966 (New York, 1966), 277; Merrill, Republican Command, 27–28; Claude G. Bowers, Beveridge and the Progressive Era (Boston, 1932), 138–39.

26“There is a widespread” TR, Works, vol. 17, 104.

27“It is no” Ibid., 104–5.

28If Nelson W. Barry, Forty Years, 152; Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 9, 172. 73 “The first essential” Ibid., 105.

29Aldrich’s was a Rothman, Politics and Power, 46; David S. Barry and Elihu Root in biographical file (NWA).

30His power derived Merrill, Republican Command, 24, 28; speech cards in NWA; Barry, Forty Years, 153. See, e.g., James Anthony Rosmond, “Nelson Aldrich, Theodore Roosevelt and the Tariff: A Study to 1905” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1974).

31Roosevelt, in contrast David S. Barry memo, biographical file (NWA).

32As far as Aldrich Merrill, Republican Command, 24–25.

33“The nation should” TR, Works, vol. 17, 106.

34Aldrich believed that Barry memo, biographical file (NWA).

35Since this was The term Majority Leader was not yet current. Neither was the convenient (and misleading) group term of “the Senate Four” for Aldrich, Spooner, Allison, and Platt. Although these men indeed worked closely together, they often differed on important issues—Aldrich and Allison on the tariff, e.g. Other Republican senators wielded great power in their personal fiefdoms: Henry Cabot Lodge on foreign policy, Eugene Hale on naval affairs, Hanna on labor, and so on. In a letter to his parents, written ca. Feb. 1903, the Chicago newspaper heir Medill McCormick defined the government of the United States as “an oligarchy tempered by the veto” (MHM).

36“I believe that” TR, Works, vol. 17, 106.

37THE SENATE WAS Profile of Aldrich based on biographical file (NWA); Steffens, Autobiography, 504; Ainslee’s Magazine, Dec. 1901; Bowers, Beveridge, 313–24; Merrill, Republican Command, 21–26; and photographs in various publications.

38There were a few Rothman, Politics and Power, 112, 136, 217, 112–15, 136, 183–86, 201.

39Orville Platt was Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 203.

40What held them Rothman, Politics and Power, 111, 117.

41He granted TR, Works, vol. 17, 107–10.

42Clearly, neither subject Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 12, 24–26; Merrill, Republican Command, 26.

43“The railway” TR, Works, vol. 17, 116–17.

44“The doctrine of” Ibid., 124.

45“We are dealing” Ibid., 125.

46FOR ANOTHER HOUR Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901; Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (Urbana, 1985), 93.

47By two o’clock Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901; New York World, 4 Dec. 1901.

48“In the midst” TR, Works, vol. 17, 160.

49Each had an New York World and New York Herald, 4 Dec. 1901.

50Democratic leaders, too The Washington Post, 4 Dec. 1901.

51Members of the Literary Digest, 14 Dec. 1901. “Never in our history,” commented the New York Evening Post, “have we had a more striking example of great responsibility upon an imperious nature.” Negative comment was concentrated in the South.

52That night, Roosevelt Pittsburgh Times, 4 Dec. 1901; Review of Reviews, Jan. 1902; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 160; Washington Evening Times, 3 Dec. 1901, and New York Tribune, 4 Dec. 1901.

53“It is not” Chicago Record-Herald, 5 Dec. 1901.

54On 7 December Washington Evening Star, 7 Dec. 1901.

55The quickest way Review of Reviews, Jan. 1902. On 9 Dec., TR received a letter from the black politician Ralph Waldo Tyler, forwarded by Booker T. Washington, warning him that “Senator Hanna will be candidate for President.” Negro officeholders all over the South were prepared “to go to the next National convention with a solid delegation” in support of their patron. No doubt this letter added a spur to TR’s own patronage plans. For his bemused reaction, see TR, Letters, vol. 3, 206.

56A surprise choice Gage privately admitted that the contrast between TR’s galvanic personality and that of McKinley had left him with a feeling of “chronic sadness.” Gage to Charles G. Dawes, 11 Dec. 1901 (LCG).

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

58It 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.

59There 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 inThe Washington Post, 28 Jan. 1902.

60Yet 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).

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

62Roosevelt 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.

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

64Secrets 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).

65Miles 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.

66His 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.

68PURGED, 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.”

69Yet 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.

71HOWLS 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).

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

CHAPTER 5: TURN OF A RISING TIDE

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

2WALTER 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.

3To 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.

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

6It 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.

7The 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.

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

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

11Roosevelt 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.

12He 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.

13The 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.

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

16Hanna 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”).

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

18At 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).

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

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

21Morgan 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.

22Shocked 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).

23Experience 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.

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

26Harriman 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.

27of 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).

28Cromwell 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.

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

30It 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).

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

32Bunau-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.

33As 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.

34ON 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.”

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

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

37With 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.

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

41A 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.

42It was 5 February Albert J. Beveridge to Albert Shaw, 10 Jan. 1902 (AJB); The Washington Post, 19 Feb. 1902.

43Any fool could Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 61; Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902; H. B. Martin and Emlen H. Miller to TR, 30 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1901, Department of Justice files (NA).

44“Am giving it” P. C. Knox to TR, 11 Dec. 1901 (TRB). For TR’s dispatch of his overworked Attorney General to Florida, see TR to Knox, 5 Dec. 1902 (PCK). “I am not dead,” Knox wrote a friend, “… but so far as attending to anything personal, might just as well have been.” To James S. Young, 15 Jan. 1902 (PCK).

45Now, eight weeks Antitrust notes, Feb. 1902, in PCK.

46Plunging deep into Memorandum, “Comment on ‘Underlying Laws’ (in all social and industrial movements), as suggested by Kidd’s Western Civilization,” ca. 1902, in PCK.

47What, then, of Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902; P. C. Knox memo, 10 Feb. 1902 (PCK); McCurdy, “Knight Sugar Decision of 1895.” TR and Knox agreed that Kidd’s revisionist allowance seemed to apply to Knight, which had become the enabling bible oflaissez-faire. The Attorney General advised that the best chance to “reverse” Knight’s effect would be to press a suit that challenged it technically, but not in principle. TR ordered him to go ahead. “This [reversal] I felt it imperative to secure.” TR to Charles G. Washburn, qu. in Washburn, Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of His Career (Boston, 1916), 67–68.

48Knox felt that Washburn, Theodore Roosevelt, 67–68.

49For once in Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 63–64.

50Farther off, in See Henry Clay Frick to P. C. Knox, 11 Nov. 1901 and 5 Feb. 1902 (PCK).

51a fourteen-page opinion Draft in PCK; New York Herald, 10 Feb. 1902. The actual delivered opinion is now lost. Eitler theorizes (although the Herald reports otherwise) that it was given to TR orally. “Philander Chase Knox,” 64.

52“If you instruct” Qu. by Walter Wellman in Chicago Record-Herald, 16 Mar. 1904 (a leak of TR’s own telling of the story to his Cabinet, the day before).

53“Mr. Hanna,” Martin, James J. Hill, 514.

54Hanna, preoccupied with Ibid. The New York Times, 20 Feb. 1902.

55“The government has” Mark Hanna to Charles E. Perkins, memorandum, 11 July 1904, qu. in Martin, James J. Hill, 515. Griggs was already representing Hill in Knox’s suit.

56“Within a very” The New York Times, 20 Feb. 1902.

57The statement was Thompson, Party Leaders, 312; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 563. The Minnesota suit indeed was rejected. Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902; Martin, James J. Hill, 512.

58Knox’s willingness Literary Digest, 1 Mar. 1902; New York Herald, The Washington Post, New York Sun, and New York World, 21 Feb. 1902.

59It had been The New York Times and New York Herald, 21 Feb. 1902; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 344–45; Knox qu. in Historical Register, 1921, 60.

60Shortly afterward New York Tribune, New York World, and Washington Evening Star, 22 Feb. 1902.

61BEFORE NIGHTFALL New York World, 22 Feb. 1902; New York Tribune, 24 Feb. 1902. For an account of the dinner, see Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 346.

62If the purpose Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 346; New York Tribune, 24 Feb. 1902.

63they stood shoulder The phrase is that of L. T. Michener to E. W. Halford, ca. 25 Mar. 1902 (copy in HKB).

64The Secretary of War Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 345–47; William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 1 Mar. 1902 (WHT); Cleveland Plain Dealer, 25 Mar. 1902; William H. Taft qu. in Archibald Butt, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt (New York, 1930), 2, 690. Harbaugh, Life and Times, 160–61, discusses TR’s probable reasons for excluding Root.

65Either that, or Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 347.

66There was something See Edward Steichen’s famous 1903 portrait of Morgan, reproduced with another “take” in Strouse, Morgan, 496–97.

67Yet interlocutors Ray Stannard Baker, “Morgan”; “J. P. Morgan,” bound obituaries file, 1913, NYPL. The definitive life is Strouse, Morgan.

68“That is just” Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 184–85. For another interpretation of this famous dialogue, see Kolko, Triumph of Conservatism, 69.

69“send your man” “Your man” is Knox; “my man” is Francis Lynde Stetson, Morgan’s personal attorney.

70Alone with Knox Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 184–85.

71THE HOUSE OF The New York Times, 31 Mar. 1913, in Knox scrapbooks (PCK); Knox qu. in New York American, 12 Jan. 1912, Knox scrapbooks (PCK).

72Knox’s formal complaint The New York Times, 11 Mar. 1902; James Montgomery Beck, May It Please the Court (New York, 1930), 333.

73OF THE THREE Martin, James J. Hill, 515–16; The New York Times, 21 Feb. 1902; Meyer, “The Northern Securities Case,” 246–47; Joseph G. Pyle, The Life of James J. Hill (New York, 1917), vol. 2, 171–72.

74Roosevelt’s action Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, vol. 1, 111; Albert Shaw in Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902; Robert Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform (Cambridge, Mass., 1902), 44; Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 67–68; Presidential scrapbook (TRP). TR was emphatic that his object was not to extend the applicability of Knight as to overturn it, and thus revitalize the necessity for some government control over business.

75“I am rather” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 236.

76He pretended to Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 261; TR, Letters, 3, 225, 237; Presidential scrapbook (TRP); TR, Letters, 3, 237, 239; Irwin Hoover, Forty-Two Years in the White House, (Boston, 1934), 293; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 234; dinner plans and settings in J. E. Fenwick, compiler, “The White House Record of Social Functions” (NA). The last-named record, in thirteen volumes, offers documentary evidence of the splendor of White House entertainments in the Roosevelt Era, 1901–1909.

77Alice Roosevelt—debutante Marguerite Cassini, Never a Dull Moment (New York, 1956), 168–89; Literary Digest, 12 Apr. 1902.

78He regretted the Literary Digest, 12 Apr. 1902; Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 194; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 351; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt. See also Rixey, Bamie, 196ff.

79Previous Presidents Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 586–87. The adverb voluntarily emphasizes that all of Harrison’s, Cleveland’s, and McKinley’s antitrust suits were initiated outside their administrations, at the state or private level.

80For these reasons Wister, Roosevelt, 209. See also Lamoreaux, Great Merger Movement, 166.

CHAPTER 6: TWO PILOTS ABOARD, AND ROCKS AHEAD

1It looks to me “Mr. Dooley,” qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 86.

2“CHAOS! EVERYWHERE!” The Washington Post, 15 Mar. 1902.

3“Both compass and” Ibid.

4On the very day Washington Times, 15 Mar. 1902.

5Hanna’s presidential Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 349; “The Hanna Presidential Boom,” Literary Digest, 7 June 1902, 23; The Washington Post, 10 Mar. 1901. “There is now in operation the most complete Bureau since 1896, and that Bureau is working day and night for Mark Hanna.” L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay, ca. 24 Dec. 1901 (copy in HKB).

6They estimated Cleveland Plain Dealer, 13 Mar. 1902; The Washington Post, 15 Mar. 1902; Chairman of the New York Irish Republican League to Mark Hanna, 21 July 1902 (MHM). This last correspondent reported that in a recent poll of his membership, representing Manhattan and the Bronx, more than two thirds had expressed a preference for Hanna.

7Hanna dismissed the Public Opinion, 27 Mar. 1902; Volnay W. Foster, assistant treasurer of the Republican National Committee, qu. in unidentified news clip (MHM); Toledo Blade news clip, ca. 15 Mar. 1902 (MHM). The dinner was held in New York on 5 Mar. 1902.

8Deep in his Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 19 May 1905 (MHM); Robert C. Rhodes, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 17 Apr. 1906 (MHM).

9Yet Hanna’s web Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 375–76; Missouri Post-Dispatch, 5 Apr. 1902, news clip in MHM. Gould, Reform and Regulation, 40, discounts the strength of Hanna’s web, finding it “fragile.” That may have been the case later on, but contemporary sources are united in depicting the Senator as the GOP leader and likely nominee in 1904. He remained at this apex of power through the rest of the year.

10It was understood John T. Flynn, “Mark Hanna—Big Business in Politics,” Scribner’s, Aug. 1933; Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 272, 344–45, 373.

11Such eminence A. B. Hough, interviewed by J. B. Morrow (MHM); The Washington Post, 29 Mar. 1902.

12The Commanding General The Washington Post, 15 Mar. 1902.

13“General Miles’s most” Boston Herald, 19 Mar. 1902.

14Not content with TR to Nelson A. Miles, 17 Feb. 1902 (TRP; suppressed). See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 245.

15The letter was TR, Letters, vol. 3, 232, 240–42, 244–47.

16He had hardly Washington Evening Star, 19 Feb. 1902.

17Root wrote separately 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902, S. Doc. 205, pt. 1, 1–3; Leopold, Elihu Root, 36; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 338–39.

18Root’s words masked 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902, S. Doc. 24, pt. 1, 881–85. For racism among United States soldiers in the Philippines, see Richard E. Welch, Jr., Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899–1902(Chapel Hill, 1979), chap. 8, and for their moral degeneration see Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, 1983), chap. 10.

19So damning was Taft qu. in The Washington Post, 11 Apr. 1902. Attached to the report was the statement of a provincial official that one third of the population of Batangas—some one hundred thousand Filipinos—had died from war, disease, and famine. This document was not included in the final released text. Herbert Welsh to Moorfield Storey, 11 Apr. 1902 (MST).

20Root was guilty Taft to Root, 8 Apr. 1902, in Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 340; John R. M. Taylor, ed., The Philippine Insurrection Against the United States: A Compilation of Documents (Pasay, Philippines, 1971–1973), 294–95; Literary Digest, 26 Apr. 1902.

21This measure Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 240–60; William H. Carter, “Creation of the Army General Staff,” 68 Cong., 1 sess., 1923, S. Doc. 119. For a review of Root’s service as Secretary of War, see Leopold, Elihu Root, 38–46.

22It sought to James B. Martin, “Irresistible Force”; Jessup, Elihu Root, 251; Report of the Secretary of War (Washington, D.C., 1902), 46–48. For an extended discussion of these changes, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the Statesman: Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1957). See also John A. Matzko, “President Theodore Roosevelt and Army Reform,” Proceedings of the South Carolina History Association, 1973.

23Miles reminded the Washington Evening Star, 19 Apr. 1902; Washington Times, 21 Apr. 1902.

24Senator Joseph Hawley The Washington Post, 25 (qu. Watterson) and 26 Feb. 1902.

25Root’s expressionless Cleveland Plain Dealer, 30 Apr. 1902.

26Roosevelt was struggling TR, Letters, vol. 3, 247–48, 271; Hale, Bull Moose Trails, 11–13; John C. Shaffer to TR, in Frederick S. Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him: The Personal Recollections of One Hundred and Fifty of His Friends and Associates(Philadelphia, 1927), 132–33.

27Perhaps, after all Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” 258, erroneously states that Miles was sent to the Philippines “in the spring of 1902.” TR did not authorize a visit until much later, when it suited his political convenience to have Miles out of the United States.

28“It is getting” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 248.

Chronological Note: TR visited Charleston, S.C., between 7 and 10 Apr. 1902. For accounts, see Rhodes, McKinley and Roosevelt, 231–32, and Wister, Roosevelt, 96ff. The trip was aimed at undoing some of the damage done to his Southern reputation by the Booker T. Washington dinner. Another purpose was to reconnoiter the extraordinarily complicated South Carolina patronage situation. From now until 1904, the state tested TR’s skill in negotiating the political tightropes among Conservative, Bryan, Commercial, and Gold Democrats, not to mention Black-and-Tan (Booker T. Washington) and Lily White (Mark Hanna) Republicans. For a lucid discussion, see Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Theodore Roosevelt and Southern Republicans: The Case of South Carolina, 1901–04,” South Carolina History Magazine 70.4 (1969).

29LODGE’S COMMITTEE For extensive quotations, see Literary Digest, 26 Apr. 1902. 100 “Had you any” Major Littleton W. T. Walker court-martial, Manila, 8 Apr. 1902, transcript in NA.

30Waller also quoted Ibid. For an account of the Waller case, see Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” 219–32.

31“A man is thrown” 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902 S. Doc. 331, vol. 25, no. 33, pt. 1, 1767. See Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” 213, on “this very mild form of torture,” from which, apparently, “very few died.”

32Other reports spoke Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 95; M. K. Sniffen to Carl Schurz, 22 May 1902 (CS).

33Amid mounting cries 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902, S. Doc. 331, pt. 2, 881–85. See, e.g., Literary Digest, 26 Apr. and 10 May 1902, and Robert W. McKee to Edward W. Carmack, 28 Apr. 1902: “A deep, half-sullen sense of mighty and most flagrant outrage againstAmericanism—[of] rape upon the holiest traditions of our land and its institutions” (EWC).

34He met with Washington Evening Star, 14 Apr. 1902; The Washington Post, 15 Apr. 1902.

35THE PRESIDENT DESIRES Full text: 57 Cong., 1st sess., 1902, S. Doc. 24, pt. 1, 1548–49. See also Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 342–43.

36Roosevelt also ordered TR, Letters, vol. 3, 259; memorandum of the Secretary’s movements, 1902–1904 (ER).

37“It is almost” Qu. in Literary Digest, 10 May 1902. General Adna R. Chaffee cabled the War Department on 5 May to say that Smith was “of unsound mind” (ER). Root’s final list of officers convicted or being disciplined for cruelty numbered as many as 350. Root to Henry Cabot Lodge, 4 May 1902 (ER). Although the Philippine insurrection was de facto President McKinley’s war, TR was at least partly responsible for the severity of its prosecution in the early months of his Administration. After the massacre at Balangiga (26–27 Sept. 1901), he had ordered General Chaffee to use “the most stern measures to pacify Samar” (Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” 206–7, 219). Like Root, TR was disposed to be tolerant of even culpable United States soldiers. When, e.g., Lieutenant Preston Brown was sentenced by a military court to dismissal and five years’ hard labor for killing a prisoner, TR commuted the sentence to loss of half pay for nine months, plus a slight downgrading of his place on the promotion list. Ibid., 218; 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902, S. Doc. 205, pt. 1, 42–49.

38Roosevelt again TR, Letters, vol. 3, 313–14; William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 1 Mar. 1902; Philadelphia North American, 5 May 1902; H. Welsh to Carl Schurz, 30 Apr. 1902 (CS).

39Like all conservatives Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 503; Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 11 July 1902 (ER); Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 32; Taylor, Philippine Insurrection, vol. 3, 358–59; Rudyard Kipling in McClure’s, Feb. 1899.

40He may be a Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 1, 7.

41Filipinos, Taft wrote Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 44–46. See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 276, for Taft attempting to restrain the President on self-determination for Filipinos.

42These sentiments, while See, e.g., Woodrow Wilson in Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1901: Filipinos were but “children” in “matters of government and justice.” They should remain “in tutelage” to the United States, and so learn “the discipline of the law.” TR’s own prepresidential epithets regarding Filipinos, turned to embarrass him when Senator Edward Carmack of Tennessee wrote them into the record: “Savages, barbarians, wild and ignorant, Apaches, Sioux” (Congressional Record, 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1901, vol. 35, pt. 1, 4673).

43THE PRESIDENT REMAINED David Healy, The United States in Cuba: 1898–1902 (Madison, 1963), 202–3; Washington Evening Star, 29 Apr. 1902. The rumors regarding the beef trust proved accurate. Because of rising food prices, Knox’s injunction, announced in May, won further popular support for the Administration, and further recriminations from corporate conservatives. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 53; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 368; Allan Nevins, ed., Selected Writings of Abram S. Hewitt (Port Washington, N.Y., 1965 [1937]), 402.

44“Theodore is a” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 378.

45On 24 April TR, Letters, vol. 3, 242. See Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902, on the changeover.

46The little white Clips in Presidential scrapbook (TRP); The Washington Post, 26 Apr. 1902. USS Dolphin is listed in Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1901 as a 240-foot cruiser (sixth class), commissioned in 1884.

47The appointments of Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 48; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 242; Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902. Long had noticed within weeks of TR’s arrival that the President intended to take personal charge of Navy policy.

48“big navy man” Paul T. Heffron, “William H. Moody,” in Paolo E. Coletta, ed., American Secretaries of the Navy (Annapolis, 1980), vol. 1, 464. Moody’s service as Secretary began on 1 May 1902.

49SPRING CAME TO Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 376; Thomas Fleming, Around the Capitol (New York, 1902), 112; TR to Joel Chandler Harris, 9 June 1902 (TRP). TR and EKR were regularly seen dining alfresco on the White House portico. Their “pleasant Continental habit of eating in the open air” soon became the vogue in Washington. New York World, 26 Oct. 1902.

50An especial closeness Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 237; Rep. James Slayden in New York World, 30 May 1902.

51ELIHU ROOT RETURNED Welch, Response to Imperialism, 142; Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 103.

52When Lodge rose The Washington Post, 5 May 1902.

53He began to read Ibid.; Henry Cabot Lodge to George H. Lyman, 15 Feb. 1902 (MHS). Another imaginative Filipino technique included the slitting open of American bodies and stuffing them with United States Army mess provisions. Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” 204.

54Over the next Welch, Response to Imperialism, 144; Some senators, notably Henry Cabot Lodge, were unenthusiastic about the bill’s assembly clause, but with Taft’s powerful encouragement they eventually accepted it. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 58.

55Only George F. Thompson, Party Leaders, 58–71; George F. Hoar to Carl Schurz, 3 June 1902 (CS). This incident occurred on 18 May 1902. See also Hoar to TR, 15 June 1902 (TRP), and TR’s moving reply in Letters, vol. 3, 276–77.

56“Everybody that” George F. Hoar to Carl Schurz, 3 June 1902 (CS).

57A few seconds before noon Washington Times, 20 May 1902; The New York Times, 21 May 1902; Leonard Wood diary, 20 May 1902 (LW).

58On the roof Frank McCoy to his mother, May 1902 (FMcC); The New York Times, 21 May 1902; news clips and photographs in Leonard Wood scrapbook (LW).

59“—and I hereby” The New York Times, 21 May 1902.

60From far across Philadelphia Press, 21 May 1902; Frank McCoy to his mother, May 1902 (FMcC).

61By any standards This sentence is paraphrased from one in Howard Gillette, Jr., “The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1899–1902: Workshop for American Progressivism,” American Quarterly, Oct. 1973. See Healy, United States in Cuba, 179–86.

62A trained surgeon Leonard Wood, transcript of speech at Williams College, 25 June 1902 (LW). See also Leonard Wood, “The Military Government of Cuba,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 21.30 (1903); and Gillette, “Military Occupation of Cuba.”

63The cannons continued New York Herald, 21 May 1902; Leonard Wood diary, 20 May 1902 (LW); James Hitchman, “The American Touch in Imperial Administration: Leonard Wood in Cuba, 1898–1902,” The Americas, Apr. 1968; Healy, United States in Cuba, 180–82 (“By the end of 1901, free public education was a reality in Cuba”). Gillette, “Military Occupation of Cuba,” suggests that Wood’s experiment did much to inspire the Progressive reform movement in the United States.

64What protection Leonard Wood to Elihu Root, 9 Apr. 1902 (ER).

65The forty-fifth Washington Times, 20 May 1902; Frank McCoy to his mother, May 1902 (FMcC).

66There were groans Eyewitness account in Harry Frank Guggenheim, The United States and Cuba: A Study in International Relations (New York, 1934), 99; New York Herald, 21 May 1902; Leonard Wood diary, 20 May 1902 (LW). Wood also took with him an extremely detailed, up-to-date map of Cuba, to give to the War Department, and a complete survey of Havana harbor and its environs, “including all fortifications, fieldworks, etc.” Wood to Elihu Root, 18 Nov. 1902 (ER).

67As soon as Leonard Wood diary, 20 May 1902 (LW); Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 77; New York World, 19 May 1902.

CHAPTER 7: GENIUS, FORCE, ORIGINALITY

1What’s all this Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 91.

2THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S TOTAL New York World, 19 May 1902; Oswald Garrison Villard, Fighting Years: Memories of a Liberal Editor (New York, 1939), 152.

3Whether exercising New York World, 19 May 1902.

4On 28 May New York World, 29 May 1902; William Dudley Foulke, A Hoosier Autobiography (New York, 1922), 117; Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 311–13; Wister, Roosevelt, 93–99; New York World, 3 May 1902. For TR’s introduction to this new and exotic sport, see Akiko Murakata, “Theodore Roosevelt and William Sturgis Bigelow: The Story of a Friendship,” Harvard Library Bulletin23.1 (1975).

5White House groundsmen John Burroughs, Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt (Boston, 1907), 84; New York World, 30 Mar. 1902. Calvin Brice remarked that he intended in the future “to observe the President from the safe summit of some neighboring hill.” Qu. in Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 364.

6Petitioners visiting TR’s current reading included a novel by the Filipino consciousness-raiser José Rizal. TR to J. C. Abrey, 31 May 1902 (TRP); Maria [Mrs. Bellamy] Storer, In Memoriam Bellamy Storer (privately printed, 1923), 38–39.

7On another occasion New York World, 22 Sept. 1901. Apparently, Henry Cabot Lodge had bet him he could not do it. TR demanded, and got, the Senator’s hat in settlement.

8He encouraged his Baltimore Sun, 15 May 1902; Washington Times, 8 June 1902.

9Hay, who as John Hay qu. in Byron Price memorandum (EMH). For a discussion of the question of presidential succession at this time, see George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (New York, 1903), vol. 2, 168–71.

10a permanent Census TR, Letters, vol. 3, 238–39.

Chronological Note: Until TR’s Presidency, each census was conducted by a temporary “office” that went out of existence as soon as it reported. These “offices” had become sinkholes of patronage by the end of the nineteenth century; the 1900 census comprised some sixty thousand jobs, all political favors. On 6 Mar. 1902, TR signed a bill that not only created a permanent directorate, but made its appointments subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior. Clerkships and other administrative positions were made subject to the civil-service law. In 1903, the Bureau initiated a countrywide system of death registration and statistical reporting; in 1904, it produced the nation’s first population forecasts; in 1905, the first annual reports on cotton supply and distribution, and in 1906, the first in a series of annual “inter-censual” surveys. Theodore G. Clemence, “The Early Years of the Bureau of the Census: The Politics of Appointment and the Struggle for Independence,” ts. in Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C., 8–12.

11Senators Aldrich and New York Herald, 18 May 1902; TR to W.H.H. Llewellyn, qu. in Douglas, Many-Sided Roosevelt, 83.

12“You have wasted” Hoar’s speech is given in Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 5788–98.

13At Arlington National The following account is based on TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers (New York, 1910), vol. 1, 59–66; and Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

14The year’s first New York Sun and Washington Evening Star, 30 May 1902. 110 He had been See ms. in TRP. No previous President had delivered a Memorial Day address at Arlington.

15“Is it only” TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 60.

16Had he spat Literary Digest, 7 June 1902. See also Welch, Response to Imperialism, 144, and, for a concise analysis of TR’s antilynch policies from this moment on, William L. Ziglar, “The Decline of Lynching in America,” International Social Science Review63.1 (1988).

17Sure enough, when Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” 250. TR finally signed it into law on 1 July 1902; Literary Digest, 7 June 1902. An editorial exception was the New York Sun, which hailed TR’s speech as “a great public service … [that] excels anything that the President has yet delivered.” Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 203–5, finds the nation’s press, as a whole, supportive of TR’s Philippines policy.

18Bruised and rueful See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 268–69, for TR’s attempt to explain his Philippines policy to an outraged cleric.

19On Wednesday, 4 See Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6267–80.

20“Be it enacted” Ibid., 6267.

21old man’s tremor Scholars skeptical of this detail should try to read Morgan’s handwriting from 1902.

22He had no new Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6267–80.

23Senator Hanna sat The Treaty of New Granada was basically a trade agreement intended to protect free transit (then by railway) across the Isthmus of Panama. In return for right of way, the United States guaranteed the “perfect neutrality” of the Isthmus, as well as “the rights of sovereignty and property which New Granada has and possesses over the said territory.” Lawrence Beilenson, The Treaty Trap: A History of the Performance of Political Treaties by the United States and European Nations (Washington, D.C., 1969), 33–34.

24Storming on Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6275.

25As soon as Ibid., 6280.

26WHEN SENATORS RECONVENED Washington Evening Star, 5 June 1902; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 165; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 319–22. The volcanic map was provided courtesy of Philippe Bunau-Varilla.

27Hanna entered to Thomas Beer, Hanna, Crane, and the Mauve Decade (New York, 1941), 600; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6317ff. All quotations from Hanna’s speech come from the latter source.

28The chamber settled Beer, Hanna. For the “facts and conditions” behind Hanna’s conversion, see Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 102–4.

29For the next The Washington Post, 6 June 1902; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6317–21.

30“Oh, do make” Beer, Hanna, 600.

31Polls in smoke-filled The conspiracy theory was dampened by another rumor that Hanna was the agent of James J. Hill and the transcontinental railroads. He was actually conducting a filibuster, in order to have no canal at all. New York Journal, 17 June 1902.

32HANNA RESUMED HIS Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 7, 6380; Philippe Bunau-Varilla, Panama: The Creation, Destruction, and Resurrection (London, 1933), 242; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 7, 6381.Managua is here a correction for Hanna’s misspoken Nicaragua.

33For another hour Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 7, 6377–87; Washington Evening Star, 6 June 1902; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 248. The best account of the legislative and diplomatic struggle for the Panama Canal is in DuVal,Cadiz to Cathay.

34AS LONG AS Beer, Hanna, 602. The senators were Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania and Thomas Platt of New York.

35MEANWHILE, HIS CUBAN Guggenheim, United States and Cuba, 101–6; Healy, United States in Cuba, 196–200; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 288. For a detailed discussion of the reciprocity issue, see United States Tariff Commission, The Effects of the Cuban Reciprocity Treaty of 1902, miscellaneous series, no. 22 (Washington, D.C., 1929).

36Common sense TR, Letters, vol. 3, 228, 265–66; U.S. Tariff Commission, Effects. For evidence of TR’s strong feelings on reciprocity, see his passionate reworkings of Spooner Amendment drafts in TRP.

37On 13 June Tomas Palma to TR, 12 Sept. 1902 (TRP). The text of TR’s Special Message is in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, D.C., 1911), vol. 15, 6682–84. See also Robert Freeman Smith, “Cuba: Laboratory for Dollar Diplomacy, 1898–1917,” The Historian 28.4 (Aug. 1966).

38“Cuba is a young” Washington Evening Star, 13 June 1902.

39Some senators detected The Atlanta Constitution, 14 June 1902; Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 187; Leonard Wood to Elihu Root, 9 Apr. 1902 (ER); World’s Work, June 1902. Embarrassingly for TR, the Message was preceded by a press revelation that Leonard Wood had used government funds for reciprocity propaganda.

40“My dear Mr. Cannon” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 272–73.

41Representative Joseph Blair Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois: Uncle Joe Cannon’s Experiment with Personal Power (New York, 1951), 118–19, 211, 40. TR had spoken out on the subject of reclamation as early as Nov. 1900, at the National Irrigation Congress. D. Jerome Tweton, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Arid Lands,” North Dakota Quarterly36.2 (1968).

42For a quarter Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 372; Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776–1936 (Princeton, N.J., 1942), 325–29.

43Roosevelt expressed TR, Letters, vol. 3, 277. Actually, Newlands and other lawmakers representing both Eastern and Western interests had been working on sketches for the Reclamation Act since 1900. But TR managed, with considerable skill, to merge the best features of all these proposals into a bill that overcame powerful Republican opposition in Congress. See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 317; Marc P. Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (New York, 1986), 116–18; and William D. Rowley, Reclaiming the Arid West: The Career of Francis G. Newlands (Bloomington, Ind., 1996), 2–6, 102–4.

44Cannon ignored Rowley, Reclaiming the Arid West, 103; P. P. Wells, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Conservation Record,” Oct. 1919 memorandum prepared for Joseph Bucklin Bishop (GP); Robbins, Our Landed Heritage, 331–33; Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 372.

45“They must be” TR to National Irrigation Congress, 15 Sept. 1903, Letters, vol. 3, 600. TR’s role in bringing about the Reclamation Act was but a chapter in the overall story. See Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 10–15. For the intellectual and sociological aspects of the reclamation movement, see Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making”; for a view of the Reclamation Act as “the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state,” see Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 115ff.

46Reclamationists spoke Beer, Hanna, 595. See also Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902. Tweton, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Arid Lands,” quotes The Denver Post: “For the happy termination of an endeavor which … appeared almost hopeless, the people of the West are indebted to President Roosevelt, without whose influence the passage of the bill would have been practically impossible.” For the subsequent application of the Reclamation Act, beginning with Nevada’s Truckee Dam (dedicated 17 June 1905), see Rowley, Reclaiming the Arid West, 1–6, and Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, 15–26.

47DURING THE NEXT Beer, Hanna, 601; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 247; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 324; Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 154–55. At least one bribe of ten thousand dollars in cash was offered to Senator Fred T. Dubois of Idaho, on behalf of certain “New York legal interests.” John T. Morgan to Henry Watterson, 10 Dec. 1903 (JTM).

48By a margin Review of Reviews, Aug. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 284. For a full account of the passage of the Panama Canal Act, see Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 125–56.

49ROOSEVELT’S EUPHORIA Washington Evening Star, 21 June 1902; Literary Digest, 26 July 1902, qu. Le Temps (France); New York Evening Post, 14 June 1902. See also Healy, United States in Cuba, 201.

50Somewhat cheered Boston Herald, 26 June 1902; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 104.

51Grief; disease; desire EKR’s miscarriage seems to have occurred in mid-May 1902. Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 237. Strangely, however, TR was still boasting about her pregnancy at the end of that month. Possibly EKR kept the news from him. A year later, she miscarried again.

52At the welcoming The Boston Globe, 25 June 1902.

53“When we were” Wister, Roosevelt, 7. Wister had just published his epochal Western novel, The Virginian. It was dedicated to TR.

54The President’s behavior Henry James, Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869–1909 (Boston, 1930), vol. 2, 159; Wood, Roosevelt, 100–101. Supplementary details in the following paragraphs come from the Boston Evening RecordandThe Washington Post, 26 June 1902.

55At the Alumni Hoar qu. in Fiske Warren diary, 2 Dec. 1903 (MST). The phrase like an impulsive boy is Senator Hoar’s own. For evidence of TR’s sincere veneration of Hoar, see TR, Letters, vol. 3, 276–77.

56Dr. Eliot began Boston Evening Record, 25 June 1902; unidentified news clips in Presidential scrapbook (TRP). For TR’s incomprehension of financial matters, see, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 3, 691.

57Harvard, to Theodore Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 56–57; Boston Evening Record and The Washington Post, 26 June 1902.

58Hay, listening John Hay to TR, 26 June 1902 (TRP); The Washington Post, 26 June 1902.

59He dropped back Boston Herald, 26 June 1902; Rhodes, McKinley and Roosevelt, 232–33; Douglas, Many-Sided Roosevelt, 136. More than two weeks later, John Hay was still marveling. “Theodore made one of the most striking speeches I ever heard,” he wrote Henry Adams on 11 July. Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 253.

60Roosevelt had to Boston Evening Record, 26 June 1902, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

61WASHINGTON WAS Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 238–39; William Seale, The President’s House (Washington, D.C., 1986), vol. 2, 669–84.

62He took up James Garfield diary, 27 June 1902 (JRG). Of the fourteen specific requests TR had made in his First Message to Congress, only three had been granted: the National Reclamation Act, the Canal Act, and the Census Act. TR’s eleven failures were to get government supervision of trusts; publicity as a remedy for trust abuses; an anti-anarchism measure; stronger immigration laws; modified reciprocity; aid to American shipping; a militia law; a General Staff of the Army; a revised merit system; a Department of Commerce; and reorganizaton of the consular service.

63Invitations were New York Herald, 15 June 1902; Washington Times, 30 Mar. 1902.

64Congress adjourned John Hay to Henry Adams, 11 July 1902 (JH); Barry, Forty Years, 274–75; The Washington Post, 4 July 1902; Review of Reviews, Aug. 1902.

Chronological Note: The war had lasted forty-one months. 126,500 Americans had seen service in the Philippines; 4,200 had been killed, and 2,800 wounded. TR’s amnesty specifically excluded the Moros of Mindanao, who, as Muslims, were fanatically determined to fight to the last man. Their terrorism was to sputter on through most of his Presidency. Nevertheless, the former Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo told William H. Taft that TR’s peaceful gesture “was worth more than many regiments of soldiers.” For the rapid moderation of American domestic argument about the Philippines after Malvar’s surrender and TR’s order, see Miller,“Benevolent Assimilation,” 245–50.

CHAPTER 8: THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME

1Th’ capital iv Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 186–87.

2SUMMER RAIN WAS Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of TR’s arrival home on 5 July 1902 is based on the New York American, 6 July 1902; “Oyster Bay: The Summer Capital,” Washington Times, 13 July 1902 (text and illustrations); unidentified news clips in Presidential scrapbook (TRP); and pictures in Albert Loren Cheney, Personal Memoirs of the Home Life of the Late Theodore Roosevelt (Washington, D.C., 1919), passim. Today, the rail approach is much the same, and the “new” station of 1902 still stands, minus only its platform awnings.

3“There are many” Boston Herald, 3 Aug. 1902. The standard village history is Frances Irvin, Oyster Bay: A Sketch, rev. Jane Soames Knickerson (Oyster Bay, N.Y., 1987).

4The little community New York World, 6 July 1902; New York Tribune, 7 July 1902; Washington Times, 5 and 9 July 1902.

5The surrey splashed Washington Times, 16 July 1902; New York Herald, 11 Aug. 1902; New York Evening Sun, 7 July 1902; P. James Roosevelt to author, 4, 5, 19, 20 Apr. 1983 (AC); Boston Herald, 3 Aug. 1902; map preserved by Mrs. Philip Roosevelt, privately held.

6Turning north, the Boston Herald, 3 Aug. 1902.

7A private driveway Washington Times, 17 June 1902; New York Evening Sun, 3 July 1902; New York Herald, 8 July 1902.

8RAIN GAVE WAY TR, Works, vol. 3, 314.

9“Among Long Island” Ibid., 316–17.

10Ovenbirds fluted Ibid., 318.

11“They come up” Ibid.

12To the west Boston Herald, 3 Aug. 1902; Kermit Roosevelt, The Happy Hunting-Grounds (New York, 1920), 22–23.

13No matter how New York Sun, 8 July 1902; New York World, 13 July 1902 (CORDON OF GUARDS ABOUT PRESIDENT); The Washington Post, 11 July 1902. The President’s security detail consisted of five Secret Service men and two policemen (New York World, 6 July 1902). Other agents were stationed twenty-four hours a day in a hotel in the village and at the station. Any given visitor was scrutinized at least three times en route to Sagamore Hill. See Walter S. Bowen and Harry E. Neal, The United States Secret Service(Philadelphia, 1960).

14a gun butt protruding Edna M. Colman, White House Gossip (New York, 1927), 284.

15Instead, he used Washington Times, 8 July 1902; New York World and New York Sun, 9 July 1902. Poultney Bigelow describes the sensation of one of these Cooper’s Bluff plunges in Contemporary Review clip, ca. 1901, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

16Yet had it Boston Herald, 3 Aug. 1902; Washington Times, 8 July 1902; Chicago Record-Herald, 12 July 1902.

17“Cousin Theodore” Qu. by William E. Curtis in Chicago Record-Herald, 12 July 1902.

18Rough Riders The Washington Post, 11 July 1902. Sagamore Hill is now invisible from Oyster Bay, but a contemporary photograph in Cheney, Personal Memoirs, 6, shows Sagamore Hill clearly visible across the water.

19About once a week Chicago Record-Herald, 12 July 1902.

20One day, he reined The Washington Post, 20 July 1902, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

21Unamused, the reporters New York Sun and New York Journal, 19 July 1902.

22“It seems to me” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 303.

23Dana withdrew his Paul Dana to TR, 1 Aug. 1902 (TRP).

24For the younger Roosevelts Waldon Fawcett, “The President’s Summer Home at Oyster Bay,” Twentieth Century Review clip, n.d., Presidential scrapbook (TRP). When Archibald B. Roosevelt lay dying in Florida in the summer of 1979, after a long life and much world travel, he mumbled repeatedly, “Take me home.” “But you are home, Father.” “No, no—home to Sagamore.” Mrs. Archibald B. Roosevelt, Jr., interview, 20 Sept. 1981. See also Kerr, Bully Father, 151.

25The estate, with Mrs. Philip Roosevelt interview, 24 Oct. 1982. See also Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., All in the Family (New York, 1929); Herman Hagedorn and Gary Roth, Sagamore Hill: An Historical Guide (Oyster Bay, N.Y., 1977); David H. Wallace, “Sagamore Hill: An Interior History,” in Natalie A. Naylor, Douglas Brinkley, and John Allen Gable, Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American (Interlaken, N.Y., 1992), 527–46.

26These haunts Parsons, Perchance Some Day, 234. “He was the enchanting Pied Piper of our childhood.”

27From early morning Longworth, Crowded Hours, 6–8; Roosevelt, Happy Hunting-Grounds, 4–5; Nicholas Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: The Man As I Knew Him (New York, 1967), 21–27. “My children,” TR robustly told a female interviewer, “are not brought up to be cowards. They are not taught to turn the other cheek if they are struck; they are told to hit back and hit hard. I won’t have any weaklings in my household. I want my boys to grow up manly and gently.” He seemed to want the same for girls, encouraging them to participate in the roughest play, and saying that he liked them to be “tomboys when they are small.” Boston Sunday Record, 3 Aug. 1902.

28Only when he Archibald Roosevelt interview, 7 June 1977; research memorandum, n.d. (HH). TR’s own children were supplemented, that summer, by eleven Roosevelt nieces and nephews from neighboring estates. Chicago Record-Herald, 12 July 1902.

29NO MATTER WHERE New York Evening Sun, 8 July 1902; Chicago Record-Herald, 12 July 1902.

30A new magazine “The People at Play,” World’s Work, Aug. 1902.

31In the good old Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 347; “In the Good Old Summertime” was the biggest popular hit of the early twentieth century.

32THE ONLY MEMBER Alice Roosevelt diary, 21 June 1903 (ARL).

33Heedless on the William E. Curtis in Chicago Record-Herald, 12 July 1902. It took TR just eighteen days, from 5 to 22 July, to read this mammoth work. See his report to John Hay in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 300.

34ON 14 JULY Schirmer, Republic or Empire, 439.

35The general’s fellow TR to Albert Shaw, 1 Sept. 1902 (TRP).

36For a moment TR had signed the Act into law on 1 July 1902. It was Taft’s overoptimistic hope that the Philippine legislature could begin functioning as early as 1 Jan. 1904, well in advance of the next presidential election. William H. Taft to Elihu Root, 26 Mar. 1902 (ER).

37“I thoroughly believe” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 298.

38Smith, however Ibid.; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 194.

39After dinner Washington Times and New York Sun, 14 July 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 189n, 303–6. For a discussion of the Vatican holdings, see Harbaugh, Life and Times; 182–83.

40Both of them New York Sun, 14 July 1902.

41Friends again Ibid.; “President’s Official Yacht Rivals Those of Royalty,” unidentified clip, 15 July 1902 (HH); Edwin A. Falk, “USS Mayflower,” pamphlet in TRC.

42“Bully! Bully!” New York Sun, 15 July 1902.

43ROOSEVELT’S DECISION Literary Digest, 26 July 1902. The dismissal was announced on the sixteenth. It made TR highly unpopular with the Army, and was seen even by anti-imperialists as a stern and cathartic punishment. See, e.g., Charles Francis Adams to Carl Schurz, 31 July 1902 (CS).

44Even the Anti-Imperialist League leaders protested that Roosevelt had dramatically sacrificed General Smith in order to protect hundreds of other American war criminals. On 22 July, Charles Francis Adams, Carl Schurz, Edwin Burritt Smith, and Herbert Welsh published an open letter to TR (in TRP), alleging abuses “far more general” than any he had admitted. For negative public reactions to it, see Literary Digest, 9 Aug. 1902.

45“I think he” Charles Francis Adams to Carl Schurz, 4 and 21 Aug. 1902 (CS).

46ALMOST UNNOTICED TR, Letters, vol. 3, 302; William H. Taft to TR, 27 Oct. 1902 (TRP).

47He dreamily informed TR, Letters, vol. 3,288.

48“Now … in the” Ibid., 289.

49Having thus briskly The Washington Post, 27 July 1902.

50FOG DELAYED John A. Garraty, “Holmes’s Appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court,” New England Quarterly, Sept. 1949; G. Edward White, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self(New York, 1993), 301.

51Oliver Wendell Holmes Catherine Drinker Bowen, Yankee from Olympus: Justice Holmes and His Family (Boston, 1944), 120; photographs in Supreme Court Historical Society, Washington, D.C.; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law(Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 5.

52In his world Alexander M. Bickel and Benno C. Schmidt, Jr., The History of the Supreme Court of the United States (New York, 1984), vol. 9, 70–71; Holmes, Common Law, 5. Sheldon Novick, Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes(Boston, 1989), 283.

53Theodore Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 3, 288.

54After returning to Novick, Honorable Justice, 235–36; Garraty, “Holmes’s Appointment.”

55Roosevelt agreed with Garraty, “Holmes’s Appointment”; Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 25 July 1902 (TRP). Holmes, for his part, had to admit that Roosevelt “said just the right things and impressed me far more than I had expected.” Qu. in White, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 312.

56“We shall have to” Garraty, “Holmes’s Appointment”; Bowen, Yankee from Olympus, 348. TR announced Holmes’s appointment on 11 Aug. 1903.

57In the good old Lyrics in Music Division, LC. In 1903, the song was sung as a waltz.

58Grotesque as it Archibald B. Roosevelt interview, 7 June 1977. TR had been peripherally involved in the coal strike since early June. See, e.g., Washington Times, 7 June 1902.

59One hundred and forty-seven Anthracite Coal Commission, Report to the President on the Anthracite Coal Strike of May–October 1902 (Washington, D.C., 1903), 37; Washington Times, 7 June 1902. For background to the anthracite strike, see Donald Miller and Richard E. Sharpless, The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields (Philadelphia, 1985).

60A visiting British Stuart Uttley, quoted in Literary Digest, 8 Feb. 1902.

61Roosevelt concluded Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 148; Proceedings of the Anthracite Coal Commission (Washington, D.C., 1903), vol. 28, 4377ff.

CHAPTER 9: NO POWER OR DUTY

1What d’ye think Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 218–19.

2FOR ELEVEN WEEKS Rosamond D. Rhone, “Anthracite Coal Mines and Coaling,” Review of Reviews, July 1902.

3What made Sheriff George E. Leighton, “Shenandoah, Pa.: Story of an Anthracite Town,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Jan. 1937; Literary Digest, 24 May and 7 July 1902; Elsie Glück, John Mitchell: Miner (New York, 1929), 111; Stewart Culin, A Trooper’s Narrative of Service in the Anthracite Coal Strike, 1902 (Philadelphia, 1903), 36–37. See also Victor R. Greene, The Slavic Community on Strike: Immigrant Labor in Pennsylvania Anthracite (Notre Dame, 1968).

4Only when a Leighton, “Shenandoah”; Walter Wellman in Chicago Record-Herald, 14 Sept. 1902: “Their faith in him is completely sublime.”

5John Mitchell Robert H. Wiebe, “The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902: A Record of Confusion,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Sept. 1961; Leighton, “Shenandoah”; Miller and Sharpless, Kingdom of Coal, 254–55; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 116–18. This concession amounted to a personal triumph for Mitchell, who argued passionately against a national strike.

6Swarthy, silent Glück, John Mitchell, 106, 98; Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 240–41.

7Mitchell’s concessions Miller and Sharpless, Kingdom of Coal, 256; Anthracite Coal Commission, Report to the President, 35. See Eliot Jones, The Anthracite Coal Combinations (Cambridge, Mass., 1919).

8When the miners Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 115.

9Roaming the anthracite Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 237–38; Mark Hanna to George Perkins, 19 May 1902 (GWP).

10“The coal presidents” The New York Times, 30 July 1902.

11SHENANDOAH WAS QUIET Culin, Trooper’s Narrative, passim; Leighton, “Shenandoah,” 136.

12Centre Street was Leighton, “Shenandoah,” 136; Rhone, “Anthracite Coal Mines.”

13Shortly before 6:00 Harrisburg Patriot, 31 July 1902. The deputy, Thomas Bedall, was the nephew of Sheriff S. Rowland Bedall. Their identical surnames have confused some historians—e.g., Miller and Sharpless in Kingdom of Coal.

14He was accompanied The New York Times, 31 July 1902; Literary Digest, 9 Aug. 1902; Leighton, “Shenandoah,” 143. See also Glück, John Mitchell, 111ff.; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 151–52.

15guns and bayonets The New York Times, 31 July 1902; Harrisburg Patriot and The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 Aug. 1902.

16This freed Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 3, 359; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 109; Literary Digest, 9 Aug. 1902.

17Ten thousand bared Philadelphia Public Ledger, 2 Aug. 1902.

18Few among the Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 240, 235.

19“If you lose” Glück, John Mitchell, 94; Philadelphia Public Ledger, 2 Aug. 1902.

20For the next Philadelphia North American, 1 Aug. 1902. See Glück, John Mitchell, 104–5, for the visits of intellectuals to anthracite country that summer.

21Roosevelt began to William Lemke, “Teddy Downeast: The 1902 New England Tour and the Style and Substance of Roosevelt’s Leadership,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 190–200.

22From what he heard Norton Goddard to TR, 12 Aug. 1902 (TRP).

23The feeling went The following account is taken from a scoop in the Philadelphia North American, 9 Aug. 1902.

24(Some years before) Ibid.

25“Will you send” TR to E. H. Harriman, 16 Aug. 1902 (TRP).

26“My day has” E. H. Harriman to TR, 18 Aug. 1902 (TRP).

27Some paragraphs Ibid.

28“The rights and” Facsimile in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 425.

29This pious protestation Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 170–72; The New York Times and New York Tribune, 21 Aug. 1902.

30Roosevelt, about TR to Philander Knox, 21 Aug. 1902 (TRP); Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 148; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 359. 137 THE SYLPH steamed Frank W. Lovering in Boston Journal, 23 Aug. 1902; The New York Times, 23 Aug. 1902; unidentified news clips, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

31Three traveling aides For an example of TR’s continuing management of press relations, see his letter to the editor of the New York Sun, asking for Lindsay Denison to accompany him on tour. “He is a trump, and as you know I can tell him everything” (TR to Chester S. Lord, 12 Aug. 1902 [TRP]). Denison rewarded him for this encomium with favorable Sun coverage and a major article, “The President on His Tours,” World’s Work, Nov. 1902.

32Roosevelt had grown Frank W. Lovering in Boston Journal, 4 Sept. 1902; unidentified news clip, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

33AT NOON THE TR reached Providence after a night stop in Hartford, Conn., where he created a sensation by publicly associating himself with the city’s blue-collar Democratic mayor. Local GOP organizers had snubbed the mayor by putting him far back in the welcoming parade. Annoyed by their discourtesy, TR mentioned the mayor by name in his speech, and afterward granted him the only private audience of his visit. This gentlemanly behavior, widely reported, was not lost on ordinary Americans. See Harper’s Weekly, 6 Sept. 1902.

34Squinting against The New York Times and Boston Herald, 24 Aug. 1902.

35“We are passing” White House speech transcript, 23 Aug. 1902 (TRP).

36Human law, he Ibid.

37Roosevelt noticed Illustration in Frank W. Lovering, “Eyewitness Tells of TR’s Pittsfield Outrage,” unidentified Berkshires news clip, ca. 20 Aug. 1962 (TRB); Boston Herald, 24 Aug. 1902.

38“Where men are” White House speech transcript, 23 Aug. 1902 (TRP); Merrill, Republican Command, 21.

39E. H. Harriman could Providence Sunday Journal, 24 Aug. 1902. TR felt somewhat responsible for a current drought in GOP campaign contributions, brought about by the Northern Securities prosecution. TR, Letters, vol. 3, 317.

40His audience began Boston Herald, 24 Aug. 1902.

41By now, he Photograph and report in Denison, “The President on His Tours.”

42THERE WAS SOME Literary Digest, 6 Sept. 1902.

43PRESIDENT WOULD The New York Times, 24 Aug. 1902, e.g., TR has been criticized by John M. Blum in The Progressive Presidents: Roosevelt, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson (New York, 1980), 29, for saying nothing against the trusts that had not already been said by, e.g., President McKinley’s Industrial Commission. But as Galambos, Public Image, 258, points out, popular anger against the trusts had cooled by 1902. TR sought to rekindle it by restating old truths in his new, harsh, twentieth-century voice. For reactions to his antitrust oratory on tour, see Literary Digest, 6 Sept. 1902, and articles by Joseph Auer in North American Review, Dec. 1902, and Albert Shaw in Century Magazine, Jan. 1903.

44THE PRESIDENTIAL SPECIAL Sixty years later, Frank W. Lovering, who covered the trip for the Boston Journal, was driving along Bayshore Drive in Miami and noticed an old Pullman car in a siding, silhouetted against the moonlight of Biscayne Bay. “Something impelled me … to cross the tracks.… I walked along beside the Pullman. Bright in gold leaf I read by the sputtering glow of an arc lamp, Mayflower. I put my hand affectionately on the polished railing of the observation platform. Time fell into retreat. It was September again in the Berkshires.” Lovering, “Eyewitness.”

45At Bangor, Maine Mrs. F. H. Eckstrom to C. H. Ames, 30 Aug. 1902 (TRP); Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt, 153ff. See also The Washington Post, 28 Aug. 1902. Afterward, TR invited Sewall to visit the White House with “as many of your family as you can persuade to come.” For an account of their stay, see TR, Letters, vol. 3, 422.

46“Not since the” Literary Digest, 6 Sept. 1902.

47All Europe Ibid., 20 Sept. 1902. In London, the Westminster Gazette hailed TR as “one of the most courageous political adventurers of our time” (ibid.).

48THE TRAIN SWUNG Presidential itinerary (TRP).

49To Roosevelt, as Burlington Free Press, 2 Sept. 1902; unidentified news clip, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); John Hay to Alvey A. Adee, 30 Aug. 1902 (JH); Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 738.

50Big Bill extra When the gaslights failed at a crowded Vermont reception, Craig was seen jumping “like a tiger” in front of TR. Reillumination of the room disclosed a wall of Secret Service agents around the President. Boston Herald and Philadelphia Press, 1Sept. 1902.

51Brattleboro. Girls Boston Journal, 4 Sept. 1902; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 134–36, 143, 145.

52Wednesday. Last day The following account is based on Lovering, “Eyewitness”; Boston Journal, 4 Sept. 1902; New York Herald, 4 Sept. 1902; George A. Lung, “Roosevelt’s Narrow Escape From Death,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 9 Jan. 1919; photographs donated by W. Murray Crane (TRB); and an official report by W. T. Meyer, 1 Oct. 1902, Precautionary File (GBC).

53“Oh my God!” New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902; the accident happened near the foot of Howard’s Hill. See Stefan Lorant’s photohistory, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1959), 380.

54ROOSEVELT LANDED Lung, “Roosevelt’s Narrow Escape.” Lung tried to squeeze TR’s chest to see if any ribs were broken, “but he resented the squeeze and asked to be left alone.” By good fortune, TR had landed in soft earth and alluvial runoff from the hill. The New York Times, 4 Sept. 1902.

55“No, I guess not,” Lung, “Roosevelt’s Narrow Escape”; New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902; Lovering in Boston Journal, same date.

56He saw a man New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902.

57“God-damned outrage” Lovering, “Eyewitness.” Many newspapers moderated this language, extremely unusual for TR. But at least two contemporary reporters quoted it verbatim (New York World and Lovering), and TR himself admitted it in an impromptu interview with Lovering later that afternoon. Finley Peter Dunne recounted the incident in his next “Mr. Dooley” column. “I can’t tell ye [what Roosevelt said] till I get mad. But I’ll tell ye this much, a barn-boss that was standin’ by and heerd it, said he niver before regretted his father hadn’t sint him to Harvard.” Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 223–25.

58As his heir John Hay to Alvey A. Adee, 4 Sept. 1902 (JH).

59At the time W. Murray Crane to Henry Cabot Lodge, 4 Sept. 1902 (HCL) (“His fighting spirit was up and he wanted to punish someone”); New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902.

60Roosevelt did not New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902.

61QUENTIN WAS INDEED The New York Times, 4 Sept. 1902. An illustration in Lorant, Life and Times, 380, shows TR speaking in Lenox, Mass., just after the accident, despite the massive disfigurement of his face. He insisted on appearing also at other scheduled stops in Connecticut before returning home on the Sylph.

62He was sentenced Judgment qu. in Pittsfield Sun, 22 Jan. 1903.

63Memories of “poor” New York Tribune, 16 Sept. 1902; Harper’s Weekly, n.d., in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

64“It takes more” New York Tribune, 16 Sept. 1902. Mark Hanna endorsed at least the first part of TR’s statement. “You may be hung,” he wrote him, “but you will certainly not be killed by a ‘Trolley car,’ ” 4 Sept. 1902 (TRP).

Chronological Note: TR remained only one night in Oyster Bay, before proceeding south on the second of his campaign swings, a five-day trip through West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. His speeches largely echoed those of his New England trip.

65Only Edith knew For a medical article arguing that the Pittsfield trauma was, at least in part, ultimately the cause of TR’s death, see Robert C. Kimberley, “The Health of Theodore Roosvelt,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 5.3 (summer 1979).

CHAPTER 10: THE CATASTROPHE NOW IMPENDING

1It was different Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 49–50.

2THE PRESIDENTIAL EAGLE New York Herald, 20 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 326. 144 The question was Sage, William Boyd Allison, 225–27.

3“We favor such” Qu. in Literary Digest, 16 Aug. 1902.

4In other words TR to J. G. Schurman, 11 Aug. 1902 (TRP); Robert LaFollette autobiographical manuscript “B,” 247 (RLF).

5This “Iowa Idea” TR to J. G. Schurman, 11 Aug. 1902, and TR to Mark Hanna et al., 1 Sept. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327, 313. For a discussion of the wildly popular Iowa Idea and Western insurgency, see Fowler, John Coit Spooner, chap. 10.

6Senators Allison Fowler, John Coit Spooner, chap. 10; Merrill, Republican Command, 117; Washington Evening Star, 16 Sept. 1902.

7But Governor Cummins’s Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 37–38; David P. Thelen, Robert M. LaFollette and the Insurgent Spirit (Boston, 1976), 49; “Though commercial competitors we are, commercial enemies we must not be.… The period of exclusiveness is past.” Qu. in Alexander K. McClure and Charles Morris, William McKinley (New York, 1901), 309.

8McKinley’s successor Sereno E. Payne to TR, 15 Aug. 1902 (TRP). Carleton Putnam sagely remarks that TR was not equipped to understand tariff policy because there was no clear right or wrong to it (Theodore Roosevelt, 500–501). “Political economists are pretty generally agreed,” TR wrote in Thomas Hart Benton (1887), “that protectionism is vicious in theory and harmful in practice.” Yet by 1902 he saw “no reason” why Americans should not have it, if most of them wanted it. See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 312–13, and for a detailed study, James A. Rosmond, “Nelson Aldrich, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Tariff: A Study to 1905,” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1974).

9His failure eighteen Literary Digest, 27 Sept. 1902. The word reciprocity does not even appear in the index to the 1902 Republican Campaign Textbook.

10Tariff reform Literary Digest, 16 Aug. 1902; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 192–94; Merrill, Republican Command, 116–20.

11During the next TR, Letters, vol. 3, 313, 326–27; Merrill, Republican Command, 122–23.

12DISEMBARKING ON Chicago Tribune, 20 Sept. 1902.

13When the train Pittsburgh Dispatch, 20 Sept. 1902. Quay and his colleague Boies Penrose had met with George Baer on 3 Sept. in a vain attempt to persuade him to arbitrate (Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 132). On the same day, TR, concerned at mounting violence in the anthracite country and criticisms of his own aloofness, released a report on the situation by Carroll D. Wright. This evenhanded document admitted a climate of “no confidence” and “distrust” on either side, but held that both had “reasonable and just” grievances that needed to be publicly adjudicated. Ibid., 109; The Independent, 18 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327.

14No sooner had New York Sun and Pittsburgh Dispatch, 20 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327. Sargent is wrongly identified as Carroll D. Wright in the last-named source. For the story of Quay and Penrose’s attempt to influence strike negotiations, see Cornell,Anthracite Coal Strike, 132–40.

15Roosevelt sent a TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327.

16HIS LEFT LEG Medical bulletin in Washington Evening Star, 24 Sept. 1902. The complete text of TR’s speech, his finest trust policy statement as President, is in Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 169–83.

17It was the first TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 175–76, 178.

18Speaking lucidly Ibid., 178.

19By choosing two Ibid., 183–84.

20At last the audience Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and Detroit Today, 21 Sept. 1902.

21A REPORTER COVERING Detroit Today, 22 Sept. 1902.

22Actually, the main Ibid.

23Early the next morning Detroit Evening News, 22 Sept. 1902; Detroit Tribune, 23 Sept. 1902; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

24Speculation that Indianapolis Journal, 24 Sept. 1902; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 187–95.

25The tariff, for TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 191, 193.

26Standing awkwardly Ibid., 194; The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902. Spooner wrote dryly to Senator Allison: “Some of it you undoubtedly recognize as familiar.” Merrill, Republican Command, 123.

27WITH FURTHER ROARS Washington Evening Star, 24 Sept. 1902. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of the events of 23 Sept. 1902 is based on “President Roosevelt’s Injury,” Indiana Medical Journal, Oct. 1902; Indianapolis Evening News, 23 Sept. 1902; and The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902.

28From Logansport station The Washington Post and Indianapolis Evening News, 24 Sept. 1902.

29“The President has” The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902.

30“Elihu … if” Memorandum, ca. 25 Sept. 1902 (GBC).

31Root paced up Ibid.

32The President moved Ibid.; “President Roosevelt’s Injury”; New York World, 26 Oct. 1902.

33Dr. George H. Medical bulletins in The Washington Post, 24 and 29 Sept. 1902; Dr. Lung qu. in Brooklyn Eagle, 9 Jan. 1919.

34At five o’clock Douglas, Many-Sided Roosevelt, 96; The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902; Indianapolis Evening News, 23 Sept. 1902.

35Successive bulletins Alvey A. Adee to John Hay, 24 Sept. 1902 (JH); The Washington Post, 29 Sept. 1902; Indianapolis Sentinel, 24 Sept. 1902.

36PAINTERS AND PLASTERERS EKR Diary, 24 Sept. 1902 (TRC); The Washington Post, 25 Sept. 1902.

37She established him Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Philander Knox to The Washington Post, 25 Sept. 1902; Chicago Tribune, 25 Sept. 1902.

38He regretted that TR, Letters, vol. 3, 328; The Washington Post, 30 Sept. 1902; Merrill, Republican Command, 127; Willis Van Devanter to F. E. Warren, 13 May 1903 (WVD).

39That did not TR, Letters, vol. 3, 335; New York World, 28 Sept. 1902; Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 417ff.

40Right now, he TR, Letters, vol. 3, 335.

41ON SUNDAY, 28 Washington Evening Star, 29 Sept. 1902.

Note: Dr. Rixey was the father of Lilian Rixey, author of Bamie.

42The President’s EKR to Kermit Roosevelt, 28 Sept. 1902 (TRC); Dr. Rixey testimony in Roosevelt vs. Newett: A Transcript of the Testimony Taken and Depositions Read at Marquette, Michigan, May 6–31, 1913 (privately printed, 1914; copy in TRB), 66, 306–7; “President Roosevelt’s Injury”; EKR to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., ca. 29 Sept. 1902 (TRJR); Washington Evening Star, 29 Sept. 1902.

43CHILL WEATHER George H. Gordon to John Mitchell, 27 Sept. 1902 (JM); Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 174; Low to TR, 2 Oct. 1902 (TRP). According to Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 244, the panic was unnecessary. If the operators had allowed their trains to haul bituminous coal (which was in plentiful supply, and which Mitchell had not embargoed), “all market demands could have been met.” In any case, fairly adequate supplies of bituminous coal got through somehow. There never was, as TR believed, “a coal famine.” For another account, see Arthur M. Schaefer, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Contribution to the Concept of Presidential Intervention in Labor Disputes: Antecedents and the 1902 Coal Strike,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 201–20.

44Henry Cabot Lodge Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 22 and 27 Sept. 1902 (TRP).

45“Literally nothing,” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 331. Heman W. Chaplin argues in The Coal Mines and the Public: A Popular Statement of the Legal Aspects of the Coal Problem, and the Rights of Consumers as the Situation Exists (New York, 1902) that TR actually was entitled to intervene under the Sherman Act (55).

46He suspected that TR, Letters, vol. 3, 331–32.

47“Unfortunately the strength” Ibid.

48Two days later Washington Evening Star, 30 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 359–60; Henry Lawrence, Memories of a Happy Life (Boston, 1926), 156; TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks (TRC).

49Crane suggested Carolyn W. Johnson, Winthrop Murray Crane: A Study in Republican Leadership, 1892–1920 (Northampton, Mass., 1967), 27–30; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 176; TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks (TRC).

50Roosevelt was not TR to Hanna, 27 Sept. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 360.

51In the cool Qu. in Jacob A. Riis, Theodore Roosevelt the Citizen (Washington, D.C., 1904), 376. Crane is generally given credit for persuading TR to hold a strike conference, but the initial idea appears to have come from John Mitchell, who wrote Mark Hanna on 8 Sept. 1902, “The strike might be brought to a close if you could have the President write the railroad presidents and our officers to meet with him and you to try to adjust our differences” (MIT).

52He showed them TR, Letters, vol. 3, 360; Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 470.

53He got his The following text is from the original “Memo to the President dictated by P. C. Knox as representing his views and those of Mr. Crane, Mr. Moody, and Mr. Payne,” 30 Sept. 1902 (PCK).

54Roosevelt struck out Ibid.; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 182, misdates this memorandum as 3 Oct. 1902. TR deleted the phrase no precedent in other strikes will be created when he made his own public statement later.

55THE COAL STRIKE Horace N. Fisher to Knox, 1 Oct. 1902, and Edwin E. Hoyt to Harry Hoyt, 6 Oct. 1902 (PCK); Pottsville Miners Journal, 24 Sept. 1902; Literary Digest, 4 Oct. 1902. Press accounts tended to exaggerate the violence, just as secretive Slavs downplayed it. John Mitchell admitted to six deaths, then seven. Stewart Culin, who spent six weeks touring the anthracite country, reported that not a day went by without “one or more” funeral procession. In the end, only three murders could be officially documented. John Mitchell to T. J. Sauerford, 1 Oct. 1902 (JM); Culin, Trooper’s Narrative, 38–40; Anthracite Coal Commission, Report to the President, 73.

56Mark Hanna wrote Hanna to TR, 29 Sept. 1902 (TRP).

57“The present miner” Press statement, 29 Sept. 1902 (JM).

58Sentimentalities of this Even as TR prepared to make his “impartial” intervention in the strike, a consignment of nonunion anthracite arrived in Washington “for the exclusive use of the Executive Mansion” (Washington Evening Star, 22 Oct. 1902). Plenty of reserve anthracite was secretly shipped out of eastern Pennsylvania to elite customers. Culin, Trooper’s Narrative, 28, mentions “the low roar of distant trains, moving coal under the protection of darkness.”

59“socialistic action” This was no neurosis. For an example of the sort of radical activism already centering around John Mitchell, see the “Program of Reforms” drawn up by his friend Henry Demarest Lloyd, a leading socialist intellectual. The document calls for sweeping nationalizations of industry, punitive taxes on wealth, profit restrictions on private investment, and “immediate registration of all citizens.” Chester Destler, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform (Philadelphia, 1963), 472.

60I SHOULD GREATLY TR, Letters, vol. 3, 334.

61Duplicate telegrams A. J. Cassatt to TR, 2 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 179.

62“Doesn’t that just” New York World, 3 Oct. 1902. The idea that anthracite miners, by exclusively striking an exclusive resource, were a “trust” in restraint of trade was not new. Knox had received several Sherman Act petitions to that effect, including one from Willcox himself. But he rejected them on the same grounds that he disallowed antitrust prosecution of the operators. “The miners’ activities are clearly restricted to production, a field in which the State [of Pennsylvania]’s power is necessarily exclusive.” P. C. Knox to TR, 7 June 1902, and “Memorandum on Mr. Ross’s letter,” 7 Oct. 1902, both in PCK.

CHAPTER 11: A VERY BIG AND ENTIRELY NEW THING

1It’ll be a hard New York Journal, 17 Oct. 1902.

2CURIOUS ONLOOKERS Except where otherwise indicated, descriptive and atmospheric details of the coal-strike conference are based on reports in the Washington Evening Star, 3 Oct. 1902, and The New York Times and The Washington Post, 4 Oct. 1902.

3Actually, he had George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).

4For almost an Washington Evening Star, 3 Oct. 1902; visual description of Mitchell based on photographs and studio portraits in JM. Other details from “Mitchell, Leader of Men,” profile in World’s Work, 25 Oct. 1902, and Frank J. Warne, “John Mitchell: The Labor Leader and the Man,” Review of Reviews, Nov. 1902.

5While George Cortelyou Walter Wellman, “The Inside History of the Great Coal Strike,” Collier’s Weekly, 18 Oct. 1902 (illustrated).

6Eben B. Thomas Ibid. For Markle’s cruelty to employees, see Miller and Sharpless, Kingdom of Coal, 259, 272.

7“Gentlemen,” said New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

8“Dee-lighted,” The following account of the coal-strike conference is based on Report of the Conference Between the President and Representatives of the Anthracite Coal Companies and Representatives of the United Mine Workers of America, October 3, 1902(Washington, D.C., 1903). TR’s own account appears in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 359–66. Because TR himself notes that the transcript does not include “all of the invectives of the operators,” the author has also relied on a few obvious “news leaks” from participants. Cortelyou, for example, is clearly Walter Wellman’s source for “Inside History.” Other sources are New York Sun and New York World, 4 Oct. 1902. The latter features on-the-spot drawings.

9He began to John Mitchell interviewed by J. J. Curran, The Survey, 18 Jan. 1919.

10A yard or two George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).

11Laying down his Report of the Conference, 4; New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

12“Mr. President, I” Report of the Conference, 4; New York Tribune, 4 Oct. 1902. 158 “Before considering” Report of the Conference, 4.

13THE OPERATORS RETURNED John Markle, in Robert J. Spence, John Markle, Representative American (New York, 1929), 110–12, recalled being surprised and angered by the abrupt termination of the morning session. He erred, however, in saying that he protested this treatment at once. The transcript indicates he did so later.

14Roosevelt had See TR to Seth Low, 3 Oct. 1902: “I read to the operators and miners this morning the paper which you have probably seen in this afternoon’s press.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 337.

15A BOWL OF WHITE New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

16“Do we understand” The New York Times, 4 Oct. 1902. The following dialogue is reconstructed from accounts in ibid.; New York World, 4 Oct. 1902; Wellman, “Inside History”; George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).

17Roosevelt, perhaps Carroll Wright, the most unbiased man in the room, felt that the operators had some good reasons to be angry. Edward Hoyt to Harry Hoyt, 6 Oct. 1902 (PCK).

18Roosevelt stared New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

19For five months Report of the Conference, 6.

20By now Baer’s Ibid., 6.

21The phrase free TR’s face was reportedly “a study” as Baer instructed him on his “duty.” Wellman, “Inside History.”

22Baer concluded Report of the Conference, 6. Mitchell was gracious enough to acknowledge Baer’s offer in the days immediately following. Baer then went further, saying that the operators would accept adjudication by any court the President cared to specify. Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 200.

23Obliquely, Baer Carroll D. Wright, “Memo for the President: Reasons for the Appointment of the Anthracite Coal Commission,” 19 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 243; Baer, “Statement”; Stuyvesant Fish to TR, 3 Oct. 1902 (TRP). The latter document, urging the President not to force a settlement, lest it prevent the “legitimate extension” of the soft-coal business, afforded TR much sardonic amusement. See Henry Cabot Lodge, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918 (New York, 1925), vol. 1, 541.

24Baer was a National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 14, 37; George Baer qu. in William N. Appel, Addresses and Writings of George F. Baer (privately printed, 1916), 252.

25Mitchell, rising Report of the Conference, 7–8; TR to Seth Low, 4 Oct. 1902 (TRP).

26E. B. Thomas specifically Report of the Conference, 8–9.

27“This, Mr. President” New York Sun, 4 Oct. 1902; Report of the Conference, 10. The cartoon, by Keppler, had appeared in Puck, 1 Oct. 1902.

28Roosevelt was fortunate TR qu. by Thomas H. Watkins in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 109 (“More amazing effrontery,” he said afterward, “I have never seen”); George Cortelyou to Walter Wellman, Chicago Record-Herald, 4 Oct. 1902, and interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA). White House telegraph operator Colonel Benjamin F. Montgomery, who was also in the room, remarked, “It truly made me sick to listen to those men,” qu. in Beer, Hanna, 584; see Willcox’s follow-up letter to TR, 8 Oct. 1902 (PCK).

29It was a crucial John Mitchell to Walter Wellman, Chicago Record-Herald, 4 Oct. 1902. He told the reporter that it had been the most trying ordeal of his life. TR, for his part, commented, “There was only one person there who acted like a gentleman, and it wasn’t I!” Qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 432. See also George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).

30“The truth of” Report of the Conference, 17. A mill owner in Pennsylvania commented sourly that this was because no local jury, given UMW intimidation, “will convict any of them.” Paul A. Oliver to John Bassett Moore, 21 Oct. 1902 (JBM); Cornell,Anthracite Coal Strike, 186–87.

31The air in Wellman, “Inside History”; New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

32OUTSIDE IN LAFAYETTE The New York Times, 4 Oct. 1902.

33While doctors hovered TR, Letters, vol. 3, 342.

34The bells of The New York Times, 4 Oct. 1902.

35“WELL, I HAVE” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 337. Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 245, notes that TR, having “tried and failed,” was risking an intervention by Hanna, who, if successful, would loom even larger as his potential rival in 1904.

36Aides were surprised Beer, Hanna, 584; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 337–38, 341. See also TR to Seth Low, 4 Oct. 1902 (unmailed) (TRP).

37He wanted to see Washington Times, 4 Oct. 1902; TR, Autobiography, 488. See, e.g., nearly the entire front page of the Chicago Tribune, 4 Oct. 1902.

38The national newspapers Literary Digest, 11 Oct. 1902.

39Roosevelt tended Brooklyn Eagle, 4 Oct. 1902; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 207–8; Walter W. Ross to TR, 5 Oct. 1902 (PCK); Frederick Holls to TR, 2 Oct. 1902 (TRC); Dwight Braman to TR, 3 Oct. 1902, and Walter W. Ross to TR, 6 Oct. 1902 (PCK); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 346.

40“the most awful” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 343–44, 592.

41As if to reassure Grover Cleveland to TR, 4 Oct. 1902 (TRP).

42This was that Ibid.

43“Your letter was” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 338–39. Cleveland’s letter was indeed such a “help” that TR immediately leaked it to Robert Bacon at the House of Morgan.

44“I think I” Ibid. TR’s decision to continue negotiating split his Cabinet into two, with Root, Knox, Moody, and Payne supporting him, and Hay, Hitchcock, Wilson, and Shaw preserving a disapproving silence. Walter Wellman in Review of Reviews, Nov. 1902.

45Roosevelt did not Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 211; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 339.

46JOHN MITCHELL RECEIVED John Mitchell to TR, 8 Oct. 1902, and Carroll D. Wright to TR, 6 Oct. 1902 (TRP).

47“Dear Mr. Putnam:” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 343.

48Putnam obliged Ibid., 344.

49WHILE ROOSEVELT READ Mrs. George Dewey diary, 12 Nov. 1902 (GD); Culin, Trooper’s Narrative, 78, 70; Edward Hoyt to Harry Hoyt, 6 Oct. 1902 (PCK); Literary Digest, 18 Oct. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 361.

50“He literally ran” George H. Gordon to John Mitchell, 7 Oct. 1902 (JM). Public leaders were beginning to talk seriously of nationalizing the anthracite industry (Carroll D. Wright to TR, 15 Nov. 1903 [TRP]).

51“We believe that” John Mitchell to TR, 8 Oct. 1902 (TRP), bluntly pointed out that the President did not have the power to enforce the findings of his own commission. See Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 196–98, for more details of TR/Mitchell negotiations at this time.

52His statement was Commons, History of Labor, 46; New York Tribune, 10 Oct. 1902.

53“I must not be” Lodge, Selections, vol. 1, 537–38; Foulke, Hoosier Autobiography, 129. TR was now reading E.H.R. Tatham’s life of John Sobieski. See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 347, for the cast list of his commission.

54Congress was entitled Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 208–9; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 210. Ignoring an opinion from Knox that he had no constitutional power to act, TR drafted a “posterity letter” explaining that he might invade anyway. “The first principle of civilization is the preservation of order” (TR to Carroll D. Wright, 8 Oct. 1902 [TRP]). See also his angry remark to the Washington correspondent of The Times of London, “If they think I am going to tolerate mob law, they will find out their mistake five minutes after they have begun” (George Washburn Smalley, Anglo-American Memories [New York, 1911], 376). Something about the President’s smiling inscrutability at this time caused John B. Jackson, appointed envoy to Greece on 13 Oct. 1902, to feel that TR was “the most dangerous man the United States have ever seen.” Jackson to Andrew D. White, 27 Mar. 1912 (ADW).

55“In all the” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 346–47.

56Cleveland was Robert McElroy, Grover Cleveland: The Man and the Statesman (New York, 1923), vol. 2, 310–11; Grover Cleveland to TR, 13 Oct. 1902 (TRP).

57Anticipating an early This sacrifice cost the former President $2,500. McElroy, Grover Cleveland, vol. 2, 310–11.

58IT WAS ELIHU Elihu Root to J. P. Morgan, 9 Oct. 1902 (ER); Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 33–36. “Morganized” railroads controlled almost 70 percent of the region’s coal output (Walter Wellman, “Inside History”). Mark Hanna had asked Morgan to help settle the strike in June. Barkis was willing, but Baer and Mitchell clung so desperately to their respective positions that the effort failed. Mark Hanna to J. P. Morgan, 3 June 1902 (GWP); Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 124; J. P. Morgan to Mark Hanna, ca. 9 Sept. 1902 (GWP).

59Root told the Elihu Root to Philip C. Jessup, 26 Oct. 1935 (PCJ).

60He would use TR legal deposition, 27 May 1914, qu. in Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 211; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 362; TR, Autobiography, 480.

61Far from dissenting New York Tribune, 12 Oct. 1902. See Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan, 392–93, for details of Root’s trip.

62When Mitchell Warne, “John Mitchell.”

63THE WEATHER TURNED TR, Letters, vol. 3, 348; TR, Autobiography, 489, 491. TR has sometimes been accused of exaggerating fears of a coming catastrophe in Oct. 1902. But see the common terror of, e.g., Judge Gray in Ferdinand C. Iglehart, Theodore Roosevelt: The Man As I Knew Him (New York, 1919), 387; Governor Crane in Lawrence, Memories, 156; Charles G. Dawes, A Journal of the McKinley Years (Chicago, 1950), 325; and James C. Cortelyou to George Cortelyou, 7 Oct. 1902 (GBC).

64“I bid you” TR deposition, qu. in Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 211. This conversation took place at 10:00 A.M., 13 Oct. 1902. White House appointment book (TRP).

65Schofield must TR had arranged through Senator Quay a means whereby Governor Stone, in response to an anonymous telegram, THE TIME FOR THE REQUEST HAS COME, would instantly “ask” for federal military help. Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 212.

66The old soldier Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 111–12. TR, pace the opinion of his Attorney General, considered himself empowered to send in troops by the Railroad Arbitration Act of 1888. TR to Carroll D. Wright (draft), 8 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Sullivan,Our Times, vol. 2, 437–38, and Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 327–28.

67Then, late on Washington Times, 14 Oct. 1902. Morgan was accompanied by Robert Bacon.

68WALTER WELLMAN Walter Wellman, “The Settlement of the Coal Strike,” Review of Reviews, Nov. 1902. The ubiquitous reporter was functioning as an unofficial conduit among TR, Mitchell, and the House of Morgan. White House appointment book, 4 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Walter Wellman to John Mitchell, 6 Oct. 1902 (JM); George Cortelyou to TR, 9 Oct. 1902 (TRP).

69a document capable Beautifully bound and preserved as “Original draft of the Coal Agreement Made on Board S. Y. Corsair in the Autograph of Secretary Root, 11 Oct. 1902” in the Morgan Library, New York City.

Chronological Note: Not coincidentally, Attorney General Knox was at that moment addressing the subject of Capital v. Government before the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. His speech, entitled “The Commerce Clause of the Constitution and the Trusts,” was the sharpest warning yet that the Roosevelt Administration would use the Sherman Act against any corporate combination that sought to evade regulation by Congress. He made clear that a certain coal combination was practically asking to be so disciplined. The speech caused a sensation, as TR expected. He regarded it as “the most important” one that any member of the Administration would deliver in 1902, and had personally arranged for it to be delivered on 13 Oct. Of course, TR had no advance knowledge that the operators would begin to crack that same day, but his insistence that Knox heap further propaganda on them just then illustrates his uncanny sense of political timing. TR to W. H. Keach, 7 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Keach to TR, same date (PCK).

70At first, Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 3, 350, 363; Corsair Agreement, copy in ER.

71“An officer of” Qu. in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 365.

72Anyone could TR, Autobiography, 482–84; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 352; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 230–31.

73Nevertheless, Roosevelt Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 248, says that Morgan was responsible for including in the final published Agreement “a statement of the operators’ case that excluded the possibility of recognition of the union.” But the identical statement appears in the original, in Root’s hand. It was, in fact, the “powerful incentive” that Root said produced “a sudden change of front” on the part of the operators (Root to Mark Sullivan, 14 July 1927 [ER]). Wiebe further accuses TR of sabotaging the UMW’s primary objective—recognition—by quoting this statement in his instructions to the Commission. John Mitchell had already withdrawn recognition as a strike demand.

74It was also calculated TR, Letters, vol. 3, 351; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 205.

75He stopped under The Washington Post, 14 Oct. 1902.

76THE “CORSAIR AGREEMENT” George Cortelyou to John Mitchell, 14 Oct. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 365, 351.

77Mitchell was sure Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 226; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 353.

78Temptingly, he TR, Letters, vol. 3, 365.

79Roosevelt cautioned Ibid. TR wrote a detailed memorandum of his conversation with Mitchell to send to Morgan, but did not send it, probably because he was more confident of persuading the financier’s deputies orally than Morgan himself in black and white. See ibid., 351–53.

80GEORGE PERKINS Lodge, Selections, vol. 1, 540.

81While they conferred The lightening of TR’s mood is palpable after 13 Oct. 1902 in TRP, passim; Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 258.

82THE STRIKE, HOWEVER Lodge, Selections, vol. 1, 540; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 366.

83Roosevelt privately TR, Letters, vol. 3, 357, 366; Lodge, Selections, vol. 1, 539–40. Bacon, a former all-star athlete, had recently suffered a complete nervous and physical collapse. On doctor’s orders he was soon to resign from the House of Morgan. Strouse,Morgan, 443.

84“I found” TR, Autobiography, 483 (italics added).

85With a straight TR, Letters, vol. 3, 366.

86Suspecting, perhaps TR, Autobiography, 484; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 366.

87Morgan’s men TR, Letters, vol. 3, 366; Elihu Root to TR, 29 June 1903, and TR to Winthrop Murray Crane, 16 Oct. 1902 (TRP). “May Heaven preserve me from ever again dealing with so wooden-headed a set,” TR wrote his sister. Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles (New York, 1926), 254.

88SOME WEEKS AFTER Wister Roosevelt, 193.

Chronological Note: It was years before Baer met Wister again and conceded, in milder mood, “About the best thing your friend ever did was to appoint the Coal Strike Commission.” By that time memories of the great strike had mellowed, if not into nostalgia, then at least to mutual forgiveness.

The operators got a 10 percent increase in the price of anthracite, plus permission to go on assessing output the way they always had. The union got its 10 percent wage hike, and a reduction of one to two hours per day in its work quota. Anthracite Coal Commission, Report to the President, 80–87. For a summary of findings, see Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 236–59. For a negative view of the settlement from the point of view of Mitchell and the UMW, see Joe Gowaskie, “John Mitchell and the Anthracite Mine Workers: Leadership Conservatism and Rank-and-File Militancy,” Labor History, winter 1985–1986. The most balanced account of the arbitration is Wiebe, “The Anthracite Coal Strike,” showing that on the whole it profited management more than it did labor.

The UMW had to wait more than a decade for the formal recognition it so desperately traded away, but was compensated by general public recognition. George Baer was to die rich but mocked, unable to expiate his self-anointment as God’s personal representative in eastern Pennsylvania. John Mitchell could look forward to a few years of such idolatry as no labor leader had yet known in the United States, but the strain of the great strike, afflicting his heart and mind, was to lead progressively through melancholy to insomnia to alcoholism (Glück, John Mitchell, 92, 197ff.; Charles A. Madison, American Labor Leaders [New York, 1950], 171–72). He, too, would die rich—having discovered that he was by nature more a capitalist than a populist.

89 The rest of Toward the end of his career, the AFL leader Samuel Gompers described the anthracite strike of 1902 as “the most important single event in the labor movement of the United States.” Finley Peter Dunne, “Remembrances,” unfinished autobiographical manuscript in FPD, 26.

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).

CHAPTER 12: NOT A CLOUD ON THE HORIZON

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.

10ON 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.

13A 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” inOuting, 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.

22THE 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 Postcartoon. 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.

31EDITH 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.

39THE 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).

45 Not until after Qu. in E. Alexander Powell, Yonder Lies Adventure (New York, 1932), 312; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358–59.

46 The full extent

Historiological Note: The best summary of archival lacunae attendant to the Venezuelan crisis is in Marks, Velvet on Iron, 42–47 and notes. To Marks’s list might be added a corresponding gap in the dispatches of French Ambassador Jules Cambon at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, and another (Oct.–Dec. 1902) in the normally copious correspondence between John Hay and Assistant Secretary of State Alvey A. Adee in JH. Elsewhere, this correspondence routinely refers to burnings and deletions. See also Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 407–8, and Edmund Morris, “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days’: Theodore Roosevelt and the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902,”Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, winter 1989. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 78–79, dismisses the evidence of these sources and states flatly that TR in later life “came to believe that he had in fact delivered a warning.”

47ROOSEVELT HAD SEEN In 1902, sixty-two million bolivars was the equivalent of twenty-five million U.S. dollars. The Washington Post, 19 Nov. 1902. For a detailed background to the Venezuela crisis of 1902, see Holger Herwig, Germany’s Vision of Empire in Venezuela (Princeton, N.J., 1986), chap. 3.

48 These powers D. M. Platt, “The Allied Coercion of Venezuela, 1902–1903: A Reassessment,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, spring 1962, notes that, contrary to traditional opinion, Germany, not Britain, was the aggressor against Venezuela throughout 1902.

49 The President sympathized TR to Cecil Spring Rice, 13 Aug. 1897, in Stephen Gwynn, ed., The Letters and Friendships of Cecil Spring Rice: A Record (Boston, 1929), vol. 1, 229–30. TR could even be said to have invited the action by stating in his First Annual Message, “We do not guarantee any [Latin American] State against punishment if it misconducts itself, providing that punishment does not take the form of the acquisition of territory by any non-American power” (TR, Works, vol. 17, 135). But as will be seen, he expected the built-in warning to be heeded to the letter. For TR the diplomatic moralist, see Marks, Velvet on Iron, chap. 3.

50 Ever the stern TR, Letters, vol. 3, 116. TR was not alone in his contempt for Castro, “that unspeakably villainous little monkey.” The Venezuela leader was reviled with near unanimity by contemporary diplomats, and modern historians have endorsed their verdict. See Herwig, Germany’s Vision of Empire, 86–87.

51 Baron von Sternburg Emil Witte, Revelations of a German Attaché: Ten Years of German-American Diplomacy (New York, 1916), 78, describes von Sternburg as “a sworn enemy of all writing.” See Stefan H. Rinke, “The German Ambassador Hermann Speck von Sternburg and Theodore Roosevelt, 1889–1908,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, winter 1991, and Rinke’s master’s thesis, “Between Success and Failure: The Diplomatic Career of Ambassador Hermann Speck von Sternburg and German-American Relations, 1903–1908” (Bowling Green State University, 1989).

52 When Roosevelt condoned TR, Works, vol. 17, 135.

53 a secret memorandum Henry C. Taylor to TR, ca. late Nov. 1902 (TRP).

54 “The first method” Ibid.; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 98; Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt, 102–11.

55 Part of him TR, Letters, vol. 3, 98, 108; Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 2, 10; Morris, “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days.’ ”

56 The adjective temporary Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 400; Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 246; Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York, 1967), 7–21; Review of Reviews, Jan. 1901; John C. G. Röhl, ed., Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations—The Corfu Papers (Cambridge, 1982), 144. TR had been hearing from Cecil Spring Rice about German colonial ambitions in Latin America since at least 1897 (see, e.g., Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 227). Vice Admiral Büschel, chief German naval war planner, summarized his country’s 1902–1903 policy vis-à-vis the United States in language that requires no translation: “Feste Position in Westinden. Freie Hand in Südamerika. Aufgabe der Monroe Doktrine.” Qu. in Paul M. Kennedy, ed., The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880–1914 (London, 1979), 57.

57 What better place In March 1901, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Elihu Root had been alarmed by reports that a German gunboat was making hydro-graphic surveys of the Margarita Islands (Richard W. Turk, “Defending the New Empire, 1900–1914,” in Kenneth J. Hagan, ed., In Peace and War: Interpretations of American Naval History [Westport, Conn., 1984], 189). Their scare communicated itself to TR. “The only power which may be a menace to us in anything like the immediate future is Germany,” he wrote (TR, Letters, vol. 3, 32). In July 1901, he warned Karl Bünz, Germany’s Consul General in New York, that his country must not think of acquiring “a foot of soil in any shape or way in South America.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 98.

58 idea of the Weltpolitik Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 55; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 143ff.; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 6. The Kaiser’s brother had actually intended to propose “a German sphere of influence” in South America to TR on his recent state visit, until silenced by von Bülow. J. Lepsius et al., Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, 1871–1914 (Berlin, 1922–1927), vol. 17, 243.

59 Germany, therefore According to Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 46, the German high command also regarded war with the United States around this time as “a distinct possibility.” See also ibid., 42–46, and John A. S. Grenville and George B. Young,Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy: Studies in Foreign Policy, 1873–1917 (New Haven, 1966), 305–7.

60 “For the first” TR, Works, vol. 17, 182.

61 Coincidentally or not Seward W. Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt, the American Navy, and the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903,” American Historical Review, Apr. 1946.

62SEA POWER TR, Letters, vol. 3, 225, 217. For TR’s 1902 naval thinking, see his speech to the United States Naval Academy in TR, Presidential Addresses, vol. 1, 39–41; Gordon C. O’Gara, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of the Modern Navy (Princeton, N.J., 1969), 116; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 253–54; Beach, United States Navy, 390–97. Marks, Velvet on Iron, 40, shows how from Dec. 1901 on TR “accompanied every step in the diplomatic confrontation with a corresponding buildup of American sea power.”

63 The most recent Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902; memorandum from Office of Naval Intelligence, 11 Feb. 1903 (TRP); Charles D. Sigsbee to TR, 22 Mar. 1902 (TRP).

64 They sat Photograph in Ronald Spector, Professors of War: The Naval War College and the Development of the Naval Profession (Newport, R.I., 1977). United States Naval War College, Rules for the Conduct of War Games (Naval War College, R.I., 1902); Ronald Spector, “Roosevelt, the Navy, and the Venezuelan Controversy, 1902–1903,” American Neptune, Oct. 1972.

65 Germany, the tacticians Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt”; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 367–70.

66HE WAS ABLE Amy S. Strachey, St. Loe Strachey: His Life and His Paper (New York, 1931), 142–43; Speck von Sternburg to TR, 19 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 28–29; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 50. On 29 Oct. 1902, Henry White wrote TR that Strachey’s White House invitation was “the greatest honor that has ever befallen him” (TRP).

67 Strachey, through his He also had the reputation of being “Germany’s sharpest critic.” Review of Reviews, Dec. 1902.

68 Awake, however Dewey was in full court uniform, having learned that the Roosevelts preferred their military aides that way. “They are getting to be quite a palace down there.” Mrs. Dewey diary, 25 Nov. 1902 (GD).

69 As Roosevelt reminded TR, Letters, vol. 3, 275.

70 But Dewey had John Garry Clifford, “Admiral Dewey and the Germans,” Mid-Atlantic 49 (1967). Like TR, Dewey had been monitoring the Venezuela situation for eleven months, in his capacity as President of the General Board of the Navy. Ronald Spector,Admiral of the New Empire: The Life and Career of George Dewey (Baton Rouge, 1974), 140–41.

Chronological Note: The shared concern of President and Admiral can be traced back to Germany’s formation of Caribbean and South Atlantic Squadrons in 1901. The following chronology is instructive.

13 Dec. 1901: Germany notifies the United States that she might have to “coerce” Venezuela and make a “temporary occupation” of her ports. 17 Dec. 1901: TR issues an executive order making Culebra, Puerto Rico, a naval base “in case of sudden war.” Jan. 1902: Navy Department advises TR of a plan for emergency deployment of warships in the Caribbean; Dewey warns that Venezuela situation looks dangerous, works out defense strategy centering on Virgin Islands; TR redoubles efforts to buy the islands from Denmark; German Embassy in Washington notifies Berlin of these developments; Wilhelmstrasse strategists refocus their contingency war plans on Long Island; Navy reports German espionage team in Port of Spain, Trinidad. February: State Department asks information on Venezuelan landing places and roads; TR appoints young, aggressive William H. Moody to be Secretary of the Navy. May: Naval intelligence reports German cruiser skulking in Venezuelan waters. June: Forthcoming assembly of “greatest fighting fleet in U.S. history” announced in world press; TR asks Dewey to command it; State Department perfects plan for defense of Venezuelan coast. July: Moody orders a similar plan providing for “offense”; TR urges Speck von Sternburg, in Europe, to visit White House: “I have very much I want to say to you” (19 July [TRP]); Dewey takes personal role in plotting maneuvers; Navy Department informed that TR is “deeply interested” in same; Germany informs Great Britain of willingness for joint reclamation measures against Venezuela. August: Imperialist expansion pressures increase on Wilhelmstrasse. 24 Sept.: TR has strategic conference with Dewey, and tells him “in strictest confidence—what had better not be written now” (Mrs. Dewey diary [GD]). 27 Oct.: TR presses for new naval bases in Cuba; two days later, he sounds out Balfour on the vulnerability of Dutch Caribbean colonies and invites Strachey to make “a flying visit” to the White House. All these activities, implying an extraordinary feeling of gathering crisis, predate the Anglo-German agreement to coerce Venezuela on 12 Nov. 1902.

71 Meanwhile, the United States Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt.”

72 Finally, on 1 Washington Evening Star, 1 Dec. 1902.

CHAPTER 13: THE BIG STICK

1 One good copper “Mr. Dooley” in The Washington Post, 1 Feb. 1903.

2ON THE MORNING Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 224–26, 416; in 1902, the West Wing was seen as providing “temporary quarters” for White House staff, until Congress should take up the question of “a permanent, adequate, and thoroughly dignified office for the Chief Executive.” Gilson Willets, Inside History of the White House (New York, 1906), 69.

3 on his right TR’s Cabinet Room is now the Roosevelt Room. The Oval Office was not built until after he left the White House. The following description is taken from photographs in TRC and from William Bayard Hale, A Week in the White House (New York, 1908), 9–11.

4 The room’s main A famous 1903 photograph of TR shows him with the globe in this position.

5 There was nothing much TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1108; TR to Grover Cleveland, 26 Dec. 1902, ibid., vol. 3, 398.

6 Congress was back Washington Evening Star, 1 Dec. 1902.

7 For two and a Ibid. When the President’s Message was published the following day, its reception was equivocal. The Harrisburg Telegraph, clarion of Old Guard Republicanism, called it “one of the most conservative documents ever issued by the White House,” while The Washington Post (Dem.) rejoiced that every line of the Message was “progressive.”

8 By 4 December New York American, 4 Dec. 1902. The Washington newspapers’ front-page coverage of the maneuvers was as warlike as TR could wish. On 5 Dec. 1902, as the “white” half of Dewey’s fleet prepared to engage the “blue” half, the WashingtonEvening Star excitedly announced, ENEMY PUTS TO SEA.

9 On 7 December Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 16; TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1102; Henry Clay Taylor to J. B. Coghlan, 8 Dec. 1902 (GD).

10 “We look like” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 389.

11 General Wood Leonard Wood diary, 30 Nov. 1902 (LW).

12 Speak softly and TR first used the proverb publicly on 2 Sept. 1901. TR, Works, vol. 15, 334–35.

13ON 8 DECEMBER Washington Evening Star, 8 Dec. 1902; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 419; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 74; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358.

14 the most dangerous Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 341, 343; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 19, 158; Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 227–30. Another of TR’s early informants about Wilhelm was Speck von Sternburg.

15 General Wood, just Leonard Wood diary, 10 Sept. 1902 (LW); Hermann Hagedorn, Leonard Wood: A Biography (New York, 1931), vol. 1, 398–99. Wood had been personally received by the Kaiser, and had noted that, like TR in the 1880s, Wilhelm spoke exultantly about his country’s newness and rawness and burgeoning economic power. Wood also saw that he was “somewhat nervous in manner,” and easily put out. All these observations were doubtless relayed to TR, between singlesticks blows.

16 some beguiling Elihu Root teased TR, referring to the Kaiser as “your cousin William.” Speck von Sternburg commented publicly that he had “not seen two men who are as alike.” Wilhelm II himself remarked to von Holleben, “Mr. Roosevelt must in some respects be very like me.” Root to TR, 15 Feb. 1904 (TRP); New York Herald, ca. 21 Jan. 1903; Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 356–57.

17 Only three months A caricature of TR and the Kaiser as twins (“Kindred Spirits of the Strenuous Life”) appeared in Punch, 16 Nov. 1904, and was suppressed by Berlin police. See also Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 441–43; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 9 Mar. 1904 (JJ). In youth, both men used to doodle ships and fleet dispositions, and in power, both tended to use the first-person possessive in referring to their respective navies. Wilhelm awarded himself the title of “Admiral of the Atlantic.” Morris,Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 142; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 81; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 58; Leonard Wood diary, 10 Sept. 1902 (LW); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 283.

18 However, as Roosevelt Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 55. “It is absolutely impossible,” Henry Adams wrote, “for anyone to be as big a fool as the Kaiser without being shut up” (Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 353; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 18–19). Röhl quotes an example of the Kaiser’s ranting against Jews: “There are far too many of them in my country. They want stamping out” (129).

19 What made Roosevelt Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (Boston, 1964), 85; Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston, 1989), 87–88. Jules Cambon noted how “very sensitive” TR was, “in his political judgments, to questions of prestige.” Geneviève Tabouis, Jules Cambon: par l’un des siens (Paris, 1938), 108, tr. the author. For the Kaiser’s homoerotic inclinations, which included a delight in seeing his courtiers dress as poodles and ballerinas, see Isabel Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II and the ‘Liebenberg Circle,’ ” in Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II.

20 “to tell the Kaiser” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358–59. This is TR’s best, fullest, and most nearly contemporary account of the Venezuela crisis. He makes no reference to arbitration. See the chronological analysis in Morris, “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days.’ ”

21 The tactfulness TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1102.

22 Again von Holleben Even as TR met with von Holleben, the USS Marietta was en route to La Guiria, Venezuela, for “purposes of observation.” Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt.”

23 The Ambassador William Loeb to Hermann Hagedorn, n.d., and Loeb interviewed by Henry Pringle, 14 Apr. 1930 (HP).

On this same day, TR also had a conversation with George Smalley, Washington correspondent of The Times. His clear purpose was to have the well-connected reporter let London policymakers know just where he stood regarding Germany’s threat to Venezuela. White House appointment book, 8 Dec. 1902, and Smalley to TR, 12 Dec. 1902 (TRP). “I think it desirable that you should know privately what … I intend to do,” he quotes TR as saying, prefatory to a twenty-minute statement of great “lucidity and force” (Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 350). Smalley might have been less eager to convey presidential messages had he known that TR considered him to be “a copper-riveted idiot.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 97.

24THE “PACIFIC” BLOCKADE Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 117; Herbert Bowen, “Roosevelt and Venezuela,” North American Review, Sept. 1919; United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1903(Washington D.C., annual), 793 (hereafter Foreign Relations).

25 John Hay relayed Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 413; Pierre de Margerie to French Foreign Office, 18 Jan. 1903 (JJ); Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 413; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 67–69; TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1102. TR’s strategic suspicions were not unfounded. See Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy, 306.

26IN BERLIN, Speck Reporting back to TR on 15 Dec. 1902, von Sternburg sounded more like an American diplomat than a German. “I’ve told them every bit of [the truth]…. Fear I’ve knocked them down rather roughly, but should consider myself a cowardly weakling if I had let things stand as they were” (TRP).

27 Expressionless, self-effacing Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 108, 197 (“As always, Speck has three faces—one for the Russians, one for the British, and one for whomever he is stationed by”); Speck von Sternburg to TR, 15 Dec. 1902 (TRP).

28 There seemed to Marks, Velvet on Iron, 50; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 422, 413. See Paul S. Holbo, “Perilous Obscurity: Public Diplomacy and the Press in the Venezuela Crisis, 1902–1903,” The Historian 32.3 (1970), for the barrage of White House publicity during Dewey’s naval maneuvers.

29 Von Bülow Alfred Vagts, Deutschland und die vereinigten Staaten in der Weltpolitik (New York, 1935), 1569, tr. the author; Die Grosse Politik, vol. 17, 255–60; Lionel M. Gelber, The Rise of Anglo-American Friendship (New York, 1938), 113.

30 The ink on Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 118.

31 Roosevelt continued TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1102; Platt, “Allied Coercion of Venezuela.”

32 Sunday, 14 December The Washington Post, 15 Dec. 1902. For reasons set forth at length in Morris, “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days,’ ” Sunday, 14 Dec., must have been the date of the secret TR-von Holleben meeting. Hay’s arbitration message was sent the previous day, Saturday, and von Holleben left Washington for New York on Sunday evening.

33 If Roosevelt expected Vagts, Deutschland, 1569; profile in Munsey’s, Sept. 1901; Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 108; Sergei Witte, The Memoirs of Count Witte, ed. Sidney Harcave (Armonk, N.Y., 1990), 61, 76–77; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 422.

34 Today, von Holleben Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 133; TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1103.

35 Controlling himself William Loeb interviewed by Henry Pringle, 14 Apr. 1930 (HP).

36 The President said Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 414.

37WILLIAM LOEB SAW Marks, Velvet on Iron, argues that TR himself may have been initially responsible, in order not to humiliate the pathologically sensitive Kaiser. “Roosevelt’s penchant for face-saving is the key to much of the mystery surrounding his foreign policy.… In the field of diplomacy he was nearly always tactful and courteous” (58–59).

38 Von Holleben Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 80, 55, 69.

39 Late that evening “At the Hotels,” The New York Times, 15 Dec. 1902.

40 Sometime during TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1104, and vol. 5, 1102; George Dewey diary, 13 Jan. 1903 (GD). Bünz, TR said years later, was “the one man who sized me up right.” When the aging Consul General was arrested on espionage charges in the First World War, TR vowed to help him, “for the really valuable service he did this country as well as his own in the Venezuela matter” (TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks [TRC]). See TR’s exquisitely detailed expositions of the Monroe Doctrine to Bünz inLetters, vol. 3, 98.

41 As von Holleben Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 414; Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 121–22.

42 But Metternich “If President Castro should prematurely perceive that there exists on our part a leaning toward arbitration,” Metternich opined, “he would interpret this as weakness and would certainly make no concessions.” Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 121.

43 It was now TR to A. W. Callisen, 3 May 1916 (TRP); Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 122; Washington Evening Star, 16 Dec. 1902; Henry Clay Taylor to Staff Intelligence Officer, San Juan, P.R., 16 Dec. 1902 (GD). There was a flurry of nervous selling on Wall Street. New York Herald, 17 Dec. 1902.

44 “Such cables,” Henry Clay Taylor to Staff Intelligence Officer, San Juan, P.R., 16 Dec. 1902 (GD).

45 After less than Marks, Velvet on Iron, 41; New York Herald, 17 Dec. 1902. Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt,” notes that the fighting edge of Dewey’s armada moved five hundred miles closer to Venezuela at this “critical” juncture.

46 Throughout the crisis Holbo, “Perilous Obscurity.”

47 By now the The Washington Post, 17 Dec. 1902; “At the Hotels,” The New York Times, 16 Dec. 1902; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 42, is puzzled by German Embassy letters dated 15, 17, and 18 Dec. and signed by von Holleben. There is no question that the Ambassador was out of town from 14 Dec. on: he must simply have taken official stationery with him to New York. See below.

48 From there The New York Times, 17 Dec. 1902; The Times (London), 18 Dec. 1902; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 69.

49 “now the cannons” Edward B. Parsons, “The German–American Crisis of 1902–1903,” The Historian 33 (May 1971).

50 The reaction in Alfred P. Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 1896–1906 (New York, 1928), 290; George P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, eds., British Documents on the Origin of the War, 1898–1931 (London, 1928–1931), vol. 2, 153. On 18 Dec., Hay, believing the crisis still to be acute, wasted much hot breath in a strongly worded “ultimatum” to Albert von Quadt, the German chargé d’affaires. Both men were, in a later phrase, out of the loop. The skimpy evidence surviving suggests that TR’s ultimatum was received by Berlin not as a shock, but as a confirmation of repeated warnings from Bünz (June 1902) and von Sternburg (July, Oct., Nov. 1902) that the new President was not to be trifled with (Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 418). Throughout the year, both von Holleben and Quadt had urged Berlin to prepare for possible war with the United States. Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 69, 71.

51SO THE DEADLINE Von Bülow expressly repeated that Germany had no territorial ambitions in Venezuela. Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 131.

52 “I am a sick man,” New York Herald news clipping, ca. 10 Jan. 1903, John Hay Scrapbook (JH). Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston, 1918), 437; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 83. Von Holleben did not return to Washington until 26 Dec. and stayed two weeks to wind up his affairs, still refusing to speak to the press. On 5 Jan. 1903, the Kaiser canceled his credentials. He left town again without saying good-bye to TR or John Hay (New York Tribune, 10 Jan. 1903; Pierre de Margerie to Théophile Delcassé, in Documents diplomatiques français [1871–1914], series 2, vol. 3, 24 [Paris, 1929–1959]). When he sailed home from Hoboken, N.J., on 10 Jan. 1903, “not a single member of the diplomatic corps or German official [with the exception of Karl Bünz] dared to see him off.” TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1104, and Blake, “Ambassadors at the Court.”

53 On 19 December Herbert W. Bowen, Recollections Diplomatic and Undiplomatic (New York, 1926), 261; Gooch and Temperley, British Documents, vol. 2, 163; Washington Evening Star, 20 Dec. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 396–98.

54 “I suppose,” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 319.

55 Overflowing with Washington Evening Star, 17 Dec. 1902; Baltimore Sun, 13 Feb. 1903. TR also wrote a generous letter to Grover Cleveland on 26 Dec. congratulating him on “the rounding out of your Venezuela policy.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 398.

56 Be yours—we John Hay to TR, 24 Dec. 1902 (TD).

57 Snow fell James Garfield diary, 24 Dec. 1902 (JRG). Perhaps the brightest glow beneath TR’s tree was shed by a small copper scuttle that Archie and Quentin found on the White House doorstep. It was addressed “To the President of the United States,” and contained a measure of anthracite coal. Ethel Roosevelt Derby interview, 1962 (TRB). The scuttle is now in TR’s library at Sagamore Hill.

Historiographical Note: Few episodes in TR’s career have aroused as much controversy as the first Venezuela crisis of 1902. His secrecy about it as President, the apparent collusion of three governments in obliterating the record, and some inconsistencies in his later accounts have caused historians, beginning with Howard C. Hill in 1927, to accuse TR of faulty memory at best and boastful lies at worst. Alfred Vagts and the American diplomatic historian Dexter Perkins, apologists respectively for Nazi Germany and the New Deal, were particularly virulent in the 1930s, and contributed much to the decline in TR’s reputation. They never succeeded, however, in challenging his basic honesty. Even Henry Pringle, the most iconoclastic of Roosevelt biographers, felt compelled to believe him, after an interview with William Loeb in which the former secretary testified that he was present at the two meetings with von Holleben. Loeb also described them to Hermann Hagedorn. Seward W. Livermore in 1946 and Howard K. Beale in 1956 were the first modern scholars to uncover fresh facts in support of TR’s story. Since then, the historical pendulum has continued to swing his way. Edward Parsons wrote a telling essay in 1971, and Frederick W. Marks III in 1979 almost succeeded in proving an international conspiracy to deny that anything happened—when plainly, something very considerable did. The account given in this chapter is based on the author’s article “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days.’ ” See also Parsons, “German-American Crisis,” and, for an important conflicting view that TR’s ultimatum was delivered in late January/early February 1903, see Serge Ricard, “The Anglo-German Intervention in Venezuela and Theodore Roosevelt’s Ultimatum to the Kaiser: Taking a Fresh Look at an Old Enigma,” in Serge Ricard and Hélène Christol, eds., Anglo-Saxonism in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1899–1919 (Aixen-Provence, 1991), 66–77. While allowing for continuing scholarly disagreement about dates, William N. Tilchin writes, “By any reasonable standard, this controversy should now be considered resolved [in TR’s favor].” Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 32.

CHAPTER 14: A CONDITION, NOT A THEORY

1 We insist that “Mr. Dooley” in The Washington Post, 1 Mar. 1903.

2“THE EQUILIBRIUM” Georges Picot qu. in Jean Jules Jusserand, What Me Befell: The Reminiscences of J. J. Jusserand (Boston, 1933), 219; see, e.g., Jean Jules Jusserand, The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (1890), Piers Plowman (London, 1894); and A Literary History of the English People (London, 1895).

3 Equally clearly Jusserand, What Me Befell, 219; whenever TR’s name was mentioned, Cambon would tap his head significantly. Storer, In Memoriam, 38–39.

4 French foreign-policy Paris correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, 19 Oct. 1902. For an overview of the scant French literature on TR, see Serge Ricard, “The French Historiography of Theodore Roosevelt,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, summer 1984.

5 “the proper policing” Hay had cabled TR’s refusal to arbitrate to Herbert Bowen, the American Minister in Caracas, on 27 Dec. 1902. Although tempted, TR had declined on Hay’s advice, partly out of a desire to help out the court, which was atrophying through lack of business. Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt”; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt.

“A great number of Frenchmen and Europeans are happy to join with me in expressing to you their gratitude for the generous, unyielding firmness you have displayed in support of international justice,” a Hague delegate wrote. “The initiative of the United States, compared with the paralysis of Europe, is a sign of the times” (Baron d’Estournelles de Constant to TR, 27 Dec. 1902 [TRP]). Estournelles de Constant, like TR, was destined to win the Nobel Peace Prize. For international praise of TR, see Literary Digest, 3 Jan. 1903.

6THE JANUARY ISSUE Baker, American Chronicle, 168–69. McClure’s circulation in 1903 was 350,000. This issue achieved record sales.

7 “The Oil War” This article was the third in what eventually grew to be a nineteen-part series by Ida Tarbell.

8 “torrential journalism,” Eric F. Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform (New York, 1956), 134–35; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 133; TR, who knew both Baker and Steffens well, was sufficiently impressed by this issue ofMcClure’s to invite the two writers to visit him at Sagamore Hill in the summer of 1903. For his previous relations with them, see Baker, American Chronicle, and Steffens, Autobiography, passim. For his later response to the new journalism, see below, chap. 26.

9 “From now until” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 401. The next Congress was not due until Dec. 1903. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 26–27, points out that by statute, the second and fourth congressional sessions of any presidential four-year term had to end on 4 March. Therefore, only the first and third sessions (when Congress could sit as long as it liked) were convenient to the production of major legislation. Even the third tended to be a cautious session, in view of the upcoming presidential election. Thus, a decision to postpone tariff or reciprocity action in 1902 meant that Congress was not likely to address them again before 1905.

10 The American economy Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 238–39. Sixty-three new trusts had been capitalized at more than seven figures in 1902.

11 He wanted three Claude Barfield, Jr., “Theodore Roosevelt and Congressional Leadership: Trust Legislation in 1903,” Organization of American Historians Convention, 1965 (Kansas City, Mo., 1965).

12 These requests Philander C. Knox to TR, 30 Mar. 1903 (PCK); 57 Cong., 2 sess., 1903, S. doc 73, serial 4422, 15–21; specifically, Littlefield’s bill gave the ICC, a semi-independent agency, subpoena powers to examine and publish the records of major companies.

13 some Rooseveltian ideas Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 239–41; Merrill, Republican Command, 142; Powers, Portraits of Half a Century, 174. TR was privately advised by Knox that the Littlefield bill would be unacceptable to big business and destructive of executive authority. (Philander Knox to TR, 5 Jan. 1903 [PCK]; Arthur M. Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Mar. 1959). On the evening of 5 Jan., TR called in John J. Jenkins, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and practically dictated a bill comprising all his antitrust views. TR also took care to publish a summary of his own program in the newspapers. Whatever legislation was finally adopted would therefore seem to have been inspired by him. Jenkins to Philander Knox, 6 Jan. 1903 (PCK); The Washington Post, 7 Jan. 1903.

14 Corporations would not Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations”; David B. Sickels to TR, 19 Jan. 1903 (TRP). Beer was the father of Thomas Beer, whose impressionistic biography of Mark Hanna is cited frequently in these notes.

15 “He was jovial” William C. Beer to George W. Perkins, 15 Jan. 1903 (GWP).

16JUSSERAND AND VON Except where otherwise indicated, documentary details in the following paragraphs come from the “Official Report on 1903 Diplomatic Reception,” supplemented with miscellaneous news clips (TAB).

17 “cosmic cynicism.” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 319, 350.

18 One by one Wister, Roosevelt, 110.

19 Roosevelt’s strategy John Hay to TR, 21 Jan. 1903 (TRP).

20 The canal treaty Herrán had been expecting an ultimatum from TR for at least a month. On 10 Jan., the Colombian Foreign Ministry granted him what he took to be carte blanche to sign the treaty. DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 196, 200; Story of Panama, 270–71; Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 194.

21 Downstairs, 1,800 Alice Roosevelt diary, 8 Jan. 1903 (ARL); William E. Curtis to George Cortelyou, 10 Jan. 1903 (GBC); “Official Report” (TAB).

22 Roosevelt (attended) Seale, President’s House, vol. 2, 699; William E. Curtis to George Cortelyou, 10 Jan. 1903 (GBC); “Official Report” (TAB).

23 The President, oblivious See Wister, Roosevelt, 113–14, for an account of this supper, and TR’s chortling recitation of “Alone in Cubia” in front of Finley Peter Dunne.

Chronological Note: The Roosevelts entertained three thousand guests in the first week of the new year alone. Between the reopening of the White House in November 1902 and the beginning of Lent in 1903, their record-breaking guest numbers were as follows:

Houseguests	200
Breakfasts	50
Lunches	275
Teas	6,000
Musicales	1,800
Receptions	5,000
State dinners	270
Private dinners	720
Suppers	1,500
Total	15,815

TR was by now spending his entire salary on entertaining. He paid the wages of twenty-three servants, the fees of musical performers, and the costs of the White House equipage. Every state dinner, down to the champagne and cigars, cost him eight hundred dollars (about sixteen thousand dollars in modern currency). When Colonel Theodore A. Bingham, Superintendent of Public Buildings and compiler of the above-cited “Official Report,” criticized the Roosevelts’ lavish lifestyle, he was dismissed. Washington Evening Star, 11 Jan. 1903; Boston Herald, 12 Feb. 1903; New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1903; New York World, 17 Feb. 1903; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 363–65.

24AT BREAKFAST THE next The following conversation is taken from Wister, Roosevelt, 116–17.

25 William D. Crum George Cortelyou memorandum, 31 Jan. 1903 (TRP). It is impossible to read TR’s voluminous correspondence with black leaders in 1902 and early 1903 and believe that he did not realize the consequences of his Crum appointment, long before Wister challenged him. For the complex state of South Carolinian politics at this time, involving both the White House and the United States Senate, see Gatewood, “Theodore Roosevelt and Southern Republicans.”

26 Thirteen Negro The Washington Post, 29 Mar. 1902. George Cortelyou memorandum, 31 Jan. 1903 (TRP); Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 7, 28. With the exception of Crum, all TR’s current black appointees were to offices already held by blacks. Most of them, indeed, were reappointments. The Washington Post, 26 Apr. 1903.

27 Moreover, most had Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 2, 328.

28 Roosevelt’s argument Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 91–100; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 383.

29 Not until 11 Wister, Roosevelt, 118.

30WISTER FLATTERED Ibid., 119. Wister’s book, like countless others of its kind, scrupulously lists the occasions when the President of the United States profited from his counsel.

31 Mrs. Minnie Cox For a congressional record of this affair, see “Resignation of the Postmaster,” 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 9, H. Doc. 42.

32 “she would get” Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, 853; “Resignation of the Postmaster,” 33. Anselm J. McLaurin of Mississippi is not to be confused with his outgoing senatorial colleague, John L. McLaurin of South Carolina.

33 Roosevelt’s reaction White House press releases, “1.34” (TRP).

34 In deference “Resignation of the Postmaster,” 18, 23, 9, 12; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 64. The Indianola post office eventually reopened with a white postmaster, but was downgraded to fourth-class status. Cox, meanwhile, bought a local savings bank and prospered mightily. Ibid., 88–89.

35ON 12 JANUARY New York Sun, 13 Jan. 1903; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 442. The black ADA-designate was William H. Lewis, a Harvard graduate and All-American football player.

36 The New York Times The New York Times, 29 Jan. 1903; New York Herald, 12 Jan. 1903; J. Henry Essen to TR, ca. 27 Jan. 1903 (TRP); Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 85.

37 “a 14-karat” Nashville Daily News, 15 Jan. 1903.

38 By now, Roosevelt A Southern Republican commented, in words that were read into the record: “Mr. McKinley so mellowed up the Southern people that they were ready to go into the Republican party by the thousands. Mr. Roosevelt is bitterly hated today by almost all Southern white men.… His position on the Negro question has solidified the Democrats as no other conceivable policy could have done. He has aroused the bitterest of race feeling, and it is a question of time when murders will result therefrom.”Congressional Record, 57 Cong., 2 sess., 1903, vol. 36, pt. 2, 1188.

39 He pointed out TR, Letters, vol. 3, 431; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 7, 28.

40 “Why the appointment” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 431.

41 Black leaders Booker T. Washington to TR, 24 Jan. 1903, and unidentified news clip, 15 Jan. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

Historical Note: “No President has had the gratitude and loyal support of a race to the extent that you have it now,” Booker T. Washington wrote, when TR’s determination became known (Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 7, 11). In Rome, Pope Leo XIII (unaware, no doubt, that he had once laid a benedictive hand on the head of eleven-year-old Teedie Roosevelt) praised the President’s determination “to seek equality of treatment of all the races.” Robinson, My Brother, 47; New York World, 15 Feb. 1903.

A simultaneous pair of resolutions, by black and white groups, emphasized the paradox of the President’s political situation. In Washington, the National Afro-American Council praised his commitment to “human rights,” and found him “an inspiration to a people struggling heroically beneath the burden of hate” (Associated Press release, 27 Jan. 1903, Presidential scrapbook [TRP]). But in Alabama, white Republicans announced that Roosevelt had “failed absolutely” to carry out the policies of William McKinley. They demanded an extraordinary state convention “solely for the purpose of retracting the resolution endorsing him for President in 1904.” The party chairman said that 95 percent of the delegates would support a presidential bid by “the greatest American statesman,” Senator Mark Hanna (The New York Times and New York Herald, 27 Jan. 1903).

This was an ominous development. Alabama, as Roosevelt well knew, was the first state on the national roll call. If it cast its vote for Hanna, Arkansas would be tempted to follow. But he could not, in conscience, back down. Resentfully, he told some Southern visitors that he did not understand why “so much fuss” should attend his few black appointments. Presidents Harrison, Cleveland, and McKinley had all made more than he—so far (The New York Times, 27 Jan. 1903; Baltimore Sun, 8 Feb. 1903). TR wrote privately to Booker T. Washington on 9 Feb. 1903, asking that all future black endorsements be kept “very mild,” to avoid hindering him politically. Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 7, 62.

42ROOSEVELT WORKED TR, Letters, vol. 3, 406, 408, 412; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 327; James R. Garfield diary, 17 Jan. 1903 (JRG).

43 “Il est plus” “He is more English than an Englishman, and more American than an American.” Qu. in Pierre de Margérie to Théophile Delcassé, 12 Jan. 1903, Documents diplomatiques, series 2, vol. 3, 26.

44 “I see you” Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 359; Pierre de Margérie to Théophile Delcassé, 18 Jan. 1903, Documents diplomatiques, series 2, vol. 3, 43–45, tr. Sharon Harris. The Kaiser confirmed, via the American diplomat Lloyd Griscom in March 1908, that he had “tried to send you a man you would like.” Draft, 18 Mar. 1908, in LG.

45 This confidence Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 294. Italy, as a lesser creditor, was also a party to the talks.

46 “Mr. Bowen is” Pierre de Margérie to Théophile Delcassé, 18 Jan. 1903, Documents diplomatiques, series 2, vol. 3, 43–45.

47 “The debts will” Ibid. For British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour’s early approval of the Corollary, see Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 35.

48 “That is precisely” Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 35. When TR voiced such patronizing sentiments publicly, as he sometimes did in reference to the Monroe Doctrine, he deeply offended Latin Americans. “If we live in disorder,” Colombia’s El Porvenirremarked, “we live in our own house, and nobody has a right to meddle with it.” Qu. in Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 265.

49ON 22 JANUARY The Washington Post, 23 Jan. 1903.

50 Under the Spooner Story of Panama, 271; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 196. Cullom was for appropriating Panama outright, on grounds of “universal public utility.”

51 “I am commanded” Story of Panama, 322.

52 “everything might be lost” DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 203.

53 Late in the Story of Panama, 272.

54 Four or five New York Sun, 24 Jan. 1903.

55 “ ’Pears lak us” Georgia Social Sentry, 13 Feb. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

56 White reactionaries “This is about the limit,” the Richmond News raged. Literary Digest, 14 Feb. 1903; Vardaman editorial in Greenwood, Miss., Commonwealth, 10 Jan. 1903, copy in TRP; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 37.

57 This was not Senator Tillman duly appeared at the hearings, and patronized Crum so effectively (“If he were a white man he’d be all right”) that a majority of the Committee voted to disapprove the nomination. Roosevelt refused to withdraw it. The New York Times, 23 Jan. 1903.

58 He was lucky Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 80; The New York Times, 25 Jan. 1903; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 1, 1180–81.

59 “It is as idle” Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 2, 1178. The complete text of Spooner’s remarks is printed in ibid., 1174–90. Even the violent Tillman praised him afterward for his “calm and dispassionate and very earnest and eloquent speech.” Ibid., 2571. N.b.: Spooner used the word duress in the sense of coercion or compulsion.

60 He cabled home DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 206. Later in the year, the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs reportedly confirmed that Herrán’s signature on the treaty was as good as his own. William Nelson Cromwell to Tomas Herrán, 5 July 1903 (TH).

61 “Gladly shall I” DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 206–7.

62IN THE LAST DAYS The New York Times, 25 Jan. 1903.

Chronological Note: On 18 Jan., Germany’s half-forgotten gunboats suddenly bombarded Fort San Carlos, Venezuela. Twenty-five people were killed. There was no apparent provocation, although the Reich claimed Venezuela fired first. John Hay memorandum, 21 Jan. 1903 (JH). Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt”; Jeffrey M. Dorwart, The Office of Naval Intelligence: The Birth of America’s First Intelligence Agency, 1865–1918 (Annapolis, 1979), 76.

From Caracas came news that the allied blockade, while starving Venezuelans of bread and salt, was permitting the importation of arms by antigovernment guerrillas; it appeared that the Kaiser was deliberately fomenting unrest as an excuse to land German marines. Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 294.

63 had secretly directed The New York Times, 25 Jan. 1903; Parsons, “German-American Crisis.” An even more secret memorandum, from the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, noted that Germany might well be protracting the Venezuela crisis deliberately. With Dewey’s ships tied down in the Caribbean, “no other objective point in the United States is now so inviting for attack as the city of Washington.” Kennedy, War Plans, 55–56.

64 The arbitration Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 7 Feb. 1903 (JJ); J. Fred Rippy, The Caribbean Danger Zone (New York, 1940), 189; Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 294.

65 That sounded There were additional rumors in early 1903 that the Kaiser wanted to establish a permanent Caribbean naval squadron, and bid for Panama Canal rights, should Colombia fail to ratify the Hay-Herrán Treaty.

66 “Are people in” Vagts, Deutschland, vol. 2, 1595. Public concern was also rising again in Britain. George Smalley in The Times (London), 24 Jan. 1903; Gelber, Rise of Anglo-American Friendship, 120–21. Perhaps significantly, TR’s luncheon guests on 29 Jan. included the Admiral of the Navy, the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of War. White House diary (TRP).

67 He did not Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 425. “The friend of peace cannot do anything but pray for you, Mr. President.… Cablegrams which I have received yesterday and today convince me that the excitement in Germany has gone to an absolutely unreasonable degree” (Hugo Münsterberg to TR, 24 Jan. 1903 [TRP]). Münsterberg, a professor at Harvard, was a member of TR’s secret du roi. He had useful private contacts on the Wilhelmstrasse.

68BARON VON STERNBURG Blake, “Ambassadors at the Court.” Technically, von Sternburg was not yet credentialed to the United States. He was obliged to play the face-saving fiction that he was deputizing for the “sick” von Holleben. His proper accreditation did not arrive until the spring. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 429–30.

69 After his first Gooch and Temperley, British Documents, vol. 2, 168; Gelber, Rise of Anglo-American Friendship, 123; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 81.

70 Von Sternburg sent Parsons, “German-American Crisis,” 445. See also John Hay to Sir Michael Herbert, draft, 5 Feb. 1903 (JH). This was a much milder version of an earlier Hay-Roosevelt draft expressing “profound regret” at the slowness of the negotiations, and warning that “a state of unrest and anxiety exists throughout the Western Hemisphere, which if suffered to increase might bring about results which would universally be deplored” (JH).

Historical Note: On 5 Feb. 1903, TR requested a comparative analysis of United States and German naval strength in the North and South Atlantic “and the seas contiguous thereto.” The answer, supplied by the Office of Naval Intelligence on 11 Feb., showed that his current temporary advantage in the Caribbean would not last long in a full war. In table form, the all-out opposition would be as follows:

	United States	Germany
Ships
Battleships, 1st class	7	10
Battleships, 2d class	1	2
Monitors/gunboats	4	13
Guns
Very big	32	0
Big	0	50
Smaller	110	144

From this it will be seen that TR’s Big Stick was more psychological than actual. Its efficacy derived from the speed and power with which he threatened to use it.

71 Whether it was Dana G. Munro quotes TR as complaining about Germany’s “impossible stand” as late as 9 Feb. Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921 (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 73. But J. Fred Rippy shows that acquiescence began around 4 Feb.—i.e., the day after von Sternburg’s urgent telegram. Caribbean Danger Zone, 191.

Historical Note: This brief resurgence of the Venezuela crisis provoked a purge of former von Holleben aides at the German Embassy. Albert von Quadt was recalled in mid-Feb., the chargé Baron von Ritter given just “forty-eight hours” to follow him a week later, and two other staffers reassigned. Jules Jusserand reported that they were all clearly being punished for the Kaiser’s loss of “face.” To Théophile Delcassé, 20 Mar. 1903 (JJ).

72 “I am not for” Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 7 and 11 Feb. 1903 (JJ).

73 Relaxing in the TR to James Connolly, 29 Sept. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters to Kermit from Theodore Roosevelt, 1902–1908 (New York, 1946), 27; Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 180; Alice Roosevelt Longworth interview, 22 June 1975.

74 The Ambassador’s own Jusserand, What Me Befell, 217; Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 11 Feb. 1903 (JJ).

75 Beaming like a TR to Pierre W. Coubertin, 6 Oct. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters to Kermit, 27; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 11 Feb. 1903 (JJ). Lloyd Griscom recorded another description of TR’s flooding conversational energy at this time. “He started to volley questions at me about Persia [over breakfast], but before I could answer, he launched into a monologue of the Great Empire from the rise of Genghiz Khan. He paused long enough for me to begin an account of ibex shooting, but interrupted to send for the rifle with which he had hunted in the West; he wanted to show us the marks of a cougar’s fangs on its butt. Then suddenly he switched to Japan.…” Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 221–22.

76 Already, almost Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 531; Strouse, Morgan, 452–53. The Expedition Act (which TR signed into law on 11 Feb. 1903) effectively fathered the Justice Department’s modern, all-powerful Antitrust Division.

77 Congressman Charles TR to Gilson Gardner, unidentified news clip, 7 Feb. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 548.

Chronological Note: When Representative Littlefield’s antitrust bill first ran into trouble in the House in mid-January, Roosevelt had called a leadership conference to advance his own program (Review of Reviews, Feb. 1903; Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations”). He thereupon sought out the operational center between “fools” like Speaker Henderson, who opposed all business regulation, and “equally obnoxious fools” like Littlefield, who fought too hard for too much (TR, Letters, vol. 3, 406), and coaxed both houses and both parties into acquiescence. Henderson was promised help from George Perkins in setting up a New York law practice when he retired at the end of the session. Perkins was promised an advisory role in setting up the new Bureau of Corporations. The House Judiciary and Rules Committees at once became more hospitable to White House proposals. William C. Beer to George W. Perkins, 11 Jan. 1903 (GWP); Review of Reviews, Feb. 1903.

78 Just behind came TR, Letters, vol. 3, 410, and vol. 5, 334–35; Merrill, Republican Command, 141–42. The bill’s extended title was added in order to win the support of congressmen from labor-intensive districts.

79 Thus, Roosevelt George Cortelyou to Philander Knox, 2 Jan. 1903 (PCK), makes plain TR’s mistrust of the ICC as an agency too independent for his liking. Conservatives in Congress had the same feelings about TR.

80 In view of James Garfield diary, 5 Feb. 1903 (JRG); Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 341. See also Campaign Contributions: Testimony Before a Subcommittee of the [Senate] Committee of Privileges and Elections. 62 Cong., 2 sess., 1913, vol. 1, 18 (hereafterCampaign Contributions).

81J. D. ROCKEFELLER Chicago Tribune, New York Herald, and The New York Times, 8 Feb. 1903.

82 Both impressions Rockefeller had just given seven million dollars for tuberculosis research. Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903.

83 By publicizing these TR, Autobiography, 445; L. White Busbey, Uncle Joe Cannon: The Story of a Pioneer American (New York, 1927), 222. Other news stories implicated three more lawmakers. Senators Aldrich, Allison, Hale, Hanna, Lodge, Teller, Quay, Platt (N.Y.), and Platt (Conn.) all denied having received Standard Oil telegrams, whereupon the New York American (12 Feb. 1903) published a facsimile of one addressed to Quay. Signed by John D. Archbold, the company’s vice president, it protested “vexatious attacks” against big business.

Chronological Note: TR’s not-to-be-attributed release of this story to the Associated Press on Saturday evening, 7 Feb., demonstrated his instinct for weekend news. Readers of Sunday-morning spreads had plenty of time to mark, learn, and inwardly digest, before firing off letters to their congressmen. Sunday-afternoon announcements were pretty sure to end up as front-page stories, because Monday morning was usually newsless.

At the time, it was assumed that TR acted on 7 Feb. after being shown one of the Rockefeller telegrams by Henry Cabot Lodge. Actually, he had been aware of Standard Oil’s lobbying effort for at least three days (James Garfield diary, 5 Feb. 1903 [JRG]). He delayed his dramatic move until the day the Littlefield Bill passed the House, thus “burying” it beneath his own Sunday headlines.

84 Subsequent articles New York American, 12 Feb. 1903; Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations.”

85 The old tycoon New York World, 12 Feb. 1903. Early on 10 Feb. Rep. Charles Littlefield had begged TR for help with his own bill, as promised. He received a cold message saying that the President now found it “unconstitutional and entirely too drastic.” Enraged, Littlefield became the only House Republican to vote against the Commerce and Labor Bill. A mere nine Democrats joined him. Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 548.

86ON 8 FEBRUARY Princeton Alumni Weekly, 14 Feb. 1903.

87“JUST AT PRESENT,” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 423.

88 Elihu Root’s long The Army Bill became law on 14 Feb. 1903. Internal bureaucratic conflicts kept the General Staff Corps from becoming fully effective in 1910. A quarter of a century later, Newton D. Baker described it as “the outstanding contribution made by any Secretary of War since the beginning of [U.S.] history.” Leopold, Elihu Root, 43. See also Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 260ff.

89 By agreement with Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 113.

Historical Note: With a fine disregard for the adjective impartial, TR chose three aggressive expansionists to be his representatives at the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal in London: Secretary of War Elihu Root and Senators Henry Cabot Lodge (R., Mass.) and George Turner (D., Wash.). The appointments were seen as deliberately provocative. Root had sent United States troops north in 1902 to secure the very frontier he would now be adjudicating. Lodge’s personal shoulder-chip, in matters to do with Great Britain and its empire, amounted to a battering ram: “I do not like to be crowded, and I especially dislike being pushed by our British brother.” Turner came from a community that had always regretted President Polk’s failure to extend the Northwestern Territory as far as “Fifty-four Forty.”

The Anglo-Canadian claim, in TR’s opinion, was “an outrage pure and simple.” His own big globe of the world (beside which he posed, in a photograph intended for immediate release) had been “made in London by mapmakers for the Admiralty,” and showed the Alaskan boundary to be precisely where the United States said it was. Since 1825, Great Britain had understood by treaty that the line ran inland from the forty-first parallel to the Portland Channel, at a distance averaging thirty miles from the coast. This seaward strip encompassed all major inlets; when Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, Canada had raised no topographical objections. Only when gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896 had she begun to regret the ceded inlets. Canada was now suggesting—demanding—that the Alaskan boundary should be measured not from the coast, but from the extremities of islands lying far out to sea. If so, Juneau, Skagway, Dyea, the much-prized Lynn Canal, and all of Glacier Bay would be Canadian.

Roosevelt was willing to grant Canada a limited amount of inlet water, according to charts drawn up by John Hay. Strategist that he was, he suspected that the Dominion’s British rulers knew their case was hopeless, and merely wanted a judicial confirmation, to quell angry local feelings. He therefore made clear to his representatives that they were not to negotiate “untenable” territorial claims, only to decide whether a boundary sanctioned by sixty years of understanding among Russia, Great Britain, and the United States was “right in its entirety or wrong in its entirety.” This caused great resentment at the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. Shortly after negotiations began on 15 Sept. 1903, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., visited London and sent TR private word that the British Government took an “exceedingly grave” view of his inflexible attitude. Six months later, Joseph Chamberlain was still fuming. “Our cordial neutrality and sympathy in the Spanish War followed—by what? By all that happened in regard to the Alaska Arbitration, the secret history of which is not altogether pleasant reading.”

See Tyler Dennett, John Hay: From Poetry to Politics (New York, 1933), 357–59; Henry Cabot Lodge to Elihu Root, 27 June 1903 (ER); John Hay to Joseph H. Choate, ca. 20 Feb. 1903 (JH); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 287; New York Tribune supplement, 29 Mar. 1903, p. 1; map in Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903; Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 145; TR to Elihu Root et al., 25 Mar. 1903 (ER); Holmes to TR, 11 Oct. 1903 (TRP); Chamberlain to Poultney Bigelow, 30 Apr. 1904 (PB). For more extensive discussion, see John A. Munro, ed., The Alaska Boundary Dispute (Toronto, 1970); Marks, Velvet on Iron, 105–11; and Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 36–48.

90 Favorable action Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 197–98. Senatorial patience with the seventy-eight-year-old Morgan was wearing thin. “Impersonating the treaty,” Mark Hanna wrote John Hay, ca. Feb. 1903, “am I not justified in killing him?” (JH).

91 Roosevelt did not TR, Letters, vol. 3, 427–28.

92 On Saturday Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903; Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46. By midsummer, the Department of Commerce and Labor had a Washington staff of more than 1,300 and a budget of ten million dollars. George Cortelyou speech memorandum, ca. 12 Aug. 1903 (TRP).

Chronological Note: On this weekend, TR’s houseguest, John Singer Sargent, was painting an oil portrait of the President pausing halfway down the White House stairway with his hand on a newel. The noticeable sadness in TR’s eyes may reflect the fact that his wife, even as he posed, was suffering her second miscarriage in two years. TR, Letters, vol. 3, 428; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 265.

93 As a final The agreement protocol was signed in Washington on 13 Feb. 1903. For a brief account of the negotiations, see Gelber, Rise of Anglo-American Friendship, 113–25.

94THE NEXT MORNING’S Los Angeles Times, 14 Feb. 1903; New York Press, 15 Feb. 1903.

95 “It always pays” TR qu. in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 44; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 450–51. See Marks, Velvet on Iron, 13–15, for a discussion of TR’s “gentlemanly” scruples in foreign policy.

96 It was a Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations”; superscript on George Cortelyou memo for the President, 14 Feb. 1903 (GBC).

97 “Say what has” TR memo, 15 Feb. 1903, and press-release draft for New York Herald, 16 Feb. 1903 (PCK).

98 The result was Literary Digest, 21 Feb. 1903.

99 Nevertheless, Roosevelt Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 555–60; clip ca. Feb. 1903 in John Hay scrapbook (JH).

100 Whether this Nearly a century later, it has so redounded. “The year 1903 is one of the most important in the annals of antitrust. In that year, the nation became conscious for the first time of a President’s taking a personal interest in the application of the law.… [His actions] unmistakably demonstrate the practicability and potentialities of large-scale and purposeful enforcement effort” (Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 560). 1903 would see only eighteen new trusts formed, as opposed to sixty-three in 1902, and forty-six in 1901.

101GEORGE BRUCE CORTELYOU Washington Capitol, 21 Apr. 1900, biography file (GBC); National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 14; Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 104, 127–28; Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903; George Cortelyou to R. A. Maxwell, 16 Feb. 1903 (GBC). For a later assessment, see Benjamin Temple Ford, “A Duty to Serve: The Governmental Career of George Bruce Cortelyou” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1963).

102 the elite company See, e.g., James Garfield diary, 13 Feb. 1903 (JRG).

103 Cortelyou, despite To TR, Garfield was “Jim,” while Cortelyou was always “Mr. Cortelyou.”

104ON 18 FEBRUARY TR, Letters to Kermit, 30. This ride is misdated as 13 Feb. in Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 426. “Wie gut ist es doch” the Kaiser commented, “that His Majesty’s German representative goes riding mit dem Präsidenten!” Die Grosse Politik, vol. 17, 292.

105 Now that Germany’s Rippy, Caribbean Danger Zone, 198; Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 145.

106 The President’s words Marks, Velvet on Iron, 52–54.

107 When Admiral Dewey Dewey qu. in New York Herald, 27 Mar. 1903; Mrs. Dewey diary, 31 Mar. 1903 (GD); Frederick Palmer, With My Own Eyes (Indianapolis, 1932), 128–29; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 239; Spector, Admiral of the New Empire, 145–46. According to Mrs. Dewey, TR received the Admiral privately, took his hand in both of his, and said, “My best beloved” (a habitual endearment) then, sotto voce, “Damn the Dutch!” According to Palmer, TR tapped Dewey on the wrist and said, grinning, “Admiral, consider yourself reprimanded.”

108THE FIFTY-SEVENTH Walter Wellman in Chicago Record-Herald, 28 Feb.–3 Mar. 1903; Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 210–11; Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, 364–65.

109 Roosevelt’s “tyrannical” Senoia, Georgia, Enterprise-Gazette, 26 Feb. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Fleming, Around the Capitol, 49; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 231–32. Dr. Crum assumed his appointment on 30 Mar. 1903.

110 “To the Secretary” TR to Elihu Root, 21 Feb. 1903 (ER).

111 Treaties were TR, Letters, vol. 3, 433; Walter Wellman in Chicago Record-Herald, 3 Mar. 1903; proclamation, 2 Mar. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

112 He had hardly Chicago Record-Herald, 3–4 Mar. 1903; Literary Digest, 7 Mar. 1903.

113 A House-Senate The phrase ugly with anger is Walter Wellman’s in the Chicago Record-Herald, 4 Mar. 1903. See also Washington Evening Star, same date.

114 At 2:00 A.M. The adjective dilatory is Quay’s own. Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3005–6; The Washington Post, 4 Mar. 1903.

115 Outside, the moon Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1903; Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 8–9; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3058.

116 Joseph Gurney Cannon Thompson, Party Leaders, 181; Public Opinion, 13 Feb. 1903.

117 Yet in this Cannon began to speak at 3:30 A.M. He had been confirmed as Henderson’s successor in January. Washington Evening Star, 4 and 5 Mar. 1903; Merrill, Republican Command, 137.

118 Long years of Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 8–9; Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 213–14.

119 “I am in earnest” Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3058.

120 When Cannon Busbey, Uncle Joe Cannon, xvi; James E. Watson, As I Knew Them: Memoirs (Indianapolis, 1936), 92, 99–100; Thompson, Party Leaders, 177–79.

121 “I am getting” Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3058.

122 Applause roared Washington Evening Star, 3–4 Mar. 1903; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3008.

123THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1903. The author is grateful to Brad Smith for enabling him to sit in the President’s Room and revisit this moment.

124 The naval-construction TR, Letters, vol. 3, 438; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 7, 106; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 112, 115. TR kept Crum in office as a recess appointee until the Senate finally confirmed him in Jan. 1905.

125 As the hands Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3070; New York Sun, 5 Mar. 1903.

126 Far away, at Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1903; Thompson, Party Leaders, 174–76; photographs in LC. For an analysis of the political forces Cannon harnessed in his leap to power, see Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 213–14.

CHAPTER 15: THE BLACK CRYSTAL

1 We’re a gr-reat Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley in Peace and War (Boston, 1905), 5.

2 “Will you take” Pittsburgh Gazette, 2 Apr. 1903.

3 The fireman stared Pittsburgh Gazette and New York Sun, 2 Apr. 1903.

Note: The principal source for this chapter is TR’s own scrapbook, “Comment on West Coast Trip, 1903,” 3 vols. (TRP). Because the scrapbook proceeds chronologically, with an abundance of overlapping information, it will be cited as a single source. The author has also relied in particular on the eyewitness daily reports of Lindsay Denison in the New York Sun, and TR’s own narrative in Letters, vol. 3, 547–63. This classic, often very funny document, written at the request of John Hay, has been published separately in Elting E. Morison, ed., Cowboys and Kings: Three Great Letters by Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 1–23. See p. 241.

4 Free at last

Chronological Note: TR’s official itinerary gives an idea of the rigors of presidential touring in the age before air travel and the loudspeaker. (“Whistle-stops” omitted.) APRIL 1: Leave Washington, D.C. 2: Chicago, Evanston, Ill. 3: Madison, Waukesha, Milwaukee, Wisc. 4: La Crosse, Wisc.; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. 5: Sioux Falls, S.D. 6: Yankton, Mitchell, Aberdeen, S.D.; Edgeley, Fargo, N.D. 7: Jamestown, Bismarck, Mandan, Medora, N.D. 8: Livingston, Cinnabar, Mont. (Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., through 24 Apr.) 25: Billings, Mont., Alliance, Nebr. 26: Grand Island, Nebr. 27: Hastings, Lincoln, Fremont, Omaha, Nebr. 28: Shenandoah, Clarinda, Van Wert, Osceola, Des Moines, Ottumwa, Iowa. 29: Keokuk, Iowa; Quincy, Ill.; Hannibal, Clarksville, St. Louis, Mo. 30: St. Louis. MAY 1: Kansas City, Mo.; Kansas City, Lawrence, Topeka, Kans. 2: Manhattan, Junction City, Abilene, Salina, Ellsworth, Russell, Hays, Wakeeny, Sharon Springs, Kans. 3: Sharon Springs. 4: Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Trinidad, Colo. 5: Santa Fe, Albuquerque, N.M. Terr. 6: Grand Canyon, Ariz. Terr. 7: Barstow, Redlands, San Bernardino, Riverside, Calif. 8: Claremont, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Calif. 9: Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Calif. 10: Monterey, Calif. 11: Pajaro, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Calif. 12: Palo Alto, Burlingame, San Francisco, Calif. 13–14: San Francisco. 15: Raymond, Calif. (Yosemite National Park through 18 May). 19: Carson City, Reno, Nev.; Sacramento, Calif. 20: Redding, Sisson, Calif.; Ashland, Ore. 21: Salem, Portland, Ore. 22: Chehalis, Centralia, Olympia, Tacoma, Wash. 23: Bremerton, Everett, Seattle, Wash. (by boat). 24: Seattle. 25: Ellensburg, North Yakima, Pasco, Wallula, Walla Walla, Wash. 26: Wallace, Harrison, Idaho; Tekoa, Spokane, Wash. 27: Helena, Butte, Mont. 28: Pocatello, Shoshone, Mountain Home, Nampa, Boise, Idaho. 29: Salt Lake City, Ogden, Utah; Evanston, Wyo. 30: Laramie, Cheyenne, Wyo. (on horseback). 31: Cheyenne. JUNE 1: North Platte, Nebr. 2: Denison, Fort Dodge, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Dubuque, Iowa. 3: Freeport, Rockford, Rochelle, Aurora, Joliet, Dwight, Pontiac, Lexington, Bloomington, Ill. 4: Lincoln, Springfield, Decatur, Ill.; Indianapolis, Ind. 5: Return Washington, D.C. “Tour of the President to the Pacific Coast,” booklet in GBC.

5 the emotional drain EKR was taken seriously ill at a reception on 12 Feb. 1903, and miscarried. Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 265.

6 and the stress See above, chap. 14; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 422; Washington Times, 20 Feb. 1903. Although TR’s chronic respiratory problem was more or less cured by his mid-twenties, he did have occasional later attacks, usually associated with extreme fatigue or fibrous inhalation. He admitted to “asthma—occasional attacks—not severe” when applying for life insurance early in his Presidency. McCullough, Mornings on Horseback; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 164; TR to Anna Roosevelt Cowles (TRB); New York Life policy statement, 14 Nov. 1901, New York Life Archives, New York.

7 At Seward, he Pittsburgh Gazette and New York Sun, 2 Apr. 1903.

8 First, a baggage The Washington Post, 3 Apr. 1903; “Comment” scrapbook. There were no women aboard the Pacific Coast Special.

9 Last came Ibid.

10AT 8:50 The following account is based on Chicago Tribune, 3 May 1903, and “Comment” scrapbook.

11 “There is a homely” TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1,265–66.

12 Actually, Roosevelt Marks, Velvet on Iron, 58–59. As a recent case in point, TR had instructed Senator George Turner to keep a cool negotiating head at the Alaska Border Tribunal, but to be confident that, in the event of “specious and captious objections on the part of the English, I [will] send a brigade of American regulars up to Skagway and take possession of the disputed territory and hold it by the power and force of the United States.” Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 115.

13 He reiterated his TR, Works, vol. 13, 465, 467–68.

14 Roosevelt continued Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 343–44.

15 “His hearty greetings” Ibid.

16 The Chicago Tribune’s “Comment” scrapbook.

17 In Milwaukee’s New York Sun, 21 and 25 Apr. 1903; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 272–78.

18 Further roars Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 10; Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel, 4, 3 Apr. 1903; “Comment” scrapbook.

19TARIFF POLICY IN TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 294–320; Leslie’s Weekly, 30 Apr. 1903; New York Sun, 8 Apr. 1903; The Washington Post, 8 Apr. 1903.

20 He ate a TR, Letters, vol. 3, 550; Bismarck Tribune, 8 Apr. 1903.

21 For the next Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 12–13; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 551.

22 When the train Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 15–16; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 201, 337; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 551–52.

23 Joe Ferris was New York Sun, 8 Apr. 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 552.

24 Shortly after noon For TR’s own account of his visit to Yellowstone, see TR, Works, vol. 3, chap. 9.

25 “Oom John” Oom (Dutch diminutive for “old man”) was TR’s affectionate name for Burroughs. See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 429–30.

26 They were greeted Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 105; Paul Schullery, “A Partnership in Conservation: Theodore Roosevelt and Yellowstone,” Montana 28.3 (1978); New York Sun, 9 Apr. 1903; Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 24–25.

27 “By the way” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 552–53.

28 Hell-Roaring Bill Herman Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands (Boston, 1921), 113–17. 219 “I will try” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 553.

29A FEW HOURS New York Sun and Baltimore American, 11 Apr. 1903; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 561; Martin, James J. Hill, 517; Lamoreaux, Great Merger Movement, 166–67.

30 “If this decision” Boston Record, 11 Apr. 1903; Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan, 401. Northern Securities stock dropped twelve points in three days after the St. Paul decision, reaching a low twenty-five points below its initial high. The Washington Post, 19 Apr. 1903.

31 William Loeb asked New York Sun, 10 Apr. 1903. For a popular reaction to the Circuit Court decision, see Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 71–73.

32 He had also Healy, United States in Cuba, 203–6; Anthracite Coal Commission, Report to the President, 80–87; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 211–14.

33 That did not Medill McCormick to his parents, ca. Feb. 1903 (MHM); Topeka, Kans., Herald, 21 Mar. 1903; The New York Times, 22 Mar. 1903; Pittsburgh Press, 15 Mar. 1903; Boston Herald, 16 Mar. 1903.

34 “Such a bosom” Literary Digest, Apr.–June 1903, 219.

35ROOSEVELT WAS NO George Bird Grinnell, “Theodore Roosevelt as a Sportsman,” The Country Calendar, Nov. 1905; Robert Underwood Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays (Boston, 1923), 309; Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 70–73; Jeremy Johnston, “Preserving the Beasts of Waste and Desolation: Theodore Roosevelt and Predator Control in Yellowstone National Park,” George White Forum 15.4 (1988).

36 Or near solitude The following account of TR’s sixteen days in Yellowstone is based on Major Pitcher’s diary, published in The Washington Post, 24 Apr. 1903; TR’s own account, “Wilderness Reserves: The Yellowstone Park,” Works, vol. 3, 266–93; Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 23–75; Fred M. Davenport, “President Roosevelt in the Yellowstone,” Outlook 142 (1926); Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 104–11; and “Comment” scrapbook.

37 Each day, he TR, Letters, vol. 3, 461–64. He made a detailed list of his natural observations to send to C. Hart Merriam of the United States Biological Survey.

38 On 12 April Pitcher diary, 12 Apr. 1903; TR, Works, vol. 3, 282–84; Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 32–33.

39 Burroughs, who Lindsay Denison in New York Sun, 24 Apr. 1903; Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 33; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 429–30.

40 “Every man who” TR, Works, vol. 3, 267–68. See also TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 324–28.

41 Roosevelt expressed Ibid.

42 Only once did he TR, Letters, vol. 3, 463.

43BACK IN GARDINER New York Sun and New York World, 19 Apr. 1903.

44 Finally, on 24 April Lindsay Denison in New York Sun, 29 Apr. 1903. “It was rather a sad interview,” Roosevelt wrote afterward. “The old fellow had gone to pieces, and soon after I left he got lost in a blizzard and was dead when they found him.” TR,Autobiography, 117.

45 Before leaving TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 324. The Washington Post, 25 Apr. 1903, remarked that TR’s Yellowstone speech showed a new governmental attitude, “after more than thirty years of passive attention to the park.”

46 Then, with a Except where otherwise cited, the following four paragraphs are based on stereopticon photographs by Underwood & Underwood preserved at SH; Lindsay Denison reports in “Comment” scrapbook; Addison C. Thomas, Roosevelt Among the People: Being an Account of the 14,000 Mile Journey from Ocean to Ocean of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (Chicago, 1910), copy in NYPL; and William Allen White’s account of a Kansas whistle-stop in Saturday Evening Post, 27 June 1903.

47 On the flatland Burroughs, Camping and Tramping, 12.

48 At whistle-stops “Comment” scrapbook.

49 (“If I might”) TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 333; TR qu. in Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Notes and Anecdotes of Many Years (New York, 1925), 117.

50 Indistinguishable as TR, Letters, vol. 3, 554.

51THE “ESSENTIAL DEMOCRACY” TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 328; TR, Works, vol. 4, 228–29. For TR’s formal visit to the site of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in St. Louis, see, e.g., Collier’s Weekly, 16 May 1903, and Jusserand,What Me Befell, 231ff.

52 (“Three cheers for”) TR, Letters, vol. 3, 425; Robbins, Our Landed Heritage, 333.

53 In Iowa’s fecund New York Sun, 29 Apr. 1903; Des Moines Register and Leader, 29 Apr. 1903.

54 “There were two” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 554–55. In exchange for the badger, TR gave the little girls a silver-and-gold medal he had been presented in Chicago. Lindsay Denison in New York Sun, 4 May 1903; Des Moines Register and Leader, 8 June 1903.

55 The baby badger TR, Works, vol. 3, 325–6; as the journey proceeded, Josiah was joined by two bears, a lizard, a horned toad, and a horse. TR, Letters, vol. 3, 555.

56NEW MEXICO TERRITORY Lindsay Denison in New York Sun, 6 May 1903.

57 “Why don’t the” New York World, 7 May 1903; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 June 1903 (JJ).

58 “his ancestors” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 557.

59 In the plaza TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 366; “Comment” scrapbook; photographs in Leslie’s Weekly, 28 May 1903.

Chronological Note: TR had touched on the subject of conservation before, as Governor of New York and in his First Annual Message as President. Just before leaving Washington on 1 Apr., he had made a private speech to the Society of American Foresters at Gifford Pinchot’s house (TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 249–57). But his post-Yellowstone utterances at Grand Canyon on 5 May 1903 marked the first time he pronounced the gospel in plain language to the people. As will be seen, TR became increasingly obsessed with the theme of conservation as he traveled through the Southwest and California.

60 “I don’t exactly” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 557. The Grand Canyon was not yet a national park in 1903. Technically a “forest reserve,” it was threatened by mining and real-estate interests.

61 “Leave it as” TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 370. For the aesthetic reaction of a later President to the Grand Canyon, see Franklin D. Roosevelt: “It looks dead. I like my green trees at Hyde Park better.” Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 199.

62 “I felt as” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 557–58; TR, Letters to Kermit, 38.

63 Fifteen hundred children Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 June 1903 (JJ); Thomas, “Roosevelt Among the People,” 212–13. All TR’s speeches in California have been published in California Addresses by President Roosevelt (San Francisco, 1903).

64 “this plain tilled” California Addresses, 24. Later, at Santa Barbara, TR exclaimed, “I do not know that I ever before so thoroughly understood the phrase, ‘A garden of the Lord.’ ” Ibid., 36.

65 Amid all the TR wrote that he liked to see California girls and women riding unself-consciously astride (Kerr, Bully Father, 116). Every speech he made through 12 May exulted in irrigation, fertility, and beauty.

66 For four hours Ironically, for all this hydrological and horticultural display, Los Angeles was just beginning to realize that its swelling population and falling aquifer were incompatible. See Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 65ff., for how this realization led to the construction of the Owens River Aqueduct, endorsed by TR.

67THE SIGHT OF California Addresses, 54; New York Sun, 12 May 1903.

68 “There is nothing” TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 384. For the popular “California-as-Mediterranean” conceit of TR and his generation, see Kevin Starr, Americans and the Californian Dream (New York, 1973), chap. 12.

69 In a major TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 383–90; Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 124; The Washington Post, 9 Mar. 1903. For a case study of the largest (and most legally audacious) of TR’s 1902 executive orders, see David E. Conrad, “Creating the Nation’s Largest Forest Reserve: Roosevelt, Emmons, and the Tongass National Forest,” Pacific History Review, Feb. 1977. In 1902, TR also enacted the first game laws of Alaska Territory, preventing the commercialization of deer hunting, and got an appropriation to preserve and maintain the first federal buffalo herd in Yosemite National Park. TR, Autobiography, 435.

70CONCERN MOUNTED H. W. Taft to William H. Taft, 2 Mar. 1903 (WHT); TR’s arrival in San Francisco after his Stanford address coincided with a guilty plea by the Federal Salt Company in another antitrust suit filed by Knox. San Francisco Chronicle, 13 May 1903; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 427–28.

71 A group of financiers Chicago Record-Herald, 31 May 1903; speech transcript (TRB).

72 “Before I came” TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 390–91. Elsewhere in San Francisco, he noted that the city stood “in the exact center” of the United States sphere of influence.

73 “In the South Seas” Ibid., 391–93.

74 The audience “The Manchurian War Scare,” Harper’s Weekly, 23 May 1903; A. Lincoln, “Theodore Roosevelt and the First Russian-American Crisis,” Southern California Quarterly, Dec. 1963; Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry, 87; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 193; “Comment” scrapbook.

75 In other disturbing Kishinev is modern Chişinau, Moldavia. There were to be three hundred more pogroms over the next three years. Stuart E. Knee, “The Diplomacy of Neutrality: Theodore Roosevelt and the Russian Pogroms of 1903–1906,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, winter 1989.

76 Casualty figures Harper’s Weekly, 6 June 1903; Foreign Relations 1903, 712–15. Although Nicholas II disciplined the Governor of Bessarabia for permitting the massacre, he privately remarked, “Jews themselves … are to blame.” Knee, “Diplomacy of Neutrality.”

77 For the first Taylor Stults, “Roosevelt, Russian Persecution of Jews, and American Public Opinion,” Jewish Social Studies 33.1 (1971); Philip E. Schoenberg, “The American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Mar. 1974; John Hay to TR, 28 Apr. and 12 May 1903 (TRP); Raymond A. Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and the International Rivalries (Waltham, Mass., 1970), 26.

78 Roosevelt was constrained TR, Letters, vol. 3, 474. In April alone, TR had received nearly five hundred communications, endorsed with many thousands of signatures, calling upon the Tsar to stop the persecution of Jews in Russia. Knee, “Diplomacy of Neutrality.”

79 “The inevitable march” TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 394. For an analysis of the formation of TR’s Far Eastern thinking, see Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 253–63.

80 “Our place as” Ibid., 396. Russia, preoccupied with her own problems, took little notice of TR’s speech. But considerable nervousness about it was expressed in Europe, particularly in Germany (Public Opinion, 21 May 1903).

81 two evenings later New York Tribune, 16 May 1903; TR, Works, vol. 3, 291–92.

82 His companion was William F. Kimes, “With Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir in Yosemite,” in Westerners Los Angeles Corral, Brand Book Fourteen (Los Angeles, 1974), 192. This is the most detailed account of TR’s visit to Yosemite. See also Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 3–26.

83 The President was TR, Autobiography, 333–34; William Wordsworth, “Lucy,” no. 5; Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 117; “I stuffed him pretty well regarding the timber thieves … and other spoilers of the forest,” Muir said afterward. John L. Eliot, “TR’s Wilderness Legacy,” National Geographic, Sept. 1982.

84 “The ‘greatest number’ ” Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 113. See ibid. for the gradual hardening of battle lines between conservation and preservation during the Roosevelt Era.

85 Whatever resonance Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 117; Muir admitted afterward, “I stuffed him pretty well regarding … spoilers of the forest.” John L. Eliot, “TR’s Wilderness Legacy,” National Geographic, Sept. 1982.

86 For the next James M. Clarke, The Life and Adventures of John Muir (San Diego, 1979), 292–93.

87 On 17 May “Comment” scrapbook; Muir qu. in William F. Bade, The Life and Letters of John Muir (Boston, 1924), vol. 2, 412.

88 some philosophical Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 109–15; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 475. TR’s order, which created an almost unbroken chain of mountain reserves from Mexico to British Columbia, was hailed by Century, Aug. 1903: “If his trip had resulted in no other public benefit, this alone would have justified it.” Three years later, TR incorporated both the valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove into Yosemite National Park.

89 Roosevelt’s next TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 414–18 (Carson City, Nev.); California Addresses, 40. Later, in Oregon, TR asked his new Commissioner of Public Lands, William A. Richards, to investigate that state’s famously corrupt disposition of forest property to mining and lumbering interests. “The extent of the Oregon land scandal would grow over the next several years as a kind of background theme to the larger story of conservation” (Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 112). For TR’s creation of the Public Lands Commission, see D. Jerome Tweton, “Theodore Roosevelt and Land Law Reform,” Mid-America49.1 (1967).

90 “Well, thank” Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 17.

91 Seattle neither “The Day Teddy Roosevelt Arrived, 1903,” Puget Sound Enetai, 18 Mar. 1983; Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 20.

92 the issue which Mark Hanna to TR, 23 May 1903 (TRP).

93 “a knockdown” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 482.

94 Fate—or Joseph B. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt, 172.

95 Roosevelt saw James Garfield interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 14 Feb. 1906 (MHM). Hanna wanted TR to recognize that opposition to the endorsement did not signify opposition to the nomination. As Chairman of the GOP, Hanna could not favor any candidate against any other, present or future. However, as John M. Blum points out, “He had not been so patient in McKinley’s behalf in 1895 or 1896.” Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 41.

96YOUR TELEGRAM TR to Hanna, 25 May 1903 (TRP). He adroitly refrained from giving out the text of Hanna’s telegram, thus giving the impression that it had been less than respectful. Beer, Hanna, 613–14.

97 Hanna had no Mark Hanna to TR, 26 May 1903. The question remains, Did Hanna have any lingering presidential ambition in the spring of 1903? There is no evidence that he did, and plenty that he did not. On 20 Mar., he had sent TR a published interview in which Ohio Congressman Charles H. Grosvenor emphatically stated that the President’s nomination was certain, and that anyone opposing him was committing political suicide. “That settles me,” Hanna joked. Just two days before TR’s annihilating telegram, he had stated publicly, “I am not, and I will not be, a candidate for the presidential nomination.” Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 424. See also John S. McCook to TR, 22 May 1903 (TRP).

98 Thus the President Washington Evening Star, 27 May 1903; Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 51; G. Thomas Edwards, “The College, the Town, and Teddy Roosevelt,” Whitman Alumnus, Nov. 1977; Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 20, 23. Having humbled Hanna, TR made an elaborate and not very convincing attempt on 29 May to explain himself. See Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 427, and also Beer, Hanna, 609–16; Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 50–53; and Gould, Reform and Regulation, 40–42.

99ROOSEVELT ARRIVED TR, Letters, vol. 3, 558–59. See also Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, chap. 13. (Mr. Pickwick: “It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do.” Mr. Snodgrass: “But suppose there are two mobs?” Mr. Pickwick: “Shout with the largest.”)

100 He waited until Eyewitness account, by the Australian, in unidentified news clip, “Comment” scrapbook. See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 558–59.

101 “a square deal” Ibid., TR’s famous political image, although hinted at in Jamestown, N.D., on 7 Apr., had first been articulated during his Grand Canyon speech of 6 May. In that case, he applied it to American Indians, but square deal quickly became a metaphor for his whole domestic political program of mediation between forces. It was the rhetorical inspiration of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal.” John Allen Gable, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Square Deal,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 17.3 (1991).

102 “My address was” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 559–60.

103 Roosevelt left Ibid., 561.

104 the concept of equilibrium See Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 151–52, for TR’s search for a fulcrum on his very first night in politics.

105 Justice separating good Kerr, Bully Father, 126; TR, Letters to Kermit, 61; New York Sun, 5 June 1903. The phrase, translated into Latin, was engraved on TR’s inaugural medal in 1905.

106 “Envy and arrogance” New York Sun, 4 June 1903. “Evidently the new [twentieth-century] American would need to think in contradictions, and in spite of Kant’s famous four antinomies, the new universe would know no law that could not be proved by its anti-law” (Education of Henry Adams, 497–98). TR’s ability to “think in contradictions” both fascinated and infuriated Adams. See below, Interlude.

107 Roosevelt was sitting The following account comes from Editor & Publishers, 13 June 1903.

108 “Guests who find” Ibid. Beveridge and Fairbanks were arch-rivals for control of Indiana’s state Republican organization in 1903, and for TR’s favor as possible Vice Presidential candidates in 1904.

CHAPTER 16: WHITE MAN BLACK AND BLACK MAN WHITE

1 Th’ black has “Mr. Dooley” in Salt Lake City Daily Tribune, 10 Nov. 1901.

2SENATOR BEVERIDGE AND Washington Evening Star, 5 June 1903; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 June 1903 (JJ); Cleveland Plain Dealer, 28 May 1903. On 10 June 1903, Mark Hanna privately promised TR that he would “support him for renomination.” Both men apparently regarded this pledge as “a contract.” Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 363.

3 Roosevelt now enjoyed The Washington Post, 6 June 1903. His current pledges gave him 496 committed, and possibly 730, convention votes. He needed only 493 votes to clinch the nomination.

4 “I thank you again” The Washington Post, 6 June 1903.

5 Although the President EKR to William Loeb, 21 Apr. 1903 (TRB); EKR to Kermit Roosevelt, 29 Apr. and 10 May 1903 (KR); Washington Times, 3 May 1903.

6 Perhaps Edith had The following catalog of calories is drawn from “Comment” scrapbook.

7 There would be The New York World, which for some reason was perennially interested in TR’s weight, reported it at two hundred pounds on 14 June 1903, seventeen pounds more than at the start of his tour. The newspaper suggested that he should weigh no more than 195 pounds for his height (five feet nine inches) and frame. Modern medical opinion would put his ideal weight at about 145 pounds, and define his actual weight as obese.

8 A younger, slimmer Homer Davenport in San Francisco Examiner, 3 May 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 391. The Encke portrait now hangs at the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, Oyster Bay, N.Y. The famous Sargent, painted between 14 and 18 Feb. 1903, is still at the White House.

9 He never failed Maria Longworth Storer, Theodore Roosevelt the Child (privately printed, 1921), 24; TR to John Hay, John Hay diary, 8 May 1904 (JH); see, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 3, 422. (“The Sewalls were here.… They came to the Congressional reception, and altogether they showed to great advantage. I was very proud of them.”) See also chap. 9 notes, above.

10 Although political Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 151–52; TR, Works, vol. 17, 39.

11 Yet his wife EKR to Nannie Lodge, 14 June 1903 (HCL); Speck von Sternburg to John C. O’Laughlin, 30 June 1903 (JCOL); The Wall Street Journal, 8 July 1903.

12 He would receive Jusserand, What Me Befell, 240.

Chronological Note: The Post Office investigation, quietly ordered by Postmaster General Henry C. Payne six months before, had become a press sensation during TR’s Western trip, in part because of rumors that its conclusions would embarrass certain high-placed veterans of the McKinley Administration. TR was confident that his own Administration would escape unscathed (the charges were more than three years old), but he was annoyed by editorial suggestions that Payne was trying to delay and downplay the investigation. The Postmaster General had, in fact, been overeager to cooperate with reporters at twice-daily briefings. Even TR complained that Payne “talked too much,” and was inviting “a newspaper trial” before all the evidence was in (James Garfield diary, 17 June 1903 [JRG]).

To that end, the President prevailed upon Payne’s chief investigator, Assistant Postmaster General Joseph L. Bristow, to release at least some preliminary findings. He said he “wished nothing but the truth,” and “cared not a rap who was hit.” Bristow hesitated, having turned up proof that Senator Mark Hanna’s closest aide at the Republican National Committee, Perry C. Heath, had used the District of Columbia Post Office as a clearinghouse for political favors.

TR promised to “protect” Bristow, and an interim report was released on 18 June. It gave Payne enough ammunition to dismiss four bureau heads, and accept many subordinate resignations. Hanna remained silent, and Heath left for a long vacation in Japan.

TR resisted renewed Democratic calls for Payne’s resignation, praising him as “a singularly sweet-tempered and upright man.” (He might have added that Payne had influenced his selection as McKinley’s running mate in 1900.) On 22 June, he announced the appointment of two respected special counsels, Holmes Conrad and Charles Joseph Bonaparte, to assist Bristow in his probe. Bonaparte was later to become an important figure in the Roosevelt Administration.

For more details of the Post Office scandal, see Dorothy Canfield Fowler, The Cabinet Politicians: The Postmasters General, 1829–1909 (New York, 1943), 273–77; James Garfield diary, 1903, passim (JRG); William W. Wight, Henry Clay Payne: A Life (Milwaukee, 1907), 123–41; A. Bower Sageser, Joseph L. Bristow: Kansas Progressive(Lawrence, Kans., 1968); Washington Evening Star, 18 June 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 494–99 and passim.

13 John Hay cautioned John Hay to William Loeb, 7 June 1903 (TRP); DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 222. The Colombian Congress had not actually convened since 1898, Marroquín having seized power in 1900 by deposing another dictator, M. A. Sanclemente. TR therefore never believed that he was dealing with a republic. “[Marroquín] embodied in his own person the entire government of Colombia.” TR, Autobiography, 532–34.

14 There was no Story of Panama, 339; Foreign Relations 1903, 143. See also Marks, Velvet on Iron, 100–101. Not one of the letters Hay sent TR on tour mentions Colombia or the treaty, although he covers lesser matters conscientiously (TRP). Hay did, however, confide his forebodings to Mark Hanna. 14 May 1903 (TD).

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.

17THE 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).

23THE 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.

29NEW 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.

32ON 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.

41HIS 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.

52ON 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).

CHAPTER 17: NO COLOR OF RIGHT

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.

13 Kermit, thirteen Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 298; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 490.

14 Ethel, nearly Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 331; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 408.

15 The two smallest Face, badger, and extremities may be viewed in Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 269.

16“WASHINGTON IS NOW” Speck von Sternburg to John C. O’Laughlin, 30 June 1903 (JCOL); Francis B. Loomis to TR, 1 July 1903 (TRP).

17 Roosevelt was mystified Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 199. Stults, “Roosevelt,” notes Hay’s “major reversal of policy” on Russian Jews after TR interested himself in their cause. Jules Jusserand expressed the views of much of Washington’s diplomatic corps when he accused TR of currying the favor of “the influential Jewish coterie,” and creating “a most vexatious precedent … a very dangerous policy.” He wondered how the Administration would like it if France forwarded a petition of black Martinicans decrying lynchings in the United States. Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 30 June 1903 (JJ).

18 A peremptory telegram TR to Francis B. Loomis, 1 July 1903 (TRP).

19 Throwing all semblance Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 200–202; Oscar S. Straus, Under Four Administrations: From Cleveland to Taft (Boston, 1922), 173. Cassini sailed on 8 July. New York World, 9 July 1903.

20 John Hay, unaware John Hay to TR, 1 July 1903 (TD).

21 His letter came New York World, 3 July 1903; Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 387.

22A DAY OR TWO Washington Times, 8 July 1903; John Hay to TR, 9 and 11 July 1903 (TD); Clymer, John Hay, 195.

23 “I always find” John Hay to Mrs. Hay, 4 July 1903 (TD).

24 Sure enough, Ibid.; New York Sun, 30 Aug. 1903. TR’s other guests were Mark Hanna, Thomas Kearns, Charles Fairbanks, Clement Griscom, Guy Wetman Caryl, and Winthrop Chanler.

25 When they did John Hay to Mrs. Hay, 4 July 1903 (TD); Foreign Relations 1903, 155–58. The extent of Marroquín’s influence on the Colombian Congress remains a matter of historical debate. In 1903, American foreign-policy experts considered him to be a strongman, but Minister Herrán complained that he was languid in comparison with TR (Herrán to Lilian H. Andrews, 8 July 1903 [TH]). Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, chap. 6, and Bergquist, Coffee and Conflict, 216, present him as essentially powerless; but see the contrary reassessment in Marks, Velvet on Iron, 101.

26 President and Secretary “We agree on all points of foreign policy.” John Hay to George Smalley, 9 July 1903 (TD). See also Hay to TR, 18 July 1903: “Permit me to observe that your planet seems to be in good working order” (TRP).

27HAY SAID GOOD-BYE New York Tribune, 9 July 1903; John Hay to TR, 13 July 1903 (TD). In this same thank-you note, Hay repeated his “trembling hope” that he might one day have TR’s promised written account of his cross-country trip. TR complied on 9 Aug. 1903.

28 On 12 July Story of Panama, 346. For a detailed discussion of the political situation in Bogotá at this time, see Bergquist, Coffee and Conflict, 214–16.

29 By a coincidence New York World, 13 July 1903; Cromwell’s aide, Roger Farnham, had given this date to the newspaper a month before. McCaleb, Theodore Roosevelt, 157.

30 a desperate message Foreign Relations 1903, 163.

31 Hay prepared Ibid., 164; TR to John Hay, 14 July 1903, qu. in Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 311.

32THE KISHINEV PETITION Simon Wolf to TR, 3 July 1903 (TRP); Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 197. Wolf’s misgivings were shared by many Americans. A New York World editorial on 10 July declared that TR’s “anonymous” press blast of 1 July “deprives our Kishinev interference of all moral force, degrading it into a mere bargaining trick.”

33 Oscar Solomon Straus In 1902, TR had appointed Straus as United States Representative at The Hague.

34 When Roosevelt heard Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 203 (facsimile of TR’s draft on pp. 206–8); Marks, Velvet on Iron, 151.

35 Everyone approved Straus, Under Four Administrations, 172–73; John Hay to TR, 11 July 1903 (TD); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 517. Afterward, everybody but Straus took credit for the cable. For its text, see Cyrus Adler, With Firmness in the Right (New York, 1940), 268–70.

36 Long before he Oscar Straus to TR, 15 July 1903 (TRP); Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry, 93. The three ports were Ta-tung-kou, Mukden, and Harbin. Newchwang was already open by treaty. Zabriskie confirms that the decision to open them (made secretly on 6 and 9 July) was prompted by the Tsar’s fear of “a united front of powers against Russia.”

37 Nicholas II’s rejection John Hay to TR, 14 July 1903 (TD); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 520. Knee, “Diplomacy of Neutrality,” argues that TR’s response to the Kishinev pogrom was more political than humanitarian. His main motive in cooperating with the Wolf committee was to secure New York’s large Jewish vote in 1904.

38 “If only we were” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 532.

39 One such vehicle Ray Stannard Baker research notes (RSB). Baker subsequently reworked these notes for publication in American Chronicle, 170–72.

40 A servant showed Baker research notes (RSB). TR’s study, almost unchanged, is now part of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

41 Like a sudden explosion Ray Stannard Baker to James Baker, 16 July 1903, and Baker research notes (RSB).

42 “My dear Mr. President” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 7, 202–3.

43 “An old Florida” Baltimore Herald, 3 July 1903.

44 “It was a very” Ray Stannard Baker research notes (RSB). See also Baker, American Chronicle, 172.

45 Behind his jocularity TR to Brander Matthews, 11 July 1903 (TRP); Review of Reviews, Aug. 1903; Literary Digest, 18 July 1903; Rollo Ogden to TR, 3 and 28 July 1903 (TRP). For sarcastic black reaction to the Kishinev petition, see Ziglar, “Decline of Lynching.”

46 For political reasons Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “A Republican President and Democratic State Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the Mississippi Primary of 1903,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, summer 1984.

47 “This people is” James Wilson to TR, 2 July 1903 (TRP).

48 So far in 1903 Literary Digest, 23 May 1903; Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 25; Postal Record, July 1903; Harrison Gray Otis to TR, 28 July 1903 (TRP). Wall Street’s impression of TR as prolabor was inaccurate. His primary instinct was for social order. On 10 June 1903, he had sent federal troops to subdue some striking miners in Morenci, Arizona Territory, acting within twenty minutes of an appeal from Territorial Governor Alex Brodie. Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 241; Washington Evening Star, 11 June 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 593.

49 an open shop Frank W. Palmer to TR, 7 July 1903 (TRP).

Chronological Note: Conditions of “intolerable tyranny” had been reported to exist in the GPO. Public Printer Palmer was accused of letting typographic and other unions create a closed and notoriously inefficient shop there, in exchange for labor peace. TR was sympathetic to an affidavit filed by a fired GPO foreman, William A. Miller, who claimed to have been penalized for raising the productivity of the bindery division by 40 percent.

TR directed that Miller be reinstated, over Palmer’s protests that such a gesture would cause the bookbinders to go on strike. He ordered George Cortelyou to investigate the situation and take whatever steps were necessary to ensure that no government union “be permitted to override the laws of the United States, which it is my sworn duty to enforce.” For a full account, see Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 134–74.

50 James S. Clarkson James S. Clarkson to Benjamin F. Barnes (TR’s assistant secretary), 15 July 1903 (TRP); The Wall Street Journal news clip, ca. 15 July 1903 (TRP).

Biographical Note: Clarkson, a notorious spoilsmaster who had fired thirty thousand Post Office appointees in a single year under Benjamin Harrison (to the extreme displeasure of Civil Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt), was surveyor of the Port of New York. His appointment by TR in May 1902 had, in the words of Life magazine, “sent cold chills down the necks of all civil service reformers.” When the reformers came to the White House for an explanation, TR merely threw up his hands with a smile. “Well, the truth is, as you know, in politics we have to do a great many things that we ought not to do.” To professional politicians, the appointment was both shrewd and successful: Clarkson had old scores to settle with Mark Hanna, and, grateful for his appointment, he worked energetically to elect TR in 1904. Life, 8 May 1902; Barry, Forty Years, 278–79; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 256–57, 262–63. See also David Crosson, “James S. Clarkson and Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1904: A Study in Contrasting Political Traditions,”Annals of Iowa 42.5 (1974).

51 “Of course I will not” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 519.

52 The sun beat Review of Reviews, Aug. and Sept. 1903. TR’s field acreage (out of a ninety-seven-acre total) included pasture. The Sagamore Hill farm, run by a full-time superintendent and several assistants, supported five horses, six Jersey cows, eight pigs, several turkeys, and a flock of chickens. It was self-sufficient in hay, straw, milk, fruit, vegetables, and flowers. There was a windmill, an icehouse, and a machine that made gas. The President, a prodigious axman, ensured a steady supply of firewood. “Theodore Roosevelt as Farmer,” Farm Journal, Dec. 1906.

53 On 22 July TR, Letters, vol. 3, 526.

54 “Every morning Edie” TR in New York Sun, 11 Aug. 1903; Kolko, Triumph of Conservatism, 69; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 139. For an attempt to interest the President in the currency question, see Leslie M. Shaw to TR, 28 July 1903 (TRP), and TR,Letters, vol. 3, 691.

55 The problem, apparently John M. Mason to author, 2 Feb. 1965. Greenbacks were limited to their 1878 circulation, silver coins set at only one hundred million dollars’ worth, and the volume of gold remained stable. This supply was inadequate to feed the growing prosperity of 1903.

56 Toward the end “Wall Street and the President,” New York Tribune, 29 Aug. 1903; Henry Clews, Fifty Years on Wall Street (New York, 1908, 1973), 771–73; The New York Times, 31 Mar. 1903. James J. Hill suggested that indigestible securities might be a better phrase. Alexander D. Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance (New York, 1909), 309.

57 Roosevelt referred TR, Letters, vol. 3, 526; Leslie M. Shaw to TR, 24 July 1903 (TRP); Lucius Littauer to TR, 27 July 1903 (TRP). For a reassessment of Shaw’s “imaginative, pragmatic, and courageous” record under TR, see Richard H. Timberlake, Jr., “Mr. Shaw and His Critics: Monetary Policy in the Golden Age Reviewed,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 77.1 (1963).

58 “Uncle Joe wants” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 524.

59 When the Speaker The Washington Post, 23 July 1903; New York Sun, 30 Aug. 1903.

60CANNON’S RUMPLED APPEARANCE The profile of Joseph Cannon is based on Review of Reviews, Dec. 1903; Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 6–7, 46; Thompson, Party Leaders, 174–79; Watson, As I Knew Them, 92–93; and Kate Carew interview in New York World, 1 May 1904; TR warned Alice Roosevelt never to stand between Cannon and a cuspidor. Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 5.

61 “a hard, narrow” TR qu. in Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 219.

62 “I could not” Lucius Littauer to TR, 27 July 1903 (TRP).

63 No sooner had Noyes, Forty Years, 309; Literary Digest, 8 Aug. 1903. In retrospect, the slump of 1903 was seen as a reaction to excessive stock purchases in 1901–1902. Clews, Fifty Years, 771–73.

64 Like ripples round Faulkner, Decline of Laissez-Faire, 163; Leslie Shaw to TR, 24 July 1903, and James S. Clarkson to TR, 29 July 1903 (TRP). The panic moderated in Aug. TR picked the important support of The Wall Street Journal, which praised his “courageous advocacy of the publicity principle” in trust control, and said that if he had gotten his legislative way earlier, “the gross over-capitalization of companies” would have been restrained to the overall benefit of the economy (The Wall Street Journal, 12 Aug. 1903). Financial quarters remained uneasy through the beginning of November. Not until Aug. 1904 did the economy begin to expand again.

65 So while stockbrokers The Wall Street Journal, 12 Aug. 1903; New York World, 26 July 1903.

66A THOUSAND MILES SOUTH Gatewood, “Republican President”; The Washington Post, 10 Aug. 1903.

67 “My dear Governor” The New York Times, 10 Aug. 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 540–41.

68 In a minority TR, Letters, vol. 3, 541. This document was the first antilynching statement ever issued by an American President. Schlesinger and Israel, History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 2, 2013.

69 “There are certain” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 542.

70 Rollo Odgen Rollo Ogden to TR, 10 Aug. 1903 (TRP); Gatewood, “Republican President.” Both Harper’s Weekly and The Atlanta Constitution blamed TR for Vardaman’s triumph, and the President unhappily admitted that “his foul-mouthed abuse of me” had drawn votes (TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1069). But Gatewood notes that the quiet restructuring and strengthening of the Mississippi GOP went on regardless under Governor Vardaman.

71 Roosevelt concluded Scheiner, “President Roosevelt and the Negro”; Vardaman editorial in Greenwood, Miss., Commonwealth, 10 Jan. 1903, copy in TRP. The country’s largest organized black body, the National Negro Baptist Convention, commended TR for his “fearless stand” for justice at a time of high social danger. Ziglar, “Decline of Lynching.”

72BY NOW, THE State Foreign Relations 1903, 179, 158, 172–73.

73 He had sent The official explanation was that Marroquín’s cable contractor was boycotting transmissions in a franchise dispute. If so, the boycott was well-timed to make Beaupré helpless, just when he was needed to lobby for the treaty. Lilian Andrews to Tomás Herrán, 21 July 1903 (TH); The New York Times, 7 Sept. 1903; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 101–2.

74 Now there arrived F. F. Whittekin to John T. Morgan, 20 July 1903, forwarded to TR (JTM).

75 “I am totally” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 565.

76 “How can the” New York Herald, 15 Aug. 1903.

77 Whatever “action” DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 264.

78 That weekend The New York Times, 18 Aug. 1903.

79 Roosevelt came down New York Tribune and New York Sun, 18 Aug. 1903; unidentified news clip, John Hay scrapbook (JH).

80BOGOTÁ, AUGUST 12 Foreign Relations 1903, 179. See also DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 240–41, and Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 323–26. Due to the vagaries of Colombian cabling, Beaupré’s wire did not reach the White House until 5:30 P.M. on Saturday, 15 Aug. It was telegraphed to John Hay on Sunday, and to TR’s Oyster Bay office early the next morning.

81ROOSEVELT WAS STILL TR to John Hay, 17 Aug. 1903, and Hay to TR, 16 Aug. 1903 (TRP). In another memorable image, written eleven years later, TR wrote of the Colombian leaders: “You could no more make an agreement with them than you could nail currant jelly to a wall—and the failure to nail currant jelly to the wall is not due to the nail; it is due to the currant jelly.” Ibid., vol. 8, 945.

82 Before replying Francis B. Loomis to TR, 15 Aug. 1903. Moore (1860–1947) was a professor of international law and diplomacy at Columbia University. A former Assistant Secretary of State, he taught from 1891 to 1924, and wrote many scholarly works, including History and Digest of the International Arbitrations … (6 vols., Washington, D.C., 1898). At the time of his consultancy to the Roosevelt Administration, he was editing an eight-volume Digest of International Law.

83 Professor Moore’s Moore’s memorandum, dated 2 Aug. 1903, is reproduced in its entirety in DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 508–13.

84 For almost six Ibid., 510–11.

85 Throughout the long Ibid., 512–13.

86 The effect upon Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 350; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 566–67. On 5 Sept., TR invited Moore to dine and spend the night at Sagamore Hill. He startled the professor by confiding that he would recognize Panama if it declared independence from Colombia. “Of course,” he added hastily, “under proper circumstances.” John Bassett Moore, “Autobiography,” ms. fragment in JBM, Panama file.

87 “The fathers at” H. A. Gudger to Francis B. Loomis, 8 Aug. 1903 (FBL), and Alvey A. Adee to John Hay, 20 Aug. 1903 (JH).

88 “The fact that” John Hay to TR, 22 Aug. 1903 (TD). Faire valoir means fully exercise.

89 Gradually, a partial Luis C. Rico to Tomás Herrán, 13 Aug. 1903, and J. Bidlake to Tomas Herrán, 8 Sept. 1903 (TH); Alban G. Snyder qu. in Mary X. Ferguson, “John Barrett,” chap. 4, 12–13 (JB).

90 “The President will” John Hay to Arthur Beaupré, 20 Aug. 1903 (TD).

91 “For the first” Tomás Herrán to William Nelson Cromwell, 17 Aug. 1903 (TH).

92AUGUST DROWSED The New York Times, 1 Sept. 1903; TR, Autobiography, 329, 339; P. James Roosevelt to author, 24 Nov. 1984 (AC); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 540. By 8 Sept., three members of TR’s security detail were laid up with fever. New York World, 9 Sept. 1903.

93 Toward the end The following account is taken from the New York World and New York Herald, 3 Sept. 1903, plus unidentified news clips in TRB.

94 “I came to kill” TR’s would-be assassin was Henry Weilbrenner, a “paranoiac” from Syosset, New York. He said that he wanted to marry Alice Roosevelt, which, TR joked, proved that Weilbrenner was insane. Unidentified news clip (TRB).

95 The security detail New York World, 4 Sept. 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 587; TR to George Cortelyou, 25 July 1903 (TRP); Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 238–39.

96 A providential invitation Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 237–38.

97 His speech there TR, Works, vol. 18, 57–70; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 7 and 20 Sept. 1903 (JJ). A portrait of More hangs in TR’s study at Sagamore Hill.

98 “Again and again” TR, Works, vol. 18, 61.

99 “The line of cleavage” Ibid., 63.

100 A civilized commonwealth Ibid., 64–65.

101BY MID-SEPTEMBER Tomás Herrán to German Villa, 2 Sept. 1903 (TH); Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 22 Sept. 1903 (JJ); TR, Works, vol. 20, 497–98; Foreign Relations 1903, 264–65; Robert A. Friedlander, “A Reassessment of Roosevelt’s Role in the Panamanian Revolution,” Western Political Quarterly 14 (June 1961). As early as 1 Aug. 1903, the Panamanian newspaper El Istmeno had published a prosecession editorial, and been disciplined by Colombian authorities. H. A. Gudger to Francis B. Loomis, 1 Aug. 1903 (JH).

102 Isthmian delegates John Hay to TR, 7 Sept. 1903 (TD); Alban G. Snyder qu. in Ferguson, “John Barrett,” chap. 4, 12–13.

103 Desperate to keep Foreign Relations 1903, 190, 362; Story of Panama, 354–55; Tomás Herrán to Luis Rico, 15 Sept. 1903 (TH).

104 Proposals for a DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 249; E. Taylor Parks, Colombia and the United States, 1765–1934 (New York, 1968), 366. The forty-million-dollar argument was advanced by a special committee of the Colombian Senate, which argued that the Compagnie Nouvelle’s last extension of its concession had been granted by executive decree in 1900, and was thus unratified. If so, the concession would be renegotiable, without any further consideration of the Compagnie, at the end of 1904. The United States need pay no more than she had already agreed to pay for canal rights, while Colombia would quadruple her expectations from the Hay-Herrán Treaty. See TR, Autobiography, 538.

105 Hay ignored this John Hay to TR, 13 Sept. 1903 (TRP). Another reason for Hay’s anger toward Bogotá was that he had heard from Arthur Beaupré that Colombian negotiants had asked Germany and Britain to bid for canal rights in competition with the United States. Beaupré to Hay, 21 July 1903 (JH); TR, Works, vol. 20, 496.

106 Roosevelt had already TR, Letters, vol. 3, 599. See also TR, Autobiography, 536.

107 so did summer The treaty expired at midnight on 22 Sept. 1903.

108 A harvest of tart TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, 3 and 15 Sept. 1903, and to William Sewall, 22 Sept. 1903 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 604. TR told a visitor that if people believed what was currently being written about him in the press, they would think him “the most despicable cur possible.” Parsons, Perchance Some Day, 149.

109 His Syracuse speech Wayne MacVeagh to TR, 23 Sept. 1903, Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 26 Sept. 1903, and TR to William Sewall, 22 Sept. 1903 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 591; Presidential scrapbook and TR to Charles J. Bonaparte, 15 Sept. 1903 (TRP).

110 Alaska Boundary Tribunal The boundary negotiations had begun on 15 Sept.

111 Roosevelt had long Elihu Root to TR, 11 Aug. 1903 (PCJ); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 425.

112 Roosevelt took TR, Letters, vol. 3, 605.

113 “I suppose few” Ibid.

CHAPTER 18: THE MOST JUST AND PROPER REVOLUTION

1 An autocrat’s a Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy (New York, 1900), 260.

2THE PRESIDENT’S FIRST New York Herald, 30 Sept. 1903; Paul T. Heffron, “Secretary Moody and Naval Administrative Reform, 1902–1903,” American Neptune 29.1 (1969); Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 95–97; William H. Moody to the Michigan Club of Detroit, 3 May 1902 (WHM). For a modern assessment, see Judith R. McDonough, “William Henry Moody” (Ph.D. diss., Auburn University, 1983).

3 Since joining the Washington Evening Star, 10 Mar. 1902; Fleming, Around the Capitol, 36, 256; Paul T. Heffron, “Profile of a Public Man,” Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society, 1980; Dictionary of National Biography. See also Wood,Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 95–97.

4 Emerging from the New York Herald, 30 Sept. 1903.

5 “a good jolt” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 514–15.

6 “In this particular” TR to L. Clarke Davis, 21 Sept. 1903 (TRP).

7 William A. Miller See note above, p. 659 (an open shop); also Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 160.

8 This apparent sanction J. W. Basra to TR, 18 Sept. 1903, and Lynn (Mass.) Central Labor Union to William Loeb, 25 Sept. 1903 (TRP); Washington Times, 18 and 20 Sept. 1903; James Garfield diary, 29 Sept. 1903 (JRG); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 607; The Washington Post, 15 Sept. 1903.

9 One of them Portrait in The American Federationist, Nov. 1903; New York Herald, 4 Sept. 1903; Glück, John Mitchell, 92. Mitchell, suffering from chronic alcoholism and insomnia, was heading toward a nervous breakdown. Madison, American Labor Leaders, 171–72.

10 Roosevelt sized Gompers TR, Letters, vol. 3, 607; New York Sun, 30 Sept. 1903. This was not the first time TR and Gompers had met. Their acquaintance was slight, but extended back to 1884. Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York, 1925), vol. 1, 526.

11 “I thank you” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 607.

12 “I ask you” Ibid.

13 Miller’s habits Ibid.; The Washington Post, 30 Sept. 1903.

14 The delegation trooped The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York Sun, 30 Sept. 1903.

15 Editorial opinion Literary Digest, 10 Oct. 1903; The Washington Post, 30 Sept. 1903. The New York Times, same date, complained only that Roosevelt had not been tough enough with labor.

16 Radical unions New York Sun, 30 Sept. 1903; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 164, 174; Ray Stannard Baker to TR, 15 Oct. 1903 (TRP). Baker had just begun a serialized exposé of union bossism in McClure’s.

17“YOU MAY HAVE noticed” TR to Mark Hanna, 5 Oct. 1903 (TRP). Senate tinkerings with the treaty, before ratifying it in the spring, had necessitated reratification by Cuba and full consent of the new Congress. Healy, United States in Cuba, 205.

18 With no paved highways Federico Boyd, Exposición histórica acerca de los motivos que causaron la separación de Panamá de la Rep. de Colombia [Panama, 1911?], 37; Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 336.

19 The President could Boyd, Exposición, 37; John Barrett to Caroline S. Barrett, 20 Nov. 1905 (JB); Marks, Velvet on Iron, 97–98. According to the New York Sun, 5 Nov. 1903, Panamanians paid higher per-capita taxes than any other Colombian citizens, yet received nothing of Bogotá’s annual levy on the railroad.

20 Panama’s political Philander Knox, “Sovereignty over the Isthmus, as Affecting the Canal,” 1903 memorandum (PCK); Marks, Velvet on Iron, 97–98; Richard H. Collin, “The Big Stick as Weltpolitik: Europe and Latin America in Theodore Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 296–316; TR, Works, vol. 17, 241–43; Parks, Colombia and the United States, 219–34, 397; Friedlander, “Reassessment.” For a revolutionary precedent in 1885, almost identical with that of 1903, see DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 124–30.

21 “This does not” TR to Mark Hanna, 5 Oct. 1903 (TRP). The words therefore and must do not appear in the published version of this letter. TR, Letters, vol. 3, 625.

22 It did not amuse At the time TR sought to discuss Panama policy with him, Hanna was desperately trying to raise campaign money on Wall Street. Mark Hanna to John Hay, 15 Sept. 1903 (JH), and to George Perkins, ca. early Oct. 1903 (GWP); Mark Hanna to TR, 4 Oct. 1903 (TRP).

23 This advice contrasted Review of Reviews, Oct. 1903. See also Lloyd J. Graybar, Albert Shaw of the Review of Reviews: An Intellectual Biography (Louisville, 1974), 124–25.

24 Roosevelt tried TR, Letters, vol. 3, 625–26.

25 “It is out of” TR, Autobiography, appendix to chap. 14. Weeks later, TR quoted these words to show how considerate he had been of Congress, if not Colombia, in October 1903. Friedlander, “Reassessment.”

26 “misconduct” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 626; Washington Evening Star, 7 Oct. 1903; William Nelson Cromwell to TR, 14 Oct. 1903 (TRP); TR qu. in Thomas Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum on the U.S. Role in the Panamanian Revolution of 1903,”Diplomatic History, fall 1988.

27 Philippe Bunau-Varilla White House appointment book, 10 Oct. 1903, and Francis B. Loomis to TR, 5 Jan. 1904 (TRP). Loomis is often described as an old and close friend (and hence, wily collaborationist) of Bunau-Varilla. They had met a few times previously, but their correspondence in FBL makes plain that they did not strike up any intimacy until after 1904. Till then, their relations were stiffly formal. Note that Loomis’s above-cited letter is a “posterity document,” clearly demanded after the fact by TR.

28 a shrewd and aggressive personality TR to William R. Thayer, 1 Mar. 1917 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 691; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 162.

29 He knew that Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”; Francis B. Loomis to TR, 5 Jan. 1904 (TRP); Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 311. TR remarked years later, “There might have been a dictograph in the room.” Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum.”

30 “Mr. President” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 310–12. Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB), rephrased TR’s question as, “What will this do to our preparations?” See also Bunau-Varilla to John Hay, 15 Oct. 1903, qu. in Bunau-Varilla,Panama, 318: “I [told him] the whole thing would end in a revolution” (JH).

31 Loomis remained Philippe Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun: My Fight for France (Philadelphia, 1940), 332. Bunau-Varilla (probably tipped off by Loomis) seems to have known about the professor’s advisory role.

32 “General and special” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 311.

Historiographical Note: David McCullough’s inference from a thirdhand source (the diary of John Bigelow) that Bunau-Varilla fully informed TR of his revolutionary plans at this meeting contradicts the testimony, on repeated occasions, of all three primary participants. It seems much more probable that Bunau-Varilla, a model of Gallic scrupulosity, gave the specifics to Loomis, to pass on to the President in executive session. This is what TR himself recalled ten years later, and does not conflict with Bigelow’s contemporary diary entry, “Bunau-Varilla … has seen the President and the Ass’t Secretary of State; unfolded to them his scheme [etc.].” Bigelow could quite well be describing separate meetings with each man. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 352; Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”; Margaret Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow (Boston, 1947), 313.

33 All that the President Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum.” Collin, “Big Stick,” 302–3, argues that by seeking a part of the Compagnie Nouvelle’s forty million dollars, Colombia—a police state corruptly ill-disposed toward both the United States and Panama—sought to reinvolve France in Latin American affairs, whereas TR wanted to take Europe out of Latin America once and for all.

34 tremendous little foreigner “That man would instruct Cosmos,” TR told Mark Hanna. The Senator became nervous. “Never mind Cosmos. Cromwell’s the man for you to listen to.” John J. Leary, Talks with TR (Boston, 1920), 256.

35 Bunau-Varilla, in Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 310–12. See also Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 131–33. TR joked afterward, “He would have been a very dull man had he been unable to make such a guess.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 689.

Historiographical Note: Bunau-Varilla’s interview with TR on 10 Oct. 1903 has become one of the most widely debated episodes in the Roosevelt presidency. Anglo-Saxon historians tend to dismiss Bunau-Varilla as an unreliable chronicler, given to exaggerations. However, William Glover Fletcher interviewed and corresponded with Bunau-Varilla at length in the course of researching his exhaustive dissertation, and came to the conclusion that he was an honest man (Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 176–78).

On the day of the interview, TR wrote another letter to Albert Shaw confirming in every detail the impression that Bunau-Varilla took away (See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628). TR’s own accounts of the meeting (to John Bigelow in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 689; and to Archibald C. Coolidge in Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”) are supplemented by details provided by two mutual acquaintances. Elihu Root recalled years later: “Bunau-Varilla told me about [it]. He said that he … got from Roosevelt such violent expressions of opinion unfriendly to the Colombians that … he told his people in Panama to go ahead.… Roosevelt did not say a single word to him about what he intended to do, but B-V found out just what he thought from his explosive comments” (Root to Philip Jessup, 16 July 1931 [ES]).

The other item is an entry dated 16 Oct. 1903 in the journal of Bunau-Varilla’s close friend John Bigelow: “Bunau-Varilla was up over Sunday [11 Oct.], has seen the President and the Ass’t Secretary of State; unfolded to them his scheme for proceeding with the Isthmian Canal without much more delay.… It is in brief to have the Isthmians revolt from the Colombian govt. declare their independence … have the U.S. send vessels to protect the Railway as it did during the uprising four years ago and forbid any fighting on the Canal territory which would protect the new state from any hostility that could do it any harm, etc. &c.” (qu. in Clapp,Forgotten First Citizen, 313).

This would appear to be damaging evidence that TR was dissembling when he stated in his Special Message of 4 Jan. 1904, “No one connected with this Government had any previous knowledge of the revolution [in Panama] except such as was accessible to any person of ordinary intelligence who read the newspapers and kept up a current acquaintance with public affairs” (TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 743). But Bunau-Varilla, when shown the diary entry in 1913, remarked that “a few points … seem to have been confused in Mr. Bigelow’s memory.” He specifically disputed the allegation that Loomis and TR were fully informed of his revolutionary plans, and said that he had “strictly abstained” from giving any details that might implicate either himself or his listeners (Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen, 312).

As with the Venezuela episode, there seems to have been a concerted effort after the fact to create archival lacunae. Loomis’s normally copious correspondence with John Hay is purged between 17 Aug. 1903 and 31 Jan. 1904 in FBL. The papers of TR, Hay, and Moody are mysteriously quiet on all matters to do with the revolution. Amador’s unpublished memoir is remarkable for its deletions of what the author described as “political secrets” about the role played by the Roosevelt Administration (Story of Panama, 643). Fletcher saw many more documents than Bunau-Varilla was willing to deposit in his Library of Congress collection.Cromwell’s papers have vanished entirely; a small collection of his letters, once filed in the Miles P. DuVal papers at Georgetown University, have also disappeared.

TR’s own comments on the meeting suggest more self-control than Bunau-Varilla remembered, but confirm that a tacit message was sent and received.

36 “under proper circumstances” TR on 15 Sept. 1903, qu. in Moore, “Autobiography.”

37 In the same spirit TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628. TR also told Shaw that he had rejected as “underhand” a proposal in early September “to foment the secession of Panama.” He did not elaborate.

38 John D. Long could Quoted in Literary Digest, 24 Oct. 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628–29, 631–32.

39 Another article Literary Digest, 3 Oct. 1903. See also Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 298–301.

40 demolished Watterson’s Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 299–301.

41 Watterson was reduced New York Sun, 28 Sept. 1903; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 301.

42MANUEL AMADOR GUERRERO Story of Panama, 29–30; Parks, Colombia and the United States, 135; Philippe Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB).

43 A more realistic Bunau-Varilla had been warned by Herbert G. Squire, an intimate of Mark Hanna, not to count on the President unless there was a revolution in Panama. “TR cannot go to the electorate with a record of having broken the law.” Philippe Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB). See also Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 312.

44 Amador said that Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 313.

45 “I can provide” Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 357; Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 135.

46 Downtown, as the Story of Panama, 282; Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 158.

47YOUR VIRILE William Nelson Cromwell to TR, 14 Oct. 1903 (TRP).

48BUNAU-VARILLA, having This section is based on Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 318–22. See also McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 354–55, and DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 310–11.

49THAT NIGHT, two White House appointment book, 16 Oct. 1903 (TRP). Story of Panama, 367–68. See TR to Elihu Root, 14 Mar. 1903, and Samuel M. B. Young to Elihu Root, 24 Dec. 1903 (ER). The following account is based on Chauncey B. Humphrey, “History of the Revolution of Panama,” unpublished ms., 5 Jan. 1923, copy in the files of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, Oyster Bay, N.Y. Supplementary details from Story of Panama, 367–68, and Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 353–54. According to Humphrey, TR read an early draft of his ms. while still in the White House, and praised his vital role in the revolution.

50 They confirmed TR, Works, vol. 18, 428ff.; this crossing occurred on 16 Sept. 1903; Obaldía’s party felt that the United States would “undoubtedly adopt the Nicaragua route.” Humphrey, “History of the Revolution.”

51 He and Murphy Humphrey, “History of the Revolution.”

52 Casting aside his Ibid.

53 Humphrey had declined Ibid.

54 “There goes our” Grayson M.-P. Murphy, interviewed by Henry Pringle, 2 Apr. 1930 (HP).

55ROOSEVELT SPENT White House appointment book, 17 Oct. 1903 (TRP); Putnam, Memories of a Publisher, 145–47.

56 On Monday, crisp cables TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 726; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 312–13; John Nikol and Francis Holbrook, “Naval Operations in the Panama Revolution of 1903,” American Neptune 38 (Oct. 1977); Story of Panama, 429.

57 In coincidental, yet Story of Panama, 664; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 629–31.

58 On 23 October TR, Letters to Kermit, 45.

59 On 26 October Story of Panama, 380; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 279; Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 360–61.

60 On 27 October Story of Panama, 328–29; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 361–62; Documents, 22 Oct. 1903, in PBV.

61 “The only dangerous” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 324.

62 Judging from his Ibid., 323, 327.

63FATE NEWS BAD Manuel Amador to Philippe Bunau-Varilla, 29 Oct. 1903, original in PBV.

64 Some of it Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 328.

65 He was being asked Ibid., 329.

66 Francis B. Loomis Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB); Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 165; Story of Panama, 331.

67 Riding back to New York Story of Panama, 381.

68 Newspapers aboard The New York Times, 29 Oct. 1903; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 313–14. Although he does not say so, Bunau-Varilla might have been told by Loomis that the Nashville had just been given (or was about to be given) its secret order to proceed at full speed to Colón. The gunboat left Kingston the following morning, Saturday, 31 Oct. Chauncey B. Humphrey states that “about Oct. 31,” he heard that two Colombian battalions were on their way to relieve the garrison guard in Panama City. “I … informed President Roosevelt what would happen [a revolution]. He sent immediately the gunboat Nashville with 450 marines to Colon to prevent the landing of these two battalions.” In the event, only one battalion arrived. The New York Times, 1 Nov. 1903; Humphrey, “History of the Revolution.” See also McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 360.

69ALL RIGHT Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 332; Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 165–66.

70 Ton and a half On this day, Hay cabled Beaupré suggesting that he take “a leave of absence” from Bogotá. Foreign Relations 1903, 218.

71ROOSEVELT SWATTED James Garfield diary, 29 Oct. 1903 (JRG).

72 It was his habit Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 60–61; Review of Reviews, Dec. 1903.

73 In New York Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 339–40; Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 147–55; Mark Hanna to George Perkins, ca. early Oct. 1903 (GWP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 640. There is much criticism in the correspondence of Charles Francis Adams and James Wilson of TR’s factional fence-straddling. Wilson, showing remarkable disloyalty for a Cabinet officer, complained on 14 Oct., “In New York he is a [Thomas] Platt man, in Pennsylvania a Quay man, and in Delaware [a John] Addicks man, and that is all there is of it” (JHW).

74 At least there was The Washington Post, 16 Oct. 1903; Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 46–48. Ambrose Bierce’s The Cynic’s Word Book (New York, 1906), carried this definition of boundary: “In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.”

75 “I think you are” Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 60–61. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote to congratulate him on scoring “a personal triumph.” Holmes to TR, 21 Oct. 1903 (TRP).

76 Master of human A Collection of the Writings of John James Ingalls (Kansas City, Mo., 1902), 97. See also Hale, Week in the White House, 10.

77 Whatever happened TR, Autobiography, 526. TR told Jules Jusserand around this time that he would force canal construction “even if war resulted.” Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 17 Nov. 1903 (JJ). See also Friedlander, “Reassessment.”

78ALL DAY LONG Amador had been warned of the troopship’s probable arrival by Governor Obaldía. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 362.

79 In a series Story of Panama, 382.

80 The coordinated grace Nikol and Holbrook, “Naval Operations”; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 334.

81 the junta had postponed Story of Panama, 382.

82 Now the plot was The Governor’s acquiescence was taken for granted, since he lived in Amador’s house. Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen, 314; Story of Panama, 385; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 369.

83 General Esteban Huertas Huertas has been disparaged by historians because he accepted a bribe of sixty-five thousand dollars, wore a large number of feathers, and stood not much taller than his own sword. But he was strong-willed and principled enough to give the junta many anxious moments. See DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 321–22, 331.

84 Huertas’s battalion Ibid., 337, 327, 307–8, 277–79; Story of Panama, 382–84.

85PREVENT LANDING Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 361–62. The Dixie received an identical cable.

86 A similar order Story of Panama, 383; Foreign Relations 1903, 236; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 364.

87 He was awakened The following timings of TR’s day are taken from news items covering his trip in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

88 Commander Hubbard sent John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 380, 387, 430

89 agreed that at all Story of Panama, 388; Shaler had already transferred most of his available passenger cars to the other end of the line. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 363.

90 Hubbard’s problem was John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 430. The number of tiradores was underestimated in some official communications during the day.

91 Simultaneously, Roosevelt Washington Evening Star, 3 Nov. 1903.

92 Another, very short Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 166; Story of Panama, 340–41. The author assumes that the Panamanian jungle was as luxuriant in Nov. 1903 as it was when he crossed the Isthmus on this same railroad in 1980.

Note: Señora Amador, wife of the revolutionary leader, has been credited with the idea of separating Tovar from his troops. But Humphrey, “History of the Revolution,” states that he suggested it to Ricardo Arango when plotting the revolution in early October.

93THE PRESIDENT VOTED New York Sun, 4 Nov. 1903; Kerr, Bully Father, 134.

94 After about a half Kerr, Bully Father, 135. The “desolate emotions” referred to are conveyed not just between the lines of the letters TR wrote about this visit, but in his idiosyncratic use of the word homesickness. Since childhood, when a photograph of Edith Carow possessed him with “homesickness and longing for the past,” he tended to conflate both emotions into a general sense of temps perdu. Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 54.

95AS ROOSEVELT DID SO Hubbard received his orders (misdirected to another boat in Colón harbor) at 10:30 A.M. TR came down from Sagamore Hill around that time, and left Oyster Bay at 11:15 A.M. John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

96 The tiradores did The Washington Post, 4 Nov. 1903; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP). Hubbard’s cable, described as “mutilated” in Story of Panama, 289, appears to have been garbled in transmission. See Nikol and Holbrook, “Naval Operations.”

97 A certain lack Story of Panama, 390; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP). The junta had decided to advance the time of revolution to five o’clock that afternoon. Washington Evening Star, 4 Nov. 1903; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 325.

98 He cast his mind TR, Letters, vol. 3, 642. The catalog of TR’s reading in the following pages is taken from his letter to Butler, reproduced in Letters, vol. 3, 641–44.

99 Sophocles’ Seven Against Actually Aeschylus.

100REVOLUTION IMMINENT Foreign Relations 1903, 235. This telegram arrived at 2:35 P.M.

101 Washington was ill Ibid., 231; Story of Panama, 393.

102 Governor Obaldía had Story of Panama, 392–93.

103 Lady Gregory’s and TR slightly misspelled some of his Irish citations (e.g., Turin for Tuirean). The Gregory and Hull titles are separate books, respectively Cuchulain of Muirthemne and The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature.

104WHEN ELISEO TORRES Story of Panama, 440–41.

105 Torres waxed more Ibid.

106 “I would be willing” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 643.

107FIVE O’CLOCK CAME Story of Panama, 395. Prescott had indeed been involved in revolutionary plotting since the birth of the junta. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 342.

108 Subsequent calls Story of Panama, 394–95; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

109 One of their first Story of Panama, 396.

110 “Of course I have” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 643–44.

111 He dozed off The Washington Post, 4 Nov. 1903; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

112 Refusing comment Washington Evening Star, 3 Nov. 1903; The Washington Post, 4 Nov. 1903.

113UPRISING OCCURRED Foreign Relations 1903, 231. The word Barranquilla refers to the troopship’s port of origin.

114 Roosevelt sent at once Washington Evening Star and New York Sun, 4 Nov. 1903, clips in John Hay scrapbook (JH). There is hour-by-hour newspaper coverage of the revolution in this archive. The Panama dispatches to the New York Herald (written by the brother of a junta member) seem to have been especially valued by Hay, who annotated many of them.

115 All the more Foreign Relations 1903, 236.

116 But “reason” of Washington Evening Star, 4 Nov. 1903.

117 For NASHVILLE White House telegraph copy (unsigned), 3 Nov. 1903 (TRP). News of the instructions was leaked to the New York Sun.

118 By 10:30 P.M. Story of Panama, 440. A similar cable, almost directly quoting the White House draft, was sent out at 11:18 by Darling (399).

119 The Atlanta had Nikol and Holbrook, “Naval Operations.”

120 Up Pennsylvania Avenue The Washington Post and Washington Evening Star, 4 Nov. 1903. Myron T. Herrick had been elected Governor of Ohio in a convincing victory for Hanna Republicans. The result was an immediate resurgence of the Hanna for President movement among GOP conservatives. The Washington Post, 5 Nov. 1903.

121 The White House DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 330; Story of Panama, 397. At 12:10 P.M., Loomis ordered Ehrman to inform the captain of the gunboat Bogotá “plainly” that the United States, mindful of her responsibility to maintain peace and free transit across the Isthmus, requested him to hold any future fire. Foreign Relations 1903, 232.

122 Commander Hubbard, by Story of Panama, 441, 656; John Hubbard to James Shaler, and copy to Eliseo Torres, 4 Nov. 1903 (TRP). The two-way effect of Hubbard’s order has been downplayed by historians seeking to blame the Roosevelt Administration for fomenting the separation of Panama (see Friedlander, “Reassessment”). While the ban on military movement undoubtedly strengthened the junta’s hold on Panama City, it worked to Colombia’s advantage in Colón. Rebel forces, which outnumbered Colonel Torres’s battalion three to one, were prevented from crossing and bloodily completing the work of revolution.

123 Torres reacted with Story of Panama, 441.

124 The mid-morning train John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 439, 441.

125 Torres went in John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

126 “war against the” Ibid., and 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

127 Undeterred, Torres’s John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

128IN WASHINGTON, the TR, Letters, vol. 3, 437; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to TR, 24 Oct. 1903, and White House appointment book, 4 Nov. 1903 (TRP). Privately, as an old soldier, Holmes admitted that he came “devilishly near to believing that might makes right.” For a revisionist view of the great Justice, see Albert W. Alschuler, Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes (Chicago, 2000), importantly countered by Jeffrey Rosen in The New York Times Book Review, 17 Dec. 2000.

129 In New York Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 324.

130 “With all the” Story of Panama, 446–47; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 344–46. As things turned out, the rest of Bunau-Varilla’s money was neither sent nor needed. See Charles D. Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla: New Light on the Panama Canal Treaty,”Hispanic-American Historical Review 46.1 (1966).

131COLONEL TORRES, closeted Story of Panama, 443–44; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

132 Colonel Shaler undertook Story of Panama, 444.

133 A state of unnatural DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 342; Foreign Relations 1903, 237.

134 And in New York Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy, 311. There is some evidence that TR, or at least Moody, had contemplated a punitive strike against Colombia nine days earlier. On 26 Oct. 1903, the Navy Department sent TR draft instructions for an attack on Cartagena by the Caribbean Squadron. Ibid., 310.

135COLONEL HUBBARD WENT John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

136 To popular relief Story of Panama, 452–57; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 335.

137 Just then, at 7:05 Captain Delano (Officer Commanding, Dixie) to William H. Moody, 6 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 458. The next morning, the Atlanta arrived, bringing United States strength in Colón to one thousand men. General Tovar and his staff were, under escort, sent back to Colombia on 12 Nov. Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 2, 286.

138ROOSEVELT’S CABINET MEETING Washington Times, 6 Nov. 1903; Story of Panama, 463, 467; Foreign Relations 1903, 239. The Frenchman’s appointment was officially upgraded to “minister plenipotentiary” that evening. Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 348–49.

139 There was no doubt Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 349.

140 Roosevelt and Hay Friedlander, “Reassessment,” rejects suggestions by John Hay’s biographers that the Secretary was less than happy with TR’s Panama policy in 1903. He quotes, e.g., Hay to John Ford Rhodes, 8 Dec. 1903: “It is hard for me to understand how anyone can criticize our action in Panama.… I had no hesitation as to the proper course to take, and have had no doubt of the propriety of it since.” Elihu Root was likewise supportive, insisting as late as 1931, “I have always felt that [Roosevelt’s] action was right.” Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 403.

141 Questions were being The Times (London), 5 Nov. 1903.

142 Roosevelt did not feel TR, “How the United States Acquired the Right to Dig the Panama Canal,” Outlook, 7 Oct. 1911; TR, Autobiography, 538. In 1887, the historian George Bancroft, revered by TR, had predicted that either an international consortium, or the United States alone, “as the power most interested” in safeguarding Panama as a neutral transit zone, would elbow Colombia aside and assume “whole control for the benefit of all nations.” DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 130.

143 Colombia was clearly Parks, Colombia and the United States, 406. While TR pondered his recognition decision, he very likely heard from Senator Morgan the comment of a Colombian general, just before the treaty was rejected: “It is ridiculous for the Americans to be treating with Colombia now, when we have to wait only a few years, until the French concession expires, [to] make you pay seventy, eighty, or one hundred millions.” Qu. in F. F. Whitteken to John T. Morgan, 2 Nov. 1903 (JTM).

144 “most just and proper” TR, Works, vol. 20, 485.

145THE PEOPLE OF PANAMA Story of Panama, 463–64.

146ROOSEVELT ADJOURNED Straus, Under Four Administrations, 174–75. The question of American moral obligations had long plagued policymakers. As far back as 1864, Attorney General Edward Bates deplored the 1846 treaty, with its guarantee of Isthmian rights and sovereignty to “New Granada,” as a mockery of “the wise and cautious policy of the fathers of this Republic.” But since the treaty was a fait accompli, Bates felt that “honesty and good faith require us to fulfill it.” He hoped that the United States would never again commit herself to “such dangerous intermeddling in the affairs of foreign nations.” Qu. in Philander Knox, “Sovereignty over the Isthmus, as Affecting the Canal,” 1903 memorandum (PCK).

147 Straus suggested TR, Letters, vol. 3, 648–49.

148 Roosevelt seized Ibid. “Your ‘covenant running with the land’ idea worked admirably,” TR wrote Moore on 12 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

149 That evening Story of Panama, 469; copy of Hay statement, 7 Nov. 1903, in TRP.

150 Professor John Bassett John Bassett Moore to Oscar Straus, 11 Nov. 1903; Straus, Under Four Administrations, 175. Notwithstanding accusations of unseemly haste, TR did not formally recognize Panama until 13 Nov. 1903. As Moore explained to the public, he at first “merely recognized de facto authorities on the spot.… It is not an uncommon thing to recognize and hold intercourse with such authorities, pending the determination of the question of formal recognition.” New York Evening Post, 11 Nov. 1903.

CHAPTER 19: THE IMAGINATION OF THE WICKED

1 A man can be Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, 179.

2 “This mad plunge” New York Evening Post, 7 Nov. 1903.

3 “It is the most” Ibid. It was probably around this time that TR, hearing that Villard was circulating a story about Kaiser Wilhelm’s ability to dismantle and reconstruct a complex Edison phonograph, ejaculated in his highest falsetto, “I wish that somebody would take Oswald Villard to pieces and forget to put him together again!” Villard, Fighting Years, 153.

4 “Nations must strike” Albert H. Walker to New York Evening Post, 10 Nov. 1903, copy in PCK. For modern historical comment, supportive of TR’s Panama policy in 1903, see also Collin, “Big Stick,” 302–6, 312; Friedlander, “Reassessment”; and Marks,Velvet on Iron, 97–105.

5 “Nothing that Alexander” Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

6 However, 75 Public Opinion, 19 Nov. 1903; Literary Digest, 21 and 14 Nov. 1903; Washington Evening Star, 6 Nov. 1903.

7 South American reactions “Latin American Views of Panama and the Canal,” Review of Reviews, Mar. 1904. See also John Patterson, “Latin American Reactions to the Panama Revolution of 1903,” Hispanic America Historical Review 24 (1944), and E. Bradford Burns, “The Recognition of Panama by the Major Latin American States,” Americas 26 (1969).

8 “We have converted” Article by “Santander A. Galofre,” ca. Dec. 1903, sent to Philippe Bunau-Varilla (PBV).

9 In Europe, as in The Times, undated clipping in John Hay scrapbook (JH); Leipzig Grenzboten, qu. in Literary Digest, 26 Dec. 1903.

10 A British visitor Henry W. Lucy, Sixty Years in the Wilderness (London, 1924), 214.

Historical Note: TR’s difficulties with public opinion in the aftermath of the Panama Revolution were complicated by a brief, but intense, war scare on the Isthmus. The concentration of United States warships continued as planned until, by 15 Nov., two walls of American armor effectively denied Colombia sea access to her former department. Panama City was defended by the Boston (7 Nov.), Marblehead (10 Nov.), Concord (10 Nov.), and Wyoming (13 Nov.). Several of these gunboats patrolled the new Republic’s coasts, extending the limits of protection to both eastern and western borders. Colombia, meanwhile, sent a special mission to Panama, under General Rafael Reyes, with a view toward settling differences and reuniting. The junta refused to let Reyes land at Colón, whereupon John Hay asked that he be given “a courteous reception and considerate hearing” offshore. On 19 Nov., Reyes met with junta representatives aboard a French steamer. He offered them many concessions humiliating to his government, but they declared the Panama revolution to be “irrevocable.” Reyes sailed north to plead, equally vainly, for an indemnity from Washington. On 3 Dec., reports that Colombian forces were advancing into Panama reached the White House. Secretary Moody ordered thePrairie from Guantánamo to Colón with a detachment of Marines to complement theDixie’s. On 15 Dec., another detachment from the Atlanta tracked down a force of two thousand Colombian soldiers in Darien. Moody responded with further deployments. These actions provoked such antiwar and anticanal sentiment on Capitol Hill that TR, alarmed, ordered a radical change in policy on 21 Dec. Overriding both Moody and Root, he confined American and naval activities on the Isthmus to the canal zone only, and insisted on unaggressive behavior. “If there should come a brush with Colombia, I want to be dead sure that Colombia fires first.” (TR to Moody, 21 Dec. 1903 [TRP]). By the new year, Panama’s own defenses were strong enough for further reduction of United States forces. Sporadic threats of Colombian invasion continued through Jan. 1904, but when Commander Hubbard of the Nashville visited Cartagena on the thirty-first, he was received with resigned goodwill. Bogotá, it seemed, had accepted the inevitable. For detailed accounts, see DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, chap. 15, and Nikol and Holbrook, “Naval Operations.” The latter conclude: “The Navy was used by [the] Roosevelt Administration as a defensive weapon, not aggressively, in the ‘taking’ of Panama. The Administration made it clear to the Colombians that the Navy was defending Panama’s coast and the Transit and then left it up to Colombia to force the issue.”

11ON 13 NOVEMBER White House diary (TRP); the most scholarly assessment of Bunau-Varilla’s brief ministry is Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla.”

12 “It is necessary” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 366. For the texts of the formal exchanges, see Foreign Relations 1903, 245–46.

13 Afterward, with Hay Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB); Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 154, 157.

14 “I shall send” Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla”; Foreign Relations 1903, 235; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 379; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 157. According to Bunau-Varilla, he warned Hay, “After I go, you will have to deal with Panamanian lawyers, who are Colombian lawyers.” Hay’s own simile for negotiating with Latin Americans was “like holding a squirrel in your lap.” Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB); DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 384.

15 What Bunau-Varilla Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 368; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 379–80, 384. For the proffered text, see Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla.”

16 Working through the Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 370–75; Fowler, John Coit Spooner, 281; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 382.

17 The Secretary was Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 376.

18 Conscious that Dr. Amador Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 159.

19BUNAU-VARILLA WAS Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 378. Although Bunau-Varilla, who was more than slightly paranoiac, believed that the delegation had come to supplant him, he was empowered to act as he did. See the Panamanian dispatches qu. in Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla.” On the other hand, Amador had reason to be shocked and enraged. They had brought with them studies of “important points of the treaty from the viewpoint of Panama,” and felt that they had the right to advise him in negotiating it on their behalf. Bunau-Varilla’s hasty and flawed convention caused permanent damage to United States–Panama relations. See also DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 380–85.

20 Amador reeled Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 378.

21 Congress had convened On 9 Nov. 1903.

22 The dragging, eighteen-month For TR’s second (10 Nov. 1903) Special Message to Congress on Cuban reciprocity, see TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 645–48.

Chronological Note: Due to an aggressive investment and lobbying strategy, the American Sugar Refining Company had managed in 1903 to consolidate all domestic sugar interests behind the treaty. Amid cries that opponents of reciprocity had “sold out” to the “sugar trust,” the House overwhelmingly approved the treaty on 19 Nov., and the Senate followed suit on 16 Dec. Healy, United States in Cuba, 205–6.

23 Thanks to the “Speaker Cannon: A Character Sketch,” Review of Reviews, Dec. 1903.

24 On 19 November Literary Digest, 21 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1903.

25 Cannon pointed out Review of Reviews, Jan. 1904; Walter Wellman in Philadelphia Press, 7 Dec. 1903.

26MARK HANNA, who Hamilton Fish to TR, 21 Nov. 1903 (TRP).

27 His uncharacteristic Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 440–41; George Cortelyou to John Bassett Moore, 18 Apr. 1906 (JBM); Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 1 Nov. 1905 (MHM); Presidential scrapbook (TRP); The Washington Post, 5 Nov. 1903;Literary Digest, 5 Dec. 1903; George Cortelyou, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 Apr. 1906 (MHM).

28 Morgan, no less Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 362; Hamilton Fish to TR, 21 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Matthew Quay to TR, 26 Oct. 1903 (TRP); Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 1, 598; E. H. Crowder to TR, 14 Oct. 1903; and W. A. Wadsworth to TR, 10 Dec. 1903 (TRP); New York Evening Post, 10 Dec. 1903; Rhodes, McKinley and Roosevelt, 281; Mayer, Republican Party, 284.

29 When the Senator Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 1 Nov. 1905 (MHM).

30 “You can say” New York World, ca. 27 Nov. 1903, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

31 Roosevelt wished Review of Reviews, Jan. 1903; Mark Hanna to George Perkins, 7 Dec. 1903 (GWP). Hagedorn, Leonard Wood, vol. 2, 378–79.

32 In a last-minute White House diary, 4 Dec. 1903 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 664; Mark Hanna to TR, 5 Dec. 1903 (TRP); Washington Evening Star, 5 Dec. 1903; Washington Times, 6 Dec. 1903; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

33 Hoar began to Shelby M. Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service (Chicago, 1911), 213. Senator Cullom was an eyewitness to this interview.

34 “I think,” Philander Knox qu. by TR in Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum.” See also Lawrence F. Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1919), 139; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 414. In a speech draft ca. May 1914, Senator Knox expressed mature misgivings about TR’s action in Panama. He agreed with Root that the United States was treaty-bound to be “passive” in any domestic revolution in Colombia, and “active” in maintaining Isthmian transit. But the fact remained that by behaving so in 1903, “serious damage resulted to Colombia, and corresponding benefits accrued to us.” Quite apart from financial gains, the United States got “sovereignty and jurisdiction over a 10-mile zone in a dependent country as against a qualified right to occupy a 6-mile zone in an arrogant, if not unfriendly country.” The American government therefore had a “moral” right to compensate Colombia “not for what she lost but what we gained.” Acknowledging TR’s famous bluster of 23 Mar. 1911, Knox agreed that “The fact is we practically [sic] took Panama. We did not take it from Colombia, we took it from the Panamans, and this is the only sense in which that statement is true” (PCK).

35 Both men rallied Opinion copy, 1903 (PCK); Elihu Root interviewed by Philadelphia Press, 2 Dec. 1903; New York Herald, 6 Dec. 1903; Washington Times, 7 Dec. 1903; Kelly Miller, “Roosevelt and the Negro” (pamphlet, ca. 1907, in Pratt Collection [TRB]), 8.

36 “Whenever I see” See Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, chap. 30.

37I AM ENABLED TR, Works, vol. 15, 235. See DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 386–95, and Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 387–408, for an account of the treaty’s rapid, if reluctant, ratification by the Panamanian junta.

38 He reviewed United States TR, Works, vol. 15, 241–43.

39 For more than half Ibid., vol. 13, 697.

40 “Yes, and the” Ibid., 698.

41 The President proceeded TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 700–704.

42 “Under such circumstances” Ibid., 706–7.

43 “I don’t know” The New York Times, 8 Dec. 1903.

44 “For the first time” Ibid., 10 Dec. 1903.

45 It is the hour See TR to Benjamin I. Wheeler, 8 Dec. 1903 (TRP). “When the chance does come,” TR had said of opportunity in 1899, “only the great man can see it instantly and use it aright.” TR, Works, vol. 13, 420.

46 “In this Panama” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 652, 662–63.

47 He kept such Charles W. Dick, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 10 Feb. 1906 (MHM); Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 435. For an example of the sort of alarming advisories TR was getting at this time, see W. A. Wadsworth’s letter to him of 1 Dec. 1903: “Things do not look just right.… Some of your political ‘friends’ in New York … are working like beavers [to ensure] that no mistake you have made or are making is lost.… There seems to be a systematic attempt to work up a public opinion that you … are liable to go off at half cock and endanger business interests” (TRP).

48 Washington, Dec. 9 Philadelphia Press, 10 Dec. 1903 (italics added).

49 Wellman said Ibid.

50 “He might wreck” Ibid.

51 “Mr. President, I” The Washington Post, 12 Dec. 1903.

52 He and Roosevelt stood Washington Evening Star, 11 Dec. 1903; The Washington Post, 12 Dec. 1903. The following dialogue is taken from the latter source. See also Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 87.

53 “I have sat” Gamaliel: in the New Testament, a legendary leader of the Sanhedrin and teacher.

54 Two days later New York Herald, 13 Dec. 1903; Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 85. See also The New York Times, 12 Dec. 1903, Public Opinion, 17 Dec. 1903, and “The Passing of the Hanna Boom,” Review of Reviews, Jan. 1904.

55ON 14 DECEMBER The Washington Post, 16 Dec. 1903; New York Press, 17 Dec. 1903; Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 76–80. A veteran court reporter called it “the strongest address made before the Supreme Court for years.” W. W. Jermane in MinneapolisJournal, 16 Dec. 1903. See also Barry, Forty Years, 250, for the reactions of Court members.

56 All the world’s Britain announced on 24 Dec., Japan on 28 Dec. 1903. By the end of Feb. 1904, Panama was universally recognized except by Colombia.

57 G. P. Putnam’s Sons TR to George Haven Putnam, 26 Nov. and 21 Dec. 1903 (TRP). According to the Economic History Services website (www.eh.net/hmit), thirty thousand dollars in 1903 was the equivalent of about $580,000 today. TR’s two windfalls therefore netted him the modern equivalent of well over one million dollars. He remained, however, the least avaricious of men. On 5 Dec., he wrote Douglas Robinson that he thought James K. Gracie had been too generous to him, and volunteered to turn over one third of his legacy to a female relative with four children (TRP).

58 The Works of Theodore Roosevelt This edition, known as the “Executive Edition,” was not the first, and by no means the last. It superseded no fewer than six collections, beginning with the “Sagamore Series” in 1900. Other editions published in 1901, 1902, and 1903 varied in length and quality. The Executive Edition, which grew by two additional volumes every two years, eventually totaled twenty volumes. It was itself superseded by the “Elkhorn Edition” of 1906, which grew, by 1920, to twenty-eight volumes. Other editions continued to appear throughout TR’s lifetime. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt achieved definitive, if rather confusing, form in 1926, when two differently arranged collections appeared: the utilitarian “National Edition” (twenty volumes) and the luxury “Memorial Edition” (twenty-four volumes). The latter set is cited in this book. For a complete Works bibliography, see the Memorial Edition, vol. 2, 559–63.

59 Better than money New York Herald, 13 Dec. 1903; Robinson, My Brother, 217.

60THE SEVENTEENTH OF December Washington Evening Star, 17 Dec. 1903.

CHAPTER 20: INTRIGUE AND STRIVING AND CHANGE

1 Whin he does Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 225.

2 “I was stuffed” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 538–39. The following day Adams was invited to another White House party. He sent his regrets, and stayed in bed “with a pound or two of sufonal.” Ibid.

Note: Adams’s letters are often written in a tone of mock suffering, for humorous effect. Nor was he beyond duplicity. He frequently caricatured men like TR and Henry Cabot Lodge in private, while praising them in public. See his contrasting account of this evening in The Education of Henry Adams, 464.

3 “I am glad” Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 364.

4ON THE AFTERNOON Except where otherwise indicated, the following paragraphs are based on the William H. Taft scrapbooks in WHT; William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 1 Feb. 1904 (WHT); Taft interviewed by Kate Carew in New York World, 28 Feb. 1904. Physical descriptions are from the Carew interview, and also from White, Masks in a Pageant, 329–30, and Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 190. (“One pair of Mr. Taft’s trousers would make two suits and a short spring overcoat for Mr. Philander Chase Knox.”) Donald F. Anderson, William Howard Taft: A Conservative’s Conception of the Presidency (Ithaca, 1968, 1973), serves as an antidote to the more reverent two-volume biography by Henry Pringle, The Life and Times of William H. Taft (New York, 1939).

5 Merely to look Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 315–16; Wister, Roosevelt, 146. Taft’s weight in early 1904 is given at 330 pounds by Horace D. Taft in Memories and Opinions (New York, 1942), 114. Taft was six feet two inches tall.

6 he was periodically Hoover, Forty-Two Years in the White House, 269. Taft’s scrapbooks in WHT consist largely of souvenir menus.

7 Yet he was not Taft, Memories and Opinions, 107–8; Thompson, Party Leaders, 308.

8 The Supreme Court Taft to TR, 27 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Helen H. Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York, 1914), 269.

9 “Who do you suppose” The story of Taft’s two refusals of the Supreme Court in 1902 and 1903 is told in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 358–59, 368, 382–83, 407, and 413. Donald Anderson, William Howard Taft, 10–12, advances the theory that TR wanted to eliminate Taft as a potential rival in 1904. But Taft was surely almost as far out of the way in the Philippines as he would have been on the bench. A more plausible theory is that Elihu Root (who personally recommended the Governor as his successor) was planning for a Taft presidency in 1908, as both the logical consequence of, and conservative correction to, TR’s reform-minded administration. Henry W. Taft to Taft, 10 Jan. 1903 (WHT).

10TWO DAYS LATER George Cortelyou memorandum of meeting, 29 Jan. 1904 (ER); Albert Shaw, “Reminiscences” (ALS); Charles Willis Thompson in New York Sun, 3 Nov. 1938; Wister, Roosevelt, 162; Elihu Root to William H. Taft, 16 Apr. 1903 (ER).

11 Roosevelt rambled on George Cortelyou memorandum of meeting, 29 Jan. 1904 (ER).

12 “I thank you” Ibid.

13 The following evening Montage by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post, 31 Jan. 1904; Washington Evening Star, 1 Feb. 1904.

14 “How is your health” The Washington Post, 16 Feb. 1904; Beer, Hanna, 621. “I have had quite a pull with this infernal ‘grip,’ ” Hanna had written Myron Herrick earlier in the day. “I think it [the Gridiron dinner] will brace me up.” He complained that Roosevelt had been “poisoned” against him by Senator Foraker. But he added significantly, “We must organize our full strength [in Ohio] and choose the Roosevelt delegates from among our friends” (copy in TRP).

15 The jingling cavalrymen Hanna occupied the entire second floor of the Arlington Hotel, on Lafayette Square. The Washington Post, 2 Feb. 1904; Philadelphia Press, 27 Mar. 1905.

16 Day followed upon Sir Mortimer Durand to A. S. Hardy, 4 Jan. 1904 (HMD); Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 190–92, 200; Alice Roosevelt diary, 22 Jan. 1904 (ARL).

17 Something about Alice’s Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 200.

18 Roosevelt took a William Sturgis Bigelow to TR, 2 Feb. 1904 (TRP); Kerr, Bully Father, 147; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 706–9; The Washington Post, 28 Jan. 1904; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 87. The white man had been recommended by Mrs. Cox.

19 “He is not safe” The New York Times, 4 Feb. 1904; Review of Reviews, Mar. 1904; speech copy in GBC.

20 When Root used Whitelaw Reid to TR, 9 Feb. 1904 (TRP); Franklin Murphy to TR, 9 Feb. 1904, and TR to Root, 4 Feb. 1904 (ER). One week after this speech, Governor Odell of New York came out strongly for TR. “It was time to set a back fire,” Root wrote TR. “I do not think that I realized how far down the disaffection had gone” (15 Feb. 1904 [TRP]).

21 Late on the evening George Cortelyou, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 Apr. 1906 (MHM); Washington Evening Star, 5 Feb. 1904.

22 “My dear Mr.” Mark Hanna to TR, 5 Feb. 1904, facsimile in Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 452.

23 The Senator lay Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 May 1905 (MHM).

24HALF A WORLD Foreign Relations 1904, 413. The image of “claps of thunder” is Hay’s.

25 Minister Kogoro John Hay diary, 11 Feb. 1904 (JH); Foreign Relations 1904, 32–35; Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 201, 215–16; James Garfield diary, 10 Feb. 1904 (JRG); Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 Feb. 1904 (JJ). Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry, 103–4, points out that not only did Washington favor Japan at this stage of the war, but that Japan, heavily financed by American loans, was in effect “fighting the battle of the United States” in the Far East. As far as the Roosevelt Administration was concerned, a victorious Japan might be easier to deal with than a victorious Russia, already “overbalancing” dangerously in Manchuria. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 724.

26UNCONSCIOUS The following account of the death of Mark Hanna is based on J. B. Morrow’s interviews with Mrs. Hanna (18 May 1905), John Coit Spooner (10 Mar. 1905), and George Cortelyou (18 Apr. 1906), all in MHM; medical bulletins, 12–15 Feb., in Presidential scrapbook (TRP); The Washington Post and Washington Evening Star, 12–16 Feb. 1904; and Beer, Hanna, 622–24.

27 The cosmopolitan curiosity The book TR was reading was E. de Michelis’s L’Origine degli Indo-Europei (Turin, 1903). Its Italian text gave him much difficulty, but he read it through to the end. “I have been much impressed with it, owing to the clear grasp of the author of the … relations between languages and races—his understanding, for instance, that Aryan is a linguistic and not a biological term.” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 795.

28 He had not done Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 554; John T. Flynn, “Mark Hanna: Big Business in Politics,” Scribner’s, Aug. 1933. These sources give the low estimate of Hanna’s wealth. According to Alfred H. Lewis in Saturday Evening Post, 26 Dec. 1903, “He is worth every splinter of 30 millions.”

29 “May you soon” Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 454–55.

30 Governors, generals TR did, however, cross the square later that night to pay his respects to Mrs. Hanna. For two modern, sympathetic assessments of the great Senator, see Harvey Ploster, “Mark Hanna and the Republican Hierarchy, 1897–1904” (M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1964), and Gerald W. Wolff, “Mark Hanna’s Goal: American Harmony,” Ohio History 79.3–4 (1970).

31 By now, most Foreign Relations 1904, 543–51; John Hay to Elihu Root, 12 Mar. 1904 (TD). For modern support for this view, see Friedlander, “Reassessment,” and Marks, Velvet on Iron, 96–105.

32 The little republic McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 398; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 304–5.

33 Roosevelt and his successors Foreign Relations 1904, 544. Colón and Panama City were excluded from the zone, although the United States undertook to provide their sanitation, water supply, and security services. Panamanian independence was guaranteed; compensation was fixed at a ten-million-dollar initial payment, plus annual rent of $250,000, to begin after nine years.

34 But Bunau-Varilla Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla.”

35 “for the honor” Philippe Bunau-Varilla to Manuel Amador Guerrero, 23 Feb. 1904 (PBV). Amador had been inaugurated four days before.

36AN ENORMOUS MAP Dorwart, Office of Naval Intelligence, 81–82; New York World, 27 Feb. 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 721; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 277.

37 Cecil Spring Rice Spring Rice to EKR, 29 Dec. 1903 (received 4 Feb. 1904) (TRP). During the Russo-Japanese War, Spring Rice deliberately addressed some of his more outspoken letters to EKR, in order to avoid surveillance and suspicion at either end. Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 286.

38 Roosevelt, replying TR, Letters, vol. 4, 760–61.

39 “very drastic” C. S. Mellen to TR, 19 Feb. 1904 (TRP).

40 “All I can do” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 750.

41 During the Alaska New York Sun, 15 Mar. 1904; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to TR, 19 Feb. 1904 (TRP).

42 Justice William Rufus Day The following short biographical sketches are based on Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions (New York, 1969–1978), vols. 2 and 3.

43 (“the last of the”) Ibid., vol. 2, 216.

44 By noon, the The following account is based on a detailed story (with group portrait) in the New York Herald, 15 Mar. 1904, and another in the Philadelphia Press, same date. The decision is published in U.S. Reports, vol. 193, 197ff. The best analysis of the proceedings remains that of Meyer, “Northern Securities Case,” chap. 8.

45 his clear, sharp voice Fuller described Holmes’s voice as “incisive as the edge of a knife” (Novick, Honorable Justice, 271). The Library of Congress preserves a sound recording of Holmes broadcasting to the American people, in tones unblunted by time, on his ninetieth birthday.

46 “No scheme or” U.S. Reports, vol. 193, 320–22, 327; New York Herald, 15 Mar. 1904.

47 It was five Philander Knox scrapbook (PCK); New York Sun, 15 Mar. 1904. TR’s other lunch guests were James Cardinal Gibbons, Austrian Ambassador Baron von Hengervár Hengelmüller, and the writer William Roscoe Thayer. Thayer, John Hay, vol. 2, 351.

48 The dimensions of Lamoreaux, Great Merger Movement, 169.

49 “Great cases,” The following quotations are from U.S. Reports, vol. 193, 400–411. Other details from New York Sun and Philadelphia Press, 15 Mar. 1904.

50 “I am happy” This was the first of the great High Court dissents for which Holmes was to become famous. “The trouble with Wendell,” an exasperated Bostonian friend complained, “is that he likes to play with his mind” (M. A. De Wolfe Howe, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1841–1882 [Cambridge, Mass., 1957–1963], vol. 1, 255). As John Blum points out, TR miscalculated in thinking Holmes a reformer. The justice was “a profound skeptic” who “deeply distrusted popular passion.” In this case, Holmes felt that most of his brethren had been carried away by the temporary, and unreasoning, antitrust mood of the times. His decision not to go along was therefore “entirely in character.” Blum, Progressive Presidents, 35.

51 So by a margin Knox, after leaving the Justice Department later that year, reacted dismissively to a question about the historical significance of his Northern Securities suit. The case was regarded as “of surpassing importance” by the press, he said, but had proved “of less real value to the government than many others that attracted no general attention.” It had been, “in a sense, a test case” (Philadelphia Ledger, 12 June 1904). Knox’s use of the phrase real value reflects his essentially pragmatic nature. What mattered to TR was its symbolic value, reaffirming the right of a federal democracy to regulate big business. Modern historical assessments, however, tend to agree with Knox. See the cynical words of Albro Martin in James J. Hill, 520, or the more balanced assessments in Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 473–74 and 562–63. Chandler, Visible Hand, 499, argues that Northern Securities led, paradoxically, to more, not less, corporate consolidation.

52 “I could carve” John Hay diary, 15 Mar. 1904 (JH); Harbaugh, Life and Times, 161–62; Lodge, Selections, 518. See also Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 564.

53 “I have such” Novick, Honorable Justice, 272. TR was writing affectionately to Holmes again by the fall of 1904 (TR, Letters, vol. 4, 989). Many years later, the Justice claimed that TR “looked on my dissent as a political departure (or, I suspect, more truly, couldn’t forgive anyone who stood in his way).” When these words were written, TR was dead, and Holmes’s tone conveys a certain octogenarian crotchetiness. Mark De Wolfe Howe, ed., Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874–1932 (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), vol. 2, 61–62.

54 Knox and Taft John Hay diary, 15 Mar. 1904 (JH); A. B. Farquhar to TR, 8 Mar. 1904 (TRP); New York World (front page, lead article), 15 Mar. 1904; New York Evening Post, 15 and 16 Mar. 1904. See the vast selection of clips in Philander Knox scrapbook (PCK); also Literary Digest, 26 Mar. 1904. For a sample of critical opinion, see The New York Times, 15 Mar. 1904.

55 The New York World New York World, 15 and 20 Mar. 1904.

56 The three men New York World, 15 Mar. 1904; Pyle, Life of James J. Hill, vol. 2, 377; Martin, James J. Hill, 519; New York Herald, 15 Mar. 1904; A. B. Farquhar to TR, 8 Mar. 1904 (TRP).

57 “As far as I” Joseph Bucklin Bishop to TR, 15 Mar. 1904 (TRP).

58BY 1 APRIL John Hay diary, 19 Mar. 1904 (JH); EKR to Cecil Spring Rice, 7 Feb. 1904 (CSR); Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, From Pinafores to Politics (New York, 1923), 83; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 134.

59 “He is a very” William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 18 Mar. 1904 (WHT).

60 Even so, Roosevelt’s Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 554; Literary Digest, 2 Apr. 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 749.

61 It was virtually Literary Digest, 2 Jan. 1904. Santo Domingo and Dominican Republic were interchangeable terms in the Roosevelt Era.

62 “Your unlimited power” Wilhelm II to TR, 1 Feb. 1904 (TRP).

63 The Kaiser could Review of Reviews, Mar. 1902; Julius W. Pratt, Challenge and Rejection: The United States and World Leadership, 1900–1921 (New York, 1967), 29–30.

Historical Note: The current situation was complicated by the fact that on 1 Feb. Santo Domingo insurgents fired upon the United States cruiser Yankee, killing one Marine. On 5 Feb., TR ordered Rear Admiral Wise to proceed to Santo Domingo with cruisers of the Atlantic Squadron and protect United States citizens and property (Review of Reviews, Mar. 1904). There is no direct evidence that the United States feared European interference (Italy, Britain, and Belgium were owed money as well as Germany), but the circumstantial evidence, as with the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903, is suggestive. At the time of the German warship scare, the State Department was under intense pressure from the Navy Department to allow the Mediterranean Squadron to take part in “maneuvers” in the Caribbean (William N. Still, American Sea Power in the Old World: The United States Navy in Europe and Near Eastern Waters, 1815–1917 [Westport, Conn., 1980], 163–64). Looking back on the crisis afterward, Elihu Root said, “We went into Santo Domingo for the sole purpose of keeping Germany from taking it” (interview, 10 Nov. 1930 [PCJ]). Ironically, Santo Domingo’s financial mess had been largely caused by an American investment firm, the Santo Domingo Investment Company, in 1903. See Douglas R. Gow, “How Did the Roosevelt Corollary Become Linked to the Dominican Republic?” Mid-America 58 (1976).

64 “I have about” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 734. TR was so pleased with this image he repeated it viva voce to his Cabinet—only then the boa constrictor was an anaconda. John Hay diary, 18 Mar. 1904 (JH).

65TWO MONTHS AFTER TR, Letters, vol. 4, 772; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 419; Gould, Reform and Regulation, 44; TR, Letters, vol. 7, 615; James O. Wheaton, “The Genius and the Jurist: The Presidential Campaign of 1904” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1964), 583; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 785–86.

66 In the meantime The Washington Post, 3 Mar. 1904; TR, introduction to Francis Curtis, History of the Republican Party (New York, 1904); TR, Letters, vol. 4, 771, 773; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 3, 5–8.

67 Cleveland fumed with Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland (New York, 1932), 750–51. The President, unabashed, was still circulating Cleveland’s letter in the fall. See, e.g., TR to C. Riggs, editor of the New York Sun, 2 Sept. 1904 (TRP).

68 “Theodore thinks of” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 570.

69 Old Guard Republicans James S. Clarkson to William Loeb, 5 Apr. 1904.

70 Reluctantly, in view Kerr, Bully Father, 149. Marguerite Cassini recalled that her father, Speck von Sternburg, and Jules Jusserand were “very much worried” by the comings and goings of mysterious Japanese visitors to the White House. Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 198.

71HIS SIGNATURE FINGERS William A. Day and Charles W. Russell to Philander Knox, 26 and 28 Apr. 1904 (PCK). The extraordinary series of letters and telegrams in Knox’s papers concerning the canal-rights transfer counters the doubt expressed by revisionist historians (e.g., Henry Pringle) as to whether the Roosevelt Administration was conscientious in obtaining good title to the Canal Zone, and in ensuring that all payments were distributed properly.

72 the supreme adjective Philippe Bunau-Varilla to Poultney Bigelow, 26 Feb. 1926 (PB).

73“I HAVE TAKEN” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 788.

74 By terms of treaty Miles P. DuVal, And the Mountains Will Move (Stanford, 1947), 136–37; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 770.

75 He sent Taft TR, Letters, vol. 4, 786–93; the other Commission members were William B. Parsons, Benjamin M. Harrod, William H. Burr, Carl E. Grunsky, and Frank J. Hecker. DuVal, And the Mountains, 130.

76 Roosevelt ordered Taft TR, Letters, vol. 4, 790.

77 Sanitary reform Ibid., 791–92.

78ON 10 MAY Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 583. The following account is based primarily on Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 114–17.

79 “You might as” Ibid., 460.

80 Shadows stole Ibid., 117.

81 Senator Matthew Quay Quay’s final decline had begun on 8 May.

82 “The last consignment” Review of Reviews, June 1904; New York Sun, 11 May 1904.

83 businesslike light The names of these products are taken from contemporary magazines. The shadow-free lamp of 1903 caused a revolution in American lighting.

84 George Cortelyou Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 267; Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 57–58, 70.

85 “Go see Cortelyou” Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 117.

Historiographical Note: The date of this interview cannot be established with certainty. But internal evidence proves Moore was wrong in remembering it as taking place after the death of Quay (28 May 1904). His mission on behalf of Senator Penrose must have come after Bliss’s rejection of the GOP chairmanship on 10 May, and before TR’s announcement of the appointment of Cortelyou on 17 May.

TR’s reverence for Quay, which has often embarrassed his apologists, was perfectly in character. He owed his Vice Presidency (hence, his Presidency) to him. He also admired very strong men, even if their morals were doubtful. Quay’s erudition (he introduced TR to Finnish literature) was another bond. TR was so impressed by the Senator’s deathbed speech that he devoted 1,500 words of his autobiography to it. See Kehl, Boss Rule, 226–29, TR, Autobiography, 158–61, and Steffens, Autobiography, 419–21. For more on the death of Quay and the controversy caused by TR’s description of him as “my staunch and loyal friend,” see Contemporary Literature, July 1904.

CHAPTER 21: THE WIRE THAT RAN AROUND THE WORLD

1 “I hope ye’re” Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, 87.

2AT SIXTY-FOUR Ion Perdicaris, “In Raisuli’s Hands: The Story of My Captivity and Deliverance, 18 May to 26 June 1904,” Leslie’s Monthly Magazine, Sept. 1904.

3 This did not Bowen, Recollections, 34; Leslie’s Weekly, 23 June 1904; Outlook, 11 June 1904. For the diplomatic and strategic background to the story here beginning, see William J. Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans: The United States Navy in the Mediterranean, 1904” (Ph.D. diss., Northeastern University Press, 1975).

4 He sat there New York Sun, 14 June 1904; Perdicaris, “In Raisuli’s Hands”; H. E. Davis, “The Citizenship of Ion Perdicaris,” Journal of Biographies & Memoirs 8 (1941); Outlook, 11 June 1904. Ion Perdicaris was the son of a wealthy, naturalized Greek American who was appointed United States Consul General in Athens in 1837. In 1840, just after Ion’s birth in that city, Perdicaris Senior returned to the United States and made a fortune in natural-gas companies. Ion was raised and educated in Trenton, N.J. After a year at Harvard, he began his divided life on both sides of the Atlantic, writing, painting, and studying the occult. Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans,” 45–47.

5 The other male Except where otherwise indicated, the sections of this chapter detailing the kidnapping of Ion Perdicaris are based on his own three narratives: a letter written while he was being held captive, reproduced in the New York Sun, 14 June 1904; “Morocco, ‘The Land of the Extreme West,’ and the Story of My Captivity,” National Geographic, March 1906; and “In Raisuli’s Hands.” Supplemental details come from Cromwell Varley, “Captured by Moorish Brigands,” The Independent, July 1904.

6 Just before eleven Samuel Gummeré to Francis B. Loomis, 20 May 1904, “Dispatches-Tangier,” State Department files (NA). Gummeré was an old friend of Perdicaris from Trenton, and owed his appointment to him.

7MR. PERDICARIS Samuel Gummeré to John Hay, 19 May 1904 (NA).

8 Conveniently, Roosevelt Still, American Sea Power, 164–65; Francis B. Loomis to Samuel Gummeré, 19 May 1904, “Instructions,” State Department files (NA).

9 The last seven Charles H. Darling to Francis B. Loomis, 19 May 1904 (NA).

10 “It is not” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 801 (italics added).

11 “If a nation” Ibid.

12 “jingoism run mad” New York World, 28 May 1904; John W. Blassingame, “The Press and American Intervention in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, 1904–1920,” Caribbean Studies 9.2 (1969); Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 65; Marks,Velvet on Iron, 9–10, 146–47. Douglas R. Gow, “How Did the Roosevelt Corollary?” argues that Root’s first enunciation of the Corollary was a political, vote-getting gesture. But he errs in saying that it had no immediate diplomatic relevance. Walter Wellman noted in Review of Reviews (Dec. 1904) that “the [Cuba Society] letter was written wholly as a warning to Santo Domingo.” Havana also was being put on notice, as it discovered in 1906. TR enunciated the Corollary again in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress.

13“I ASK NOTHING” Perdicaris, “Morocco”; Samuel Gummeré to Francis B. Loomis, 20 May 1904 (NA).

14 A few days Thomas H. Etzold, “Protection or Politics? ‘Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead?’ ” The Historian, Feb. 1975.

15 “I had much” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 821, 807. See the last-cited letter, to George Otto Trevelyan, for an expression of TR’s current frame of mind. For a further sense of TR’s executive maturity at this time, see his long directives on Far Eastern affairs, Panamanian cable concessions, and Philippines administration in TR, Letters, vol. 4, 834–43. The note of command is assured, deft, irresistible; the point of view omniscient.

16 The odds on Washington Evening Star, 20 May 1904; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 322. TR had sensed Parker as his probable Democratic rival for more than a year. The Exeter, N.H., News-Letter, 6 Mar. 1903, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

17 Reticence and its Washington Evening Star, 21 May 1904; New York Sun, 27 May 1904; Newark, N.J., Evening News, 1 June 1904. See also TR, Letters, vol. 4, 804.

18 A White House “source” Washington Evening Star, 17 May 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 797.

19 “He wants us” John Hay diary, 22 May 1904 (JH).

20 Like Taft William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 12 Apr. 1904 (WHT).

21 In any case John Hay diary, 22 May 1904 (JH); TR, Letters, vol. 4, 833.

22 With less than New York Evening Post, 18 May 1904; The New York Times, 3 May 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 823–24, 833; Philadelphia Press, 4 June 1904; New York Sun, 18 June 1904.

23 “Mr. President, I” Butler, Across the Busy Years, vol. 1, 321. Another of TR’s favorite Beveridge stories had the young Senator visiting him at night and saying with solemn urgency: “It’s time now, sir, for you to govern by psychic suggestion.” Wister,Roosevelt, 112. In the event, the temporary chairman of the 1904 Republican convention was Henry Clay Payne. Elihu Root gave the keynote speech.

24ROOSEVELT DID NOT John Hay diary, 28 May 1904 (JH).

25 The President seemed Qu. in Peter Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis, 1904–1905” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1984), 52.

26AT 5:30 A.M. Samuel Gummeré to Francis B. Loomis, 3 June 1904 (NA).

27PRESIDENT WISHES Samuel Gummeré to John Hay, 8 June 1904, and Hay to Gummeré, same date (NA).

28 Before nightfall Samuel Gummeré to John Hay, 8 June 1904 (received 6:21 P.M., 9 June) (NA).

29ON 10 JUNE Philadelphia Public Ledger, 10 June 1904.

30 Roosevelt accepted Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 206; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 828–29.

31 “Many great and” TR to Philander Knox, 23 June 1904 (PCK).

32 Roosevelt had grown TR, Letters, vol. 5, 782; Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 27, 203. Leslie Shaw once overheard Knox politely reprimanding the President that it was almost impossible to state a legal proposition to him. “Before I am halfway through stating it, you have grasped it all, and have rendered your decision before you know what my conclusions are.” Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 473–74.

33 And he was quick Philadelphia Public Record, The Washington Post, and Utica, N.Y., Observer, 19 June 1904; Philadelphia American, 10 June 1904. Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 407, and Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 207–8, agree with Knox’s sober self-assessment. “Almost without exception,” Eitler remarks, “the record … was one of presidential leadership by Roosevelt and conservative legalistic support by Knox.” As an executive pair, they separately represented the promise and the restraints of the Constitution.

34JOHN HAY FORWARDED Foreign Relations 1904, 500; John Hay diary, 14 June 1904 (JH); Hay to TR, 15 June 1904 (TD).

35 The Secretary’s desire Dennett, John Hay, 402.

36 “Our position must” TR to John Hay, 15 June 1904 (JH).

37 Hay unhappily Still, American Sea Power, 167; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, Documents diplomatiques, series 2, vol. 25, 234; Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 42–44.

38 “The President’s will” Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 19 June 1904 (JJ). The French government did, however, put considerable diplomatic pressure on Morocco to settle with Raisuli. Since the Sultan was newly indebted to Foreign Minister Delcassé for a fifty-million-franc loan, he could hardly refuse. In “Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead,” American Heritage, Aug. 1959, Barbara Tuchman remarks of the Roosevelt/Hay approach to Jusserand: “By recognizing France’s special status in Morocco, this step, consciously taken, was of international significance in the train of crises that was to lead through Algericas and Agadir to 1914.” It is also possible that TR, a punctilious diplomat, was simply honoring the month-old Anglo-French Entente.

39 Similar complaints The New York Times, 17 June 1904; Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 374–76; Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 278–80; Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 92; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 838–39; Charles G. Dawes to TR, 18 June 1904 (TRP); New York Sun, 18 June 1904.

40 “Excitement is” Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 24 June 1904 (TRP).

41 Old-timers talked The best account of TR’s role in the 1884 convention is Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt, chap. 23.

42 Now, two decades The New York Times, 20 June 1904; “The Republican National Convention,” Review of Reviews, Aug. 1904.

43 “From Panama on” Kerr, Bully Father, 156–57. This letter of 20 June 1904 is misdated “June 21” in TR, Letters, vol. 4, 840.

44LONG BEFORE PROCEEDINGS The New York Times, 21 and 19 June 1904; Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 45; New York Sun, 21 June 1904. “From beginning to end, [the convention] was ruled with an iron hand beneath a soft glove … the master was recognized, and loyalty to the party was simply servility to orders.” Review of Reviews, Aug. 1904.

45 One thing Roosevelt New York World, 22 June 1904; New York Sun, 21–23 June 1904.

46 A question buzzed Wheaton, “Genius and Jurist,” 283; New York Sun, 22 June 1904.

47 At 12:14, another Payne, acting chairman of the convention, died on 4 Oct. 1904. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account (including speech quotations) is based on Official Proceedings of the 13th Republican National Convention in the City of Chicago, June 21, 22, 23, 24, 1904 (Minneapolis, 1904).

48 Elihu Root rose New York Sun, 22 June 1904.

49 “Louder!” a voice The New York Times, 22 June 1904.

50IN WASHINGTON, it Washington Evening Star, 22 June 1904; Elihu Root to TR, 14 June 1904 (TRP). TR had supplied the list of “achievements” himself. See TR, Letters, vol. 4, 810–13, and Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 421–23.

51IN TANGIER, it The exact time difference between Washington and Tangier was four hours and forty-five minutes. World Almanac, 1904.

52 Today, 21 June Samuel Gummeré to John Hay, 19 and 20 June 1904 (NA); Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans,” 113; John Hay diary, 18 June 1904 (JH); Samuel Gummeré to Francis B. Loomis, 23 May 1904 (NA).

53 Aboard the Brooklyn Doris D. Maguire, ed., French Ensor Chadwick: Selected Letters and Papers (Washington, D.C., 1981), 362; Samuel Gummeré to John Hay, 21 June 1904 (NA). Gummeré’s cable was received by the State Department at 1:40 P.M.—i.e., 6:25P.M. Tangier time. Overnight, the Admiral changed his mind about sending Marines ashore, thus pre-empting an almost certain bloodbath. French E. Chadwick to John Hay, 24 June 1904 (JH); Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans,” 115.

54BY NOW, Root’s The New York Times, 22 June 1904.

55 “All except the members” Ibid.

56 Root did not enunciate Ibid.

57HAY PONDERED Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 65–66. 334 Unable to confront Dennett, John Hay, 402.

58 Hunt came back The last two sentences of this paragraph represent the author’s reading of TR’s attitude. Etzold, “Protection or Politics?” and Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 69–70, feel similarly. Although some historians have doubted that TR authorized or even knew of Hay’s ultimatum in advance, TR himself was specific on 31 Dec. 1915: “I was able to secure the release of [Perdicaris] only by demanding immediate action, and making them understand that when I said action I meant it.” Qu. in Maguire, French Ensor Chadwick, 619.

59 Hay, drafting his John Hay diary, 23 June 1904 (JH).

60WE WANT PERDICARIS John Hay to Samuel Gummeré, 22 June 1904 (NA).

61 “Then I will” Memorandum by William D. Hassett in EMH, n.d. See also memos by Gretchen Hood and Dudley Haddock, 16 May 1943, in EMH. All three sources say Hood was the originator, in his conversation with Hay, of the phrase Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead. However, Hay, never a boastful man, called the phrase his own “concise impropriety,” and in his diary for the day speaks simply of “my telegram.” Hood’s version of the phrase was less “concise,” with a superfluous either that Hay (a fastidious stylist) would not have permitted himself. At any rate, the journalist got the scoop.

62 But by the time Foreign Relations 1904, 503.

63HOOD’S DISPATCH Chicago Record-Herald, 23 June 1904.

64 “We declare our” Merrill, Republican Command, 184–86. See Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 290, for Lodge’s nonauthorship of the GOP platform.

65 When Lodge finished Chicago Record-Herald, 23 June 1904.

66 “Bulletin,” the clerk Ibid.

67 After two days New York Tribune, 23 June 1904, used the phrase “like an electric thrill.”

68 Cannon quickly adjourned TR’s reputation, Etzold remarks in “Protection or Politics?” has suffered from “unjust smudging” by historians who have sought to show that the Raisuli telegram was timed for political effect in Chicago, rather than diplomatic effect at Tangier. There is no evidence that TR was responsible for its timing. Hay, however, did not hesitate to share his “concise impropriety” with the press. In announcing the Scripps-McRae dispatch, Cannon said that it had been “verified,” presumably in a telephone call to the State Department. Etzold comments: “The fact that Roosevelt had resolved on such a position by 15 June, before the convention even opened … makes it clear that the politics of conventioneering had far less to do with the message than long exasperating delays.” See also Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans,” 123, and Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 25–27.

69 “Events are numberless” Official Proceedings, 147.

70 It was just The New York Times, 24 June 1904.

71 An elemental din Ibid.

72THE REAL ROOSEVELT Alice Roosevelt diary, 23 June 1904 (ARL).

73 With kisses on The New York Times, 24 June 1904.

74 “Thank Heaven” See also Ion Perdicaris to Samuel Gummeré, 29 June 1904 (NA). Taxed by an indignant Gummeré about his lapsed citizenship (which was finally confirmed in a State Department cable to Loomis on 28 June), Perdicaris said that he had traded his passport in 1861 in order to prevent the Confederacy from attaching some property he owned in South Carolina. This formality aside, “I … continued to consider myself an American citizen … both my parents being, at the time of my birth, citizens of the United States.… I now realize only too keenly the false position in which I have been placed by this fatal hesitation and neglect.” Qu. in Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 67–68. Larsen cites an important, and neglected, ruling by Secretary of State Root on 27 Oct. 1905 that Perdicaris “never effectively acquired Greek, or divested himself of American citizenship.” See also Etzold, “Protection or Politics?” on Perdicaris’s legal entitlement to United States protection in 1904. Perdicaris was presented with a new United States passport in 1905, and spent the rest of his life in Britain.
Raisuli, enriched by the Sultan’s ransom, became a figure of legendary status in Morocco. His followers believed him to be immortal. He acquired a fleet of small ships and practiced Berber-style piracy on coastal traffic. In old age, he was captured by a younger rival, after a fierce fight. He died in April 1925, a few months after his ancient hostage.

CHAPTER 22: THE MOST ABSURD POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF OUR TIME

1 I think a lot Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 225.

2THE DIFFICULTY OF TR, Letters, vol. 4, 892.

3 So, by late June The most complete account of this year’s campaign events is Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist.” See also Merrill, Republican Command, chap. 8.

4 There was no William H. Harbaugh, “Election of 1904,” in Schlesinger and Israel, History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 3, 1973–74; Thompson, Party Leaders, 365–66; Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 315.

5 Alton Brooks Parker Washington Evening Star, 2 May 1904; Alton Parker scrapbook (ABP); Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 109. See also Fred C. Shoemaker, “Alton B. Parker: The Image of a Gilded Age Statesman in an Era of Progressive Politics” (M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1983).

6 Roosevelt had foreseen John Hay diary, 20 Mar. 1904 (JH); Brooks Adams to TR, 22 Sept. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 4, 806.

7 Personally, he liked On 15 June 1900, Governor Roosevelt expressed “not merely a strong personal liking but a very high regard and admiration” for Parker, and went out of his way to secure patronage for the judge’s brother, also a Democrat. Parker publicly praised TR on his retirement from Albany. There is a photograph of them sitting convivially at the same table at TR’s farewell dinner. TR, Letters, vol. 2, 1333, and vol. 3, 1; Alton Parker, Autobiography Notes (ABP).

8 The judge was James Creelman, “Alton Brooks Parker: A Character Sketch,” Washington Evening Star, 24 May 1904; M. G. Cuniff, “Alton Brooks Parker,” World’s Work, June 1904. The best assessment of Parker is Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” chap. 3.

9 Eighteen years of Review of Reviews, Aug. 1904; Harold F. Gosnell, Boss Platt and His New York Machine (Chicago, 1924), 42; Dictionary of American Biography; Washington Evening Star, 9 May 1904.

10 And so did most Harbaugh, “Election of 1904,” 1977; Washington Evening Star, 6 July 1904.

11ON FRIDAY, a little The New York Times, 9 July 1904. Parker’s house, called Rosemount in 1904, is now Lamont Landing in Esopus, N.Y. Elizabeth Burroughs Kelley, The History of West Park and Esopus (Hannacroix, N.Y., 1978).

12 Around sunset The following account is taken from The New York Times and New York Herald, 10 July 1904.

13 the achievement of his life Nobody browsing Parker’s papers in LC can doubt that his remaining twenty-two years were anticlimactic to this moment. In old age, the judge began to dictate a memoir of Saharan dryness, but words failed him when he reached 1904. Apart from a few notes, the autobiography lay unfinished.

14 They were full Alton Parker scrapbook (ABP); The New York Times, 9 July 1904.

15 The telegram was Washington Evening Star, 12 July 1904; The New York Times, 10 July 1904. See also Harbaugh, “Election of 1904,” 1983.

16I REGARD THE Qu. in Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 343–45.

17 An eighty-year-old For obvious reasons, Democratic campaign literature played down the fact that the G. in Davis’s name stood for Gassaway.

18ROOSEVELT WAS FULL TR, Letters, vol. 4, 852, 858; Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 89.

19 Professionals in both Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 351–52. See, e.g., New York Evening Post, 11 July 1904. “For the first time, they [the Republicans] are afraid, and their fear is real.” Des Portes to Théophile Delcassé, 13 July 1904 (JJ).

20 Time would tell Some strategists were even talking of a delay until October. See, e.g., Albert J. Beveridge to TR, 9 Aug. 1904 (AJB).

21 Roosevelt had scheduled Washington Evening Star, 2 July 1904; The Washington Post, 3 July 1904.

22ON 27 JULY Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of TR’s notification ceremony is based mainly on reports in The New York Times, New York Sun, New York World, and New York Herald, 28 July 1904.

23 “That’s perfectly true” Cannon had just praised the Roosevelt Administration’s actions in Panama.

24 used the word power John Hay diary, 13 July 1904 (JH). “Mr. Knox [also] thought it was touched with demagogy in its original form,” TR cheerfully informed George Cortelyou. “Root agreed with Knox” (8 June 1904 [GBC]). His edited speech appears inPresidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 3, 36–47.

25 She laughed with The New York Times and New York World, 28 July 1904. The adjective phosphorescent is Marguerite Cassini’s in Never a Dull Moment, 166.

26 Something flickered The New York Times, 28 July 1904.

27 Roosevelt paid no New York World, 28 July 1904; Alice Roosevelt diary, 21 June, 17 and 27 May (“I pray God to grant unto me a fortune”), and 9 and 13 June, 1903; 27 July 1904 (ARL). Alice called her snake “Emily Spinach.” For TR’s views on this pet, see below, pp. 692–93.

28 “When I come down” Ibid., 15 June 1903 (ARL).

29ROOSEVELT’S THOUGHTFUL Group portrait of the GOP Notification Committee, Leslie’s Weekly, 11 Aug. 1904.

30 Odell had proved Richard L. McCormick, From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893–1910 (Ithaca, 1981), 166–89.

31 This brazen mixing Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 475; Gould, Reform and Regulation, 47; see also McCormick, From Realignment to Reform, 220–22.

32 It was vital McCormick, From Realignment to Reform, 175; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 423.

33 “The Republicans of” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 677.

34 Root politely declined Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 425–27.

35ON THE DAY The Washington Post and Washington Times, 29 July 1904; John Hay to Henry White, 2 July 1904 (TD).

36 Washington sweltered Washington Evening Star, 10 Aug. and passim 1904; Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 305; John Hay to Henry White, 2 July 1904 (TD); contemporary photographs in LC.

37 Roosevelt decided TR, Letters, vol. 4, 880.

38 “sweetest of all” Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 351.

39 “Edith and I” Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 260–61.

40 In New York Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 357–58; Crosson, “James S. Clarkson.”

41 A female reporter Kate Carew, New York World, 12 Aug. 1904.

42 Also unlike Hanna Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 358; Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 383. By the end of Aug., Dawes already noted “great savings” in all contract matters. “At last we have a Committee whose work is untainted by fraud of any kind.”

43 The Senator softened Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 378.

44 Roosevelt tried once TR, Letters, vol. 4, 886–87; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 325.

45ROOSEVELT HAD LONG See Anne Venzon, “Gunboat Diplomacy in the Mediterranean,” Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, supplement, Mar. 1985.

Chronological Note: On 27 Aug. 1903, John G. Leishman, United States Minister in Constantinople, had cabled the State Department with news of the assassination of an American diplomat in Beirut. The local government’s response was inadequate and unsatisfactory. TR immediately ordered three warships to Beirut. No sooner had he done so than another cable arrived, stating that the first telegram had contained an error; the diplomat had been “shot at” rather than “shot.”

TR saw the incident as a perfect opportunity to settle several longstanding issues between the United States and the Ottoman Empire, including indifference of local officials toward the security of Christian diplomats, and discrimination and harassment suffered by American missionaries. The warships would therefore stay in Turkish waters for as long as it took to clear up such issues. On 3 Sept., Hay reported that he had told the Turkish minister “that if he does not want our ships in Turkish waters, it is very easy to cause them to depart.” The Sultan had only to settle “two or three matters which have dragged too long.” However, Hay’s prediction that this would take only “a few days” was not quite accurate. While satisfactory action regarding the shooting incident was taken by mid-Sept. (thanks to the appointment of a new governor in Beirut), the Ottoman government frustratingly refused to recognize that the Squadron’s presence was anything other than a “friendly visit.” However, TR, Hay, and Leishman continued to hope that the United States naval presence in Turkish waters would eventually persuade the Sublime Porte to deal with the relevant issues. While some minor claims were settled in Oct., nothing more substantive came about, and finally, on 1 Feb. 1904, the Squadron left Beirut(Foreign Relations 1904, 774; Still, American Sea Power, 157–64; Venzon, “Gunboat Diplomacy,” 27, 30–31). For an exhaustive treatment of both the Turkish and Moroccan crises of 1903–1904, see also Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans.”

46 the Sublime Porte The phrase Sublime Porte was used in 1904 much as the Kremlin is used today. It derived from the gate that gave access to Ottoman departments of state in Constantinople.

47 He demanded Foreign Relations 1904, 749. There is a sketch of Leishman in Lewis Einstein’s memoir, A Diplomat Looks Back (New Haven, 1968), 30; see also Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans,” passim.

48 Their high hopes Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of Parker’s notification ceremony is based on news clips that the judge himself pasted into his scrapbook, and on photographs in the Evening Mail Illustrated Sunday Magazine, 20 Aug. 1904 (ABP).

49 Parker received Excerpts from Parker’s speech are printed in Harbaugh, “Election of 1904,” 2022–23. Ironically, the cameraman was working for a moving-pictures company.

50AFTERWARD, LOYAL Public Opinion, 18 Aug. 1904; Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 393–94; Washington Evening Star, 11 Aug. 1904.

51 Cortelyou’s textbook Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 397–400, 487–89; Republican Campaign Textbook (New York, 1904), passim.

52 The Democratic textbook Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 395, 397–400; Schlesinger and Israel, History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 3, 1986.

53 Neither party Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 399. The best that could be said about lynchings in 1904 was that the year’s total of eighty-six was down from 104 in 1903. Ziglar, “Decline of Lynching in America.”

54 the most eagerly awaited Merrill, Republican Command, 168. See, e.g., the Sun’s 3 Aug. 1904 comment on TR’s labor policies: “He is on the side of the men who are every day seeking to overthrow the Constitution.” TR was greatly annoyed by this accusation. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 876–77.

55WITHIN DAYS OF Foreign Relations 1904, 826; Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 464; Still, American Sea Power, 158–64. See also William J. Hourihan, “The Big Stick in Turkey: American Diplomacy and Naval Operations Against the Ottoman Empire, 1903–1904,” Naval War College Review 34.5 (Sept.–Oct. 1981).

56 Roosevelt hastened TR, Letters, vol. 4, 885, 891; “I am well aware that I have no right to make war,” he wrote on 8 Aug., “and have not the dimmest or remotest intention of doing so.”

57 Thanks to Hay’s TR, Letters, vol. 4, 890; Literary Digest, 20 Aug. 1904.

58 For almost a month Review of Reviews, Oct. 1904; The Cambridge Biographies & Memoirs (New York, 1934), vol. 12, 590–91.

59 Farther inland Review of Reviews, Oct. 1904; Cambridge Biographies & Memoirs, vol. 12, 591–92.

60 “The Russians think” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 913.

61 “Unless I am” Albert J. Beveridge to TR, 26 Aug. 1904 (AJB).

62 The “speaking” Harbaugh, “Election of 1904,” 2024–27.

63 A quieter voice Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 396; Nicholas Murray Butler to TR, 6 May 1904 (TRP); Thompson, Party Leaders, 81; New York Sun, 24 June 1904; New York Evening Post, 21 June 1904.

64 At six foot Champ Clark, My Quarter Century in American Politics (New York, 1920), vol. 2, 281; Thompson, Party Leaders, 33, 81–82; Fleming, Around the Capitol, 228; Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 1, 219; Thomas R. Shipp, “Charles W. Fairbanks,” Review of Reviews, Aug. 1904.

65 This awkwardness New York Sun, 24 June 1902; Republican speaking schedule in Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 599.

66 The first tests M. Des Portes to Théophile Delcassé, 7 Sept. 1904 (JJ).

67 Both states were Public Opinion, 15 Sept. 1904; Review of Reviews, Oct. 1904; Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 373–74.

68 “Unless we throw” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 919.

69 “The people need” Joseph Pulitzer, open letter to Josephus Daniels, New York World, 8 Sept. 1904.

70THE PRESIDENT CHOSE TR, Letters, vol. 4, 921–43.

71 At least twelve Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 601.

72 “Our opponents” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 921, 930, 939.

73 “There is not” Ibid., 923–42.

74 “We have striven” Ibid., 942.

75 The President’s letter Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 409–10; Public Opinion, 22 Sept. 1904; John Hay to TR, 13 Sept. 1904 (TRP).

76“WELL, MY PART” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 945.

77 Cortelyou’s first The Wall Street Journal, 12 June 1903; Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 592–93; Merrill, Republican Command, 168–70.

78 When one did George Cortelyou, interviewed by Louis Wiley, 29 June 1906, transcript in GBC.

79 “Now, Mr. Bliss” Campaign Contributions, 123.

80 “You need have” Ibid., 128. According to Archbold’s testimony, this interview took place in mid-Sept. In 1912, TR vehemently denied that it took place “with my consent or knowledge” (TR, Letters, vol. 7, 603). “I cannot of course say whether or not it is true that Mr. Bliss asked for or received such a contribution.”

81 AT 10:00A.M. The New York Times, 23 Sept. 1904.

82 The bedlam continued Ibid.

83 Parker’s next Ibid.

84 The judge spent Ibid., 23–25 Sept. 1904; Alton Parker scrapbook (ABP).

85 “War grows more” John Hay to Joseph H. Choate, 1 Sept. 1904 (JHC).

86 Roosevelt, younger Japan’s special interest in Korea had been sanctioned by the Anglo-Japanese agreement of 1902. On 26 Feb. 1904, Korea agreed without protest to become a virtual protectorate of Japan.

87 “I would like” Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 18 Oct. 1904 (JJ).

88 “Look how long” Ibid.

89 Jusserand, whose Ibid.

Chronological Note: The role of international arbiter, so different from that of Rough Rider, appealed to TR, and he was flattered to play it in preview on 24 Sept. 1904, when two hundred delegates from the Interparliamentary Union visited him at the White House. They read a resolution from their recent convention in St. Louis, where legislative officials from Europe, the British Empire, and South America had called for a peacekeeping “congress of nations” (New York Tribune, 25 Sept. 1904). They begged Roosevelt to call a second Hague Conference, along the lines of the one that had established the International Court of Justice in 1899. One delegate reminded him that the first conference had postponed the vital question of arms limitation. “In applying to you we address ourselves to an earnest defender of international justice, and we bear in mind that you were the first head of state who turned governments toward the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague.” TR agreed to their plea, telling them, “At an early date I shall issue the call for the conference you request.” Republican officials did not doubt he would choose a date “early” enough for the election. See also Literary Digest, 8 Oct. 1904.

90 Joseph Pulitzer complained New York World, 1 Oct. 1904.

91 The aggregate George Cortelyou, interviewed by Louis Wiley, 29 June 1906, transcript in GBC.

92 Cortelyou’s friends Cortelyou’s difficulties, which are amply documented in GBC, arose out of the deaths of three investors in a preparatory school he founded and headed in 1887. When the venture failed, he refused insolvency and entered the Postal Service, determined to reimburse their estates. By 1905, he was clear of all debt.

93 Soon Democratic campaign Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 473–80.

94 All Cortelyou said Presidential scrapbook (TRP). “My determination to keep quiet,” Cortelyou wrote the President on 2 Oct. 1904, “has been largely with the hope of drawing their fire far enough ahead of the election” (TRP).

95 The fighter in TR to George Cortelyou, 2 Oct. 1904 (GBC); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 963. Perhaps coincidentally, he wrote a few days later to praise the hunter Stewart White’s prowess in killing “105 pigs in two weeks” with a knife. He doubted that he could pull off such a feat himself, although “I have a bully knife … with a fourteen-inch blade, and I firmly believe that one thrust would do the business … even against a boar.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 978.

96 “Mr. Cortelyou is” Cornelius Bliss to TR, 3 Oct. 1904 (TRP). Another professional impressed by Cortelyou’s quiet, yet effortlessly thorough, performance was James S. Clarkson. “The red light is no longer a color in politics and the brass band has departed. Instead of trying to capture men in the mass, [his] system is to go to them in detail and reach them along the lines of effective influence.” Clarkson to Leigh Hunt, 1 Oct. 1904 (JSC).

97 After Elihu Root’s McCormick, From Realignment to Reform, 189; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 962.

98 The Democratic National James S. Clarkson to Leigh Hunt, 1 Oct. 1903 (JSC).

99 “Pray get out” McCormick, From Realignment to Reform, 191; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 961.

100 “The drift here” William D. Foulke to TR, 6 Oct. 1904 (TRP). TR had privately used the same metaphor himself. TR to George Cortelyou, 2 Oct. 1904 (GBC).

101 At 1 Madison Campaign Contributions, 685.

102 “Who is this?” Ibid., 685–86.

103 “I would rather” Long afterward, when this telephone conversation was put on the record, Scott hedged his memory of it, saying the President might have said, “Mr. Harriman is coming to see me.” Whoever made the first move, each man had cause to seek the interview.

104 Harriman was a Harriman had also served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention (Klein, Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman, 363). Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 494ff., suggests that Harriman’s new interest in politics was an extension of his business rivalry with J. P. Morgan. TR was aware of this rivalry, and encouraged it by sedulously consulting “now the one [man], now the other” (495).

105 “In view of” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 979.

106 “Now, my dear” Ibid., 983.

107 Harriman was thus TR, Letters, vol. 4, 983; vol. 5, 448. Klein, Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman, 364, notes that this addendum also served as “evidence” that if Harriman came south to see the President, it was on his own initiative. Eight years later, TR cited it to that exact purpose. See TR, Letters, vol. 7, 609.

108 When Harriman called John Hay diary, 15 Oct. 1903 (JH); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 985; vol. 5, 448.

109 Twelve thousand New York World and The New York Times, 20 Oct. 1904. According to a survey conducted by the Odell organization, TR could expect a 96,000-vote plurality in New York State, while Higgins was trailing his Democratic opponent. Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 498.

110 Roosevelt received E. H. Harriman to TR (telegram), 20 Oct. 1904; William Loeb to TR, 21 Sept. 1912 (TRP); EKR diary, 20 Oct. 1904 (TRC).

111 Roosevelt spent TR in Letters, vol. 7, 608; William Loeb in Campaign Contributions, 529; E. H. Harriman in ibid., 693; Benjamin B. Odell in ibid., 112. TR appears to have conveniently forgotten to raise the subject of railroad regulation. Another subject of great interest to Harriman that TR wished to avoid was Governor Odell’s desire to have Chauncey Depew appointed United States Ambassador to France, thus making Depew’s Senate seat available to himself.

112 Whatever else John L. Heaton, The Story of a Page: Thirty Years of Public Service and Public Discussion in the Editorial Columns of the New York World (New York, 1913), 317.

113 He had a pleased Merrill, Republican Command, 166; Campaign Contributions, 693.

114HARRIMAN PROVED Campaign Contributions, 440–41.

115 Millionaires virtually Corey, House of Morgan, 370–71; Don C. Seitz, Joseph Pulitzer: His Life and Times (New York, 1924), 305. Gould’s donation alone was worth nearly two million dollars in contemporary [2001] valuation.

116 Other donations Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 357–58. Heaton, Story of a Page, 320. TR’s final fund total was $2,195,000, more than 70 percent of it from corporations. For an exhaustive, if often speculative, analysis of the corporate-financing issue, and Harriman’s relations with TR, see Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” passim. Wheaton estimates that “between one-fourth and one-third [of the GOP fund] was put into the treasury in the last two weeks of the campaign” (606).

117 “Corporate cunning” Qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 249–50.

118 “It tires me” TR qu. in The New York Times, 12 Jan. 1919.

119 As one workingman Review of Reviews, Nov. 1904. An oft-reproduced cartoon by Homer Davenport portrayed Parker as a sphinx in judicial robes (ABP).

120 “Well, you are” Alton Parker, Autobiography Notes (ABP). For another version of this anecdote, see Campaign Contributions, vol. 1, 899–900.

121 The judge returned Alton Parker, Autobiography Notes (ABP).

122 As luck would New York World and The New York Times, 24 Oct. 1903; Heaton, Story of a Page, 209.

123 His remarks made The New York Times, 24 Oct. 1903.

124 “We are at” Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 319–20.

125ALICE LIKED TO One “posterity letter” survives in which TR, afraid that his eccentric elder daughter might cause a scandal in the waning days of the campaign, lectures her sternly over his full signature.

Dear Alice, Do you know how much talk there has been recently in the newspapers about your betting—matching quarters at the races & c.—and courting notoriety with that unfortunate snake? … Do try to remember that to court notoriety by bizarre actions is underbred and unladylike. You should not bet at all, and never in public.… When you do foolish things, you make it certain that worse than foolish things will be ascribed to you. To run into debt and be extravagant as to your clothes—such pointless extravagance, too—is not only foolish but wicked. Your father, Theodore Roosevelt. (28 Aug. 1904, copy in AC)

126 Some instinct TR, Letters, vol. 3, 996–97.

127 He did not Ibid., 995–96.

128 By telegram, he Ibid., 996–98. These documents, plus others written in the weeks ahead, were absorbed by TR into the longest and most vehement of all his “posterity letters,” to the Senate Committee investigating campaign contributions in Aug. 1912. It is printed in ibid., vol. 7, 602–25.

129 “I congratulate you” Elihu Root to TR, 28 Oct. 1904 (ER).

130IN THE LAST DAYS Wheaton, “The Genius and the Jurist,” 513.

131 “Has my request” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 1004.

132 There was no Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 530.

133 “Although this may” Ibid., 531; Alton Parker speech script, 31 Oct. 1904 (ABP). See also New York World, 1 Nov. 1904.

134 “I have never” EKR to Henry Cabot Lodge, ca. 1 Nov. 1904 (HCL). On this same day, Alice Roosevelt wrote in her diary, “I am positive he won’t be elected.… I can’t bear it” (ARL).

135 The question TR, Letters, vol. 3, 1013. See the whole of this strategic letter for further examples of TR’s exquisite sense of press timing.

136 Parker was tempted Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 355.

137 This was going Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 143.

138 Old-time journalists Heaton, Story of a Page, 210.

139 “Mr. Parker’s accusations” White House press statement, 4 Nov. 1904 (TRP).

140 Roosevelt asked Ibid.

141 “The statements made” Ibid. For TR’s even stronger draft statement (which aides apparently toned down), see TRP.

142“VICTORY. TRIUMPH.” Alice Roosevelt diary, 8 Nov. 1904 (ARL). According to Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 519, Parker’s telegram was prompted by the collapse of his hopes in New York, and was sent to RNC headquarters at 8:30 P.M. By the time the landslide reached Chicago, most Democratic officials headed for home.

143 Purged by his John Hay diary, 6–7 Nov. 1904 (JH); Washington Evening Star, 11 Nov. 1904; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 64. Several observers noted TR’s strange calm on this evening. He confided to his sister Corinne “that he had never wanted anything in his life quite as much as the outward and visible sign of his country’s approval,” and for the first time she understood how painful it had been for him to function as McKinley’s “accidental” heir (Douglas, Many-Sided Roosevelt, 268–69; Robinson, My Brother, 217–18). According to Douglas, TR’s disclaimer of another run was, like many of his apparently impulsive decisions, premeditated. He had discussed it several weeks before with Attorney General Moody.

144 “On the fourth” Washington Evening Star, 9 Nov. 1904. TR’s final popular vote was 7,628,461, exceeding McKinley’s total in 1900 by 409,970. He carried every northern and western state as well as Delaware, West Virginia, and Missouri. Parker’s total of 5,084,223 fell short of Bryan’s in 1900 by 1,272,511. In the Electoral College, TR scored a record 336 to Parker’s 140. Republicans strengthened their domination of Congress, with a 57 to 33 division of seats with Democrats in the Senate, and 250 to 136 in the House. Altogether it was, in the words of Charles Dawes, “the greatest Republican victory on record,” and, as Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World magnanimously conceded, “the greatest personal triumph ever won by any President” (Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 387; Heaton, Story of a Page, 211). For a comprehensive analysis of voting patterns, broken down in virtually every category save hairstyle, see Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” chap. 13. His figures reveal some interesting negatives. For example, Democratic disillusionment with Parker (doubtless influenced by TR’s pre-election tirade) had more to do with the end result than Republican enchantment with the President. Both parties lost voter support in the South, mainly because of black disfranchisement. TR personally—and surprisingly, in view of his habitual identification with the American farmer—lost votes in most rural counties across the Corn Belt. Wherever soil was poor, he gained; wherever it was rich, his support declined. His best strength was in big cities (Jews voted for him almost solidly in New York) and in areas of thriving industry. The coal-strike conference notwithstanding, TR did not do well in depressed or strike-torn counties. Wheaton concludes that the prime causes of his plurality were economic prosperity and Republican loyalty.

INTERLUDE

1ON THE DAY Except where otherwise indicated, the following two paragraphs are based on James J. Horgan, “Aeronautics at the World’s Fair of 1904,” Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 24.3 (1968).

2 “quite drunk” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 588.

3 “One asked oneself” Education of Henry Adams, 467.

4 He had tried See ibid., chap. 25, “The Dynamo and the Virgin.”

5 The settled life Education of Henry Adams, passim and 500.

6 the very personification Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams: The Major Phase (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 324.

7 “The devil is” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 537.

8ROOSEVELT GOT TO Education of Henry Adams, 468. TR was in St. Louis on 26 and 27 Nov. 1904. It was not technically his first visit to the fairgrounds, since he had stopped by and spoken there in the early planning stage, during his Western tour.

9 He came at Education of Henry Adams, 468.

10 “We really had” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 1047–48.

11 He stomped Alice was convulsed when her father paused to peer shortsightedly at a statue, and pronounced it a “particularly fine Diana.” As she could well see, it had all the attributes of an Apollo. Longworth, Crowded Hours, 65.

12 He was impressed TR, Letters, vol. 3, 1048.

13 The presidential train The Washington Post, 28 Nov. 1904; Robinson, My Brother, 220–22; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 1049–51. Mrs. Robinson, writing some sixteen years later, misremembers some of the details of this postmidnight session, and also, puzzlingly, recalls TR dictating another mammoth “review” of Finley Peter Dunne’s views on the Irish Question. This letter was actually written previously, on 23 Nov. 1904. See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 1040–42. However, she may be accurate in stating that TR continued his dictation in her presence, until a porter arrived with coffee at 7:00 A.M. “Shortly after that I was assisted to my berth in a more or less asphyxiated condition, from which I never roused again until the train reached the station in Washington.”

14 Nearly nineteen million Horgan, “Aeronautics at the World’s Fair”; David R. Francis, The Universal Exposition of 1904 (St. Louis, 1913), xviii–xix.

15 As if in earnest Horgan, “Aeronautics at the World’s Fair.”

16MARGUERITE CASSINI HAD Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 215.

17 The Ambassador’s choler John Hay diary, 2 Jan. 1905 (JH); Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 252. Because New Year’s Day was a Sunday in 1905, official receptions were postponed by twenty-four hours.

18 While Europe John Hay diary, 3 Jan. 1905 (JH).

19 Rheumatic, perpetually Ibid., 15 and 25 Jan. 1905; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 629.

20 More and more Jusserand, What Me Befell, 276.

21 All that remained Hay was suffering from a prostate condition and heart disease (angina pectoris).

22 The Russian Baltic The fleet, commanded by Admiral Zinovi Rozhdestvenski, had sailed from Rigal Harbor in Oct. 1904.

23 “dealing with” Clymer, John Hay, 152.

24 Politely disapproving John Hay diary, 4 Jan. 1905 (JH).

25 the other his EKR to Kermit Roosevelt, 30 Jan. 1905 (KR).

26 “With him wielding” Education of Henry Adams, 417.

27 Roosevelt’s Energetik Education of Henry Adams, 441. Energetik: in German natural science, the fundamental energy of matter. In a sarcastic editorial headlined FIRMNESS — IN ROTATION, the New York Evening Post, 1 Feb. 1905, inquired: “Why is he never simultaneously firm on all his pet measures, but generally decided only on one at a time, in a somewhat periodic rotation?”

28 “the darkening prairie” Education of Henry Adams, 396.

29 “always and everywhere” Ibid., 455.

30 “Truth was the” Ibid., 456.

31 another henry Henry James to William James, 14 Jan. 1903 (HJ). James had not been in Washington since the days of President Arthur. See Leon Edel, Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916 (London, 1972), 274–76.

32 “The President is” Henry James to William James, 14 Jan. 1905, and to Mary Cadwalader Jones, 13 Jan. 1905 (HJ). For another account of this evening, see Lawrence, Memories of a Happy Life, 177.

33 “Theodore Rex” Henry James to Mary Cadwalader Jones, 13 Jan. 1905 (HJ). For the earlier, mutually contemptuous relations of TR and James, see Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 467–68.

34THE IMAGINATION MUST Bacon’s aphorism 104, from his Magna Instauratio (1620), is given here as paraphrased by Adams (Letters, vol. 5, 606). The original reads, “The understanding must not therefore be supplied with wings, but rather hung with weights to keep it from leaping and flying.”

35 Here was Arthur Education of Henry Adams, 437; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 561; Arthur Balfour, “Reflections Suggested by the New Theory of Matter,” The Times (London), 18 Aug. 1904.

36 “I foresee something” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 552.

37 Nearer home Samuels, Henry Adams, 321.

38BOTH KANEKO John Hay diary, 30 Jan. and 15 Feb. 1905 (JH). Kaneko, a cosmopolitan Tokyo aristocrat, had opened a discreet war public-relations bureau in New York, whence he lobbied more energetically than effectively to keep American opinion pro-Japanese through the summer of 1905. James Kanda and William A. Gifford, “The Kaneko Correspondence,” Monumenta Nipponica37.1 (1982); Eugene P. Trani, The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in American Diplomacy (Lexington, Ky., 1969), 19. For the early relationship of TR and Kaneko, see Julian Street, “A Japanese Statesman’s Recollections of Roosevelt,” The New York Times Book Review, 31 July 1921.

39 “The weather remains” John Hay diary, 1 Feb. 1905 (JH).

40 Heart pain Ibid., 28 Jan. 1905.

41 Cassini waved Ibid., 23 Feb. 1905.

42 “destined to be” Qu. in Edel, Henry James, 276.

43 “Roosevelt has the” Henry Watterson to Poultney Bigelow, 22 Feb. 1905 (PB).

CHAPTER 23: MANY BUDDING THINGS

1 Onaisy lies th’ “Mr. Dooley” in Collier’s, Feb. 1903.

2THEODORE ROOSEVELT The following description is based on “TR’s Inaugural Ceremony, 1905” and “TR’s Inauguration, 1905,” newsreel films in TRAF; the diary-letter of Matthew Hale, 4 Mar. 1905, in TRP; Lorant, Life and Times, 422; Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1905; The New York Times, 5 Mar. 1905. Additional touches from Robinson, My Brother, 223–24, and Longworth, Crowded Hours, 67.

3 “My fellow citizens” TR, Works, vol. 17, 311–12.

4 The wind snatched Sir Mortimer Durand diary, 4 Apr. 1905 (HMD).

5 Nobody, with the On or about 11 Dec. 1904, TR had been sparring in the White House with a Navy aide, Lieutenant Dan Tyler Moore, and took “a hot one” to the side of the head. It ruptured a blood vessel in the left eye, and his vision immediately began to blur, degenerating into spotted half-blindness. The disability remained a secret, even from Moore, throughout TR’s presidency. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1065; Leary, Talks with TR, 20–21; Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 18–19.

6 Close observers The New York Times, 5 Mar. 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1133; Hay, Letters, vol. 3, 328. The ring is now in Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

7 Hay could not Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt, 42. The Secretary had previously observed that TR “thought more and talked more” about Lincoln “than any one I ever met in public life” (John Hay to Norman Hapgood, 8 Aug. 1904 [TD]). TR himself admitted to “seeing” Lincoln often in the White House. “For some reason or other he is to me infinitely the most real of the dead Presidents.” See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 392.

8 “a document which” TR, Autobiography, 400.

9 (which had expressed) TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1131.

10 “Much has been” TR, Works, vol. 17, 311.

11 He spoke for Ibid. Remarkably, aside from in his opening “My fellow Americans,” TR did not use the personal pronoun in his address. This remains a record in inaugural oratory.

12 with a new “The Senate is determined to be ‘ugly.’ Their openly expressed opinion is that ‘Teddy’ … wants taking down a peg.” Sir Mortimer Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 7 Mar. 1905 (HMD).

13 Afterward, Roosevelt Butt, Letters, 282. TR described Bacon privately as “a voluble, pinheaded creature … a horrid instance of the mischief that can be done by a man of very slender capacity, if only he possesses great loquacity, effrontery, and an entire indifference to the national welfare.” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1133.

14 So impregnable John Hay diary, 25 Feb. 1905 (JH).

15 floated an enormous Fakirs and spielers along the avenue did brisk business selling miniature replicas of this new American icon. “Take home a Roosevelt ‘big stick.’ ” Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1905.

16 Whatever tomorrow’s TR, Letters, vol. 4, 491; TR to Pierre de Coubertin, 21 Nov. 1904 (TRP); Jay G. Hayden to Hermann Hagedorn, 10 Dec. 1948 (TRB); Leary, Talks with TR, 20.

17 “The President will” John Hay diary, 22 Oct. 1904 (JH).

18ON 10 MARCH Ibid., 10–11 Mar. 1905.

19 He cautioned Hay Ibid., 10 Mar. 1903; Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 253.

20 Even Count Cassini John Hay diary, 16 Mar. 1905 (JH).

21 “We are condemned” Ibid.

22 Hay left Washington The New York Times, 18 Mar. 1905; John Hay diary, 17 Mar. 1905 (JH).

23 Roosevelt was in “Well, Franklin,” TR said to the groom at the reception, “there’s nothing like keeping the name in the family.” Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 288–89. Some years before, as a Harvard undergraduate, Franklin had heard TR speak and “was so impressed … that he vowed he, too, would someday find a way to become active in the political affairs of his country.” Elliott Roosevelt to John A. Gable, 7 July 1989, in Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, summer 1989.

24 Nor did he “Uncle Ted … stole the show and the bridegroom and bridal party sank into an obnoxious oblivion.” Corinne Robinson Alsop, unpublished autobiography, Alsop Papers (TRC), 55. See Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt (New York, 1992), vol. 1, 166–67.

25 To that end EKR diary, 21 Jan. 1905 (TRC); Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 288.

26THE PRESIDENT TOOK Washington Evening Star, 17 Mar. 1905; John Hay diary, 18 Mar. 1905 (JH).

27 Morocco had suddenly For the immediate background to the Moroccan crisis of spring 1905, see Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 355–59, and Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 95–107.

28 Kaiser Wilhelm II John Hay diary, 7 Mar. 1905 (JH).

29 (as Mr. Perdicaris) See above, p. 324.

30 If the President Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 275.

31 and gain immensely Ibid., 356; John Keiger, France and the Origins of the First World War (New York, 1981), 21.
Germany’s sense of exclusion in North Africa derived from the Anglo-French treaty of 8 Apr. 1904, which gave the French control of Morocco in exchange for British control of Egypt.

32 Great Britain, in turn TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1162.

33 “The Kaiser has” Ibid., 1150.

34 Von Sternburg was Ibid., 1155.

35 April came with Tyler Dennett, Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War (New York, 1925), 172–75.

36 a “worthy creature” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 242. Spring Rice was adjudged by his superiors to be too junior, and too likely to be manipulated by TR.

37 who to his Sir Michael Herbert had died prematurely on 30 Sept. 1904.

38 “I wish the Japs” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1150.

39 Rather than leave Ibid.; The New York Times, 4 Apr. 1905.

40 “I am not” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1156.

41 Rumors proliferated Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 1, 415; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 717.

42 The President stayed

Chronological Note: TR’s five-week hunting vacation in Oklahoma (wolves) and Colorado (bears) was preceded by a week’s political tour of Kentucky, the Indian Territory, and Texas, where he attended a Rough Riders reunion. He published accounts of both his hunts in Scribner’s Magazine, Oct. and Nov. 1905, and subsequently included them in Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter (“Wolf-Coursing” and “A Colorado Bear Hunt”). See TR, Works, vol. 3.

43THE FIRST IMPORTANT Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 283; Dennett, Roosevelt, 176.

44 Tokyo did not Dennett, Roosevelt, 176.

45 Roosevelt wired back Ibid., 178.

46 While awaiting TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1161–62.

47 France certainly was Keiger, France and the Origins of the First World War, 21.

48 and Britain, in TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1162.

49 “I do not care” Ibid.

50 One little dog TR, Works, vol. 3, 67.

51 (“One run was”) Kerr, Bully Father, 168. John “Jack” Abernathy was the sort of man TR admired. “A really wonderful fellow, catching the wolves alive by thrusting his gloved hands down between their jaws so that they cannot bite. He caught one wolf alive, tied up this wolf, and then held it on the saddle, followed his dogs in a seven-mile run and helped kill another wolf. He has a pretty wife and five cunning children.”

52 Going without lunch TR, Works, vol. 3, 65. As a testament to TR’s overpowering physicality, ranging from his desire to kill to his palpable love of nature in all its forms, “A Colorado Bear Hunt” makes for enlightening reading.

53 On 24 April TR, Works, vol. 3, 82–83; Denver News, 25 Apr. 1905; Washington Evening Star, 26 May 1905; TR to Philip B. Stewart, 26 Apr. 1905 (TRP). “I notice the President has got two bears,” Ambassador Takahira remarked. “We would be satisfied with one!” Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 55.

54 Then he began TR to Philip B. Stewart, 26 Apr. 1905 (TRP).

55 Late that evening Benjamin J. Barnes to William Loeb, Jr., 25 Apr. 1905 (TRP).

56 “You are hereby” Dennett, Roosevelt, 179–80.

57 Taft added, in Ibid., 180. Henry W. Denison was Baron Komura’s official American adviser in Tokyo.

58 Loeb felt unable The following account is taken from an interview given by Loeb to the columnist “Bob Davis,” published in the New York Sun, 28 Mar. 1929, and later reprinted in Roosevelt House Bulletin, spring 1943. Loeb’s movements are confirmed by the Denver News, 27 Apr. 1905.

59 Before going to bed TR to Philip B. Stewart, 26 Apr. 1905 (TRP).

60 They treated Alexander Lambert to TR, 18 June 1905 (TRP).

61 “Am a good deal” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1167–68.

62 Roosevelt spent Pierre de La Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire (Paris, 1899–1905); TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1179; Jusserand, What Me Befell, 277.

63 Roosevelt read TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1174.

64 “struck by certain” Ibid., 1269.

65 At least, though Ieronim Pavlovich Taburno, The Truth about the War (Kansas City, Mo., 1905).

66WHAT NONE OF Jusserand, What Me Befell, 276; TR on 7 Jan. 1905, qu. in Murakata, “Theodore Roosevelt and William Sturgis Bigelow.” Bigelow, a wealthy Buddhist and connoisseur of Japanese art, was yet another member of TR’s secret du roi. It was he who interested the President in jujitsu.

67 Although Roosevelt had Tyler Dennett believed that had TR been in Washington on 25 April, he could have “hastened the peace by a month or six weeks.” Roosevelt, 182.

68 “in her stomach” TR, Works, vol. 3, 83.

69 his new ambassador “Few Ambassadors have gone to their posts with a letter so full of the mind of their ruler.” John Hay diary, 5 Jan. 1905 (JH). See also TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1134, for the President’s earlier attempts to influence the Russian government “privately and unofficially.” The adroit Meyer was to become the most valuable of all his diplomatic appointments. See Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer.

70 Meyer had managed Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 145–46.

71 The Tsarina’s problem Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 49–50; Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 455, 465–68.

72 “Did you ever” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1158.

73 “my own belief” Ibid., 1179.

74 “As we left ever” TR, Works, vol. 3, 91.

CHAPTER 24: THE BEST HERDER OF EMPERORS SINCE NAPOLEON

1 Thim was th’ “Mr. Dooley” in The Washington Post, 12 Apr. 1903.

2 “Come hither” Wallace Irwin, “The Ballad of Grizzly Gulch,” in At the Sign of the Dollar (New York, 1905), 32.

3 But as he Ibid., 34.

4 (Santo Domingo would) See Gow, “How Did the Roosevelt Corollary?”

5 the better he could Note that he does not mention a word of his involvement even to Elihu Root on 13 May. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1171–72. 387 So backward Irwin, “Ballad of Grizzly Gulch,” 35.

6THE BATTLE OF Tsu Kenneth Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet: American Sea Power Comes of Age (Dulles, Va., 1998), 192.

7 “a civilized” See p. 228.

8 Although he confessed TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1178.

9 His cousin Wilhelm Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 47.

10 Ambassador Cassini Jusserand, What Me Befell, 300; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1232.

11 But France, right Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 122–24. TR had changed his mind about staying aloof from the Moroccan squabble because he saw in it the possibility of “a world conflagration.”

12 So the diplomatic

Chronological Note: On 2 June 1905, TR initiated what Oscar Kraines calls “the first comprehensive inquiry” into federal administration (Oscar Kraines, “The President Versus Congress: The Keep Commission, 1905–1909,” Western Political Quarterly 23.1 [1970]). On his own initiative, and without Congressional direction or confirmation, TR appointed a committee for the purpose of investigating business methods in all federal offices, with an eye toward improving efficiency and cutting costs. Headed by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Charles H. Keep, and composed of James Garfield, Gifford Pinchot, Lawrence Murray, and Frank Hitchcock, the commission first investigated two government-agency scandals (an area technically outside their mandated province) before getting down to the stated task. Keep and his colleagues uncovered copious examples of waste and ineffective methods, and came up with some truly innovative ideas and solutions (many originated by TR himself). The Keep Commission was the first to recommend the idea of a retirement program for federal employees; to propose a classification system for federal salaries and positions; to suggest uniform regulations for work hours and leaves of absence; and to recommend the centralization of supply purchasing and distribution, as well as the reduction of unnecessary government publications and mailings. Despite the Commission’s hard work, Congress refused to pass any related legislation. Kraines notes that while Congress viewed the increasing cost of government with alarm, it viewed with equal (if not greater) alarm the President’s attempts to investigate and reorganize as threats to both legislative control and patronage. The Keep Commission became just another battleground between TR, who wished to expand his executive powers, and a Congress reluctant to surrender any authority. It took until 1920 for Congress to create a retirement system for federal employees.

13ROOSEVELT PUT ALL As early as Aug. 1904, TR had considered Meyer to be Cabinet material, as well as a potential top ambassador. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 890.

14 Although the United States Ambassador When Meyer first met the Tsar, on 12 Apr. 1905, he was able to break the ice by saying that he had “met His Imperial Majesty’s brother … at Kiel, when I was racing there with the Emperor of Germany” (Howe,George von Lengerke Meyer, 142). For a modern assessment, see Wayne A. Wiegand, “George Meyer and Kaiser Wilhelm II,” Mid-America 74.1 (Jan. 1974).

15 The way Meyer Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, passim. Failure to “make the Porc.,” as Cousin Teddy had, became a lifelong neurosis for Franklin Roosevelt. Geoffrey C. Ward, A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1989), 46.

16 “I want a man” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1079.

17 “I am not inclined” Ibid., 1079–80.

18 After only two Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 157.

19 This was not Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 46; Dennett, Roosevelt, 215–16.

20 At all costs TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1203.

21 The move was Ibid., 1203–4.

22 Count Lamsdorff George von Lengerke Meyer diary, 6 June 1905 (GVM). The Tsarina’s birthday is wrongly dated in Dennett, Roosevelt, 193.

23 Meyer found himself Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is taken from Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 158–62.

24 “It is the judgment” Telegram copy, 5 June 1905, in TRP. See also TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1204.

25 As Meyer read George von Lengerke Meyer diary, 7 June 1904 (GVM).

26 “If Russia will” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1204.

27 “… and the President” Ibid.

28 “Mr Roosevelt’s success” London Morning Post, 12 June 1905.

29 He had, in fact Washington Times, 9 June 1905; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1209; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 289–90.

30 “It really is” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1209.

31 Since Edith’s culinary industry Ibid. Pine Knot, 125 miles southwest of Washington, remained TR’s country hideaway throughout his second term. It is now maintained as a museum by the Theodore Roosevelt Association. See William H. Harbaugh, “The Theodore Roosevelts’ Retreat in Southern Albemarle: Pine Knot 1905–1908,” Magazine of Albemarle County History 51 (1993).

32 “The President is” Joseph James Matthews, George W. Smalley: Forty Years a Foreign Correspondent (Chapel Hill, 1973), 158.

33 What was “going on” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222–29; vol. 6, 234–36.

34 “The President feels” TR to Kogoro Takahira, 15 June 1905, qu. in Letters, vol. 4, 1228.

35 There was a world Ibid., 1230; Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 168.

36 “the triumph of Asia” TR, qu. in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 168.

37 Roosevelt had confided Mrs. Lodge was included as an honorary member of TR’s secret du roi. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1202.

38 As he mediated Ibid., 1303; vol. 6, 234.

39 Wilhelm II had Jusserand, What Me Befell, 319–20. Von Sternburg asked if the President was also taking Wilhelm II’s Weltanschauung into account in his Far Eastern negotiations. (The Kaiser had urged peace upon the Tsar, fearing that Nicholas might be assassinated after Tsu Shima.) TR truthfully replied that Meyer had used Wilhelm’s name as well as his own when conversing with the Tsar. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1203; Henry Cabot Lodge (qu. TR in 1905) to Philippe Bunau-Varilla, 12 July 1924 (FBL).

40 The French Ambassador Both the French and British governments shared TR’s fear of war if the Kaiser was not thrown a sacrificial lamb. Delcassé was succeeded on 6 June 1904 by the less imperialistic Maurice Rouvier. For the text of TR’s memo (which he shared with Jusserand), see TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1256–57. Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” chap. 3, provides the most detailed account of TR’s parallel negotiations in 1905. For TR’s own record, see TR, Letters, vol. 6, 231–51.

41 Roosevelt made a point Jusserand, What Me Befell, 302–3.

42 “eight guinea-pig power” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 242.

43 A summons to Sir H. Mortimer Durand diary, 18 June 1904 (HMD).

44 “He told me” Sir H. Mortimer Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 16 June 1904 (HMD).

45 (“You are the only”) TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1203.

46 Lodge, in turn Sir H. Mortimer Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 16 June 1904 (HMD). TR could not resist giving a hint to what he was doing when he told the graduating class at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., on 21 June: “No man in public position can, under penalty of forfeiting the right to the respect of those whose regard he most values, fail as the opportunity comes to do all that in him lies for peace.” Transcript in TRB.

47 Durand noted Ibid. For TR’s two June “posterity letters” to Henry Cabot Lodge, describing his activities, see TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1202–6 and 1221–33.

48JUSSERAND HAD NO Jusserand, What Me Befell, 302–3; John Hay to TR, 16 June 1904 (TD).

49 “I suppose nothing” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1216.

50 In the mid-Atlantic John Hay diary, 13 June 1904 (JH). The vision of Lincoln prompted Hay to write his own epitaph. See Thayer, John Hay, vol. 2, 408–9.

51 Roosevelt was in TR joked to Hay that “the more I saw of the Tsar and the Kaiser, the better I liked the United States Senate.” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1286.

52 As they talked John Hay to Clara Hay, 20 June 1904 (TD).

Chronological Note: On 28 June, TR attended the twenty-fifth reunion of the Harvard Class of 1880. For an excellent account, see Marian L. Peabody, “Theodore Roosevelt Visits Cambridge: Reminiscences of His Hostess’s Daughter,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 3 May 1958.

53NEWS OF THE TR reacted to Hay’s death with genuine grief. But he made clear that he mourned him as “a beloved friend,” and not as a member of the Administration. “For two years he has done little or nothing in the State Dept. What I didn’t do myself wasn’t done at all” (TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1260—or, for harsher criticism, 1271). He attended the Secretary’s funeral in Cleveland on 5 July, accompanied by past and present Cabinet officers. In a strange scene afterward, when the presidential party was picnicking on a railside lawn at Wheelock’s Switch [Ohio] en route east, TR suddenly rose to his knees “and asked God’s mercy” on Hay’s soul. The Cabinet knelt with him for a few minutes of silence under the trees. The New York Times, 7 July 1905.

54 Simultaneously, William Washington Evening Star, 1 and 2 July 1905; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 69–70.

55 “Elihu,” the President Emily Stewart notes, 1905 (PCJ).

56 Root sat silent Dunne, “Remembrances”; Elihu Root, interviewed by Emily Stewart, 13 Sept. 1932 (PCJ). According to Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 449, Root sacrificed an estimated $200,000 in annual income to become Secretary of State at $8,000.

57 He exchanged glances Emily Stewart notes, 1905 (PCJ). This conversation took place on the presidential train after Hay’s funeral in Cleveland.

58ROOSEVELT WAS QUITE Elihu Root, interviewed by Emily Stewart, 13 Sept. 1932 (PCJ).

59 Apart from an Japan declined TR’s suggestion of an armistice. Dennett, Roosevelt, 205.

60 A sense gathered Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 83. TR did not realize that Britain needed Japan’s goodwill in a secret attempt to strengthen the Anglo-Japanese Alliance vis-à-vis India and Korea. The allies were soon to sign a revised agreement protecting British interests in the former and Japanese aspirations in the latter. See Ian H. Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894–1907 (London, 1966).

61 mutiny aboard Dennett, Roosevelt, 205.

62 Wilhelm II seemed Ibid., 208.

63 Roosevelt was reinforced Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 476.

64 “Now, oh best” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1283–84.

65 “My feeling is” Ibid., 1284.

66 Knowing he could Ibid.

67 Roosevelt’s admiration Ibid., 1233.

68 Eight years before Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 572–73.

69 “In a dozen years” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1233–34.

70 The oracular tone Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 129; Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 85. According to John Barrett, whom TR asked to report on the situation in California, anti-Japanese hysteria was largely due to propaganda put about by Michael H. De Young, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, for reasons as much to do with newspaper circulation as any desire to “embarrass” the President. At any rate, the “yellow peril” propaganda was dangerously effective. John Barrett to [unknown], ca. 6 July 1905, and TR to Barrett, 15 July 1905 (JB); Thomas A. Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American Crises (Stanford, 1934), 10–11.

71 He was afraid When Cassini blustered that Russia “was fighting the battles of the white race” in the Far East, TR, thinking of the Kishinev pogrom, asked him “why in that case she had treated other members of the white race even worse than she had treated Japan.” The Ambassador’s reply was not recorded. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222.

72 He asked Lloyd Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 86. TR also vehemently protested discrimination against Chinese immigrants, with the exception of “coolies,” or peasants. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1235–36.

73HAPPILY, THE PRESIDENT Taft’s party left Washington on 30 June 1905, and sailed from San Francisco on 8 July. For varying accounts of the trip, see Ralph E. Minger, “Taft’s Mission to Japan: A Study in Secret Diplomacy,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (1961), and Stacy Rozek Cordery, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Private Diplomat: Alice Roosevelt and the 1905 Far Eastern Junket,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 352–67.

74 Roosevelt had asked Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 384.

75 the flare and smell This was Alice’s own phrase. Longworth, Crowded Hours, 70.

76 She was, if anything Ibid., 72–77, 68.

77 When they arrived Ibid., 79–84.

78 On 27 July William H. Taft to Elihu Root, 29 July 1905 (“Agreed Memorandum of Conversation Between Prime Minister of Japan and Myself”), cable transmission reproduced in John Gilbert Reid, ed., “Taft’s Telegram to Root,” Pacific Historical Review, March 1940 (hereafter “Taft-Katsura Memorandum”). Taft addressed himself to Root, but was communicating with TR. His cable cost the United States taxpayer just over one thousand dollars, or about $19,400 today.

79 Although the memorandum Esthus, Roosevelt and Japan, 102.

Historiographical Note: Esthus notes the illogicality whereby conspiratorial historians have insisted, over the years, in calling this document the “Taft-Katsura Agreement.” Its own title, qu. above, shows “only that the two parties agreed that the memorandum was an accurate record of what was said.”

Esthus notes further that the memorandum, for all its subsequent reputation as a “secret pact” and progenitor of the myriad “executive agreements” characteristic of 20th-century diplomacy, lay forgotten for nearly twenty years, after serving its original informal purpose. TR specifically denied on 5 Oct. that there had been any quid pro quo. The memorandum was meant “merely to clear up Japan’s attitude [regarding the Philippines], which had been purposefully misrepresented by pro-Russian sympathizers.” Its separately numbered statements about Korea and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance stood “entirely apart” from that primary concern (TR, Letters, vol. 5, 46).

In further support of TR’s denial, Katsura himself denied Japanese rumors of a “bargain” concerning Korea. The Prime Minister stated that United States policy toward Korea in 1905 struck him as “entirely spontaneous” (Esthus, Roosevelt and Japan, 105). Index entries under “Korea” in TR, Letters, vol. 4, et seq., show that TR’s own contemptuous attitude toward the Hermit Kingdom was formed long before the Taft-Katsura conversation.

For the rediscovery of the cable, see Tyler Dennett, “President Roosevelt’s Secret Pact with Japan,” Current History, Oct. 1924. For a sample modern interpretation by the conspiracy school, see Walter LaFeber, “Betrayal in Tokyo,” Constitution, fall 1994.

80 As the Prime Minister Taft-Katsura Memorandum.

81 Allowing Koreans Ibid. For Japan’s previous efforts, diplomatic and military, to colonize Korea, see Dennett, Roosevelt, 96–111. See also M. Hane, “Theodore Roosevelt and Korea: The U.S. Response to the Japanese Policy to Make Korea Its Protectorate,”Journal of American History 82.4 (1996).

82 Regarding the Philippines Taft-Katsura Memorandum.

83 Taft said that Ibid. For reactions to Root’s appointment, see Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 47–51.

84 “If I have” Taft-Katsura Memorandum.

85YOUR CONVERSATION TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1293; Dennett, Roosevelt, 110–11.

86ALICE, UNAWARE Alice Roosevelt diary, 27 July and passim 1905 (ARL).

87 At a dinner entertainment Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 259.

88 Since her father Teague, Mrs. L., 4–5; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 122.

89 Her last impression Longworth, Crowded Hours, 85.

90 a sketch of his daughter Facsimile from family collection, privately held. TR’s superscript reads “Not a posterity letter.”

91 At the time Dennett, Roosevelt, 198–200.

92 Washington was, of TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1226.

93 Only one met Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 66. The choice of Portsmouth was announced officially on 12 July 1904.

94 The pretty, little Ibid., 67–70. The building (no. 86) still stands.

95 Their respective Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 115–16.

96AT SIX AND A half Ibid., 74–76; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 284; E. J. Dillon, “Sergius Witte,” Review of Reviews, Sept. 1905.

97 Henry Adams had Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 284; John Hay diary, 16 Feb. 1905 (JH); Charles Hardinge to Lord Lansdowne, 4 Jan. 1905, in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 1A, 3, 1. The best contemporary portrait of Witte is in Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, chap. 30.

98 Roosevelt had hoped Dennett, Roosevelt, 42–43; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1276. Ito had actually proposed a Russo-Japanese alliance in 1902, when Witte was the Tsar’s finance minister.

99 Komura was, like Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 72; Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 398. The latter memorably describes Komura as having “an intelligent face, but of parchment written all over with hieroglyphics.”

100 Not only that Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 225–26.

101 The four plenipotentiaries For a complete list of delegates to the Portsmouth Conference, see Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 72–73, 76–77.

102 That solemn engagement Philip G. Thompson notes (Portsmouth Conference) (HKB). The date of this visit was 27 July. The New York Times, 28 July 1905.

103 a space both deep and high The following description is based on David H. Wallace, Historic Furnishings Report: Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (Harpers Ferry, W. Va., 1989), vol. 1, 51–52, 246–52 (photographs taken in July 1905). See also Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill (New York, 1954), 232–35. Komura was the first VIP received by TR in the North Room.

104 heavy Philippine hardwoods The Roosevelts took pride in the fact that “every bit of wood or stone [in the North Room] came from the United States or her possessions.” Roosevelt, All in the Family, 7–9.

105 “Framed” thus in Japan’s terms are reproduced in Dennett, Roosevelt, 231–32. See also Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 95–96.

106 Arrogant though these Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 96.

107 As for the indemnity TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1293.

108 hard numbers of yen A member of the Japanese delegation hinted that the indemnity request might run as high as three million yen. J. J. Korostovetz, Pre-War Diplomacy: The Russo-Japanese Problem: Diary of J. J. Korostovetz (London, 1920), 28 (hereafter Korostovetz, Diary).

109 After Komura and Takahira TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1293. Philippe Bunau-Varilla to Francis B. Loomis, 27 July 1905 (FBL); Loomis to TR, 28 July 1905 (TRP).

110 Roosevelt was worried TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1293. TR here displayed acute intuition. According to Baron Rosen, Witte “would not have hesitated to consent to the payment of a war indemnity provided it could be accomplished under some plausible disguise.” Roman Rosen, Forty Years of Diplomacy (London, 1922), vol. 1, 263–64.

111 his friend Kentaro See above, Interlude, p. 368.

112 The Russian plenipotentiaries Korostovetz, Diary, 31.

113 His guests arrived Ibid.

114 Still less could Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 112, quotes some of the Tsar’s adamant instructions, which formed the basis of Witte’s negotiating brief.

115 Their country Rosen, Forty Years, vol. 1, 263–64. Sakhalin was to remain a Russian strategic trigger-spot for most of the rest of the century: vide the downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983.

116 Paradoxically, the Ibid., 264.

117 Baron Rosen’s suspicion Ibid.

118 Witte was enormous Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 386–87; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 61. TR’s impression of Witte was not altogether pleasant, and turned to outright dislike as the peace conference progressed. TR, Letters, vol. 5, 22–23.

119 “We are not” Korostovetz, Diary, 31, qu. Witte’s own repetition, later that day, of his words to TR.

120 However, Witte Ibid., 32.

121 Witte watched Witte, Memoirs, vol. 2, 442. It is probable that Witte told TR, for example, that Japan had just as many imperialistic designs in Manchuria as Russia did, and considerably more in Korea. And by her very nature, she was likely to close the Open Doors in both those countries with louder slams than any yet heard. After Portsmouth, Japan did indeed immediately close the door on Korea, and by the time TR left office she had begun to shut it in Manchuria, too. By 1938, Japan had used her military power to close off all of China to the West, and her subsequent moves upon the Philippines, not to mention Pearl Harbor, made wastepaper of the Taft-Katsura Memorandum. It is moot, of course, whether China and Korea would have fared any better under Russian domination. See Dennett, Roosevelt, 238–39, for the role of public relations in formulating American attitudes in 1905.

122 Roosevelt said Korostovetz, Diary, 32.

123 The plenipotentiaries Dennett, Roosevelt, 240 “I have brought them to a cool spring,” TR said later that afternoon. “It remains to be seen whether they will drink of it or not.” Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 362.

124 Tweedledum and Tweedledee See above, p. 168.

125 from next Wednesday When the delegations got to Portsmouth, they found that TR had made no arrangements for meetings, leaving them to construct their own schedule. Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 127.

126 He sent two Korostovetz, Diary, 35. Except where otherwise indicated, the following is taken from this source, plus New York Sun, 6 Aug. 1905, and Henry J. Forman’s excellent oral history of his coverage of the Mayflower reception for the Sun syndicate. Forman was one of the bright young reporters TR liked to cultivate with exclusive favors. He was given a presidential pass to remain on board during the ceremonies, and permission to dispatch bulletins ashore by rowboat shuttle (dropping them out through a porthole). A transcript of Forman’s memoir, “So Brief a Time” (1959–1960), conducted by Doyce B. Nunis, is in the Department of Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA.

127 glittered like a ballroom The simile is Forman’s.

128 From then on It is not likely that a peace conference ever began more noisily. The Mayflower’s logbook records twenty-one guns for TR, nineteen each for the plenipotentiaries, then respective honors for every Cabinet officer, admiral, and general who came aboard. O.H.M. McPherson, “The U.S.S. Mayflower, a Presidential Prerogative,” Yachting, July 1992.

129 the Stars and Stripes This flag now hangs at in the North Room at Sagamore Hill.

130 Since Komura and Rosen, Forty Years, vol. 1, 265.

131 The door to Witte, Memoirs, vol. 2, 434, 439.

132 As the President handled The simile of a hostess is again that of Forman, who was stationed in the room with a notebook. It was the first decisive moment of the peace conference, a pas de deux or pas de quatre, a symbolic crossing of the threshold between formality and conviviality. The subsequent relaxation of tension was not to last.

133 Asia and Russia “Two and two they came, arm in arm.” Forman’s original eyewitness account makes plain that TR and his senior guests did not, as often stated, enter all in a row. He led the way, as President of the United States, and the plenipotentiaries followed, “Baron Komura’s shoulder touching Mr. Witte’s elbow.” Witte managed, by means of his longer stride, to get a foot over the threshold first.
134 Those set aside Not even the punctilious Rosen recalled his orientation. “We were seated all in a group surrounding our genial host” (Forty Years, vol. 1, 265). Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 222, says without attribution that the principals shared a long wall seat, while TR took “the only chair in the room, facing them.”
135 To Komura, he Rosen tried to interpret, but was ignored.

Historical Note: TR read French easily, as indicated by his consumption of all of La Corce and Cahun’s Turcs et Mongols in 1905 (“with such thoroughness … that at the end it was dangling out of the covers”). He spoke the language with equal ease (“Je le parle comme une langue touranienne”), although John Hay noticed that his grammar was “entirely lawless,” and Jules Jusserand was amused by his occasional, entirely unself-conscious pauses before settling on le mot juste (TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1268; André Zardieu, “Trois Visites à M. Roosevelt,” Le Temps, 15 Apr. 1908; Thayer, John Hay, vol. 2, 356; Jusserand, What Me Befell, 338).

According to Ethel Roosevelt Derby (interview, 1962 [TRB]), her father read German “equally well”—works of literature, history, and science, as well as poetry. In youth, he could recite stretches of the Nibelungenlied by heart. As President, TR often conversed in German with Germans (Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 1, 373; Butt, Letters, 116). He was less versed in Italian, although, as noted above, he read E. de Michelis’s L’Origine degli Indo-Europei from cover to cover in 1904. For more on TR’s “not inconsiderable” linguistic achievements, see Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 34–35.

134 Other guests Review of Reviews, Sept. 1905.

135 Roosevelt went on See TR, Works, vol. 18, 409.

136 When lunch was Rosen’s position right next to the President, opposite Komura, was not accidental. As Russian Ambassador to the United States, “I was the ranking person of both delegations.” Rosen, Forty Years, vol. 1, 265.

137AT TWENTY MINUTES New York Sun, 6 Aug. 1905, precisely gives departure times. In what is possibly a jingoistic slip of the pen, Korostovetz has the Dolphin wallowing in the Mayflower’s wake. Diary, 37.

138 “I think we” Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 223, qu. Joseph Bucklin Bishop.

139 The self-important New York Sun, 19 Aug. 1905; Forman, “So Brief a Time,” 34–35. For the negotiations up to this point, see Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 128–38. Trani’s overall account of the conference is the only one based on Japanese and Russian, as well as American, primary sources.

140 His news today Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 137–39.

141 Later that evening George Meyer to TR, 18 Aug. 1905 (TRP); Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 139.

142 Roosevelt detected See, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222–23.

143 A fantasy began Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 306.

144 He told Kaneko Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 140.

145 That night, Roosevelt Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 296–97.

146 It was galvanizing The telegram, addressed to Witte, read: “I earnestly request that you send either Baron Rosen or some other gentleman who is in your confidence to see me immediately, so that I may through him send you a strictly confidential message.” Dennett, Roosevelt, 251–52.

147 Roosevelt was playing Korostovetz, Diary, 92.

148 He said that three Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 141.

149 “We Americans” Qu. in ibid., 142.

150 Roosevelt seemed to know TR was receiving regular briefs from the reporter John Callan O’Laughlin, a member of his secret du roi with good connections in Portsmouth. See Dennett, Roosevelt, 252n.

151 He asked Rosen Korostovetz, Diary, 91–92; Dennett, Roosevelt, 252. TR was unaware, as he talked, that Nicholas II had that day summoned the Duma (national assembly)—the first truly democratic step taken by any Russian monarch.

152 Rosen, politely masking The ambassador kept his anger for later (Rosen, Forty Years, vol. 1, 104; Korostovetz, Diary, 99).

153 “If it is our” Qu. in Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 299. TR’s proposal was rejected outright by Nicholas II (Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 142). Throughout the conference, the Russians felt they were being leaned on by TR, because the Japanese were rigidly silent about his equal pressure on them. He compared his own attitude as being that of “a very polite but also very insistent Dutch uncle.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 1.

154 On Monday, the President Dennett, Roosevelt, 253.

155 “I earnestly ask” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1307–8.

156 “not an inch” Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 138.

157 The cable went TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1306–8.

158 “I think I ought” Ibid., 1308–9.

159 Then, putting TR to Jules Jusserand, 21 Aug. 1905 (JJ). In a handwritten postscript, TR adds: “I have received a couple of brand-new pipe dreams from my constant correpondent [Wilhelm II].”

160 “I cannot” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 707.

161THE SIGHT OF Sergei Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 145.

162 “Russia is not” George Meyer to TR, 23 Aug. 1905, qu. in TR, Letters, vol. 5, 5–6. See ibid., 6–9, for more cables to and from TR during the crisis period.

163 On the same day For an indication of TR’s frenzied activity in this period (“I am having my hair turned gray”), see Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 298–302.

164 Another year of war TR, Letters, vol. 5, 1312–13.

165 The letter was wired Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 301–2.

166ON FRIDAY, 25 August For more on TR’s famous dive, see Douglas, The Many-Sided Roosevelt, 104–5; Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 226–29.

167 cigarette after cigarette Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 399. This dramatic story was told by Witte after the conference. Witte wrote later that he had spent the previous night “sobbing and praying.” Witte, Memoirs, vol. 2, 440.

168 Rumors spread over the weekend Korostovetz, Diary, 102; Dennett, Roosevelt, 260.

169 On Tuesday, 29 August Korostovetz, Diary, 107–8.

170 Komura sat Dennett, Roosevelt, 261.

171HENRY J. FORMAN This incident occurred on 10 Aug. 1905. Forman, “So Brief a Time,” 29–31.

172 Then Roosevelt was Ibid., 30.

173 “the best herder” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 719.

174 “It’s a mighty” Harold Phelps Stokes, “Yale, the Portsmouth Treaty, and Japan,” privately printed memoir, 1948 (TRC).

CHAPTER 25: MERE FORCE OF EVENTS

1 Ye see, th’ fact Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Observations, 97.

2 “Accept my congratulations” Qu. by TR in Letters, vol. 5, 9. For the plaudits of other foreign government officials, see Benson J. Lossing, Our Country (New York, 1908), vol. 8, 2084–87.

Chronological Note: On 13 Sept. 1905, in a development that greatly amused TR, Nicholas II called for a second Hague Peace Conference. TR asked the Russian Ambassador if this meant that His Majesty wished to have it appear that he (not TR in 1904) had conceived of calling a second conference. When Baron Rosen answered yes, TR told him that he was delighted to have the Tsar take the initiative in the matter, and that he would heartily back him up. While relieved that it would not fall to him, once again, to “appear as a professional peace advocate,” the President did find a “rather grim irony” in the fact that the man who had so prolonged the Russo-Japanese War was now taking the lead in a “proposition toward world peace” (TR, Letters, vol. 5, 25–26, 30–31). The Second Hague Conference met on 15 June 1907.

3 The Mikado’s enigmatic TR, Letters, vol. 5, 8–9. After the Portsmouth Peace Treaty was signed, TR sent Mutsuhito the largest of his Colorado bearskins. According to Kaneko, “His Majesty was greatly pleased with the skin, because of the emblematic nature of the gift.” Street, “Japanese Statesman’s Recollections.”

4 “It is enough” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 1–2. Taft had, meanwhile, returned home with most of his official party.

5 Alice had returned Longworth, Crowded Hours, 106–7; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 15; Review of Reviews, Oct. 1904.

6 This did not “I confess that we came out from [the] Navy Yard in Portsmouth with all the booties as we could carry and cast a discreet smile on our ‘wily Oriental faces.’ ” Kentaro Kaneko to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 7 Sept. 1905, in Kanda and Gifford, “Kaneko Correspondence,” 2.

7 After Tsu Shima TR qu. in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 168; Ferguson, “John Barrett” (JB); Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy, 313ff. Many years later, when Philip C. Jessup asked about TR’s conduct of Far Eastern affairs from 1905 to 1909, Root replied dryly, “He kept them in his hands.” Interview, 13 Sept. 1932 (ER).

8 a new recruit See James Brown Scott, Robert Bacon: Life and Letters (New York, 1923), 105; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 455–56.

9 Socialism was spreading British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 1A, 3, 162–63; Jusserand, What Me Befell, 322.

10 The “odd year” Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 26–27, points out that, by statute, the second and fourth congressional sessions of the four-year cycle had to end on 4 March. That made each a mere three months long.

11 One issue above Ibid.; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 198. It is not known if TR saw Baker’s earlier conspiracistic articles about J. P. Morgan and “The Great Northern Pacific Deal” in Collier’s, Oct.-Nov. 1901. If so, he would have been able to trace the progressivist neurosis to the first weeks of his own presidency.

12 “law-abidingness” S. S. McClure to TR, 18 July 1905 (TRP). See also Philip Loring Allen, America’s Awakening: The Triumph of Righteousness in High Places (New York, 1906), chap. 1.

13 Doubtless somebody “Somebody” by the name of Herbert Croly had indeed just begun work on what was to become the basic text of Progressivism: The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909). See Croly, “Why I Wrote My Latest Book,” World’s Work, May 1910, and “The Memoirs of Herbert Croly: An Unpublished Document,” ed. Charles Hirschfeld, New York History 58.3 (1977).

14 What particularly S. S. McClure to TR, 18 July 1905 (TRP). The first five chapters of Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, remain the best survey of the rise of Progressivism in early twentieth-century America.

15 Now here, in the Ray Stannard Baker to TR, 9 Sept. 1905 (TRP). The page proofs are wrongly identified in TR, Letters, vol. 5, 25, as coming from Baker’s first (Nov. 1905) article in the series. See text, below.

16 Let Baker, Steffens See Eugene L. Huddleston, “The Generals up in Wall Street,” Railroad History 145 (1981), for an alternative look at Ray Stannard Baker and his work. While history has viewed Baker as one of its greatest muckrakers and a wholly impartial analyst of runaway corporate power, Huddleston maintains that Baker was neither as objective nor as well-informed as Progressives then and since have made him out to be. He claims that Baker oversimplified complex issues, fell short in command of technical data governing railroad rates, operations, and regulation, and used as his most trusted background source an outdated, fifteen-year-old book, A. B. Stickney’s The Railway Problem. Huddleston also feels that Baker often relied on moralistic rhetoric designed to stir up emotion in an effort to disguise the fact that he had little solid evidence of wrongdoing. In Huddleston’s judgment, Baker’s solid reputation today is based partly on the esteem accorded him by TR, who consulted with the journalist in drafting railroad-reform legislation, even including a paragraph almost exactly in Baker’s words in his Message to Congress seeking such legislation. Time would demonstrate that TR used Baker to help accomplish his goal of rallying popular support for the new legislation—Baker’s six-part series appeared at just the right time, November 1905–June 1906, to help the Hepburn Act through Congress—only to dismiss his brand of journalism as less than honorable. Baker’s disillusionment with TR led him to ardent support of Woodrow Wilson, and he later became Wilson’s official biographer.

17 “I haven’t” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 25.

18 Just how “far” Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 359–65, shows that TR gave advance notice of his legislative intentions to the “short” Congress of 1904–1905, both in his Fourth Annual Message and in a remarkable speech to the Union Club of Philadelphia on 30 January 1905. Neither utterance had any lasting effect, due to the distraction of the Inauguration and the quick death of the Fifty-eighth Congress.

19 On 30 September Cheney, Personal Memoirs, 122–23.

20 The President approached New York Sun, 1 Oct. 1905.

21 Two articles of his Scribner’s, Oct. and Nov. 1905.

22 It supplemented TR, Works, vol. 24, 559–62. TR’s income from his writings in 1905 was $18,487, about $341,000 in modern dollars. Checks came from five different publishers (TRP, passim).

23 livre broché A small, sewn paperback. Léon Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt (Paris, 1905). Copy in TRB.

24 Bazalgette admitted Ibid., 25–26. All translations are by the author, who has occasionally repunctuated Bazalgette’s ornate sentences for contemporary clarity.

25 Perhaps the most Ibid., 39, citing in particular the famous passage about the moonlit mockingbird in chap. 4 of The Wilderness Hunter. See TR, Works, vol. 2, 62–63.

26 “He was able” Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 29.

27 “the supreme political” Ibid., 5.

28 “that most dangerous” Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 193.

29 “The tone is resolute” Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 21.

30 “Such is the magnetism” Ibid., 24.

31 “When, for example” “Lorsque l’outrance qui est dans sa nature lui fait coté le spread-eaglism.” Ibid.

32 “He has only one” Ibid., 25.

33 an attribute Bazalgette Another attribute that escaped Bazalgette was TR’s extraordinary political caution. See Marks, Velvet on Iron, 144–47.

34 the worst-beaten candidate The phrase is Henry Pringle’s, as is much of the political information in this paragraph. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 367.

35 Having found Ibid., 360–61; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 147–52. See John M. Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Legislative Process: Tariff Revision and Railroad Regulation, 1904–1906,” in TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1333–42.

36 The most he John M. Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act: Toward an Orderly System of Control,” in TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1560.

37 Another law he Charles C. Goetsch, Essays on Simeon E. Baldwin (West Hartford, Conn., 1981), 82–185; TR, Works, vol. 17, 253–54.

38 That call had Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 158; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 34. The nation’s biggest news story in the fall of 1905 was an investigation by New York State authorities into attempts by E. H. Harriman and other financiers to speculate with the Equitable Life Assurance Company’s giant pool of cash. See Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, chap. 3.

39ONE OF THE FIRST TR, Works, vol. 3, xxix–xxx. Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter contained much rewriting but only one essay previously unpublished, “At Home.” This charming piece was written in the summer of 1905, no doubt as a respite from the strains of peacemaking. Unquotable out of context, its deeply disturbing last line communicates the strange blend of love and cruelty with which hunters “kill the thing they love.” See Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 363–64.

40 “I am hurt” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 86.

41 “the real spirit” Ibid., 69.

42 Kermit had found TR, Letters to Kermit, 285; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 1303; Mezey, Poetry of E. A. Robinson, xxix–xxx. According to Robinson, TR cogently proffered the Custom House job in six words: “Good salary. Little work. Soft snap!” Ibid., 196.

43 In further generosity TR, Works, vol. 14, 360–64; Outlook, 12 Aug. 1905; Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 22. Interestingly, TR had rejected a suggestion that he appoint Robinson to a position in Britain, on the grounds that “our literary men are always hurt by going abroad.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 1155.

Historical Note: TR’s review (and strong-arming of Scribner’s into acquiring and republishing The Children of the Night) proved something of an embarrassment to him. He was chastised by outraged literary critics for trespassing on their territory and neglecting affairs of state. Robinson’s sales and professional reputation were not much enhanced. The poet spent the next four years doing nothing at the Customs House except reading the newspaper every morning. Relieved of financial worry, he continued to drink, and wrote hardly any verse. Robinson was of the poetic ilk that finds inspiration in privation. In 1910, he dedicated one of his finest collections, The Town Down the River, to TR, and went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes. When Robinson lay dying of cancer in 1935, Kermit Roosevelt came regularly to sit with him.

44 Tensions were high Josephus Daniels, Editor in Politics (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941), 494–95; speech typescript, 19 Oct. 1905 (TRP).

45 The floors were Clarence Martin, A Glimpse of the Past: The History of Bulloch Hall (Roswell, Ga., 1987), 11.

46 “It is my very” Speech carbon, 20 Oct. 1905 (TRB). See also John Allen Gable, “My Blood Is Half Southern: President Theodore Roosevelt’s Speeches in Roswell and Atlanta, Georgia on October 20, 1905,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 17.4 (1991).

47 The farther south Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 144; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Theodore Roosevelt in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 3.3 (1973).

48 He avoided Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 238; TR on 12 Oct. 1905, qu. in Gable, “My Blood Is Half Southern.” See also Ziglar, “Decline of Lynching in America.” TR proceeded to New Orleans, whence he sailed for Washington on the USSWest Virginia, celebrating his forty-seventh birthday at sea.

49ROOSEVELT WAS SO M. A. De Wolfe Howe, James Ford Rhodes: American Historian (New York, 1929), 119, citing Rhodes’s own memo of the evening.

50 “two hundred thousand” Rendered as digits in ibid., 120.

51 (At least Alice) Howe, James Ford Rhodes, 120–21. Alice’s engagement was announced on 13 Dec. 1905. Stacy A. Rozek, “ ‘The First Daughter of the Land’: Alice Roosevelt as Presidential Celebrity, 1902–1903,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 19.1 (1989).

52 l’outrance qui Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 24. See the collection of imprecations amassed by Wagenknecht in Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt, 119–29.

Historical Note: As TR and Taft sat together on the night of 16 November 1905, Japanese guards surrounded the imperial palace in Seoul, Korea. Emperor Kojong capitulated to them. Then, in Philip Jessup’s words, “the Korean Legation in Washington transferred its archives to that of Japan, and Korea passed out of the family of nations.” Jessup,Elihu Root, vol. 2, 6.

53A SURPRISE RESULT Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1919), 96; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 70–71.

54 “We are at this moment” McClure’s, Nov. 1905 (emphasis added).

55 “Out of hopelessness” Ibid.

56 “In our industrial” TR, Works, vol. 17, 315–16.

57 The Department of Justice Ibid., 318.

58 the law should be positive In calling for the enactment of his program, TR used the phrase affirmative action. Ibid.

59 Its prime focus Ibid., 322.

60 The President kept Ibid., 321.

61 To Aldrich, Depew Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1561.

CHAPTER 26: THE TREASON OF THE SENATE

1 But now whin “Mr. Dooley” qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 87.

2“YOU AND I” George Baer to Stephen B. Elkins, ca. Nov. 1905, memo in PCK.

3 The railroads were weary Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 123–24; Oscar D. Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins (Pittsburgh, 1955), 266–67. For the complex (and ultimately inconclusive) story of TR’s previous “trial run” at tariff and railroad rate reform in 1904–1905, see Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Legislative Process,” and TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1028–29. See also Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 147–53. At that time, TR traded away his demands for tariff reform in 1905 in order to gain support for rate regulation in 1906.

4 “the most popular” Washington Evening Star, 17 Jan. 1906.

5 “The newspapers are” Ibid. Tillman is here creatively misquoting Julius Caesar, I.ii.

6 Another weapon Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 202; Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 420; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 166.

7 In consequence of Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 159.

8 He was fifty The author owes much to Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 213ff., for this description of LaFollette. Other sources are Ray Stannard Baker, Notebook no. 2 (RSB); Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 72–73; and Thelen, Robert M. LaFollette, which reveals among other things that the Senator subsisted on a diet of “granose biscuits, English walnuts, zwieback, butter and milk” (36). See also LaFollette’s Autobiography, ed. Allan Nevins (Madison, 1960 [1913]).

9 “Mr. Roosevelt is” Twain to Albert B. Paine, 9 Jan. 1906, in Mark Twain, Autobiography (New York, 1924), vol. 2, 290–91.

10 the outdated system On the same day that TR welcomed LaFollette to Washington, the banker Jacob Schiff was warning the New York Chamber of Commerce that the booming American economy was destined to collapse if something was not done about the currency question. Kolko, Triumph of Conservatism, 152ff.

11 Elihu Root, a These sentences closely paraphrase Root’s language in an interview with N. W. Stephenson, 26 Jan. 1925, on the subject of TR v. Nelson Aldrich in early 1906. Copy in NWA.

12 “the radical elements” Ibid. The New York Herald, early in 1906, estimated that seventy Americans were worth more than $35 million, or $630 million apiece in contemporary dollars, untaxed. Along with five thousand lesser multimillionaires, they controlled one sixteenth of the nation’s wealth. The Herald darkly predicted “billionaires” by mid-century, unless some redistribution took place. Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 16–17.

13 “He told me” Sir Mortimer Durand to Sir Edward Grey, 11 Jan. 1906 (HMD).

14 “study of Cromwell” TR had written a biography of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell (New York, 1889). See Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 705–7.

15 The trouble with George E. Mowry and Judson A. Grenier, introduction to David Graham Phillips, The Treason of the Senate (Chicago, 1964), 23; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 131.

16 As if on Mowry and Grenier in Phillips, Treason, 28.

17 Roosevelt was not Ibid., 26; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 131; Baker, American Chronicle, 184–85. TR looked with particular displeasure on the Cosmopolitan series because, six months before, Phillips had published a book of essays, The Reign of Gilt, mocking him for monarchical behavior.

18IN ALGECIRAS Marks, Velvet on Iron, 67; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 145.

19 White was under Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 162–63.

20SENATOR ELKINS TOOK Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 268–70.

21 On 27 January Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 159.

22 Tall and stately Powers, Portraits of Half a Century, 219; Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 2, 6. See also John Ely Briggs, William Peters Hepburn (Des Moines, 1919).

23 the greatest challenge Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 267–68.

24 More precisely Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1563; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 226.

25 At one o’clock The following account is taken from Ray Stannard Baker, Notebook no. 2 (RSB). See Steffens, Autobiography, 509–11, for another such interview.

26 (as Elkins preferred) Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 275.

27 “I do not represent” Baker repeated these words to Lincoln Steffens that night, and Steffens said, “I gave him that yesterday” (Baker notebook no. 2 [RSB]). This is entirely possible: TR had previously borrowed the phrase fetish of competition from Baker. However, there is no record of Steffens visiting the White House for at least a week prior to 8 Feb. 1903, and readers of his memoirs will be familiar with his need to trump every conversational exchange. Steffens also claimed to have given TR the phrase a square deal in the White House: “ ‘That’s it,’ he shouted.… ‘I’ll throw that out in my next statement.’ And he did” (Steffens, Autobiography, 506). But see p. 233 for TR’s apparent coining of the phrase, with variations, on tour in the West.

28 Even as he spoke Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 203; LaFollette’s Autobiography, 174.

29 One of the Senator’s Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1560, 1564.

30 “The one thing” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 56.

31THE COSMOPOLITAN’S SERIES March issue, on sale 15 Feb. 1906; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 45; La Follette’s Autobiography, 176. For a contemporary group portrait of the progressives of 1906, see Allen, America’s Awakening.

32 Perhaps the fiercest The New York Times, 22 Aug. 1988. The original, pre-Doubleday text has been reissued as The Lost First Edition of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” ed., Gene DeGruson (Memphis, 1988).

33 Now, at last The Jungle sold more than one hundred thousand copies in 1906, and was read by an estimated one million Americans. Christine Scriabine, “Upton Sinclair and the Writing of The Jungle,” Chicago History 10.1 (1981).

34 Senator Beveridge sent John Braeman, Albert J. Beveridge: American Nationalist (Chicago, 1971), 101–10.

35 “I recommend” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 381.

36 In requesting Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 483ff. This chapter of Sullivan’s great saga is an exquisitely detailed piece of social history.

37 Sinclair was but Ibid., 479; Upton Sinclair, The Jungle [1906 version], ed. James R. Barrett (Chicago, 1988), 2, 334.

38ALICE ROOSEVELT HAD Teague, Mrs. L., 128; Carol Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (New York, 1988), 102–3.

39 frenzied press activity There are 415 large scrap albums of wedding reportage in the archives of the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, D.C.

40 Roosevelt seemed Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 106; Rozek, “ ‘The First Daughter of the Land’ ”; Teague, Mrs. L., 122–23. Alice’s train was arranged by her cousin Franklin, who was good at that sort of thing and consequently known, among the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, as “Featherduster,” and “Miss Nancy.” Alsop, “Autobiography,” 2; Rixey, Bamie, 92.

41 “I want you” Teague, Mrs. L., 128. Alice Roosevelt Longworth frequently repeated this remark to family members, always emphasizing that it was only half humorous.

42 “Alice—Alice” Washington Evening Star, 23 Aug. 1908.

43ROOSEVELT READ TR, Letters, vol. 5, 156–57. John E. Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’: A Reassessment,” Mid-America 46.2 (1964), shows that TR’s reaction to muckraking in 1906 was consistent with his views as early as 1901.

44 “I need hardly” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 156; see also vol. 3, 142. In 1906, Hearst was not only contesting his recent defeat as a candidate for the mayoralty of New York, but preparing to run for Governor.

45 The pity was Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 531–34. Aldrich also yielded to pressure from TR and the American Medical Association.

46 “The tone” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 19.

47 If so, the Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 273–74; Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1564; The New York Times, 24 Feb. 1906.

48 four other Republicans Aldrich, Foraker, John Kean of New Jersey, and the former Governor of Massachusetts, Winthrop Murray Crane, appointed to the Senate in 1904 after the death of George Frisbie Hoar. Senator Tillman, who voted in favor, was the ranking Democrat on the committee.

49 Now began Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 244–45; Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 204–5.

50 The issue of Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1565–66.

51 So, amid For an alternative metaphor, see Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 242: “So the battle raged until the wind-batteries had literally blown themselves out.”

52WAS ONE TO Sinclair, Jungle [1906], 36.

53 (“Eik! Eik!”)“Eik! Eik!”) Ibid., 4. See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 178–79, for his letter to Sinclair about The Jungle. He wrote that, in his opinion, the author’s brand of socialism would result in “the elimination by starvation” of the poor people it was supposed to save.

54 “I would like” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 176. TR’s desire for secrecy proved short-lived. See James Harvey Young, “The Pig That Fell into the Privy,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59.4 (1985).

55 Roosevelt’s was a TR, Letters, vol. 5, 176.

56 Sinclair’s description Sinclair, Jungle [1906], 124.

57 squab stuffed Washington Evening Star, 18 Mar. 1906. The menu featured no beef or pork items.

58 “… the Man with” Qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 94. Many sources mistakenly state that TR’s first “muckrake” speech took place on 27 Jan. 1906. On that earlier date, he spoke about the beginning of the construction on the Panama Canal. The dinner of 17 March was a special celebration hosted by Speaker Joseph Cannon.

59 Roosevelt’s subsequent Ibid.; Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’ ”; Victor Murdock interview, 31 Mar. 1940 (HKB); Thompson, Party Leaders, 160. Thompson, who was present at the dinner, records that guests were so impressed that they urged TR to print his speech “as a public duty.”

60 Nor was it Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’ ”; Baker, American Chronicle, 201–2; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 96.

61THE LAST THING The following account is condensed from those in Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 374–86, and Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 167–210.

62 With some asperity Interview qu. in Jusserand, What Me Befell, 323.

63 Roosevelt repeated Ibid.; Jusserand to M. Bourgeois, Documents diplomatiques, series 2, vol. 9, 725.

64 Senator Knox had A superscript on William Loeb to Philander Knox, 3 Mar. 1906 (PCK), indicates that Knox was summoned to the White House from the Belasco Theater, where he had been attending a matinee, and offered Justice Brown’s seat. TR made clear that the Senator was his first choice. Knox declined (no reason given). For subsequent events, see Paul T. Heffron, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Appointment of Mr. Justice Moody,” Vanderbilt Law Review 18.2 (1965) (hereafter Heffron, “Mr. Justice Moody”).

65 Unwilling as TR, Letters, vol. 5, 242.

66 “If the conference” TR to Wilhelm II, 2 Mar. 1906 (TRP).

67 “paltry and unworthy” Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 383. The Kaiser’s more thoughtful aides agreed with TR and Root. Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke later described the Algeciras Conference as an affair Germans had to “slink out of … with our tail between our legs.” Isolated at the end, Germany decided never again to trust its fortunes to international conferences. Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, 22.

68 “Communicate to” Qu. in Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 384–85. TR was amused by the elaborate flatteries he and Wilhelm II exchanged during the conference. “How could anyone with even a glimmer of humor swallow such stuff?” he said to his English friend Arthur Lee. “We might as well have been addressing each other from behind ancient Greek masks. But Speck tells me the Kaiser was delighted with it all” (Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 335). For TR’s own account of the Moroccan affair, see TR, Letters, vol. 5, 230–51.

69THE ARTICLE IN Phillips, Treason, chap. 2; LaFollette’s Autobiography, 179; British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 20.

70 One of the weakest The following account is taken from LaFollette’s Autobiography, 174–75.

71 A small group Elihu Root interview, 30 Sept. 1930 (PCJ); Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 160–61; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 233–34.

72 The President was Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 161; Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, 416–17; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 233–34; TR, Works (National Edition), vol. 13, 153.

73 Somebody suggested It was Henry Beach Needham, one of TR’s tame reporters. Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 250–53. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 273–75.

74 Tillman knew Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 254–55; William E. Chandler to William Loeb, 11 Apr. 1906 (TRP).

75BUNYAN’S NOISOME Baker, American Chronicle, 201; see 202–3 for Baker’s attempt to head off TR’s repetition of the speech.

76 He noted TR, Works, vol. 18, 576–77.

77 “It is important” Ibid., 578.

78 If conservatives The Philadelphia Press termed TR’s inheritance-tax call “the most radical proposition ever made by a President.” Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

79 Those who had Victor Murdock interview, 31 Mar. 1940 (HKB); Stephen E. Lucas, “Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘The Man with the Muckrake’: A Reinterpretation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59.4 (1973); Sir Mortimer Durand in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 28. For TR’s own review of the speech, see TR, Letters, vol. 5, 217–19.

80 Men with muckrakes Mowry and Grenier in Phillips, Treason, 40; Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’ ”; Baker, American Chronicle, 204. For an extensive study of TR’s relationship with Progressive journalists, see Thaddeus Seymour, Jr., “A Progressive Partnership: Theodore Roosevelt and the Reform Press—Riis, Steffens, Baker, and White” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1985).

81SENATORS TILLMAN AND Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 256–57.

82 A disillusioned Nathaniel Stephenson, Nelson Aldrich, 314.

83 Even Senator Elkins Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 274.

84 “I love a” The Washington Post, 12 May 1906. But see Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1570–71.

85ROOSEVELT TRANQUILLY H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (London, 1934), 648.

86 “He is the” H. G. Wells, The Future in America: A Search after Realities (New York, 1906), 246–53. For more on this interview, see Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 646–49.

87 Having read Wells, Future in America, 246–47, 250.

88 the progressive impulse TR had apparently expressed to Wells his concern about “the growth of monopolistic combinations” and the need for “very vigorous antitrust legislation” to combat it. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 647.

89 Tillman railed See Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 264–71, for an account of the recriminations (vigorously joined in by TR) that followed news of the secret White House/Chandler/Tillman operation.

90 had started something Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 164, points out that although the amended bill’s language on court review read vaguely enough to satisfy Senate conservatives, it enabled the Supreme Court to come down sharply, four years later, on the side of an empowered ICC.

91 Railroad rate regulation Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 275–79; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 272–73.

92 supplied extra details See Young, “Pig That Fell.” TR’s original “first-class man” investigating the meat industry had materialized in the form of two commissioners, Charles P. Neill and James B. Reynolds. See Conditions in the Chicago Stockyards: Message of the President of the United States, 59 Cong., sess. 1, 1906, H. doc. 873.

93 Apprehensive that British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 43. See James Harvey Young, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (Princeton, N.J., 1989).

94 James W. Wadsworth TR, Letters, vol. 5, 296; Young, “Pig That Fell.”

95 Again, Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 5, 296.

96 A pleasedly firm Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 459; Review of Reviews, Aug. 1906. The territories of Arizona and New Mexico were also offered statehood, but declined.

97 That afternoon Washington Evening Star, 30 June 1906.

98 Still, it had TR, Letters, vol. 5, 329.

99 “Society cannot” Qu. in Ray Stannard Baker, “The Railroad Rate: A Study in Commercial Autocracy,” McClure’s, Nov. 1905.

CHAPTER 27: BLOOD THROUGH MARBLE

1 I’m not so Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, 217.

2EDITH KERMIT ROOSEVELT New York Tribune, 2 July 1906.

3 The President emerged Ibid. Except where otherwise indicated, the following portrait of EKR in midlife is adapted from Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt.

4 To children other Alsop, unpublished autobiography, 4–5 (TRC).

5 (Archie and Quentin) Looker, White House Gang, 43–44.

6 New England reserve EKR was descended from Puritans and French Huguenots. See EKR, American Backlogs: The Story of Gertrude Tyler and Her Family, 1660–1860 (New York, 1928).

7 “If they had” Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 559.

8 Edith was well-read Butt, Letters, 127. Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 583; Baker, notebook no. 28, Jan. 1905 (RSB); Jules Jusserand to Ministère des Affaires Étrangers 9 Mar. 1909 (JJ).

9 Whereas his For EKR’s role as patroness of White House “musicales,” see Elise K. Kirk, Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit (Urbana, 1986), 169–88.

10 largest and worst Nicholas Roosevelt, Front Row Seat, 25.

11 His attitude toward Alsop, unpublished autobiography, 4 (TRC); Alice Roosevelt Longworth interview, Nov. 1954 (TRB); William Allen White, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, ca. 1936 (HKB); Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 168–69.

12 Her attitude toward Landor, “Death,” qu. in Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 500: I warmed both hands at the fire of life, / It sinks, and I am ready to depart. Rixey, Bamie, 231.

13HE DID NOT LOOK EKR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, 4 June 1906 (TRC).

14 “damned little Jew” Maurice Low, Washington correspondent of the London Morning Post, had reported that TR acknowledged the congratulations only of Wilhelm II after the Portsmouth peace treaty. “He spoke savagely—as he ought not have spoken to me about an Englishman” (Sir Mortimer Durand diary, 8 May 1906 [HMD]). On another occasion, TR called Low a “circumcised skunk.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 918.

15 William E. Chandler Leon B. Richardson, William E. Chandler (New York, 1940), 666–67; Watson, As I Knew Them, 83; J. Van Vechten Olcott, interviewed by J. F. French, 1922 (TRB). Another Roosevelt explosion is described in Mrs. Dewey’s diary, 11 May 1906 (GD).

16 And Norman Hapgood TR to Hapgood, 29 June 1906 (TRP). “The usages which obtain among gentlemen leave no option in such a case; and your [refusal to name sources] both fixes your status and leads inevitably to the conclusion that you made the statement knowing it to be false.”

17 But Roosevelt had TR, Letters to Kermit, 130; TR to Ethel Roosevelt, 17 June 1906 (TRP); Gifford Pinchot to Irving Fisher, 22 Aug. 1905 (GP). TR had been aware for at least four years that he had an eating problem. “I am rather an early Goth and eat too much and drink too much, and then trust in hard work to do away with the effects,” he wrote Pierre de Coubertin, a French friend, on 21 Nov. 1902 (TRP). By “drink” he meant such liquids as milk and coffee. Apart from his bibulous evening on the night of the Cannon birthday party (which he cited years later as an aberration), TR’s alcohol intake verged on that of teetotalism. See Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 92–97.

18 “It is clear” Fisher to Pinchot, 2 Sept. 1905 (GP).

19 Edith sweetly New York Tribune, 5 July 1906; Oyster Bay Pilot, 27 July 1906; The Washington Post, 11 July 1907. Alice teased her father that he seemed to hay “with a view to his political future.” TR to Alice Longworth, 29 June 1908 (TRP).

20“J’ESSAIE DE” Samuel H. Church to William Loeb, 9 Aug. 1906 (TRP).

Biographical Note: An earlier letter (2 Aug.) from Church to Loeb states that Rodin, who was intending to visit the United States in 1907, had told Church of his “strong desire” to execute a bust or statue of TR. He felt the resulting work would convey the President’s “tremendous energy and vitality,” and very likely be his masterpiece. Church informed TR, through Loeb, that the Carnegie Institute would pay for the statue and subsequently exhibit it in Pittsburgh. TR agreed to pose for Rodin. For undisclosed reasons, the proposal came to nothing.

21 (“Theodore,” Edith) Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 38.

22 “It is now” The Washington Post, 18 Aug. 1906.

23 “At a few minutes” Summary Discharge or Mustering Out of Regiments or Companies: Message of the President of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1908), 20–21 (hereafter Summary Discharge).

24 Roosevelt ordered Ibid., 20, 32. Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Port Washington, N.Y., 1971), 5–17; John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station, 1992), 29–30. The garrison’s previous occupants had been white. Protests against its occupation by “nigger” troops were forwarded to Secretary Taft as early as the beginning of June.

25 As a result Weaver, Brownsville Raid, 30; Summary Discharge, 31–32.

26 Only one Summary Discharge, 24.

27 Some damaging Ibid., 31; Lane, Brownsville Affair, 18, 20.

28 Roosevelt waited Summary Discharge, 34. TR had also received urgent appeals from both Texas Senators to move the troops, in view of inflamed local feelings. Ibid., 29.

29 He ordered Ibid., 34.

30 Roosevelt then sent TR, Letters, vol. 5, 384–85; Lane, Brownsville Affair, 19–20.

31 It came on The complete text of Blocksom’s report appears in Summary Discharge, 60–65.

32 “be discharged” Ibid., 64.

33 Blocksom added Ibid., 65.

34 Over the last See Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 237–38.

Biographical Note: For a definitive statement of TR’s attitude toward blacks in April 1906, see TR, Letters, vol. 5, 226–28. It was made in response to the patrician racism propounded by his friend Owen Wister in Lady Baltimore (New York, 1906). TR accepted “entirely” Wister’s theory that blacks were “altogether inferior to the whites,” and wrote that he saw no reason why “ninety-five percent of the Negroes” in the South should be allowed to vote. He reserved his scorn for the hypocrisy of Southern whites who talked discrimination yet retained black mistresses, and, worse still, stole the votes of disfranchised blacks in order to “elect” racist members of Congress. He disagreed with Wister that Southern blacks had “become worse” since the Civil War, citing Booker T. Washington as an example of the race’s power to improve itself. “I may add that I do not know a white man of the South who is as good a man as Booker Washington.” See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 221–30.

35 His one outburst See p. 425.

36 More ominously Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 238.

37THE PRESIDENT’S SANGUIS HARPER’S WEEKLY, 8 Sept. 1906; Cheney, Personal Memoirs, 83.

38 It was the greatest Harper’s Weekly, 8 Sept. 1906; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 123. This battleship became the Delaware, displacing twenty thousand tons, and mounting ten twelve-inch guns. Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 195–97, 201.

39 “the dirt fly” TR’s first use of this phrase appears to have been at the Gridiron Club on 27 Jan. 1906. “As long as I am President the dirt will fly in the Canal Zone.”

40 Having fought Ralph E. Minger, “William H. Taft and the United States Intervention in Cuba in 1906,” Hispanic America Historical Review 41 (1961).

41 Roosevelt authorized Whitney T. Perkins, Constraint of Empire: The United States and Caribbean Interventions (Westport, Conn., 1981), 14. See also Scott, Robert Bacon, 113–19.

42 “Just at the” TR to Henry White, 13 Sept. 1906 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 5, 401.

43 It was particularly John Barrett, “Elihu Root’s Trip in South America,” ms. in JB; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 481. This grand tour was the first ever made by an American Secretary of State in office. For a detailed account, see Janice Hepworth, “A Policy of Practical Altruism,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 3.3 (1961).

44 a paradox of Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 13. President Estrada Palma often threatened to resign, but his clear purpose in doing so was to force the United States to intervene and prop up his regime. See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 428.

45 “You had no” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 409. See also Christopher A. Abel, “Controlling the Big Stick: Theodore Roosevelt and the Cuban Crisis of 1906,” Naval War College Review 40.3 (1987).

46 His latest Secretary Bonaparte had joined the Cabinet on 1 July 1905. For an excellent short portrait, see Eric F. Goldman, “Charles J. Bonaparte, Patrician Reformer: His Earlier Career,” in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, series 61, no. 2. See also Walker Rumble, “Rectitude and Reform: Charles Joseph Bonaparte and the Politics of Gentility” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1971).

47 It was agreed Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 14–15.

48 slaughtered six hundred Hagedorn, Leonard Wood, vol. 2, 65.

49 For much of Heffron, “Mr. Justice Moody.” Moody expressed a desire to leave the Administration on 27 August, in what may have been a ploy to get TR to make up his mind. See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 390, 396.

50 He was much Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 324–26.

51 “I would walk” Oscar K. Davis, Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, 1898–1918 (Boston, 1925), 54. See also Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 2, 38.

52 Taft was warm According to George Harris, a photographer assigned to the Roosevelt White House, TR decided against Root when he noticed the Secretary at a social reception, pacing alone with his hands behind his back. Elsewhere in the room, Taft jovially entertained a circle of guests. Harris in The Washington Post, n.d. 1952 (HKB).

53 Roosevelt was not “You, Mr. Speaker, will be the next President of the United States,” TR told Joseph Cannon at a Sagamore Hill ceremony on 17 August. “Uncle Joe” had begun to fancy himself as the party’s nominee in 1906, after hearing a few compliments too many during his recent seventieth-birthday celebrations. The Washington Post, 18 Aug. 1906; Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 10.

54 The Washington Post 28 June 1906, qu. by Durand in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 49.

55JOSEPH B. FORAKER Foraker to TR, 26 Sept. 1906 (TRP).

56 Roosevelt could not Taft himself, en route to Cuba, had queried TR’s willingness to act unilaterally, only to be told that the President “would not dream of asking the position of Congress” in such an emergency. Nothing but “a long wrangle” would result, while the emergency worsened. A strong President must “accept responsibility to establish precedents which successors may follow even if they are unwilling to take the initiative themselves.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 414–15.

57 “I am sure” Ibid., 430–31.

58 The Senator had Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 264–65; Weaver, Brownsville Raid, 24; John D. Weaver, The Senator and the Sharecropper’s Son: Exoneration of the Brownsville Soldiers (College Station, 1997), 91. TR told Charles Dawes in Jan. 1904 that he regarded Foraker as “insincere.” Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 363.

59 “He is a” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 428–29.

60 “I can only” Ibid., 409. The allusion is to the court scene in The Pickwick Papers, wherein Sam Weller informs the judge that he spells his surname with a v. A confirmatory shout comes from the gallery: “Quite right too, Samivel.… Put it down a ‘we,’ my Lord, put it down a ‘we.’ ”

61 “Simplified Spelling” Except where otherwise indicated, this section is based on Mark Sullivan’s unsurpassed short history of spelling reform in Our Times, vol. 3, 162ff. See also Clyde H. Dornbusch, “American Spelling Simplified by Presidential Edict,”American Speech 36 (1961), and John H. Vivian, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Spelling Reform Initiative: The Newspaper Response,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, summer 1978.

62 diarrhea Sullivan himself spells this word with the Greek vowel œ. Our Times, vol. 3, 164.

63 u in honor TR was himself an excellent speller, as his autograph manuscripts attest. He nevertheless had a few quaint foibles, such as writing Wednsday for Wednesday, atall for at all, and inserting, for reasons best known to himself, an extra apostrophe indid’n’t.

64 It seemed to TR, Letters, vol. 5, 390–91.

65 addresst blusht Office of the Public Printer, Simplified Spelling: For the Use of Government Documents (Washington, D.C., 1906), 15–23.

66 Soon, the nation’s Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 1906; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 389.

67ON 29 SEPTEMBER Ibid., 424–26; Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 18; Minger, “William H. Taft,” 85.

68 In his last TR, Letters, vol. 5, 435, 438.

69 Color had become Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 460; Review of Reviews, Oct. 1906; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 239.

70 Only those with Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 13 Oct. 1906 (TRP); TR, “Legislative Actions and Judicial Decisions,” Works, vol. 18, 83; David H. Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Harrisburg Speech: A Progressive Appeal to James Wilson,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Oct. 1969.

71 “If I am” James Wilson, “On the Law of Nature,” in The Works of James Wilson, ed. Robert G. McCloskey (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 132–33. The author is indebted to David H. Burton for relating TR’s speech to this essay. Burton argues that TR, in the fall of 1906, feared that his recent sheaf of progressive legislation might be challenged by the judiciary, which was traditionally biased in favor of property rights. Be that as it may, historians may detect in the Harrisburg speech the first signs of what was to become one of the most controversial demands of Progressivism: popular recall of judicial decisions.

72 Propelled by Summary Discharge, 178. TR’s order, transmitted by the War Department, was dated 4 Oct. 1906, the day of his visit to Harrisburg. As the quoted paragraph makes clear (see the complete order for repetitive emphasis), he had already decided that the men of the Twenty-fifth were guilty.

73 His old friend arrived The following account is taken from Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 323–27.

74 Lee remembered Alan Clark, ed., “A Good Innings”: The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham, P.C., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.B.E. (London, 1974), 69–71. See 1–7 for a biographical sketch of Lee.

75 Lee left Lee, in A Good Innings, glosses over the redundancy of his visit, and is at pains to represent himself as having had to perform a painful duty in getting rid of Sir Mortimer. If he had come when TR had first summoned him, on 27 July, he might indeed have administered the coup de grâce, but illness delayed his departure until 3 October. Grey’s letter recalling Durand was dispatched the following day (Durand diary, 21 Oct. 1906) (HMD). Durand subsequently heard that “the President has been complaining of me through Henry White” (ibid., 12 Nov. 1906). See also Nevins, Henry White, 224–25, and, for TR’s “appointment” letter, TR, Letters, vol. 5, 458. When Lee reprinted this letter, he omitted the names of two alternative ambassadors suggested by TR: Cecil Spring Rice and Munro Ferguson.

76 Sir Mortimer was Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 6 Dec. 1906, and to Madge Durand, 15 Dec. 1906 (HMD).

77 Edith Roosevelt had Durand to “Nell,” 9 Aug. 1904, and to Coutts Bank, 16 Dec. 1904 (HMD).

78 “I must try” Durand diary, 21 Oct. 1906 (HMD). For a full account of Durand’s recall, see Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 111–13.

79BY NOW, TAFT Magoon, former Governor of the Panama Canal Zone, was sworn in on 13 Oct. 1906. Although TR had told Taft to announce that elections would be held immediately, the corruption of Cuba’s political process was found to be so extreme that representative government was not restored until 1908. Magoon was a popular and gentle executive who issued no death sentences and was even criticized for his leniency. The United States withdrew from Cuba by TR’s outside deadline of 28 Jan. 1909. David A. Lockmiller, Magoon in Cuba: A History of the Second Intervention (Chapel Hill, 1938). See also Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 18–19; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 141.

80 “It is important” Weaver, Senator, 113.

81 Ignoring him The extraordinary care with which TR prepared for Moody’s appointment belies his reputation for hasty decision making. See Heffron, “Mr. Justice Moody,” and, for a parallel example at the lower federal level, Elting E. Morison, “Theodore Roosevelt Appoints a Judge,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historial Society 72 (1963). Moody proved to be a distinguished but sadly short-tenured Justice, of mostly conservative opinions, whose lucid powers of expression earned the praise of both Oliver Wendell Holmes and Felix Frankfurter. A collapse of the central nervous system forced his retirement from the Supreme Court in 1910. He died, after years of torment, in 1917.

82 General Garlington’s Brownsville See Summary Discharge, 178–83.

83 He stated Ibid., 179.

84 Garlington had then Ibid., 180–82.

85 On 30 October Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 309; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 232–35; Review of Reviews, Dec. 1906.

86 Charles Evans Hughes Hughes, forty-four in the summer of 1906, had come to national attention the previous fall, when he acted as counsel to a state committee investigating the major life-insurance companies of New York. In the course of fifty-seven public hearings, he proved himself a “mental colossus,” investigating fairly but with such mastery of detail that many potential witnesses left town in order to avoid his examination. His success in winning the indictments or resignations of some of New York’s most powerful top executives won the admiration of TR, and propelled Hughes into public life. Even as he ran for governor, he was already being spoken of as a potential Supreme Court Justice or President. See also Robert F. Wesser, “Theodore Roosevelt: Reform and Reorganization of the Republican Party in New York, 1901–1909,” New York History 46.3 (1965).

87 Washington listened Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 9, 118–19.

88 “There is some” Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 309–10.

89 one syllable Root, speaking in Utica, had quoted the passage in TR’s First Annual Message to do with journalistic rabble-rousers who “sowed the wind” of anarchy. “I say by the President’s authority that in penning these words, with the horror of President McKinley’s murder fresh before him, he had Mr. Hearst specifically in mind.” Outlook, 10 Nov. 1906.

90 Root’s statement had As Mark Sullivan notes, the speech destroyed any chance Root had of being nominated for the presidency himself. He had incurred the enmity of Hearst in his own home state. Our Times, vol. 3, 280.

91 “You can not” Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 9, 118.

92 With that, he Emma Lou Thornbrough, “The Brownsville Episode and the Negro Vote,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (Dec. 1957); Summary Discharge, 183; Weaver, Senator, 116; The New York Times, 21 Nov. 1906. Among the few empirical certainties in American history is that “Princess Alice” would not long have tolerated life in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Historical Note: The disparity between the date of TR’s order and its actual release on 7 Nov. has caused confusion in some sources. See Thornbrough, “Brownsville Episode,” and Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 309, for contemporary anger at TR’s manipulation of the election.

93 Across the nation Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 236; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 488–89.

94 “Well, we have” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 488. Optimistic as always, TR did not choose to see a conservative backlash against progressivism developing in the Republican Party, as evinced by the antilabor vote and increased majorities for Foraker and Cannon (499).

95 “By direction of” Summary Discharge, 183. See Lewis N. Wynne, “Brownsville: The Reaction of the Negro Press,” Phylon 33 (1972).

96 There followed Weaver, Senator, 68–72; Summary Discharge, 183–84.

97 For the last Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 446.

98 arrogance of tone and language This phrase was used by Sir Mortimer Durand in a dispatch of 19 Oct. 1906. The Ambassador also quoted one of TR’s friends: “He feels his time is short.” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 128.

99 “The order in” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 490. TR’s addressee was Governor Curtis Guild, Jr., of Massachusetts.

100 Roosevelt’s name For black reaction to TR’s order, see Thornbrough, “The Brownsville Episode,” passim; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 1, 446; Weaver, Brownsville Raid, 98–102.

101HE HAD SEEN Ibid., 496; Harper’s Weekly, 8 Dec. 1906.

Historical Note: TR arrived off Colón on the afternoon of 14 Nov. 1906. Accompanied by his wife, doctor, and a small party of aides and press, he crossed the Isthmus the next day to inspect the Pacific approaches to the Canal Zone at La Boca. He spent the night in Panama City as the guest of President Amador. On 16 Nov., he explored the Culebra Cut, and the next day returned to Colón via Gatun (see text). The Louisiana left Limón Bay that evening. En route back to the United States, TR visited Puerto Rico. He arrived in Washington on 26 Nov.

102 Imaginations less vivid For the intensely stimulative effect of Panama on TR’s fancy, see his two letters to Kermit in ibid., 495–98. See also his extraordinary, illustrated Special Message of the President of the United States Concerning the Panama Canal, 17 Dec. 1906 (Washington, D.C., 1906), which shows a concern for human welfare (“I inspected between twenty and thirty water closets”) never before seen in presidential documents.

103 Roosevelt heard Panama Star and Herald, 17 Nov. 1906; Palmer, With My Own Eyes, 266–67. For comprehensive accounts of TR’s three days in Panama, see Panama Canal Review, Roosevelt Centennial supplement, 7 Nov. 1958, and McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 492–99.

104 Food was The author is indebted to Palmer, With My Own Eyes, 267–68, for the following story. Palmer accompanied TR through Culebra Cut. Extra details (including TR’s “rapid-fire volley” interrogation style) come from The New York Times, 17 Nov. 1906, and Panama Star and Herald, 17 and 18 Nov. 1906.

105 Taking the hint TR, Letters, vol. 5, 498.

106 Much of it Ibid., 499, 504; Panama Canal Review, 7 Nov. 1958; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 501.

107 He could not wait TR, Letters, vol. 5, 496; Panama Star and Herald, 18 Nov. 1906. The precipitation accompanying TR’s visit was the heaviest in fifteen years.

108“STEVENS AND HIS” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 497.

109 “a big fellow” Ibid., 495, 497.

110 “so hardy, so efficient” Ibid., 497. See also TR’s Special Message of the President of the United States Concerning the Panama Canal (Washington, D.C., 1906).

111NEW YORK William H. Taft to TR, 17 Nov. 1906 (TRP). This cable, sent to Colón, missed TR’s departure for Ponce and had to be relayed there.

112 If press reports The reports were accurate. But on 20 November, Taft, worried at TR’s unexplained failure to reply to his cable of three days before, ordered the discharges to proceed. Taft to Mrs. Taft (“The President is worked up on the subject”), 21 Nov. 1906 (WHT); Weaver, Senator, 118; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 498.

113 While he continued Weaver, Senator, 118–19. The last man discharged was also the longest to live. See passim, for the story of Dorsie Willis.

114BY NOW, A Ibid.; Lane, Brownsville Affair, 226–28.

115 This case was Constitution League pressure had been the indirect cause of Taft’s suspension order. See Lane, Brownsville Affair, chap. 2.

116 At the end Charles [illegible] of IRS, New York, to William Loeb, Jr., 30 Nov. 1907, warning that Stewart was likely to be “impertinent” to the President (TRP). The “communication” of Stewart to TR cited in Lane, Brownsville Affair, 28 and 32, is not in TRP.

117 Beyond ambition Joseph Benson Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life (Cincinnati, 1916), vol. 1, 178. See also Weaver, Senator, 32 and passim.

118 He was so Foraker, I Would Live It Again, 277.

119 “The members of” TR, Works, vol. 17, 414–15.

Historical Note: At thirty thousand words (printed “thruout” in simplified-spelling style), the Message was his longest yet. The progressive themes he had sounded a year before emerged more insistently, in calls for extended employers’ liability, stronger regulation of corporations, a mandatory eight-hour day, and a drastic law against child labor. He condemned the uncontrolled killing of seals in Alaska in language of great zoological precision, and added an income tax as well as an inheritance tax to his suggested (but not requested) revise of internal-revenue law. Elsewhere, invocations of family values and naval might represented the old Theodore Roosevelt, as did an eccentric final suggestion that rifle clubs should be established across the country, in emulation of “the little republic of Switzerland.” TR, Works, vol. 17, 401–80.

120 Unfortunately for Weaver, Senator, 121. It was extraordinary, indeed discourteous, for such a proposal to be made before the traditional reading of the President’s Message. But Foraker’s hand had been forced when Senator Boies Penrose offered a weaker resolution immediately after the convening of Congress on 3 Dec. Both resolutions were approved, forcing both Taft and TR to document their actions. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 240.

121 The resolution Weaver, Senator, 121; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 240.

122 Roosevelt remained TR, Letters, vol. 5, 521.

123ALL IN ALL Ibid., 524. TR was the first American to win a Nobel Prize. The award was announced on 10 Dec. 1906, but he appears to have been informed at least five days earlier (521).

124 He added Ibid.

Historical Note: This project never materialized. The foundation, constituted by an act of Congress in 1907, let TR’s prize money lie unused for ten years. In July 1917, TR asked Congress to return it to him, and distributed it to various charities offering relief to victims of the Great War. By then, the sum had grown to more than $45,482, or $818, 676 in contemporary dollars. Straus, Under Four Administrations, 240–42.

125 To Kermit, he TR, Letters, vol. 5, 520–21.

126 laughter seemed strained Sir Mortimer Durand to Sir Edward Grey, 14 Dec. 1906 (HMD). TR could hardly be expected to find funny a blackface skit in which an old Negro from Tuskegee allowed, “I had a boy in dem colored troops down at Brownsville, but I ’spect he’s on his way home now.” Weaver, Senator, 125.

127 “Now don’t” The author takes the liberty of inferring damn from the four hyphens in Sir Mortimer’s above-cited report.

128 “It is not” Durand diary, 10 Dec. 1906 (HMD).

Chronological Note: Another probable reason for TR’s strain this evening was a current sensation in the press over his dismissal, earlier in the year, of the United States Ambassador to Austria, Bellamy Storer. Mrs. Storer, an aunt of Nicholas Longworth, had for years been monomaniacally lobbying every person of influence in the Northern Hemisphere in behalf of a red hat for her favorite archbishop, John Ireland of St. Paul. Her willingness to use TR’s name, and even private letters from him, in efforts to cow the Pope, ended her husband’s somewhat somnolent diplomatic career. The “ ‘Dear Maria’ Affair,” as it came to be known, reached its climax on 8 Dec. 1906, after Bellamy Storer’s own self-pitying account of his dismissal, quoting other Roosevelt letters, was leaked to the Boston Herald. TR, more amused than annoyed, issued a devastating public response on 10 Dec. He would have been less amused if he had known that the paper’s informant was Joseph B. Foraker. For full accounts, see Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 128, and Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, chap. 6.

129 A good motto Sir Mortimer Durand, “Report on the United States of America for the Year 1906,” in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 159. The noun rem in Horace’s epigram is often inaccurately given as “money.”

130 a special message The quotations from TR’s first Brownsville message are taken from Richardson, Compilation, vol. 10, 7710–11.

131 As to the Ibid., 7712.

132“WHEN YOU TURNED” The following dialogue is taken from Wister, Roosevelt, 225–26. Wister does not give the date of this walk, but says that it occurred “just in the middle of the Brownsville disturbance. This, plus TR’s invitation of 5 Nov. 1906, “Do let me see you as soon as possible after I come back from Panama,” suggests a White House visit before the end of the year (264).

133 “And then jump” According to Isabel Anderson, Presidents and Pies (Boston, 1920), 29, a popular riddle in Washington at this time was:
Q: Why is Roosevelt like a grasshopper?
A: Because you never know which way he’ll hop, but when he does, he hops like hell.

CHAPTER 28: THE CLOUDS THAT ARE GATHERING

1 “We’ve been” “Mr. Dooley” in Washington Evening Star, 30 Dec. 1906.

2 luxuriate in his Nobel TR’s Nobel Prize now glitters on the mantelpiece in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

3 note of grimness New York Sun, 2 Jan. 1907. For a detailed account of this reception, see the Prologue to Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. TR’s handshake record still stands in the Guinness Book of World Records, 2001.

4 quarter of a century See Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt, 249–51.

5 Then, as ever Ibid., 255. The dominant note of TR’s Sixth Annual Message, Literary Digest (15 Dec. 1906) remarked, had been “a demand for greater centralization of power.”

6 On 14 January The New York Times, 15 Jan. 1907. TR also withdrew his order that dischargees be denied civil employment in the government.

7 a full investigation Authorized by the Senate on 22 Jan. 1907.

8 “this belief in” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 631.

9 Such an opportunity Ibid.; Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46–47.

10 Judge Gary praised Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46–47. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 563.

11 This was a Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46–47.

12 a giant trust Strouse, Morgan, 469–70.

13IF MEMBERS OF Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is based on a reminiscence by Samuel G. Blythe, ca. Jan. 1932, in HBP and a letter of Joseph Foraker, 29 Jan. 1907, qu. in Foraker’s own Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 249–57. Other accounts appear in Arthur Wallace Dunn, Gridiron Nights (New York, 1915), 182–87; Watson, As I Knew Them, 70–73; and Clark, My Quarter Century, vol. 2, 443–49.

14 a table perpendicular The evening’s seating arrangements, confused in all written accounts, are mapped out by the Washington Herald, 27 Jan. 1907, in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

15 All coons look Blythe reminiscence (HBP).

16 “I would like” Ibid.

17 “the mob” The Washington Post, 29 Jan. 1907.

18 Then, picking Ibid.; Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 251.

19 Senate debate on Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 250–51.

20 Diners from Blythe reminiscence (HBP). Watson, As I Knew Them, 71, says TR’s speech was “very coldly received.” Blythe’s earlier account (“[He] sat down amid much applause”) is supported by a similar statement in The Washington Post, 29 Jan. 1907.

21 “The hour for” Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 249. [“I take” inferred from Foraker’s “He took.”] Less primary accounts have Blythe saying, “Now is the time to bridge the bloody chasm.” Weaver, Senator, 126.

22 (the next course) All accounts agree that everyone remained hungry through the evening, but memories differ as to which courses did not arrive. According to The Washington Post, 29 Jan. 1907, there were four. In that case, diners ate just oysters and clear turtle soup. TR’s speech prevented consumption of the shad, and Foraker forestalled the filet de boeuf à la Gotham. The terrapin à la Maryland, squab stuffed with truffles, tomato salad, frozen strawberry bombe, and assorted cakes were enjoyed in menu form only. Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

23 “all persons” Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 251.

24 He noted that Ibid.

25 The noise subsided Ibid., 253. Champ Clark, writing thirteen years later, quotes TR as ranting in this rebuttal against the “bloody butchers” of Brownsville, who “ought to be hung” (My Quarter Century, vol. 2, 447). But he also recalls TR saying that “all talk on that subject was academic,” a remark that Foraker, in his letter of 29 Jan. 1907, ascribes to the President’s first speech. If TR had, at any point, used the language Clark quotes, Foraker would surely have noted it. Samuel Blythe states that TR’s tone during the latter part of the evening was “neither bellicose nor belligerent.” TR himself wrote on 27 Jan. that he had been “inclined to make a Berserker speech,” but had decided against it. Letters, vol. 5, 571.

26 “If the floor” Blythe reminiscence (HBP). See also Watson, As I Knew Them, 72–73.

27 “I call that” Lawrence, Memories of a Happy Life, 157–58.

28 a reluctant party Lane, Brownsville Affair, 141–42. Taft’s doughy receptivity to TR’s sharp-edged impress, mentioned elsewhere in the text, is indicated by a remark to his brother Charles on 1 Jan. 1907: “I am not responsible for the Brownsville order; but I think it entirely justified” (WHT).

29 By the time Foraker, I Would Live It Again, 281–88. Mrs. Foraker’s account of surveillance by the Secret Service, written in 1932, is unsupported by any other evidence, except that regarding Tillman in Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 2, 92. It is, nevertheless, detailed enough to give any reader pause.

30 Roosevelt showed TR, Letters, vol. 5, 559–60.

31A VISITOR TO Everett Colby in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 154. Colby does not give the date of his visit, except to say that the Japanese crisis had just “reached an acute stage.” The only recorded visit of both Taft and Root to the Executive Office at such a moment was on the morning of 13 Feb. 1907, at the height of the first war scare. Washington Evening Star, same date.

32 For the last Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 134–35. Chinese schoolchildren already had their own schools in San Francisco. The order of 11 Oct. 1906 had been followed by a white-inspired riot, and a Japanese bank president had been killed. There were immediate calls in Japan for an anti-American boycott.

33 Roosevelt sat Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 154–55.

34 “They don’t care” Qu. in Murakata, “Theodore Roosevelt and William Sturgis Bigelow.”

35 Some of the most TR, Works, vol. 17, 452–53.

36 This last remark Ibid., 454–55; San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Dec. 1906; Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 127. Elihu Root cogently remarked to Ambassador Aoki that the antagonism of American laborers toward Japanese was not so much an assertion of superiority as an admission of inferiority. Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 7.

37 Senator Tillman The New York Times, 15 Jan. 1907.

38 Tokyo’s response Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 9. See also Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1879–1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).

39 The result was Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 13, 15; Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 155–56. See also John R. Jenswold, “Leaving the Door Ajar: Politics and Prejudices in the Making of the 1907 Immigration Law,” Mid-America 67.1 (1985).

40 “Why should I” Phillip Dunne, ed., Mr. Dooley Remembers: The Informal Memoirs of Finley Peter Dunne (Boston, 1963), 201–2.

41 To win passage Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 15. “Yellow Peril” Cassandras tended to overlook the fact that many Japanese immigrants, having worked in the United States for a few years, returned home with their hard-earned dollars.

42 “in the way” Root to Ambassador Luke Wright, qu. in ibid., 13.

43 Schmitz, who Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 128–33, 143–44. The age scruple was not unreasonable, in that many of the immigrant “children” originally discriminated against had been twenty to thirty years old.

44 his first term Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs 8.3 (1984); TR, Letters, vol. 5, 35.

45 He had even Rebecca Kramer, “Theodore Roosevelt, Disarmament, and The Hague,” t.s. monograph (AC). See notes above for chaps. 22 and 25.

46 The idea of TR, Letters, vol. 5, 398–400.

Chronological Note: With TR’s encouragement, the United States at first pressed seriously for a general reduction in naval forces, insisting that the issue of arms limitation be discussed at The Hague. This proved to be an unpopular stance with Germany, which had its own strategic reasons for building up a larger navy. Britain was initially supportive of the United States, but then, in view of the Kaiser’s ardent militarism, declined to negotiate away its own armed advantage. Russia and Austria also opposed the idea of disarmament (Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 69; The New York Times, 16 June 1907; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 357).

TR himself was conflicted in his attitude. His letters on the subject earnestly contend that most arms-control proposals did not really apply to the United States, since “we have a small navy (and an army so much smaller as to seem infinitesimal) compared with the armed forces of the other great powers which in point of population, extent of territory, wealth and resources, can be put in the same category with us. Therefore we cannot ourselves reduce our forces” (TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358).

Through most of 1906, however, he pushed for a “feasible and rational plan” of naval disarmament, declaring that limits on battleship size would reduce the rampant costs and dangers of an arms race. His proposal in Sept. 1906 that the Hague Conference should forbid the construction of any battleship larger than theDreadnought was received unenthusiastically by the British and adamantly opposed by Wilhelm II. TR then wrote Sir Edward Grey in October, suggesting that an attempt should be made to limit the number of ships being built. But his temporary ardor for arms control was clearly flagging. By early 1907 he had essentially lost hope and interest in the Second Hague Conference, whose proceedings he did not even follow. It fell to Elihu Root to direct American delegates at the conference, establish the Drago Doctrine (still in force), and push for the strengthening of the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration. This idea broke down when the countries could not agree on how the judges would be chosen. By the time the conference closed on 18 Oct. 1907, it was generally considered a failure. TR, Letters, vol. 5, 601; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 75–79, 82. See Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs 48.3 (1984).

47 In a letter TR, Letters, vol. 5, 528–29.

48 Three days later Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 161; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 600–601. For Root’s unenthusiastic handling of the arms-limitation issue at the Second Hague Conference, see Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 71ff. By February 1907, British interest in the subject had also waned, the Liberal government being at least as wary of Germany’s rearmament as the Roosevelt Administration was of Japan’s.

Historical Note: TR’s comments on arms limitation in 1906 and early 1907 have an oddly prophetic ring. He cites, over and over again, his fear that if “free peoples” disarm too much, they will become vulnerable to “military depotisms and barbarisms” (see, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 5, 366). Eighty years in advance of Ronald Reagan’s cautionary motto regarding arms-control pacts, “Trust, but verify,” TR was writing the British Foreign Secretary about the Hague agenda proposals, “In view of the marvelous ability certain nations have of concealing what they are doing, we would have no real idea whether or not they were keeping down their armaments even in the event of an agreement to do so.” Ibid., 601.

49AS THE END Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 203; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 604.

50 Conservation, by itself J. Leonard Bates, “Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907 to 1921,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44.1 (1957); Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 386, 339.

Historiological Note: The date at which conservation acquired its modern, politicized meaning is as variously debated by historians as that for progressivism. Bates and Lacey agree that 1907 was when conservation became a social movement, as opposed to a complex of disciplines—and as contrasted with the sentimentalpreservation of John Muir and the Sierra Club. Bates directly links conservation to progressivism. Lacey stresses conservation’s scientific origins in the work of such pioneers as the explorer-geologist John Wesley Powell, the mammologist C. Hart Merriam, the forester-geographer Henry Gannett (bequeather of much data to Pinchot), and the prodigiously catholic WJ McGee. It was Gannett who first spoke of forest preservation as “almost a religion.”

51 Roosevelt had virtually Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 200; Harold T. Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot: Public and Private Forester (Urbana, 1970), 75–78; Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 216–17.

52 There was something The word hypnotic is that of TR’s childhood friend Fanny Parsons, in a description that emphasized Pinchot’s extraordinary attraction for women (Parsons, Perchance Some Day, 127). See also Wister, Roosevelt, 174; Roosevelt vs. Newett, 196; James Garfield diary, 30 July 1904 (JRG).

53 “Pinchot truly” TR qu. in Butt, Letters of Archie Butt, 147.

54 A forced draft Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 215.

55 Thus came into TR’s own “Memorandum on signing proclamations” appears in TR, Letters, vol. 5, 603–4. “Failure on my part to sign these proclamations would mean that immense tracts of valuable timber would fall into the hands of the lumber syndicates.… The creation of the reserves means that this timber will be kept … in such manner as to keep them unimpaired for the benefit of children now growing up to inherit the land.”

56 Only after the “The opponents of the Forest Service turned handsprings in their wrath,” TR gleefully wrote in his Autobiography (419). The other major conservation measure of this session was TR’s creation of the Inland Waterways Commission on 14 Mar. 1907. See chap. 29, below.

57ON 4 MARCH British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 171–72. For a short sketch of Ambassador Bryce, see Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.”

58 the first Jew According to Straus, TR said when offering him the appointment, “I want to show Russia and some other countries what we think of Jews in this country.” Straus had assumed office on 17 Dec. 1906. Straus, Under Four Administrations, 210.

59 Cortelyou had been Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 509; Strouse, Morgan, 565–66.

60 “a demonstration” Klein, E. H. Harriman, 399; Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, vol. 1, 44–50.

61 his native Germany Schiff was also rather deaf. An enduring joke in Rooseveltian circles was that the President, boasting at a dinner of New York notables about his appointment of Oscar Straus without any regard to ancestry or creed, turned to Schiff for corroboration (“Isn’t that so, Mr. Schiff?”) and got it: “Dot’s right, Mr. President, you came to me and said, Chake, who is der best Choo I can put in my Cabinet?”

62 “We are confronted” Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, vol. 1, 44–45.

63 Roosevelt wrote back Klein, E. H. Harriman, 398; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 631. TR’s naïveté in financial matters is indicated not only by the remark he made about Harriman, but also in his disinclination to call what might have been an important conference. He had not hesitated, seven weeks before, to invite Mayor Schmidt and the entire San Francisco school board to Washington, at government expense.

64 “This has been” Klein, E. H. Harriman, 400.

65 “your stern and” Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, vol. 1, 47.

66 the macabre artifact The New York Times, 14 Apr. 1907.

67 More rational admirers Adams, Letters, vol. 6, 55–57; Bliss Perry, The Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (Boston, 1921), 361; TR, Letters to Kermit, 184.

68 Spring came TR, Letters to Kermit, 186, 189.

69 In early May James Bryce to Sir Edward Grey, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 203–4; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

70 It also revived Ibid., 204; TR, Letters to Kermit, 195.

71 second elective term Longworth, Crowded Hours, 148. “No one will ever know how much I wished, in the black depths of my heart, that ‘something would happen’ and that Father would be renominated.”

72 nine tenths of him TR made this admission on 10 Oct. 1908, long after the question of a third term had become academic. Butt, Letters, 125.

73 Having thus made TR, Letters to Kermit, 196.

74HE SAW THEM TR to C. Hart Merriam, 23 May 1907 (TRP). Except where otherwise cited, the source for the following section is Alton A. Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt the Last to See the Passenger Pigeon?” Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science for 1976 86 (1977). The authoritative work on TR as ornithologist and natural historian is Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt.

75 He had collected Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 78.

76 “The passenger pigeon” Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?” notes that the last known surviving passenger pigeon died in captivity in Ohio, on 1 Sept. 1914.

77 the last bird William B. Mershon, The Passenger Pigeon (Deposit, N.Y., 1907), 223. A more recent authority cites a specimen shot in Fairfield County, Conn., in 1906. Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?”

78 saw no evidence See also Alton A. Lindsey, “The Sighting at Pine Knot,” Natural History, Nov. 1977.

Historical Note: Only after TR got back to Washington did he ponder a remark about some “wild carrier pigeons” by Dick McDaniel, the foreman of a farm adjoining Pine Knot, and realize that he had a possible supporting witness. Subsequent interviews with McDaniel, whose reliability was vouched for, established that birds matching the ones TR described had been sighted on the farm six days earlier. Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?” subjects TR’s claims to exhaustive scrutiny and concludes that he was indeed the last qualified observer of wild passenger pigeons. Nine years later, at the height of the Great War in Europe, TR wrote: “The extermination of the passenger pigeon means that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims.” TR, Works, vol. 4, 227.

CHAPTER 29: SUCH A FLEET AND SUCH A DAY

1 “D’ye think?” “Mr. Dooley” in Chicago Record-Herald, 20 Oct. 1907.

2 The agreeable James R. Reckner “ ‘I Had Great Confidence in the Fleet’: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 383. Elihu Root remained TR’s principal foreign-policy adviser, but the multilingual, much-traveled Meyer was the Administration’s expert on the social aspects of diplomacy. On this date, Root was in Clinton, N.Y., recovering from illness. Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 23.

3 “Nothing during my” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 671–72.

4 calling for war Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 23.

5 Elihu Root did Ibid.

6 Roosevelt was not so Ibid., 6–23; Dorwart, Office of Naval Intelligence, 83; TR, Letters, vol. 7, 393. See also Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, 111; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 24.

7 The Office of Dorwart, Office of Naval Intelligence, 83.

8 He had asked Reckner, “ ‘I Had Great Confidence,’ ” 383–84.

9COLONEL W. W. Ibid., 383.

10 Roosevelt said Ibid.; Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 220. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 729–30, and James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet (Annapolis, 1988).

11 The idea was Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 220; Dewey to TR, qu. in Jusserand, What Me Befell, 308. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 725–26, and Louis Morton, “Military and Naval Preparations for the Defense of the Philippines During the War Scare of 1907,” Military Affairs 13.2 (1949).

12 Wall Street’s stock Strouse, Morgan, 564–65; Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, 45.

13 He had private information TR, Autobiography, 564.

14 He issued Reckner, “ ‘I Had Great Confidence,’ ” 384.

15 When someone asked Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 221.

16 Metcalf was authorized Reckner, “ ‘I Had Great Confidence,’ ” 385, claims that TR bungled the announcement, first by allowing it to be leaked, then by issuing a series of conflicting statements about the fleet’s true destination. According to Francis B. Loomis, TR did have some initial qualms about the possibly inflammatory consequences of his order, not only on Japanese war sentiment but on the much more truculent “yellow” newspapers of the United States. In the event, Japanese reaction was encouragingly muted, and by late July TR’s resolve had hardened to a calm self-certainty. See Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 332 and esp. 543–44.

17 “a practice cruise” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 709.

18 twenty-nine million Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 497–98; Strouse, Morgan, 573–74. Rockefeller was right. The fine was canceled on appeal.

19 Conservatives blamed TR, Letters, vol. 5, 746.

20 Roosevelt, who Ibid., 745–46.

21 “The present trouble” Ibid., 747.

22 “Please do not” Ibid., 763. Bonaparte consulted, on TR’s orders, with Herbert Knox Smith, who informed him that the Sherman Act was “an economic absurdity … impossible of general enforcement.” On 24 September, TR instructed Bonaparte to abandon his case against International Harvester. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 218.

23 With that, he TR to George Otto Trevelyan, 23 Aug. 1907 (TRP). On Wall Street, feelings of foreboding persisted, mixed with recriminations against Roosevelt for his alleged fiscal irresponsibility.

24ONE THING THE ROMANS Ferrero was much on TR’s mind at this time. See TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 6, 1374.

25 WJ McGee, the visionary Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 379, nicely describes McGee’s concept as “a scheme to restore the commons through water, rather than land.”

26 “a comprehensive plan” M. Nelson McGeary, Gifford Pinchot: Forester-Politician (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 94. See also Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot, 108ff., and Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 379–82.

27 By the time WJ McGee, ed., Proceedings of a Conference of Governors in the White House, May 13–15, 1908 (Washington, D.C., 1909), vi–vii (hereafter Governors’ Conference Proceedings). For TR’s own account of his Mississippi cruise, see TR, Letters to Kermit, 216ff.

28 A sense that TR to Archibald Roosevelt, 7 Oct. 1907 (fragment, TRB); Herbert Knox Smith, “Roosevelt’s Leadership,” address to Roosevelt Memorial Association, [n.d.] 1924, copy in TRB.

29 Roosevelt made his TR, Presidential Addresses, vol. 6, 1432–33.

30 “There is an” Ibid., 1431.

31 These implosions The Washington Post, 16 Oct. 1907.

32 “a simultaneous deficiency” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 347.

33 “I can’t go on” Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 438.

34 “Do I look?” Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 165. In 1918, shortly before his death, TR admitted that his only real regret was his misjudgment of the panic of 1907. He had acted “without a clear knowledge of business affairs.” Jack Cooper interview, Oct. 1919 (TRB).

35 By now, most Strouse, Morgan, 578.

36 The President was Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 439. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 747–49.

37ALTHOUGH A TOTAL Strouse, Morgan, 580–84.

38 Judge Gary said Watson, As I Knew Them, 69; Strouse, Morgan, 587–88; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 830–31. A congressional investigation in 1911 revealed that Gary and Frick may have taken advantage of TR’s fiscal naïveté when they protested their reluctance to acquire Moore & Schley (whose name they declined to reveal to him over breakfast). What they demonstrably got, along with an assurance of antitrust indemnity, was a bargain investment and a considerable enlargement of U.S. Steel’s presence in the South. Strouse, Morgan, 590.

39 Gary called Strouse, Morgan, 588.

40ON 11 NOVEMBER TR, Letters, vol. 5, 838–39; Collier’s, 30 May 1908; press release file, 1908 (TRP).

41WALL STREET’S currency Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 248–49. 501 “I am absolutely” TR, Letters to Kermit, 224.

42 “There may be” TR, Works, vol. 17, 482.

43 Mr. E. H. Harriman List copy, 25 Dec. 1907, in GBC.

44 “If there is one thing” Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York, 1966), 124.

45 “I am Commander-in-Chief” Wimmel, Great White Fleet, 223.

46 “I have not” The New York Times, 12 Dec. 1907.

47MONDAY, 16 DECEMBER The following account is based on newspaper accounts in Presidential scrapbook (TRP), and on the detailed report of the British Embassy naval attaché in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 13, 6–7.

48 “By George!” Qu. in Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt, xv.

49 When the presidential Washington Evening Star, 16 Dec. 1907.

50 Less audibly Robley D. Evans, Admiral’s Log (New York, 1910), 413–14. TR later claimed to have warned Evans that the Japanese threat was serious. “Admiral, I am very fond of you, but if you or your ships are surprised in port or at sea, don’t come back to me.” Leary, Talks with TR, 11–13.

CHAPTER 30: MORAL OVERSTRAIN

1 He’s a gr’-reat “Mr. Dooley” in Chicago Record-Herald, 20 Oct. 1907.

2“THE REACTION AGAINST” Adams, Letters, vol. 6, 94.

3 “I find I” Leary, Talks with TR, 206.

4 he was insane Current Literature, Mar. 1907.

5 At the annual British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 246.

6 To Ambassador James Bryce James Bryce, “General Report on the United States for the Year 1907,” in ibid., 349. À outrance = to the knife.

7 “The oppression” Ibid.

8 Bryce left vague Ibid., 350.

9 He was definite Ibid.

10 The President’s initial TR, Letters, vol. 6, 103–4.

11 Moral Overstrain Written by George W. Alger (Boston, 1906).

12 Roosevelt had tried At the same time, it was noted that he had not yet given the Secretary of War a formal endorsement, so Taft remained chosen, but not blessed.

13 “Charles the Baptist” Sam McCune Lindsay, “Recollections” (manuscript memoir, 1955, in TRB). Finley Peter Dunne flatly states, “Nobody liked Hughes—nobody at all” in “Remembrances” (FPD).

14 a Special Message Davis, Released for Publication, 69–71, misdates Hughes’s speech as 30 Jan. 1908, but is otherwise a prime source for this typical Roosevelt publicity ploy.

15 much harsher language Frank B. Kellogg, one of TR’s more influential field advisers, wrote on 25 Jan. 1908 to warn him that the Special Message would be “a mistake,” in that his views were already well known and did not have to be so brutally repeated. Further, he believed that the Message would “tend to alienate … conservative businessmen and good Republicans” from TR’s candidate for the 1908 GOP presidential nomination, William H. Taft. Frank B. Kellogg Papers (LC).

16 As a result The New York Times, 1 Feb. 1908.

17 He demanded The complete text of TR’s Special Message is reprinted in TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1572–91.

Historical Note: George E. Mowry remarks that historians of the Progressive Era have frequently ascribed TR’s radicalization in 1910 and 1912 to the publication of Herbert Croly’s Promise of American Life in late 1909. “A glance at his messages and speeches of 1907 and 1908 would seem to argue that Roosevelt may have had as much influence on Croly as Croly had on him” (Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 222). Elting E. Morison further observes that these same two messages “proposed in some detail the basic national reforms achieved under Taft and Wilson.” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 922.

18 Roosevelt proudly Ibid., 1574–77.

19 Referring to himself Ibid., 1577–86.

20 “These new conditions” Ibid., 1588.

21SUBSCRIBERS TO All the public comments on TR’s Special Message in the following paragraphs are taken from Current Literature, Mar. 1907.

22 “the President is” Mark De Wolfe Howe, James Ford Rhodes: An American Historian (New York, 1929), 195. See also Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 19 Sept. 1907, and TR to Lodge, 21 Sept. 1907 (TRP).

23 “Of all your” Nicholas Murray Butler to TR, 4 Feb. 1908 (TRP).

24 “You regret” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 925.

25ON 7 FEBRUARY William James in The American Magazine, Nov. 1907; Samuel Carter III, The Incredible Great White Fleet (New York, 1971), 54–55.

26 For twenty-two Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 228; Carter, Incredible Great White Fleet, 51–52.

27 Throughout 1907 Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 27–29; “Memorandum Respecting Japanese Immigration into Canada and the United States,” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 13, 160.

28 By 29 February Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 262; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 30. In May 1908, the Japanese monthly inflow was down to 900 from nearly 2,000 in May 1907. Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 279.

29 He also won Weaver, Senator, 131. Foraker observed that the five Democrats were prepared to find the soldiers guilty without even looking at the testimony.

30 The dissenting members Ibid.

31 So did the Ibid., 130.

32 Roosevelt’s other Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 263–66.

33 Sounding rather TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1017–18.

34 “But, Mr. President” Jusserand, What Me Befell, 332. The following section is adapted from 332–36.

35 “Washington and Rochambeau” The midriver island is now Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national memorial to TR. Deep in its forested interior stands a statue modeled on the illustration on p. 141. Nan Netherton, “Delicate Beauty and Burly Majesty: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt Island,” t.s. (1984), 11 (TRB).

36 “We might meet” For TR’s version of this story, see Butt, Letters, 228–29.

37 On 12 May Wister, Roosevelt, 147; table plan in “Executive Mansion Social Functions,” RG 42, vol. 11 (NA). This beautifully compiled scrapbook series is a monument to the social and entertainment activities of the Roosevelt White House, 1901–1909 (hereafter “Social Functions”).

38 The President sat Some physical descriptions taken from the famous group photograph of the Governors’ Conference, 13 May 1908.

39 (in a severe sulk) Uncle Joe’s pique is mentioned in Butt, Letters, 45.

40 Bryan’s presence “Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources at the White House, May 13–15, 1908,” memorandum account in “Social Functions.”

41 When wood and water Michael Lacey notes that the Governors’ Conference was not only the first but the last occasion in American history when representatives of all branches of government “gathered together to discuss a set of common issues” (“Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 111). Cleveland died on 24 June.

42 Roosevelt, wanting “Social Functions.”

43 The dinner seating Ibid.; Edith Kermit Roosevelt Catering Agreement, 12 May 1908, in “Letters Received” file, in ibid.

44 “I confess to you” Butt, Letters, 7.

45 “A wonderful man” Ibid., 91.

46AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK Governors’ Conference Proceedings, xix–xxxi.

47 The “Syllabus” Ibid., xiii–xvi.

48 “The Lord thy God” Ibid., 1 (Deuteronomy 8:7–9).

49 Roosevelt delivered The following quotations from TR’s address are taken from ibid., 3–13.

50 Conservation as a Copy in AC. TR’s speech is reprinted in TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 7, 1738–53.

51 “the State as quasi sovereign” See Hudson County Water Co. v. McCarter, 209 U.S. 349 (1908).

52HE STAYED WITH Governors’ Conference Proceedings, 14.

53 The conference broke The Washington Post, 16 May 1908; Governors’ Conference Proceedings, 192–94.

54THUS EMPOWERED Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 391–92; TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1065ff.

55 Americans began to be The following survey of TR’s conservation accomplishments through May 1908 is based on John Allen Gable, comp., “President Theodore Roosevelt’s Record on Conservation,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 10.3 (fall 1983). See also Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, passim.

56 now that “Conservation” Michael J. Lacey flatly states, “The language and aims of Conservation were invented in the spring of 1908.” Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 440.

57 (“Is there any?”) Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 469.

58 And Roosevelt had By the time TR left office in 1909, his conservation record had indeed expanded to include 18 national monuments, 51 federal bird reservations and 4 national game preserves, and 150 national forests (increasing the total acreage he inherited by more than 400 percent). The last-mentioned area was equal to that of all the Atlantic states from Maine to Virginia combined, with the addition of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Gable, “President Theodore Roosevelt’s Record.”

59 “Any man who” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1041.

60 Two West Virginia Ibid., 1039, 1045; Henry Adams to Mrs. Frederick Tams, 3 Apr. 1908 (JH).

61 Adams had to Henry Adams to Mrs. Frederick Tams, 3 Apr. 1908 (JH). Lodge’s fabled froideur, and total lack of interest in what anybody thought of him, had finally alienated Adams. “If I told Cabot that he is personally and physically loathsome to me … he would not understand what I meant.” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 693.

CHAPTER 31: THE RESIDUARY LEGATEE

1 I don’t know “Mr. Dooley” in Chicago Record-Herald, 20 Oct. 1907.

2THE FIRST DAY TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1044–45.

3 “Q,” as schoolmates For a classic memoir of Quentin Roosevelt, and an endearing boy’s-eye view of his father, see Earle Looker, The White House Gang (New York, 1929).

4 (“The Republican”) Ibid., 44–45.

5 The property office The following account of the Battle of the Guidon is taken from ibid., 92–94. While writing his memoir, Looker interviewed all surviving members of the gang, save Quentin.

6 (obsessive clock-watcher) Q’s dollar pocket-watch is a leitmotiv in Looker’s descriptions of gang activities. For TR’s own time consciousness, see the pseudonymous article by “K” (probably Finley Peter Dunne), “The Powers of a Strenuous President,” The American Magazine, Apr. 1908: “No railroad engineer runs more sharply on schedule than he. His watch comes out of his pocket, he cuts off an interview, or signs a paper, and turns instantly, according to his timetable, to the next engagement. If there is an interval anywhere left over he chinks in the time by reading a paragraph of history.”

7 “Too late! Too late” Dialogue transcribed verbatim from Looker, White House Gang, 94–96.

8 Roosevelt’s surprise attack “If Hughes is going to play the game,” TR had said, grinning after hogging the headlines with his Special Message, “he must learn the tricks.” William Manners, TR and Will: A Friendship That Split the Republican Party (New York, 1969), 49.

9 With that, he For another presidential reprimand, involving the gang’s embellishment of White House portraits with spitballs, see ibid., 16, and TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1004.

10 as had Mark Beer, Hanna, 586.

11 The famous MacMillan Looker, White House Gang, 120–21. “Time and again, afterwards, I have thought of these enchanting models—realizing that it was a rare privilege given me, to see the genesis of Quentin’s interest in the air.”

12 “I have two” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1044.

13 For some time Ibid., vol. 5, 679; TR, Letters to Kermit, 238, 240; Carl Akeley, introduction to TR, Works, vol. 5, x–xi. The date of Akeley’s dinner (or lunch) with TR is uncertain, but it appears to have occurred between 25 Oct. and 7 Nov. 1907, after the President’s return from Louisiana. See also Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 224, and Kermit Roosevelt, Happy Hunting-Grounds, 11–14. From April 1908 on, the “note of Africa” is increasingly sounded in TR’s correspondence.

14 “I think I” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1060. Another person who got an advance indication of TR’s designs on African wildlife was John Burroughs, who joined him around this time for a weekend at Pine Knot. One night after dinner, while EKR knitted, TR gave the naturalist J. H. Patterson’s The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures (London, 1907) to read by lamplight, and himself read Cromer’s Modern Egypt (London, 1908) at a table in the big bare room. “Suddenly Roosevelt’s hand came down on the table with such a bang that it made us both jump, and Mrs. Roosevelt exclaimed in a slightly nettled tone, ‘Why, my dear, what is the matter?’ He had killed a mosquito with a blow that would have demolished an African lion.” Hearing this story years later, the essayist Gamaliel Bradford commented: “He killed mosquitoes as if they were lions, and lions as if they were mosquitoes.” John Burroughs, Under the Maples (New York, 1921), 106; Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 6. Note: Burroughs’s chapter on Pine Knot contains a spurious refutation of TR’s sighting of passenger pigeons there in 1907. See Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?”

15ROOSEVELT STAMPEDE Washington Evening Star, 3 June 1908.

16 (Charles P. Taft) was Taft’s mentor-like half-brother.

17 “If your friend” Cullom, Fifty Years, 303.

18 At latest count Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 348; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 284.

19 The giant airship A photograph of the zeppelin appears on p. 537 of Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, directly opposite a paragraph on p. 536 describing the nomination of Taft.

20 On Tuesday Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 350–51; Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Presidential Nominations and Elections (New York, 1916), 72.

21 The proceedings in The New York Times, 18 June 1908; Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 352; Alsop, “Autobiography,” 7.

22 “That man is” Official Report of the Proceedings of the Fourteenth Republican National Convention (Columbus, Ohio, 1908), 88.

23 Joseph Bucklin Bishop For Bishop’s anti-Semitism, see, e.g., his letter to TR of 21 Oct. 1903: “I have just had the exquisite pleasure of trampling upon the Jew [newspaper editor Moses Strauss] as he crawled at my feet” (TRP). In a follow-up letter, dated 24 Oct., he warned TR against a “Jew syndicate” attempting to control the New York press. Waspish, emotional, unctuous, and conniving, Bishop was also an antifeminist. “I never met a man who had so low an opinion of women as human beings” (Villard,Fighting Years, 129). These traits did not dissuade TR from choosing Bishop, years later, as his authorized biographer.

24 He saw no reason Bishop, Presidential Nominations, 72–73.

25 At 1:30 Ibid., 73; TR, Letters to Kermit, 250.

26 Bishop remained Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is taken from Bishop, Presidential Nominations, 74–76.

27 She was denied Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 353.

28 But Lodge Ibid.; Bishop, Presidential Nominations, 76.

29 a 2:00 A.M. telegram Charles Evans Hughes, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, n.d. [ca. 1935] (HKB). The alleged bribe, apparently vouchsafed by one of Taft’s rich friends, was one hundred thousand dollars, and the intermediary was identified as one Elbert Baldwin.

30 LaFollette complained LaFollette, “Autobiography,” 247 (LC).

31 at five hundred pounds Mayer, Republican Party, 303. Progressives could hardly say that Taft had not made gestures in their direction, having tried without success to get Jonathan P. Dolliver and Albert J. Beveridge to run with him. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 284–85.

32“THERE IS A” Qu. in TR, Letters, vol. 6, 184.

33 “It was absolutely” Ibid., 183–84.

34 “Well, I’m through” “Roosevelt Tired,” ms., 1908 (RSB). There is another version of this interview (misdated late summer 1908) in Baker, American Chronicle, 204–5.

35 “No, revolutions” “Roosevelt Tired,” ms., 1908 (RSB). “I have never seen him in a more human mood,” Baker wrote afterward, “nor have I ever been more impressed with his bigness and breadth.”

36 He stayed Henry L. Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), 341; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 285. Wright, a Tennessee Gold Democrat, took over as Secretary of War on 1 July 1908.

37 “He and I” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1085.

38 Taft headed Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 341.

39FOUR DAYS LATER Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 536–38.

40 “A trifle too” EKR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, 18 May 1908 (HKB).

41 Instead of heading New York Tribune, 22 and 24 July 1908; Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 342.

42 Large, strong, plumpish This description of Captain Butt is taken from references passim in Butt, Letters. See especially Lawrence F. Abbott’s introduction, vii–xxviii.

43JULY 25, 1908 Some of Butt’s letters were misdated in publication, including this one, which was begun on the twenty-fourth. Those describing his first days in the White House (pp. 1–6) should be dated May, not April. The following long quotation is from Butt,Letters, 62–65.

44 smoking on the porch TR never smoked.

45 Like the President Butt, Letters, 70–71.

46 “I want ghosts” Ibid., 88.

47 “You know how” Ibid., 85.

48 Winthrop asked Ibid.

49 Roosevelt moved on Ibid., 86–87.

50 Despite the Ibid., 75–76.

51 “Archie, when I” Ibid., 78.

52 Forty little boys Ibid., 79–80.

53 Asked afterward Ibid., 81. See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 448.

54 He indulged Butt, Letters, 77.

55 He sensed a Ibid., 91.

56 “And he is” Ibid.

57 “No one dreads” Ibid., 92.

58TAFT’S SPEECH Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 344.

59 Now began what Ibid., 342. TR was deeply saddened this month by the death, after a long battle with cancer, of his old friend Baron Speck von Sternburg.

Chronological Note: Although TR’s presidential power was diminishing steadily in mid-1908, he still retained to the full his command of the executive order. On 10 August, he announced the appointment of a Commission on Country Life, a Pinchot-inspired board charged with finding out why the nation’s rural population was advancing more slowly than city dwellers’.

In his letter to the Commission’s chairman-designate, the agronomist Liberty Hyde Bailey, he observed that the government was subjecting farmers to too many economic coachings and cajolements, in order to increase their productivity, at the expense of consideration for their social and emotional well-being. “The great rural interests are human interests, and good crops are of little value to the farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm.”

He asked the Commission to report to him upon the present condition of country life, and to advise him as to how it could be improved, especially with regard to rural education. The children of farmers should be encouraged to grow up wanting to do what their parents did, rather than join the general querulous drift away from country to town. “There is too much belief among our people that the prizes of life lie away from the farm.”

The Commission recommended in Feb. 1909 that rural areas be redeveloped using European-style communal/cooperative models. Country life should ideally offer “the four great requirements of man—health, education, occupation, society.” The new doctrine of conservation should be applied so that the ravages visited on the environment by unregulated monopolies could be repaired, and the American countryside regain its beauty. TR submitted these recommendations to Congress before leaving office, but nothing was done about them. TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1169–70; 60 Cong., sess. 2, 1909, S. doc. 703, Special Message from the President of the United States Transmitting the Report of the Country Life Commission. See also George S. Ellsworth, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission,” Agricultural History 34 (Oct. 1960), and Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 393–400.

60 testimony to his TR’s Messages to Congress advocating inheritance and income taxes and stringent corporation control had deprived Bryan of much traditionally Democratic ammunition.

61 “For reasons which” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1207.

62 “You should put” Ibid., 1209–10.

63 “I never” Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 504.

64 “Let the audience” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1230.

65 William Randolph Hearst Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 223; Weaver, Senator, 140.

66 Foraker, devastated Weaver, Senator, 141.

67 These qualifications Ibid.; TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1244.

68 “That a man” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 13, 147.

69ROOSEVELT RETURNED Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 288–89.

70 Taft came to TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1304; Butt, Letters, 137. For a discussion of Taft’s Unitarian problem, see Harbaugh, Life and Times, 340–41. See also TR’s impassioned plea for religious tolerance in American public life in Letters, vol. 6, 1333–34. Of this letter, the Jewish leader Simon Wolf wrote to TR, “I know of no state paper in the archive of our Government, that surpasses it.” Qu. in Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 284–85.

71 The nearest thing Harbaugh, Life and Times, 337–39.

72THE FOLLOWING DAY TR to Jules Jusserand, 27 Oct. 1908 (JJ).

73 “I told him” Butt, Letters, 143–44.

74 Changing the subject Ibid., 144. The De Camp portrait of TR went to Harvard University.

75 “Was there ever?” Butt seems to have been unable to answer. He had recently been treated to another Roosevelt effusion, on the subject of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in the middle of a tennis game. Ibid.

CHAPTER 32: ONE LONG LOVELY CRACKLING ROW

1 “Well, I see” Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 49.

2 The fake telegram Butt, Letters, 153–54. When TR’s use of the word frazzle leaked out, to the mystification of White House correspondents, he explained, not very helpfully, “The meaning is contained in the election returns of last night.” Brooklyn Eagle, 4 Nov. 1908. Nunc Dimittis—“Lord, now let us thy servants depart in peace.”

3 Taft’s Electoral College This election analysis closely follows that in Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 506.

4 “the Bearded Lady” Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt, 126.

5 the legendary Texan Anecdote in memo, Nov. 1908 (JBM).

6 “I really did” Judith Icke Anderson, William Howard Taft: An Intimate History (New York, 1981), 114.

7 “Of course, if” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1329.

8 He was not short Charles G. Washburn, Address, 9 Feb. 1919, reprint in Pratt Collection (TRB); Davis, Released for Publication, 135ff.; Heaton, Story of a Page, 329–30; TR, qu. in Norman Hapgood, The Changing Years (New York, 1930), 42; TR,Letters, vol. 6, 1105–6.

9 He had long Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, 12–14; TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1105–6, 1115, 1123.

Note: Most of these negotiations were carried on during the summer of 1908. The amount of TR’s annual retainer from Outlook has not been confirmed, but neither he nor the Abbotts denied that it was thirty thousand dollars. Indianapolis Star, 22 Oct. 1908.

10 The Abbotts proudly Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, 14.

11 She thought Mr. Butt, Letters, 322–23.

12MID-NOVEMBER TR to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., 16 Nov. 1908 (TRB).

13 French Revolutionary shouts “Honor to the unlucky brave!” and “To the lantern!” were mob calls, usually accompanying the stringing up of an aristocrat. Jusserand, What Me Befell, 337.

14 became oddly silent Butt, Letters, 175.

15 “Concentrated power” TR, Works, vol. 17, 586.

16 The only really new Ibid., 601.

Historical Note: The phrase deep and brilliant is that of Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, who in 1931 stated that this section of TR’s 1908 Message “vindicates the title of Theodore Roosevelt to a place in the history of the jurisprudence of this country.” Quoting from his own book The Nature of the Judicial Process (New Haven, 1921), Cardozo commended TR’s profound “intuitions and perceptions,” and held that contemporary critics who accused the President of “ignorance … of the nature of the judicial process” were themselves ignorant of the way judges thought. “Pascal’s spirit of self-search and self-reproach” was not incompatible with self-doubt, but no honest judge could deny the role of self in every decision. “All these inward questionings are born of the hope and desire to transcend the limitations which hedge our human nature. Roosevelt, who knew men, had no illusions on this score.” Roosevelt Medal Acceptance Speech, 1931, transcript in TRB.

17 “did not themselves” TR, Works, vol. 17, 621.

18PRESIDENT-ELECT TAFT Anderson, William Howard Taft, 114–15. If the reporters could have read some of Taft’s private mail at this time, they might have been more concerned about his readiness for office. He confessed to a friend that questions of appointments and tariff policy left him feeling “just a bit like a fish out of water.” But “my wife is the politician and she will be able to meet all these issues.” Qu. in Harbaugh, Life and Times, 432.

19 “He is going” Butt, Letters, 232–33.

20 Butt certainly could Ibid., 233.

21 The lights were Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

22 Roosevelt and Taft Ibid. The “articles” in question were dispatched, respectively, to magazines named Scribbler’s and Lookout.

23 As so often Butt, Letters, 205–7, 245–46; Watson, As I Knew Them, 128; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 158.

24 The President’s annual Butt, Letters, 251.

25 To the President Ibid., 253.

26 “I don’t feel” Ibid.

27ALL THE ROOSEVELTS The following description is taken from ibid., 254–56, with minor details from Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

28 No sooner had Butt, Letters, 257–59; The Washington Post, 29 Dec. 1908.

29 Time was when Longworth, Crowded Hours, 137–38; Butt, Letters, 258.

30“MR. SPEAKER” Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “The Secret Service Controversy,” in his Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 237, misdated this call as occurring on 8 Jan. See Congressional Record, 60 Cong., Sess. 2, 1909, vol. 43, 458–62; also TR,Works, vol. 17, 620; The New York Times, 17 Dec. 1908.

31 So far, the Longworth, Crowded Hours, 160; Harbaugh, Life and Times, 344.

Historical Note: Harbaugh notes that this confrontation “served mightily to hasten” the basic swap of political philosophy between the Republican and Democratic parties in the twentieth century. TR himself accused the congressional GOP leadership of hiding behind states’ rights in order to protect interstate corporations, while the Democrats, who had formerly made a shibboleth of states’ rights, began to align themselves behind the President. “By the middle of the century the reversal would be relatively complete: the majority of Democrats in Congress would be wedded to the centralized welfare state; all but a small minority of Republicans would be opposed or unsympathetic to it.”

32 Cannon sat now Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 237; Harbaugh, Life and Times, 344–45.

33 There was some The Atlanta Constitution, 11 Jan. 1909, qu. in Gatewood, “Secret Service,” 238.

34 Its chief, John Ibid., 240–42.

35 The Secret Service’s Ibid., 243–45, 237. When the House had first limited its Secret Service appropriation, TR and Attorney General Bonaparte transferred nine investigative agents to the Justice Department, thus forming (on 26 July 1908) the nucleus of the FBI. Ibid., 252–55.

36 “Nobody likes him” Butt, Letters, 336. See this book, passim, for copious anecdotes of the last days of TR’s Presidency.

37ARCHIE BUTT was Ibid., 278, 297, 281.

38 One legislative request TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1248; Beach, United States Navy, 423–26; White, Autobiography, 404; Sprout, Rise of American Naval Power, 272–73.

39 “I do not believe” Butt, Letters, 314.

40 “They little realize” Ibid.

41 “Why, Mother” Ibid., 327–28.

42 At Hampton Roads Washington Evening Star, 22 Feb. 1909; TR to Archibald B. Roosevelt, 23 Feb. 1909 (TRP); Butt, Letters, 353–54.

43 “That is the answer” Butt, Letters, 354.

EPILOGUE: 4 MARCH 1909

1 “It will be” The New York Times, 5 Mar. 1909. Davis, Released for Publication, 150–57.

2 His Inauguration was Except where otherwise indicated, this account of TR’s departure from Washington is based on reporting in the Washington Times and Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1909, plus The New York Times and The Washington Post, 5 Mar. 1909. See also Davis, Released for Publication, 150–55.

3 “I knew” The New York Times, 5 Mar. 1909.

4 “It isn’t” Butt, Letters, 381. Butt wrote afterward that he felt “about as depressed as I have ever felt in parting from any one in my life, save only my own mother.” Ibid.

5OBSERVERS WERE Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, 222; Anna Roosevelt Cowles to Corinne Robinson, 6 Mar. 1909 (TRC).

6 “There was not” Anna Roosevelt Cowles to Corrine Robinson, 6 Mar. 1909 (TRC).

7 did not show Baltimore Sun, 5 Mar. 1909.

8 constantly bubbling Gifford Pinchot called TR “on the whole, the happiest man I ever knew.” Roosevelt House Bulletin 1 (1924): 3.

9 Acton’s famous dictum “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 5 Apr. 1887.

10 “a very symbol” Harper’s Weekly, 6 Oct. 1906.

11 “Roosevelt, more than” Adams, Education of Henry Adams, 417.

12 Uncounted men For the recollection of one such child, see W. Preble Jones, memo, 24 Nov. 1924 (TRB).

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Unless otherwise credited, all images are from the Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Mass.

Frontispiece Theodore Roosevelt by Edward S. Curtis, 1904. The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

prl.1 Roosevelt’s journey to the Presidency, 14–16 September. Map by the author.

prl.2 The Wilcox Mansion, Buffalo [now Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site], September 1901. Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

1.1 Theodore Roosevelt walks to work, 20 September 1901.

2.1 Booker T. Washington, 1901. The Schomburg Collection, New York Public Library.

3.1 Philander Chase Knox, ca. 1901.

5.1 Father and daughter at the launching of the Kaiser’s yacht, 25 February 1902.

6.1 Independent Cuba raises her flag, 20 May 1902. Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, New York.

7.1 Graduation ceremony at United States Naval Academy, 1902. The Library of Congress.

7.2 Theodore Roosevelt’s White House in summer. Collection of Alice Sturm.

8.1 Quentin Roosevelt in the daisy field at Sagamore Hill. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

8.2 Elihu Root as Secretary of War. The Library of Congress.

9.1 Roosevelt during his New England tour, 1902.

10.1 John Mitchell as president of United Mine Workers, ca. 1902.

11.1 The temporary White House, no. 22 Jackson Place, 1902.

13.1 Theodore Roosevelt’s White House in winter.

14.1 Jules Jusserand, anonymous sketch. Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, New York.

15.1 The President on his cross-country tour, 1903.

15.2 Roosevelt at Glacier Point, Yosemite, May 1903. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

16.1 View of the renovated White House, ca. 1903. Author’s Collection.

16.2 Secretary of State John Hay, 1904. Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, New York.

17.1 The President and his family, summer 1903.

18.1 Sagamore Hill in winter.

19.1 Mark Hanna and members of the Republican National Committee, 11 December 1903.

20.1 Theodore and Edith Roosevelt receiving at a White House garden party.

21.1 The Republican National Convention, Chicago, June 1904.

22.1 Roosevelt being notified of his nomination, 27 July 1904.

22.2 Alice Roosevelt, 1904. Collection of Alice Sturm.

23.1 Roosevelt’s Inauguration, 4 March 1905.

23.2 TR reading with Skip in Colorado, May 1905.

24.1 Alice Roosevelt and William Howard Taft en route to Japan, 1905. Collection of Alice Sturm.

24.2 Extracts from TR’s “picture letter” to Alice, 21 July 1905. Collection of Alice Sturm.

24.3 Sergei Witte, Baron Rosen, the President, Baron Komura, and Ambassador Takahira, 5 August 1905.

25.1 Alice in the Far East, late summer 1905. Collection of Alice Sturm.

25.2 Roosevelt in his Sagamore Hill study, September 1905.

26.1 Theodore Roosevelt in mid-sentence.

27.1 The President’s favorite photograph of Edith Kermit Roosevelt. Author’s Collection.

27.2 Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, ca. 1906. Collection of Alice Sturm.

27.3 Roosevelt mounting a steam shovel, Panama Canal Zone, November 1906.

28.1 Speaker Joseph Cannon, ca. 1907.

29.1 Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot on the Mississippi River, October 1907.

30.1 Roosevelt (invisible) leads a Rock Creek Park expedition. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

30.2 Theodore Roosevelt hosts the first conservation conference, May 1908.

32.1 President-elect William Howard Taft, 1909.

32.2 The Great White Fleet returns from its round-the-world trip, 22 February 1909.

epl.1 Roosevelt and Taft arriving at the Capitol, 4 March 1909.

epl.2 The children of Taylor, Texas, bid farewell to Theodore Roosevelt, 6 Apr. 1905. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.