Theodore Rex (138 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
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.
14
Commander 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.
17
Undisturbed by the
Ibid; Nicholas Murray Butler,
Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections
(New York, 1939), vol. 1, 312–13.
18
QUIET 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.
20
Later, 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.
22
The presidential suite
The New York Times
, 24 Sept. 1901; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 161; Robinson,
My Brother
, 206–7.
23
Later, when decorations
Robinson,
My Brother
. Mrs. Robinson misdates this dinner by one day.
24
TWO 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.
25
Kermit and Ethel
New York
Herald
and New York
Journal
, 26 Sept. 1901.
26
“It is understood”
The Washington Post
, 28 Sept. 1901.
27
The White House police
Ibid.
28
Alice, naughtily
Teague,
Mrs. L.
, 62; Alice Roosevelt Longworth,
Crowded Hours: Reminiscences of Alice Roosevelt Longworth
(New York, 1933), 43.
29
distracted 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.
30
Washington’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.
31
State 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.
32
Washington, 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.
33
after leaving the
Booker T. Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP);
Booker T. Washington Papers
, vol. 1, 12.
34
As his mother
Harlan,
Booker T. Washington
, 1.
35
Blacks 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.
37
Washington’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 History
37.3 (1971);
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 227.
38
Roosevelt, gazing at
Donald J. Calista, “Booker T. Washington: Another Look,”
Journal of Negro History
49.4 (1964)
.
39
NO 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.
41
Washington was forced
Ibid., 229.
42
Scott 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.
44
Hanna wrote back
Mark Hanna to TR, 12 Oct. 1901 (TRP).
45
Despite 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.
46
Encouraged, 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).
47
He 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.
48
Roosevelt 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).
50
Most 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).
: T
HE
M
OST
D
AMNABLE
O
UTRAGE
1
Thousan’s iv men
“Mr. Dooley” in Salt Lake City
Daily Tribune
, 10 Nov. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
2
ON 16 OCTOBER
Harlan,
Booker T. Washington
, 318–20; Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Booker T. Washington to TR, 1 Oct. 1901 (TRP).
3
Roosevelt 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).
4
He received Washington
Harlan,
Booker T. Washington
, 311, errs in saying that Alice Roosevelt attended the dinner. She was still out of town.
5
Dinner proceeded
James E. Amos,
Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet
(New York,
1927), 54;
Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 472.
6
The 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.
7
Here, 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.
8
For those blacks
Dyer,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 97–98; TR,
Autobiography
, 11; TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 1066; Wister,
Roosevelt
, 259; TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 226.
9
Yet Roosevelt believed
Dyer,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 92, 97; TR,
Letters
, vol. 2, 1364–65; TR in
Review of Reviews
, Jan. 1897.
10
Sometime 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.
11
NEITHER 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).
12
Whites, 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).
13
But during the
The Atlanta Constitution
, 17 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
14
“The most damnable”
Memphis Scimitar
, 17 Oct. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
15
The word
nigger New York Tribune
, 25 Oct. 1901.