Theodore Rex (176 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
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.
39
ONE 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contained much rewriting but only one essay previously unpublished, “At Home.”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 USS
West Virginia
, celebrating his forty-seventh birthday at sea.
49
ROOSEVELT 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.
53
A 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.
: T
HE
T
REASON OF THE
S
ENATE
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, 1
52ff.
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.
18
IN ALGECIRAS
Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, 67; TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 145.
19
White was under
Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 162–63.
20
SENATOR 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.