Theodore Rex (184 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
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.
39
FOUR 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.
43
JULY 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.
58
TAFT’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.
69
ROOSEVELT 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.
72
THE 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.
: O
NE
L
ONG
L
OVELY
C
RACKLING
R
OW
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.
12
MID-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.
18
PRESIDENT-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
.