The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (148 page)

Nicholas Murray Butler, who had been sent ahead with express orders to nip any draft-Roosevelt movement in the bud, remembered the galvanic effect of his entrance into the Walton’s main lobby. “He walked in … with his quick nervous stride and at once the crowd waked up. T.R.’s name was on every lip and the question as to whether or not he should be forced to take the Vice-Presidency pushed every other question into the background … All Saturday evening the delegations kept coming and it was perfectly evident to me on Sunday morning that only the most drastic steps would prevent T.R.’s nomination.”
⁵²

The run began with the Kansas delegation, who had been reading William Allen White editorials for a year, and were anxious for the honor of being first to declare in Roosevelt’s favor. But the Governor heard they were coming, and ducked out of his suite, leaving word that he would be back “in a few minutes.” An hour later the leader of the Kansans, J. R. Burton, traced Roosevelt to Platt’s room.

He found the Governor in the act of thumping a table and saying, “I can’t do it!” Platt was lying on the sofa, while his son Frank, Benjamin Odell, and “Smooth Ed” Lauterbach sat nearby. Nobody except Roosevelt seemed to mind Burton’s intrusion. “Colonel Roosevelt,… the delegation from the Imperial State of Kansas is waiting upstairs for you to keep your promise to see them,” said the delegate. His colleagues were prepared to forgive his discourtesy, having “the utmost admiration” for him, and were determined to place him before the convention; but if he did not meet with them at once, and choose his own nominator from among them, Burton would take charge of the nomination himself. At this, reported a bystander, Platt looked “friendly.” Odell said, “Well, that settles it.” And Roosevelt, with a melodramatic sigh, headed upstairs.
⁵³

Next morning a committee of the still more important Pennsylvania delegation called and also expressed unanimous support for Roosevelt. The California delegation followed on; all day long, as the excitement of conscripting a popular candidate spread through the convention hotels, the flattering flood continued.
⁵⁴
Roosevelt greeted all comers with expressions of regret that they had ignored his wishes, but he grinned so widely that his complaints lacked somewhat in force. His “resolve” to stand firm began to weaken during the afternoon, and by nightfall it was all but swept away. At
10:30 P.M
. a White House observer telephoned McKinley’s private secretary, George B. Cortelyou. “The feeling is that the thing is going pell-mell like a tidal wave. I think up to this moment Roosevelt was against it, but they have turned his head.” If Senator Mark Hanna had not been spending the weekend out of town, wrote a
Tribune
reporter, the Governor might have withdrawn his statements of non-acceptance there and then.
⁵⁵

More calls flashed over the wires—to Haverford, Pennsylvania, where Hanna was dining with a shipping tycoon, and thence to the White House with a plea for McKinley to abandon his neutrality and come out in favor of some other candidate. About midnight a cold reply came back: “The President has no choice for Vice-President. Any of the distinguished names suggested would be satisfactory to him. The choice of the Convention will be his choice; he has no advice to give.”
⁵⁶

H
ANNA WAS IN A
rage when he returned to the Hotel Walton on Monday, 17 June. McKinley’s refusal to advise him on the choice of a running mate was a blow to his prestige, and the first deliberately hostile act of their twenty-four-year-old friendship. All things considered, this was not a good morning for Professor Nicholas Murray Butler to approach the Chairman with what can only be described as an academic piece of advice. The only way to stop the nomination going to Roosevelt, Butler lectured, was to present the convention with another candidate of equally compelling personality. “You cannot beat somebody with nobody.” Hanna responded to this epigram with an outburst of profanity, and assured Butler that his precious Governor would not be nominated. He, Hanna, simply would not permit it. When Butler asked whom the Chairman might prefer, Hanna growled something about John D. Long.
⁵⁷

The Chairman’s mood worsened all morning. “Do whatever you damn please!” he bellowed in response to a routine question. “I’m through! I won’t have anything more to do with the Convention! I won’t take charge of the campaign!” Somebody tried to soothe him by pointing out that he still controlled the party. “I am not in control! McKinley won’t let me use the power of the Administration to defeat Roosevelt. He is blind, or afraid, or something!”
⁵⁸

Observers wondered again at the Chairman’s strange fear of Roosevelt. Hanna had never liked the man, and his dislike had deepened into something like hatred after the fist-shaking incident at the Gridiron Club in the spring of 1898. But this terror, this premonition of a national disaster should Roosevelt be allowed to stand at McKinley’s side, was entirely new. At last Hanna, losing all self-control, blurted it out.

“Don’t any of you realize that there’s only one life between this madman and the Presidency?”
⁵⁹

M
AD OR NOT
, Roosevelt now posed such a serious threat to all the declared vice-presidential candidates that Hanna was forced to limp into his suite shortly before lunch and ask, once and for all, if he intended to run or not. The Governor would not say. He wondered how he could risk his political future by refusing a popular call. Hanna contemptuously replied that the Roosevelt boom had little to do with popularity. Senator Platt was simply using him as a tool. If Roosevelt really wished to show his so-called independence, he should withdraw promptly, publicly, and finally. That would effectively block any attempt to draft him.

Roosevelt hesitated, then agreed to write a statement of withdrawal at once.
⁶⁰

A
N HOUR OR SO LATER
, while Hanna was alerting the leaders of state delegations to the imminent announcement, Roosevelt sat at lunch with his wife, aides, and a few close friends. Henry Cabot Lodge was there, silent and embarrassed behind an enormous blue silk badge reading “
FOR VICE PRESIDENT JOHN D. LONG
.”
⁶¹
It was his duty to wear the emblem, as a member of the Massachusetts delegation, but the irony of the slogan must have grated on the sensibilities of all present.

Butler’s account of the luncheon implies that Roosevelt said nothing about his recent decision to issue a final statement of denial. He merely sat and listened while everybody except Lodge pressed him to do just that. Edith Roosevelt was outspoken in her insistence that the Vice-Presidency was wrong for him. Not until after Lodge had left, with a bitter “I must go back and be loyal to Long,” did the Governor allow Butler to draft a statement.

The draft was appropriately terse and uncompromising. Edith approved it, and Butler handed it to Roosevelt. “If you will sign that paper and give it out this afternoon, you will not be nominated.”

Roosevelt stared at the document, contorting his face, as was his habit in moments of perplexity. He thought he could “improve its
phrasing,” and crossed over to the desk. Somehow the draft became a new statement entirely in his own handwriting. “Theodore, if that is all you will say, you will certainly be nominated,” said Butler, aggrieved. “You have taken out of the statement all the finality and definiteness that was in mine.”

At four o’clock Roosevelt’s statement obstinately went forth.
⁶²
Thousands of eyes scrutinized it to the last conditional clause, and found nowhere the least hint of a refusal to accept the will of the convention. As far as staving off a draft was concerned, he might as effectively have written the single word “Yes.”

“It’s a cinch,” chuckled one delegate. “All we have to do is go ahead and nominate him.”

“And then four years from now—” said another delegate.

“Quite so,” said a third.
⁶⁴

C
HAIRMAN
H
ANNA GAVELED
the convention to order in Exposition Hall shortly after noon on Tuesday, 19 June. As the thwacking echoes died away and the band prepared to strike up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Theodore Roosevelt made the most famous of all his delayed entrances. Marching with military purposefulness,
but not too quickly, he advanced down the aisle toward the New York delegation, his jaw clenched firm against floating spectacle-ribbons, looking neither to right nor left. Fifteen thousand pairs of eyes admired his broad black hat, so irresistibly reminiscent of Cuba (“that’s an Acceptance Hat,” somebody quipped),
⁶⁵
and at least ten thousand pairs of hands applauded him as yells of “We Want Teddy!” swept around the auditorium. Roosevelt took fully two minutes to reach his seat; only then did he stand to attention for the beginning of the anthem. From the podium, Mark Hanna, a temporarily forgotten man, gazed down with disgust. Roosevelt was holding the Acceptance Hat over his heart.
⁶⁶

For the rest of the day the convention was anticlimactic and boring. A blight of listlessness, to quote
Harper’s Weekly
, hung over the proceedings, intensified by steamy, cabbage-smelling heat wafting from the slums of West Philadelphia. Yet much aggressive activity was going on behind the scenes. Hanna, lobbying like a man possessed, bullied every delegate he could find into promises of support for John D. Long, or Representative Jonathen Dolliver of Iowa—anybody but Theodore Roosevelt. White House observers, fearful that the Chairman would split the party in two, telephoned Washington for advice on Tuesday night. The result was another request for decorum from McKinley: “The President’s friends must not undertake to commit the Administration to any candidate. It has no candidate … The Administration wants the candidate of the Convention, and the President’s friends must not dictate the Convention.”
⁶⁷