The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (158 page)

12.
Trib.
, Jan. 3, 1882. Some Republicans were missing: the total House strength was 61.

13.
See, e.g., But.233.

14.
John Walsh in
Kansas City Star
, Feb. 12, 1922.

15.
Albany correspondent of the
New York Star
, qu. TRB mss.; Sul.227;
New York Sun
, Jan. 3, 1882.

16.
TR.Auto.64;
N.Y. Sun
correspondent (see Note 15).

17.
Sul.215; HUN.23; Put.251 n.

18.
Isaac Hunt, supplementary statement in HUN.34; Put.251.

19.
Citations of this diary refer to the published version in Mor.1469–73.

20.
Isaac Hunt has anecdotes concerning the original Ms. of this diary, which startled him considerably when he first read it in TR’s Albany room. It struck him as libelous, and indeed TR seems to have been the victim of a libel suit later in the season; whether or not the diary caused it Hunt does not say. See HUN.
passim
.

21.
Mor.1470.

22.
Ib., 1471.

23.
Ib., 1469–73.

24.
Ib., 1469.

25.
Put.255 gives a typical ballot. (N.B.: his phrase “necessary for choice 61” applies to a day when only 120 members were voting.)

26.
Auto.91; Mor.1469.

27.
TR.Wks.XIII.57; Phelps,
Handbook
, and
Albany Illustrated, passim
.

28.
MBR to E, Jan. 8, 1882 (FDR).

29.
Anna Bulloch Gracie diaries in TRC,
passim;
Mrs. Joseph Alsop Sr. in TRB mss.; Anna Bulloch Gracie to E, Jan. 8, 1882 (FDR).

30.
HUN.42. Hunt was nearly seventy at the time he recalled this first meeting with TR (see Bibl.). He placed it “in the early part of the first session,” saying that the caucus had been called to discuss a proposed Republican-Democratic “deal” regarding appointments. If so, the meeting took place on Feb. 21, 1882. But TR, in his Legislative Diary, Jan. 10, writes enthusiastically
about some fellow-members “from the country,” doubtless including Hunt; and since there
was
a caucus on appointments around this time (Put.250) Hunt was probably confusing the one with the other. The author therefore assumes, as Putnam does, that the meeting took place at the earlier caucus. In any case the date matters less than Hunt’s vivid memory of TR’s appearance and behavior.

31.
Hunt, supplementary statement, HUN.32.

32.
Ib., 33.

33.
Ib. A Harvard classmate recalled to Bradley Gilman how TR had once pounced on him, overwhelmed him with a barrage of questions, then withdrawn as suddenly and picked up something to read. “He was just bored with me. That was all. He had drained me of the information he sought.” Gilman,
Roosevelt the Happy Warrior
(Little, Brown, 1921) 49.

34.
Hunt, supplementary statement, HUN.33.

35.
HUN.75.

36.
TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 13, 1882; Mor.56. Elsewhere Alice is, e.g., “Baby,” “little darling Alicey,” and “poor baby-wife.”

37.
Pri.48; HUN.22; Hunt, supplementary statement, 23.

38.
HUN.50; TR.Auto.65; HUN.84–5. George Spinney told the story of the blanket-tossing incident in ib. The word “balls” was erased from the typed transcript, although five symbolic spaces remain. The story sounds apocryphal, but Spinney reminded TR of it in early January 1907, and the President was highly amused. “That was a mighty good letter of yours and sounded so like the Spinney of twenty-five years ago that it made me laugh as I read it.” (Mor.5.559).

39.
HUN.85 ff.; supplementary details from James Taylor in TRB mss. Other versions of this incident have TR flattening three toughs at a tavern outside town, and knocking out a Tammany spoiler at the entrance to the Delavan House. All share the Rooseveltian qualities of lightning response to any hostility, and aristocratic contempt for the provoker. See, e.g., Gilman,
Warrior
, 74.

40.
Phelps,
Handbook
, 24; Roseberry,
Capitol
, 46 ff. The ceiling is now boarded up.

41.
Put.252; Mor.1470.

42.
Albany Press-Knickerbocker
, qu. PRI.n. See TR.Wks.XIV.3 for text of this speech.

43.
Ib.

44.
New York Herald
, Feb. 11, 1883.

45.
HUN.5.

46.
Gilman,
Warrior
, 10.

47.
Mor.1470.

48.
TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 24, 1882.

49.
Facsimile in Lor.193. For another reaction, see
The Criterion
, Jan. 28, 1882: “Mr. Roosevelt made in that brief speech a record for honesty, judgment, and conception of statesmanship that ranks him at once among the leading legislators of his time.”

50.
Put.257. It may be of interest to note here that six days after TR’s maiden speech, his old friend Sara Delano, now married to James Roosevelt of Hyde Park, gave birth to a son, Franklin Delano.

51.
TR.Pri.Di. Feb. 14, 1882; Mor. 1471–2.

52.
Put.258.

53.
TR.Auto.72.

54.
HUN.16–26.

55.
Put.254–5; Pri.66; John Walsh in PRI.n.

56.
Mor.1472.

57.
Ib.

58.
TR.Auto.72.

59.
Ib., 71.

60.
Ib., 75.

61.
Ib., 75–6.

62.
TR.Auto.77.

63.
HUN.6–7; Put.261.

64.
HUN.8; Put.261.

65.
Henry Lowenthal,
N.Y.T
. City Editor, int. FRE; TR.Wks.XIV.7–11; Put.261–70.

66.
Hunt, supplementary statement, 1.

67.
John Walsh in PRI.n.

68.
New York World
, Mar. 30, 1882.

69.
Put.263.

70.
TR.Auto.79.

71.
Spinney, qu. Put.264.

72.
Full text of TR’s speech is in TR.Wks.XIV.7 ff.

73.
Spinney in Hunt, supplementary statement, 4.

74.
Put.265; TR.Wks.XIV.11.

75.
HUN.2–4.

76.
Spinney, qu. Put.265;
Sun
, Apr. 6, 1882;
Trib, N.Y.T.
, same date.

77.
Sun
, Apr. 6, 1882.

78.
Hunt, supplementary statement, 34. (Here, in typed transcript, “balls” is changed to “chickens.”)

79.
Sun
, n.d., in TR.Scr.;
N.Y.T.
, n.d., in ib.;
World
, Apr. 7, 1882.

80.
N.Y.T.
, Apr. 6, 7, 1882.

81.
Spinney, qu. Put.266.

82.
Ib.

83.
An associate in the Assembly later estimated that TR “could have made a million dollars if he had wanted to.” HUN.75.

84.
Pri.73; Put.269.

85.
Bigelow, Poultney,
Seventy Summers
(London, 1925) 269.

86.
N.Y.T.
, Apr. 13, 1882.

87.
HUN.49. In an interview with Ethel Armes, Sept. 19, 1924, Hunt recalled TR yelling with delight one day, “I have been sued for slander! I am getting on amazingly politically.” TRB.

88.
Hudson, William C.,
Recollections of an Old Political Reporter
(N.Y., 1911) 144–9.

89.
Hunt, supplementary statement, 22.

90.
Mrs. Joseph Alsop Sr. (Corinne’s daughter) int. in TRB mss.

91.
Anna Bulloch Gracie’s diary, 1882, makes mysterious references to an “illness” of Elliott’s (probably a recurrence of his teenage epilepsy attacks), which she first heard about on Mar. 30. “Went to church Holy Communion prayed to God to cure him.”

92.
Joseph Murray in FRE.;
Morning Journal
, Apr. 29, 1884.

93.
Trib.
, Mar. 22, 1882.

94.
Ib., June 3, 1882.

95.
Qu. Har.22.

96.
Trib.
, Apr. 28, 1882; Put.300.

97.
TR.Auto.69; Put.300.

98.
See Hurwitz, Howard L.,
TR and Labor in New York State
(NY, 1943) for a negative assessment of TR’s labor record in the Assembly, Put.299–305 for a positive. The cigar-bill episode is usually viewed as a turning-point in Roosevelt biographies, largely because TR himself placed so much emphasis on it in his own
Autobiography
(81–3). However the rest of his youthful labor record, not to mention countless contemptuous references to the labor movement in his private letters, indicates that he “matured” in this respect very slowly. It should not be forgotten that TR was an ardent Progressive when he dictated his memoirs in 1913.

99.
Clips, TR.Scr.; Hunt, supplementary statement, 2 ff.; HUN.14–20.

100.
Clips, TR.Scr.;
Trib.
, June 1, 1882.

101.
World
, June 1.

102.
Qu. Put.271.

103.
World
, June 1.

104.
Put.272.

105.
N.Y.T.
, June 3, 1882. See comments of individual legislators returning to New York in
Trib.
, June 3.

106.
Trib.
, June 3, 1882; TR.Scr.

107.
Mor.56.

108.
TR.Scr.

109.
Spinney in HUN.41.

Important sources not in Bibliography:
1. Hudson, William C.,
Random Recollections of an Old Political Reporter
(NY, 1911).

1.
Albany Argus
, Jan. 2, 1883.

2.
Pr.74; Put.278–9.

3.
TR to TR Jr. in Mor.634–5.

4.
See Put.277–9 for an account of TR’s re-election campaign. His vote was 4,225 against 2,016, with 67 percent of the ballot—an improvement of 4 percent over his 1882 vote.

5.
Shaw, Albert, “TR as Political Leader” in TR.Wks.XIV.xvii; Hudson,
Recollections
, 145; Franklin Matthews in
Harper’s Magazine
, Sep. 28, 1901, 984. See also Andrew D. White to Willard Fiske, May 26, 1884: “When you remember that this prodigious series of successes of his have been achieved by a man of … college standing … you will realize what a striking case it is. In my judgment, nothing has been seen like it in this State since the early days of Seward” (Cornell U. Libraries).

6.
TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 1, 1883.

7.
Albany Argus
, Jan. 3, 1883; Put. 278 fn.

8.
Hudson,
Recollections
, 251. See Nev. for Cleveland’s rise to power.

9.
Tugwell, Rexford G.,
Grover Cleveland
(NY, 1968) 72. “He is a mass of solid hog,” Henry Adams wrote (to C. F. Adams, Jan. 23, 1894). The following physical description of Cleveland is taken from Nev. 57–8 and
passim;
Carpenter, Frank G.,
Carp’s Washington
(McGraw Hill, 1960) 39–41; Wise, John S.,
Recollections of Thirteen Presidents
(NY, 1906); pors.

10.
Nev. 109; Stoddard memo, TRB mss.

11.
Hud.143.

12.
Nev.57–8; see below, Ch. 11, for details of Cleveland’s paternity case.

13.
HUN.39.

14.
It will be remembered that TR, then touring Europe with Alice, had exclaimed, “This [the assassination] means work in the future for those who wish their country well.” Upon returning to New York he began attending meetings of the N.Y. Civil Service Reform Association, and was elected its vice-president just before his departure to Albany. “I am heartily in accord with any movement tending toward the improvement of the ‘spoils’ system,” he wrote in his letter of acceptance, “—or, I should say, its destruction.” (TRB mss.)

15.
Put.280–1; Nev.123.

16.
New York Times
, Jan. 25, 1883; Ellis, David M.
et al., A History of New York State
(Cornell U. Press, 1967) 369; Nev.123; HUN.40.

17.
HUN.40. See also
N.Y. Evening Post
, Jan. 10, 1883: “Mr. Roosevelt … has secured to a remarkable degree the confidence of public-spirited citizens of either party.”

18.
Mor.59. There is some doubt over the date of this letter, which TR marks simply “Albany, Monday evening.”: See ib., fn., and Put.274, fn. The latter believes it to be mid-January 1882. But Henry James, whom TR specifically mentions meeting, was not in Boston that January: he had left town on Dec. 26, 1881. James
was
there through New Year’s 1883, however; so if TR and Alice had gone to Boston for Christmas, the meeting probably took place sometime during the festive season. Jan. 1, 1883, was a Monday, which would explain TR’s advance presence in Albany for the opening of the Legislature. Alice, presumably, joined him on Tuesday or Wednesday, helped him choose rooms, then accompanied him to New York on Thursday, as promised in his letter to Mittie. Note that the letter also mentions his first known reference to meeting with Henry Cabot Lodge.

19.
Put.280.

20.
Alice’s routine reconstructed from the letters of MBR, C, and E, and Anna Bulloch Gracie’s diaries in TRC.

21.
Anna Bulloch Gracie diary, Oct. 2, 1882; Put.307; Par.44.

22.
TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 3, 1883.

23.
New York Herald
, Feb. 11, 1883.

24.
HUN.88.

25.
Mor.1471.

26.
HUN.86 says, “I think the dinner was in 1884.” But he adds, “We had our pictures taken before or after.” A group portrait of the “quartette” is in TRC, but it manifestly dates from 1883, when TR had lost his side-whiskers, but still retained his center parting. Judging by the solemn expressions of all concerned, the picture was taken “before” the dinner. See p. 171.

27.
Ib.

28.
Qu. Sul.230.