The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (161 page)

67.
Sun
, June 2.

68.
Ib., and
World
, same date.

69.
Ib.

70.
Chi. Trib
, June 4, 1884.

71.
Ib.; pictures in New York Public Library Collection.
Sun
, June 4.

72.
Collage from various newspapers cited
passim
.

73.
Chi. Trib.
, June 4. According to Andrew D. White, who overheard this remark, it was made on the last day of the Convention, when the portrait of Lincoln dominating the hall was suddenly removed. But contemporary newspapers confirm that Garfield’s portrait replaced that of the Emancipator at the beginning of the proceedings.

74.
Put.431–2, various newspapers cited
passim
.

75.
Sun
, June 4, 1884;
Chi. Trib., N.Y.T.
, same date; Put.430 fn. and 434.

76.
Sun
, June 4, 1884; Put.434.

77.
Mor.72; TR.Wks.XIV.37.

78.
Sun
, June 4, 1884;
World
, same date. (But see
Chi. Trib.
, June 4, ed.) Note that Putnam, whose biography is flawed by occasional racial bias, studiously leaves out the key element in TR’s speech (p. 435).

79.
Put.435;
Sun
, June 4; Foraker,
Life
, 161. Mrs. Foraker, in her own, excellent autobiography,
I Would Live It Again
(Harpers, 1932), remembers TR at this time as a “scowling and raspily positive” young man whose “fire and point of view” attracted her husband. She notes the irony of the fact that it was a black man that brought them together, and a black regiment (at Brownsville) that caused their spectacular falling-out in 1907.

80.
Sun
, June 4, 1884.

81.
Ib., June 5, 1884.

82.
Ib., June 6, 1884.

83.
Chi. Trib.
, June 6, 1884.

84.
Andrew D. White,
Autobiography
, 1.206–7;
Chi. Trib., Sun
, June 6, 1884.

85.
Mor.72. “Governor Long” was John D. Long, TR’s future superior at the Navy Department.

86.
N.Y.T.
, June 7, 1884.

87.
Sun
, June 7, 1884.

88.
Ib.; see Put.440–1.

89.
Ib.;
Sun
, June 7, 1884; HUN.23.

90.
Chi. Trib.
, June 7, 1884. See also Andrew D. White,
Autobiography
, 1.205; other newspapers cited
passim
.

91.
Qu.
Sun
, June 7, 1884; qu. Har.40.

92.
Sun
, June 7, 1884;
Chi. Trib.
, same date.

93.
Nation
, June 12, 1884;
N.Y.T.
, June 7.

94.
World
, June 7, 1884. According to the unpublished memoirs of Eugene Hay (LC), TR privately told fellow delegates that he had been sounded out by the Blaine forces as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate.

95.
See Put.446.

96.
St. Paul Pioneer Press
, June 9, 1884. See also Put.448. In another careful self-positioning, TR had by now separated himself from the Free Trade Club, which was anathema to protectionist GOP conservatives. “I’m a Republican first; Free Trader afterwards,” he wrote a club officer, Poultney Bigelow. Quoted in unpublished biographical sketch of TR by Bigelow in Poultney Bigelow Papers, New York Public Library. (Undated letter, probably Jan. 1884.)

97.
TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB); TR.Wks. 1.152.

1.
TR.Wks.I.150. The following account of TR’s solo expedition is taken from his own narrative, “A Trip on the Prairie,” first published in
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman
in 1885. Supplementary details from TR. Pri.Di. June 17–22, 1884, and other sources cited
passim
.

2.
TR.Wks.I.307–9; 1.2; II.54.

3.
Ib.

4.
See p. 27.

5.
TR.Wks.I.150; 308; 309–10.

6.
Apparently TR saw no live buffalo on his peregrinations through the Badlands in 1884. He comments in TR.Pri.Di. only on the countless skulls and skeletons to be seen everywhere. In other words, the future president of the American Bison Society must have killed one of the very last buffalo in Dakota on his hunt the previous fall.

7.
TR.Wks.I.149–51; TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB); TR.Wks.I.151–2.

8.
Ib., 329.

9.
Ib., 153–5, 154–7, 158, TR to B, June 23, 1884.

10.
TR.Wks.I.161-2.

11.
Ib.

12.
Put.457; TR to B, June 23, 1884.

13.
This commitment raised TR’s total investment in Dakota to $40,000, or 20% of his capital. The contract was signed on June 12, 1884.

14.
TR.Wks.I.164; Put.457.

15.
He had arrived on the night of June 9, and ridden immediately to his ranch.

16.
Put. 452; Twe.111. The hotel is still operating under the name “Rough Riders Hotel.” Medora, garishly restored and commercialized, is now a major tourist destination in North Dakota. Chateau de Morès survives intact as a state historical site, and the giant chimney of the Marquis’s packing plant still looms over town.

17.
Mor.73.

18.
Bad Lands Cowboy
, Jan. 5, 1884; Hag.RBL.79, 120; Brown, Dee,
Trail Driving Days
(Scribner’s, 1952) 186; Goplen, Arnold O., “The Career of the Marquis de Morès in the Bad Lands of North Dakota,”
North Dakota History
, Jan.-Apr. 1946, 40; Twe.69, 71; Brown,
Trail Driving
, 187.

19.
Twe.
passim;
Goplen, “de Morès”;
Trail Driving
, 185; Put.362.

20.
Goplen, “de Morès,” 47.

21.
Ferris and Merrifield had refused to allow one of the Marquis’s herds to graze on the range opposite Maltese Cross, which according to frontier law “belonged” to their ranch. The Marquis had offered them a $1,500 bribe, which they refused. Hag.RBL. 84–6; Put.451.

22.
Hag.RBL.127; Put.460–1.

23.
See Gar.79 ff. for Lodge’s tribulations and torment after Chicago.

24.
Bad Lands Cowboy
, qu. HAG.Bln.

25.
The
Cowboy
office soon became a favorite haunt of TR when he was in town, along with those others who “liked to smell printer’s ink and feel civilized.” Arthur T. Packard in
Saturday Evening Post
, Mar. 4, 1904.

26.
Bad Lands Cowboy
, qu. HAG.Bln.

27.
TR.Wks.271; Hag.RBL.188; HAG. Bn.; Lan.80.

28.
Hag.RBL.149; Put.456–7; TR. Auto. 97–8; Sew.18–19. This site, returned to nature, is now the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. A diorama re-creates it at the Museum of Natural History in New York.

29.
TR.Auto.96; photos by TR in TRC; TR.Wks.I.10-11.

30.
Put.459; Mor.73.

31.
Sew. 12.

32.
Ib.

33.
Ib., 13–4; Sewall in HAG.Bln.

34.
Put.459.

35.
Hag.RBL.147; Put.461.

36.
HAG.Bln. See Hag.RBL.139–147 for an account of Granville Stuart’s vigilante movement, also Mattison, Ray H., “Roosevelt and the Stockmen’s Association” in
North Dakota History
, XVII.2–3 (Apr.-July 1950). This rough-and-ready form of justice sometimes had unfortunate consequences, as when the vigilantes strung up an innocent man. Their leader did his best to apologize to the widow. “Madam, the joke is on us.” Albert T. Vollweiler in
Quarterly Journal of U. North Dakota
19 (Oct. 1919) 1.

37.
St. Paul Pioneer Press
, July 2, 1884.

38.
COW.

39.
The family had acquired Alice Lee’s habit of calling him by his college nickname. Although the word understandably pained him, it took them some time to relearn the word “Theodore.” See Robinson/Cowles/Alsop correspondence,
passim
.

40.
Sew. 14–15.

41.
TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB).

42.
Put.463–5; COW.

43.
Anna Bulloch Gracie to Archibald Bulloch Sr., May 14, 1884 (TRP).

44.
Merrifield in HAG.Bln.; Hag. RF.11.

45.
Nev.154.

46.
Gar.79 ff; Put.464–5.

47.
See
N.Y. Evening Post
, June 12, 1884, for text; also Put.448.

48.
Elsewhere TR noted that it was “impossible to combine the functions of a guerilla chief with those of a colonel in the regular army; one has the greater independence of action, the other is able to make what action he does take vastly more effective.”
Boston Herald
, July 20, 1884; Put.467.

49.
Mor.75. The reactions of William Roscoe Thayer may be taken as typical. See his
TR
, 52.

50.
Wis.26. TR was blackballed for membership of the Union League Club, which his father had helped found, on June 12, 1884. Not until October 9 did Charles Evarts manage to persuade the club committee to accept him. Irwin, Will et al.,
A History of the Union League Club of New York
(Dodd Mead, 1953) 127–8.

51.
Eve. Post
qu. Har.41; Mor.75. John M. Dobson, in “George W. Curtis and the Election of 1884,”
New York State Historical Quarterly
52 (1968) 3, argues
that the GOP’s pro-Cleveland mugwumps represented no reformist trend, only anti-Blaine hysteria. Hence TR was justified in declining their embrace.

52.
Sample headlines: “A TERRIBLE TALE—DARK CHAPTER IN A PUBLIC MAN’S HISTORY—The Pitiful Story of Maria Halpin and Governor Cleveland’s Son.” Sample editorial opinion: “We do not believe that the American people will knowingly elect to the Presidency a coarse debauchee who would bring his harlots with him to Washington and hire lodgings for them convenient to the White House.”
Buffalo Telegraph
and Charles Dana in the
Sun
, qu. Tugwell, Rexford G.,
Grover Cleveland
(NY, 1968) 91–2. For sequel to scandal, see below, n. 86 and text.

53.
Trib.
, July 28, 1884.

54.
Hag.RBL.159; Put.471; see also Sew. 17.

55.
Bad Lands Cowboy
, July 31, 1884; Mor.73; Hag. 159.

56.
Sewall qu. Put.471; Hag.RBL.161–2; HAG.Bln.

57.
Sewall in ib.; Lincoln Lang on Merrifield in ib.; Lan.67; Put.423.

58.
TR to B, Aug. 12 and 17, 1884.

59.
Ib.; Put.472–3; TR.Wks.I.420, III.75.

60.
Sewall in HAG.Bln.; Sew.19; Put.472–3; Sew.18.

61.
TRB.

62.
TR to B, Aug. 17, 1884; TR.Wks.I.311.

63.
TR burned and bleached quickly and flatteringly.
St. Paul Pioneer Press
, July 2, 1884, described him as already “browned the color of maplewood bark.” TR to B, Aug. 12; 1885 newsclip in TRB; Mor.77. According to
N.Y. Her.
, Sep. 22, 1885, TR’s equipment included a beautifully embossed, monogrammed, 45-lb. saddle, silver-inlaid bit and spurs, real angora chaps, a braided quirt, and an “exquisite pearl-handled, silver-mounted revolver.” Among his many rifles was one inlaid with solid gold plates delicately engraved with hunting scenes.

64.
Now Wibaux, Montana. Mingusville was originally so named because its founders were a woman named Minnie and her husband, Gus. TR never specified the exact date of this encounter. Hag.RBL.151–3 places it impossibly in June of 1884; TR’s documented movements during that month prove that he would not have had the time to visit Mingusville. Put.251 fn. places the incident in April 1885, while conceding that the evidence is “circumstantial.” The author considers August 1884 a far more likely date, for these reasons: TR was at a loose end then; he mentions a shortage of horses in his letter to Bamie, which might explain his search for strays; also both W. Roy Hoffman and Pierre Wibaux, who were living near Mingusville at the time, agree the incident took place “shortly after July 1884.” (Hoffman, unpublished autobiography in TRB.) This could only have been between August 1 and 17. TR’s assertion that “it was a cold night” causes some problems, but falling temperatures are not unusual in late August, in windswept prairie towns.

65.
TR.Auto.124–5. At this point the reader should be reassured that TR, for all his self-esteem, was no braggart. Episodes like the Mingusville story, which seem too “fictional” to be true, occur frequently in his writings. However any scholar who makes any prolonged study of TR discovers that he was almost infallibly truthful. Edward Wagenknecht remarks: “I believe that in general he came as close to telling the truth as any man can come in talking about himself.” Elihu Root wrote: “He was incapable of deception, and thoughtless of it.” Hostile biographers investigating TR’s wilder stories have found them documented
down to the last detail. He was, of course, capable of humorous exaggeration and poetic license, but so is every good story-teller. See Wag.97–103.

66.
Hag.RBL.165; Sewall in HAG.Bln.

67.
TR.Wks.I.93.

68.
Hag.RBL.165–6.

69.
Put.391.

70.
Only known copy of
In Memory
is in TRC.

71.
Sewall in HAG.Bln. (he misdates the year as 1885); see also Sew.47, and Sewall in
Forum
, May 1919. Mrs. Roberts, a Badlands neighbor, remembers TR as “sad and quiet” during these days.
(McCall’s
, Oct. 1919.)

72.
TR to B, Sep. 20, 1884.

73.
TR.Pri.Di. The list is abridged; fragments of text in quotes. (N.B. These dates are adjusted, since TR’s diary was an old one, left over from 1883.)