The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (50 page)

N
OTWITHSTANDING
R
OOSEVELT’S
other preoccupations, it is probable that he found time to read a front-page article in
The New York Times
on 25 February, for its subject-matter was of intense interest to him. The headlines read
DRESSED BEEF IN THE WEST
—
THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE OF THE MARQUIS DE MORES
, and the copy consisted of an interview with the Frenchman, just arrived at the Hotel Brunswick. Much was made of his elegant city attire, in contrast to the broad sombrero and buckskin suit he wore out West. “The Marquis is a young man of 26, with a clear-cut and refined face and expressive gray eyes. He wears a dark brown mustache and slight sidewhiskers. He went West 18 months ago to organize the dressed beef business on the Northern Pacific Railroad. He put his first slaughterhouse on the Little Missouri. Here it was that the trouble [between himself and the three frontiersmen] occurred.…” But de Morès would not discuss “the Buffalo Bill side” of life in Dakota. He was more interested in promoting Medora as a future capital of the beef industry. The little town’s population was put at 600, and it already boasted a newspaper, the
Bad Lands Cowboy
. De Morès
was prepared to invest a million dollars in his enterprise, and was confident of profitable returns. “In his region, he says, are the most magnificent cattle farms to be found anywhere. Grass-fed cattle keep fat all Winter.”
¹²

R
OOSEVELT’S HYPERACTIVITY
did not diminish as the session wore on. If anything it increased, through two more phases of his City Investigation Committee, and two more reports totaling nearly a million words of testimony. The evidence of “blackmail and extortion” in the surrogate’s office, “gross abuses” in the sheriff’s, “no system whatever” in the Tax and Assessments Department, and “hush money” paid to policemen—interlarded with prison descriptions and brothel anecdotes which make strong reading even today—was so shocking that no fewer than seven of his nine corrective measures were passed by the Legislature.
¹³

Since these seven bills called, among other things, for prompt cancellation of the tenure of all New York City department heads, from the bejeweled Commissioner Thompson downward, they aroused frantic opposition in the House, including one free-for-all, on 26 March, which the
Evening Post
called “a scene of uproar and violence to all rules of decency.”
¹⁴
Hissing, howling Assemblymen ran to and fro, some hiding in the lobby in an effort to break the quorum, others besieging the Clerk’s desk with threats and denunciations. “During all this tumult,” said Isaac Hunt, “TR was the presiding genius. He was right in his element, rejoicing like an eagle in the midst of a storm.”
¹⁵

The uproar was to no avail. All seven bills went on to achieve passage by overwhelming margins, despite parliamentary sabotage by Speaker Sheard.
¹⁶
Roosevelt did not, however, pause to enjoy this moment of triumph over his erstwhile rival. A chance for even sweeter revenge—upon Sheard’s patron, Senator Warner Miller—lay ahead, at Utica, on 23 April.

U
TICA, A SHABBY
canal-town in the middle of the Mohawk Valley, was the site of the New York State Republican Convention
for 1884. Four delegates-at-large, plus 128 district and alternative delegates, would be chosen for the National Convention at Chicago. When Roosevelt checked into Bagg’s Hotel on 22 April, he knew that enormous issues were at stake—issues transcending the convention’s provincial locale and rather mundane agenda. Forces had gathered all over the country to nominate James G. Blaine at Chicago, instead of President Arthur, whose political support was eroding.
¹⁷
If New York, the President’s own state, voted to send a pro-Blaine delegation to Chicago, Arthur might well be deposed after serving less than one full term.

Roosevelt himself supported neither Arthur nor Blaine. The former, if only for his participation in the New York Collectorship struggle of 1877, was
persona non grata
to any son of Theodore Senior. The latter gave off a faint reek of legislative corruption which made the young moralist sniff with disdain. Blaine was a former Speaker of the House and Secretary of State; there was no denying his political stature and magnificent abilities. Yet for fifteen years he had been unable satisfactorily to explain certain improprieties during his Speakership, arising out of a favorable ruling in behalf of a railroad, whose bonds he had subsequently bought. As a result of this apparent self-interest, Blaine had twice been denied the Presidential nomination; but now, in 1884, party regulars seemed disposed to forgive him.
¹⁸

Not so Roosevelt, who early in the New Year had endorsed the third-running candidate, Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont.
¹⁹
Edmunds was honest, industrious, unambitious, and dull, but for these very reasons he appealed to Independent Republicans—the young, idealistic reformers who identified neither with Stalwarts nor Half Breeds. Besides, he happened to suit Roosevelt’s present purpose, which was to force the state Convention to elect a pro-Edmunds delegation, and publicly humiliate Boss Miller, who was committed to Blaine.
²⁰
Utica’s Grand Opera House promised a suitably theatrical setting for his scenario.

The plot was based on a few simple political facts. There were about five hundred Republicans in town. Roosevelt, as Senator Edmunds’s most prominent supporter, would influence the votes of perhaps 70 Independents. The remaining 430-odd votes were evenly
divided between Arthur and Blaine.
²¹
He thus stood in his favorite position—at the balance of power. Could he but persuade the 70 Independents to stand there with him, in a tight group that leaned neither one way nor the other, he would eventually be able to swing the convention in any direction he chose.

N
O SOONER HAD
R
OOSEVELT
arrived in the hotel lobby than he was besieged by excited Independents. At least forty of them followed him upstairs, and his suite immediately became known as “Edmunds headquarters.” Although the Opera House was not due to open its doors until noon the following day, negotiations began at once, in an atmosphere of whispered secrecy. Messengers sped back and forth between Roosevelt’s rooms and those of Boss Miller, representing Blaine, and those of State Chairman James D. Warren, representing President Arthur. Few serious observers believed that the Independent strength would last through the evening. “The Edmunds men … are showing their teeth,” reported the
New York World
, “and refuse to be coaxed by either side; but they lack organization and may find themselves outwitted.”
²²

Actually Roosevelt’s organization was very good. He himself was doing the outwitting. By periodically appearing in the corridors to announce, in conversational tones, that he was “no leader” of the Independents and had “no personal ambitions” at Utica, and by giving ambiguous replies to both Blaine and Arthur emissaries, he gave the impression that he was holding on to his seventy votes with difficulty. Miller and Warren thus separately assumed that Roosevelt was bargaining to release them. All the young dude wanted, obviously, was to be made a delegate-at-large. Well, if that was his price …

At six o’clock the negotiants emerged for dinner, greeted one another politely, and arranged themselves in enigmatic groups of tables. Newspapermen tried to guess, from the movement of complimentary bottles of champagne, which way the political currents were flowing; but the bottles circulated in all directions. A
Sun
reporter captured something of the tension in the atmosphere.
“Bagg’s Hotel is filled to suffocation tonight,” he cabled. “There are no Blaine hurrahs, or Arthur enthusiasm, or Edmunds sentiment here. The old party managers are simply … groping in the dark for the coming man. There is harmony everywhere; but it is the harmony of men who are afraid of each other.”
²³

To Boss Miller’s bewilderment, Roosevelt proved no more tractable after dinner than he had been before. He not only rejected an offer to send one Independent delegate-at-large, i.e., himself, to Chicago, along with three Blaine men, but also refused to make the ratio two and two. News of the second rejection, which leaked out about midnight, greatly excited Chairman Warren, who offered the Independents
three
places on the ticket, in exchange for just one Arthur supporter; but Roosevelt also rejected that. At
2:30 A.M.
, the President’s men made their final, humiliating offer, an offer so weak it amounted to capitulation. All four delegates-at-large could be Independents for Edmunds, as long as there was no danger of them ultimately switching to Blaine. Roosevelt graciously accepted, knowing very well who the leader of those delegates would be.
²⁴

T
HERE WAS SOMETHING
faintly comic, to newspaper reporters, about the sight of machine Republicans filing through the streets next morning in somber black, their tall silk hats shining in the sun. They looked for all the world like mourners at a funeral. Boss Miller walked alone, a large, portly, graying man with troubled eyes.
²⁵
Roosevelt’s rejection of his advances last night had stunned and shamed him; his mood today was not improved by an editorial in the
World
calling him “a pigmy” in comparision with his “giant” predecessor, Roscoe Conkling.