The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (86 page)

As usual in times of stress, Roosevelt distracted himself with literature, and worked doggedly on his long-postponed history of New York City. “How I regret ever having undertaken it!” By way of relaxation he wrote three or four hunting pieces for
Century
, and, by way of duty, some very dull articles on Civil Service Reform. He apologized to George Haven Putnam for having to abandon—temporarily—Volumes Three and Four of his
magnum opus
. “I half wish I was out of this Civil Service Commission work, for I can’t do satisfactorily with
The Winning of the West
until I am; but I suppose I ought really to stand by it for at least a couple of years.”
¹⁴⁴

H
E SPENT ONE
of the most important weekends of his life on 10 and 11 May, reading from cover to cover Alfred Thayer Mahan’s new book,
The Influence of Sea Power upon History.
¹⁴⁵
Since the publication of his own
Naval War of 1812
he had considered himself an expert on this very subject, and had argued, passionately
but vaguely, that modernization of the fleet must keep pace with the industrialization of the economy. But he had never questioned America’s traditional naval strategy, based on a combination of coastal defense and commercial raiding. Now Mahan extended and clarified his vision, showing that real national security—and international greatness—could only be attained by building more and bigger ships and deploying them farther abroad. While advocating the constant growth of the American Navy, Mahan paradoxically insisted that its power be concentrated at various “pressure points” which controlled the circulation of global commerce. By striking quickly and sharply at any of these nerve centers, the United States could paralyze whole oceans. Mahan supported his thesis with brilliant analyses of the strategies of Nelson and Napoleon, proving that navies could be more effective than armies in determining the relative strength of nations. He also explained the intricate relationships between political power and sea power, warfare and economics, geography and technology. Roosevelt flipped the book shut a changed man. So, as it happened, did Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, when he read it—not to mention various Lords of the British and Japanese Admiralties, and officials throughout the Navy Department of the United States. More than any other strategic philosopher, Alfred Thayer Mahan was responsible for the naval buildup which preoccupied these four nations at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; more than any other world leader of the period, Theodore Roosevelt would glory in
The Influence of Sea Power upon History
, both as a title and as a fact.
¹⁴⁶

T
HE REPORT OF
the House committee’s investigation, filed 13 June 1890, stated that “the public service has been greatly benefited, and the law, on the whole, well-executed” by all three Commissioners. Charles Lyman was mildly censured for a certain “laxity of discipline” in administrative affairs, while his colleagues received unqualified praise. “We find that Commissioners Roosevelt and Thompson have discharged their duties with entire fidelity and integrity,” the document stated.
¹⁴⁷
“WHITEWASH!” screamed the
Washington Post
, but most press comment was approving.
The New York Times
and
Evening Post
went so far as to criticize President
Harrison and Postmaster General Wanamaker for not supporting the Civil Service Commission. Roosevelt returned with some relief to bureaucratic work.
¹⁴⁸
During his first year in office he had attracted a greater glare of publicity than his eight predecessors put together. It was time to retire temporarily to the wings before he was accused of hogging the footlights. Already the
Saturday Globe
was warning: “There is, perhaps, no man in the country more ambitious than this young New York politician.”
¹⁴⁹

Once again Washington began to drowse in summer heat. Edith and the children returned to Sagamore Hill; Cecil Spring Rice fled for the cool shores of Massachusetts; Henry Adams prepared to depart for the South Seas. Congress remained in session, with Speaker Reed presiding over the House in flannels and canvas shoes, a yellow scarf around his enormous waist.
¹⁵⁰
Roosevelt went to Oyster Bay as often as he could, but pressure of work (for the Commission was still backlogged) continually drew him back. He managed to finish his
“very
commonplace little book” on New York by the beginning of August, and spent the next three weeks feverishly trying to clear his desk. Another Western trip was in the offing, this time to Yellowstone, which he wished to inspect on behalf of the Boone & Crockett Club, but administrative difficulties nearly made him cancel it. “Oh, Heaven, if the President had a little backbone, and if the Senators did not have flannel legs!”
¹⁵¹

The first of September found Roosevelt in a large family party, including his wife and two sisters, heading West to Medora and the Rockies. Impressed as he was by the splendors of Yellowstone, he reserved his most admiring adjectives for Edith. The sight of that demure, book-loving lady cantering across the prairie on a wiry horse seemed to have shocked him into a renewed awareness of her charms. “She looks just as well and young and pretty as she did four years ago when I married her … she is as healthy as possible, and so young-looking and slender to be the mother of those two sturdy little scamps, Ted and Kermit.”
¹⁵²

W
ASHINGTON WAS STILL
deserted when he got back there in early October. Benjamin Harrison was at home, however, so Roosevelt paid a friendly call. Harrison, who had gotten into the
habit of drumming his fingers nervously during their interviews, gave him a frigid reception. Evidently the White House wanted to have nothing further to do with Civil Service Reform. “Damn the President! He is a cold-blooded, narrow-minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid old psalm-singing Indianapolis politician.”
¹⁵³

The November Congressional elections were disastrous for the Republican party, due mainly to an unpopular tariff measure which William McKinley had pushed into law at the end of the last session. With prices on manufactured goods rising daily, voters threw the culprit out of office—severely damaging his presidential prospects—and filled the House with the largest Democratic majority in history.
¹⁵⁴
Roosevelt, who had never liked the McKinley bill, began to mutter dire predictions about Cleveland recapturing the White House in 1892. But with his family reinstalled in town, and Henry Cabot Lodge by great luck returned to Congress, he found it impossible to be gloomy. Indeed, Roosevelt was conspicuously the most cheerful Republican in Washington that winter. “He continues to wear the nattiest and most stylish grey trousers, and the most boyish hat he can buy,” reported a local correspondent, “and he whistles jovially as he legs it down to the rooms of the Civil Service Commission.”
¹⁵⁵

Christmas was spent at 1820 Jefferson Place, and Roosevelt rejoiced in the event as much as any of his children:

That, according to his old friend Mrs. Winthrop Chanler, was the essence of Theodore Roosevelt, at least during his early years in Washington. “Life was the unpacking of an endless Christmas stocking.”
¹⁵⁷

“He is evidently a maniac morally no less than mentally.”
Elliott Roosevelt about the time of his marriage to Anna Hall
. (
Illustration 16.2
)

I
N
J
ANUARY 1891
Roosevelt was forced to turn his attention to “a nightmare of horror”
¹
that had been brooding over him for at least three years. His preoccupation with literature, politics, and his own immediate family had caused him to ignore warnings that Elliott Roosevelt was determinedly drinking himself to death. The two brothers, so close in youth, had recently seen very little of each other. Twenty miles of country road, and a yawning social gulf, separated their respective Long Island establishments. At Sagamore Hill the talk was of books and public affairs; at Hempstead, of parties, fashions, and horseflesh. On the rare occasions when the brothers met, friends were struck by the reversal of their teenage roles: where once Theodore had been sickly and solitary, and Elliott an effulgent Apollo, now it was the elder who glowed, and the younger who was wasting away.
²