Theodore Rex (135 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
Biographical Note:
According to one of TR’s classmates, Wilson was an “ardent” admirer of TR as early as 1883. Albert Shaw, “Reminiscences of Theodore Roosevelt,” ms. (AS). Scattered references in Wilson’s early papers indicate that the two men first crossed paths on the academic lecture circuit on 20 Nov. 1890. By the middle of the decade they were corresponding; they appeared on the same platform at a Reform Rally in Baltimore, 3 Mar. 1896 (The
Papers of Woodrow Wilson
, ed. Arthur S. Link [Princeton, N.J., 1966], vol. 9, 483–85;
The Baltimore Sun
, 4 Mar. 1896). Surviving correspondence dates from April 1897 (Wilson,
Papers
, vol. 10, 238). Wilson expressed public admiration for TR (“This popular, this gifted man”) at Harvard on 13 Oct. 1899. TR was equally complimentary about Wilson. As Governor, he hoped the professor would visit him in Albany. “There is much I should like to talk over with you.” In 1900, Wilson consulted TR about his appointment to the chair of politics at Princeton. He valued TR’s advice “as showing … a very sane, academic side of him, not known by everybody … but constituting his hope of real and lasting eminence.” On 18 July 1901, TR invited Wilson, as a man of “constructive scholarship and administrative ability” (TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 277), to stay at Oyster Bay. He wished advice “on how to arouse our young college students … to take an active interest in politics.” TR was musing on an academic career himself at this point, and had a scheme to establish student reform committees at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Wilson came, saw, and was conquered by TR’s ebullience. Afterward, he praised the visit as “most delightful and refreshing” (Wilson,
Papers
, vol. 11, 253, 277, 352, 513–16; vol. 12, 164, 172).
71
“I am going to make”
Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 97–98, 63; New York
Herald
, 15 Sept. 1901.
72
“John Hay is”
New York
Herald
, 15 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 97–98.
73
Compounding the flattery
Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 99. The ultraconservative Gage was indeed nervous about having to serve under TR. Hay to Henry Adams, 19 Sept. 1901 (TD).
74
My dear Roosevelt
Hay to TR, 19 Sept. 1901 (TRP). During the course of the day, TR also received a letter from Henry Cabot Lodge, the controlling power of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, beseeching him, “Above all, do nothing which could cause the retirement of Secretary Hay.” Francis E. Leupp,
The Man Roosevelt: A Portrait Sketch
(New York, 1904), 54.
75
16
SEPTEMBER DAWNED
The New York Times
and New York
Sun
, 17 Sept. 1901; film, “President McKinley’s Funeral Cortege at Buffalo,” Library of Congress; Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 100.
76
THE FUNERAL TRAIN
Catalogs illustrating these beautiful vehicles can be seen in GBC.
77
Reporters were assigned
The New York Times
and New York
Sun
, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat,
From McKinley, 1
00ff.; TR scrapbooks (TRP). Loeb was subsequently appointed assistant secretary to the President. TR’s decision to retain Cortelyou over him struck many Rooseveltians as opportunistic and unfeeling. McKinleyites, however, were delighted. The well-connected Cortelyou helped smooth out many transition problems between the two camps, and Loeb eventually got his delayed preferment. For a biographical sketch of Loeb, see “The Perfect Stenographer” in Louis W. Koening,
The Invisible Presidency
(New York, 1960).
78
At 8:57
The following narrative of TR’s twelve-hour, 420-mile journey to Washington is based on the firsthand observations of newspapermen who rode on the
funeral train, principally Joseph I. C. Clarke (New York
Herald)
and H. H. Kohlsaat (Chicago
Times-Herald)
. Other accounts appeared in
The New York Times
, New York
Sun
, New York
World, Chicago Tribune, Buffalo Express
, and local newspapers—e.g., Harrisburg
Patriot
, 17 Sept. 1901. Some descriptions of the route traveled come from reconnaissances made by the author. Other sources cited below.
79
What he had just
Twelve days before, TR had spoken with pride about “this fundamental fact of American life, this acknowledgement that the law of work is the fundamental law of our being” TR,
Works
, vol. 15, 330.
80
This first year
London
Daily Mail Yearbook
, 1902;
Collier’s Weekly
, 25 Jan. 1902; Mark Sullivan,
Our Times
(New York, 1926–1935), vol. 1, 31. Contemporary statistics, cited by an English analyst in
Collier’s Weekly
, 25 Jan. 1902: The United States was the world’s richest nation, worth $88 billion to Britain’s $55 billion, France’s $45 billion, Germany’s $40 billion, and Russia’s $30 billion. See also articles on United States prosperity in
Review of Reviews
, Sept. and Oct. 1901;
Success
, Oct. 1901; and New York
Evening Post
, 31 Dec. 1901. The best surveys of material America at the turn of the century are the opening chapters of Harold U. Faulkner,
The Decline of Laissez-Faire, 1897–1917
(New York, 1951), and George E. Mowry,
The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912
(New York, 1958).
81
Indeed, it could consume
Faulkner,
Decline of Laissez-Faire
, 68–69; Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 1, 33;
Success
, Oct. 1901; Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
, 4; James Ford Rhodes,
The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations, 1897–1909
(New York, 1922), 158. August’s export total of $107 million was the largest in United States history (New York
Evening Post
, 31 Dec. 1901).
82
Even if the United States
William Woodruff,
America’s Impact on the World
(New York, 1975), 115–16;
Forum
, 19 May 1902; product sampling derived from a survey of popular British periodicals, Sept.–Dec. 1901 (LC);
Success
, Oct. 1901; Frederick A. McKenzie,
The American Invaders
(New York, 1901); “The American Commercial Invasion of Europe,”
Scribner’s
, Jan. and Feb. 1902. For the exuberant overseas expansion of American corporations in 1901, see Mira Watkins,
The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914
(Cambridge, Mass., 1970), chaps. 4 and 5.
83
As a result
Andrew Carnegie,
Triumphant Democracy
(New York, 1893), 5; Faulkner,
Decline of Laissez-Faire
, 23, 87; Jean Strouse,
Morgan: American Financier
(New York, 1999), 442–43; Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
, 4.
84
It was hard
Ray Stannard Baker,
American Chronicle
(New York, 1945), 89–90. See Sidney Fine,
Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State, 1865–1901
(Ann Arbor, 1956).
85
Trees soon barred
Williams, “TR Receives.” By 1901 the nation was making more than two billion calls annually.
86
The foreign papers
Clarke in New York
Herald
, 17 Sept. 1901. Foreign press quoted in New York
Sun
, 16 Sept. 1901.
87
Continental comment was
World’s Work
, Dec. 1901; TR scrapbooks (TRP). For a presentist French view of TR’s prepresidential character, see Serge Ricard, “Théodore Roosevelt avant la présidence: analyse d’une pensée politique,”
Canadian Review of American Studies
12.2 (fall 1981).
88
fifth in the world
T. A. Brassey, ed.,
The Naval Annual, 1902
(Portsmouth, U.K.). Great Britain led the naval ranking, followed by France, Russia, and Germany.
89
About
9:30 Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 98; Clarke in New York
Herald
, 17 Sept. 1901.
90
For ten minutes
Ibid.
91
McKinley had marched
With the exception of Grover Cleveland (who had family
responsibilities), every President since Lincoln had worn a military uniform during the Civil War.
Review of Reviews
, Nov. 1901.
92
Powerful commercial
Faulkner,
Decline of Laissez-Faire
, 68–69; Foster Rhea Dulles,
America’s Rise to World Power, 1898–1954
(New York, 1955), 46ff.
93
They had trumpeted
Downes v. Bidwell
, 182 U.S. Reports 244 (1901). In this decision, the Supreme Court found that the new territories were appurtenant to, rather than part of, the United States. As long as they remained thus “unincorporated” into the body politic, their inhabitants could not expect the full freedoms enjoyed by United States citizens, “only such fundamental rights as were derived from natural law” (Dulles,
America’s Rise
, 56). These included rights to life, liberty, and property, but did not include guarantees of, say, uniform tariff and excise rates, nor necessarily any of democratic vote (ibid., 57). TR agreed with William Howard Taft that the Supreme Court’s attitude was just: “What does well here would work ruin there [the Philippines]—trial by jury in all cases, for example” (TR,
Letters
, vol.
3, 105).
Cynical observers suggested that the court’s ruling had been affected by the pro-imperialism vote of 1900.
94
The old soldiers
Frederick H. Harrington, “The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States,
1898–1900,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, Sept. 1935; see also Howard C. Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
(Chicago, 1927), 13, and Robert L. Beisner,
Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900
(New York, 1968).
95
“World duties,”
TR,
Works
, vol. 15, 332.
96
“So they have”
Ibid., 333.
97
Cuba, for example
Upon arrival in Washington, the President stated emphatically that he wanted to get out of Cuba (Francis E. Leupp to Oswald Garrison Villard, 20 Sept. 1901 [CS]). “Never in recent times,” TR asserted, “has any great nation acted with such disinterestedness as we have shown in Cuba” (ibid.,
476–77).
While repeating these sentiments twelve years later in his
Autobiography
, he admitted that in 1901 “our own direct interests were great, because of the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and especially because of Cuba’s relation to the projected Isthmian Canal” (214).
98
“Sometimes,” Roosevelt
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 105.
99
Clearly, a vast
World’s Work
, Sept. 1901; Richard Leopold,
Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition
(Boston,
1954), 26–28;
Alexander E. Campbell,
America Comes of Age
(New York,
1971), 94–95;
Lewis L. Gould,
The Presidency of William McKinley
(Lawrence, Kans.,
1989), 114–15.
TR, in
Letters
, vol. 3, 209, sneers at “those amiable but very far from wise philanthropists who think that we can … benefit the Filipino by getting out of the Philippines and letting him wallow back into savagery.”
Review of Reviews
remarked, in an article on the problems confronting Governor-General Taft: “Under the most liberal estimates, there are not over a half-million people in the islands who possess anywhere near the capacity for selfgovernment exhibited by the most ignorant negro in the black belt of our own South” (Aug. 1901). For TR’s intense prepresidential interest in the Philippines (he wanted to be the first Governor-General), see Oscar M. Alfonso,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines
(New York, 1974), chap. 1.
100
President McKinley’s
Leopold,
Elihu Root
, 34–35; TR,
Works
, vol. 15, 337–38. Taft disclaimed some of the rumors in a letter to Root (2 Aug. 1901 [ER]), but admitted others were true. According to Daniel B. Schirmer,
Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War
(Cambridge, Mass.,
1972), 226, 230
, Filipinos were being exterminated, at the height of the insurrection, at a ratio of five dead to every one wounded. For a contemporary view of the relations between the United States and its new dependencies, see Arthur W. Dunn, “The Government of Our Insular Possessions,”
Review of Reviews
, Dec. 1901.
101
THE TRAIN BEGAN
The New York Times
, 17 Sept. 1901; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 3, 20, 23; Alexander E. Campbell,
Great Britain and the U.S., 1895–1903
(London, 1960), 179–83; A. Northend Benjamin, “Russia in the East,”
Munsey’s
, June 1901.
102
Both powers were
Frederick W. Marks III,
Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt
(Lincoln, Nebr., 1979), 4–5; Thomas A. Bailey,
A Diplomatic History of the American People
, 8th ed. (New York, 1968), 482; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 3, 20, 26, 112; Raymond A. Esthus,
Theodore Roosevelt and Japan
(Seattle, 1966), 8. See also A. Gregory Moore, “Dilemma of Stereotypes: Theodore Roosevelt and China, 1901–1909” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1978).
103
Worldwide, the balance
A modern historian redefines this as “an imbalance” favorable to the United States and Great Britain (William N. Tilchin,
Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft
[New York, 1997], 49). See also Edward H. Zabriskie,
American-Russian Rivalry in the Far East: A Study in Diplomacy and Power Politics, 1895–1914
(Philadelphia, 1946),
passim
. “I think the 20th century will still be the century of the men who speak English.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 15.
