Theodore Rex (178 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
94
James W. Wadsworth
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 296; Young, “Pig That Fell.”
95
Again, Roosevelt
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 296.
96
A pleasedly firm
Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 3, 459;
Review of Reviews
, Aug. 1906. The territories of Arizona and New Mexico were also offered statehood, but declined.
97
That afternoon
Washington
Evening Star
, 30 June 1906.
98
Still, it had
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 329.
99
“Society cannot”
Qu. in Ray Stannard Baker, “The Railroad Rate: A Study in Commercial Autocracy,”
McClure’s
, Nov. 1905.
: B
LOOD
T
HROUGH
M
ARBLE
1
I’m not so
Dunne,
Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy
, 217.
2
EDITH KERMIT ROOSEVELT
New York Tribune
, 2 July 1906.
3
The President emerged
Ibid. Except where otherwise indicated, the following portrait of EKR in midlife is adapted from Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
.
4
To children other
Alsop, unpublished autobiography, 4–5 (TRC).
5
(Archie and Quentin)
Looker,
White House Gang
, 43–44.
6
New England reserve
EKR was descended from Puritans and French Huguenots. See EKR,
American Backlogs: The Story of Gertrude Tyler and Her Family, 1660–1860
(New York, 1928).
7
“If they had”
Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 559.
8
Edith was well-read
Butt,
Letters
, 127. Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 583; Baker, notebook no. 28, Jan. 1905 (RSB); Jules Jusserand to Ministère des Affaires Étrangers 9 Mar. 1909 (JJ).
9
Whereas his
For EKR’s role as patroness of White House “musicales,” see Elise K. Kirk,
Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit
(Urbana, 1986), 169–88.
10
largest and worst
Nicholas Roosevelt,
Front Row Seat
, 25.
11
His attitude toward
Alsop, unpublished autobiography, 4 (TRC); Alice Roosevelt Longworth interview, Nov. 1954 (TRB); William Allen White, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, ca. 1936 (HKB); Wagenknecht,
Seven Worlds
, 168–69.
12
Her attitude toward
Landor, “Death,” qu. in Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 500:
I warmed both hands at the fire of life, / It sinks, and I am ready to depart
. Rixey,
Bamie
, 231.
13
HE DID NOT LOOK
EKR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, 4 June 1906 (TRC).
14
“damned little Jew”
Maurice Low, Washington correspondent of the London
Morning Post
, had reported that TR acknowledged the congratulations only of Wilhelm II after the Portsmouth peace treaty. “He spoke savagely—as he ought not have spoken to me about an Englishman” (Sir Mortimer Durand diary, 8 May 1906 [HMD]). On another occasion, TR called Low a “circumcised skunk.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 918.
15
William E. Chandler
Leon B. Richardson,
William E. Chandler
(New York, 1940), 666–67; Watson,
As I Knew Them
, 83; J. Van Vechten Olcott, interviewed by J. F. French, 1922 (TRB). Another Roosevelt explosion is described in Mrs. Dewey’s diary, 11 May 1906 (GD).
16
And Norman Hapgood
TR to Hapgood, 29 June 1906 (TRP). “The usages which obtain among gentlemen leave no option in such a case; and your [refusal to name sources] both fixes your status and leads inevitably to the conclusion that you made the statement knowing it to be false.”
17
But Roosevelt had
TR,
Letters to Kermit
, 130; TR to Ethel Roosevelt, 17 June 1906 (TRP); Gifford Pinchot to Irving Fisher, 22 Aug. 1905 (GP). TR had been aware for at least four years that he had an eating problem. “I am rather an early Goth and eat too much and drink too much, and then trust in hard work to do away with the effects,” he wrote Pierre de Coubertin, a French friend, on 21 Nov. 1902 (TRP). By “drink” he meant such liquids as milk and coffee. Apart from his bibulous evening on the night of the Cannon birthday party (which he cited years later as an aberration), TR’s alcohol intake verged on that of teetotalism. See Wagenknecht,
Seven Worlds
, 92–97.
18
“It is clear”
Fisher to Pinchot, 2 Sept. 1905 (GP).
19
Edith sweetly
New York Tribune
, 5 July 1906; Oyster Bay
Pilot
, 27 July 1906;
The Washington Post
, 11 July 1907. Alice teased her father that he seemed to hay “with a view to his political future.” TR to Alice Longworth, 29 June 1908 (TRP).
20
“J’ESSAIE DE”
Samuel H. Church to William Loeb, 9 Aug. 1906 (TRP).
Biographical Note:
An earlier letter (2 Aug.) from Church to Loeb states that Rodin, who was intending to visit the United States in 1907, had told Church of his “strong desire” to execute a bust or statue of TR. He felt the resulting work would convey the President’s “tremendous energy and vitality,” and very likely be his masterpiece. Church informed TR, through Loeb, that the Carnegie Institute would pay for the statue and subsequently exhibit it in Pittsburgh. TR agreed to pose for Rodin. For undisclosed reasons, the proposal came to nothing.
21
(“Theodore,” Edith)
Hagedorn,
Roosevelt Family
, 38.
22
“It is now”
The Washington Post
, 18 Aug. 1906.
23
“At a few minutes”
Summary Discharge or Mustering Out of Regiments or Companies: Message of the President of the United States
(Washington, D.C., 1908), 20–21 (hereafter
Summary Discharge)
.
24
Roosevelt ordered
Ibid., 20, 32. Ann J. Lane,
The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction
(Port Washington, N.Y., 1971), 5–17; John D. Weaver,
The Brownsville Raid
(College Station, 1992), 29–30. The garrison’s previous occupants had been white. Protests against its occupation by “nigger” troops were forwarded to Secretary Taft as early as the beginning of June.
25
As a result
Weaver,
Brownsville Raid
, 30;
Summary Discharge
, 31–32.
26
Only one
Summary Discharge
, 24.
27
Some damaging
Ibid., 31; Lane,
Brownsville Affair
, 18, 20.
28
Roosevelt waited
Summary Discharge
, 34. TR had also received urgent appeals from both Texas Senators to move the troops, in view of inflamed local feelings. Ibid., 29.
29
He ordered
Ibid., 34.
30
Roosevelt then sent
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 384–85; Lane,
Brownsville Affair
, 19–20.
31
It came on
The complete text of Blocksom’s report appears in
Summary Discharge
, 60–65.
32
“be discharged”
Ibid., 64.
33
Blocksom added
Ibid., 65.
34
Over the last
See Gould,
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
, 237–38.
Biographical Note:
For a definitive statement of TR’s attitude toward blacks in April 1906, see TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 226–28. It was made in response to the patrician racism propounded by his friend Owen Wister in
Lady Baltimore
(New York, 1906). TR accepted “entirely” Wister’s theory that blacks were “altogether inferior to the whites,” and wrote that he saw no reason why “ninety-five percent of the Negroes” in the South should be allowed to vote. He reserved his scorn for the hypocrisy of Southern whites who talked discrimination yet retained black mistresses, and, worse still, stole the votes of disfranchised blacks in order to “elect” racist members of Congress. He disagreed with Wister that Southern blacks had “become worse” since the Civil War, citing Booker T. Washington as an example of the race’s power to improve itself. “I may add that I do not know a white man of the South who is as good a man as Booker Washington.” See TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 221–30.
35
His one outburst
See p. 425.
36
More ominously
Gould,
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
, 238.
37
THE PRESIDENT’S
SANGUIS
HARPER’S WEEKLY
, 8 Sept. 1906; Cheney,
Personal Memoirs
, 83.
38
It was the greatest
Harper’s Weekly
, 8 Sept. 1906; Gould,
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
, 123. This battleship became the
Delaware
, displacing twenty thousand
tons, and mounting ten twelve-inch guns. Wimmel,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet
, 195–97, 201.
39
“the dirt fly”
TR’s first use of this phrase appears to have been at the Gridiron Club on 27 Jan. 1906. “As long as I am President the dirt will fly in the Canal Zone.”
40
Having fought
Ralph E. Minger, “William H. Taft and the United States Intervention in Cuba in 1906,”
Hispanic America Historical Review
41 (1961).
41
Roosevelt authorized
Whitney T. Perkins,
Constraint of Empire: The United States and Caribbean Interventions
(Westport, Conn., 1981), 14. See also Scott,
Robert Bacon
, 113–19.
42
“Just at the”
TR to Henry White, 13 Sept. 1906 (TRP); TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 401.
43
It was particularly
John Barrett, “Elihu Root’s Trip in South America,” ms. in JB; Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 1, 481. This grand tour was the first ever made by an American Secretary of State in office. For a detailed account, see Janice Hepworth, “A Policy of Practical Altruism,”
Journal of Inter-American Studies
3.3 (1961).
44
a paradox of
Perkins,
Constraint of Empire
, 13. President Estrada Palma often threatened to resign, but his clear purpose in doing so was to force the United States to intervene and prop up his regime. See TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 428.
45
“You had no”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 409. See also Christopher A. Abel, “Controlling the Big Stick: Theodore Roosevelt and the Cuban Crisis of 1906,”
Naval War College Review
40.3 (1987).
46
His latest Secretary
Bonaparte had joined the Cabinet on 1 July 1905. For an excellent short portrait, see Eric F. Goldman, “Charles J. Bonaparte, Patrician Reformer: His Earlier Career,” in
Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science
, series 61, no. 2. See also Walker Rumble, “Rectitude and Reform: Charles Joseph Bonaparte and the Politics of Gentility” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1971).
47
It was agreed
Perkins,
Constraint of Empire
, 14–15.
48
slaughtered six hundred
Hagedorn,
Leonard Wood
, vol. 2, 65.
49
For much of
Heffron, “Mr. Justice Moody.” Moody expressed a desire to leave the Administration on 27 August, in what may have been a ploy to get TR to make up his mind. See TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 390, 396.
50
He was much
Lee,
Good Innings
, vol. 1, 324–26.
51
“I would walk”
Oscar K. Davis,
Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, 1898–1918
(Boston, 1925), 54. See also Dunn,
From Harrison to Harding
, vol. 2, 38.
52
Taft was warm
According to George Harris, a photographer assigned to the Roosevelt White House, TR decided against Root when he noticed the Secretary at a social reception, pacing alone with his hands behind his back. Elsewhere in the room, Taft jovially entertained a circle of guests. Harris in
The Washington Post
, n.d. 1952 (HKB).
53
Roosevelt was not
“You, Mr. Speaker, will be the next President of the United States,” TR told Joseph Cannon at a Sagamore Hill ceremony on 17 August. “Uncle Joe” had begun to fancy himself as the party’s nominee in 1906, after hearing a few compliments too many during his recent seventieth-birthday celebrations.
The Washington Post
, 18 Aug. 1906; Bolles,
Tyrant from Illinois
, 10.
54
The Washington Post
28 June 1906, qu. by Durand in
British Documents on Foreign Affairs
, vol. 12, 49.
55
JOSEPH B. FORAKER
Foraker to TR, 26 Sept. 1906 (TRP).
56
Roosevelt could not
Taft himself, en route to Cuba, had queried TR’s willingness to act unilaterally, only to be told that the President “would not dream of asking the position of Congress” in such an emergency. Nothing but “a long wrangle” would result, while the emergency worsened. A strong President must “accept responsibility
to establish precedents which successors may follow even if they are unwilling to take the initiative themselves.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 414–15.
