Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of American Power: An American for All Time [Hardcover ed.] 1498596754, 9781498596756

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Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of American Power

Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of American Power An American for All Time William R. Nester

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nester, William R., 1956- author. Title: Theodore Roosevelt and the art of American power : an American for all time / William R. Nester. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 201806491 (print) | LCCN 2019000909 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498596763 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781498596756 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919. | Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919--Political and social views. | Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919--Influence. | Presidents--United States--Biography. | Power (Social sciences)--United States--History. | Balance of power--History. | United States--Politics and government--Philosophy. | United States--Foreign relations--Philosophy. Classification: LCC E757 (ebook) | LCC E757 .N47 2019 (print) | DDC 973.91/1092[B]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060491 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

1

1: The Stepping Stones 1

The Child of Nature

21

2

The Assemblyman

29

3

The Westerner

45

4

The Civil Service Commissioner

55

5

The Police Commissioner

75

6

The Assistant Navy Secretary

85

7

The Rough Rider

99

8

The Governor

113

9

The Vice President

123

2: The Presidency 10 The Trustbuster

133

11 The Square Dealer

149

12 The Imperialist

165

13 The Statesman

195

14 The Conservationist

219

15 The Mistake of His Life

229

3: The Unfinished Business 16 The Elder Statesman

237

17 The New Nationalist

245

18 The Man in the Arena

255

19 The Last Chances

265

20 The Legacy

279

Abbreviations Bibliography Index

295 297 317 v

vi

About the Author

Contents

329

Introduction

I believe in a strong executive; but I believe that responsibility should go with power. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 While I am a Jeffersonian in my genuine faith in democracy and popular government, I am a Hamiltonian in my government views, especially with . . . the need of the exercise of broad powers by the National Government. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 The Constitution should be treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment, and not as a straightjacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3 I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition. (Theodore Roosevelt) 4 To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace. (Theodore Roosevelt) 5

Contrary to his most famous maxim, Theodore Roosevelt was anything but soft-spoken. Indeed, even his best friends had trouble shutting him up. He was notorious for his enthusiastic, rapid-fire, booming discourses on an encyclopedic array of subjects. His brilliant mind seethed with ideas, facts, and views that he eagerly shared with anyone, anywhere, anytime whether it was someone seated demurely beside him at a formal dinner party or thousands of boisterous people at a campaign rally. Of course, Roosevelt was not just a talker, far more vitally he was a doer. Historians regularly rank him among the great or near great presidents but he chalked up just as dizzying an array of achievements at each lower stage of his political career. 6 Of all his political posts he stayed longest in the White House with seven and a half years, followed by six years as a federal civil service commissioner, three years as a New York state assemblyman, two years as a New York City police commissioner, two years as New York’s governor, one year as assistant navy secretary, and half a year as vice president. Perhaps no one has had a more whirlwind triumphant military career, a mere 133 days from his commission to his mustering out. During that time, Roosevelt formed a regiment and, in “a crowded hour,” led his men to victory at the battle of San Juan Heights where his heroism earned him a postmortem Medal of Honor. Of the many awards he received during his lifetime, the most prestigious was 1

2

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the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. In between his public offices he squeezed in stints as a rancher, explorer, and naturalist. He was also a prolific writer with thirty-eight published books and scores of articles amounting to millions of words. Finally, he was a loving family man; his first wife died in childbirth and he had five children with his second wife. Given all this, Theodore Roosevelt bequeathed an enduring legacy for Americans over how to govern as progressively and how to live as genuinely as possible. His deeds and words provide a spectrum of provocative perspectives into perennial national debates over what it means to be an American, a progressive, a man, and a moral person. More than a century ago, he wrestled with what to do about such seemingly recent threats to America as the rich getting exorbitantly richer and the middle class and poor stagnating or getting poorer; corporate giants strangling the economy with monopolies and oligopolies; cities plagued by corrupt bureaucrats, brutal cops, lousy schools, festering diseases, crumbling infrastructure, mass poverty, and vicious criminal gangs; millions of immigrants accused of driving down wages and diluting national identity; the destruction of natural resources essential for the nation’s continued prosperity; swelling economic and military power posed by foreign adversaries; worsening anti-American revolutions in foreign lands deemed vital to national security; the relative effectiveness of mass torture, executions, and destruction for fighting wars or international arms control, laws, and organizations for fostering peace; and even Islamist terrorism. A mirror held up to Roosevelt’s life reveals a prism of inspiring and disturbing reflections into the challenges and dilemmas of our own. How could one man accomplish so much? Theodore Roosevelt was a master of the art of American power. The art of power itself is as old as humanity and simply involves one’s ability to get what one wants in a conflict with others for the same thing. That includes asserting “smart” power or the appropriate available resources of “hard” or physical power and “soft” or psychological power. Leaders wield the art of American power when they protect or enhance the nation’s strategic, economic, social, and cultural interests guided by the Declaration of Independence’s values and the Constitution’s institutions. Of course, a leader must get national power before he can wield it. Each step upward in the hierarchy of local, state, and federal government at once demands and grants power. This progression is an art of American power as long as one’s selfinterests and the nation’s interests overlap. When they conflict, that person may have mastered the art of power but not the art of American power. The art of American power distinguishes between how one asserts power at home and abroad, between domestic and foreign policy. If American principles and laws prevail at home, the restrictions for wield-

Introduction

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ing an array of soft and hard power assets abroad are far looser. In the international arena, the White House daily wields diplomacy and espionage to assert national interests with all countries, and covert actions, economic sanctions, saber-rattling, and war as appropriate against countries that pose varying threats. American power is further enhanced by its economic and military alliances with others. These essential means for defending or enhancing American interests remain constant even as the technologies that convey them undergo ever more revolutionary changes. For instance, over two and a half centuries, Americans have largely led the transformation in how wars are fought from massed men armed with bayoneted muskets charging one another or sailing ships maneuvering to get upwind of each other to nuclear-powered aircraft carries, cruise missiles, drones, and cybertage, to name a few of countless stunning changes. Throughout his life Roosevelt asserted available or developed appropriate sources of power to realize both his personal ambitions and visions for America as a statesman, soldier, and scientist. 7 He was among America’s greatest progressives. In each public post, he asserted power to solve problems and better the lives of the people under his care. Inseparable from how Roosevelt understood and asserted power was his patriotism. He sought to wield power by means that reflected the nation’s ideals and institutions respectively grounded in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, although at times he provoked controversy by how he interpreted and stretched those powers. He understood the dynamic relationship between prosperity and security for both the United States and its individual citizens. As such Roosevelt provides countless examples for those who followed him as president and for officials at all levels of federal, state, and local government for how to strengthen America and thus Americans strategically, economically, socially, and culturally. Take, for instance, Roosevelt’s policy that resulted in the Panama Canal. He achieved that through three stages. In the first, like a chess master he wielded the essential mix of diplomats, spies, businessmen, warships, and marines to engineer Panama’s independence from Colombia followed by a treaty with the new government that authorized the United States to build, run, and defend a canal across that country to link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. He got that job done nearly bloodlessly; not a single American and only one Panamanian died during the military operation. In the second stage, he quickly rounded up more than the twothirds of senators needed to ratify the treaty. Finally, he helped organize the consortium of corporations capable of constructing and managing the canal, an engineering feat as astonishing for its time as the moon landing was six decades later. Since the Panama Canal’s completion in 1914, it has enormously enhanced American economic and strategic power. The United States and its people are far more secure and wealthy than they otherwise would have been without Roosevelt’s Panama policy. Thus did

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Roosevelt bequeath to his White House successors a brilliant example of how to assert the appropriate array of soft and hard powers to take advantage of opportunities abroad that strengthen the United States at a minimal cost in treasure and blood. Yet any one of scores of Roosevelt’s other domestic or foreign policies could be just as enlightening. For Roosevelt, what one did was inseparable from and dependent on who one was. As such, soft power surpassed hard power in getting what one wants in any conflict. Ambition and confidence are critical components of soft power. From an early age, he believed that he was destined for greatness and by acting on that belief empowered himself to eventually realize it. As a college student he quipped to a friend that: “You may laugh, but I have a presentiment that some time I may be President.” 8 But ambition and confidence alone are not enough for success. They in turn must be grounded in character. Indeed, of all the forces that shape an individual’s career and life, Roosevelt insisted that the most vital was one’s character or some mix of diligence, honesty, toughness, courage, compassion, and wisdom. 9 He constantly struggled to exemplify these empowering attributes. He hoped that posterity would recall first his extraordinary character and then his extraordinary deeds, recognizing that one led to the other. For him, moral and physical courage was the key dimension of both personal and national character: “Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is an unpardonable sin.” 10 He developed an unflinching and at times reckless courage by striving “to become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness . . . by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.” 11 For instance, when a mountain lion attacked his dogs, “I ran in and stabbed him behind the shoulder thrusting the knife you loaned me right into his heart. I have always wished to kill a cougar as I did this, with dogs and the knife.” 12 This was only one of numerous near death experiences on the hunt or at war. He coolly put three bullets into a grizzly before the beast collapsed at his feet; he shot down charging African lions and American bisons within a few paces of mauling or goring him. In Cuba, bullets wounded or killed men around him as he conspicuously led the charge up Kettle Hill on horseback; barbed wire forced him to dismount and spearhead his men up San Juan Hill on foot. Roosevelt led a charmed life but he did not escape often severe injuries. While herding cattle at his Dakota ranch, his horse reared and fell on him, cracking his right shoulder. During a fox hunt on Long Island, his horse stumbled and threw him against a stone wall, which broke his arm; he remounted and finished the hunt before seeking a doctor. During his presidency he was stick-fighting with General Leonard Wood when a heavy blow from his opponent broke his right arm. A boxing match with a military aide at the White House cost him the sight in his left eye. At Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a trolley crashed into his carriage, killed one of

Introduction

5

his bodyguards, and hurled the president, Governor Murray Crane, and private secretary George Cortelyou onto the ground. While his two companions suffered minor bruises, Roosevelt’s leg was badly cut and became inflected, which doctors eliminated only by cutting away the rotten flesh to the bone. During his trip down Brazil’s River of Doubt he badly bruised his leg, which became infected as malaria and parasites assailed him. In 1916, his horse threw him as he tried to heave himself atop and the fall broke two of his ribs. Roosevelt’s most extraordinary near death experience came during his 1912 presidential campaign as the Progressive Party candidate. He was on his way to deliver a speech at a Milwaukee coliseum packed with fans when an assassin fired a bullet into his chest and it lodged inches from his heart. He dismissed the urgings of his aides that they immediately rush him to a hospital. Instead he hurried on to the coliseum where he spoke for more than an hour before the stunned crowd. He had nearly hyperkinetic energy, which he described as “my usual restless, caged wolf feeling.” 13 His physical prowess was legendary. Until recently he held the world record for handshakes on one day, 8,150 with visitors filing into the White House on January 1, 1907. 14 He loved skinny-dipping in Rock Creek even in mid-winter, and from midstream joyfully calling on cabinet members, diplomats, and journalists shivering ashore to strip and join him. Roosevelt wanted all Americans to join him in the “strenuous life.” Roosevelt exercised his mind as vigorously as he did his body. Intellectually he was among the most brilliant presidents. His memory by sight and sound was legendary. He could quote long passages of prose and poems that he had read long before. No president and few Americans have been more voracious readers than Roosevelt, including even Jefferson. He could speed-read two or three tomes in a single evening. He treated the Library of Congress as an extension of his own collection, and regularly sent over lists of books to be delivered to the White House. He often knew much more about a congressional district than its representative or a foreign nation’s history than its learned inhabitants. 15 Roosevelt somehow found time from his frenetic public and private life not just to write but to become a prodigious and highly successful writer. He authored thirty-eight books and hundreds of articles in the fields of history, politics, and nature. His Naval War of 1812 and four volume Winning of the West series are his best known and enduring works, although his books on his hunting, ranching, and safari adventures remain vivid and insightful reading. Roosevelt dissects his subjects often in minute and lyrical detail. Much of his writings are autobiographical, and mostly modest for his successes and frank for his failures. He was a proud workaholic; “I belong to the laboring classes and the eight hour law does not apply to me.” 16 He insisted that: “There is only

6

Introduction

success for those who know how to prepare it.” 17 Success, however, should only be earned honestly. Business profit was “a good thing only so far at it is accompanied by, and develops, a high standard of conduct—honor, integrity, civic courage.” 18 President Benjamin Harrison recalled that “the only trouble I ever had with managing him was . . . he wanted to put an end to all the evil in the world between sunrise and sunset.” 19 Roosevelt dedicated much of his life to bettering conditions for his fellow citizens. He grounded his public policies on progressive values. Government had a moral duty to help those who could not help themselves. Workers should receive a living wage for an eight hour day. People should be freed from worry that the food or medicine they consumed were dangerous. Merit rather than connections or payoffs should determine who was hired for a job or whose bid was accepted for a project. He condemned corrupt officials who sold public assets for private gain or corrupt politicians who sold their votes. He insisted that Americans should wisely use rather than waste the nation’s natural resources so that future generations could enjoy the same benefits as the current generation. He championed national parks, forests, and monuments that preserved America’s historic, cultural, and natural heritage. He wanted a just society where each individual was free to develop his or her potential and dreams. Power, of course, was essential to achieving all this. Roosevelt’s understanding of the relationship between soft and hard power is exemplified by his axiom: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Each depended on the other: “If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength.” 20 A true man practiced what he preached and disdained those who talked a good fight but could not toe the line: “If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I preach. I have a horror of people who bark but don’t bite.” 21 Reputation is a key element of power. Nations like people have a far better chance of getting what they want if their word can be trusted. He insisted that America “behave toward other nations precisely as a strong, honorable, and upright man behaves in dealing with his fellow-citizens.” 22 Roosevelt was a voracious political animal who relished squaring off with others. He once explained that “I always genuinely enjoy” politics “and act as target and marksman alternatively with immense zest,” although he admitted “it is a trifle wearing.” 23 Elihu Root described him as “essentially a fighter and when he gets into a fight he is completely dominated by the desire to destroy his adversary.” 24 Cecil Rice concurred: “He always finds something to do and somebody to fight” and “is happiest when he conquers but quite happy if he only fights.” 25 He was a pragmatist who at times cut corners and deals to get jobs done and finesse prob-

Introduction

7

lems. When a friend questioned the propriety of such acts, he admitted that “in politics we have to do a great many things that we ought not to do.” 26 He firmly believed the best defense was a vigorous offense: “I always like to do my fighting in the adversary’s corner.” 27 A key to understanding Roosevelt’s art of power was his belief that life was a constant struggle at every human level whereby only the fittest survive let alone thrive. In this historian H.W. Brands provides an important insight into his psyche: “For Roosevelt the struggle was the thing; without struggle, life wasn’t worth living, for the individual or the nation.” 28 Roosevelt’s state of nature mixed versions described by pessimist Thomas Hobbes and optimist Jean Jacques Rousseau. Yet over time this Social Darwinian struggle that let only the fittest survive would help more people than it harmed: “The doctrine seems merciless, and so it is; but it is just and rational for all that.” 29 Although a man could never escape the laws of nature, he could master those laws and wield them to master and help other people. Indeed, material progress depended on more clever entrepreneurs and efficient producers squeezing out their lessers. Ethics was the antidote to such a Darwinian world. Victors have a moral duty to reach down and pull up all those below that they had previously vanquished. He insisted that: “No nation can claim rights without acknowledging the duties that go with the rights.” 30 “Speak softly and carry a big stick” is Roosevelt’s best known axiom of power. This along with other celebrated sayings that he originated or popularized—“strenuous life,” “muckraker,” “hat in the ring,” “bully pulpit,” “jawbone,” “trustbuster,” “anti-spoils,” “red-tape mind,” “lunatic fringe,” and “man in the arena”—express life as a constant struggle. Yet other Roosevelt sayings like “square deal” and “wise use” pointed to ethical ways to alleviate the harshness of existence by promoting the highest refinements of civilization and morality. To these related ends he abhorred the notion that the winner should take all. A monopoly of wealth and power was synonymous with tyranny. He hated predatory capitalists as much as he hated predatory socialists. In America, he sought to nurture balances of power in every political and economic realm such as among business corporations, or between management and labor, or producers and consumers. He was at once pro-business and antitrust. He encouraged both the conservation and consumption of natural resources. As for international relations, he tried to manipulate regional distributions of power to favor American interests. He asserted American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and a vital American role as the balancing power in other regions. He sought to sublimate great power rivalries by encouraging them to work in concert to resolve common problems. Roosevelt had a long list of heroes to emulate in different fields. Topping his list of the greatest statesmen were George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln. What these leaders shared was the

8

Introduction

conviction that American prosperity and security depended on a muscular, problem-solving federal government led by the president. Looking back on his own presidency, he boasted that “I have used every ounce of power there was in the office and have not cared a rap for the criticism of those who spoke of my ‘usurpation of power’ . . . I believe in a strong executive; but I believe that responsibility should go with power and that it is not well that the strong executive should be a perpetual executive.” 31 With this interpretation, Roosevelt followed the philosophical footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, who penned 55 of the 85 Federalist Papers that explained the Constitution and urged its ratification. George Washington, who presided over the constitutional convention, completely agreed with this interpretation. Subsequent prominent Hamiltonians before Roosevelt included John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson was serving as the ambassador in Paris when Hamilton and others were meticulously framing the Constitution in Philadelphia from May to September 1787. Yet Jefferson’s erudition and gravitas established him as the symbolic leader of a radically different interpretation. Jeffersonians insist that the Constitution only permits what is explicitly written in the text. Their application of this notion, however, is selective and contradictory. They at once celebrate and ignore the American “people” as the Constitution’s foundation while insisting that the United States is a compact among the states, of which each retains its sovereign rights. Roosevelt explained the core of his political philosophy: “While I am a Jeffersonian in my genuine faith in democracy and popular government, I am a Hamiltonian in my government views, especially with . . . the need of the exercise of broad powers by the National Government.” 32 Like any president, Roosevelt complained about trying to get anything done with an obstructionist Congress. He admitted that he did “not much admire the Senate, because it is such a helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done.” 33 He pointed out that Congress’s efficacy depended on the issue: “It is for the enormous interest of this Government to strengthen and give independence to the Executive in dealing with foreign powers, for a legislative body, because of its very good qualities in domestic matters, is not well fitted for shaping foreign policy on occasions when instant action is required.” 34 Roosevelt broke with Hamiltonism on one critical issue, the power of the judiciary. For Hamiltonians the federal court system’s power of judicial review, or determining whether a law is constitutional, was a key principle. Roosevelt radically disagreed, asserting that the people should ultimately be superior to the courts in determining right from wrong: “When a judge decides a constitutional question, when he decides what the people as a whole can and cannot do, the people should have the right to recall that decision if they think it is wrong.” He advocated a further enhancement of the people’s power, recall votes on judges to “get

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9

rid, not merely of a bad judge, but of a judge who, however virtuous, has grown so out of touch with social needs and facts that he is unfit longer to render good service on the bench.” 35 A president is more than the policymaker in chief. Roosevelt was always well aware that as president his duty was to epitomize and inspire the nation: “Most of these people habitually led rather gray lives, and they came to see the President” for “something to talk over and remember and tell their children . . . I think that besides mere curiosity there was a . . . feeling that the President was their man and symbolized their government, and that . . . he embodied their aspirations and best thought.” 36 He recognized that his political power was partly grounded in his ability to personify a type of American hero: “The chief service I can render these plain people who believe in me is not to destroy their ideal of me.” 37 H. W. Brands noted insightfully that “the ideal the public had formed of Roosevelt was largely a reflection of the ideal he had created for himself.” 38 As America’s teacher in chief, Roosevelt wielded what he called his “bully pulpit” to educate the public on vital issues and inspire them to devote themselves to their civic duties: “I did not ‘divine’ what the people were going to think. I simply made up my mind what they ought to think and then did my best to get them to think it.” 39 He deployed metaphors so his listeners could better understand his message. For instance, he likened monopolistic trusts to voracious, gigantic beasts stalking the economic jungle and devouring neighborhood businesses and families. He knew for most people style was more important than substance in grasping key points. He had a high-pitched voice that rasped with frequent overuse. For emphasis he bit off each word after saying it. He justified his speaking style by explaining “I have got to be emphatic to attract attention.” 40 He was a master manipulator of the mass media, then mostly confined to newspapers and magazines. 41 His power over the press was both charismatic and coercive. He provided them a room at the White House, spoke with them daily at length, answered all their questions, and fed them an unending stream of colorful stories and background information. The only catch was that they could only report what he permitted. He ousted anyone who broke that deal. This rarely happened. Newspaper rivalries, especially those in New York City like Joseph Pulitzer’s World and William Randolph Heart’s Journal, were fierce. Being excluded from the press pool meant losing scoops to one’s competitors. He timed many important releases for Sunday, the slowest news day, knowing that newspapers would carry the stories on their front pages on Monday morning. He issued anonymous trial balloons to test political and public reactions. He would squeeze out rivals trying to make news by unleashing deluges of stories.

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Introduction

Roosevelt was among the most charismatic presidents, exuding a powerful magnetism comparable to Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He was an exuberant people person who genuinely enjoyed being around fellow humans, and the more stimulating they were the better. He loved matching wits with first-rate minds. He reveled in inviting experts to his side for dinner, brisk walks, or horseback rides, during which he would pick their brains. As president he spent much of his $50,000 annual salary on entertaining influential congressmen, judges, businessmen, diplomats, scientists, authors, artists, professors, and journalists. William White was among those that he captivated. He recalled their first meeting when Roosevelt “sounded in my heart the first trumpet call of the new time that was to be . . . I had never known such a man as he and never shall again. He overcame me. And in the hour or two we spent that day . . . he poured into my heart such visions, such ideals, and such hopes, such a new attitude toward life and patriotism and the meaning of things, as I had never dreamed men had.” 42 There was definitely a downside to being around Roosevelt. His insatiable extroversion at once exhilarated and exhausted those around him as eventually he vacuumed the energy and patience of everyone in a room. He dominated any social gathering with his nonstop talking and kinetic physical presence as he loudly asserted his views of politics, history, science, philosophy, religion, and morality. Some found him endlessly fascinating and amusing; others dismissed him as boorish and controlling. One recipient of “the Roosevelt treatment,” Richard Child, described the ordeal: “You go to the White House, you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk, and then you go home to wring the personality out of your clothes.” 43 Although Roosevelt was the scion of a wealthy family embedded within society’s elite, unlike most people of his class, he was skeptical rather than fawning toward plutocrats: “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own businesses.” 44 He insisted that of “all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.” 45 Not surprisingly, Wall Street hated him as much as Main Street mostly adored him. Yet his haters were hardly confined to super-rich business tycoons. Woodrow Wilson called him “the most dangerous man of the age.” 46 Henry James condemned him as “a dangerous and common jingo,” rendered more so because of “his amusing likeability.” 47 Henry Adams dismissed him as “primitive,” “abnormal,” and “pure act,” and feared “the effect of unlimited power on limited mind.” 48 Although harsh criticism by his most prominent foes could rile him, Roosevelt mostly shrugged off the chorus: “If a man has a very decided character,

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11

has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies.” 49 He harbored plenty of flaws, although they were rooted more in his personality than his character. He was a far better talker than listener. He tended to intimidate rather than encourage dissent among his advisors. He could be a sucker for flattery and being told what he wanted to hear. He could misjudge the motives and characters of others, assigning them attributes or faults they did not merit. He projected his own values and goals onto his favorites, most disastrously with William Howard Taft. He was a notorious showboat and scene-stealer; his daughter Alice quipped: “He wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.” 50 Although he was affectionate to those he loved, he also had a coldhearted, callous side that extended even to his own family. After his first wife died in childbirth, he abandoned his baby Alice to his sister and thereafter had as little to do with her as possible even when she lived in his home with his second wife and children. He was so intent on hardening his first-born son that Theodore Junior suffered an emotional breakdown when he was ten. Deeply ashamed of what he had done, Roosevelt swore that thereafter “I shall never press Ted either in body or mind.” 51 Yet he proudly sent all four of his sons off to the horrors of World War I to uphold and possibly be sacrificed on the altar of the family’s “honor.” When Quentin was killed and his other sons returned wounded emotionally and physically, Roosevelt again lamented his folly. Underlying many of his worst failings was the clash between his cool reason and churning feelings. Intellectually he had a sophisticated understanding of history and the contemporary world. Emotionally he was a Manichean who tended to see issues in good versus evil terms; he assumed that he always represented good and demonized anyone who opposed him. One cannot compromise with evil, one can only vanquish it. He struggled to suppress a dimension of himself filled with sorrow and rage. Tragedies forever haunted two days that should otherwise have been happy. He married his first wife on his birthday, October 27; her early death would thereafter darken that day for him. Diseases killed his wife and mother on Valentine’s Day, February 14, forever blackening that day as well. Cancer killed his father at age forty-six. Alcoholism ruined his younger brother Elliot’s life and drove him to suicide when he was thirty-four. Roosevelt buried the searing pain of these tragedies as deeply as possible in his psyche “until they are too dead to throb.” 52 He recognized the bleaker side of human nature in himself as well as others: “There is no one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us. . . . It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.” 53

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As for religion, Roosevelt was raised in the Dutch Reformed Church, attended church weekly, and never publicly questioned Christian theology. He revealed a classic Calvinist outlook when he declared “I wish to show my faith by my works” and explained his dutiful churchgoing as “I want to set an example.” 54 Yet, although late in life he occasionally evoked God in his speeches, he does not appear to have believed in an afterlife; for him death was going “into the blackness” where “all things are the same to every man.” 55 He believed in a strict separation of church and state, going so far as to try to remove “In God We Trust” from the national currency. 56 For Roosevelt, a religion’s chief value was promoting social cohesion and virtuous behavior. He was a small “c” Christian who called on “all clergymen, all laymen who thoroughly believe that the tree is to be judged by its fruits, that religion and christianity cannot prosper unless they result in moral uplift and social betterment. . . . This means . . . working with broad tolerance and charity, so that religion may find its expression in an upright and useful life.” This was best achieved “in a broad and catholic spirit in work for the essentials of christianity . . . without regard to sect” and joined “with all good men in whatever way they worship their Creator, to bring nearer the reign of righteousness and of brotherly kindness on this earth.” 57 Among the paradoxes of Roosevelt’s life was that while he was a cutting-edge progressive on most public issues, he was a strict conservative on private moral issues. He was an old-fashioned gentleman who rose when any woman entered the room, and he sternly expected all other males present to pay the same courtesy. He was among America’s most prudish presidents. He condemned sex outside of marriage. He celebrated large families as signs of the husband’s virility and the wife’s fecundity, and as a duty to perpetuate one’s race. Although he was a moderate on nearly all issues, he was an extremist on birth control, “the one sin for which the penalty is national death . . . a sin for which there is no atonement.” 58 Roosevelt was the first president to conceive and assert American interests virtually around the world. The great powers crowded around the global chessboard with its irregularly shaped spaces, pawns of varying strengths, and rules varying from one cluster of spaces to the next. He sought to master this game by carefully determining just where and how to defend or enhance America’s critical interests. His core argument was that “the increasing interdependence and complexity of international political and economic relations render it incumbent on all civilized and orderly powers to insist on a proper policy for the world.” 59 In today’s world “wars between the great civilized powers have become less and less frequent,” while “wars with barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples come in an entirely different category.” For reasons of both self-interest and morality, the great powers had an “international police duty which must be performed for the sake of the welfare of mankind.” 60 Duty ac-

Introduction

13

companied power; the more powerful an individual, group, or nation, the greater was one’s duty to wield one’s power responsibly. To this end, he called on the great powers to work together in concerts to keep the peace among themselves and resolve problems with poorer countries. During his 1910 address before the Nobel Prize Committee, he called for a League of Peace whereby the great powers would work together to settle differences among themselves and other states that had the potential to erupt in war. In peacemaking as in all his other endeavors, he led by example. In the 1905 Portsmouth conference he ended a war between Russia and Japan, and thus earned the Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1906 Algeciras conference he forestalled a likely war of France and Britain against Germany. As a diplomat he had a style all his own. Historian H.W. Brands noted that “Roosevelt never would have made a good full-time diplomat; he was too impatient” and “longed to cut through the niceties of form and start pickaxing at the obdurate substance beneath.” 61 His favorite diplomatic strategy was one on one with a statesman or diplomat, cajoling and charming him to his point of view. He was equally adept at issuing intricate instructions to a trusted envoy then dispatching him to forge a deal with a foreign leader. Roosevelt held complex views of war and peace. Although he was not a warmonger, at times he sounded like one. He sincerely believed such nostrums as: “No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.” 62 Yet as president, he initiated no war and ended an ongoing war—a revolt by Filipinos against American rule—begun by his predecessor. All along he asserted his belief that peace was best upheld through strength: “We infinitely desire peace, and the surest way of obtaining it is to show that we are not afraid of war. We should deal in a spirit of justice and fairness with weaker nations, and we should show to the strongest that we are able to maintain our rights.” 63 He insisted that “I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it . . . I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war.” 64 These principles guided his presidency’s foreign policies. Roosevelt’s international big stick was the navy to protect America’s spheres of interest overseas, especially in the Western Hemisphere: “If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build, and keep at a pitch of the highest training, a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.” 65 Just how much naval strength America needed depended on that of one’s potential foes and friends, but: “Better a thousand times err on the side of over readiness to fight, than to err on the side of tame submission to injury, or cold-blooded indifference to the misery of the oppressed.” 66

14

Introduction

The United States would intervene in foreign countries only as a last resort when violence threatened American lives and property: “All that we desire is to see all neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendliness. . . . Brutal wrongdoing or an impotence that results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may finally require intervention by some civilized country, and in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty.” 67 Roosevelt was a master of saber-rattling and gunboat policy. His most decisive assertion came in 1903, when he manipulated Panama’s independence from Colombia then a treaty with the new government that granted the United States the right to build, run, and defend a canal within a ten-mile wide swath from sea to sea. The key to his success was an American warship and 400 marines that squared off with as many Colombians; after a tense standoff, the Colombians sailed away. In 1907, he had a fleet of sixteen battleships and ten support vessels painted white and dispatched on a goodwill visit around the world, a feat that excited the popular imagination at the time much as the moon walk did six decades later. Yet the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation of the globe was no mere public relations stunt. It was an assertion of American geopolitical power that especially targeted Japan and Germany for intimidation. A critical component behind the success of any foreign policy was enlisting the public’s support by educating them of its necessity. Otherwise an ignorant and emotional public could derail that policy. He explained: “This people of ours simply does not understand how things are outside our own boundaries; of course I do not desire to act unless I can get the bulk of our people to understand the situation and to back up the action; and to do that I have got to get the facts vividly before them.” 68 He lamented that: “I suppose the United States will always be unready for war, and in consequence will always be exposed to great expense, and to the possibility of the gravest calamity, when the Nation goes to war. This is no new thing. Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience.” 69 Despite the shortcomings he found among many of his countrymen, Roosevelt reveled in being an American, whose essence was defined by “spirit, conviction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace.” 70 The nearly two years he spent in several prolonged periods in Europe reinforced his nationalism. Amid one trip he triumphantly wrote that “the more I see, the better satisfied I am that I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.” 71 Yet he was no sentimentalist when he assessed American national character: “We are barbarians of a certain kind. And what is most unpleasant we are barbarians with a certain middle-class Philistine quality of ugliness and pettiness, raw con-

Introduction

15

ceit and raw sensitiveness. Where we get highly civilized, as in the northeast, we seem to become civilized in an unoriginal and ineffective way.” 72 Theodore Roosevelt is among those instantly recognizable American icons. Although the Mount Rushmore sculpture is his best known image, there are hundreds of photos. Most images are of him posed with his family or friends or alone behind a desk in his various offices or triumphantly cradling a rifle and standing beside a wild beast he has just shot. Some photos capture him on the campaign trail amid throngs of people, romping with his children, or engaged in other vigorous actions. The photos generally reveal three versions of Roosevelt: jaw jutting, scowling, and pounding the air with his fist as he harangues a crowd; grinning wildly; or staring solemnly. Cartoonists loved him for his mouth seemingly filled with oversized teeth, his short hair neatly parted in the middle, his thick-lensed granny eyeglasses, his bushy walrus moustache, his chubby cheeks, and his ever stouter body. The black and white photos do not reveal his bluish-gray eyes and the light brown hair of his younger years that morphed steel-gray during his late forties and grayish-white during his late fifties. Recordings reveal a surprising high-pitched voice that chewed off words for emphasis. He was five foot eight inches tall, average for his epoch. He was skinny as a boy, lean and muscular in his twenties, then fattened steadily as he passed through middle to old age as even his frenetic activities could not burn off all the calories he devoured; he gorged daily on three huge multicourse meals and rarely skimped on seconds or even thirds. In his last years gout and old injuries made walking painful. After leaving the White House, he insisted on being referred to as Colonel Roosevelt rather than Mr. President, thus offering an insight into his values. The worst thing one could call him was “Teddy,” a term of endearment reserved solely to his wife and sisters. Yet behind these quasi-heroic, quasi-cartoonish images was a consummate master of the art of American power. NOTES 1. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1087. 2. Roosevelt to William Potter, April 23, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:216–17. 3. Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 643. 4. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1922), 357. 5. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1897), 1:265. 6. Gary M. Marshall, “The Evaluation of Presidents: An Extension of the Schlesinger Polls,” The Journal of American History, vol. 57, no. 1 (June 1970), 104–13; Elmer Pilschke, “Rating Presidents and Diplomats in Chief,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4 (Fall 1985), 725–42; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 112, no. 2 (Summer 1997), 179–90; Robert K. Murray and Tim H. Blessing, Greatness in the White House (College Station: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 8–9, 15.

16

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7. For the most prominent critical biographies, see: Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931); Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 1858–1886 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1958); Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1958); Stefan Lorant, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Doubleday, 1959); William Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961, 1975); Nathan Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (New York: William Morrow, 1992); Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1979); David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982); H.W. Brands, T.R.: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1997); Louis Auchincloss, Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Times Books, 2001); Dalton, Kathleen, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Random House, 2002). For the most prominent critical political biographies, see: John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); David H. Burton, Theodore Roosevelt, American Politician: An Assessment (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997); Paul Grondahl, I Rose like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 2004); Joshua David Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt: The Preacher of Righteousness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). For the most prominent critical books on his presidency, see: George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper, 1958); Willard B. Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1970); David H. Burton, The Learned Presidency: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson (London: Associated University Press, 1988); Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Modern Library, 2001); Alda DiPace Donald, Lion in the White House: A Life of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Basic Books, 2007); Peri Arnold, Remaking the Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, 1901–1916 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011). 8. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 89. 9. For a good book on how Roosevelt developed and asserted his values, see: Joshua David Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt: The Preacher of Righteousness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 10. Roosevelt speech to the Naval War College, June 2, 1897, Roosevelt Works, 2:69. 11. Roosevelt Autobiography, 35. 12. Watts, Rough Rider in the White House, 182. 13. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, May 15, 1886, Roosevelt Letters, 1:101. 14. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, xxxi–xxxii. In 2002, New Mexico gubernatorial candidate shook 13,392 hands on one day. 15. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 614–15. 16. Brands, T.R., 320. 17. Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval History of the War of 1812: The History of the United States Navy during the Last War with Great Britain (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1882), 171. 18. Roosevelt address to Congress, December 5, 1905, Roosevelt Works, 15:280. 19. Harry J. Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), 75. 20. Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, 1800, Roosevelt Works, 13:474–75. 21. Roosevelt to Douglas Robinson, April 2, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:809. 22. Roosevelt Autobiography, 211–12. 23. Theodore Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, November 18, 1888, Roosevelt Letters, 1:149. 24. Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1938), 2:180–81.

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17

25. Edward J. Renehan, The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 25. 26. David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), 279. 27. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 14, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:858. 28. Brands, T.R., 388. 29. Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 17. 30. Roosevelt Autobiography, 273. 31. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1087. 32. Roosevelt to William Potter, April 23, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:216–17. 33. Roosevelt to Joseph Bishop, March 23, 1905, Bishop Letters, 1:433. See also: Ronald Reter, “President Theodore Roosevelt and the Senate’s ‘Advice and Consent,’ to Treaties,” Historian, vol. 44, no. 4 (1982), 483–504. 34. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, September 17, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:414. 35. Roosevelt address, Columbus Ohio, February 21, 1912, Roosevelt Works, 17:138. 36. Brands, T.R., 472. 37. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1088. 38. Brands, T.R., 518. 39. Donald V. Weatherman, Endangered Guardians: Party Reform within a Constitutional System (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 39. 40. Roosevelt to Willard Straight, January 13, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1005. 41. For a good article, see: George Juergens, “President Roosevelt and the Press,” Daedalus, vol. 111, no. 4 (1982), 113–33. For broader studies of the mass media and Roosevelt’s era, see: Ted T. Smythe, The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900 (New York: Praeger, 2003); Fiona Dean Halloran, Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013). 42. William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White, ed. Sally Foreman Griffith (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1990), 297. 43. Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds of Roosevelt, 108. 44. Morris, Theodore Rex, 360. 45. Roosevelt Autobiography, 234. 46. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, xv. 47. Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 275. 48. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918, 2000), 417, 418. 49. William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961, 1975), 303. 50. Michael Teague, ed., Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth (New York: Doubleday, 1981), 156. 51. Roosevelt to Granville Hall, November 29, 1899, Roosevelt Letters, 2:100. 52. Roosevelt to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, March 7, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:966. 53. Roosevelt to Edwin Arlington Robinson, March 27, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1024. 54. George E. Mowry, The Era and Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 48, 111. 55. Roosevelt to Oliver Wendell Holmes, December 5, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1059. 56. Willard B. Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1970), 213–15. 57. Roosevelt to John Mott, October 12, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1283–84. 58. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 790. 59. Roosevelt Annual Address, December 2, 1902, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:624. 60. Roosevelt Annual Address, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:575. 61. Brands, T.R., 534. 62. Roosevelt speech, Naval War College, June 2, 1897, Roosevelt Works, 2:69. 63. Roosevelt address, San Francisco, May 13, 1903, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:394. 64. Roosevelt Autobiography, 115.

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65. Roosevelt Address, Chicago, Roosevelt Addresses, April 2, 1903, 1:266. 66. Roosevelt, Washington’s Forgotten Maxim, Roosevelt Works, 2:146. 67. Roosevelt to Elihu Root, May 20, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:801. 68. Howard Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1956), 455. For a good book on the manipulation of the mass media and public opinion during the Roosevelt epoch, see: Robert C. Hildebrand, Power and the People: Executive Management of Public Opinion in Foreign Affairs, 1897–1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981). 69. Roosevelt Autobiography, 114. 70. Theodore Roosevelt, “True Americanism,” Roosevelt Works, 13:13–26. For good studies of Roosevelt’s patriotism and nationalism, see: Gary Gerstle “Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism,” Journal of American History, vol. 86, no. 3 (1999), 1280–1307; Paul M. Rego, The American Ideal: Theodore Roosevelt’s Search for American Individualism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008). 71. Brands, T.R., 188. 72. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, August 13, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:648.

1

The Stepping Stones

ONE The Child of Nature

Doctor, I’m going to do all the things you tell me not to do. If I’ve got to live the sort of life you have described, I don’t care how short it is. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 I still wonder whether he is the real thing or only the bundle of eccentricities which he appears. (William Thayer) 2 I am afraid it is too big a task for me. I wonder if I won’t find everything in life too big for my abilities. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 27, 1858, and grew up first on East Twentieth Street then West Fifty-Seventh Street. 4 He was born into a venerable and rich family whose Roosevelt branch first arrived in 1649 when the city was still New Amsterdam. Despite his privileged upbringing, Roosevelt from a young age was beset with physical and moral challenges. Learning how to overcome those challenges provided some of his earliest lessons on the art of power. Health problems assailed the family. Roosevelt himself was a frail child, beset by asthma, heart murmurs, stomach aches, insomnia, and nearsightedness. His elder sister Anna had a twisted spine and walked with difficulty. Asthma afflicted his younger sister Corinne. His younger brother Elliot had emotional problems, became an alcoholic, and eventually drank himself to death. Cancer killed his father at the young age of forty-six when Roosevelt was nineteen years old. Bright’s disease killed his mother when he was twenty-four. Historian H.W. Brands reveals that Roosevelt’s asthma and other childhood ills may have been as much psychological as physical. While environmental culprits like coal dust, horse dung dust, pollen, and molds aggravated his asthma, as important may have been being a sensitive child with three siblings trying to catch the attention of an adored, busy, 21

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and often absent father. 5 Atop all this, the doses of nicotine and caffeine that doctors prescribed to alleviate his asthma likely worsened his health. Fortunately, Roosevelt could enjoy fleeting escapes from the city’s foul air, clamor, and congestion. During the summer when diseases plagued the city, the family rented a home called Serenity at Oyster Bay, on Long Island’s north shore or took trips to the Maine woods and Adirondacks. Roosevelt later tried to understand and express his own psychological development: “The saying that the child is the father to the man may be taken in a sense almost the reverse of that usually given to it. The child is father to the man in the sense that his individuality is separate from the individuality of the grownup into which he turns.” 6 He adored his father and namesake, declaring him “the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness.” 7 Theodore Roosevelt Senior was a progressive who crusaded against corruption and for virtue in politics. He was also a philanthropist who headed charities that funded orphanages and hospitals. He helped found the Metropolitan Art Museum and Natural History Museum on opposite sides of Central Park in 1872. Roosevelt’s lifelong obsession with justice, helping the downtrodden, curbing corporate power, and cleaning up politics was inspired by his father’s crusades and vengeance against the machine politics that throttled his father’s political career. In 1876, Republican Party boss Roscoe Conkling killed Roosevelt Senior’s nomination by President Rutherford Hayes to head New York City’s port customs service by a Senate vote of 32 against 25; Conkling then got one of his cronies, Chester Arthur, appointed to that post worth a fortune to those who were venal. Yet in Roosevelt’s eyes, his father made a terrible mistake that darkened the family’s honor. He paid a substitute $1,000 to serve as a soldier in his place in the Civil War. Was his beloved father afraid to fight for the cause that he fervently supported? The New York City draft riots of July 1863, which resulted in over a hundred deaths, spotlighted the criticism that the goals of national unity and abolition disguised “a rich man’s war and poor man’s fight.” A portion of Roosevelt’s lifelong obsession with honor, virility, and war was driven to bury with his own successes his shame at his father’s refusal to fight in the noble cause for American union and ideals. His father dodged the draft partly in sensitivity to Roosevelt’s mother, Martha Bulloch, better known as Mittie, who was born on a Georgia plantation and whose relatives fought for the Confederacy. Mittie was a classic southern belle who charmed all who met her with her beauty, gentle wit, story-telling, and refined style in clothing and home furnishings. Unfortunately, she was also frivolous, self-indulgent, conceited, and indolent. This forced Anna, the oldest child and daughter, gradually to

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23

assume more duties for running the household and mothering her siblings. After their father died, Roosevelt wrote Anna that “you will have to advise me on many things.” 8 And so she did. His life-long dependence on Anna was practical as well as emotional; she helped manage his finances and gave him pertinent political and social advice. Roosevelt admitted to being “nervous and timid” as a child, flaws he tried to overcome by emulating role models from American history that he read about in books and the virile exploits of the Bulloch men that his mother loved telling him about. He “felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their own in the world, and . . . had a great desire to be like them.” 9 A sharp spur to toughen himself came during a family vacation in Maine when he was thirteen. Two local boys taunted him for being a four-eyed city slicker. When he tried to fight them, they easily subdued him. Thereafter he became obsessed with developing his body so that he would never again be humiliated. He embarked on a vigorous training regimen of boxing, weightlifting, wrestling, and gymnastics at home, and horseback riding, hiking, and swimming during excursions in the countryside. He also became obsessed with guns and shooting. In his late teens he stopped growing at five foot eight inches, average height for his time, but by then he had transformed his once skinny frame into hard muscle. Few women thought him handsome with his broad face, high forehead, wide mouth with thick lips that spread in wild grins, penetrating, cold blue-gray eyes, and staccato speech, yet many were drawn by the kinetic animal energy he exuded. 10 Throughout his childhood, tutors schooled him in the social and natural sciences, along with French and German. His knowledge mostly came from hours of daily reading. His first academic love was zoology. He was fascinated with animals, especially birds, which he shot, dissected, and stuffed as trophies. His first books were The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks (1877) and Notes on Some of the Birds of Oyster Bay (1879), both selfpublished when he was a teenager. 11 Roosevelt had many passions but none surpassed his love of the natural world. Late in his life, he struggled to express his obsession with “the hidden spirit of the wilderness that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm.” 12 He always sought to understand what interested him. Revolutionary thinkers developed Roosevelt’s understanding of nature. The first was his uncle, Robert Roosevelt, from whom he inherited his love and learned his first lessons about nature, especially birds. His uncle revealed the thrill of hearing songbirds and observing their lives. He explained how all species, including humans, depend on each other in the web of life. Later Roosevelt read a series of books that his uncle wrote on ornithology. However, the most powerful influence on Roosevelt was Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), complemented by Thomas Huxley’s Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863). He later wrote that “I sat at the feet of Darwin and Huxley.” 13

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Yet Roosevelt was not a pure social Darwinian who attributed human development solely to the incessant struggle for survival that permitted only the fittest to thrive. The Golden Rule was the critical element that differentiated humans from beasts. Stanley Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1858) inspired him to uplift the downtrodden and explore exotic places. George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature (1864) revealed how humans had developed to the point where, paradoxically, they were destroying the natural world that nurtured them; Roosevelt was determined to transform government policies and American mentality from destroying to conserving natural resources so that they benefited human generations. Fiction was just as vital in developing Roosevelt. James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823), Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841), and Captain Mayne Reid’s The Scalp Hunters (1851), The Boy Hunters (1853), and White Chief (1855) provided him with vivid heroes and prose along with a nature-worshipping ethos to emulate. Atop these classics, he devoured the books of the leading scientists in each field. Family trips to Europe when he was ten and fifteen years old were supposed to round out his education. He later regretted not making more of these experiences. He was more appalled by the filth of its cities and the scams of its denizens than attracted by the richness of its high culture. During the second trip, the family sailed from Europe to Egypt, whose pyramids did intrigue him, then to the Holy Land and Constantinople. His most memorable encounter during the journey was meeting Ralph Waldo Emerson. The trip cumulated at Vienna, where his father represented the United States at an international business fair. The family then stayed in Dresden for five months during which Roosevelt became conversant in German. As Roosevelt entered Harvard University in September 1876, his father’s parting advice was to “take care of your morals first, your health next and finally your studies.” 14 The transition was tough since his home tutoring kept him from learning how to socialize. For company he kept pet snakes and other animals in his room. His natural intelligence, curiosity, and exuberance soon attracted the attention of his professors and colleagues alike, but struck some as overbearing and insensitive. He annoyed professors by repeatedly interrupting their lectures with his own opinions, prompting one to reply, “Now, look here, Roosevelt, let me talk. I’m running this class.” 15 Decades later Roosevelt still puzzled classmate William Thayer: “I still wonder whether he is the real thing, or only the bundle of eccentricities which he appears.” 16 Nonetheless, he was tapped to join the elitist Porcellian Club, Hasty Pudding Club, and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and made friends with similar interests in the Natural History Society, Literary Society, the Harvard Advocate newspaper, and clubs for boxing, shooting, art, and singing. He expounded his progressive views in his undergraduate thesis entitled “The Practicality

The Child of Nature

25

of Giving Men and Women Equal Rights.” To indulge his love of history, he began researching and writing what would become his first and most enduring scholarly book, The Naval History of the War of 1812, published in 1882. 17 Along the way, like any first-time author, he had doubts about whether he was up to the task: “I have plenty of information now, but I can’t get it into words; I am afraid it is too big a task for me. I wonder if I won’t find everything in life too big for my abilities.” 18 Perhaps the most important skill that he began developing at Harvard was public speaking. He had to overcome a vicious cycle of shyness and a tendency to stammer and mispronounce words that provoked mirth in his listeners. A college friend memorably described “his difficulty in enunciating clearly or even in running off his words smoothly. At times he could hardly get out them out at all, and then he would rush on for a few sentences, as skaters redouble their pace over thin ice.” 19 Roosevelt would eventually become a brilliant public speaker, renowned for his electrifying and prolific deliveries. As for his beliefs, he “grew into manhood thoroughly imbued with the feeling that a man must be respected for what he made of himself.” His progressivism then was limited. A man should be “honest in his dealings with others and charitable in the old-fashioned way to the unfortunate; but . . . it was not part of his business to join with others in trying to make things better for the many by curbing the abnormal and excessive development of individualism in a few.” 20 This view would radically change. Roosevelt was a college sophomore when his father died on February 9, 1878. Bowel cancer had been painfully devouring him for months, but he kept his fatal disease hidden from his children. Roosevelt was devastated at losing “the one I loved dearest on earth . . . I feel that if it were not for the certainty that, as he himself has so often said, he is not dead but gone before, I should almost perish. With the help of God I will try to lead such a life as he would have wished.” 21 Historian H.W. Brands offers the important insight that “his father’s premature death robbed Roosevelt of the opportunity to make one of the most important transitions in a young man’s life: of learning to deal with his father on adult terms, as an equal. However revered parents may be, children eventually come to recognize that they are just ordinary people.” For Roosevelt this did not happen, he idealized his father all his life. The result was to suspend “part of Roosevelt’s maturation process. Roosevelt would never have the opportunity to walk with his father as an equal. For his whole life, his father would walk somewhere ahead and above him, encouraging him to be better, stronger, and wiser than he was.” This can actually be positive if the son is capable of matching or surpassing his father’s achievements. Indeed Roosevelt’s accomplishments far exceeded those of his father. The only downside of this was

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that Roosevelt “remained in most respects a moral absolutist until the day he died.” 22 In an appropriate Freudian touch, the last gift that his father handed Roosevelt was a double-barreled shotgun for Christmas. Roosevelt’s existing interest in guns and shooting would become an obsession. The practical result of his father’s death was to make Roosevelt the family’s head. Roosevelt Senior had setup a trust fund for his wife and each child; Roosevelt Junior’s share was $125,000 and an annual stipend of $8,000, worth over $150,000 today, not a bad income for a college student. Indeed, had he wanted to do so Roosevelt could have lived comfortably off the stipend the rest of his life. Roosevelt received a dire medical prognosis during his senior college year in March 1880. Dr. Dudley Sargeant, Harvard’s physician, informed him that he had a weak heart and strictly advised him to lead a quiet, sedentary life or else he would die young. Roosevelt rebelled at the news and advice. “Doctor, I’m going to do all the things you tell me not to do. If I’ve got to live the sort of life you have described, I don’t care how short it is.” 23 And so he did in the most extraordinary possible ways. Shortly thereafter he embarked what became a grueling wilderness hunting trip in Maine. In his diary he marveled: “My life has such absurd contrasts. At one time I live in the height of luxury; and then for a month will undergo severe toil and hardship—I enjoy both extremes almost equally.” 24 During this trip, his guide, Bill Sewall, became a lifelong friend. Sewall was a dozen years older than Roosevelt and served as a substitute father figure. The summer between his sophomore and junior years, Roosevelt met and fell in love with Alice Lee, the daughter of a prominent Boston family. She was a tall, pretty, outgoing, blue-eyed blond, then seventeen years old. It was love at first sight for him but not her. At a party, he nudged a friend and whispered, “See that girl? I am going to marry her. She won’t have me, but I am going to have her.” 25 And so he did. His persistence eventually overwhelmed her initial skepticism at his abrasive personality and ordinary looks. Gradually she warmed to the notion of wedding someone who clearly loved her and came from an elite family, would graduate from an elite school, was generous with his money, and whose intelligence and drive would likely lead to success in whatever field he chose. Roosevelt had been an excellent student before falling in love, but now his grades tumbled. That did not bother him. As he was about to graduate, he boasted of having “lived like a prince for my last two years in college,” then listed all the friends, fun, and trips he had enjoyed, “and to crown all . . . I have won the sweetest of girls for my wife.” 26 Despite the distractions of romance and his membership in a half-dozen or so clubs, Roosevelt graduated with such honors as magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and ranking 21 in his class of 177 students on June 30, 1880.

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Looking back, he recalled “I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard, and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me in after life.” 27 Theodore and Alice married on his twenty-second birthday, October 27, 1880, at the Unitarian Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. They honeymooned passionately for two weeks at the Roosevelt family vacation home called Tranquility in Oyster Bay before breaking their idyll and hurrying to New York City and a room at the family home on 57th Street. Theodore Roosevelt had decided what to do with his life and he was already off for a late start. NOTES 1. Carleton Putnam, Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 1858–1886 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 198. 2. William Roscoe Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1919), 21. 3. Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, August 21, 1881, Roosevelt Letters, 1:50. 4. For his formative years, see: Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 1858–1886 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958); David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981). 5. Brands, T.R., 10–11. 6. Roosevelt Autobiography, 21. 7. Roosevelt Autobiography, 11. 8. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, March 17, 1878, Roosevelt Letters, 1:33. 9. Roosevelt Autobiography, 21. 10. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 62–63. 11. Roosevelt, The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks (New York: s.n., 1877); Theodore Roosevelt, Notes on Some of the Birds of Oyster Bay, Long Island (New York: s.n., 1879). 12. Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), xi. 13. Theodore Roosevelt, “My Life as a Naturalist,” American Museum Journal, vol. 18 (May 1918), 321. 14. Quoted by Roosevelt to Martha Bullock Roosevelt, March 24, 1878, Roosevelt Letters, 1:33. For Roosevelt’s Harvard years, see Donald George Wilhelm, Theodore Roosevelt as an Undergraduate (Boston: J.W. Luce and Company, 1910). 15. William Roscoe Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1919), 21. 16. Thayer, Roosevelt, 21. 17. Roosevelt, The Naval History of the War of 1812 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1882). 18. Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, August 21, 1881, Roosevelt Letters, 1:50. 19. Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, 20. 20. Roosevelt Autobiography, 20. 21. Brands, T.R., 82. 22. Brands, T.R., 83, 84. 23. Carleton Putnam, Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 1858–1886 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 198. 24. Brands, T.R., 101. 25. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 42.

28 26. Brand, T.R., 104. 27. Roosevelt Autobiography, 18.

Chapter 1

TWO The Assemblyman

I intended to be one of the governing class. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 The caveat emptor side of the law, like the caveat emptor side of business, seemed to me repellent. It did not make for fair social dealing. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 They are common thieves . . . they belong to that most dangerous of all classes, the wealthy criminal class. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3 I learned the invaluable lesson that in the practical activities of life no man can render the highest service unless he can act in combination with his fellows, which means a certain amount of give and take between him and them. (Theodore Roosevelt) 4

Midway in his university years, Theodore Roosevelt recognized that he wanted to do more than spend his life describing and dissecting wildlife specimens. Alice was crucial in his transformation as her disapproval of “too much slaughter . . . brought about a change in my ideas as regards science.” 5 He relegated studying the natural world to a beloved hobby. He would become a lawyer. He began classes at Columbia University’s law school in October 1880. The insights into the profession and himself that he acquired during the brief time he studied law were important in developing his understanding of the art of power and what he wanted to do with that power. Just what kind of lawyer Roosevelt became depended on what field most interested him, and determining that took time. Early on he ruled out corporate law. Morality dictated no other choice: “The caveat emptor side of the law, like the caveat emptor side of business, seemed to me repellent. It did not make for fair social dealing.” 6 He would be a lawyer who helped resolve rather than worsen problems for individuals and society as a whole. 29

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Law school then was not what it has since become. The emphasis was on understanding legal philosophy rather than what to do in specific cases. Nonetheless, that theoretical approach was grounded in existing rather than abstract law. The first lecture entry in Roosevelt’s notebook reads: “We are concerned with questions of what law is; not what it ought to be.” 7 That would seem to rule out identifying and reforming bad laws. This indifference to injustice repelled him. Just legal decisions naturally depended on just laws. Roosevelt became notorious for leaping to his feet during lectures to champion “for justice and against legalism.” 8 Nineteenth-century law schools differed from those of recent decades in another crucial way. Students then could afford to be as leisurely and collegial with one another as they are frenzied and cutthroat now. Nearly all those who studied law in Roosevelt’s era were already well-established members of the elite and would have no trouble finding a luxurious berth in a top firm after they graduated. In May 1881, Roosevelt and Alice embarked for a three month grand tour of Europe, during which he climbed the Matterhorn and Jungfrau. He returned to New York with a clear vision of what he wanted to do with his life. Roosevelt decided that he was far better suited for a political forum than a courtroom. He wanted to improve the lives of as many people as possible and ideally the entire country. He could best do that if he made progressive laws rather than struggled for justice within the confines of existing laws. To that end he dropped out of law school and got into politics. America was in desperate need of reform. Roosevelt grew up in the Gilded Age of frenzied industrialization, commercialization, and corporatization. Everything was for sale to the highest bidder, including the votes of politicians. The result was a rigged economic and political game. “Robber barons” commanded interlocking monopolies and oligopolies that strangled markets, swiftly crushed any entrepreneurs who challenged them, sold shoddy goods and services at sky-high prices, and paid off politicians and judges to let them get away with all the loot. The concentration of wealth got so extreme that eventually one man, John Pierpont or J.P. Morgan, owned one-quarter of the entire American economy. The rich elite got enormously richer while incomes for the middle class and poor mostly stagnated or worsened. Tens of millions of men, women, and children worked twelve or more hours a day six or seven days a week for pittances that kept them alive. Wages were further depressed by the millions of immigrants that poured into the country and competed with natives for jobs. Cities had oases of opulence or gentility amid swaths of filth, crime, disease, and despair, exacerbated by the collaboration between economic barons and political bosses. In the countryside, the railroad monopolies kept farm and ranch families at subsistence

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levels by charging them exorbitant prices to ship their crops or livestock to market. Unbridled financial speculation provoked stock market bubbles that imploded followed by prolonged depressions from 1873 and 1893 that wiped out the jobs and savings of countless laborers, and the businesses of countless entrepreneurs. During the late nineteenth and into the twentieth century, violent conflicts between corporate owners and workers resulted in thousands of strikes and hundreds of deaths. For many if not most Americans, life was a Sisyphean trap where upward mobility was but a dream. The indifference or even glee whereby the business titans parasitically enriched themselves by exploiting the American people and their government was epitomized by Cornelius Vanderbilt’s quip, “The public be damned!” 9 Yet the Robber Barons could not buy off or bully into collaboration or fatalism everyone who might oppose them. The Gilded Age provoked a countervailing Progressive Age in which ever more reformers emerged determined to rescue America from the plutocrat seizure of power at the local, state, and national levels. American Progressivism has been the name for a party, an era, and an enduring political movement. 10 It has many interpretations but essentially represents the practical attempts by reformers to realize America’s ideals expressed by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. As such, progressivism is as old as the United States, with Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln the most powerful progressives who preceded Theodore Roosevelt. Genuine progressives are dedicated to bettering political, economic, and social conditions for Americans through a muscular problem-solving government. They seek to ameliorate not just material standards but the quality of life for as many people as possible. To do so idealistic bromides will not do. A true progressive is a lifelong student of the complexities of history and the truths of science. Only after arming themselves with that knowledge can those with power committed to improving America actually do more good than harm. A political career for a progressive poses a daunting dilemma at any time, with the Gilded Age among the most challenging in American history. Political machines dominated both the Republican and Democratic parties. Money fueled those machines. Patrons dispensed jobs and seats for payoffs or paybacks. Roscoe Conkling, the man who destroyed the political career of Roosevelt’s father, still commanded New York State’s Republican Party machine. 11 Was it really impossible for a moral man to get into politics without abandoning his morality? Roosevelt provoked laughter when he shared his intention with other members of New York’s social and financial elite. They warned him “that politics were ‘low’; that the organizations were not controlled by ‘gentlemen’; that I would find them run by saloonkeepers, horse-car conductors . . . and . . . that the men I met would be rough and brutal and unpleasant to deal with. I answered that if this were so it merely meant

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that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that the other people did—and that I intended to be one of the governing class, and that if they proved too hard for me I . . . would have to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough and tumble.” 12 Roosevelt found a solution to this conundrum. He began hanging out at Morton Hall, the Republican Party’s Twenty-First district headquarters above a saloon on Fifty-Ninth Street. His strategy was to go “around enough to have the men get more accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began to speak the same language.” 13 This strategy worked. Joe Murray was deputy to local boss Jake Hess. Roosevelt and Murray each needed the other. Murray saw in Roosevelt a bright, articulate, energetic, well-connected young man with which to dispossess the current holder of that New York state assembly seat, William Trimble, a notoriously corrupt part of Conkling’s machine and local boss Hess, who Murray wanted to displace. Roosevelt saw in Murray the man who could open his door to the political world. Roosevelt sidestepped any financial dependence on Murray and the machine by paying his own filing fee and campaign expenses. Murray worked behind the scenes to talk sixteen of the twenty-five Republican district leaders into voting for Roosevelt rather than Trimble in the primary caucus on October 28. In doing so, Murray ousted Hess as the district’s Republican boss. The election was only two weeks away. Roosevelt threw himself into nearly nonstop campaigning. Murray soon got ample proof of his candidate’s integrity and naiveté. Roosevelt recalled being asked by a saloonkeeper if he would lower liquor license fees “that he regarded as too high. I responded that I belied that they were really not high enough, and that I should try to have them made higher. The conversation threatened to become stormy.” 14 Murray smoothed over feelings with the saloonkeeper and thereafter shifted Roosevelt to canvassing the wealthier neighborhoods while he and his men made the rounds of the rougher districts. During the general election on November 9, 1881, Roosevelt crushed Democratic Party candidate W.W. Strew by 3,490 to 1,989 votes. 15 He entered New York’s assembly on January 3, 1882. At age twenty-three, he was the assembly’s youngest member in history. He caused a stir among his colleagues even before his maiden speech. Assemblyman John Walsh recalled: “Suddenly our eyes, and those of everybody on the floor, became glued on a young man who was coming in through the door. His hair was parted in the center, and he had sideburns. He wore a single eye-glass, with a gold chain over the ear. He had on a cutaway coat with one button at the top, and the ends of his tails almost reached the tops of his shoes. He carried a gold-headed cane in one hand, a silk hat in the other, and he walked in the bent-over fashion that was the style with the

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young men of the day. His trousers were as tight as a tailor could make them, and had a bell-shaped bottom to cover his shoes.” 16 His bizarre appearance provoked derision in many of his colleagues who mocked him as an Oscar Wilde–like dude and dandy. Republican leader Tom Alvord dismissed Roosevelt as “a damn fool” and counted him as “half” a man among his cohort. 17 Roosevelt had to endure such slights from his own party but suffered no mockery from the other side of the isle. In a local saloon on an especially frigid upstate winter day, Tammany Hall’s J.J. Costello sneered, “Won’t Mama’s boy catch cold?” Roosevelt strode over and knocked him down and as Costello struggled to his feet knocked him down again. “Now go over there and wash yourself. When you are in the presence of gentlemen, conduct yourself like a gentleman.” 18 Oscar Wilde would have never handled such an affront quite that way. Roosevelt may have been a fashion-horse but there was nothing effete about him. Roosevelt’s clothing style was certainly appropriate for New York’s Capitol, the most stunningly original of the fifty statehouses. While most states have opted for mini-versions of the federal Greek revival capitol in Washington, New Yorkers built a Neo-Renaissance marble colossus, begun in 1867 and finished in 1899, whose Byzantine and Arabesque decorations inadvertently reflected the nature of the politics that have transpired within from Roosevelt’s day through our own. Once seated Roosevelt swiftly dashed any hopes by Murray and the rest of the Republican Party machine that he would be a team player. The Republicans needed every man possible in a united front. In the 32 seat Senate, the Republicans numbered 15, the Democrats, 14, and Tammany 3. In the 128 seat House, the Republicans numbered 61, the Democrats 59, and Tammany 8. The Democrats would have taken both houses had they been able to entice the Tammany faction to rejoin them. But the Tammany men preferred acting as the Assembly’s fulcrum of power by selling their votes to the highest bidder. If the Republicans managed to pass anything they could at least be confident that their colleague in the governor’s mansion, Alonzo Cornell, would sign it into law. In the House, the Tammany Eight flexed their muscles on every issue that arose, beginning with the first order of business, electing a speaker. The deadlock lasted weeks as the various political chiefs cut deals behind closed doors. By early February, the Tammany Hall faction had extracted enough concessions to throw their vote to Democrat Charles Patterson over Republican Tom Alvord. Now the House could finally proceed to other matters. Patterson divvied up the committee seats roughly proportionate to each party’s power. After getting a seat on the Cities Committee on February 14, Roosevelt was appalled to discover that most of his colleagues “are positively corrupt, and the others are singularly incompetent.” 19 Yet, nonplussed, he “introduced four bills, one to purify New York’s water supply, another to

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purify its election of alderman, a third to cancel all stocks and bonds in the city’s ‘sinking fund,’ and a fourth to lighten the judicial burden on the Court of Appeals.” 20 Each bill was designed to diminish the power of special interest groups that paid off committee members to vote no. Only the alderman bill became law. Animosities grew so fevered that Roosevelt kept a broken table leg at his feet just in case his enemies on the Cities Committee rushed him. 21 Meanwhile, he attracted a small group of reformers, including most prominently Isaac Hunt and William O’Neal, and received glowing coverage by New York Times journalist George Spinney. Hunt described Roosevelt’s aggressive political style: “He yelled and pounded his desk, and when they attacked him, he would fire back with all the venom imaginary. In those days he had no discretion. . . . He was a perfect menace in that House.” 22 Roosevelt later admitted that he learned politics on the job by lots of trial and error. As a freshman assemblyman, he soon recognized how self-defeating his behavior had been: “I stood out for my own opinion . . . I took the isolated peak on every issue, and my people left me. . . . The things I wanted to do I was powerless to accomplish.” He was determined to change that: “I turned in to help them, and they turned to and gave me a hand. And so we were able to get things done. We did not agree in all things, but we did in some. . . . That was my first lesson in politics.” 23 The issue with which Roosevelt spearheaded his career was reforming New York City’s elevated train service. Jay Gould controlled a national corporate empire of railroads, telegraphs, newspapers, and related industries. 24 He had acquired the Manhattan Elevated Railroad by wielding his corporate empire first to bankrupt then buy it at 5 percent of its former worth. New York State Supreme Court Justice Theodore Westbrook collaborated with Gould by striking down lawsuits filed against him. By refusing to investigate collusion and bribery between Gould and Westbrook, New York Attorney General Hamilton Ward was their critical ally. With the legal and political obstacles out of the way, New York then awarded Gould’s corporation the privilege of building and running the system without requiring any significant regulations or taxes. As a result, the corporation charged high prices for poor service. In squaring off against the Manhattan Elevated Railroad, Roosevelt was a tiny David up against three Goliaths, Gould, Westbrook, and Ward. He was especially eager to square off with Westbrook, who notoriously wielded his gavel to kill any legal challenges to corrupt business practices not just for Gould but for anyone who could afford his price. In an impassioned speech before the House on April 6, Roosevelt denounced the collusion and corruption tangling the economic and political systems. He shot straight at Westbrook when he declared, “We have a right to demand that our judiciary should be kept beyond reproach and we have a right to demand that if we find men against whom there is not

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only suspicion, but almost a certainty that they have been in collusion with men whose interests were in conflict with the interests of the public, they shall . . . be required to . . . prove there has not been collusion; and they ought themselves to have been the first to demand such an investigation.” 25 He was even more blunt off the floor, condemning Westbrook for his “corrupt collusion with Jay Gould” and insisting “that Judge Westbrook ought to be impeached.” 26 Roosevelt’s crusade provoked a spirited debate among politicians and newspaper editors. Reformers naturally celebrated him as their hero while the machines attacked him as their enemy. The most painful reaction came from his uncle, James Roosevelt, who actually tried to talk him out of his reform crusade by explaining that to get ahead he had to go along with “the ring . . . that is, the inner circle, included certain big business men, and the politicians, lawyers, and judges who were in alliance with and to a certain extent dependent upon them, and that the successful man had to win his success by the backing of the same forces, whether in law, business, or politics.” This conversation was Roosevelt’s “first glimpse” into “that combination between business and politics which I was in after years so often to oppose.” 27 The Gould machine did everything it could to expose any wrongdoing by Roosevelt but found nothing hidden. They actually tried to catch him in a classic honey trap. One night they got a pretty woman to collapse before him as he walked home. He naturally assisted her. She asked him to protect her by escorting her home. Smelling a rat, he hailed a taxi, helped her in, paid the fare, and stepped back. He then hurried to the nearby home of a friend who was a detective. The detective went to the woman’s address where he observed several men lingering outside. 28 The failure of the machine politicians to coopt or crush the upstart reformer infuriated them. An editorial in The World, part of Gould’s mass media empire, blasted Roosevelt: “The son of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt ought to have learned, even at this early part of his life, the difference between a call for a legislative committee of inquiry and a stump speech. Why not allow Mr. Roosevelt to impeach the judge at once, try him, and convict him?” 29 Much to the inner circle’s chagrin, the advice inspired rather than intimidated Roosevelt. Spurning the Republican machine’s pressure to desist, he sponsored a resolution calling for an investigation into Westbrook and Ward. Although Republican boss Alford pulled every legislative trick to kill the initiative, Roosevelt prevailed. On April 7, the vote to consider the resolution first failed by 54 to 50 because it was secret. Roosevelt then pushed through a public second vote to consider the motion, which passed by 59 to 45. The public vote on the resolution itself that came on April 12, passed by 104 to 6, far beyond the required twothirds vote for an investigation. These public votes, especially the second, reflected the calculation among nearly all the machine members that if

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they were compelled to join reformers on the issue, they could derail the effort elsewhere in the political system and be paid very generously for doing so. The Judiciary Committee opened an investigation but soon was rumored to be enveloped by corruption, with votes being bought for $2,500. The report issued on May 31, acquitted Ward of wrongdoing and split over whether Westbrook had committed any crimes and, if so, what to do. The compromise was to reprimand rather than impeach Westbrook. Despite Roosevelt’s protests, the House approved the report by a vote of 77 to 35. Although Westbrook escaped impeachment, he could not escape his own tormented psyche; a few days later he was found dead in a hotel room, apparently from suicide. Roosevelt was not progressive on every issue. He opposed a daily two dollar minimum wage for New York City government workers, salary raises for police and firemen, and the abolition of tenement sweatshops for cigar rollers. Although all three bills passed, New York’s Supreme Court killed the third on the grounds that it violated the “sanctity of the home.” This enraged Roosevelt who condemned the “well meaning” judges for their ignorance “of tenement house conditions; they knew nothing whatever of the needs, or of the life and the labor of the threefourths of their fellow citizens in great cities.” 30 To the relief of all the exhausted members and interest groups alike, New York’s state assembly adjourned on June 2. Roosevelt had quaffed deeply from the vat of political power and he wanted more. He spent much of the five months before the next November election politicking. He won a resounding victory when the votes were tallied, with his 4,225 votes more than twice those of Democrat candidate Elbert Farrar’s 2,016. 31 His victory contrasted with the fate of most Republican candidates. The Republicans held 43 of the 128 House seats, and 14 of the 32 Senate seats. Grover Cleveland, Buffalo’s former mayor, was the Democratic governor. The only Democratic weakness was their split among three rival factions, Tammany Hall, Irving Hall, and County Democrats. By comparison, the Republicans were relatively unified. Roosevelt proudly strode into the state assembly that opened on January 2, 1883. He was now the acknowledged leader of the Republican’s progressive wing. When Isaac Hunt nominated him as the Republican Party candidate for House speaker, the members unanimously approved him, although the conservatives did so bitterly through clenched teeth. Roosevelt lost to Democratic candidate Alfred Chapin by a vote of 84 to 41 votes, but remained the assembly’s minority leader. Roosevelt tempered his efforts during the 1883 legislative session by putting his political party before reforms. As head of the Republican’s reform wing, he could have worked closely with Governor Cleveland,

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who led the Democrat’s reform wing. Together they could have mustered enough votes to push through laws and appoint judges vital to cleansing the state’s political and economic messes. Instead, they became allies on only one issue. Both agreed to reform the civil service by making written exams rather than backroom bribes the sole criteria for appointment. After Roosevelt introduced a civil service reform bill, Cleveland invited him to the governor’s mansion to discuss a strategy for passing it. They had a fairly good meeting of minds and got along well enough, although countless others could have echoed Cleveland’s impressions of Roosevelt: “There is a great sense in a lot that he says, but there is such a cocksureness about him that he stirs up doubt in me all the time.” 32 In his House speech, Roosevelt explained that his bill was designed “to take out of politics the vast band of hired mercenaries whose very existence depends on their success, and who can almost always in the end overcome the efforts of them whose only care is to secure a pure and honest government.” 33 Hamlet-like, Roosevelt debated with himself for weeks over whether to vote for or against reducing the fare for New York City’s elevated system from ten to five cents. He weighed the practical effect of lowering costs for New York commuters against the legal reality that Gould’s contract let him set the fare. The bill passed by huge majorities in both houses; Roosevelt was among those who voted for the people over the law, then promptly regretted doing so. He was let off the hook when Cleveland vetoed it as unconstitutional since the state had signed a legal contract with Gould. In a speech backing Cleveland’s veto, Roosevelt admitted having “weakly yielded, partly in a vindictive spirit toward the infernal thieves and conscienceless swindlers who have had the elevated railroad in charge, and partly to the popular voice of New York.” He asserted his willingness to “pass a bill of attainder on Jay Gould and all of his associates, if it were possible. They have done all possible harm to this community with their hired newspapers, with their corruption of the judiciary and this House. . . . They are common thieves . . . they belong to that most dangerous of all classes, the wealthy criminal class.” 34 When the New York assembly adjourned on May 4, Roosevelt had little to show for his efforts over the previous four months. He later admitted that hubris had warped his outlook and behavior: “Immediately after leaving college I went to the legislature. I was the youngest man there, and I rose like a rocket. I was reelected next year by an enormous majority in a time when the Republican Party as a while met with great disaster; and the republican minority in the house, although I was the youngest member, nominated me for speaker. I immediately proceeded to lose my perspective. . . . Like most young men in politics, I went through various oscillations of feeling before I ‘found myself.’ At one period I was so impressed with the virtue of complete independence that I proceeded to act on each case purely as I personally viewed it, without

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paying any heed to the principles and prejudices of others. The result was that I speedily and deservedly lost all power of accomplishing anything at all; and I thereby learned the invaluable lesson that in the practical activities of life no man can render the highest service unless he can act in combination with his fellows, which means a certain amount of give and take between him and them.” 35 Those were vital practical political lessons. Even more important were the constant jarring reminders that his character and principles were the core of his developing art of power. Roosevelt diverted himself from the tar baby of New York state politics in four directions in 1883. He and Alice stayed at the Delevan Hotel during the week when the assembly was in session and for most weekends hopped the train for the five hour trip 145 miles down the Hudson valley to their new Manhattan brownstone on West Forty-Fifth Street. There he could “imagine nothing more happy in life than an evening spent in my cozy little room, before a bright fire of soft coal, my books all around me, and playing backgammon with my own dainty mistress.” 36 He paid $10,000 for sixty acres of land enveloping a ridge a mile south of Oyster Bay, Long Island, with a beautiful view of the water; he would later expand his acreage to 155 acres. There he intended to build a mansion eventually to be called Sagamore Hill. Then in September, he headed west to Dakota Territory to hunt buffalo and other animals. Although game was scarce, the region enchanted him and he was determined to stake himself to the territory. He paid $14,000 for a ranch with 400 cattle at Chimney Butte about eight miles south up the Little Missouri River valley from Medora, and hired two experienced ranchers, Sylvane Ferris and Bill Merrifield, to run it for him. Finally, he learned with delight that Alice was pregnant with their first child. He won a third term to the New York assembly on November 6, 1883. When the New York assembly convened on January 1, 1884, the Republicans controlled the Senate by 19 to 13 and the House by 72 to 58. Grover Cleveland remained the Democratic governor. Roosevelt’s third term was as raucous as previous years but culminated with a devastating tragedy. The Republican Party’s reform faction nominated him to be the candidate for House speaker. The conservative faction’s candidate, Titus Sheard, beat him by 42 to 30 votes. Roosevelt was disappointed but soon found both a lesson and an advantage in his defeat: “I made a stout fight for the nomination but the bosses . . . combined and I was beaten. . . . But the fact that I had fought hard and efficiently . . . with no machine back of me, assured my standing as floor leader. My defeat in the end . . . strengthened my position, and enabled me to accomplish far more than I could have accomplished as Speaker.” 37 Roosevelt promptly joined his supporters in voting unanimously for Sheard. In his own effort to promote party unity, Sheard worked with

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him to assign committee chairs and members. Roosevelt chose the City Committee as a stronghold for launching his reform initiatives. On January 11, he introduced three bills to reform New York City politics, one that strengthened the mayor’s power and accountability, another that raised liquor license fees, and a third that limited the city’s ability to borrow money from questionable sources. Although the liquor bill died, the mayor and finance bills passed. The most controversial of the three was actually the mayor bill, which opponents attacked as establishing an authoritarian government. He acknowledged the concerns, but quipped that “I would rather have a responsible autocrat than an irresponsible oligarchy.” He then explained that actually they had nothing to fear, that an autocratic mayor would be impossible under his constant illumination by “the full light of the press” and “the full glare of public opinion; every act he performs is criticized, and every important move that he makes is remembered.” 38 Meanwhile, a majority heeded his call for an investigation of New York City corruption and named him chair of the special committee on January 15. He held hearings at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York City. He made the most of his power by exposing the arrogance and venality of those he subpoenaed to testify. He erupted in indignation when a sheriff claimed privacy in questions about his use of public money: “You are a public servant. You are not a private individual; we have a right to know . . . the expense . . . it is a perfectly proper question.” 39 As Roosevelt pushed his bills and investigations through Albany’s political maze, his mind drifted ever more poignantly far down the Hudson River to his family in New York. He thrilled at the thought of soon being a father. When Alice’s pregnancy became noticeable, he sublet their home on Forty-Fifth Street and moved his wife into the family mansion on Fifty-Seventh Street with his mother and unmarried sister Anna. Roosevelt finally received the extraordinary news by telegram on February 13. Earlier that day, Alice gave birth to a daughter. He swiftly wrapped up his affairs. In an extraordinary burst of political prowess, he got his City Committee to approve fourteen bills for introduction to the floor and made a last round of handshakes and cajoling for his municipal reform bill which was scheduled for a vote later that day; a bipartisan consensus arose to postpone the vote after word spread why Roosevelt would not be present. Then a second telegram arrived that transformed his elation into despair. Although the message has not survived, his brother Elliot must have sent it with words similar to what he sent their sister Corinne: “There is a curse on this house. Mother is dying and Alice too.” 40 He caught the train for the usually five hour ride to Grand Central Station, but fog slowed that journey so he did not get home until nearly midnight. He arrived in time to spend precious, agonizing last hours

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with his mother and wife. On February 14, Valentine’s Day, three hours after midnight typhoid killed his mother. Alice lingered painfully until early afternoon when Bright’s disease shut down her kidneys. The twin burials took place in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery two days later. “The light has gone out of my life,” he scribbled in his diary. “For joy or for sorrow my life has now been lived out.” 41 Roosevelt dealt with his grief by burying it as deep in his psyche as possible. He tried to purge Alice from his life as if she had never existed. He sold their home on Forty-Fifth Street, got rid of her belongings, burned all their letters and photographs, tore out pages from his diary that mentioned her, wrote not a word about her in his autobiography, and never publicly uttered her name again; even more disturbingly he would always be coldly aloof from their daughter. To heal himself he had to go far away. He resolved to discard his political career and immerse himself in his ranch out west where muscle-straining labor, hearty male companionship, far horizons, and crisp air would cleanse his spirit. But before that he owed his constituents the duty to finish out his term. He left his newborn daughter, Alice, with his sister Anna, and headed to Albany on February 18. He topped off his career with a barrage of genuine reforms. Over the next month his City Committee approved thirty-five more bills for votes on the floor. His investigative committee on New York City amassed 1,054 pages of testimony which he distilled into a 15,000 word, forty-seven page report. He stepped behind the House podium to make one impassioned speech after another excoriating the corruption and greed that was strangling America. 42 His frenzy of reforms was as much for himself as New Yorkers. He admitted that “I should go mad if I were not employed.” 43 Eighteen-Eighty-Four was a presidential election year. Each state Republican Party would have a convention to pick a presidential candidate and delegation to send to the national convention at Chicago. The main choices were whether to back the uncharismatic, plodding, corrupt, but “favorite son” Chester Arthur of New York, who became president after an assassin murdered James Garfield in 1881, or dump him for the more dynamic but reputedly even more corrupt former Secretary of State James Blaine of Maine or the reformer Senator George Edmunds of Vermont. New York’s Republican Party held its convention at Utica in midApril. The delegates split among the “stalwarts” who backed Arthur, the “half-breeds” who backed James Blaine, and the reformers who backed Edmunds. Roosevelt could muster only about 70 other delegates behind Edmunds. After numerous votes no candidate won a majority. A deal was cut to split New York’s delegation to the national convention proportionally among Edmunds, Blaine, and Arthur supporters. Roosevelt re-

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ceived the most votes to be one of four independent delegates-at-large at Chicago. Roosevelt and other assemblymen at Utica then returned to Albany to finish the legislative session. Governor Cleveland awaited Roosevelt with a formidable obstacle to his legislative agenda. He called Roosevelt to his office and explained that, although he agreed with most of the bills in principle, they were hastily written, riddled with contradictions and lapses, and thus were vulnerable to Supreme Court rulings that they were unconstitutional. For instance, the Tenure of Office bill actually had two different terms for officials. He cited the fate of Roosevelt’s bill regulating the cigar industry earlier that session that Cleveland had signed but the Court of Appeals had declared unconstitutional. The governor was resolved not to sign another such bill. He would veto Roosevelt’s bills unless his committee carefully redrafted them to pass legal muster. Roosevelt angrily leapt to his feet and blustered that the principles were more important than the legality. Cleveland rose as well to insist that he would indeed wield his veto unless the bills were rendered legally sound. Roosevelt’s failure to quell his hot- and hard-headedness killed the chance of an alliance between the two reform leaders from rival political parties. Looking back on his three years in New York’s assembly, Roosevelt reflected that “I worked on a very simple philosophy of government . . . that personal character and initiative are the prime requisites in political and social life. It was not only a good but an absolutely indispensable theory as far as it went; but it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow for the need of collective action.” 44 Roosevelt had less than a two weeks respite between the New York assembly’s adjournment on May 16 and the opening of the Republican National Convention on May 31. Along the way he declined a delegation’s request to nominate him for a fourth term in Albany. Roosevelt did what he could to rally support for Edmunds, but the convention eventually embraced Blaine. He was allowed to make a short speech to the convention and thrilled at his “chance of speaking to ten thousand people assembled together.” 45 It would be the first of hundreds of occasions. The most important thing that Roosevelt took away from the convention was a deep and enduring friendship and political alliance with Henry Cabot Lodge. 46 The two men shared many common values and interests. Both were born into families of long-established wealth, were Harvard Porcellian Club members and university graduates, had authored books on American history, and shared a vision for America’s growing place in the world. Lodge was eight years older than Roosevelt and became like an elder brother. He had served in the Massachusetts state legislature from 1879 to 1881, was a delegation to the Republican Party convention in 1880, and was recently his state’s Republican Party chair.

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At the 1884 convention they worked closely together to promote Edmunds’ candidacy. 47 When Blaine won, each reluctantly agreed to back him. Roosevelt’s support for Blaine could not have been more lukewarm. He told a reporter that “I am by inheritance and education a Republican; whatever good I have been able to accomplish has been . . . through the Republican Party . . . I went as a regular delegate to the Chicago convention, and I intend to abide by the outcome of that convention.” 48 With this last political duty done, on June 7, Roosevelt boarded a west-bound train for the Dakota Territory. NOTES 1. Roosevelt Autobiography, 36–37. 2. Roosevelt Autobiography, 35. 3. Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 177. 4. Jacob Riis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (New York: The Outlook Company, 1904), 54. 5. Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 1858–1886 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 178. 6. Roosevelt Autobiography, 35. 7. Brand, T.R., 111. 8. Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 198. 9. For some leading books on the Gilded Age and Robber Barons, see: Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (New York: Penguin Classic, 1873, 2001); Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Classic Account of the Influential Capitalists Who Transformed America’s Future (New York: Harvest Book, 1934); Alfred P. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989); Sean Dennis Cashman, America in the Gilded Age: From the Death of Lincoln to the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: New York University Press, 1993); Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Leon Fink, ed., Major Problems in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Documents and Essays (New York: Cengage Learning, 2000); Janette Thomas Greenwood, The Gilded Age: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Charles W. Calhoun et al., The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America (Boston: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy (New York: Henry Holt, 2006); Alan Trachenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007); Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove Publishing, 2010); H.W. Brands, American Collosus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865–1900 (New York: Anchor, 2011); Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 10. For leading books on progressivism, see: Harold U. Faulker, The Decline of Laissez Faire, 1897–1917 (New York: Rinehart, 1951); David W. Noble, The Paradox of Progressive Thought (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958); Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage, 1960); Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966); Carl Resek, ed., The Progressives (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967); John Allen Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978); Robert Crunden, The Ministers of Reform: The Progressives’ Achievement in American Civilization,

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1889–1920 (New York: Basic Books, 1982); John Chambers, The Tyranny of Change: American in the Progressive Age, 1890–1920 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000); Lewis J. Gould, America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914 (New York: Routledge, 2001); Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ronald J. Pestrillo and William J. Atto, eds., American Progressivism: A Reader (New York: Lexington Books, 2008); William Nugent, ed., Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Cecelia Teechi, Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America and What They Can Teach Us (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Sidney Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Topeka: University Press of Kansas, 2009); Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010); William Link and Susanah Link, eds., The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Documentary Reader (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013); Michael Woolraich, Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels Who Created the Progressive Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014); David Woolner and Jack Thompson, eds., Progressivism in America: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 11. For some leading books on New York politics during the Gilded Age, see: Richard L. McCormick, From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893–1910 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981); Alexander B. Callow, The Tweed Ring (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981); Seymour Mendelbaum, Boss Tweed’s New York (New York: Ivan Dee, 1990); Richard F. Welch, King of the Bowery: Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany Hall, and New York City from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009); Kenneth D. Ackerman, Boss Tweed: The Corrupt Poll who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York (New York: Viral History Press, 2011). 12. Roosevelt Autobiography, 36–37. 13. Roosevelt Autobiography, 37. 14. Roosevelt Autobiography, 38–39. 15. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 135. 16. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 144. 17. Putnam, Roosevelt, 251. 18. Putnam, Roosevelt, 248. 19. Roosevelt Autobiography, 43–44. 20. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 152. 21. Roosevelt Autobiography, 46. 22. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 153. 23. Jacob Riis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (New York: The Outlook Company, 1904), 54. 24. Edward J. Renehan, The Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (New York: Basic Books, 2006). 25. Roosevelt speech, April 6, 1882, Roosevelt Works, 16:8–13. 26. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 73. 27. Roosevelt Autobiography, 47. 28. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 73. 29. New York World, April 7, 1882. 30. Roosevelt Autobiography, 50. 31. Paul Grondahl, I Rose Like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 2004), 101. 32. John Corry, A Rough Rider to Albany: Teddy Runs for Governor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 25. 33. Roosevelt speech, New York Assembly, April 9, 1883, Roosevelt Works, 14:23–24. 34. Roosevelt speech, March 2, 1883, Roosevelt Works, 16:19–21.

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35. Roosevelt Autobiography, 52. 36. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 173. 37. Roosevelt Autobiography, 52. 38. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 222. 39. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 224–23. 40. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 229. 41. Brands, T.R., 163. 42. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 238–39. 43. Roosevelt to Carl Schurz, February 21, 1884, Roosevelt Letters, 1:66. 44. Roosevelt Autobiography, 54. 45. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, June 8, 1884, Roosevelt Letters, 1:72. 46. John Arthur Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Knopf, 1953); William J. Miller, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (New York: Heinemann, 1967); William C. Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 47. Edward Kohn, “Crossing the Rubicon: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the 1884 Republican National Convention,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 5, no. 1 (2006), 18–45. 48. John A. Corry, A Rough Rider to Albany: Teddy Runs for Governor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 43.

THREE The Westerner

As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head. . . . I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees, but he was senseless. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 If it had not been for my years in North Dakota, I never would have become president of the United States. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2

Among the happiest times of Theodore Roosevelt’s life was riding the range of his own ranch, where “the romance of my life began.” 3 He might have added that Dakota was where his lessons on the art of power continued in new stages and dimensions. He arrived on June 23, 1884, and was soon relieved to see that Bill Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris, the two local cowboys with whom he had entrusted Chimney Butte, also known as the Maltese Cross, had aptly fulfilled their duty. After they escorted him around his spread, he noted that over the winter “I lost about 25 head from wolves, cold, etc., the others are in admirable shape, and I have about a hundred and fifty five calves. I shall put on a thousand more cattle and shall make it my regular business.” 4 He bought a second ranch at Elkhorn forty-two miles down the Little Missouri River. To run this ranch, he asked two friends from back east to head west and join him. He first met Bill Sewall and his nephew Wilmot Dow, when they served as his hunting guides in Maine. Seward explained that his $3,000 mortgage forced him to stay put. Roosevelt paid it off, then appealed to his manhood: “If you are afraid of hard work and privation do not come west. If you expect to make a fortune in a year or two, do not come west. If on the other hand you are willing to work 45

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hard” and desire “an unlimited rise ahead of you and a future as bright as you yourself choose to make it, then come.” 5 Seward and Dow prepared to join him. With all that done, on July 1, Roosevelt returned to New York to spend a couple of weeks with his neglected family then visited Henry Cabot Lodge at his home in Nahant, Massachusetts. Along the way he committed some controversial political gaffs. Word spread of his reluctance to campaign for Blaine in the upcoming presidential election. He had opposed Blaine at the Republican convention because big business had so notoriously corrupted him. He admitted to a journalist that philosophically he was closer to Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland. When the journalist reported his remarks, he issued a statement that at once denied and admitted making them. He then felt compelled to compensate for his conflicting loyalties by making several speeches for Blaine. As for his own political future, he told Lodge that “I have not believed and do not believe that I shall ever be likely to come back into political life.” 6 Roosevelt was back at his ranch in late August. Ranching was mostly routine but got lively while branding calves, breaking horses, or rounding up cattle stampeded by thunder and lightning. The work was frequently dangerous. A man could easily be injured or killed by being thrown by a horse, trampled or gored by cattle, bit by a rattlesnake, frozen to death by prolonged exposure to temperatures far below zero or suffer sunstroke by prolonged exposures to temperatures far above one hundred. Roosevelt earned his men’s respect by enduring all they endured, working as hard as they did, and steadily catching up to their skills. One time he suffered cracked ribs and another time a broken shoulder after his horse threw him. Twice he nearly drowned in the Little Missouri River when the ice collapsed as he tried to ride across it, then nearly froze to death before he finally got a fire started. As the boss, Roosevelt could disappear for days of hunting and exploring far across the plains. He penned words that revealed his state of mind: “Nowhere, not even at sea, does a man feel more lonely than when riding over the far-reaching never ending plains . . . their vastness and loneliness and their melancholy monotony have a strong fascination for him.” 7 That monotony eventually got to him. He sought “excitement and fatigue to prevent over much thought” and “unless I was bear hunting all the time I am afraid I should soon get restless with this life as with life at home.” He was “sorry that my political career should be over, but after all it makes very little difference. 8 All that hard riding and all those bone-numbing nights wrapped in a blanket purged some of the agony from Roosevelt’s soul. He decided to head east to visit his family and vote in the November election. He swallowed his contempt and cast his ballot for Blaine even though Cleveland was both a progressive and incorruptible. The most politically damaging

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charge against Cleveland was that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. It was a tight presidential race that Cleveland won with 4,914,482 votes or 48.9 percent to Blaine’s 4,856,905 or 48.3 percent, and in the Electoral College by 219 to 182; the shave was closest in New York, just 1,149 votes carried the state’s 36 electors into Cleveland’s column and thus victory. Congress remained split. In the Senate, the Republican bolstered their edge with four seats, bringing their total to 42, while the Democrats dropped to 34 seats. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats lost a dozen seats but retained their large lead with 183 seats, while the Republican seats rose to 140. 9 Roosevelt found politics and power out west refreshingly straightforward from politics and power back east. Disputes among westerners were likely to be settled with displays of physical courage and violence, with the winner taking all. He proved to be as much a master of western as eastern politics. He squared off with and got the better of a succession of hardened men who sought to rob and humiliate him. He was not the only dude rancher around. Antoine de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Mores was, like him, a rich scion driven by wanderlust and grandiose ideas, and just a year older. In 1883, he founded the town of Medora, named after his wife, on the Little Missouri River’s east bank. Within a year, Medora was a bustling town of 250 people with general stores, saloons, hotels, a newspaper, and, most importantly, a depot on the Northern Pacific railway about midway between Chicago and Portland. Mores and his wife lived in a twenty room, two story mansion on a bluff overlooking the town. He invested part of his fortune into a ranch and a slaughterhouse from which carcasses were shipped in refrigerated cars to cities across the United States. His butchers processed cattle and sheep from his own expanding herds and from other ranchers in the region, including Roosevelt. What Medora did not have and Mores did not want was a sheriff and judge; the nearest judge was at Dickinson forty miles east, the nearest sheriff 150 miles east at Mandan, and the nearest federal marshal two hundred miles south at Deadwood. Mores was determined that he, backed by his cowboys, would impose order on the region. 10 Every rancher, including Mores, owed only small portions of the land where their livestock roamed. They all exploited land owned by the federal government and thus the American people but paid not a dime for the privilege. Only so many cattle or sheep could graze a stretch of grassland or guzzle from a creek for so long without destroying those resources. Although all ranchers competed with each other for public lands, cattlemen especially hated sheepherders because sheep nibble grass to the earth, thus leaving nothing for cattle that follow them. The result was a “tragedy of the commons” whereby the ranchers sought dwindling resources that Washington owned but did not regulate. In this

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state of nature, might determined right. What passed for “justice” was often decided by vigilantes or simply the better shot. Mores wanted to buy Roosevelt’s Elkhorn ranch. When Roosevelt refused to sell, Mores sent Eldridge Paddock and two other gunmen to intimidate him. Roosevelt was out riding when the three gunmen rode to his ranch and issued a threat of sell or else to Sewall and Dow. When his men explained what had happened, Roosevelt acted decisively. He rode alone to Paddock’s house near Medora, pounded on the door, and demanded that Paddock show himself. Like most bullies, Paddock was a coward and refused to open the door. Roosevelt shouted, “I understand that you have threatened to kill me on sight. I have come over to see when you want to begin the killing.” Paddock protested that he had been “misquoted.” 11 Roosevelt claimed to take him at his word, but warned him not to trespass again on his land. This did not purge the festering animosities between Roosevelt and Mores. After receiving a menacing letter from Mores, Roosevelt fired off a reply that was at once conciliatory and challenging. He assured Mores that “I am not your enemy,” then asserted that since “your final words . . . seem to imply a threat, it is due to myself to say that the statement is not made through any fear of possible consequences to me; I too . . . am always on hand and ever ready to hold myself accountable in any way for anything I have said or done.” 12 Mores wrote back that he had meant no offense and invited him for dinner at his mansion. Roosevelt had called his bluff. Mores likely stood down because he was under a legal cloud of accusations that he and his men had murdered two cowboys who he accused of tearing down fences and grazing cattle on his land. Mores would eventually be indicted, tried, and acquitted of these charges in 1885. Although Roosevelt reached the frontier just as it was rapidly fading away, he still found his share of Wild West adventures. Danger lurked on the high plains. Horse thieves and cattle rustlers could defy local vigilante committees and rob a man of his wealth and his life. As for Indians, the region’s tribes were shadows of their former selves, broken in spirit, decimated in numbers, defeated repeatedly in war, the buffalo they depended on for life nearly exterminated, and condemned to reservations where they subsisted off flour and salt beef rations. Yet, their very desperation and bottled up rage might provoke one last revolt. One day Roosevelt was riding far out on the plains when five Indians appeared on a rim and “the instant they saw me they whipped out their guns and raced full speed at me, yelling and flogging their horses.” He jumped off his horse and “stood with my rifle ready,” reasoning that “if I let them get hold of me they would at least take my horse and rifle, and possibly kill me. So I waited until they were a hundred yards of and then drew a bead on the first . . . and in a twinkling every man was lying over the side of his horse, and all five had turned and were galloping back-

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wards.” The Indians made signs of peace and asked for sugar and tobacco. He declared he had none and threatened to shoot if they got any closer. The Indians “galloped off, with oaths that did them credit to at least one side of their acquaintance with English.” 13 The worst likely threat, especially for a rich eastern dude rancher like Roosevelt, were town bullies, itching to vent the venom from their twisted psyches on a weak scapegoat. He had a famous run-in with a bully at Nolan’s Hotel in Mingusville, thirty-five miles west of Medora. He had spent the day tracking lost horses and was cold and exhausted when he rode into town. He was tying up outside when gunshots erupted within. He knew he was headed into trouble but he had no place else to go. The bully grinned broadly as he stepped inside and sat down at a table. “Four eyes is going to treat,” he declared, glaring into Roosevelt’s face. The taunt of “four-eyes” must have evoked hard memories of the bullies who had roughed him up when he was fourteen. That had been a turning point. He had resolved then never again to yield to a bully. He coolly assessed what he was up against: “He stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language. He was foolish enough to stand so near, and, moreover, his heels were close together that his position was unstable. Accordingly, in response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said: ‘Well, if I’ve got to I’ve got to,’ and rose, looking past him. As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head. . . . I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees, but he was senseless.” 14 This near fatal encounter did not deter Roosevelt from seeking another. He hired two guides to hunt grizzly bears in the Big Horn Mountains. In a forty-seven day trek by wagon, he shot 170 mammals and birds. The climax came when a twelve hundred pound grizzly rose just a few feet before him. Roosevelt leveled his rifle, fired, and “jumped aside out of the smoke, to be ready if he charged.” It was an extremely lucky shot with “the bullet hole in his skull . . . exactly between his eyes.” 15 Had he merely wounded the grizzly, the enraged beast might have attacked, torn him apart, and devoured the remnants. Tales of posses pursuing horse and cattle rustlers are common western lore, but Roosevelt may be the only man who ever led a chase of boat rustlers. Mike Finnegan was another local bully, who, with two cronies, stole Roosevelt’s rowboat on March 24, 1886. A blizzard halted any notion of pursuit for three days. During this time Roosevelt, Sewall, and Dow constructed a boat. When the weather cleared, they loaded provisions, their guns, and plenty of blankets into the boat, and pushed off downriver. Only Roose-

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velt would have packed Anna Karenina and other books among his belongings to pursue outlaws. One can imagine him savoring Tolstoy’s words as snow swirled and his men hauled at the oars. After several frigid days on the river and even colder nights ashore they spotted the stolen boat and smoke from a nearby fire. They beached their boat and crept toward the camp. Only one man was there and he surrendered without a fight. The other two were out hunting; they threw up their hands when they returned to camp and found rifles leveled at them. Roosevelt had the outlaws row them downriver for another eight days and ensured that they were shoeless at night as he and his men took turns watching them. At a cattle camp, Roosevelt borrowed a horse, rode to a ranch fifteen miles away, borrowed a buckboard, and returned to the river to pack the three thieves aboard. He sold one boat to the local rancher. Seward and Dow rowed the other boat all the way to Mandan where they packed it on a train for the journey back to Medora. Meanwhile, Roosevelt walked behind the buckboard and kept his gun on the thieves as one of them held the reins and urged on the horse. Forty-five miles south at Dickinson, he watched in exhausted satisfaction as the sheriff jailed his prisoners. Roosevelt was a part-time witness and lesser participant as a frontier region was transformed into a territorial government. It was both a federal and grassroots effort. Washington designated the Dakota Territory and appointed a governor, marshals, and other federal officials, while the army provided broad security. Settlers formed towns then governments for those towns. When Roosevelt first bought land in the region in 1883, whistle-stop towns were strung along the Northern Pacific Railroad that bisected Dakota Territory east and west, while other towns sprouted often far from that umbilical cord. Ranchers registered spreads from small to grand across swaths of the earth, although most remained federal domain. It was as a rancher that Roosevelt experienced firsthand vital lessons about conservation that he had studied theoretically since he was a boy. Only so many of each species can live in its natural setting, a reality known scientifically as an ecosystem’s carrying capacity. On the high plains too many cattle and sheep devoured the grasses that sustained them. Unregulated market forces of supply, demand, and greed degraded and eventually destroyed that once rich natural resource. 16 Overgrazing was only the most serious issue. Ranchers also needed to fight rustlers, settle disputes over mavericks, improve stock through selective breeding, and scare off newcomers who would squeeze more cattle and sheep onto rapidly diminishing grass and water. Roosevelt was resolved to change that. He made the rounds of his fellow ranchers to talk them into working together to overcome common problems. On December 19, 1884, they met at Robert’s Hall in Medora to form the Little Missouri Stockmen’s Association and elect Roosevelt its

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first president. They agreed to work together to overcome all the problems that they faced. He was so pleased with his politicking that he invested another $39,000 into expanding his land and cattle herd, bringing his total investment to $85,000. During the summer of 1885, he spent a couple of months in New York and elsewhere back east. He supervised the finishing touches on Sagamore Hill, his huge mansion overlooking Oyster Bay. He marched in Ulysses Grant’s funeral. He went to the state Republican Party convention at Saratoga. Then he headed west once again. Roosevelt devoted portions of 1886 to politics. He was present for Billings County’s first election. The political philosophy of the winners was rock-solid conservative. The fledging government’s first declaration was a threat “to hang, burn, or drown any man that will ask for public improvements at the expense of the County.” 17 These values were inimical to those of Roosevelt, but he kept his own views to himself. He called a meeting of the Stockman’s Association, which named him their delegate to the Montana Stock Grower’s Association meeting in Miles City. He celebrated July 4, 1886, at Dickinson, whose town council asked him to deliver a celebratory speech. Roosevelt proudly observed that “these westerners have now pretty well accepted me as one of themselves.” 18 This was no idle boast. He had certainly proven his manliness, which was critical to western conceptions of power and politics. He rode and shot well enough. More importantly, he was as tough as the toughest of them. He could endure days in the saddle rounding up and driving cattle. He could shiver away sub-zero degree nights on the frozen earth. He could swim ice-choked rivers. He could sweat off hundred degree or higher broiling temperatures day after day. And he did all this without a complaint. He was as brave as the bravest of them. He had coolly shot a grizzly through its skull after the beast reared before him. He had lowered his rifle and scared off five Indians who threatened him. He had knocked out one bully and challenged two others, who revealed their essential cowardice by backing down. In late winter, he and his two ranchmen had spent weeks in the pursuit, capture, and haul to jail of three outlaws who had stolen his boat. He had formed the Stockman’s Association for ranchers to work together to resolve common problems and lobby government for benefits. The accusation that he was a bespectacled rich easterner was true, but the sneers that he was a “dude” steadily diminished to the vanishing point the longer he was among them. However, unlike most of them, he was committed to justice and progress for all. Yet, despite these feats, Roosevelt’s barnstorming, free-spending, outlandish antics as a young, rich easterner likely repelled more than a few of those hardscrabble homesteaders and ranch-hands. For three years he came and left for months at a time in whirlwinds of nearly nonstop action and talk then he stayed away back east seemingly for good. The locals

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reckoned they had seen the last of him while continuing to chuckle or cuss recalling Roosevelt stories. But of course they kept hearing about him as he rose steadily up the ranks of political power to the White House. And he came back for periodic whistle-stop visits. Roosevelt reflected that only after he became president did they “all feel I was their man, their old friend; and even if they had been hostile to me in the old days when we were divided by the sinister bickering and jealousies and hatreds of all frontier communities, they now firmly believed they had always been my staunch friends and admirers.” 19 Such are the whims of human nature. He recognized that his operation, like those of nearly everyone, was too crude to steadily make money: “In its present form stock-raising on the plains is doomed. . . . The great free ranches, with their barbarous, picturesque, and curiously fascinating surroundings, mark a primitive stage of existence” that “must pass away before the onward march of our people.” 20 The trouble was that neither he nor anyone else could figure out how to modernize ranching so that it was an efficient industry rather than a rock-hard lifestyle. His ranch operation peaked in early 1886 as he and his cowboys rounded up over 5,000 cattle. Yet his business kept hemorrhaging money. Pride and exhilaration forced him to keep doubling down until he invested $85,000. Sewall and Dow turned over the reins of Elkhorn to Merrifield and Ferris, and headed back east in September 1886. They got out before devastating blows. A drought in fall 1886 thinned the herd followed by four months of blizzards and subzero weather that killed thousands, and finally a warm Chinook wind that melted the snow into huge floods that wiped out all but a few of the rest. Roosevelt reported forlornly that he “had only a few hundred sick steers left, no cows.” 21 Although the disaster broke his heart for his ranch, he clung to his high plains stake until he finally sold out in 1897; in between his visits were rare and fleeting. That disaster lay ahead. By early 1886, he had seesawed between his western and eastern interests for two years when two forces decisively tipped him to the latter. NOTES 1. Roosevelt Autobiography, 71. 2. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1979), 278. 3. For good books on his ranching experiences, see: Ray H. Mattison, Roosevelt and the Stockman’s Association (Bismarck: North Dakota State Historical Society, 1950); Michael J. Collins, That Damned Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and the American West, 1883–1898 (New York: P. Lang, 1989); Roger Di Silvestro, Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands: A Young Politician’s Quest for Recovery in the American West (New York: Walker and Company, 2010); Clay S. Jenkinson, A Free and Hardy Life: Theodore Roosevelt’s Sojourn in the American West (Bismarck, ND: Dakota Institute, 2011). For good articles,

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see: Mody Boatright, “Theodore Roosevelt, Social Darwinism, and the Cowboy,” Texas Quarterly, vol. 7 (Winter 1964), 11–20; Valerie Mathes, “Theodore Roosevelt as a Naturalist and Bad Lands Rancher,” North Dakota History, vol. 53, no. 3, (1986), 2–13; Duane G. Jundt, “Never Draw Unless You Mean to Shoot: Theodore Roosevelt’s Frontier Diplomacy,” Wild West History Association Journal, vol. 5, no. 6 (2012), 4–17. 4. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, June 17, 1884, Roosevelt Letters, 1:73. 5. William Sewall, Bill Sewall’s Story of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1919), 14. 6. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, November 11, 1884, Lodge Letters, 1:26. 7. Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 86. 8. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, September 20, 1884, Roosevelt Letters, 1:82. 9. H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969); Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). 10. Collins, That Damned Cowboy, 43. 11. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 281. 12. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 303. 13. Roosevelt Autobiography, 66. 14. Roosevelt Autobiography, 71. 15. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 280. 16. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, vol. 162, December 13, 1968, 1243–48. 17. Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), 1:392. 18. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, April 22, 1886, Roosevelt Letters, 1:99. 19. Brands, T.R., 473. 20. Roosevelt, Hunting Trips, 16–17. 21. Paul Grondahl, I Rose Like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 2004), 166.

FOUR The Civil Service Commissioner

No republic can permanently endure when its politics are corrupt and base; and the spoils system, the application in political life of the degrading doctrine that to the victor belongs the spoils, produces corruption and degradation. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 Mr. Roosevelt is amazing quick in apprehension. Is there not danger that he might be too quick in execution? (Benjamin Harrison) 2 The Government must protect its witnesses who are being persecuted for telling the truth. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

The siren calls of New York politics began to echo louder in Roosevelt’s mind. In early 1885, he opened a letter from a group of reform politicians asking him to return to run for office. He replied: “I really have not given a single thought to my taking a place on the state ticket this fall. I shall let you know at once if such an idea enters my head: but I don’t think it at all probable unless for some reason it should seem best to outsiders.” 4 In other words, he would be happy to reenter politics if they could arrange a relatively assured victory for a relatively important position. New York Mayor William Grace soon asked him to be president of the Board of Health, but the post never materialized. Then, in October 1886, Elihu Root and William Bellamy sent him an offer on behalf of a coterie of powerful New York City Republicans—the Republican Party’s nomination to run for New York’s mayor. His opponents would be Democrat Abram Hewitt and Independent Henry George, a populist and orator who had articulated an array of progressive reforms in his book Progress and Poverty. 5 On October 16, Roosevelt accepted the offer with mixed feelings that he did not share with his backers. 6 What chance did he have in a city the Democratic Party dominated in a race among three candidates who shared similar progressive views? Some of his backers were from the political machines that he had 55

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denounced as an assemblyman. Had they really turned the other cheek or were they setting him up as the Republican sacrificial lamb? A humiliating loss might sever him from future political opportunities: “If I make a good run it will not hurt me; but it will if I make a bad one as is very likely.” 7 Although he realized that “there is not the slightest chance of my election,” he felt compelled to do so after “all the prominent party leaders came to me, and put it on the score of absolute loyalty to the party; and I did not see how I could refuse.” 8 After receiving the nomination on October 27, Roosevelt threw himself into his campaign with eighteen hour days of politicking and strategizing, shaking hands and twisting arms. As the election neared, he slammed his rivals harder. He realized his worst fears on November 10. With the votes tallied, Hewitt had won decisively with 90,552, followed by George with 68,110, and finally Roosevelt with 60,435. 9 Rubbing salt in the wound of his devastating defeat was learning that no other Republican candidate across New York State had won a lower share of the vote. Roosevelt’s political aspirations appeared dead and all but buried. When a reporter asked about his plans, he replied, “I intend to divide my time between literature and ranching.” 10 Actually he had a far more pressing engagement that overshadowed all others. Edith Carow was a childhood friend with whom Roosevelt rekindled a relationship that blossomed into romance in 1885. 11 On November 17, he asked Edith to marry him. She agreed. They decided to wait a year for propriety’s sake to give him a respectable enough mourning time for his first wife’s death. They married at St. George’s Church in London on December 2, 1886, when she was twenty-five years old and he was twenty-eight. They then embarked on a three month grand tour of Europe. Roosevelt returned from his honeymoon to learn that the harsh winter followed by the Chinook Wind had wiped out nearly all of his cattle. He had bet and lost nearly all of his inheritance on his ranch. Yet he had won something priceless. He had squeezed a lifetime of frontier adventures into a few years, burned away much of his anguish at the twin deaths of his wife and mother, and emerged hardened in body, matured in character, and more skilled in the art of power. He later reflected that: “If it had not been for my years in North Dakota, I never would have become president of the United States.” 12 He was now ready to devote himself to married life in New York. At first the marriage caused some tension with Anna, who was unmarried at age thirty-one and had mothered Alice. Edith insisted that she was now Alice’s mother. Roosevelt reluctantly agreed. Some of the tension dissipated when the Roosevelts moved into Sagamore Hill in spring 1887. Their twenty-two room mansion overlooking Oyster Bay may have initially seemed huge even to Roosevelt. He and Edith swiftly filled it with

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his memorabilia and five children of their own along with Alice and servants. Edith was the perfect wife for Roosevelt. They had an affectionate, respectful relationship. She deftly reined him when he grew too exuberant, extravagant, or overbearing. She was a good if stern mother to Alice and the five children she bore, Theodore junior (1887), Kermit (1889), Ethel (1891), Archibald (1894), and Quentin (1897). She was a gracious hostess at Sagamore Hill, other social settings, and later at the White House. 13 For now, without a job, Roosevelt had plenty of time not just for his growing family but for reconnecting with New York’s elite. He was interested in more than socializing or even politicking for some prestigious post or candidacy. Among the takeaways from his ranching experiences was the vital need to conserve natural resources to ensure that future generations enjoy the same benefits from them as the current generation. To this end, he issued dinner invitations for December 8, 1887, to a dozen rich, influential, nature-loving friends, including Henry Cabot Lodge, Owen Wister, Henry Adams, Cecil Rice, and George Grinnell, the editor of Forest and Stream. In his after dinner talk, he proposed that they form the Boone and Crockett Club dedicated to studying, hunting, and conserving wildlife. They heartily agreed. During their first formal meeting in January 1888, his colleagues unanimously elected him the club’s president. The Boone and Crockett Club soon swelled to a hundred members, all hunters with prominent careers in business, politics, science, art, or academia. Roosevelt acted as the Boone and Crocket Club’s point man in Washington by lobbying key politicians and administrators to support their goals. The first victory was to establish the National Zoo in Washington in 1889. The Boone and Crockett Club allied with the American Forestry Association to pressure Congress and the White House to conserve or preserve America’s diminishing wildlife, forests, and natural wonders. Years of persistent lobbying paid off when President Benjamin Harrison signed into law the Forest Reserve Act on March 3, 1891. The law empowered the president to designate forest reserves on federal lands. The next critical conservation step came with the Park Protection Act, also known as the Lacey Act after its sponsor Representative John Lacey of Iowa, which President Grover Cleveland signed into law on May 7, 1894. The law empowered the federal government to safeguard Yellowstone and other national parks against exploitation by rapacious businesses and poachers. In 1895, Roosevelt spearheaded the creation of the New York Zoological Society, which eventually, in 1898, opened the Bronx Zoo, then the world’s largest and devoted to displaying animals in their natural settings rather than the prevailing cramped cages in other zoos. During his twenties, Roosevelt launched his related careers of being both a historian and a subject of history. 14 As for his preference, he con-

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fessed his career priorities to Francis Parkman that “literature must be my mistress . . . for although I really enjoy politics, I appreciate perfectly the exceedingly short nature of [its] tenure.” 15 He partly studied history to better understand himself and partly wrote his own history to better understand history and the art of power. He used historical and literary heroes to guide his own development, attitudes, and actions. Writing the history of great men spurred him to find some way of joining their exalted ranks. His The Naval History of the War of 1812 (1882) appeared when he was only twenty-two. He turned his western adventures into a trilogy, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885), Life and the Hunting Trail (1888), and The Wilderness Hunter (1893). 16 Many of the chapters began as articles for Century magazine that he wrote during downtimes from ranching and hunting. He then fired off two biographies, one of Thomas Hart Benton (1887) and the other of Gouverneur Morris (1888), which had mixed reviews and limited sales. 17 He wrote both books hastily and the haste shows, along with his fawning idealization of the populist Benton with whom he identified. He had little in common other than keen intelligence and patriotism with Morris, a womanizer who lost a leg trying to escape a jealous husband. Roosevelt’s writings influenced, and were in turn influenced by, the most profound American historians of the late nineteenth century. His book, The Naval War of 1812, provoked an ongoing debate over naval strategy and opened doors to corridors of power for him. Admiral Stephen Luce, who founded the Naval War College in 1884, asked Roosevelt to come and speak on naval affairs in 1888. It was during this trip that Roosevelt met Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a history professor at the Naval College at Newport, Rhode Island. Mahan’s 1890 The Influence of Sea Power upon History, owed much to his Naval War of 1812. 18 Roosevelt and Mahan became friends and political allies. 19 Mahan’s 1900 book The Problem of Asia stirred Roosevelt’s thinking on how best to assert American interests across the Pacific basin and Far East. 20 Inspired by such brilliant historians as Francis Parkman and William Prescott, Roosevelt began his Winning of the West series, which eventually stretched to four volumes, subtitled An Account of the Exploration and Settlements of the Country from the Alleghenies to the Pacific; the first two volumes appeared in 1889, the third in 1894, and the fourth in 1896, with each dedicated to Parkman. 21 What Roosevelt presented was essentially a Social Darwinian version of American history whereby a superior race of enterprising, courageous pioneers vanquishes and civilizes a continent from indolent barbarous tribes. Walt Whitman was among those who lauded the series: “There is something alluring in the subject and the way it is handled: Roosevelt seems to have realized its character—its shape and size—to have honestly imbibed some of the spirit of that wild Western life.” 22

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Frederick Jackson Turner was profoundly influenced by Roosevelt’s Winning of the West series and other books. Turner presented his essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” at the American Historical Association meeting in Chicago in 1893, although he did not get around to expanding it into a book until 1921. The perspectives of Roosevelt and Turner overlapped, with each embracing most of the other’s outlook. Each recognized distinct development stages for the United States whose culture and eventual greatness was most vitally forged on the frontier. Each lamented the frontier’s passing and feared for America’s future unless its energies could be harnessed to farsighted undertakings. It was the “heroes” of their narratives that contrasted, with Roosevelt celebrating extraordinary men of action and vision, and Turner emphasizing the countless ordinary farm families who toiled anonymously but productively as the nation’s economic and democratic backbone. The perspectives of Brooks Adams in his Law of Civilization and Decay in 1896 and American Economic Supremacy in 1900 had a major impact on Roosevelt’s thought. 23 Adams was as darkly pessimistic about America’s future as Roosevelt was guardedly optimistic. Yet his powerful arguments forced Roosevelt to devise equally powerful counterarguments. His most important influence was getting Roosevelt to think deeper and broader about the crucial dynamic between national wealth and power. Roosevelt’s 1900 book, The Strenuous Life, a collection of essays and speeches, was in many ways a response to Mahan, Turner, and Adams, at once embracing and transcending their key ideas. He issued this clarion challenge to his readers: “The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all their hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife.” 24 Roosevelt largely watched the 1888 presidential campaign from the sidelines. He did not run for any office. He offered lukewarm support to the Republican presidential candidate, Benjamin Harrison, a Civil War veteran, Indiana lawyer, politician, recent one-term senator in Washington, and the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. 25 When all the November 6 ballots were counted, Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland trounced Harrison by 5,534,488 votes or 48.6 percent to 5,443,892 or 47.8 percent, but Harrison won technically by gaining 233 electoral college votes to a mere 168 for Cleveland. Roosevelt eventually found something significant for himself in Harrison’s questionable victory. 26 Roosevelt’s public service career revived on May 1, 1889, when Henry Cabot Lodge informed him that President Harrison was considering him to be one of the nation’s three civil service commissioners. 27 On May 7,

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Harrison interviewed Roosevelt at the White House and offered him the job. The post would not have been his first choice in the federal government. The annual pay was $3,500 for the rather tedious work of investigating allegations of corruption among federal officials. He would have to move his family to Washington. His jurisdiction would be the entire country, which would annually keep him from his family for weeks. Nonetheless, he eagerly accepted. His decision mixed lofty idealism with hard practicalities. He harbored a long-standing antipathy to the spoils system. His beloved father had fought a losing crusade against corruption and Roosevelt had carried on that struggle as a New York state assemblyman. Now was his chance to champion his values: “No republic can permanently endure when its politics are corrupt and base; and the spoils system, the application in political life of the degrading doctrine that to the victor belongs the spoils, produces corruption and degradation. The man who is in politics for the office might as well be in politics for the money he can get for his vote.” 28 Then there was the realization that if he rejected this offer, he would probably not get another: “I hated to take the place but I hardly thought I ought to refuse.” 29 He had actually hoped to be named to a much loftier post, assistant secretary of state. Two congressional allies, Lodge and Thomas Reed, had asked Harrison to appoint him to that position. Harrison and Secretary of State James Blaine firmly rejected the notion. Blaine still resented that Roosevelt and Lodge had initially opposed his nomination as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1884. Harrison expressed his concern that Roosevelt “lacks the repose and patient endurance required in an Assistant Secretary. Mr. Roosevelt is amazing quick in apprehension. Is there not danger that he might be too quick in execution?” 30 It was only after this rebuff that Lodge and Reed had talked Harrison into naming Roosevelt a civil service commissioner. The Civil Service Commission occupied three rooms in a Greek revival building that now housed federal offices but once served as Washington’s City Hall before that government moved into a larger building. Roosevelt first set foot there on May 13, 1889, when he met his fellow commissioners Charles Lyman and Hugh Thompson. The initial friendly relations swiftly became strained as his colleagues could not match the fervor with which Roosevelt fulfilled his duties. Roosevelt described Lyman as “a good, honest, hardworking man, very familiar with the law; but he is also the most intolerably slow of all the men who ever adorned red tape.” 31 As for Thompson, “I can hardly dare trust him in such work.” 32 Certainly in comparison Roosevelt was a near impossible act to follow let alone compete with on the same stage at the same time. Edwin Godkin, The Nation’s editor, pegged the new man as “erratic and impulsive but . . . energetic, enthusiastic, and honest and may be relied on to see that the law is faithfully executed.” 33

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The Civil Service Commission spearheaded the federal workforce’s transformation from a spoils system into a merit system. Progressives had tried to enact this fundamental reform throughout the nineteenth century’s last third, although the first congressional effort dated to 1811. Conservatives killed that 1811 bill along with annual versions from 1864 to 1869. In 1871, President Ulysses Grant and congressional progressives established a seven man commission to promote merit for civil service employees and investigate allegations of wrongdoing. Pressured by lobbyists, a congressional majority ended the commission in 1875. Grant and his successors, Rutherford Hayes and James Garfield failed to convince a majority to restore the commission. In 1881, the editors of prominent publications, Godkin of The Nation and Georg Curtis of Harper’s Weekly, established the National Civil Service Reform League to champion the cleansing of corruption and incompetence from the federal workforce. After two years of pressure, the League convinced a congressional majority to approve the Pendleton Civil Service Act, named after its sponsor Senator George Pendleton of Ohio, which President Chester Arthur signed into law on January 16, 1883. The Pendleton Act designated twenty-eight categories of federal jobs to be determined by merit rather than the prevailing favoritism, bribes, or party loyalty. This accounted for about a quarter of the federal workforce when Roosevelt joined the service. To be eligible applicants had to pass a civil service test. Those who earned a job on their merits could not be fired summarily but only after a legal process that proved corruption or incompetence. The Act outlawed soliciting or giving political donations on federal property or firing someone for refusing to contribute. Three commissioners oversaw regional Civil Service Boards and Chronicles that respectively investigated and wrote reports; they pursued the most egregious allegations initially uncovered and documented by local officials. The commissioners had to be a mix of Republicans and Democrats appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. Each commissioner had an office and one clerk to assist him. Unfortunately the Commission’s powers fell far short of its duty to ensure that those who received merit-based jobs actually merited them. They could merely investigate and advise. They were not empowered to subpoena anyone or require testimonies under oath. They presented the evidence of wrongdoing to the department or agency head in which the infraction allegedly occurred. The trouble with this, of course, was that those very heads had approved the questionable appointments. The spoils system warped, stunted, and pillaged American democracy. Roosevelt explained: “Patronage does not really help a party. It helps the bosses to get control of the machinery of the party . . . and . . . the public chest. Under the spoils system a man is appointed to an ordinary clerical or ministerial position in . . . government, not primarily because he is expected to be a good servant, but because he has rendered help to

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some big boss or to the henchmen of some big boss. His stay in office depends not upon how he performs service, but upon how he retains his influence in the party.” Opposing this essentially criminal organization and behavior, was merely the “unorganized sentiment of the community in favor of putting things on a decent basis. The large number of men who believe vaguely in good are pitted against the smaller but still larger number of men whose interest it often becomes to act very concretely and actively for evil.” 34 For Roosevelt, the spoils system was the root of all political evil in America: “The spoil monger, the man who peddled patronage, inevitably breeds the vote-buyer, the vote-seller, and the man guilty of malfeasance in office.” 35 The spoils system was deeply entrenched with nefarious ways to protect those who did not merit the jobs they received. For instance, one way unqualified people passed tests was by bribing the person who graded the test; the going rate was fifty dollars. Compounding the unprofessionalism was the lack of a training program, job security, and retirement benefits. All along big government kept getting bigger, rising from about 20,000 in 1860 to about 166,000 in 1890. 36 With 112,000 workers, the post office was the federal government’s largest employer. Merit was supposed to determine 28,000 of those jobs, with the rest distributed by the postmaster general often in return for kickbacks and other financial or political favors. The current postmaster general soon became Roosevelt’s latest nemesis. John Wannamaker was a self-made Philadelphia millionaire who got rich equipping the American army during the Civil War. 37 He was an innovator who not only established one of the first department stores, but was the first to install a restaurant, electricity, and telephones; grant his workers paid vacations, health care, pensions, and life insurance; and offer customers money back guarantees on their purchases. He wielded part of his wealth to buy his way to prominence in the Republican Party. In 1888, he raised $200,000 for Harrison’s presidential campaign; $20,000 of that money came from his own deep pocket. In return, a grateful Harrison granted Wannamaker the most potentially lucrative post in the federal government. Wannamaker’s deputy was James Clarkson, who did most of the dirty work of distributing the spoils. By November 1889, eight months after Harrison took the presidential oath, Wannamaker and Clarkson had replaced 32,335 Democratic postmasters with Republicans. 38 All along Roosevelt tried to balance his loyalty to the Republican Party with his loyalty to the Constitution, law, and Civil Service Commission. He complained that “Wannamaker has been as outrageously disagreeable as he could possibly be. . . . He seems to be the only one of the Cabinet who wants to pitch into us.” 39 Yet ultimately he blamed Harrison, who “has not sustained his Commission at all, and has allowed Wannamaker to” commit “the clearest violations of the law.” 40 In this

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delicate political situation, his strategy was “to avoid a quarrel with him, both for the sake of the reform and of the party; but every now and then he intrudes too much, and I have to hit him a clip.” 41 He boiled the Commission’s goals down to “two things. One is to make the officials themselves understand that the law is obligatory not optional, and the other is to get the same idea into the heads of the people.” 42 He launched his crusade in his hometown, where he canned three New York City customs officials who had sold posts for $50 each; in doing so, he avenged his father who Republican boss Roscoe Conkling had prevented from being the Customs House supervisor and instead passed it to his sycophant Chester Arthur. He then headed to the Midwest for ten days of investigations. His first case could not have been more politically sensitive. William Wallace, the Indianapolis postmaster, had two extraordinary beneficiaries. He owed his office to Postmaster General Wannamaker at the behest of President Harrison. Wallace in turn promptly reemployed three Republican stalwarts who were fired three years earlier for incompetence and corruption. Lucius Swift, who edited the Civil Service Chronicles in Indianapolis, brought the case to Roosevelt’s attention. Typically, Roosevelt was invigorated rather than intimidated at squaring off against venality, favoritism, and ineptness that reached to the pinnacle of American political power. Once in Indianapolis, he found overwhelming evidence that the charges were true. Wallace promised to fire the three employees and never again yield to politics or graft. Roosevelt triumphantly wrote Lodge that “we had stirred things up well” and “administered a galvanic shock” to Harrison “that will reinforce his virtue for the future.” 43 Roosevelt then headed to Milwaukee where Postmaster George Paul stood accused of pocketing bribes to help applicants cheat on exams. He discovered that Paul has “grossly and habitually violated the law and has done it in a peculiarly revolting and underhanded way. His conduct merits the severest punishment.” 44 Paul resigned to escape prosecution. The key witness was Hamilton Shidy, who headed both the post office and Civil Service Board, who Paul forced to rubber-stamp passes for the tests of those who paid him off. In return for his evidence and promise to obey the law, Shidy was transferred to the Census Bureau. In both the Indianapolis and Milwaukee cases, Roosevelt aired the dirty political laundry in the press. This enraged Harrison, Wannamaker, and many in the Republican elite who feared their own venality might eventually be exposed to the detriment of their lucrative political careers. Harrison wanted to fire Roosevelt, but desisted fearing that the political blowback from so blatantly silencing a whistleblower might be worse. He called Roosevelt to the White House and tried to talk him into going easy. Roosevelt reveled in having “made this commission a living force, and in consequences the outcry among the Spoilsmen has become furious; it has evidently frightened” Harrison, who suggested “that the law should be

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rigidly enforced where the people will stand it, and handled gingerly elsewhere. But I answered militantly that as long as I was responsible the law should be enforced . . . I am a great believer in practical politics; but when my duty is to enforce a law, that law is surely going to be enforced, without fear or favor. I am perfectly willing to be turned out—or legislated out—but while in I mean business.” 45 Harrison changed tactics. Rather than stonewall, he pretended fully to support Roosevelt while assailing him indirectly through surrogates. He summoned the three commissioners to the White House on July 10. Roosevelt emerged radiant from the meeting, crowing that Harrison “is with us. The Indianapolis business gave him an awful wrench, but he has swallowed the medicine, and in his talk with us today did not express the least dissatisfaction with any of our deeds or utterances.” 46 Frank Hatton was a former postmaster general, current Washington Post editor, and enemy of the Civil Service Commission. In an editorial on July 28, he accused Roosevelt of corruption and incompetence, and demanded his resignation. Congressional champions of the spoils system loudly echoed the charges. Roosevelt angrily denied the allegations and threatened but did not pursue a slander suit. Instead, he relied on the annual Civil Service Commission report that appeared in November 1889 to clear his name. 47 Meanwhile, Roosevelt repaid Thomas Reed’s backing him as commissioner by endorsing him against William McKinley as speaker of the House of Representatives. In the December election, Reed won and assured Roosevelt that he would uphold the Commission, although he admittedly preferred the spoils system. With his brilliant erudition and caustic wit, Reed was definitely someone to have as a friend rather than foe. He once famously said, referring to his enemies, that: “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” 48 Unfortunately, the power of Reed in the House and Lodge in the Senate was not enough to overwhelm those in Congress dead-set to destroy the Civil Service Commission and its most dangerous commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. A deadlock persisted in both houses of Congress between those who wanted to bolster and those who wanted to eliminate the Commission. Roosevelt complained that “no department of the Government is run with such absolutely insufficient means as ours” nor were any federal officials “so insufficiently paid.” 49 Meanwhile, in January 1890, the House Committee on Reform in the Civil Service launched an investigation of the Civil Service Commission. The political deck was blatantly stacked against any fair assessment. Arch-conservative Hamilton Ewart of South Carolina was the prosecutor, assisted by Frank Hatton, the Washington Post editor. Ewart issued twelve charges against the Commission, including one that specifically targeted Roosevelt for pro-

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viding a Census Bureau job to Shidy and not pursuing corruption charges against him in return for evidence. The hearings opened on February 19, 1890. When called upon to testify, Roosevelt justified his behavior toward Shidy as a standard prosecutorial tool, insisting that: “The Government must protect its witnesses who are being persecuted for telling the truth.” 50 Shidy, however, proved unworthy of the deal when he admitted that he would succumb to pressure again to join a corruption scam. Roosevelt did his best to stave off insinuations by Postmaster General Wannamaker and former Milwaukee postmaster George Paul that he was somehow guilty of corruption. Ewart closed the hearings on March 7. Ultimately, Ewart and the committee let the evidence rather than politics shape their conclusions. On June 13, 1890, they issued a report that vindicated the Civil Service Commission by declaring that “the public service has been greatly benefited, and the law, on the whole, well-executed.” The report also cleared of wrongdoing two commissioners, “Roosevelt and Thompson” who “have discharged their duties with entire fidelity and integrity,” while Lyman was lightly rebuked for “laxity of discipline.” 51 Although Hatton condemned that report as a “whitewash” in a front page article in the Washington Post, most enemies of the Civil Service Commission called off their attacks for now. 52 Roosevelt tried to follow up the Commission’s victory by nailing down the president’s unconditional and public commitment to civil service reform. The president typically hemmed and hawed without committing himself. Roosevelt stalked away from the White House, later venting that Harrison “refused to consider the changes in the rules which are necessary to enable us to do our work effectively. He has never given us one ounce of real backing. He won’t see us, or consider any method for improving the service, even when it in no way touches a politician. It is horribly disheartening to work under such a Chief.” 53 During their years in Washington, Roosevelt and Edith enjoyed the city’s social and intellectual whirl. To his sister Anna, Roosevelt described the capital as “just a big village, but . . . a very pleasant big village. Edith and I meet just the people we like to see. This winter we had a most pleasant time socially and officially. . . . We dine out three or four times a week, and have people to dinner once or twice. . . . The people we meet are mostly those who stand high in the political world, and who are therefore interested in the same subjects that interest us: while there are enough also . . . from whom one really gets something . . . trained, able, powerful men, though often narrow minded.” 54 He forged some enduring relations with geologist and explorer Clarence King, painter Frederick Remington, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and stained-glass artist John La Forge. He became friends with two Englishmen, the historian George Trevelyan and especially the diplomat and writer Cecil Rice. He hob-

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nobbed more superficially with such literary luminaries who passed through Washington as Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Bret Harte, Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lyman Draper, Brander Matthews, Charles Francis Adams, and Rudyard Kipling. During this time, he fantasized about taking the greatest political prize of all: “I used to walk by the White House, and my heart would beat a little faster as the thought came to me that possibly . . . I would someday occupy it as president.” 55 The latest serious corruption scandal erupted in March 1891. Accusations arose that Harrison appointees as postmasters and marshals were shaking down subordinates for five and ten dollar donations for the president’s future reelection campaign. This blatantly violated the Civil Service Act’s prohibition of soliciting campaign funds on federal property. The epicenter for the crimes was Baltimore, where a Republican Party primary was pending. Roosevelt asked Wannamaker to investigate. Wannamaker refused. Roosevelt then went to Baltimore to question officials accused of wrongdoing. Harrison was enraged when he learned of his visit but was helpless to stop him. The 146-page report that Roosevelt delivered to the White House on August 4, identified twenty-five Harrison appointees for violating the law. Some of the testimonies could not have been more damning. When Roosevelt asked one official how he cheated, he replied, “We do our cheating honorably.” 56 He concluded his report by calling for abolishing the spoils system and implementing the merit system for all federal employees. 57 Wannamaker refused to dismiss the twenty-five accused. Instead, claiming that the evidence was inconclusive, he launched his own investigation. Roosevelt erupted in anger when Wannamaker’s messenger informed him of his decision: “You may tell the Postmaster General from me that I don’t like him for two reasons. In the first place, he has a very sloppy mind, and in the next place he does not tell the truth.” 58 Wannamaker’s team compiled a report but the postmaster general rejected all requests by Roosevelt that he send a copy to the Civil Service Commission. Roosevelt appealed to Harrison, but the president predictably backed his loyalist postmaster general. Roosevelt asked the House of Representatives to determine why twenty-five officials that the Civil Service Commission had officially accused of law-breaking in August 1891 remained in office in March 1892. On April 19, the Civil Service Reform Committee voted to hold hearings from April 25 until May 25. Wannamaker testified that Roosevelt had intimidated and tricked officials into making confessions that they later retracted. Roosevelt justified his tactics: “Of course I used leading questions! I have always used them in examination of this kind and always shall use them . . . to get at the truth!” He later declared that if the twentyfive accused “are not guilty, then it is absolutely impossible that men ever

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can be guilty under the Civil Service Law.” 59 Wannamaker was forced to present his own committee’s report that ran over nine-hundred pages. Although the evidence was even more definitive than Roosevelt’s report, Wannamaker’s concluded that it was insufficient to indict any of the twenty-five accused. On June 22, the Civil Service Reform Committee issued its own report. To Roosevelt’s delight and relief, the report upheld his report and condemned the conclusions of Wannamaker’s report. Among Roosevelt’s greatest strengths was his open-mindedness. He had very powerful views on virtually any issue but he eagerly adjusted them as he gained alternative knowledge and perspectives. As a young Dakota rancher, he mimicked the prevailing racism when he quipped to a local newspaper reporter that “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the death of the tenth.” 60 This was not an original phrase but a common saying among frontier whites. The rich eastern dude rancher spewed this vulgar bluster to help him fit in with westerners who regularly mouthed such vicious genocidal hatreds. His views of Indians was revolutionized during his tenure as Civil Service Commissioner. 61 The Commissioner of Indian Affairs was John Oberly, a Harrison appointee. Oberly had a well-deserved reputation for protecting federal employees accused of incompetence and corruption in return for kickbacks. Herbert Welsh headed the Indian Rights Association. Among the Indian Rights Association’s causes was ensuring that the Civil Service Commission oversaw all federal employees on Indian reservations. Roosevelt firmly agreed: “To my mind the most important step that could be taken to solve the Indian problem would be to make the service absolutely non-political.” 62 Under pressure from Roosevelt and Welsh, along with George Grinnell, the editor of Forest and Stream, Harrison reluctantly agreed on April 13, 1891, to place the 700 or so teachers on Indian reservations under the Civil Service Commission’s oversight. Roosevelt and Welsh embarked on an inspection tour of western Indian reservations in September 1892. What they found, especially on the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation grossly offended every humanitarian value Roosevelt had of right and wrong. Pine Ridge was and remains one of the worst reservations for crime, alcoholism, and poverty. South Dakota’s Republican Party shook down teachers and other officials on the reservation for up to $200 to keep their federal jobs, and the “donors” in turn plundered the resources that were supposed to go to the Sioux people struggling to survive. Suddenly the Indian-hating racism that Roosevelt had imbibed from his fellow westerners during his ranching sojourn appeared a self-serving delusion that justified exploiting the Indians. He angrily blew the whistle on the scandal: “Here we have a group of beings who are not able to protect themselves . . . to whom . . . we are supposed to be holding out a helping hand. . . . They are credulous and easily

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duped by a bad agent, and they are susceptible of remarkable improvement when the agent is a good man. . . . To the Indians the workings of the spoils system at the agencies is a curse and an outrage.” 63 Despite the thick corruption cloud surrounding Benjamin Harrison, the Republican Party renominated him as their presidential candidate in 1892. Roosevelt received a curt rejection from the White House for his offer to campaign for Harrison’s reelection. This hurt Roosevelt deeply: “If only they would back me up then let me act publicly, on the stump, as a Republican! But they won’t do either, and seem to regard me with a curious mixture of suspicion and treacherous dislike.” 64 Two men eagerly challenged Harrison’s grip on the White House, Democratic Grover Cleveland and Populist James Weaver. After the votes were counted on November 8, the two progressive candidates between them garnered more than half the votes, with 5,556,918 or 46 percent for Cleveland and 1,041,028 or 8.5 percent for Weaver, while only 5,176,108 or 43 percent turned out for Harrison. As for electoral votes, Cleveland won 277, Harrison 145, and Weaver 22. The Democratic Party also dominated Congress. In the Senate, the Republican Party lost 10 seats and their edge as they plummeted from 47 to 37 seats, while the Democrats surpassed them by picking up five seats that raised their total from 39 to 44; Populist Party candidates won 2 seats and the Silver Party won one seat. Although the Republicans gained 45 seats in the House of Representatives, their 133 seats remained far behind the Democrats with 212; the Populist Party picked up two seats to total eleven and the Silver Party won a seat. 65 With a Democrat in the White House, Roosevelt reasoned that he would have to start looking for a new job. In reviewing his tenure as commissioner, he took pride in having “not flinched from trying to enforce the law during these four years, even if my progress has been at times a little disheartening.” 66 Navy Secretary Benjamin Tracy gave Roosevelt a barbed compliment: “Well my boy, you have been a thorn in our side during four years. I earnestly hope that you will remain to be a thorn in the side of the next administration.” 67 In all, Roosevelt at once rued and reveled “in knowing that there is no man more bitterly disliked by many of the men in my own party.” 68 Tracy’s wish came true. Secret politicking by Roosevelt kept him the job. He knew and respected Cleveland from the time the assemblyman and governor worked together in Albany to pass a number of bills. They shared overlapping progressive agendas despite their conflicting party affiliations. The two exchanged confidential telegrams in mid-October, several weeks before the election. Although the specific proposals have been lost, the tone was friendly and supportive. Then, after Cleveland won, Roosevelt sent word to him via progressive leader Carl Schurz that he would like to stay. Schurz relayed Cleveland’s gratifying reply that he would consider doing

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so since “there is not another man in the country who can do it as well as you can.” 69 Roosevelt and Cleveland revived their friendship and common outlook during a meeting on January 17, 1893. Yet Cleveland kept Roosevelt hanging another three months, and more than a month and a half after he took the presidential oath, before he formally asked him to stay on April 25. 70 Cleveland not only retained Roosevelt, but also George Johnston who actually opposed and did all he could to impede civil service reforms; he did strengthen the Commission by replacing lackluster Charles Lyman with John Proctor. Roosevelt dominated the triumvirate. Illness often kept his colleagues away from work, something that Roosevelt relished: “I have all the work of the Civil Service Commission to myself . . . it is more satisfactory than having a divided responsibility; and it enables me to take more decided steps.” 71 Roosevelt tried to interest Congress in transforming the threesome into a one man director, but most progressives and conservatives preferred keeping the current structure. Progressives wanted a bipartisan body whose members eyed each other as much as the bureaucracy for corruption. Conservatives wanted to kill the commission altogether but viewed a cumbersome triumvirate as a lesser evil than a directorship. From March to August 1894, House conservatives championed a bill, sponsored by Democrat Benjamin Enloe of Tennessee, to repeal the 1883 Pendleton Act. The Enloe Bill passed by 100 to 71 but died in the Senate. Overall Cleveland’s administration was a breath of fresh air after the corruption stench of Harrison’s administration. Nearly all the new key officials, including War Secretary Daniel Lamont, Navy Secretary Hilary Herbert, Postmaster General Wilson Bissell, and Agriculture Secretary Sterling Morton, upheld professional standards for themselves and their personnel. In contrast, Secretary of State Walter Gresham assigned his assistant Josiah Quincy the task of replacing Republicans with Democrats in Washington and overseas, although merit largely determined who got what. Worst of all was Treasury Secretary John Carlisle, who Roosevelt characterized as “dishonest, untruthful, and cowardly.” 72 Carlisle earned that reputation for doling out jobs either as paybacks or for kickbacks, and firing all his black employees. Cleveland’s insistence that honesty and efficiency prevailed in the federal government gave Roosevelt and the Civil Service Commission little to do. The new administration’s social atmosphere was as fresh as its political atmosphere. Cleveland invited Roosevelt and Edith to a formal dinner at the White House, a courtesy that Harrison never made. Yet, with no big scandals to crusade against, Roosevelt grew increasingly restless. Led by Elihu Root, a group of Republican progressives asked him in 1894 to run for the party’s nomination for New York mayor against William Strong, a reform-minded businessman and Republican Party

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leader. Thomas Platt was then New York State’s Republican Party boss. Recognizing “how bitter the anti-Platt feeling is,” Roosevelt decided not to associate himself with that political tar baby. 73 He also wondered if he had all the skills vital to being an effective mayor: “I should have been delighted to smash up the corrupt contractors and to have tried to put the street cleaning commissioner’s force absolutely out of the domain of politics; but with the actual work of cleaning the streets, dumping the garbage, etc., I wasn’t familiar. It was out of my line, and, moreover, I didn’t feel I could leave my work here—in which I believe with all my heart and soul—for at least a year to come, and so I had to refuse.” 74 Yet he turned down the offer with mixed feelings. He was thirty-five years old, the father of six children, with a job as the civil service commissioner. Then came the latest extraordinary offer that changed his life. Mayor William Strong, the man that Roosevelt would have run against, asked him to be one of New York City’s four police commissioners, who by law were split equally between the Republican and Democratic parties. It was a generous gesture to a man who might wield the position to run against him in the future. Roosevelt accepted the job with no little trepidation: “I hated to leave Washington, for I love the life.” He worried that the job’s demands would make it difficult “to keep on with my literary matters.” Finally, he admitted his fear that the job would be “absolutely impossible to do what will be expected of me . . . I must make up my mind to much criticism and disappointment.” All this aside, the timing was perfect: “I am nearly through what I can do here; and this is a good way of leaving a position which I greatly like but which I do not wish permanently to retain.” 75 Roosevelt submitted his resignation to President Cleveland on April 25, 1895, and cleaned out his desk on May 10. Just what did he achieve during his six years as a commissioner? Typically he had an answer: “There have been haltings and shortcomings, here and there, but as a whole the improvements in the administration of the law has kept pace steadily with the growth of the classified service. Year by year the law has been better executed, taking the service as a while, and in spite of occasional exceptions in certain offices and bureaus.” 76 This was a fair assessment. Overall, with his unrelenting vigorous leadership of the Commission, he cheered, nudged, and cajoled further the morphing of the spoils system into the merit system. Just how much slower the progress would have been had he never served is impossible to say. The progress, however, was clear. The number of people who took civil service tests tripled from 11,281 in 1888 to 31,036 in 1895. The number of incorrect mail handlings went from 1 in 2,834 in 1889 to 1 in 7,831 in 1894. The proportion of women who passed the civil service exam rose from 28 percent to 43 percent from 1884 to 1894, although their actual proportion of those posts rose only from 7

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percent to 25 percent, and they mostly received low-level clerical jobs. The transition to a merit system would not officially be complete until the 1939 Hatch Act. Presidents rather than commissioners were the most powerful forces behind this achievement. To varying degrees, each president ended his term with a “blanketing” or asserting protection over swaths of the civil service. Although the motivation was largely to prevent the next president from firing and replacing them with his own followers, the effect was progressive. 77 Roosevelt unwittingly developed his own political skills more than civil service reforms. He obtained a thorough grassroots understanding of the federal government that would help him navigate the maze to get what he wanted as president. He honed the research skills vital for making cases for reforms, and then the political skills of haggling, arm-twisting, and trade-offs vital for transforming proposals into genuine reforms. He became a national hero standing up to corrupt, greedy, inept politicians and bureaucrats. He deepened and broadened his understanding of the humanities and sciences by associating with brilliant scholars, writers, artists, inventors, scientists, and engineers. And he nearly always had an exhilarating time doing all that. NOTES 1. Roosevelt to Charles Bonaparte, May 14, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:161. 2. William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961), 74. 3. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 430. 4. Roosevelt to Walter Hubbell, June 8, 1885, Roosevelt Letters, 1:91. 5. Henry George, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase in Wealth, The Remedy (New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1879, 1997). 6. Roosevelt to Elihu Root and William Bellamy, October 16, 1886, Roosevelt Letters, 1:110–11. 7. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 17, 1886, Roosevelt Letters, 1:111. 8. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 20, 1886, Roosevelt Letters, 1:112. 9. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 355. 10. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 373. 11. Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady (New York: Modern Library Edition, 2009); Lewis L. Gould, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Creating the Modern First Lady (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013). 12. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 378. 13. Edward Renehan, The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in War and Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 14. For studies of Roosevelt development as both a historian and subject of history, see: John A. Barsness, “Theodore Roosevelt as Cowboy: The Virginian as Jacksonian Man,” American Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3 (Autumn 1969), 609–19; Richard Slotkin, “Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt’s Myth of the Frontier,” American Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 5 (1981), 608–37; Richard Slotkin, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Frontier Hypothesis,” European Contributions to American Studies, vol. 16 (March 1989), 44–71. 15. Roosevelt to Francis Parkman, July 13, Roosevelt Letters, 1:173.

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16. Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1885), Theodore Roosevelt, Life and the Hunting Trail (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1888), and Theodore Roosevelt, The Wilderness Hunter (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1893). 17. Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Hart Benton (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1887); Theodore Roosevelt, Gouverneur Morris (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1888). 18. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1894). 19. For a good book on the relationship between Roosevelt and Mahan, see: Richard W. Turk, The Ambiguous Relationship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1987). For a good book that captures the essence of Mahan’s thought, see: Benjamin F. Armstrong, ed., The 21st Century Mahan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013). See also: Kenneth J. Moll, “A.T. Mahan, American Historian,” Military Affairs, vol. 27, no. 3 (Autumn 1963), 131–40; Michael Corgan, “Mahan and Roosevelt: The Assessment of Influence,” Naval War College Review, vol. 33, no. 6 (1980), 89–97. 20. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Problem of Asia and Its Effects on International Policies (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1900). 21. Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West: An Account of the Exploration and Settlements of the Country from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, 4 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1889–1896). 22. Charles Eliot Norton, Walt Whitman as Man, Poet, and Friend (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), 216. 23. Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History (New York: Macmillan, 1896); Brooks Adams, American Economic Supremacy (New York: Macmillan, 1900). 24. Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (New York: Century Company, 1900), 20. 25. Harry J. Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968); Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison, 25rd President, 1889–1983 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006). 26. H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969); Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Charles W. Calhoun, Minority Victory: Gilded Age Politics and the Front Porch Campaign of 1888 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008). 27. For good books and articles, see: Richard D. White, Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003); Richard D. White, “Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner: Linking the Influence and Development of a Modern Administrative President,” Administrative Theory & Praxis, vol. 22, no. 4 (December 2000), 696–713; Richard D. White, “The Bull Moose and the Bear: Theodore Roosevelt and John Wannamaker Struggle over the Spoils,” Pennsylvania History, vol. 71, no. 1 (2004), 1–24. For an excellent insider’s account, see: William D. Foulke, Fighting the Spoilsman: Reminiscences of the Civil Service Reform (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919). 28. Theodore Roosevelt, “Six Years of Civil Service Reform,” Scribner’s Magazine, vol. 18 (1895), 238. 29. Roosevelt to Charles Bonaparte, May 14, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:161. 30. William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961), 74. 31. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 27, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:192. 32. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 19, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:199. 33. Richard D. White, “The Bull Moose and the Bear: Theodore Roosevelt and John Wannamaker Struggle over the Spoils,” Pennsylvania History, vol. 71, no. 1 (2004), 5. 34. Roosevelt Autobiography, 76–77. 35. Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 220.

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36. Paul Van Riper, The History of the United States Civil Service (Evanston, IN: Row, Peterson, 1958), 201. 37. Herbert Eshkowitz, John Wannamaker: Philadelphia Merchant (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999). 38. White, Roosevelt the Reformer, 30. 39. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 11, 1889, Lodge Letters, 1:84. 40. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 27, 1889, Lodge Letters, 1:123. 41. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 17, 1889, Lodge Letters, 1:86. 42. Bishop Letters, 1:47. 43. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, June 24, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:166. 44. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 411. 45. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, June 29, 1889, Lodge Letters, 1:80. 46. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 11, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:172. 47. White, Roosevelt the Reformer, 32–34, 41–43. 48. Samuel W. McCall, The Life of Thomas Brackett Reed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), 248. For a more recent biography, see: James Grant, Mr. Speaker!: The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed, The Man Who Broke the Filibuster (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011). 49. Roosevelt to Charles Collins, January 13, 1890, Roosevelt Letters, 1:210. 50. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 430. 51. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 434. 52. White, Roosevelt the Reformer, 40–43. 53. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 22, 1891, Roosevelt Letters, 1:257. 54. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, February 11, 1894, Roosevelt Letters, 1:364. 55. Henry Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1927, 1971), 7. 56. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 445. 57. Theodore Roosevelt, The Report of Commissioner Roosevelt Concerning Political Assessments and the Use of Official Influence to Control Elections in the Federal Offices at Baltimore, Maryland (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891). 58. William D. Foulke, Fighting the Spoilsmen: Reminiscences of the Civil Service Reform Movement (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919), 25–26. 59. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 461. 60. Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), 355. 61. For Roosevelt’s changing views of and policies toward Indians, see: William T. Hagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997); William T. Hagan, “Civil Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt and the Indian Rights Association,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (May 1975), 187–200. 62. Richard D. White, Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), 53. 63. Roosevelt, “Civil Service Reform: A Report of Stewardship,” February 20, 1893, Roosevelt Works, 14:160. 64. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 10, 1891, Lodge Letters, 1:119. 65. George H. Knowles, The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1892 (Stanford: University of California Press, 1943); H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969); Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). 66. Foulke, Fighting the Spoilsmen, 33. 67. White, Roosevelt the Reformer, 100. 68. Theodore Roosevelt to William Foulke, December 5, 1892, Roosevelt Letters, 1:298. 69. White, Roosevelt the Reformer, 99. 70. Roosevelt to Anna R. Cowles, April 26, 1893, Roosevelt Letters, 1:314.

74 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

Chapter 4 Roosevelt to Anna R. Cowles, May 24, 1893, Cowles Letters, 117–18. Roosevelt to Anna R. Cowles, June 24, 1893, Roosevelt Letters, 1:385. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 11, 1894, Lodge Letters, 1:137. Brands, T.R., 269. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, April 14, 1895, Roosevelt Letters, 1:442. Roosevelt to Grover Cleveland, April 25, 1895, Roosevelt Letters, 1:444. White, Roosevelt the Reformer, 87, 128–32.

FIVE The Police Commissioner

I have to contend with the hostility of Tammany, and the almost equal hostility of the Republicans. I have to contend with the folly of the reformers and the indifference of the decent citizens; above all I have to content with the singularly foolish law under which we administer the Department. . . . Add to this a hostile legislature, a bitterly antagonistic press, an unscrupulous scoundrel as comptroller. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 There is more law at the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in any ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Inspector Alexander Williams) 2

Typically this latest stage of Theodore Roosevelt’s political career was also the latest in his education in the art of power and politics: “By the time I was ending my career as Civil Service Commissioner I was already growing to understand that mere improvement in political conditions by itself was not enough. I dimly realized that an even greater fight must be waged to improve economic conditions, and to secure social and industrial justice, justice as between individuals and as between classes.” 3 This understanding crystallized during two years of patrolling New York City’s mean streets and wretched slums. 4 His first day on the job, May 6, 1895, could not have gone better. His fellow commissioners included Frederick Grant, the former president’s son, a state politician, and the other Republican, while the Democrats were the lawyers and politicians Avery Andrews and Andrew Parker. The four were required to choose a president among themselves. Andrews, the longest sitting commissioner, graciously nominated Roosevelt, and Grant and Parker agreed that he was the most appropriate choice, given his experience as a federal civil service commissioner. Serving as a police commissioner not only brought Roosevelt home but jumped his salary to $6,000. It was a two hour commute from Saga75

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more Hill to police headquarters at 300 Mulberry Street on the Lower East Side. He returned home most nights unless events forced him to miss the last train, when he stayed at his sister Anna’s townhouse at 689 Madison Avenue. He spent many a night prowling the city’s dark streets to ensure his cops were on duty. The four commissioners oversaw the appointment of policemen and investigated corruption and incompetence charges against them. The requirement that the commissioners be equally split between Democrats and Republicans forced them to cooperate and compromise with one another, and helped ensure that any mayor and his minions from one party were carefully scrutinized by the other party. Their power was further bolstered by the requirement that, while mayors appointed them, only governors could dismiss them and only then after judicial hearings over formal charges of wrongdoing. Finally, they had to agree unanimously to any hiring or firing. The commissioners also served as the Board of Elections empowered with appointing officials, administering polling places, and ensuring accurate ballot counts. The commission presided over a 38,000 man force organized in thirtyeight precincts of around a thousand cops and other personnel each, with a total budget of $5 million, to fight crime in a city with 1,515,301 people in the last census in 1890, the nation’s most populous and nearly a third larger than second-place Chicago with 1,093,850 people. The most crimeridden neighborhoods were Hell’s Kitchen, the Bowery, the Tenderloin, Five Points, Frenchtown, Little Italy, Chinatown, and, worst of all, the Lower East Side, also known as Jewtown. Robberies, gambling, and prostitution were the most common crimes. There were about 8,000 saloons and about 30,000 prostitutes who plied their trade from the most luxurious brothels to the foulest alleys. The commission’s most daunting challenge was combatting criminals within rather than beyond the police force. Roosevelt was dismayed to discover that: “From top to bottom, New York’s police force was utterly demoralized by the gangrene” of “venality and blackmail” whereby “the policemen, the ward politician, the liquor seller, and the criminal alternatively preyed on one another and helped one another to prey on the general public.” 5 As if that were not bad enough, he was disgusted to discover that “I have to contend with the hostility of Tammany, and the almost equal hostility of the Republican machine. I have to contend with the folly of the reformers and the indifference of the decent citizens; above all I have to content with the singularly foolish law under which we administer the Department. . . . Add to this a hostile legislature, a bitterly antagonistic press, an unscrupulous scoundrel as comptroller.” 6 Corruption and ineptness riddled the system. Although merit was supposed to determine all hirings and promotions, every position was essentially for sale with the price rising up the hierarchy; an entry level job cost $300 and a captainship $10,000, although the prices varied with

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supply and demand. A policeman, in turn, recouped his initial investment and supplemented his meager income by shaking down businesses for bribes, with the fee roughly proportionate to the business’s income. In effect, the police department operated just like a criminal organization that provides “protection” for cash and other favors. And atop all the corruption was a pervasive police brutality exemplified by inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams who boasted: “There is more law at the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in any ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court.” 7 To that Williams might have added any attempts successfully to prosecute him along with Thomas Byrnes, the police superintendent, and William “Big Bill” Devery, the captain of the 22nd precinct; each repeatedly beat the legal raps brought against them. Compounding the corruption was the statewide Sunday closing law for saloons. Like most moralistic laws it provoked rather than inhibited crime. Saloonkeepers paid off cops to turn a blind eye to their open establishments. The law had a loophole that let restaurants and hotels serve liquor. Saloonkeepers served food and rented beds by the hour. Meals were often no more elaborate than a tiny sandwich with each glass of liquor. Politics swirled around saloons in cities much like it did around post officers in rural communities. Political bosses often headquartered themselves in a prominent bar and reaped the benefits of palming donations and distributing largess. Politicians from each ward made their own weekly rounds of police stations to pocket their share of the loot. More powerful politicians then skimmed a portion from their ward flunkies. Although both parties took what they could from the system, the Democrats enjoyed the lion’s share. Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party headquarters, had mastered a “virtuous” cycle of power that let them dominate New York City politics for decades. They did so by extracting enormous amounts of cash as “donations” then distributing nearly as much to buy votes in elections. Richard Croker was the current Tammany Hall boss. Roosevelt had two powerful allies in the crusade he was about to launch to purge corruption, incompetence, and brutality from New York’s police force. One was Charles Parkhurst, the pastor of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church at 24th Street and the president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime. Parkhurst organized teams of private detectives to investigate allegations of police venality and ineptness, whose reports he then shared with the newspapers. The other was New York State’s Lexow Commission, named after state senator Clarence Lexow, which investigated New York City police corruption and was empowered to issue subpoenas and grant immunity from prosecution. Roosevelt initiated a number of reforms that bolstered police efficiency and competence, and reduced crime and corruption. He established a bicycle squad to swiftly reach crime scenes and pursue fleeing suspects. He ordered that all cops regularly exercise their bodies and pistol shoot-

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ing skills. He issued a standard .38 caliber revolver to all policemen. He began a merit list for police who displayed exceptional creativity or courage. He inaugurated a point system for promotions that included test scores and evaluations of the candidate’s record. Most progressively, he pioneered an anti-crime strategy that a century later came to be called the “drain the swamp” or “fix the broken windows” approaches. He understood and assailed the deep socio-economic reasons for pervasive crime. He tried to get Albany to pass a bill that outlawed sweatshops, tenements, and slumlords. He tried to get street cleaning in the hands of professionals rather than political bosses so that streets rather than taxpayers actually got cleaned. He tried to get schools to set up playgrounds so children had a supervised, constructive, and safe place to vent their energies. He tried to organize boxing clubs in poor neighborhoods to channel the violent energies of teenage boys and young men. He tried to prosecute patrons caught with prostitutes. Alas, the political and crime bosses who exacerbated and leeched off the vicious cycle of poverty, joblessness, crime, ignorance, fatalism, and desperation killed or crimped these efforts. Among the many characteristics that made Roosevelt a master of the art of power was his ability to think and act creatively and decisively. He finessed a potentially explosive situation with action that involved both overwhelming force and rich symbolism. An infamous German antiSemite and parliamentarian named Hermann Ahlwardt was scheduled to speak at Cooper Union in New York City on December 12, 1895. The Jewish community demanded that he not be allowed to speak. This posed a dilemma for Roosevelt. Canceling his talk would violate Ahlwardt’s right to freedom of speech and martyrize him for his cause. Letting him talk might provoke riots. Roosevelt resolved the dilemma by assigning forty Jewish policemen to protect Ahlwardt. To assuage their feelings, he explained that “I am going to assign you to the most honorable service you have ever done . . . the protection of an enemy, and the defense of religious liberty and free speech.” 8 No violence ensued and the irony of being shielded by people of the same faith and culture that he was savaging transformed Ahlwardt and his vicious message into absurdities. Roosevelt sought to lead from the front by walking the streets and determining who the good and bad cops were. His greatest ally in this strategy was a journalist rather than a policeman. Jacob Riis was a Danish immigrant, writer for the Evening Sun, photographer, and reformer, whose 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, provided an eye-opening, often gut-wrenching exploration of the horrific poverty, crime, and despair that afflicted most New Yorkers. 9 No one knew the city better than Riis. Roosevelt initiated a friendship by visiting “him at his office to tell him how deeply impressed I was by the book, and that I wished to help him in any practical way to try to make things a little better.” 10 They

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forged a dynamic relationship: “I felt that with Jacob Riis’s guidance I would be able to put a goodly number of his principles into actual effect. He and I looked at life and its problems from substantially the same standpoint. Our ideals and principles and purposes, and our beliefs as to the methods necessary to realize them, were alike.” 11 The analogy of a hunting guide in an unknown wilderness is apt. Roosevelt relied on guides to stalk wild beasts. Riis was his guide to the bewildering maze of New York City’s slums and the dangerous men who lurked there. Roosevelt loved roaming the streets with Riis in disguise to ensure that the policemen were fulfilling their duties. During his two years as police commission president, Roosevelt made only one significant misstep but it was colossal and threatened to destroy the progress his other initiatives were making. He targeted saloons as the root of much of New York’s corruption: “The most powerful saloonkeepers controlled the politicians and the police, while the latter in turn terrorized and blackmailed all the other saloonkeepers.” 12 A state law forbade saloons from opening on Sunday. This deprived saloonkeepers of income on a day when their establishments would be packed with customers as most enjoyed their one respite from six-day workweeks. However, bribes to cops let them operate openly. All saloonkeepers felt compelled to make the payments for fear of losing regulars to rivals. Starting on June 23, 1895, Roosevelt strictly enforced the Sunday closing law for saloons. He did so with the convoluted logic and wishful thinking that it would provoke a political uproar that forced Albany to rescind a bill that actually encouraged crime. His strategy backfired. Too many people benefited from the corruption for such a defective law to be easily rescinded. Instead, Roosevelt became increasingly blistered as a puritanical zealot: “It is an awkward and ugly fight, yet I am sure I am right in my position and I think there is an even chance of our winning.” 13 His crackdown provoked a political uproar as a chorus of saloonkeepers, brewers, distillers, cops, politicians, and crime bosses condemned him. The Wine, Beer, and Liquor Sellers’ Association complained that one of four saloonkeepers faced bankruptcy from the closure policy. German and Irish Americans who enjoyed a daily pint or two of beer in convivial settings vented their indignation. The loudest protest was uttered by “King” Pat Callahan, a former New York assemblymen and now organized crime leader. When rookie cop Eddie Bourke tried to shut down his saloon, Callahan assaulted him. Bourke subdued Callahan and marched him to jail. During the trial, Callahan packed the court with Tammany Hall politicians in hopes of intimidating the judge. Roosevelt urged the judge to stand firm. Justice prevailed when a jury convicted Callahan for assaulting a police officer and violating the Sunday liquor sales law. In response to complaints that the Sunday abstinence law was counter-productive and better off ignored, Roosevelt coolly explained: “I do

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not deal with public sentiments. I deal with the law. How I might act as a legislator, or what kind of legislation I should advice, has no bearing on my conduct as an executive officer charged with administering the law.” He justified his policy on legal and moral grounds for championing those who obeyed rather than broke the law: “Law-abiding citizens are rarely blackmailed. The chief chance for blackmail, with all its frightful attendant demoralization, arises from having a law which is not strictly enforced, which certain people are allowed to violate with impunity for corrupt reasons, while other offenders who lack their political influence are mercilessly harassed.” 14 He also argued that: “It is not possible to give the young a more dangerous impression than that the law has sidedoors and back-doors.” 15 The Wine, Beer, and Liquor Sellers’ Association asserted a twopronged strategy against Roosevelt. It demanded jury trials for any saloonkeepers charged with opening on Sunday, hoping that the caseload would overwhelm the legal system. Then, on August 23, 1895, it called on all its members to strictly follow the law and shut their businesses on Sunday. The hope was that would provoke mass protests at the harsh economic burden that the law imposed. The legal deadlock and protests got so bad that progressive mayor Strong called in Roosevelt and tried to convince him to abandon his crusade. Roosevelt adamantly refused. Although Democrats controlled New York City politics, Republicans dominated Albany, with Levi Morton in the governor’s mansion and majorities in both legislative houses. Roosevelt’s crusade potentially threatened the Republican Party’s power. Republican bosses pressured Roosevelt to relax his crusade in the weeks leading up to the 1895 election. His enemies in the party derided his crusade as Rooseveltism, which infuriated him: “The implication is that for the sake of the Republican Party, a party of which I am a very earnest member, I should violate my oath of office and connive at law breaking. . . . Personally, I think I can best serve the Republican party by taking the police force absolutely out of politics. Our duty is to preserve order, to protect life and property, to arrest criminals, and to secure honest elections.” 16 Roosevelt was vindicated when Mayor Strong won reelection and the Republicans retained their grip on New York State’s government, although Tammany Hall continued to dominate New York City politics. On April 1, 1896, Albany passed the Raines law, sponsored by senator John Raines, that forced saloons and clubs to keep their curtains open on Sunday, raised the drinking age from sixteen to eighteen, forbade bartenders from giving drinks to anyone who was drunk or a habitual drunkard, prevented pharmacies from selling alcohol-based medicines without a doctor’s prescription, and raised taxes to $800 from $75 for saloons and from $35 for beer-only businesses; only hotels with ten or more rooms could sell alcohol in their restaurants on Sundays.

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Nonetheless, Thomas Platt, New York State’s long-standing Republican Party boss, imposed a shelf life on Roosevelt’s tenure as police commissioner. In May 1896, he got a bill signed into law in Albany that, on January 1, 1898, would join the counties of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island with New York City, which then was confined to Manhattan and the Bronx. The bill would abolish all existing commissions and replace them with new bureaucracies whose leaders Platt was eager to appoint. Roosevelt protested that a single police chief was much easier to corrupt than four commissioners, with each eyeing the others, but that of course was the point. He feared that Platt, New York’s king of Republican Party corruption, would gleefully fire him. Platt soon confirmed that fear by summoning him and explaining “in an entirely pleasant and coldblooded manner” his intention “to legislate me out in about 60 days.” 17 In Platt’s eyes, Roosevelt was a traitor to him and the Republican Party both for his anti-corruption crusade and for backing Thomas Reed, a reformer and House Speaker, over New York Governor Morton, the party machine’s candidate for the presidency. It was time to start looking for new, stimulating work. This necessity was compounded by the worsening obstruction of Andrew Parker on the board. Roosevelt’s exposure of corruption had forced scores of cops at all levels to resign, leaving as many openings to be filled with honest men. Although Grant and Andrews enthusiastically backed Roosevelt’s nominations, Parker delayed them as long as possible, often simply by repeatedly skipping votes, hoping that the candidate would turn to him to cut a backroom deal. This strategy was especially effective with Peter Conlin, who finally got the nod from Parker to become police chief after promising to do all he could to discredit Roosevelt. With progress stalemated at headquarters, Roosevelt, Grant, and Andrews tried to outflank Parker by appealing to New York’s Assembly to change the rules so that only three votes were needed to approve a nomination. A bill with that reform passed the House but Platt killed it in the Senate. The reformers were back to square one. Roosevelt despaired that “I have no ardent backers from New York State and the machine leaders hate me.” 18 It was small comfort knowing that he had achieved national fame for his anticorruption crusade. Roosevelt was under enormous stress. Somehow Parker got incriminating evidence against Grant and blackmailed him into joining his obstructionism on the board. The political gridlock and the constant attempts by the Republican Party machine to break Roosevelt were exhausting enough. Crime was rising again without the payoffs that kept it in check. Then there was the outright danger to Roosevelt himself. Countless men whom Roosevelt’s anti-corruption campaign had humiliated, deprived of illegal income, or jailed would happily kill him if they could get away with it. Walking the night beat on New York’s dark streets was increasingly risky. Even headquarters was not safe. Two package bombs

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were delivered in 1896 but fortunately were detected and defused without detonating. Roosevelt finally lost his temper and ended up looking foolish. On May 5, Mayor Strong and comptroller Ashbel Fitch met with him to discuss the police budget. Two journalists witnessed and eagerly reported what transpired. When Fitch rejected his request for $11,000 to fund a campaign against saloon openings on Sunday, Roosevelt erupted in rage, denigrated Fitch’s manhood, and challenged him to a duel. Fitch heatedly accepted the challenge. Strong threatened to have them both arrested if they did not stand down. That got their attention. Strong then asserted that he would refer their dispute to the Corporation Counsel. A somewhat chastened Roosevelt did not apologize to Fitch but did tell the reporters that the duel was over. This incident occurred as Roosevelt and Strong shared an explosive secret. Two weeks earlier, on April 20, an opportunity arose for Roosevelt to rid the board of Parker. A policeman signed an affidavit admitting that he had paid $400 to an intermediary in return for the promise that Parker would approve his post. Roosevelt took the affidavit to Strong. The damning evidence placed them in a quandary. Parker’s arrest, trial, and conviction could discredit the entire police board. On May 20, Strong wrote Parker asking him quietly to resign within seven days or he would release the affidavit to the press. Parker refused. The press published the affidavit on May 28. Parker clung to his post. Strong had Roosevelt draw up five charges against Parker. The trial began on June 11 and ended on July 8. Grant and Conlin testified for Parker. The judge found Parker not guilty. Parker clung to his position for another ten and a half months. All along Roosevelt was increasingly miserable. The stalemate at headquarters was unbreakable. The commissioners barely spoke to each other. Their mutual hatred was palpable. Strong finally found enough new evidence of Parker’s corruption to recommend on March 17, 1897, that Governor Morton fire him. Parker finally resigned on April 17, to avoid the stigma of Morton’s pending formal dismissal. This was a major step in a long obstacle-strewn political road to reviving the police board and cleaning up the corruption. But Roosevelt had already abandoned that journey. On April 6, he had joyfully accepted a job offer that was a dream come true. As Roosevelt prepared to move to his new position, he took enormous pride in his achievements as the police commission president. He explained that the challenge in cleaning up New York City was not, “save to a small extent, bad laws; it is the fact that our city officials are themselves corrupt or the tools of corrupt, vicious, or ignorant men. My great work was putting the administration of the government upon the highest plane of integrity and efficiency.” 19 From 1895 to 1896, as the police spent more time fighting rather than committing crimes, felonies fell from 1,083

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to 911, while felon suspects arrested rose from 732 to 847, total arrests rose from 1,384 to 2,527, and the total value of recovered stolen property rose from $139,502 to $197,333. 20 His crackdown on corruption and incompetence left New York City’s police force better than he found it. From 1895 to 1897, the number of formal complaints against cops soared from 3,757 to 6,134; the number of days that cops had their pay docked for infractions from 6,064 to 10,217; the fines from $23,139 to $35,759; cop firings from 41 to 98; and the number of detective bureau arrests from 1,384 to 2,527. 21 The force expanded by 1,600 men. Stricter standards for hiring and training made new cops smarter, tougher, and better shots than their predecessors. New stationhouses were opened and hundreds of slum tenements, brothels, and opium dens were shut down. In all, he could proudly report to Mayor Strong that for once “the police force has been administered without regard to politics and with an honest and resolute purpose to enforce the laws equitably. . . . The old system of blackmail and corruption has been almost entirely broken up.” 22 Yet ultimately all these successes came at a high political price as “the machine leaders hate me more than any other man.” 23 It was time to move on. But where? NOTES 1. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, June 28, 1896, Roosevelt Letters, 1:545. 2. Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt, 11. 3. Roosevelt Autobiography, 90. 4. For good books on Roosevelt as police commissioner, see: Jay Stuart Berman, Police Administration and Progressive Reform: Theodore Roosevelt as Police Commissioner of New York (New York: Greenwood, 1987); H. Paul Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt and the New York City Police, 1895–1897 (New York: J. Wiley and Sons, 1994); Richard Zacks, Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (New York: Doubleday, 2012). 5. Theodore Roosevelt, “Municipal Administration: The New York Police Force,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 80, no. 479 (September 1897), 289. 6. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, June 28, 1896, Roosevelt Letters, 1:545. 7. Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt, 11. 8. Zacks, Island of Vice, 200; Roosevelt Autobiography, 105. 9. Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Bedford Press, 1890, 2010). For two fine biographies, see: Janet Pascal, Jacob Riis: Reporter and Reformer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Tom Buk-Swiently, The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008). 10. Roosevelt Autobiography, 96. 11. Roosevelt Autobiography, 96. 12. Roosevelt Autobiography, 107. 13. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 14, 1895, Roosevelt Letters, 1:466. 14. Roosevelt press statement, June 20, 1895, Roosevelt Works, 14:181–82. 15. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 14, 1895, Roosevelt Letters, 1:466. 16. Roosevelt speech, September [n.d.], 1895, Roosevelt Works, 14:184. 17. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, January 19, 1896, Roosevelt Letters, 1:509. 18. John A. Corry, A Rough Ride to Albany: Teddy Runs for Governor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 75.

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19. Roosevelt to Henry Nelson, April 8, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:44. 20. Zacks, Island of Vice, 234, 267–68. 21. Jay S. Berman, “Theodore Roosevelt as Police Commissioner of New York: The Birth of Modern American Police Administration,” in Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American, ed. Natalie Naylor, Douglas Brinley, and John Allen Gable (Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishers, 1992), 171–82. 22. Roosevelt to William Strong, April 17, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:594. 23. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, March 20, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:588.

SIX The Assistant Navy Secretary

As regards Hawaii I would annex those islands tomorrow. If that is not possible I would establish a protectorate over them. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 Until we definitely turn Spain out of those islands (and if I had my way that would be done tomorrow), we will always be menaced by trouble there. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 When the war comes, it should come finally on our initiative, and after we have had time to prepare. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

Theodore Roosevelt’s political fortunes were tied to those of the Republican Party in New York and in Washington. The year 1896 was a turning point for the Republicans. The national convention met at St. Louis in late June and nominated William McKinley as the presidential candidate. 4 Although Roosevelt had backed Thomas Reed, the House Speaker, he pronounced McKinley “an upright and honorable man, of very considerable ability & good record as a soldier & in congress.” The only potential trouble was that he was “not a strong man . . . and unless he is well backed I should feel rather uneasy about him in a serious crisis, whether it took the form of a soft money craze, a gigantic labor riot, or danger of a foreign conflict.” 5 The crisis that tested McKinley would come, and Roosevelt would play a major role in bringing it on. McKinley certainly had a strong résumé. During the Civil War, he fought bravely, most notably at Antietam, and rose through the ranks from private to major. He went home to Ohio to get a law degree, pass the bar, practice for a decade, and twice win election as a county prosecutor. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1877 and served until 1890, when a Democratic majority in Ohio’s government gerrymandered him from his seat. He served two terms as governor from 1892 to 1896. He earned a reputation for being honest and hardworking as well 85

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as bland and self-effacing. All this alone might not have been enough to win him the nomination since he faced such tough, charismatic, and articulate rivals as Thomas Reed, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senator William Allison of Iowa, and New York Governor Levi Morton. But McKinley had a political ace that trumped his rivals. Mark Hanna was a Cleveland millionaire, Ohio’s political boss, and the national Republican Party chair. 6 He had sponsored McKinley’s political career and was able to cut enough deals with other Republican bosses, most notably Thomas Platt of New York and Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania at the St. Louis convention in June, to secure McKinley the nomination. In doing so Hanna achieved a first in American politics—he became the Republican Party boss for the entire country. Although Hanna was a classic wheeler-dealer, he tried and mostly succeeded in being as honest as his protégé McKinley. Roosevelt found Hanna “a good natured, well meaning, rough man, shrewd and hard-headed but neither very far-sighted nor very broad-minded, and as he has a resolute imperious mind he will have to be handled with some care.” 7 The Democratic Party met at Chicago and nominated William Jennings Bryan as its presidential candidate. 8 Bryan was charismatic, eloquent, idealistic, and zealous. Roosevelt had harsh words for him, worrying that “Bryan closely resembles Thomas Jefferson whose accession to the Presidency was a terrible blow to this nation.” 9 He condemned Bryan for “appealing more and more openly to the base malignancy and hatreds of those demagogues who strive to lead laboring men to ruin, in order to wreak their vengeance on the thrifty and well-to-do. He advocates principles sufficiently silly and wicked to make them fit well in the mouth of the anarchist leader . . . Mr. Bryan would substitute a government of the mob.” 10 McKinley won the election with 7,102,246 votes or 51.0 percent of the total and 271 electors to Bryan’s 6,492,559 or 46.7 percent and 176 electors. In the Senate, the Republicans retained their majority although they lost a seat, bringing their total to 43. The Democrats emerged with 33 seats, having lost seven. The Silver Party won five seats. In the House, the Republicans lost 41 seats yet kept their edge with 203. The Democrats won 23 seats bringing them to 128. The Populist Party won 15 seats to emerge with 22, while the Silver Republican and Silver Party won three and one seats, respectively. 11 A stark political reality clouded Roosevelt’s jubilation at the sweeping Republican victory. New York political boss Thomas Platt was now a senator with the power to promote or block anyone from his state who sought a federal position. If Roosevelt wanted a political future at the national level he would have to somehow appease Platt without compromising his integrity. Shortly after the election, Platt granted his request for an interview.

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Roosevelt must have felt like he was entering a lion’s den. For years Republican conservatives had complained that his tough, unyielding policies had alienated voters among police, saloonkeepers, saloon habitués, and others who benefited from the corrupt system. Yet the meeting between Platt and Roosevelt was cordial. Platt would be happy to get him off New York City’s police board and into a prestigious but powerless post in McKinley’s administration. He promised Roosevelt that he would find him something. Fortunately, Roosevelt had a powerful backer in the Senate who was able to get him what he wanted. Henry Cabot Lodge eventually talked Platt, Hanna, McKinley, Navy Secretary John Long, and Senate conservatives into making Roosevelt the assistant naval secretary. Platt swiftly agreed, explaining: “I do not particularly like Theodore. He has been a disturbing element in every situation to which he has been a party. . . . But he is not essentially harmful and can probably do less harm to the organization as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy than in any other office that can be named.” 12 The biggest obstacle to the appointment was McKinley, who worried that Roosevelt’s zeal and Social Darwinian outlook might get America into an unnecessary war. Lodge exchanged McKinley’s concern and Roosevelt’s pledge to conform strictly to the administration’s policies. 13 Being the assistant naval secretary was an ideal post for Roosevelt. He had always wanted to serve in some sort of military capacity. Naval power had long fascinated him. His first book was on naval operations during the 1812 War. And although he would be playing second fiddle, he was determined to be a virtuoso. That would not be hard to do. Naval Secretary Long was ailing and frequently absent from his post, leaving Roosevelt in charge. 14 Roosevelt explained that Long “has wanted me to act entirely independently while he was away, and to decide all these things myself.” 15 And atop all this, he was happy to return to Washington. While looking for a house to rent for his family, he stayed with Lodge and his wife Nannie. Roosevelt no sooner became assistant naval secretary than he began mapping out and trying to fulfill a grand geopolitical strategy. 16 His central premise was that national power was grounded on mercantile power backed by naval power. He called for the United States to have a fleet strong enough to deter and ideally defeat other naval powers. In a global market, American warships and marines had to protect American commercial interests no matter where they were threatened. To do so, the United States needed a global network of naval bases to support naval operations in distant regions. A moral duty complicated this straightforward strategy. He believed that the greater a nation’s power, the greater its duty to uphold “civilization” and protect the weak from predators. He hated bullies whether they

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were males or countries. To deter international bullying, he proclaimed “no higher international duty than to safeguard the existence and independence of industrious, orderly states, with a high personal and national standard of conduct, but without the military force of the great powers.” 17 When nations collapsed into anarchy and predators there exploited them, “our duty . . . becomes absolutely inevitable, to police these countries in the interests of order and civilization.” 18 Roosevelt most comprehensively revealed his grand strategy to Captain Alfred Mahan, the navy’s leading historian, in a letter penned on May 3, 1897. Looking at the Pacific, he deemed one great power above all as threatening American interests: “I am fully alive to the danger of Japan.” Japan had recently defeated China and took as spoils a huge indemnity, Taiwan, and the Pescadore islands. Tokyo was rapidly building up its fleet to surpass the other great powers in the Pacific. Roosevelt saw a strategic asset that in American hands would stave off the Japanese threat. “As regards Hawaii,” he confided to Mahan, “I would annex those islands tomorrow. If that is not possible I would establish a protectorate over them. With Hawaii . . . in our hands most of the danger of friction would disappear.” In the Caribbean, three foreign powers competed with the United States for dominance. Although Spain was a second rate military and economic power, it clung to its colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Britain remained the master of Jamaica and several lesser islands. Germany was a newcomer in search of markets and potential colonies. Roosevelt would act decisively against Spain: “Until we definitely turn Spain out of those islands (and if I had my way that would be done tomorrow), we will always be menaced by trouble there.” He would force Spain to grant independence to Cuba and Puerto Rico, and do everything necessary to ensure that “no strong European, and especially Germany, should be allowed to gain a foothold by supplanting some weak European power.” The best way to ensure that was for the United States to establish protectorates over those countries. A strategic asset beckoned that would simultaneously bolster American power in the Pacific and Caribbean: “I believe we should build the Nicaragua canal at once.” The canal would at once bolster America’s economic and military power. 19 The navy was the key means for America to realize Roosevelt’s geopolitical vision: “Our ships should be the best of their kind. . . . But, in addition there should be plenty of them. We need a large navy . . . able to meet those of any other nation . . . it is not economy—it is niggardly and foolish short-sightedness—to cramp out our naval expenditures while squandering money left and right on everything else.” He called for a swift expansion of American naval power, with a dozen state of the art battleships the centerpiece. Related practical and psychological forces justified this buildup: “We ask for a great navy, partly because . . . the possession of such a navy is the surest guaranty of peace, and partly

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because . . . no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing, when the need shall arise, to take everything on . . . war.” 20 The navy could not adequately protect America’s expanding global interests unless it was modernized. Roosevelt chaired a committee devoted to devising a modernization blueprint for the navy. The checklist included installing the latest steam engines and electrical systems in vessels; ending the difference between command and engineering officers; basing promotions on merit rather than seniority; hiking pay for all personnel; and overhauling the curriculum at the Naval Academy and other training schools to reflect the latest advances in strategy, weapons, and technology. 21 Roosevelt would undoubtedly have pushed these proposals through the system had the war with Spain not intervened. He would take up naval reform again after he became president. Nonetheless, he got much done during his year at the Navy Department. He was the acting secretary from July to September as Long stayed away to nurse his fragile health. He made the most of his power. Biographer Edmund Morris lists Roosevelt’s astonishing whirlwind of acts during just his first twenty-two days on the job: “He managed to write a report of his tour of the naval militia; inspect a fleet of first- and second-class battleships off Sandy Hook; expedite a stalled order for diagonal armor supplies; devise a public relations plan for press coverage of the forthcoming North Atlantic Squadron exercises; set up a board to investigate ways of relieving the chronic dry-dock shortage; introduce a new post-tradership system; weigh and pronounce verdict upon the Brooklyn Navy Yard employment form in order to favor a protégée of Senator Cushman Davis; extend his anti-red-tape reforms to cover battleships and cruisers; eliminate the department’s backlog of unfilled appointments; draw up an elaborate cruising schedule for the new torpedo-boat flotilla; settle a row between the Bureaus of Ordnance and Construction; review the relative work programs in various navy yards; draft a naval personnel reform bill; and fire all Navy Department employees who rated a sub-70 mark in the semiannual fitness reports—all the while making regular reports to the vacationing Secretary, in tones calculated both to soothe and flatter.” 22 He topped all that off with researching, writing, and presenting to McKinley an anthology of statements by former presidents on naval strategy and American foreign policy. 23 Roosevelt was determined that “the best men were to occupy the fighting positions.” 24 After evaluating hundreds of candidates, he championed an appointment that would decisively shape the war with Spain. Commodore George Dewey was nearing retirement, having spent more than three decades on peacetime duties after valiantly serving as a lieutenant under Admiral David Farragut during the Civil War. 25 Roosevelt was determined to appoint Dewey to command the Pacific fleet after Admiral Frederick McNair retired. He faced an obstacle in Senator William Chandler who tried to pressure Long to put Commodore John

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Howell in that command. Roosevelt scorned Howell as “irresolute” and “extremely afraid of responsibility.” 26 He requested a meeting with Chandler before he decided on Howell. Chandler stood firm on his choice. Roosevelt then enlisted Senator Redfield Proctor to pressure McKinley to appoint Dewey. McKinley agreed and wrote Long recommending that he tap Dewey. Long complied. Roosevelt welcomed a chance to assert gunboat diplomacy. In late May 1897, word arrived that Tokyo had sent a cruiser, the Naniwa, to Hawaii as a show of strength. The assistant naval secretary briefed the president on the symbolic threat posed by the Naniwa’s presence and how to counter it. Anchored at Pearl Harbor was the Philadelphia, a cruiser with as much firepower as the Naniwa but lacking torpedoes and with a fouled bottom that reduced its speed; in a battle the Naniwa would enjoy critical advantages. The only other American warship in those waters was the obsolete Marion. The United States should bolster its naval presence in the Hawaiian Islands, ideally with the battleship Oregon but at the very least with the torpedo boat Bennington. 27 McKinley agreed and had Roosevelt order those deployments. As Roosevelt scanned the world for challenges to American interests, none appeared more dangerous than what was happening in Spain’s colony of Cuba just a hundred or so miles south of Florida. In 1868, a Cuban independence movement rebelled and fought desperately before the Spaniards finally crushed it in 1878. The Spaniards then failed to enact political and economic reforms that might have transformed Cuba from an exploited colony into a loyal province. This failure was hardly surprising. As a great power, Spain had declined steadily for centuries. 28 The biggest blow to the Spanish empire occurred in 1821, when most of its Latin American colonies asserted independence. By 1898, Spain ruled Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, the Philippine, Caroline, and Mariana islands in the western Pacific, and several small colonies along Africa’s fringe. A constitutional monarchy and parliament governed Spain. Queen Maria Christina was the current monarch, but her powers were largely symbolic. Two political parties seesawed in power, the Conservatives and Liberals, currently led respectively by Antonio Canovas and Praxedes Sagasta. Haggling rather than elections determined which party governed. The party leaders picked a prime minister and his cabinet behind closed doors then rigged elections to give the new government a majority of deputies. One party grudgingly yielded to the other when its policies failed disastrously. Nonetheless, genuine differences in outlook split the parties. Conservatives favored the monarchy, church, agrarian interests, and brutal suppression of any colonial revolts. Liberals favored free trade, urban interests, and reforms that alleviated the worst

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grievances that provoked colonial revolts. Yet, no matter which party was in power, corruption and incompetence prevailed. The Cubans rebelled again in February 1895. This time they fought a war without mercy by destroying sugarcane fields, warehouses, villages, railroads, and telegraph and telephone lines, and murdering prisoners, all in an attempt either to expel the Spaniards or provoke them into committing mass atrocities that alienated the population. Prime Minister Canovas ordered General Valeriano Weyler to wield any means to defeat the rebels, and swelled the army to 214,000 Spanish and 80,000 loyal Cuban troops. Weyler slaughtered rebels and their supporters wherever he cornered them, and herded the rural population into concentration camps where disease and starvation killed at least 100,000 of 1.6 million Cubans. 29 Spain’s increasingly brutal attempts to crush this second rebellion threatened American economic, humanitarian, and strategic interests. The war spread across Cuba, destroying plantations, warehouses, railroads, laborers, and customers from which American investors, merchants, and shippers reaped profits. Trade between the United States and Cuba plummeted from $100 million to $60 million from 1896 to 1897. American investors lost millions of dollars of the nearly $50 million they had invested in Cuba. As American businesses suffered worse losses, their demands grew for Washington to protect them. Humanitarian groups in the United States condemned the Spanish concentration camp strategy. Strategically, Cuba was the Caribbean’s largest and longest island, with three especially deep water ports, with Havana on the north side toward the west end and Santiago and Guantanamo on the south side toward the east end. It would be far better for American warships to anchor in those ports than those of Spain or some other power. A newspaper rivalry kept Cuba on the front pages in New York, and supplied vivid stories for other newspapers around the country. 30 In what became known as “Yellow Journalism,” named after the cheap paper used, William Randolph Heart’s Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s World competed to publish the most horrifying stories of Spanish atrocities against the Cubans, and called for American intervention. A possibly apocryphal story captured the sensationalism. Among the reporters in Cuba was the painter Frederic Remington, working for the Journal. After receiving Remington’s message that the scale of fighting and death did not justify American interference, Hearst replied, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” 31 A span of increasingly vocal and powerful groups represented these economic, humanitarian, strategic, and newspaper interests. 32 These interest groups, including exiled Cubans in New York and New Orleans, pressured McKinley’s administration and Congress to recognize and aid the rebels. Although both political parties condemned Spanish atrocities,

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more Republicans than Democrats favored intervention, and each party split over what to do. Roosevelt was a leading voice in the intervention choir. He justified a war against Spain to promote the array of interrelated interests: “first . . . on the grounds of both humanity and self-interest of interfering on behalf of the Cubans, and of taking one more step toward the complete freeing of America from European domination; second, the benefit done our people by giving them something to think of which isn’t material gain, and especially the benefit done our military forces by trying both the Navy and Army in actual practice.” 33 Roosevelt twice briefed McKinley in September 1897, on naval and foreign affairs, and outlined a plan of rapid naval movements and attacks in the Caribbean and Pacific should war erupt with Spain. He warned: “If we hesitate and let the Spaniards take the initiative, they could give us great temporary annoyance by sending a squadron off our coast, not to speak of the fact that if they were given time . . . there would be plenty of German and English, and possibly French, officers instructing them how to lay mines and use torpedoes for the defense of the Cuban ports. Besides, we would have the Japs on our backs.” 34 The bottom line was that: “When the war comes, it should come finally on our initiative, and after we have had time to prepare.” 35 War with Cuba was not inevitable. 36 As always, a dynamic mix of leaders and luck over time determined what eventually happened. An anarchist assassinated Canovas on August 8, 1897. Sagasta took power and shifted Spanish policy. He sacked Weyler and replaced him with General Roman Blanco with orders to shut the concentration camps and release the survivors to their homes. He promised the Cubans that from January 1, 1898, they could enjoy autonomy as a Spanish province, and he appointed a government of Cubans to take power on that date. Tragically, the conservative Spanish elite in Havana opposed these measures. Blanco disobeyed his order to liberate the concentration camp inmates. Army officers led riots on January 12 that threatened American lives and businesses in Havana. Upon hearing of this violence, McKinley convened his key advisors to decide what to do. A consensus emerged to send the battleship U.S.S. Maine, then at Key West, to Havana as a show of strength. The Maine anchored in Havana harbor on January 25, 1898. This decision could not have pleased Roosevelt more: “Between ourselves I have been hoping and working ardently to bring about our interference in Cuba.” 37 Hearst’s Journal got a sensational scoop when it published on February 9 the translation of a purloined letter from Ambassador Enrique Dupuy de Lome to Foreign Minister Jose Canelejas. Lome described McKinley as “weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a common politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.” As if this were not

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electrifying enough, Lome called for “a man of some prominence sent here in order that I may make use of him to carry on propaganda among the Senators and others.” 38 Although Lome swiftly resigned and departed, the devastating diplomatic damage could not be undone. Americans were outraged at the insults to the president and interference in American politics. McKinley himself was humiliated and determined to overcome his image as spineless. Then, on February 15, an explosion sank the Maine and killed 266 of the 354 men aboard. McKinley immediately ordered an investigation. 39 Roosevelt was among countless Americans who saw an obvious cause: “The Maine was sunk by an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards.” 40 Yet he soon tempered this view: “It may be impossible to ever settle definitely whether or not the Maine was destroyed through some treachery upon the part of the Spaniards. The coincidence of her destruction with her being anchored off Havana by an accident such as has never before happened, is unpleasant enough to seriously increase the many existing difficulties between ourselves and Spain.” 41 The tragedy provoked most newspapers and politicians into a frenzy of war drumming. Roosevelt embarked on a flurry of initiatives. On February 25, he cabled Admiral Dewey to assemble all his warships except the Monocacy at Hong Kong and ensure that all had full coal supplies. Should war erupt, Dewey should “see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands.” 42 He ordered all other squadron commanders to top off their vessels’ coal supplies and designated rendezvous sites for them should war break out. He had ammunition reserves brought to distribution ports. He asked Congress to lift the recruitment limits for sailors. Only one key war preparation was missing despite Roosevelt’s efforts to realize it. Should war come, coordinated strategy and operations between the navy and army was essential. When he asked for the War Department’s plans, he was stunned to learn that “no plans” existed. 43 He was proud of his crowded day as acting navy secretary. Running into his friend Colonel Leonard Wood, he grinned broadly and boasted: “Well, I have had my chance . . . and I have taken advantage of it. Yesterday afternoon the Secretary of the Navy left me as acting secretary . . . and I have done what I thought ought to be done . . . I have done everything I can to get the navy ready.” 44 Long had mixed feelings about his “assistant.” Roosevelt’s work ethic impressed him: “He was heart and soul in his work. His typewriters had no rest. He was especially stimulating to the younger officers who gathered around him and made his office as busy as a hive.” Yet Long was alarmed to discover that in his absence his assistant had gone too far: “I find that Roosevelt, in his precipitate way, has come very near causing more of an explosion than happened to the Maine. . . . It shows how the best fellow in the world—and with splendid capacities—is worse than no

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use if he lacks a cool head and careful discretion.” Astonishingly, he admitted that Roosevelt “bores me with plans of naval and military movement, and the necessity of having some scheme of attack arranged for instant in case of an emergency.” 45 Yet Long did not rescind the orders. The last thing McKinley wanted was a war: “I have been through one war. I have seen the dead piled up, and I do not want to see another.” 46 As the pressure for warring against Spain mounted, he desperately asked Joseph Cannon, who chaired the House Appropriations Committee, for $50 million, explaining: “I must have money to get ready for war. I am doing everything possible to prevent war, but if it must come, and we are not prepared for war. Who knows where this war may lead us.” 47 He floated two suggestions to Congress that he reasoned would avoid war. The United States could buy Cuba for $300 million or accept a reparation payment from Spain if an investigation revealed that Madrid was behind the Maine’s destruction. This provoked a congressional debate in which most speakers denounced McKinley’s notions as weak-willed. Nonetheless, on March 9, Congress did give McKinley his $50 million, with the House voting 311 to 0 and the Senate 76 to 0. With $30 million, the Navy got the lion’s share although most was earmarked for constructing three battleships, sixteen destroyers, fourteen torpedo boats, and several smaller vessels. This buildup would take years to complete, long after any war with Spain had ended. A portion of the navy budget did buy ships for transports. At least the navy budget was farsighted. Of the $20 million army allotment, $16 million addressed the nation’s fears rather than its needs by renovating or building seacoast fortresses against attacks that Spain was incapable of making. The soldiers at the front would curse this priority as they suffered shortages of food, shelter, transport, medicine, tropical uniforms, and ammunition. 48 After a six week investigation, the Maine Court of Inquiry issued its report on March 28. An external explosion detonated the forward magazine that sank the battleship. The investigators could not determine the external explosion’s origin. The American navy was not in any way responsible for the disaster. 49 McKinley demanded that Madrid agree by April 1 to accept an armistice, open negotiations with the rebels, close the remaining concentration camps, and let the United States distribute food aid in Cuba. If the Spaniards and Cubans failed to strike a deal by October 1, he would arbitrate peace between them. Sagasta accepted all these conditions except the armistice. Pride insisted that Madrid not unilaterally declare an armistice, but that the rebels first request one. This would have been good enough for McKinley had he not faced ever louder calls for war among most advisors, politicians, and newspapers. During April’s first week, he twice postponed appealing to Congress when diplomatic signals indicated that Madrid might fully comply

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with his ultimatum. When these proved to be false, he sent his message on April 11. He asked, however, not for the power to wage war but for the power to wage peace: “I ask Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government . . . and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes.” He did not call for Cuban independence or recognizing the rebels. 50 For the next eight days, the House and Senate heatedly debated the resolution. Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont changed the thinking of many opponents with a speech that reported the appalling conditions he had witnessed during his recent fact-finding visit to Cuba; he now favored a war that he had previously opposed. Senator Henry Teller of Colorado tipped the balance when he proposed amending the resolution with a promise that the United States would not permanently take-over Cuba after the fighting ended. With the Teller Amendment, the joint resolution passed by 42 to 35 in the Senate, and 310 to 6 in the House of Representatives on April 19. McKinley signed the resolution into law on April 20. That resolution would automatically become a war declaration unless Spain complied with its demands. The two countries then rushed to war with each other. Rather than compromise, Madrid severed diplomatic relations with Washington on April 21. The next day, McKinley ordered the naval squadron at Key West to blockade Cuba. Spain declared war against the United States and on April 23; this same day, McKinley called for 125,000 army volunteers. McKinley received Spain’s war declaration on April 24; this same day, Long ordered Dewey to implement the plan that Roosevelt had previously issued him. McKinley sent Spain a war declaration on April 25, but backdated it to April 23 to match Spain’s declaration. Roosevelt had finally gotten the war he had long wanted. The question now was where he could do the most good and win the most glory. He recognized the paradox that “my usefulness will largely disappear in time of war” as “the military advisors come to the front” and in doing so shove him aside. Regardless, he was honor-bound to fight because “for the last year I have preached war with Spain” and “should feel distinctly ashamed . . . if I now failed to practice what I preached.” 51 Actually he had nurtured dreams of leading a regiment to liberate Cuba ever since a revolt against Spanish rule erupted there in 1895. He shot off a letter to New York Governor Levi Morton, imploring him, “in the very improbable even of a war with Spain” to issue him “a commission in the force that goes to Cuba!” 52 Now was the opportunity that he had long awaited and he was dead set to seize it: “It was my one chance to do something for my country and for my family and my one chance to cut my little

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notch on the stick that stands as a measuring rod in every family. I know that I would have turned from my wife’s deathbed to answer that call.” 53 Edith knew how important this commission was to her husband, but in going off to war he was literally and figuratively turning his back on her and his six children. If battle or disease killed him she and her children would have a modest and diminishing fortune to sustain them. McKinley and Long tried to convince him to remain at his post, but Roosevelt resigned on May 15, having secured a promise to help lead a volunteer regiment to war against Spain. NOTES 1. Roosevelt to Alfred Thayer Mahan, May 3, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:607–8. 2. Roosevelt to Alfred Thayer Mahan, May 3, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:607–8. 3. Roosevelt to John Long, January 14, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 1:759. 4. For good books on McKinley’s presidency, see: Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1980); H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003). 5. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, June 20, 1896, Roosevelt Letters, 1:543. 6. For good books on Hanna, see: Herbert Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Works (New York: Macmillan, 1912); William T. Horner, Ohio’s Kingmaker: Mark Hanna, Man and Myth (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010). 7. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 30, 1896, Roosevelt Letters, 1:552. 8. For good books on Bryan, see: Robert W. Cherny, A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994); Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). 9. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, August 5, 1896, Roosevelt Letters, 1:554. 10. Roosevelt speech, September 29, 1896, Roosevelt Works, 16:392–93. 11. For good books on the 1896 election, see: William D. Harpine, From the Front Porch to the Front Page: McKinley and Bryan in the 1896 Presidential Campaign (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2005); William R. Hal, Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010). 12. Thomas Collier Platt, The Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt (New York: B.W. Dodge and Company, 1910), 541. 13. Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt, December 2, 7, 1896, March 8, 1897, Lodge Letters, 1:240–42, 244–46, 252–54. For a good article on relations between President McKinley and Assistant Navy Secretary Roosevelt, see: Richard F. Hamilton, “McKinley’s Backbone,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3 (September 2006), 482–92. 14. Wendell Garrett, “John Davis Long: Secretary of the Navy, 1897–1902: A Study in Changing Political Alignments,” New England Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3 (1958), 291–311. 15. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 24, 1897, Lodge Letters, 1:280. 16. For good books on the navy and Roosevelt’s influence during this era, see: William R. Braidsted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897–1909 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958); Gordon C. O’Gara, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of the Modern Navy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969); Henry J. Hendrix, The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009); Henry J. Hendrix, Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009). For good articles, see: Seward Livermore, “The American Navy as a Factor in World Politics, 1903–1913,” American Historical Review, vol. 63, no. 4 (1958), 863–79;

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Albert C. Stillson, “Military Policy without Guidance: Theodore Roosevelt’s Navy,” Military Affairs, vol. 25, no. 1 (1961), 18–31; John Grenville, “American Naval Preparations for War with Spain, 1896–1898,” Journal of American Studies, vol. 2, no. 1 (1968), 33–47; Peter Karsten, “The Nature of ‘Influence’: Roosevelt, Mahan, and the Concept of Sea Power,” American Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4 (1971), 585–600; Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs, vol. 48, no. 4 (1984), 174–79; Peri Arnold, “Policy Leadership in the Progressive Presidency: The Case of Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Policy and His Search for Strategic Resources,” American Political Development, vol. 10, no. 2 (1996), 333–59; Matthew Oyos, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Implements of War,” Journal of Military History, vol. 60, no. 4 (1996), 631–55; Simon J. Rofe, “Under the Influence of Mahan: Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and their Understanding of American National Interest,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 732–45; Carl Hodge, “A Whiff of Cordite: Theodore Roosevelt and the Transoceanic Naval Arms Race, 1897–1909,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 712–31. 17. Theodore Roosevelt, “The World War: Its Tragedies and Its Lessons,” The Outlook, September 23, 1914. 18. Roosevelt to William Hale, February 26, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:740. 19. Roosevelt to Alfred Thayer Mahan, May 3, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:607–8. 20. Roosevelt speech to the Naval War College, June 2, 1897, Roosevelt Works, 15:240–59. 21. Roosevelt to John Davis Long, December 9, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:726–40. 22. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 606–7. 23. Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval Policy of America as Outlined in Messages of the Presidents of the United States from the Beginning to the Present Day (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1897). 24. Roosevelt, “The War of America the Unready,” Roosevelt Works, 22:252. 25. Ronald Spector, Admiral of the New Empire: The Life and Career of George Dewey (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988). 26. Roosevelt to William Chandler, September 27, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:691. 27. Roosevelt to William McKinley, April 22, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:601. 28. Raymond Carr, Modern Spain, 1875–1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); William Mattly, The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 29. David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 7, 9. 30. Joseph Wisan, The Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1895–1898 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934). 31. W. Joseph Campbell, “Not Likely Sent: The Remington-Hearst ‘Telegrams,’” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 2 (Summer 2000), 405–22. See also: W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company, 2001). 32. For good studies on American imperialism and imperialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see: Ernest May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961); Walter Lafeber, The New Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963); H. Wayne Morgan, America’s Road to Empire (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965); Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire (New York: Little, Brown, 2010). 33. Roosevelt to William Kimball, November 19, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:717. 34. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 15, 18978, Lodge Letters, 1:278. 35. Roosevelt to John Long, January 14, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 1:759–63. 36. For good books on the Spanish-American War’s origins, see: Walter Mills, The Martial Spirit (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1931, 1989); Philip Foner, The SpanishCuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895–1902 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Lewis L. Gould, The Spanish-American War and President

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McKinley (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1982); John M. Dobson, Reticent Expansionism: The Foreign Policy of William McKinley (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1988); John L. Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain over Cuba, 1895–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippines Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Richard Hamilton, President McKinley, War, and Empire (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006). For good articles, see: Walter LaFeber, “That ‘Splendid Little War’ in Historical Perspective,” Texas Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 4 (Winter 1968), 89–98; Joseph A. Fry, “William McKinley and the Coming of the Spanish-American War: A Study of Besmirching and Redemption of an Historical Image,” Diplomatic History, vol. 3 (1979), 77–79; Thomas G. Paterson, “United States Intervention in Cuba, 1898: Interpretations of the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War,” The History Teacher, vol. 39, no. 3 (May 1996), 341–61; Mark Penceny, “A Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Peace: The Ambiguous Case of the Spanish-American War,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 34, no. 4 (November 1997), 415–30; John L. Offner, “McKinley and the Spanish-American War,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1 (March 2004), 50–61. 37. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, January 17, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 1:763–64. 38. Trask, War with Spain, 26–29. 39. For good studies on the USS Maine, see: Michael Bernoncini, “The Sinking of the Maine: What Teddy Knew and Why He Didn’t Tell,” New England Journal of History, vol. 49, no. 1 (1982), 52–56; Louis A. Perez, “The Meaning of the Maine: Causation and the Historiography of the Spanish-American War,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 58, no. 3 (August 1989), 293–322. 40. Roosevelt to Benjamin Diblee, February 16, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 1:775. 41. Roosevelt to John Long, February 16, 1898, Theodore Roosevelt, 1:773–74. 42. Roosevelt to George Dewey, February 25, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 1:784–85. 43. Roosevelt Autobiography, 122. 44. Leonard Wood, “Roosevelt: Soldier, Statesman, and Friend,” Introduction, Roosevelt, The Rough Riders and Men of Action (1926), xvii–xviii. 45. John Davis Long, The New American Navy, 2 vols. (New York: Overlook Company, 1903), 2:173–74. 46. Herman Hagedorn, Leonard Wood: A Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Harpers, 1931), 1:141. 47. Trask, War with Spain, 33–34. 48. Millis, Martial Spirit, 117–19. 49. This mystery will probably never be solved. For an investigation that concluded that the explosion was internal from an accident in the munition room, see: Hyman G. Rickover, How the Battleship Maine was Destroyed (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976). 50. Trask, War with Spain, 52–55. 51. Roosevelt to Albert Lambert, April 1, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:808. 52. Roosevelt to Levi Morton, March 19, 1895, Roosevelt Letters, 1:436. 53. Butt Letters, 146.

SEVEN The Rough Rider

The instant I received the order I sprang on my horse and then my “crowded hour” began. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 San Juan was the great day of my life. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 It wasn’t much of a war, but it was the best war we had. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

The victor in a war between the United States and Spain seemed obvious. 4 America’s 74 million people were nearly four times larger than Spain’s 17 million people. America was a manufacturing, financial, and commercial giant; Spain’s economy was largely agrarian with small-scale factories in some cities. Although corruption and plutocracy plagued politics in both countries, Madrid suffered far more than Washington in making and implementing critical national decisions. Nonetheless, Spain appeared to enjoy a military edge with its veteran army defending home turf in Cuba. America’s military was unprepared for war. 5 Although by the Civil War’s end, the American army was the world’s best fighting force, its skills, cohesion, and numbers declined precipitously over the next three decades. By 1898, the army numbered only 28,183 poorly trained and motivated troops in 25 infantry, 10 cavalry, and 5 artillery regiments, the highest organization, scattered at bases across the country. A regiment rarely had all its companies together for joint training and almost never trained with other regiments. Somehow the War Department had to transform these frontier regiments along with state volunteer regiments into a national army to fight a war-hardened enemy army overseas. War Secretary Russell Alger was utterly inept in this duty. Nelson Miles, the army’s commanding general, was a veteran of the Civil War and Indian wars, but his heart was not in fighting Spain. 6 Alger and Miles despised 99

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and refused to cooperate with each other. Roosevelt loathed both men: “Alger has no force . . . Miles is a brave peacock . . . They both told me they could put 100,000 men in Tampa in 24 hours! The folly, the lack of preparations, are almost inconceivable.” 7 He had a sharp point. Neither Alger nor Miles had readied the army for war remotely comparable to what Roosevelt had done for the navy. To defend Cuba, around 70,000 Spanish troops remained, roughly one-third the peak of 214,000 in 1896; combat, disease, and desertion explains this severe attrition. Nonetheless, the Spaniards outgunned America’s regular army. Although volunteer regiments soon swelled America’s army, a lack of transports and supplies would limit the invasion force to 17,000 troops. Yet Spain suffered two disadvantages that undercut its manpower advantage. The Spanish troops were scattered over a huge island both to battle the 20,000 or so rebels and defend key ports against foreign invaders. The Americans could feint at different points then land at one key point. Only then could the Spanish converge most of their forces against the enemy. The Spanish troops enjoyed some critical tactical edges over the Americans. They were skilled veterans who had been fighting guerrillas for three years, and were armed with German Mauser rifles, superior in accuracy and rate of fire to the American Krag-Jorgensens for regular troops and single-shot, Civil War era Springfields for volunteers. Another advantage was that the veteran Spanish troops were acclimated to Cuba’s tropical diseases and brutal heat and humidity. Although the two countries listed similar numbers of warships, America’s total outweighed Spain’s by 116,455 to 56,644 tons. America’s navy deployed four first-class battleships, one second-class battleship, and eight armored cruisers to Spain’s one battleship and four armored cruisers. Each had a fleet in the Atlantic and Pacific. When the war erupted, Madrid’s Pacific fleet was concentrated at Manila while its Atlantic fleet was anchored at Cadiz, Spain. Both navies had trouble manning their vessels. 8 America’s war against Spain first opened in the Pacific. Following Roosevelt’s plan, Dewey promptly steamed with his four armored cruisers and two gunboats from Hong Kong on April 27 toward Manila. Awaiting the Americans was Admiral Patricio Montojo’s fleet of two armored cruisers, five unarmored cruisers, and several gunboats. On the morning of May 1, Dewey halted briefly at Manila Bay’s entrance. Through binoculars he could see Montojo’s fleet anchored at Cavite near the bay’s entrance. What he could not see was whether the Spaniards had distributed any mines in his way. He gambled and steamed his fleet directly toward the enemy. The gamble paid him victory. No mines detonated. During the subsequent two hour battle the American warships sank or disabled every Spanish warship while suffering only a few hits and two men

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wounded. Dewey’s next step was to blockade Manila but without troops could do nothing more. Upon hearing of Dewey’s victory, McKinley sent him congratulations, promotion to rear admiral, and a promise that enough troops would eventually arrive to take Manila and the rest of the Philippines. Emboldened by the easy victory, McKinley hoped to score another in Cuba. After conferring with Alger and Long, he ordered the army at Tampa expanded from 10,000 to 70,000 troops and an invasion of Cuba at the earliest opportunity. He soon had to back-pedal from that ambitious buildup. There was only enough ammunition available for 25,000 troops. Dewey, meanwhile, received a potential ally. Emilio Aguinaldo was a Filipino revolutionary leader who had gone into exile at Hong Kong in 1897, after a failed revolt against Spanish rule. The Spanish essentially bought peace by signing the Treaty of Biac-na-Bato with Aguinaldo on December 14, 1897. In return for pocketing 600,000 Mexican silver pesos, Aguinaldo and his inner circle agreed to go into exile. Aguinaldo was in Singapore when the war erupted. American Consul Spencer Pratt recognized that Aguinaldo could be a vital ally in defeating Spain in the Philippines and talked him into joining Dewey’s expedition. Aguinaldo reached Hong Kong too late but caught up to Dewey at Manila on May 19. Aguinaldo later claimed that Dewey, like Pratt, had promised Philippine independence if he rallied an army to defeat the Spanish; the admiral and consul later denied his claim. What Dewey did do was supply Aguinaldo’s rebels with arms, ammunition, and advisors. But this was just a stopgap measure until an American army appeared in Manila Bay. Aguinaldo, meanwhile, announced on May 24, that he was the commander for all Filipino troops and the dictator for the Filipino people. He declared Philippine independence on June 12. Rather than recognize these steps and try to negotiate an American protectorate over the Philippines, the White House ignored them. McKinley was resisting growing pressure to colonize the Philippines; if he succumbed, the longer he took to do so, the worse the conquest would cost in lives and treasure. War Secretary Alger finally succumbed to Roosevelt’s pleas to let him raise and lead the First Volunteer Cavalry regiment. 9 Roosevelt recognized that he was a novice and needed someone experienced to actually command the regiment. He got Alger to appoint Leonard Wood colonel while he served as lieutenant colonel. Wood was a doctor by training and a warrior by nature. 10 He had fought against the Apaches and captured Geronimo. His marriage to General Miles’s niece gave him a political advantage. Wood and Roosevelt chose San Antonio, Texas, as their headquarters to recruit, organize, equip, and train their regiment. On May 15, Roosevelt ensconced himself in the Menger Hotel, appropriately located just

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across from the Alamo. Eventually 23,000 men applied to fill one of the 1,000 ranks. Roosevelt boasted that the Rough Riders were “as typical an American regiment as ever marched or fought. I suppose about 95 percent of the men are of native birth, but we have a few from everywhere, including a score of Indians and about as many men of Mexican origin from New Mexico; then there are some fifty easterners—almost all graduates of Harvard, Yale, Princeton . . . and as many Southerners; the rest are men of the plains and the Rocky Mountains. Three fourths of our men have at one time or another been cowboys or else are small stockmen.” Roosevelt’s official and unofficial Washington connections let him swiftly collect all the needed horses, equipment, uniforms, tents, and weapons. They wielded revolvers and Krag-Jorgensen carbines, standard issue for the regular cavalry, but no sabers. They wore blue flannel shirts, brown woolen pants, brown leggings, black boots, blue polka-dot kerchiefs, and dark gray slouch hats. There were 1,000 horses or one for each man, and 250 mules to carry supplies. Roosevelt and Wood each had two horses. Roosevelt took pride in his own swift mastery of military arts: “I have been both astonished and pleased at my own ability in the line of tactics. I thoroughly enjoy handling these men, and I get them on the jump so that they execute their movements at a gallop.” 11 He did ruffle Wood’s sense of military propriety after issuing this command to reward his men for a successful drill: “The men can go in and drink all the beer they want, which I will pay for.” 12 Roosevelt was contrite after Wood explained that officers must keep strictly aloof from their men and not indulge them. At the end of each long day, Wood, Roosevelt, and their officers raised a glass of whiskey to toast themselves, “The officers: may the war last until each is killed, wounded, or promoted.” 13 Meanwhile, the president and his advisors debated just how to fight the war. General Miles strongly advised postponing any invasion until autumn after Cuba’s pestilential rainy season was over and America’s army and navy was actually ready for war: “It is extremely hazardous . . . to put an army on that island at this season of the year, as it would be undoubtedly decimated by the deadly disease, to say nothing of having to cope with 80,000 troops . . . that have become acclimated.” 14 McKinley, Alger, and Long recognized that political pressures demanded an American invasion of Cuba as soon as possible. The question was where? At first, they talked about Miles leading an army ashore near Havana. They scrapped that idea when they learned that Admiral Pascual Cervera had steamed his fleet from Cadiz to an unknown destination. Was he heading toward Havana to attack the invaders? Or would his fleet appear off New York or even Washington? It was only after word arrived on May 29 that Cervera had anchored in Santiago that the president and his advisors agreed to blockade him there then land an army that captured that strategic port on Cuba’s southeastern coast. General William Shafter

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would command the expedition while Miles prepared a second expedition either for Havana or Puerto Rico; Shafter’s Fifth Corps would mass at Tampa, Florida, Miles’s Eighth Corps at Chickamauga, Tennessee. Wood and Roosevelt rushed through preparations for their regiment. On May 29, they packed 1,000 men and 1,250 horses and mules on seven trains bound for Tampa. The trains stopped nine miles short on June 2, as congestion prevented them from rolling into the station. Roosevelt disembarked his men and horses to camp while he and Wood went to Tampa to receive instructions from Shafter. Shafter was not an inspiring sight as he was then a very obese sixty-three-year-old man. Yet he had fought valiantly for America during the Civil War, and won a medal of honor at the battle of Fair Oaks, where he was wounded. After the war he stayed with the army and fought Indians out west. Despite his résumé, he proved to be an utterly inept commander. The Fifth Corps numbered 16,887 men split among the first and second infantry divisions and a cavalry division, commanded respectively by Generals Henry Lawton, Jacob Kent, and Joseph Wheeler. Shafter infuriated all the cavalrymen when he decided to leave all the horses in Tampa except 959 horses for officers and 1,336 pack and draft mules, and infuriated Roosevelt and Wood when he ordered them to take only eight of their twelve companies or 560 men to Cuba. 15 On the morning of June 8, Wood and Roosevelt were to pack eight companies onto a train for Tampa Bay, then board a transport ship. The first train promised did not arrive nor did a second. Roosevelt finally commandeered a train with empty coal cars passing through from Tampa, loaded his men aboard, and had the engineer drive backward to the port. This did not end the confusion. Shafter had not assigned regiments to specific vessels, but simply told the colonels to load their men on any of the 38 transport ships with room. Roosevelt quick-marched his troops to the quay and aboard a vessel that officers from two other regiments had already tried to claim. The Rough Riders occupied the best berths by the time the other regiments squeezed aboard. Then came a report that three unidentified ships were lying in wait on the course the flotilla would take toward Cuba. Shafter postponed the voyage until a reconnaissance clarified any potential threat. For six days the flotilla lay anchored in Tampa Bay as the men sweated and cursed in the scalding heat. On June 14, after receiving word from scouting vessels that no enemy warships lurked on the route, Shafter finally ordered the flotilla forward. Although the expedition’s objective was Santiago, a direct landing under the guns of the fortress and entrenchments guarding the harbor would be suicidal. The plan was to disembark at Daiquiri eighteen miles east of Santiago, then march two miles west to Siboney, where a road arched into the interior to Santiago. The flotilla anchored off Daiquiri early on the morning of June 22. Shafter ordered the warships to bom-

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bard the landing site although the 300 Spanish troops there had already retreated after spotting the armada. Lawton’s division landed first followed by Wheeler’s division; Kent’s division came ashore the next day. To land the horses and mules, Shafter simply ordered them prodded off the decks high above the surging sea. The frantic animals milled frantically in the water until a bugler ashore blew the cavalry charge. At that most horses and mules swam for the beach where they were collected. It took three days for all the troops, supplies, artillery, horses, mules, and wagons to be landed. Within days of coming ashore men began to sicken and die from malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and toxic canned food. Around 2,000 Spanish troops were entrenched along a three hundred foot ridge at Las Guasimas three miles north of Siboney. On June 24, Shafter and his generals conceived a plan for a two-pronged assault by the 2nd cavalry brigade on the Spanish position. General Samuel Young would lead the 1st and 10th regiments directly up the road while Wood and Roosevelt led their Rough Riders on a trail westward to outflank the Spanish position. Ideally, General Calixto Garcia’s 5,000 or so rebel troops in the area would cut off the Spanish retreat. Roosevelt admitted that leading his regiment in an alien land to fight an alien people bewildered him: “It was a mountainous country covered with thick jungle, a most confusing country, and I had an awful time trying to get into the fight and trying to do what was right . . . and all the while I was thinking that I was the only man who did not know what I was about, and that the others did—whereas I found out later, pretty much everybody else was as much in the dark as I was.” 16 Yet he calmed as they marched through the jungle: “It was very beautiful and very peaceful and it seemed more as if we were off on some hunting excursion than if we were about to get into a sharp and bloody little fight.” 17 His revelry dissolved as gunfire cracked in the forest ahead. The fog of war engulfed him: “What to do then I had not an idea. The country in front fell away into a very difficult jungle-filled valley . . . and if I advanced I was afraid I might get out of touch with everybody and not be going in the right direction. Moreover, as far as I could see, there was nobody in front who was shooting at us, although some of the men on my left insisted that our own men had fired into us . . . At his moment some of the regulars appeared across the ravine on our right. The first thing they did was to fire a volley at us, but one of our first sergeants went up a tree and waved a guidon at them and they stopped. Firing was still going on to our left . . . and I was never more puzzled to know what to do. I did not wish to take my men out of position without orders, for fear that I might . . . be leaving a gap if there was a Spanish force which meditated an offensive. On the other hand it did not seem . . . that I was doing enough fighting to justify my existence. . . . So I finally left my men where they were and started off at a trot toward where the firing was with a couple of orderlies.” 18

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Spanish snipers picked off one Rough Rider after another, eventually killing seven and wounding thirty-four. Wood ordered Roosevelt to lead three companies to the right while the other three companies circled to the left. The Rough Riders outflanked and scattered the Spaniards. Roosevelt was in the thick of the fighting: “One man was killed as he stood beside a tree with me. Another bullet went through a tree behind which I stood and filled my eyes with bark. The last charge I led on the left with a rifle I took from a wounded man.” 19 Horrific images burned into his mind. He later sickened at the sight of hundreds of vultures that “plucked out the eyes and tore the faces and the wounds of the dead Spaniards.” 20 In all the Americans suffered 16 dead and 52 wounded and the Spanish 10 dead and 8 wounded. The advance stalled there for lack of provisions. Shafter was so inept that he could not even organize the steady landing of supplies and then convey them to the troops at the front. Fever struck down Wheeler and Young, opening the way for a chain reaction of promotions. General Samuel Sumner took Wheeler’s place commanding the cavalry division. Wood then took charge of the 2nd cavalry brigade. That left Roosevelt to command the Rough Riders and enjoy promotion to colonel. General Arsenio Linares, the Spanish commander, could not have defended Santiago more ineptly. One road ran east from Santiago around San Juan Heights three miles away. Another road ran northeast to El Caney hill eight miles away. Linares kept nearly all of his 10,429 troops in the city, and deployed only about 750 on San Juan Heights, the key position guarding the city’s eastern approach, 100 on Kettle Hill two hundred yards farther east, and 521 on El Caney. Blockhouses, trenches, and barbed wire protected the troops on each position. Shafter’s original battle plan on July 1, was for Sumner’s and Kent’s division to hold the line facing the San Juan Heights while Lawton’s division took El Caney. Lawton’s division would then march southwest toward Santiago and outflank San Juan Heights as Summer’s and Kent’s divisions attacked it. Sumner’s division would first take Kettle Hill then together with Lawton’s division assault San Juan Heights. Lawton’s division attacked El Caney in the morning but the Spaniards valiantly held the position despite being outnumbered ten to one. The Americans finally captured El Caney around noon. A command snafu delayed Sumner’s advance. Shafter assumed that Sumner would attack when he was ready. Sumner waited for a specific order to attack. Finally, the word arrived. Roosevelt recalled: “The instant I received the order I sprang on my horse and then my ‘crowded hour’ began.” 21 He and his men swarmed up Kettle Hill as the Spaniards fired then fled. Two hundred yards away lay San Juan Ridge atop which the Spaniards fired at them from entrenchments. Roosevelt ordered his men to return the fire then led them down into the valley. A barbed wire fence forced him to dismount and turn his horse loose. Then he and his men

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climbed over the fence and fired at the Spaniards atop the ridge. He brought his troops in line with another regiment and asked them “why they did not charge, and being answered that they had no orders, I said I would give the order.” When the commanding officer refused to acknowledge Roosevelt’s authority, he demanded, “Then let my men through, Sir,” and “I marched through, followed by my grinning men. The younger officers and the enlisted men of the regulars jumped up and joined us. I waved my hat, and we went up the hill with a rush.” 22 The trouble was that initially only a half-dozen troops followed him. The rest were milling about in the valley or assisting wounded men to the rear. He headed back to rally the troops, at one point drawing his revolver to halt some fleeing men. As they charged up the ridge the Spaniards loosened several volleys then fled. As Roosevelt reached the top “two Spaniards leaped from the trenches and fired at us, not ten yards away. As they turned to run I closed in and fired twice, missing the first and killing the second” with a revolver recovered “from the sunken battleship, Maine.” 23 The Spanish troops fought valiantly, yielded ground grudgingly, and inflicted twice as many casualties as they endured; the Americans suffered 1,385 casualties, including 205 killed and 1,180 wounded, and the Spanish 593, including 215 killed, 370 wounded, and only two captured. 24 The American victory was tactical rather than strategic. Clearing the heights was just the first decisive step. The commanders failed to follow up this advantage with a rapid advance into the city. Roosevelt complained that had there been “anyone in high command to supervise and press the attack that afternoon, we would have gone right into Santiago. In my part of the line the advance was halted only because we received orders not to move forward, but to stay on the crest of the captured hill and hold it.” 25 Nonetheless, with the capture of San Juan Heights, Santiago’s fall was merely a matter of time. Over the next couple of weeks, Shafter extended the American lines around Santiago until he enclosed the city and severed its water supply. Although 3,000 Spanish reinforcements got into Santiago, they actually made the surrender happen sooner rather than later as food diminished more rapidly. On July 3, Admiral Cervera’s fleet steamed out against the blockading American fleet. The American warships sank nearly every Spanish warship while suffering only a few hits and one man killed. In a series of polite letters, Shafter tried to convince General Jose Toral, who took command after Linares was wounded, that he would have to bombard the city unless the Spaniards surrendered. Toral arranged a face-saving way to give up. He asked Shafter to bombard an uninhabited and undefended part of the city on July 10. They then began negotiating terms on July 11, reached agreement on July 14, and formally signed the capitulation on the morning of July 18.

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Roosevelt proudly led his Rough Riders into Santiago on July 18, and two days later received command of the 2nd cavalry brigade. With the fighting done, the soldiers had plenty of downtime on their hands. Roosevelt tried to break the monotony with two political campaigns of which he lost both. One was to receive a Medal of Honor that General Wheeler had promised him for his valiant actions at Kettle Hill and San Juan Heights. He firmly believed that he deserved the nation’s highest award, boasting that “I do not think that anyone else could have handled this regiment quite as I have handled it during the last three weeks . . . it has done as well as any of the regular regiments, and indeed, frankly, I think it has done better than any of the volunteer regiments.” 26 He launched a campaign through both political and military channels but generated more resentment than sympathy and got nowhere during his lifetime. His other effort was to get his Rough Riders into the invasion of Puerto Rico. American operations to take Puerto Rico began with an attack by a naval squadron then a blockade of San Juan on May 12. It was another two and a half months before General Nelson Miles led 1,300 ashore on July 25. Roosevelt, however, severely miscalculated when, in a letter making his request to War Secretary Alger, he boasted that his Rough Riders were “as good as any regulars, and three times as good as any state troops.” 27 Alger replied sternly: “The regular army, the volunteer army, and the Rough Riders have done well, but I suggest that, unless you want to spoil the effects and glory of your victory, you make no invidious comparisons. The Rough Riders are no better than other volunteers. They had an advantage in their arms, for which they ought to be very grateful.” 28 Roosevelt’s disparaging remarks about the volunteers would haunt his next political campaign. Roosevelt’s efforts to get a Medal of Honor and get to Puerto Rico failed miserably. His next campaign, however, succeeded decisively and saved countless lives. The fighting had lulled but not the dying. Mosquitoes bearing malaria and yellow fever joined bacterial forces with dysentery to sicken thousands and kill hundreds of American troops. Roosevelt reported that “out of my 400 odd men in camp, 123 are under the doctor’s care; the rest of the 600 with whom I landed are dead or in the rear hospitals.” 29 If Roosevelt could not lead his Rough Riders to Puerto Rico, he was determined to lead them home as quickly as possible while he still had some left. He led a charge of his fellow officers to pressure the McKinley administration to promptly withdraw the expedition. General Shafter was the channel for his campaign. He fired off his own letter to Shafter that read: “To keep us here, in the opinion of every officer commanding a division or a brigade, will simply involve the destruction of thousands. There is no possible reason for not shipping practically the entire command North at once.” 30 He then drafted a version that he and his col-

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leagues signed and released to the Associated Press on August 4. Millions of Americans read these alarming words: “We the undersigned officers . . . are of the unanimous opinion that his army should be at once taken out of the island of Cuba and sent to some point on the Northern seacoast of the United States . . . that the army is disabled by malarial fever. . . . This army must be moved at once or perish.” 31 This did the political trick. After conferring with Alger and Long, McKinley ordered most of the army home. The troops returned not as conquering heroes to ticker tape parades but as convalescents to be quarantined from the population for a month. Roosevelt and his Rough Riders sailed from Santiago on August 8 and disembarked at Montauk, on Long Island’s southeastern tip, on August 15. Eventually 20,000 troops packed into the long rows of white wedge tents at Camp Wikoff. The hope was that the isolated windblown point would purge lingering fevers from the troops during their sojourn. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, 10,844 American troops and 13,000 Filipino troops besieged Manila by early August. The Spanish commander, General Firmin Jaudenes was desperately looking for a face-saving way to surrender. He cut a deal with Dewey to launch on August 12 a bombardment whose shells fell into the sea short of the city followed by a surrender on August 13. The following day, General Wesley Merritt led American troops into Manila to raise the American flag; Merritt was now America’s first governor general of the Philippines. Aguinaldo and his men bitterly resented being excluded from the surrender and occupation. In all, the Philippines campaign cost the Americans merely 18 killed and 109 wounded. 32 Tragically, this was merely the prelude rather than conclusion to war in the Philippines. For once all the War Hawk promises of a short decisive war came true. When Madrid accepted a cease-fire on August 12, the war between the United States and Spain had essentially ended. All that remained was for the diplomats to haggle over peace terms. John Hay famously called America’s fight with Spain “a splendid little war.” 33 Roosevelt saw it slightly differently: “It wasn’t much of a war, but it was the best war we had.” 34 These remarks are true if callous. During the Spanish-American War, 5,462 Americans perished, of which only 379 died in combat, and 1,604 were wounded, compared to 750,000 Americans who died during the Civil War. 35 So what would America win from the war? That remained to be negotiated. The White House received on July 22, a request from Madrid for an armistice followed by peace talks. Although McKinley and his advisors were eager for peace, they debated just what spoils of war to get and the best diplomatic strategy for getting them. They delayed signing an armistice until August 12 to allow American forces in the Caribbean and Philippines to secure their primary objectives. Peace talks between

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American and Spaniard diplomats began in Paris on October 1. Each side’s initial position was unbridgeable. The Americans demanded that Spain cede its entire empire in the Caribbean and Pacific. The Spaniards demanded that Washington assume Madrid’s $400 million debt for any cessions of territory. A deal was finally struck. Under the Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898, Washington would pay Madrid $20 million for Spain’s title to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The Senate ratified the treaty by 57 to 27 votes on February 6, 1898. The United States would assert a protectorate over Cuba and colonies over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. McKinley had agonized over what to do about the Philippines before finally deciding to colonize it. Like most Americans, he believed that Filipinos were incapable of governing themselves for the foreseeable future. He knew well that America would bear a terrible financial and humanitarian burden if it colonized the Philippines in the name of bringing those benighted people civilization and stability. Yet there were powerful economic and strategic reasons to keep the Philippines. Potentially the Philippines itself had ample markets and resources for American businessmen to exploit. A naval base in Manila Bay would be a third strategic stepping-stone including Hawaii and Guam to East Asia’s markets. If the United States did not take the Philippines another great power would and its economic and strategic gain would be America’s loss. This fear was reasonable. Shortly after Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay a German fleet and smaller flotillas of British, French, and Japanese warships appeared. The German ambassador in Washington received word from Berlin that “the emperor deems it a principal object of . . . policy to leave unused no opportunity which may arise from the Spanish-American War to obtain the naval fulcrum in East Asia.” 36 The president reached his decision after hours of praying for guidance. He called in a group of prominent protestant ministers and explained that America must control the Philippines to prevent the “anarchy and bloodshed” that “would follow in the wake of native ignorance and inability to govern; so there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos and civilize and Christianize them.” 37 He issued a proclamation to the Filipino people on December 21, 1898, that explained why the United States was replacing Spain as the colonial power. He promised that America’s governance would bring stability, prosperity, and civilization to the Philippines. The United States also annexed Hawaii. This event was almost inevitable with only the timing and circumstances uncertain. The Hawaiian Islands sprawl in a cluster about a third of the way across the Pacific toward the markets of the Far East. American merchants first began visiting Hawaii, then known as the Sandwich Islands, in the late eighteenth century. Over the next century, increasing numbers of Americans settled there and founded businesses and cattle ranches. Hawaii’s economic and thus strategic importance to the United States steadily swelled through-

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out the nineteenth century, especially after America’s territory expanded to the Pacific coast by 1848. American political power in the islands expanded with its economic power. The Hawaiian monarch was split between modernizers and traditionalists, between those who welcomed and those who deplored the Americans. An American-backed coup in January 1893 toppled anti-American Queen Liliuokalani and brought to power a government led by Stanford Dole that asked Washington to annex Hawaii. President Benjamin Harrison’s administration negotiated an annexation treaty, but was unable to bring it to the Senate for a vote before Harrison left office. President Grover Cleveland inherited the treaty and, on March 17, 1893, declared his opposition to its ratification. Shortly after McKinley became president, Hawaii’s government renewed its annexation request on April 5, 1897. This time taking Hawaii made strategic and economic sense to most congressmen. Francis Newlands of Nevada sponsored a joint congressional annexation resolution. The House voted 209 to 91 in favor on June 15, the Senate voted 42 to 21 in favor on July 6, and McKinley signed the resolution into law on July 7, 1898. For strategic reasons, on July 12, McKinley claimed for the United States unoccupied Wake Island in the Pacific between Hawaii and Guam. Millions of Americans opposed the war with Spain and American colonization of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Wake, and Hawaii for an array of political, economic, strategic, and moral reasons. 38 A group of prominent Bostonians formed the Anti-Imperialist League on June 15, 1898, and soon opened chapters across the country. The League’s members included such prominent Americans as Carl Schurz, Mark Twain, Charles Francis Adams, William James, and Andrew Carnegie, who became its president. League spokesmen argued that democracy and imperialism conflicted with each other, that America could have one but not both. Carnegie ridiculed White Man’s Burden rationale for colonizing the Philippines: “Has the influence of the superior race on the inferior ever proved beneficial to either? I know of no case in which it has been or is. Soldiers in foreign camps, so far from being missionaries for good, require missionaries themselves more than the natives.” 39 But ultimately the anti-imperialists failed. The Rough Riders held their final parade on September 13, then were mustered out. Just 133 days earlier Roosevelt and Wood had officially formed the regiment. In between, they had given the men rudimentary training, embarked for the front, and Roosevelt had led them to victory first in a bloody skirmish then a bloodier battle. His troopers had chipped in and purchased a farewell present that could not have been more appropriate or moved him more. Thereafter among his most cherished possessions was Frederick Remington’s bronze sculpture, The Bronco Buster.

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NOTES 1. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Rough Riders,” Roosevelt Works, 2:124. 2. Hicks, Mowry, and Burke, American Nation, 279. 3. Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 878. 4. For good books on the Spanish-American War, see: Frank Friedel, The Splendid Little War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958); Philip Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895–1902 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Benjamin R. Beede, ed., The War of 1898 and U.S. Interventions, 1898–1934 (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1994); David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996); Louis A. Perez, The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Edward F. Dolan, The Spanish-American War (New York: Twenty-First Century Books, 2001); Kenneth E. Hendrickson, The Spanish-American War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2003); Mar Barnes, The Spanish-American War and Philippines Insurrection, 1898–1902: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Routledge, 2010). 5. For good studies on the American military’s preparations for and waging of the war, see: William R. Braidsted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897–1909 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958); John Grenville, “American Naval Preparations for War with Spain, 1896–1898,” Journal of American Studies, vol. 2, no. 1 (1968), 33–47; Graham A. Cosmas, An Army for Empire: The United States Army in the Spanish-American War (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing Company, 1994). 6. Robert Wooster, Nelson Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). 7. A.C.M. Azoy, Charge! The Story of the Battle of San Juan Hill (New York: Longmans, Green, 1961), 23. 8. Trask, War with Spain, 63–84. 9. For good books on Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, see: Henry Castor, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders (New York: Random House, 1954); A.C.M. Azoy, Charge!: The Story of the Battle of San Juan Hill (New York: Longmans, Green, 1961); Virgil Carrington Jones, Roosevelt’s Rough Riders (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971); H. Paul Jeffers, Colonel Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt Goes to War, 1897–1989 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996); Peggy Samuels, Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan: The Making of a President (College Station: Texas A & M Press, 1997); H. Paul Jeffers, In the Rough Rider’s Shadow: The Story of a War Hero, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (New York: Presidio Books, 2002); Louis Auchincloss, ed., Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and an Autobiography (New York: Library of America, 2004). For a broader interpretation of the Rough Riders’ political and cultural significance, see: Christine Bold, “The Rough Riders at Home and Abroad: Cody, Roosevelt, Remington, and the Imperialist Hero,” Canadian Review of American Studies, vol. 18, no. 3 (1987), 321–50. 10. Hermann Hagedorn, Leonard Wood: A Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Harpers, 1931). 11. Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, May 25, 1898, Lodge Letters, 1:300–1. 12. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 186. 13. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Rough Riders,” Roosevelt Works, 2:122. 14. Piero Gleijeses, “1898: The Opposition to the Spanish-American War,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 35, no. 4 (November 2003), 697. 15. Trask, War with Spain, 190. 16. Roosevelt Autobiography, 131. 17. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Rough Riders,” Roosevelt Works, 2:86. 18. Roosevelt Autobiography, 132. 19. Roosevelt to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, June 25, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:844. 20. Roosevelt to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, June 27, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:845. 21. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Rough Riders,” Roosevelt Works, 2:124. 22. Roosevelt Autobiography, 132.

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23. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Rough Riders,” Roosevelt Works, 2:137. 24. Trask, War with Spain, 245. 25. Roosevelt Autobiography, 135. 26. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 19, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 1:325. 27. Roosevelt to Russell Alger, July 23, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:859. 28. Brands, T.R., 361. 29. Roosevelt to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, July 19, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:855. 30. Roosevelt to William Shafter, August 3, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:864. 31. Petition to William Shafter, August 3, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:865. 32. Trask, War with Spain, 386, 413. 33. John Hay to Roosevelt, July 27, 1898, Hay Letters, 2:337. 34. Hicks, Mowry, and Burke, American Nation, 279. 35. Millis, Martial Spirit, 367. 36. Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt and World Order, 140. 37. H. Wayne Morgan, America’s Road to Empire (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 96. 38. For good studies on the anti-imperialists, see: Robert L. Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); E. Berkeley Thompkins, Anti-Imperialism in the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970); Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972); Welch, Richard E. Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Piero Gleijeses, “1898: The Opposition to the Spanish-American War,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 35, no. 4 (November 2003), 681–719. 39. Brands, Bound to Empire, 27–30.

EIGHT The Governor

What we want for you is the Senate but it looks as if the drift was very strong to make you Governor and that may lead to the Senate next winter. (Henry Cabot Lodge) 1 I have thoroughly enjoyed being Governor. I have kept every promise, expressed or implied, I made on the stump and I feel that the Republican Party is stronger . . . because of my incumbency. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2

Theodore Roosevelt now had to figure out what next to do with his life. Henry Cabot Lodge had suggested an intriguing option during his Cuban campaign: “What we want for you is the Senate but it looks as if the drift was very strong to make you Governor and that may lead to the Senate next winter. You must not think that I am dreaming about these things because you can have no idea of your popularity here.” 3 The sitting governor, Republican Frank Black, was a creature of Senator Thomas Platt’s political machine and deeply engulfed in corruption scandals including bribes, kickbacks, and misallocations of $1 million of a $9 million program that failed to upgrade the Erie Canal. Black would likely lose his reelection bid to a prominent reform Democrat who promised to clean up Albany. However, if war hero Roosevelt ran he would likely win and keep the governor’s mansion for the Republican Party. 4 Boss Platt’s key deputies, Congressmen Lemuel Quigg and Republican Party chair Benjamin Odell, shared Root’s outlook. They presented Platt with a stark choice—he could back a losing Black reelection campaign or a winning Roosevelt campaign. This posed a terrible dilemma for Platt, who hated the reformer and maverick Roosevelt as much as he favored his sycophant Black. He worried that if Roosevelt “becomes governor of New York, sooner or later, with his personality, he will have to be President of the United States” and “I am afraid to start that thing 113

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going.” 5 He finally agreed to see if he could somehow chain Roosevelt to his machine. He sent Quigg to cut a deal with Roosevelt at Camp Wikoff on August 20. Roosevelt later recalled that “Quigg spoke very frankly to me, stating that he earnestly desired to see me nominated and believed the great body of Republican voters in the State so desired, but that the organization and the State Convention would finally do what Senator Platt desired,” which was “a plain statement as to whether or not I wanted the nomination, and . . . my attitude toward the organization . . . whether or not I would ‘make war’ on Mr. Platt and his friends, or whether I would confer with them and with the organization leaders . . . and give . . . consideration to their point of view as to party policy and public interest.” 6 Roosevelt replied that he would not seek but would be happy to get the nomination. If so he “would not make war on Mr. Platt or anybody else if war could be avoided; that what I wanted was to be Governor and not a faction leader; that I would certainly confer with the organization men, as with everybody else who . . . have knowledge of and interest in public affairs.” He asserted that “I should have to act finally as my own judgment and conscience dictated and administer the State government as I thought it ought to be administered.” 7 Platt grudgingly accepted Roosevelt but then, to his fury, could not get Black to withdraw his candidacy. So Roosevelt was still up for grabs to the most appealing bidder. A group of prominent reformers, led by John Chapman, sought Roosevelt to champion their cause as the Independent Party’s gubernatorial candidate. Chapman made his first appeal on August 24 and thought he sealed the deal on September 1. Roosevelt would be the white knight candidate to dethrone Black and whatever candidate the Democrats ran. An independent campaign by war hero Roosevelt would force Pratt to abandon the unreelectable Black and embrace Roosevelt. And this is what happened, but took a twist that enraged Chapman and other Independent leaders. Roosevelt secured a six day leave to visit his family at Oyster Bay. On September 10, he had Lovell Jerome, a prominent non-Platt Republican, issue a press statement designed to play the Independent and Republican Parties against each other to support his candidacy. Lowell explained that Roosevelt wanted the public to know that “he was and always had been a Republican in the broadest sense of the word. While he was not seeking the Republican nomination, should it come to him he would accept it as an honor and a duty. . . . Should he . . . be elected, he would be a Republican Governor—a Governor of the entire party.” 8 This statement naturally worried Chapman and his colleagues who were recruiting an Independent Party list of candidates to run for state positions topped by Roosevelt’s name. The next day, Roosevelt assured a Chapman messenger of his commitment to the Independent Party.

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Roosevelt’s statement jolted Platt just as much. He summoned Roosevelt to his residence at the Fifth Avenue Hotel at 23rd Street on September 17. He told Roosevelt not to worry about Black’s refusal to stand down, he would arrange overwhelming support for the war hero by the time the Republican Party convention opened. In return, Roosevelt had to pledge his loyalty to the Republican Party and Platt, its leader. Confident of his popularity and political skills, Roosevelt insisted that he would remain his own man and governor for all New Yorkers no matter what. Platt had no choice but to shake Roosevelt’s hand and promise him the candidacy. Although Roosevelt loathed all political bosses, he sought to understand each’s unique quirks to better manipulate him for the public good while avoiding any Faustian bargains. Power rather than wealth obsessed Platt, who “did not use his political position to advance his private fortune. He lived in hotels and had few extravagant tastes. Indeed, I could not find that he had any tastes at all except for politics, and on rare occasions for a very dry theology wholly divorced from moral implications. But big business men contributed to him large sums of money which enabled him to keep the grip on the machine and secured him the help of the machine if they were threatened with adverse legislation.” 9 Roosevelt assessed his options for finessing Platt and picked what became a winning strategy: “I had neither the training nor the capacity that would have enabled me to match Mr. Platt and his machine people on their own ground. Nor did I believe that the effort to build up a machine of my own . . . would meet the needs of the situation . . . I . . . consistently adopted the plan of going over the heads of the men holding public office and of the men in control of the organization, and appealing directly to the people behind them. . . . More than half my work as Governor was in the direction of getting needed and important legislation. I accomplished this only by arousing the people, and riveting their attention on what was done.” 10 In cutting a deal with Platt, Roosevelt cynically broke his deal with Chapman. He wrote Chapman that “I do not see how I can accept the Independent nomination and keep good faith with the other men on my ticket. It has been a thing that has worried me greatly.” 11 Chapman asked him to reconsider. Roosevelt gave a blunter reply: “I would not be acting in good faith toward my fellow candidates if I permitted my name to head a ticket designed for their overthrow.” 12 Chapman could not take no for an answer. On September 24, he journeyed to Sagamore Hill to confront Roosevelt with his “betrayal” and try to shame him into leading the Independent Party charge. They had a heated discussion. Chapman missed the last train. Roosevelt let him spend the night. Chapman later recalled that they shook hands the next morning “and avoided each other for twenty years.” 13 Meanwhile, enraged by his betrayal, most Independents backed the Democratic candidate rather than Roosevelt.

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Having disposed of this unpleasantness, Roosevelt soon faced another that potentially ended his campaign. Not unreasonably, New York’s constitution required governors to be state residents for at least five previous years. To pay fewer taxes, Roosevelt listed his official residence as Washington, DC, rather than Oyster Bay, New York. Three days before the Republican Party convention opened, Black’s campaign gleefully shared this seeming disqualifier with the press. Platt and Odell mobilized legal heavyweights Elihu Root and Joseph Choate to find a way to finesse the problem. The lawyers bleakly reported that the case seemed open and shut against Roosevelt. The only possible defense was to obscure the dispute with as much legalese as possible, reckoning that most Republicans would not want a technicality to prevent them from voting for a genuine war hero over a corrupt political hack to be their governor. A lawsuit might overturn Roosevelt’s election but the Republican Party elite was willing to risk that. A deeply despondent Roosevelt offered to end his candidacy. Platt knew how to manipulate Roosevelt. “Is the hero of San Juan Hill a coward,” the boss demanded, knowing that he had Roosevelt’s manhood in his hands by questioning it. Roosevelt promptly assured Platt that he was in the race to the finish line. Platt then had Root and Choate talk a New York Supreme Court judge into ruling that Roosevelt was an official state resident if he paid his back taxes to Oyster Bay; Roosevelt promptly paid. The Democrats threatened to challenge this deal but never did. 14 Roosevelt stayed at Sagamore Hill during the Republic Party convention at Saratoga. On September 25, he learned that the Republican Party had nominated him to be their gubernatorial candidate by an overwhelming victory on the first ballot of 753 votes to 218 for Black, and unanimity on the second ballot. 15 Roosevelt opened his campaign on October 5, with a speech at Carnegie Hall. He was escorted by six Rough Riders and his celebration of American patriotism and imperialism would have been far more appropriate were he running for president than governor. Endorsements by his Rough Riders were always heartfelt but sometimes backfired. Buck Taylor called on a crowd to vote for the colonel because “he will lead you, as he led us, like sheep to the slaughter!” 16 Platt and Odell were appalled and did what they could to get Roosevelt to address state issues and appeal to state constituencies crucial to his election. Roosevelt shrugged off the pressure as he took his Rough Rider campaign to the New York State’s far reaches. Depending on one’s view, the high or low point of Roosevelt’s campaign came when he publicly challenged Richard Croker to a mass gunfight. Croker was the boss of Tammany Hall and the Democratic Party. He got the Democrats to approve Augustus Van Wyck, a Brooklyn judge, as their gubernatorial candidate. Croker was also a bully who wielded his

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huge size to intimidate others to bow to his will. Roosevelt issued this challenge: “Let him take thirty of his best men, I don’t care how well they’re heeled, and I will take my gang and we’ll see who’s boss. I’ll shoot him so full of holes he won’t know himself from a honeycomb.” 17 Roosevelt had some vital unfinished business from the war to boost his heroic image and gubernatorial campaign. He was determined to make good on General Joe Wheeler’s offhand remarks that he deserved a Medal of Honor. To Lodge, he explained that “I don’t ask this as a favor—I ask it as a right . . . I am entitled to the Medal of Honor, and I want it.” 18 War Secretary Alger despised Roosevelt for many reasons, especially his cocksure aggressiveness and the letter he sent him during the war celebrating the Rough Riders and disparaging the 71st New York and other volunteer and regular troops alike. Alger fired back a letter lauding all those who served and rebuking him for his remarks. Now he and President McKinley, who had his own misgivings about Roosevelt, agreed to file away his plea to a review board which would not act before the 1900 election if ever; indeed, Roosevelt was not awarded the Medal of Honor until 2001. This did not end Alger’s vengeance. Apparently he also leaked to Democratic Party newspapers the wartime exchange of letters between them. Roosevelt’s insulting remarks enraged veterans of the 71st New York and the National Guard; many appeared at his campaign stops to hiss the Rough Rider candidate. Roosevelt further fueled their anger by being accompanied by a Rough Rider color guard during his whistlestop tour. When the votes on November 8 were counted, Roosevelt edged out Van Wyck by 661,707 to 643,921 votes for a safe if slender margin of 17,794; two other candidates, Benjamin Hanford of the Socialist Labor Party and Theodore Bacon of the Independent Party received 23,860 and 2,103 votes, respectively. Republican candidates also won the posts of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, comptroller, attorney general, and treasurer, and captured the legislature by 27 to 23 seats in the Senate and 88 to 62 seats in the Assembly. Looking ahead, Roosevelt expressed pride at being governor and his determination “to make a square and decent one. I do not expect, however, to hold political office again and in a way that is a help, because the politicians cannot threaten me with what they will do in the future.” 19 Looking back, he marveled at the whirlwind half year that took him from a Washington bureaucracy to Cuban battlefields to the New York governor’s mansion: “I have played it in bull luck this summer. First, to get into the war; then to get out of it; then to get elected. I have worked hard all my life, and have never been particularly lucky, but this summer I was lucky, and I am enjoying it to the full.” He then added: “I know perfectly well that the luck will not continue . . . I am more than contented to be Governor of New York, and shall now care if I never hold another office.” 20 This indifference would be fleeting.

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It was so cold on Roosevelt’s inaugural day of January 2, 1899, that only drums rumbled, brass instruments froze. Roosevelt was the first governor to enjoy the new Capitol building without the clamor of construction; it was finally finished after 32 years of work and $25 million of expenditures since the cornerstone was laid in 1867. Historian H.W. Brands offers an interesting insight into Governor Roosevelt: “Even as governor, Roosevelt could never identify with the state of New York the way he identified with the nation. States had no historic destiny—certainly not since the Civil War—and took no distinctive part in the struggle among nations.” 21 Nonetheless, Roosevelt brought the same energy and drive for sweeping reforms to New York State as he did to all his other positions. Each January as the assembly convenes, the governor gives New York’s equivalent of the state of the union address. On January 4, Roosevelt presented a progressive to-do list that included reforming the civil service, taxing corporations that benefited from public franchises, limiting state workers to eight hour days, providing protection for women and child laborers, having biennial legislative sessions, and conserving more of the state’s forest and watershed for the benefit of future generations. He would enact into law versions of almost all these ideas. Roosevelt fulfilled his promise to Platt to consult him on any key decisions and issues. He mostly did so during weekend trips to New York when he met Platt for Saturday breakfast at his Fifth Avenue Hotel residence. He used these occasions to inform Platt of his intentions. He tempered his limited cooperation with Platt with frequent public denunciations of the Republican and Democratic boss systems, each of which fronted big business interests in return for vast amounts of money. He never minced words when exposing big business’s power to corrupt democracy: “A corporation is simply a collection of men, who may do well or who may do ill. The thing to do is to make them understand that if they do well you are with them, but if they do ill you are ever and always against them.” 22 Pratt tried to stifle any reforms that Roosevelt championed, to the point where he actually joined forces with Democrat bosses. The first major conflict between them erupted when Platt told Roosevelt to appoint Francis Hendricks to be the public works superintendent. Roosevelt explained that he would not do so because Hendricks was entangled with former Governor Black’s Erie Canal scandal. The refusal enraged Platt who was determined to break the governor to his will. Roosevelt then sought a qualified man for the position, but no one would take the job after Platt operatives warned that the Platt-dominated senate would not approve. Roosevelt found a face-saving way around the stalemate. He presented a list of four highly qualified candidates to Platt and asked him to pick one. The senate overwhelmingly approved Platt’s choice of

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John Partridge. Thereafter Roosevelt wielded this tactic to get qualified, relatively independent candidates into positions of power. Roosevelt’s toughest battle with Platt was over a bill to tax the profits of corporate franchises like streetcar and electricity companies granted by New York State. For this he carefully knit a bipartisan political alliance. Of four taxation bills in various committees, he picked Senator John Ford’s as the best for raising revenues, fairness, and transparency. When Roosevelt informed Platt of his intention, “I was hardly prepared for the storm of protest and anger my proposal aroused.” 23 Platt urged him to abandon the Ford bill and forget any notion of reform until a joint committee investigated the issue in 1900. He warned that if the bill became law “no corporation will ever again contribute a dollar to any campaign fund when you are a candidate. . . . The corporations have long memories; they don’t forget.” Meanwhile, the “people will give three cheers for your independence and then forget all about it.” 24 Roosevelt asserted his will to push the Ford bill through the legislature and asked for Platt’s support. For the sake of appearances, Platt finally agreed, knowing that he could stall the bill in the house. After the bill passed the senate by 33 to 12 votes on April 12, Roosevelt began jawboning assemblymen to back it. On April 27, the day before the session was scheduled to end, the bill remained bottled up in committee. Roosevelt sent a Special Emergency Message to House speaker Frederick Nixon to force the bill from the committee onto the floor. Acting on Platt’s orders, Nixon tore up the message. Roosevelt’s legacy as governor hung in the balance. If Platt succeeded in killing the tax reform bill, Roosevelt would emerge empty-handed from presiding over his first legislative session. That would encourage Platt to be even more obstructive in the next session, thus severely damaging Roosevelt’s political career. Roosevelt could only rescue his ambitions by acting decisively now. He sent a second message to the assembly, this time carried by his secretary to warn that if his message was not read the governor would come over and personally read it. This time Platt gave in and permitted the message to be read and a vote taken. The governor’s message urged immediate passage of a bill that required corporations enjoying franchises to pay their fair share of the taxes. The bill passed the House by the overwhelming vote of 109 to 35. The assemblymen then ended their session and went home. Yet Roosevelt hesitated to sign it. Conservatives had slipped a poison pill into the bill that let local governments rather than Albany assess what corporations owned. This would encourage massive corruption as officials pocketed huge bribes to lower taxes. Rather than sign the bill and declare a partial victory, Roosevelt recalled the assembly for a special session starting May 22. He explained why he could not sign the bill as it was currently written and asked them to rewrite it to maximize revenues and minimize corruption. This time Platt yielded. A revised bill passed

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both houses on May 27, 1899, and Roosevelt triumphantly signed it into law. He then adjourned the session. Another key victory over Platt was getting the assembly to pass a civil service reform bill, which he promptly signed into law. The 1899 Civil Service Reform bill was actually far tougher that the 1883 version that Governor Grover Cleveland had pushed through the legislature and had continued in force until 1897 when the Republican and Democratic bosses repealed it. The resulting reversion to a spoils system was so scandalously corrupt that pressure immediately mounted for a tough version. Roosevelt pressured Platt into backing the bill. Roosevelt racked up an astounding array of other progressive laws and policies during his two years as governor. He successfully championed bills that imposed an eight hour workday for state employees, limited work hours for women and children, and bolstered the state’s regulatory and inspection power over safety conditions in factories, sweatshops, and tenement houses. He had the State Board of Health investigate complaints of horrific pollution in Saratoga Lake, and wielded the subsequent report to force the local governments to construct sewage treatment plants that cleaned up most of the mess. He expanded the Adirondack and Catskill State Park’s forests and watersheds, and preserved the Palisades, a dozen miles of magnificent cliffs on the Hudson River’s west bank leading down to New York City, from development. He raised the standard for the Fisheries, Game, and Forest Commission to encourage scientists and woodsmen to apply. He signed the Ambler Dairy Product Act that forbade producers from adding toxic ingredients and colors to their products. He signed the Beet Sugar Act that subsidized New York State producers. He pushed through a law that outlawed discrimination against black children in public schools, and required children to attend neighborhood schools regardless of their race. He got the legislature to pass a law that required corporations to open their financial accounts for both stockholders and state inspectors. He got a law passed that banned prizefighting. He established a commission to investigate tenement houses and propose standards for health, safety, number of occupants, and occupations. He accelerated development of the reservoir system that supplied water to New York City. He launched investigations whose damning evidence of crimes forced corrupt Democratic bosses like Richard Croker and Asa Gardiner to resign their public posts, although rather than wear prison stripes they got away with golden parachutes. In all, the only significant time that he offended progressives was when he refused clemency for a woman convicted of murder who would die in the electric chair. He was justified in boasting that “I have thoroughly enjoyed being Governor. I have kept every promise, expressed or implied, I made on the stump and I feel that the Republican Party is stronger . . . because of my incumbency.” 25

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Roosevelt took advantage of the lull in New York politics to journey to Las Vegas, New Mexico, for a reunion with his Rough Riders in June 1899. As if he were on a political campaign, he made a short speech at each whistle-stop there and back. He rather disingenuously claimed to be surprised that “I was received by dense throngs exactly as if I had been a presidential candidate.” 26 Indeed, that was his intended effect. He was looking ahead to the 1904 election when, after presumably a successful tenure as New York’s governor, he would run for the White House. Then an unexpected event happened that decisively changed the course of his life. NOTES 1. Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt, July 6, 1898, Lodge Letters, 1:324. 2. Roosevelt to Thomas Platt, February 1, 1900, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1157. 3. Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt, July 6, 1898, Lodge Letters, 1:324. 4. For good books on Roosevelt gubernatorial campaign and tenure as governor, see: Wallace G. Chessman, Governor Roosevelt: The Albany Apprenticeship, 1898–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); Harold F. Gosnell, Boss Platt and His New York: A Study of the Political Leadership of Thomas C. Platt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Others (New York: AMS Press, 1969); John M. Corry, The Rough Ride to Albany: Teddy Runs for Governor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000). 5. H. Paul Jeffers, ed., The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publications, 2002), 154. 6. Roosevelt Autobiography, 151. 7. Roosevelt Autobiography, 151. 8. Corry, Rough Ride to Albany, 125. 9. Roosevelt Autobiography, 153. 10. Roosevelt Autobiography, 156–57. 11. Roosevelt to John Chapman, September 19, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:876. 12. Roosevelt to John Chapman, September 22, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:877. 13. M.A. DeWolfe Howe, ed., John J. Chapman and His Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937), 469. 14. Thomas Platt, “Two Nominations of Roosevelt, Part I,” McClure’s Magazine, vol. 35, no. 2 (June 1910), 116, 115–29. 15. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 714. 16. Theodore Roosevelt, “In Cowboy Land,” Outlook, vol. 104 (May–August 1913), 169. 17. Jacob Riis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (New York: Outlook Company, 1904), 204. 18. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, December 6, 1898, Lodge Letters, 1:366. 19. Albert Hart and Hebert Ferleger, eds., The Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1941), 539. 20. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, November 25, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:888. 21. H.W. Brands, T.R., 388. 22. Theodore Roosevelt, Public Papers of Theodore Roosevelt, Governor 1899 (Albany, NY: Brandow Printing Company, 1899), 323. 23. Roosevelt Autobiography, 308. 24. Alvin F. Harlow, Theodore Roosevelt: Strenuous American (New York: Julian Messner, 1943), 193–94. 25. Roosevelt to Thomas Platt, February 1, 1900, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1157. 26. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 1, 1899, Lodge Letters, 1:403–4.

NINE The Vice President

Don’t any of you realize that there’s only one life between this madman and the Presidency? (Mark Hanna) 1 I really do not see that there is anything in the Vice Presidency . . . I could do very little: whereas as Governor I can accomplish a great deal. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2

Heart failure killed Vice President Garret Hobart on November 21, 1899. The loss was sad but fortuitous for President William McKinley, who intended to run for reelection in 1900. Although Hobart’s health had deteriorated for months before he died, he was not known for being overly charismatic or erudite even at the height of his career as a New Jersey politician. The ideal new running mate for McKinley would be dynamic, celebrated, inspiring, and from a state with lots of electoral votes. Theodore Roosevelt was the obvious top choice to tap as the new vice president. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts spearheaded the campaign to convince McKinley to name Roosevelt vice president. But formidable obstacles stymied a Roosevelt candidacy. The offer posed dilemmas for Roosevelt himself, one financial, the other existential. Being vice president would bring a painful pay cut from $10,000 to $8,000; atop that he lived for free in the governor’s mansion but would have to look for housing in expensive Washington. There was no question over which job would be more fulfilling: “in the Vice Presidency I could do very little; whereas as Governor I can accomplish a great deal.” 3 In a letter to Lodge, he weighed the pros and cons of his choices. He took pride in having been “pretty successful as Governor” but found “ample work left for me to do in another term—work that will need all my energy and capacity . . . but in the Vice Presidency I could do nothing. I am a comparatively young man yet and I like to work. I do not like to be 123

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a figurehead.” He ended his letter by declaring “decisively that I want to be Governor and do not want to be Vice President.” 4 Left unsaid was which job was a better stepping-stone to realizing his dream of living in the White House. For this being vice president presented distinct advantages over being governor. He could make his Washington home a beehive for nurturing ties with senators, representatives, and journalists that would ease the politics for getting Congress to pass his future agenda. He could travel the country garnering support among local Republican Party officials and making public speeches. He could promise much while not being held accountable until after he won the presidency. Finally, he could master the information, minds, and issues of each government bureaucracy. Having done all that, he could begin governing decisively as soon as he took the presidential oath of office. Yet, for now, Roosevelt reckoned it was best to play coy. He wrote Mark Hanna, who was juggling roles as McKinley’s campaign manager, National Republican Party chair, and an Ohio senator, that: “I can do most good to the national ticket by running as Governor in this State. There will be in New York a very curious feeling of resentment both against myself and against the party leaders if I ran as Vice President, and this will affect our vote . . . whereas if I ran as Governor I can strengthen the national ticket in this State.” 5 Hanna could not have agreed more. The thought of having a reformer and loose cannon like Roosevelt a heartbeat away from the White House appalled him. He applauded Roosevelt for his determination to stay in Albany and finish his agenda as New York’s governor. He realized that Roosevelt’s assurance was just boilerplate political posturing. Ever more prominent Republicans were advocating Roosevelt for vice president. Hanna would pull every political trick possible to keep Roosevelt in Albany and away from Washington. One of the nation’s most powerful Republican bosses was determined to make Roosevelt vice president regardless of whether he wanted the post. Governor Roosevelt had been a nightmare for Thomas Platt and his political machine. Roosevelt had bested Platt on virtually every issue and succeeded in pushing through a half dozen or so reforms topped by a tax on corporate franchises. The big business allies of Platt and his fellow conservatives angrily complained that they were not reaping the benefits of all the millions of dollars in donations they had poured into their pockets. And the worst appeared yet to come. In Roosevelt’s January 1900 annual message, he called for a new round of reforms that included conserving the state’s natural resources, regulating the cutting of forests, imposing water pollution controls, making businesses liable for worker injuries, and breaking up corporate monopolies and oligopolies that exploited the middle class and poor, and stymied entrepreneurship. He was also gathering evidence possibly to indict for corruption Insurance Superintendent Louis Payn, a key Platt flunky.

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To head off these looming political disasters, Platt had to act swiftly and decisively. He summoned Roosevelt for a breakfast meeting on January 20, 1900. After the opening exchange of niceties, they got down to business, with Payn’s fate topping the list. Payn was a notoriously egregious example of the collusion between politicians and corporations to loot public resources. Payn pocketed at least $435,000 in kickbacks to approve $5 million of illegal financial manipulations by the State Trust Company. Roosevelt insisted that Payn must go. Platt was equally adamant that Payn must stay. Roosevelt submitted a list of four candidates to take Payn’s place and told Platt to pick one. Platt refused to look at it. Roosevelt gave Platt three days to choose one of the names or else he would make his own choice and send it to the senate for approval. Later that day, Platt informed the press that Roosevelt “ought to take the vice presidency both for National and State reasons.” 6 The next day, Benjamin Odell, the Republican Party chair, called Roosevelt in for a meeting and threatened to destroy his political career if he did not back Payn. Roosevelt replied, “Well, we will see about that.” Then, as Roosevelt started toward the door, Odell cried, “Hold on! We accept. . . . The Senator . . . will make no further opposition.” In later relating this story, Roosevelt remarked: “I never saw a bluff carried more resolutely to the final limit.” 7 The governor’s latest victory enraged Platt, who shouted: “I want to get rid of the bastard. I don’t want him raising hell in my state any more. I want to bury him.” 8 Roosevelt did not take Platt’s animosity too personally. He understood that “the big monied men . . . whose campaign contributions have been no inconsiderable factor in his strength, have been pressing him very strongly to get me put in the vice-presidency, so as to get me out of the state.” 9 All along McKinley stayed aloof from the political maneuverings of those for and against naming Roosevelt vice president. He did invite for dinner at the White House Roosevelt along with party heavyweights War Secretary Elihu Root, Navy Secretary John Long, and Senators William Chandler of New Hampshire and Joseph Foraker of Ohio on May 11. Roosevelt passed muster at that informal but pointed job interview with all but Long, who wanted to top off his career with the vice presidency’s light duties and generous benefits. 10 Determined to keep Roosevelt off the ticket, Hanna pressed McKinley to name Long his running mate. McKinley’s refusal enraged Hanna. The Republican national convention opened at Philadelphia on June 19. Platt worked behind the scenes with Lodge, who chaired the convention, to ensure that Roosevelt became McKinley’s running mate. His front man was the former senator and now delegate-at-large Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania. Quay hated Hanna who had repeatedly thwarted his ambitions when they were both senators. Shortly after Lodge called the convention to order, Quay rose to offer a resolution that each state delegation vote in a ratio of one to every thousand primary votes cast in each

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state. This would have stripped the southern state bloc, where the Republican Party attracted few primary voters, of their power. Much of Hanna’s national power was rooted in the southern bloc. As the convention debated the resolution, Hanna hurried over to Quay and asked his price for withdrawing the resolution. Roosevelt’s nomination for the vice presidential candidacy, Quay gleefully replied. Hanna hurried away to another group of Republican leaders and exploded in wrath: “What is the matter with all of you? Here’s this convention going headlong for Roosevelt for Vice President. Don’t any of you realize that there’s only one life between that madman and the Presidency? Platt and Quay are no better than idiots! What harm can he do as Governor of New York compared to the damage he will do as President if McKinley should die?” 11 Later that night Hanna conceded, wearily informing his captains that: “The best we can do is pray fervently for the continued health of the President.” 12 During the convention Roosevelt coyly played hard to get for the vice presidency. When pressed, he said things like: “I understand the high honor and dignity of the office. . . . But . . . I feel most deeply that the field of my best usefulness to the public and to the party is in New York State.” 13 No one ran against McKinley or Roosevelt. On June 21, all 926 delegates voted for McKinley and all but one for Roosevelt, who cast an abstaining vote. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt sought to inspire the nation with his vision: We stand on the threshold of a new century big with the fate of a mighty nation. Its rests with us now to decide whether . . . we shall march forward to fresh triumphs or whether . . . we shall cripple ourselves for the contest. Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work of the great world-powers? No. The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of the ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man ready to run a race. 14

His message was only appropriate for a vice presidential candidate if it echoed the ideas of the presidential candidate. McKinley must have grimaced at his running mate expressing a vision of American global power so diametrically opposed to his own. Yet Roosevelt’s usefulness was in attracting voters who might otherwise be indifferent or opposed to McKinley. The only sensible strategy was to loosen Roosevelt on the campaign trail and then firmly muzzle him after the election. The 1900 campaign reprised the major candidates of the 1896 campaign as the Democrats again chose William Jennings Bryan as their standard-bearer. Bryan’s running mate was Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, Grover Cleveland’s second vice president. The Populist Party split, with the Fusion wing endorsing Bryan and the rest of the party split among three other candidates. Bryan ran on the same platform of advocating

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that America adopt the silver standard that he had in 1896, this time amended by denouncing McKinley’s imperialism that conquered an overseas empire for America. As Bryan and Stevenson crisscrossed the country making speeches, McKinley resumed his front-porch campaign of four years earlier, welcoming voters and interest groups at his home in Canton, Ohio. There he modestly pointed out that under his presidency the nation had enjoyed four years of prosperity and a successful war. It was Roosevelt’s job to hit the campaign trail. He joyfully boasted to Hanna, “I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.” 15 He was good to his word. Biographer Edmund Morris cited the stunning statistics that by the November 6 election, Roosevelt had delivered “673 speeches in 597 towns in 24 states; he had traveled 21,209 miles and spoken an average of 20,000 words a day to 3 million people.” 16 He certainly had plenty of free time to do so. A New York governor’s job annually peaks during the first five or so months when the legislature is in session then becomes very quiet the rest of the year. Roosevelt always relished whistle-stop campaigns where he could harangue cheering crowds a half dozen or so times a day. During his tour, bandits tried to attack his train at Cripple Creek, Colorado, but his Rough Rider escort drove them off with a fusillade of shots. The more persistent attacks came from Democratic spokesmen and newspapers that spread the rumor that he was an alcoholic. Roosevelt rebuffed the claim, explaining that he spurned strong liquor and took a glass or two of wine with dinner and a glass or two of champagne at social gatherings. The controversy inspired Henry Adams acerbically to note that “Theodore is never sober—only he is drunk with himself and not with rum!” 17 The McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won 7,228,864 votes or 51.6 percent and 292 electors to the Bryan-Stevenson ticket’s 6,370,932 votes or 45.5 percent and 155 electors. The northeast, midwest, and west coast leaned toward McKinley, the south was solid for Bryan, and they split the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin states. The Republicans retained control of Congress. In the Senate, the Republicans lost one seat, bringing them down to 53, while the Democrats gained 5 seats, giving them 28. The Silver Republicans gained a seat, bringing them 3, and the Populist Party lost five seats, leaving them one. In the House, the Republicans gained 13 seats, bringing them 198; the Democrats lost 10 seats, dropping them to 153; the Populists lost a seat, leaving them 5; and the Silver Republicans lost one of their two seats. 18 Once the excitement of the campaign and the election results had subsided, Roosevelt had to figure out how to fill his time as vice president. Although he was vice president for half a year, his official duties lasted a mere five days when he presided over the Senate from March 4 to 8, 1901, before it adjourned until the fall. That gave him plenty of time to romp with his family and fire off letters and essays. He admitted to William

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Howard Taft that “I am enjoying the perfect ease of my life at present” but “I have very ugly feelings now and then that I am leading a life of unwarranted idleness.” 19 Part of the problem was with his boss. He complained that McKinley “is perfectly cordial and friendly to me . . . but he does not intend that I shall have any influence of any kind . . . in the administration. . . . The President made up his mind that I was needed on the ticket . . . and wanted me nominated, while Hanna did not.” Now that Roosevelt had served his purpose, McKinley could ignore and emasculate him: “The President in a cold-blooded way has always rather liked me, or at least has admired certain qualities in me. . . . But at bottom neither he nor Hanna . . . sympathize with my feelings or feel comfortable around me, because they cannot understand what it is that makes me act in certain ways at certain times, and therefore think me indiscreet and over impulsive.” 20 As the months passed in dreary inaction, Roosevelt was getting stir-crazy. To Leonard Wood, he argued: “The Vice Presidency is an utterly anomalous office . . . which I think ought to be abolished. . . . The man who occupied it may at any moment be everything, but meanwhile he is practically nothing.” 21 That moment came expectantly. Once again, an unexpected death presented Roosevelt with his latest phenomenal career boost, this time into the White House itself. 22 On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was enjoying the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, when anarchist Leon Czolgosz fired two shots at him. One bullet glanced off his ribs, the other tore deep into his stomach. The surgeons could not extract the bullet and could only sew up his torn abdomen. Roosevelt learned of the attempted assassination as he attended a luncheon of Vermont’s Fish and Game League on Isle La Motte in Lake Champlain. He immediately arranged to journey by boat to the mainland then by train to be with the president. He found McKinley weak but slowly recovering. After lingering a few days, he returned to Sagamore Hill to collect his family for a trip to the Adirondacks. On September 12, he and some companions were returning from a hike to the summit of Mt. Marcy, New York’s highest peak, when a messenger caught up with a telegram from George Cortelyou, McKinley’s secretary. The president’s life was rapidly diminishing, come quickly, the telegram urged. By the time Roosevelt reached McKinley on September 14, gangrene had killed him earlier that day. A local judge swore Theodore Roosevelt in to be president of the United States. He was only forty-two years old. Shortly after occupying the Oval Office, he explained to his best friend: “It is a dreadful thing to come into the Presidency this way. But it would be a far worse thing to be morbid about it. Here is the task, and I have got to do the best of my ability; and that is all there is about it.” 23

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NOTES 1. H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003), 150. 2. Roosevelt to George Lyman, December 29, 1899, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1120. 3. Roosevelt to George Lyman, December 29, 1899, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1120. 4. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, February 2, 1900, Lodge Letters, 1:448. 5. Roosevelt to Mark Hanna, April 3, 1900, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1246. 6. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 753. 7. Roosevelt Autobiography, 303. 8. Nathan Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 335. 9. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, February 3, 1900, Lodge Letters, 1:440. 10. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 759. 11. H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003), 150. 12. James E. Watson, As I Knew Them (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill, 1936), 58. 13. Roosevelt to Mark Hanna, February 1, 1900, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1157. 14. Roosevelt speech, Republican Convention, June 21, 1900, Roosevelt Works, 14:345. 15. Roosevelt to Mark Hanna, June 27, 1900, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1342. 16. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 769. 17. Noel T. Busch, TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt and His Influence on Our Times (New York: Reynal, 1963), 276. 18. Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1980), 229. 19. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, April 26, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:68–69. 20. Roosevelt to Bellamy and Maria Storer, April 17, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:57. 21. Roosevelt to Leonard Wood, April 17, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 1:60. 22. For an excellent account that puts the assassination in perspective, see: Scott Miller, The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century (New York: Random House, 2013). 23. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 23, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:150.

2

The Presidency

TEN The Trustbuster

Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with our institutions. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2

Theodore Roosevelt hit the White House floor running. 3 He could not wait to unleash all his pent-up ideas for transforming America. And to do that, he needed the help of powerful men in powerful positions within and beyond government. He retained McKinley’s brilliant chief secretary, George Cortelyou, who oversaw a White House staff that eventually included two executive clerks, fourteen clerks, and nine messengers. He inherited some highly capable cabinet members like John Hay as secretary of state, Elihu Wood as secretary of war, and Philander Knox as attorney general. Lesser lights included James Wilson as agriculture secretary, Ethan Hitchcock as interior secretary, John Long as navy secretary, Lyman Gage as treasury secretary, and Charles Smith as postmaster general. He soon replaced the latter three and would eventually find new men for each cabinet post. He named Cortelyou to head the Department of Commerce and Labor after it was established in 1903. To enact and fund most of his agenda he needed congressional approval. Although he was lucky to have Republican majorities in both houses, key players often disputed the details, degree, or substance of his proposals. He met frequently to plot strategy with a group of leading Republican senators including his close friend Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, Orville Platt of Connecticut, William Allison of Iowa, 133

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John Spooner of Wisconsin, and Albert Beveridge of Indiana. Most other Republican senators were skeptical allies who he continually had to convince “that a given measure that I championed was right. . . . If I could not convince them . . . that was my fault, or my misfortune; but if I could convince them, I never had to think again as to whether they would or would not support me.” 4 He faced some formidable Congressional opponents. The boss of political bosses was Mark Hanna, who chaired the Republican National Committee and was an Ohio senator. Hanna hated Roosevelt and reacted to his elevation to the White House by exclaiming, “Now look, that damned cowboy is president of the United States.” 5 But Hanna’s power diminished sharply with the demise of his protégé William McKinley. He now was far more beholden to Roosevelt than Roosevelt was to him. With their hands deep in big business pockets, a score or so senators and a hundred or so representatives pulled every possible legislative trick to thwart his reforms. His two most persistent and formidable congressional opponents were Joseph Cannon of Illinois, the House Speaker, and Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. Roosevelt recalled that: “We succeeded in working together, although with increasing friction, for some years, I pushing forward and they hanging back. Gradually I was forced to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way, and then I achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us. I continued in this way to get results until almost the close of my term; and the Republican Party became once more the progressive party of the Nation.” 6 He had an increasingly acrimonious relationship with Senator Joseph Foraker of Ohio; Roosevelt condemned him as “a very powerful and vindictive man” who is among “the most unblushing servers and beneficiaries of corporate wealth . . . that I have ever seen.” 7 As a result, Roosevelt struggled to rally majorities for many vital votes. He trapped himself in a dilemma that he found hard to escape. He insisted on a muscular problem-solving presidency where Congress played a supporting rather than leading role. Most members of Congress from both parties resented and resisted this, which made him all the more determined to assert his policies by any possible means including bypassing Congress altogether. One way he sought to bend them to his will was by bombarding them with information and arguments that supported his positions. He issued more than 400 addresses and reports to Congress. The trouble was that reason and time have limits. Most congressmen ignored rather than studied what he dumped on their desks. Commissions were one way that Roosevelt finessed obstructionist congressmen and bureaucrats. He appointed commissions of experts to investigate and propose solutions for problems threatening American wealth and security that big business prevented Congress from addressing. His commissions included Civil Service, Scientific Work, Departmen-

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tal Methods, Public Lands, Country Life, Inland Waterways, and National Conservation. Each investigated a problem and proposed solutions. The trouble was that commissions could only suggest; Congress still had to approve and fund the proposals. The best way to outflank a recalcitrant Congress was to appeal to public opinion via the newspapers. Roosevelt mastered the press, transforming it from the watchdog into the lapdog of his presidency. His method was simple. He explained that “if any of the reporters should at any time violate a confidence or publish news that the President thought ought not to be published, he should be punished by having legitimate news withheld from him.” 8 This was a death sentence in the hypercompetitive press world. He compensated by meeting nearly daily with the press corps to regale them with anecdotes and inside information. He often issued important announcements on Sundays, the week’s slowest news day, to blare across Monday’s front pages. Most Americans adored Roosevelt and even many of those who disliked him found him fascinating. He seemed to be a genuine allAmerican hero, at once larger than life and down to earth. People loved reading about his latest policy crusades, battles with congressional heavyweights, diplomatic coups, and hunting trips. He also seemed to personify the all-American husband and father. His rambunctious children nosily and joyfully filled the White House with pranks and pets, while Edith was a gracious First Lady. In contrast to Congress, the press, and the public, the federal court system was impervious to Roosevelt’s array of political arts. The only way to shape decisions was to fill vacancies with like-minded people. He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1902, William Rufus Day in 1903, and William Henry Moody in 1906, 19 judges to the Courts of Appeals, and 53 judges to the District Courts. Each justice he appointed nudged the Supreme Court a step or two further from conservatism toward progressivism. Yet even a handpicked justice could issue some upsetting decisions. For instance, Roosevelt expected that Holmes, the chief justice of Massachusetts’s Supreme Court, would be as progressive as a Supreme Court justice in defending the people against exploitive corporations. Holmes, however, proved to be a maverick who disappointed him on several important votes. Roosevelt “was bent upon making the Government the most efficient possible instrument in helping the people of the United States to better themselves in every way, politically, socially, and industrially.” 9 To that end, he sought to purge the red tape, obstructionism, corruption, and inertia from the federal bureaucracy, and transform public officials into models of competence and problem-solving. On April 15, 1903, the White House unveiled a streamlined set of civil service rules that regulated pay grades and job classifications, forbade employees from engaging in political activities on the job, and strengthened the Civil Service Commission’s

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investigatory powers. These reforms were a major step in transforming the federal government from a spoils into a merit system. From 1901 to December 1908, the number of merit-based jobs rose from 108,967 of 235,766 to 220,000 of 352,104 or from about 46 percent to 66 percent. 10 Searching for even more progress, on June 3, 1905, he appointed what became known as the Keep Commission to investigate the federal system and propose improvements. The chair was Charles Keep, and included James Garfield, Gifford Pinchot, Lawrence O’Maury, and Frank Hitchcock, all men of outstanding integrity and government service. The Keep Commission appointed and oversaw twelve committees composed of seventy government officials that explored specific issues. The research took four years to complete. The Keep Commission submitted its program to Congress on February 21, 1909. Unfortunately, Congress tabled the program, which included such commonsense ideas as imposing uniform work hours, rules, leaves of absence, salary grades, efficiency ratings, pension plans, and office equipment and supplies. Politics trumped practicality as interest groups that would have lost contracts and patronage killed the proposals. 11 Roosevelt weathered criticism for rewarding his own favorites with federal jobs. War Secretary Root once mischievously asked: “Mr. President, there is a rumor going around . . . that every Rough Rider who isn’t dead holds a federal office. Is that right?” 12 The president had indeed provided jobs for a number of Cuban veterans, especially Rough Riders. He also helped out two friends from his Dakota years by naming Bill Merrifield a federal marshal in Montana, and Joe Ferris Medora’s postmaster. On July 8, 1903, he issued an executive order that lifted age limits from veterans with federal jobs. Yet he was just as sensitive to appeal to key voting blocs like Catholics, Jews, and blacks by appointing them to visible positions. So, what did Roosevelt do with his power? Admittedly, he did not “enter the Presidency with any deliberately planned and far-reaching scheme of social betterment. I had, however, certain strong convictions and I was on the lookout for every opportunity of realizing those convictions.” 13 He explained his priorities during his first annual address to Congress on December 3, 1901. 14 Topping his to-do list was busting the trusts that were strangling the economy and sucking wealth from the middle class and poor, leaving them poorer. 15 Roosevelt was president during the height of the “Gilded Age,” when America was locked into a vicious economic and political cycle. Corporate titans took over and exploited the economy with monopolies, oligopolies, and trusts, and corrupted the political system by paying off politicians to let them get away with all the loot. 16 America’s industrialization accelerated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from $5.7 billion in manufacturing in 1889 to $8.2 billion in 1899 to $20.8 billion

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in 1910. Much of the economy literally ran on the rails. In 1901, railroads had 265,352 miles of track, which conveyed $1,118,534,000 worth of freight and 607,278,000 passengers who paid $351,356,000 worth of tickets. As the economy expanded, fewer people owned it. From 1897 to 1904 alone, 4,277 corporations merged into 257. By 1909, 1 percent of businesses were making 44 percent of goods. 17 Work conditions in factories and mines were generally abysmal with over 20,000 laborers annually dying on the job. Workers were not completely helpless in the hands of corporate titans. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) numbered 1,676,000 members in 1904. 18 The AFL was dedicated to improving the pay and work conditions for its members. When asked what he wanted, AFL President Samuel Gompers simply replied, “more.” The trouble was that unions existed in legal limbo, which weakened their bargaining power with employers. Complicating the creation and distribution of wealth was the nation’s steadily expanding population. The 1900 census recorded 77,583,000 inhabitants of the United States, up from 63,000,000 in 1890. In all, there were 68,270,000 whites, 9,315,000 blacks, 237,916 American-Indians, 89,863 Chinese-Americans, and 24,226 Japanese-Americans. America was still a predominately rural society with 60 percent of the population living in towns with fewer than 2,500 people or on farms in 1900 and 55 percent in 1910. The largest cities were New York with 3,437,202 people, Chicago with 1,698,595, Philadelphia with 1,293,697, St. Louis with 575,238, and Boston with 560,892. Most cities swelled with migrants and immigrants faster than their governments could expand sewer, water, electricity, transportation, and education services; nearly a million immigrants annually stepped ashore in the United States demanding food, shelter, and jobs. 19 Trusts exemplified the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands that stifled incomes for most Americans. A trust, also known as a holding company, is an arrangement whereby an autonomous board controls the stock of companies. Roosevelt recognized that trusts were the natural outgrowth of the related, industrial, financial, commercial, technological, transportation, and communications revolutions, and had the potential to help as well as exploit most Americans. He gave credit where it was partly due. He lauded “the captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across this continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our manufactures, have on the whole done great good to our people.” He could have qualified each of those phrases by noting how government was crucial in accelerating the nation’s economic development by working with the private sector in building roads, ports, schools, and railroads, nurturing industries with protective tariffs and treaties that opened foreign markets to American goods, and massive subsidies and land giveaways to entice corporations to build the railroads. He did note: “Great corporations exist only because they are

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created and safeguarded by our institutions; it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with our institutions.” 20 After paying these tributes, he spotlighted the critical problem and what to do about it: “Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.” He zeroed in on one industry whose excesses government had to stop: “The railway is a public servant. Its rates should be just and open to all shippers alike.” 21 He distinguished between good and bad corporations, lauding the former and excoriating the latter. The difference was simple. Good corporations bettered and bad corporations worsened life for most Americans. The list of evil corporate practices included “seeking profit through injury or oppression of the community by restricting production through trick or device, by plot or conspiracy against competitors, or by oppression of wage-workers, and then extorting high prices for the commodity it had made artificially scarce, it would be prevented from organizing if its nefarious purpose could be discovered in time, or pursued and suppressed by all the powers of the government whenever found in actual operation.” However, no corporation that served the public good and obeyed the law would ever be broken up because of its sheer size: “Where a company is found seeking its profits through serving the community by stimulating production, lowering prices, or improving service while scrupulously respecting the rights of others (including its rivals), its employees, its customers, and the general public, and strictly obeying the law, then no matter how large its capital, or how great the volume of its business, it would be encouraged to still more abundant production, or better service, by the fullest production that the government could afford it.” 22 He had to tread that delicate balance vital for policy success between doing too much and too little: “Somehow or other we shall have to work out methods of controlling the big corporations without paralyzing the energies of the business community and of preventing any tyranny on the part of the labor unions while cordially assisting in every proper effort made by the wageworkers to better themselves by combinations.” 23 To bust the trusts, Roosevelt had two weak institutions, the Justice Department and the Interstate Commerce Commission, and a weak law, the Sherman Antitrust Act. The 1789 Judiciary Act established the post of attorney general, whose job was to advise the president on legal matters. The attorney general was largely a one man show until an 1870 act made him the head of a newly created Justice Department empowered with enforcing federal laws. In 1887, the Justice Department received an ally and rival when the Interstate Commerce Act established the five member

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Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) with the power to monitor and regulate shipping rates for railroads and other forms of transportation. The potential power of both the Justice Department and ICC was bolstered by the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed “every contract, combination in the form of trust, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States,” and empowered the federal government to identify and break up corporations that violated this law. Predatory pricing happens when businesses sell their products at a loss to bankrupt rivals then raise prices to recoup their earlier losses. Theoretically the federal government could go after not just trusts but monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels. Mergers, however, were a far more problematic “restraint of trade.” The Antitrust Act let those harmed by trusts recoup their losses at three times the value. This encouraged victims to sue business predators who harmed them. With the Sherman Antitrust Act, the federal government took the first step on a long, grueling unending struggle toward liberating the American people from an economy dominated by rapacious trusts, monopolies, and oligopolies. Yet conservative justices on the Supreme Court emasculated the Sherman Antitrust Act in a series of rulings culminating with the 1895 United States versus E.C. Knight Company. The majority ruled that the E.C. Knight Company trust that controlled 98 percent of the nation’s sugar refining industry was perfectly legal because refining was done in one place within a state and thus did not fall under the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause. The Supreme Court also ruled that mergers were legal, thus setting off a merger boom. With the Supreme Court backing monopolies, Roosevelt’s predecessors rarely used the Sherman Antitrust Act, with only 18 lawsuits launched among the Harrison, Cleveland, and McKinley administrations from 1890 to 1901. Although Roosevelt launched 44 antitrust suits, he disliked the Sherman Antitrust Act, deeming it ineffective and rigid. Lawsuits were a laborious, time-consuming, and uncertain way to manage the economy. He preferred jawboning business titans to end their machinations. He repeatedly called for Congress to enact a law empowering the president to break up any monopolies and oligopolies. Congress enhanced presidential power to manage the economy by establishing several new institutions in 1903. The Department of Commerce and Labor would investigate and work to overcome problems in those broad areas; the president was authorized to transfer to the new department any relevant existing statistical or scientific bureaus. A Bureau of Corporations kept track of the monopolies and oligopolies controlling industries; Roosevelt would use the Bureau of Corporations as a channel to warn business titans to stand down from their more collusive and exploitive acts. An Antitrust Division armed the Justice Department with a team of legal experts dedicated to battling the corporations strangling America’s economy. The 1903 Expediting Act empowered the attor-

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ney general to declare an antitrust case of “general public importance,” and thus get it immediately before a federal circuit court. The 1903 Elkins Act or Anti-Rebate Bill outlawed “rebates,” better understood as “kickbacks.” These bills boosted Roosevelt’s antitrust power but corporate titans still outgunned the presidency. In his annual address of December 1905, Roosevelt called for a bill that empowered the ICC to regulate railroad rates by imposing ceilings. Two Iowa Republicans, Senator Jonathan Dolliver and Representative William Hepburn, championed the president’s latest crusade by introducing similar bills into their respective chambers later that month. The House version passed first, by 364 to 7 on February 8, 1906, and became known as the Hepburn Bill or Railroad Rate Regulation Act. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island led twenty-four fellow conservatives in trying to kill the bill in the Senate. Facing their implacable opposition, Roosevelt “was forced to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way and then I achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us.” 24 Rallied by Roosevelt, the people of the plains states eventually came to the rescue. They had suffered severely from the price-gouging inflicted by the railroad titans. They now pressured their senators to put their interests before the tycoons that stuffed cash into their pockets. Senator Chester Long of Kansas proposed a compromise with wording that enabled courts to rule on the constitutionality of ICC decisions. This, of course, was a fig leaf measure for senators caught between their corporate sponsors and their constituents since the federal courts already had the right of judicial review. The bill passed the Senate 71 to 3 on May 18. Roosevelt signed the Hepburn Act into law on June 29, 1906. With Roosevelt’s direction, Hepburn drafted a bill that would force corporations to file all their merger plans for approval with the Bureau of Corporations; if the Bureau of Corporations did not disapprove the merger within thirty days, the subsequent new corporation would be free from antitrust lawsuits. The bill was designed to eliminate the uncertainty, expense, and time associated with antitrust efforts. Hepburn submitted the bill to the Senate in March 1908. Critics accused Roosevelt of wanting to control the economy. Corporate interests ensured that the bill died in the Senate. Roosevelt’s point man for busting the trusts was Attorney General Philander Knox. Few people better understood the Big Business world. As a lawyer Knox had represented J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Frick, and Andrew Mellon; indeed Knox was among the legal architects of U.S. Steel. Roosevelt treasured Knox’s insider’s knowledge along with his equestrian skills.

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Roosevelt first unleashed Knox against Northern Securities Company, capitalized at $400 million, a holding company controlled by J.P. Morgan, James Hill, and Edward Harriman that imposed a railroad monopoly across a swath of the northern United States from Chicago to the west coast. Northern Securities swiftly became notorious for charging cut-rate prices for corporations in its overlapping holding companies and skyhigh prices for everyone else. The trust’s profits soared as its predatory pricing strategy bankrupted its rivals then bought them at fractions of their former values. This was disastrous enough for the economy and people across that vast expanse of the country. The fear was that Northern Securities would soon have enough money to buy the nation’s entire railroad system and thus strangle America’s entire economy. Knox announced on February 19, 1902, his intention to file a suit to break up the Northern Securities monopoly. The lawsuit singled out Morgan and Hill as the principal lawbreakers, with Harrison an unindicted associate. The evidence, however, appeared slight. The suit argued that the nearly identical fares charged by the Great Northern and Northern Pacific represented a “restraint of trade.” The suit momentarily stunned Morgan. He just could not conceive that anyone, even that crusader Roosevelt, would dare challenge his economic empire. The next day he gathered his thirteen top corporate heads, which he appropriately called his Corsair Club, to discuss how to kill the lawsuit. Learning of their meeting, Roosevelt invited them to the White House. He was eager to square off and set them straight as soon as possible. The resulting confrontation epitomized the Goliath versus David struggle between trusts and trustbusters. Morgan’s demand to the president was notorious for revealing how huge corporations got and kept their monopolies and oligopolies: “If we have done something wrong, send your man to my man and they can fix it up.” Roosevelt issued this celebrated reply: “We don’t want to fix it up; we want to stop it.” Morgan then insisted that Roosevelt reveal if he intended to target his other corporations. Roosevelt assured him that he would do so only if “we find out that in any case they have done something that we regard as wrong.” After Morgan and his corsairs left, Roosevelt remarked to Knox: “That is a most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator who either intended to ruin all his interests or else could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.” 25 Knox filed his suit on March 10, 1902. To the astonishment of many, the Eighth Circuit court in St. Louis upheld the United States against Northern Securities on April 8, 1903. Northern Securities appealed. The decision in Northern Securities Company versus the United States came on March 14, 1904, when the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to dissolve the monopoly.

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Standard Oil Company was the biggest titan that Roosevelt faced down. John D. Rockefeller formed Standard Oil Company in 1870 and over the next three decades conquered a near monopoly over oil production, transportation, refinement, and marketing in the United States and most markets around the world. He did so by ruthless predatory pricing that bankrupted rival companies then purchased them at fractions of their former value. Standard Oil reorganized itself as a holding company in 1899. By 1904, Standard Oil controlled 91 percent of production and 85 percent of the market for petroleum products in the United States. Ida Tarbell was a muckraking journalist who targeted Standard Oil. She was motivated not just to serve the public but to avenge her father whose business Standard Oil had destroyed. She wrote nineteen articles for McClure’s Magazine from November 1902 to October 1904 that revealed Standard Oil’s repertoire of illegal monopolistic activities. She then published her articles as a book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, in 1904. 26 Tarbell’s bestseller had as powerful an effect on Roosevelt as Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle would two years later. Roosevelt ordered the Bureau of Corporations to investigate Standard Oil. The Bureau of Corporations issued a report in May 1906 that corroborated and expanded Tarbell’s findings. He then had the Justice Department prepare an antitrust lawsuit against Standard Oil’s rapacious business practices and file it in the St. Louis Circuit Court in November 1906, capping similar lawsuits by fourteen states. In August 1907, the court found Standard Oil guilty and fined it $29 million. Rockefeller swore he would never pay a dime of the fine. In September 1907, the government filed a lawsuit to dissolve Standard Oil. Rockefeller sent a team to meet Interior Secretary James Garfield, and pledge to reorganize the company if the lawsuit was dropped. Garfield passed the message to Roosevelt, who said he would consider it. Two days later, Rockefeller and John Archbold, Standard Oil’s respective president and vice president, submitted their reorganization plan to Attorney General Charles Bonaparte. Roosevelt and Bonaparte were studying the plan when Rockefeller committed an act that killed any chance of winning approval; Rockefeller sent word that he would win Roosevelt reelection in 1908. On October 28, Roosevelt announced that the lawsuit would proceed. The final victory took place during the Taft Administration. On May 15, 1911, the Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil had violated the Sherman Antitrust Law, and ordered the corporation broken up into 90 companies, each with a different board of directors and managers. Business tycoons were so used to buying politicians that they sometimes forgot that Roosevelt was a man of integrity. During the 1904 presidential campaign, as political pressure built against Standard Oil, Rockefeller tried to buy the Republican Party. When Roosevelt learned that the Republican Party had received a $100,000 donation from Standard Oil, he ordered the check returned. It would be a clear conflict of interest to take

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money from a corporation that the administration was trying to break up. Meanwhile, Roosevelt was trying to jawbone the Northern Securities Company into not taking advantage of its monopoly. He invited Harriman to the White House on October 10, 1904. Harriman blundered when he offered to make a $250,000 donation to the Republican Party. This outraged Roosevelt who terminated their meeting. He explained his standard for donations: “It is entirely legitimate to accept contributions, no matter how large they are, from individuals and corporations . . . with the explicit understanding that they were given and received with no thought of any more obligation.” 27 Roosevelt’s designation of “bad” and “good” trusts depended on whether he could strike a secret and dependable gentleman’s agreement with the titan to curb abuses of power. For instance he eventually approved the U.S. Steel Company worth $492 million and controlling a twothirds American market share after it was created on February 25, 1901, when J.P. Morgan merged Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel Company, Elbert Gary’s Federal Steel Company, and William Moore’s National Steel Company. He also eventually approved International Harvester worth $120 million and controlling 85 percent of the farm machinery industry in 1902, when J.P. Morgan merged two giants, Deering Harvester Company and McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, and three smaller producers, Plano, Milwaukee, and Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner. Almost immediately International Harvester wielded its near monopoly power to drive smaller manufacturers bankrupt by selling machinery at a loss then recouping the initial loss with higher prices. Complaints swelled. In December 1906, Congress ordered the Bureau of Corporations to investigate International Harvester. In January 1907, Morgan sent George Perkins and Elbert Gary to meet with Attorney General Bonaparte and promise full cooperation in any investigation. The Bureau of Corporations found conclusive evidence that International Harvester had systematically engaged in monopolistic behavior. The next step was an antitrust lawsuit. However, after receiving assurances from Morgan, Roosevelt deemed International Harvester a “good trust” and squelched the lawsuit in August 1907. The president needed Morgan and other titans not just to restrain their own predatory behavior but eventually to save the economy. Roosevelt described a “panic” as “fear, unreasoning fear; to stop a panic it is necessary to restore confidence.” 28 America’s latest financial panic erupted in August 1907 and nearly provoked a deep economic depression. 29 Frenzied speculation that stimulated then popped a financial bubble was the cause. The catalyst was the failed attempt of a coterie of schemers to take over the United Copper Company by panicking stockholders with bankruptcy rumors then buying the stocks with borrowed money when they plummeted to fire sale prices. The scheme failed when the United Copper

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Company’s stock prices failed to revive and the coterie could not pay what they owed to banks that had lent them money. Word of this provoked a stampede of depositors from one bank and trust after another. The federal government could do little to stem the panic. Not once but twice, in 1811 and 1836, conservatives had killed United States Federal Banks that regulated the financial system before those years from 1791 and 1816, respectively. The only thing Roosevelt could do was call on Congress to authorize the banks to issue government-backed bonds to cover their debts and losses, and thus rally confidence in the markets. On January 7, 1908, Senator Aldrich introduced a bill that permitted the creation of $250 million worth of such bonds. Opponents led by Robert La Follette denounced this bailout of Wall Street speculators who had devastated Main Street. Roosevelt worked behind the scenes for a compromise. The Senate passed a revised version on March 27. The House was also split over whether to bail out Wall Street. Edward Vreeland of New York devised the compromise that let the House approve the measure by 185 to 145 on May 14. Roosevelt signed the Aldrich-Vreeland Currency Act on May 30, 1908. The bill created a National Monetary Commission to oversee the financial system and intervene to stem panics; this institution was the foundation for the Federal Reserve System established in 1911. The bill also authorized Treasury Secretary Cortelyou to invest first $37 million then $31 million of government bonds into major banks. The trouble was that this infusion was far too little far too late. Only J.P. Morgan and his fellow titans like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Frick, and Andrew Carnegie had the power to rescue the nation from economic collapse. This coterie pumped tens of billions of dollars into the most vital banks, trusts, and other corporations. In doing so the titans not only revived the value of their existing stocks but vastly expanded their corporate empires by buying commanding shares of scores of other companies at rock-bottom prices. Morgan and his cronies exacted a stiff price for their “service.” The biggest coup came when their U.S. Steel Corporation, the world’s first business worth more than a billion dollars, got much larger after paying $30 million for the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, which owned the world’s largest iron ore deposit with an estimated $2 billion value. Roosevelt met with Henry Frick and Elbert Gary at the White House on November 4, 1907. They agreed that an economic collapse might be averted if the government infused another $150 million worth of government bonds and the titans invested a yet to be determined amount of money in the market. Just how much and where the corporate money went depended on the president’s pledge to refrain from any antitrust actions against U.S. Steel. Roosevelt reluctantly agreed. Starting on November 21, Gary managed the oligopoly’s price-fixing through a series of dinners that lasted over a year. Meanwhile, Roosevelt approved U.S. Steel as in compliance with federal antitrust laws. Over the long term, the

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1907 Panic shifted the congressional power balance over whether to regulate the financial system. In 1908, Senator Aldrich led the campaign for a third U.S. bank, to be called the Federal Reserve and established in 1913. So how effective were Roosevelt’s antitrust policies? In his 1903 annual address, he assessed his strategy: “The progress has been done by evolution, not by revolution. Nothing radical has been done; the action has been both moderate and resolute.” 30 This was and would remain true after he left the White House four and a half years later. Actually, his trustbusting words were mightier than his deeds. When it came to trusts, he tended to speak loudly and wield a rather puny stick. In all, he initiated only 44 antitrust lawsuits during his nearly eight years in office as trusts continued to soar in number and voraciousness. In contrast, William Howard Taft, his successor, launched 90 antitrust lawsuits in a mere four years. 31 Starkly different strategies explain the starkly different trustbusting results. Taft’s blind justice beat Roosevelt’s gut instinct hands down. Taft grounded his antitrust policy on the strict interpretation and application of the law. Roosevelt’s approach was as arbitrary as Taft’s was legal by relying on backroom jawboning and handshakes rather than opposing arguments by lawyers before judges. And yet in the popular imagination, Roosevelt is the trustbusting giant and Taft is the Big Business creature. History belies these caricatures. Nonetheless, Roosevelt’s policy was hardly a failure. One must weigh a leader’s deeds against his challenges. When Roosevelt became president the United States was a failed state, with plutocracy deeply imbedded beneath a democratic façade. He was determined to purge plutocracy from the system and restore democracy to America. Given the overwhelming economic and political forces against him, his antitrust crusade failed while daring greatly. If he did not halt let alone reverse the takeover of America’s economy by the trusts, at least he slowed and spotlighted it. By preaching loudly from the Bully Pulpit, he rallied ever more voters, newspapers, and politicians to the antitrust crusade. Arguably all this gave Taft the chance to actually begin disentangling the economy from the trust stranglehold, with his most decisive victory the breakup of Standard Oil into 33 companies with different boards and managers. In all, Roosevelt’s antitrust policy was a limited success. NOTES 1. Roosevelt annual message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Works, 17:91. 2. Roosevelt annual message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Works, 17:92. 3. For the most prominent critical books on his presidency, see: George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper, 1958); Willard B. Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years

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(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1970); David H. Burton, The Learned Presidency: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson (London: Associated University Press, 1988); Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Modern Library, 2001); Alda DiPace Donald, Lion in the White House: A Life of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Basic Books, 2007); Peri Arnold, Remaking the Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, 1901–1916 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011). 4. Roosevelt Autobiography, 196. 5. Eric Rauchway, Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 38. 6. Roosevelt Autobiography, 195. 7. Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 27, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:428–29. 8. David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), 267. 9. Roosevelt Autobiography, 212. 10. Frank Mann Stewart, The National Civil Service Reform League: History, Activities, and Problems (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 65; Arthur Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1982). 11. Richard D. White, “Executive Reorganization, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Keep Commission,” Administrative Theory & Praxis, vol. 24, no. 3 (2002), 507–18. 12. White, Roosevelt the Reformer, 171. 13. Roosevelt Autobiography, 212. 14. Roosevelt annual message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Works, 17:90–160. Unless otherwise noted, the following quotations come from this address. 15. For good books on government antitrust and other regulatory policies, see: Commerce Clearing House, The Federal Antitrust Laws with Summary of Cases Instituted by the United States, 1890–1951 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952); Hans B. Thorelli, The Federal Antitrust Policy; The Origin of an American Tradition (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954); Gabriel Kolko, Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); Abro Martin, Enterprise Denied: The Origins of the Decline of American Railroads (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971); Bruce Bringhurst, Antitrust and the Oil Monopoly: The Standard Oil Cases, 1890–1911 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1979); Stephen Skowronck, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Richard D. Stone, The Interstate Commerce Commission and the Railroad Industry: A History of Regulatory Policy (New York: Praeger, 1991). For good articles on government antitrust and other regulatory policies, see: Arthur Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 45, no. 4 (1959), 571–90; Arthur Johnson, “Antitrust Policy in Transition, 1908: Ideal and Reality,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 48, no. 3 (1961), 415–34; James German, “Taft, Roosevelt, and U.S. Steel,” Historian, vol. 34, no. 4 (1972), 598–613; Leroy Dorsey, “Theodore Roosevelt and Corporate America, 1901–1909: A Reexamination,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 25 no. 24 (1995), 725–39. 16. For good books on the Gilded Age, see: Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (New York: Penguin Classic, 1873, 2001); Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Classic Account of the Influential Capitalists Who Transformed America’s Future (New York: Harvest Book, 1934); Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963); Alfred P. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Leon Fink, ed., Major Problems in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Documents and Essays (New York: Cengage Learning, 2000); Janette Thomas Greenwood, The Gilded Age: A History in Documents (New

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York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Charles W. Calhoun et al., The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America (Boston: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Alan Trachenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007); William Link and Susanah Link, eds., The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Documentary Reader (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). For good books on corporate leaders, see: Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989); Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998); Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy (New York: Henry Holt, 2006); Edward J. Renehand, The Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove Publishing, 2010). For good books on the Morgan empires, see: Vincent P. Carosso, The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1834–1913 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (New York: Random House, 1999); Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove Press, 1990). 17. Treasury, Commerce, and Labor Department statistic web sites. 18. Labor Department statistic web site. 19. Bureau of the Census statistic web site. 20. Roosevelt annual message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Works, 17:90–160. 21. Roosevelt annual message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Works, 17:90–160. 22. Roosevelt Autobiography, 493. 23. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, March 9, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1133. 24. Roosevelt Autobiography, 195. 25. Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 1:184–85. 26. Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company (New York: McClure, Phillips, and Company, 1904). 27. Roosevelt to George Cortelyou, October 26, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:995–96. 28. Roosevelt Autobiography, 242. 29. For good books on the 1907 Panic, see: Upton Sinclair, The Changers (New York: Classic Books Library, 1908, 2008); Robert F. Bruner, and Sean Carr, The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2007). 30. Roosevelt annual address, December 7, 1903, Roosevelt Works, 17:196–249. 31. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 300.

ELEVEN The Square Dealer

My action on labor should always be considered in connection with my action as Regards capital, and both are reducible to my favorite formula—a square deal for every man. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 As a people we claim the right to speak with peculiar emphasis for freedom and for fair treatment of all men without regard to differences of race, fortune, creed, or color. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2

“Square deal” was among Roosevelt’s most celebrated slogans. The slogan actually originated with muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens who, during Roosevelt’s first year in office, rebuked him for not standing “for anything fundamental. All you represent is the square deal.” This inspired Roosevelt, who leapt to his feet and shouted: “That’s it. That’s my slogan: the square deal.” 3 The square deal became the metaphor for Roosevelt’s approach to justice among groups and individuals. He wielded what powers he could as president to realize this ideal. In doing so, he had to prioritize. The answers to two related questions determined his priority list: Which injustices were the most pressing and which did he have the most power to remedy? For Roosevelt, the most urgent injustice was the worsening economic gap between the ever richer rich on one hand and the middle class and poor on the other. He distinguished between wealth obtained by legitimate means that benefited humanity and wealth illegitimately wrought by exploiting the many for the few. He lauded honest entrepreneurship: “In our industrial and social system the interests of all men are so closely intertwined that in the immense majority of cases a straight-dealing man who by his efficiency, by his ingenuity and industry, benefits himself must also benefit others.” 4 He loathed “the representatives of predatory 149

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wealth . . . accumulated on a giant scale by iniquity, by wrongdoing in many forms, by plain swindling, by oppressing wageworkers, by manipulating securities, by unfair and unwholesome competition, and by stockjobbing.” These predators corrupted the legal system so that “there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.” Rich men can buy their way “from serving a sentence which a man of less prominence . . . would have to serve.” The result is that “justice is discredited in the eyes of plain people.” He denounced plutocracy’s destruction of democracy: “Corrupt business and corrupt politics act and react, with ever increasing debasement, one on the other; the rebate-taker, the franchise-trafficker, the manipulator of securities, the purveyor and protector of vice, the blackmailing ward boss, the ballot-box-stuffer, the demagogue, the mob leader, the hired bully and man-killer, all alike work at the same web of corruption.” 5 He darkly warned that if the American “people become so sordid that all that counts is moneyed prosperity, ignoble well-being, and effortless ease and comfort, then this nation shall perish.” 6 To combat these evils, Roosevelt called for “the adoption of some . . . progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either in life or devised or bequeathed upon the death of any individual—a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual.” 7 This provoked an eruption of rage by conservatives who excoriated his proposals and condemned him as a traitor to his class and a socialist. Plutocrats ensured that any attempts by progressives in Congress to convert Roosevelt’s proposed tax on the superrich into law died in committee. Roosevelt completely backed the right of workers to organize themselves and pressure their employers for better pay, benefits, and conditions. 8 He expressed his dedication to helping working-class Americans in his first annual address to Congress on December 3, 1901, just six weeks after becoming president: “With the sole exception of the farming interest, no one matter is of such vital moment to our whole people as the welfare of the wage-workers.” He lauded labor unions for fighting for better conditions for workers: “Very great good has been and will be accomplished by associations of unions of wage-workers, when managed with forethought, and when they combine insistence upon their own rights with law-abiding respect for the rights of others.” 9 He sought to forge a balance of power and ethics between corporations and unions: “I believe in corporations. If a corporation is doing square work I will help it so far as I can. If it oppresses anybody; if it is acting dishonestly toward its stockholders or the public or towards its laborers or towards small competitors . . . when I have the power I shall try to cinch it. So I believe in labor unions. If I were a wage-worker I should most certainly join one. . . . But if the members of labor unions indulge in rioting and violence, or behave

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wrongfully either to a capitalist or to another laborer or to the general public, I shall antagonize them just as fearlessly as under similar conditions I should antagonize the biggest capitalist in the land. . . . My action on labor should always be considered in connection with my action as regards capital, and both are reducible to my favorite formula—a square deal for every man.” 10 Roosevelt’s commitment to workers and unions was soon tested. John Mitchell, who headed the United Mine Workers (UMW), had led his men in a successful strike in 1900 amid the presidential election. Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan embraced their cause while Republican candidate William McKinley called for compromise to resolve the issues. Mark Hanna, the Republican Party boss, talked the mine owners into granting the miners the 10 percent wage increase they demanded to keep the peace and bolster McKinley’s reelection bid. After letting the dust settle, Mitchell led 140,000 Pennsylvanian anthracite miners on strike in spring 1902 to demand a 20 percent pay raise, an eight hour day, honest ways of determining how many tons of coal were dug, and recognition of the union. 11 Roosevelt sympathized with the miners, but for now would not publicly say so. He asked Hanna to take care of the problem. This time the mine owners rejected any notion of compromise for a very simple reason, the more they yielded, the more the miners demanded. Roosevelt then asked Attorney General Knox to investigate the validity of the conflicting claims of owners and miners over the related issues of pay, production, hours, and safety, and what, if anything the federal government could do to force a resolution. Knox’s report acknowledged the strengths of each side but concluded that the government could do nothing as long as the strike remained nonviolent and was confined to one state. The strike persisted. The miners hoped the loss of profits would force the owners to fold. The owners hoped the loss of pay would force the miners to fold. As coal reserves dwindled, prices soared for coal and all the goods and services dependent on it. Industries and power plants asserted mounting pressure on the mine owners and the White House to cut a deal. The savings of miners disappeared and the union’s cash rapidly dwindled. If the strike persisted into the winter, the furnaces and ovens of millions of poorer Americans would be iron cold while inflation devoured everyone’s income. And if that happened, Roosevelt feared the eruption of “the most terrible riots that this country has ever seen.” 12 As winter neared he grew increasingly frustrated: “I do not see what I can do, and I know the coal operators are especially distrustful of anything which they regard as in the nature of political interference. But I do most earnestly feel that from every consideration of public policy and of good morals they should make some slight concession.” Although his hands were tied the public might well vent its anger on the Republican Party in the midterm elections: “We have nothing whatever to do with this coal

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strike and no earthly responsibility for it. But the public at large will tend to visit upon our heads responsibility.” 13 He invited the seven mine owners and Mitchell to meet with him on October 3. This provoked outcries of unwarranted government interference from the owners and their fellow conservatives. He justified his mediation by arguing that “the urgency and terrible nature of the catastrophe impending requires me to use whatever influence I personally can.” He appealed “to your patriotism, to your spirit that sinks personal consideration and makes individual sacrifices for the general good.” 14 This only excited more wrath from the owners. Roosevelt struggled to keep his temper as “they insulted me for not preserving order (and they evidently ignored such a trifling detail as the United States Constitution), and attacked Knox for not having brought suit against the miners’ union as violating the Sherman Antitrust Law.” 15 He failed to get either side to budge from its position. Roosevelt later asked Mitchell if he would lead his men back to the mines if a presidential commission investigated the dispute and proposed a solution. Mitchell politely rebuffed the request, arguing that the workers had already conceded enough. Roosevelt made it known that he was mulling a military takeover of the mines. This worried both the owners and miners. On October 15, Mitchell informed the president that he would agree to a seven man arbitration board if the president named two representatives to join three owner and two miner representatives. Roosevelt agreed and proposed asking such luminaries as Catholic Bishop John Spaulding, former president Grover Cleveland, and Edward Clark, who headed the railroad conductors’ union. The owners rejected this compromise. Their intransigence was turning ever more of the public and press against them. Roosevelt observed that “the little world in which the operators moved was absolutely out of touch with the big world that included practically all the rest of the country.” 16 The swelling pressure finally forced the owners to make a small concession in late October. They agreeing to accept Bishop Spaulding and a union member, as long as he was called an “eminent sociologist,” to the board. This gave Mitchell a face-saving way of signaling the miners to return to work. Roosevelt’s commission met, investigated, debated, and issued a proposal: the owners should grant a 10 percent wage increase, nine hour workday, and arbitration committee to handle disputes, but could continue to refuse to recognize the UMW. The owners and miners accepted the deal. The strike ended. Roosevelt was determined to make the crisis a learning opportunity for both sides by explaining: “It was essential that organized capital and organized labor should thoroughly understand that the third party, the great public, had vital interests and overshadowing rights in such a crisis as that through which we have just passed.” 17 It was the president’s role to represent the public interest.

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Alas the anthracite coal strike in Pennsylvania was hardly the last strike that threatened the public interest. A series of mining strikes, often violent, erupted in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada. Each time Roosevelt carefully studied the situation to determine each side’s rights and wrongs and the costs and benefits of intervening. He spoke softly to the key players while occasionally gesturing to his big stick, ordering the army to expel both the owners and workers from the mines and digging out the minerals itself for the public good. Fortunately, he never had to go that far. Although he did deploy troops to keep order, that was enough to pressure the owners and miners to cut a deal. Tragically, mining was not the only dangerous industry for workers, only the most dangerous. Without tough and enforced government safety regulations, hundreds of thousands of workers annually died or were injured on the job. Roosevelt was determined to change that. He worked with congressional leaders to pass in 1906, the Employers’ Liability Act, that made owners responsible for the safety of their workers. The Supreme Court struck down the act on January 6, 1908, on the grounds that it regulated intrastate as well as interstate commerce. The decision enraged Roosevelt, who fired off a protest letter to Justice William Day: “If the spirit behind these . . . decisions obtained in all the actions of the Federal and State courts, we should not only have a revolution, but it would be absolutely necessary to have a revolution, because the condition of the worker would become intolerable.” 18 Roosevelt was able to get Congress to pass an Employers Liability Act in 1908 that was written carefully to ensure that it applied only to interstate commerce. Meanwhile, Roosevelt struggled to get Congress to enact a workman compensation bill that covered all federal workers. Sponsors introduced such a bill in 1906, but conservatives managed to delay and dilute it for two years. Roosevelt signed the Workman Compensation into law in May 1908. The Workman’s Compensation Act only affected about one in four federal workers or those employed in “hazardous” conditions in arsenals, factories, or military bases. If such a worker was seriously injured on the job and incapable of working he could receive a year’s full pay and half pay for an additional year. Any worker with a claim had to wait fifteen days after his injury before he could begin receiving compensation. Yet another severe problem was child labor. As with many causes, Roosevelt embraced child labor regulations after he read reports detailing the horrendous conditions. 19 The 1900 census revealed that 1,752,187 children or one in five between the ages of five and ten years old worked in “gainful employment,” with the proportion rising with each year. Most children worked long hours in dismal conditions, literally for pennies, while owners reaped huge profits. The issue resonated deeply within Roosevelt. Although he enjoyed a pampered childhood, his father had sought better conditions for poor and orphaned children in New York

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City, and was a founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1875. Roosevelt applauded the National Child Labor Committee’s founding in New York City, on April 25, 1904. The Society lobbied Congress for federal and state laws that established and enforced work hours and conditions for different age groups along with mandatory elementary school for all children under twelve years old. Conservatives argued that any regulations of child labor would hurt business, were unconstitutional, and were a state and local, not a national concern. The conservatives defeated any attempts by Roosevelt and congressional humanitarians to promote a national child labor law. Roosevelt succeeded only in establishing a child labor law for the District of Columbia. Roosevelt convened the first White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children in 1909 which raised consciousness on the issue but conservatives killed any progress until the Fair Standards Labor Act of 1938. Roosevelt launched his latest reform crusade in December 1905, by calling for passage of a tough law “to regulate interstate commerce in misbranded and adulterated foods, drinks, and drugs.” All Americans would benefit as the “law would protect legitimate manufacture and commerce, and would tend to secure the health of welfare of the consuming public. Traffic in foodstuffs which have been debased or adulterated so as to injure health or to deceive purchasers should be forbidden.” 20 He had actually mulled the need to regulate America’s food industry for a long time. He first became aware of the potential hazards of eating processed food during the Spanish-American War, when spoiled meat from lead-sealed cans sickened thousands and killed hundreds of American troops. 21 Roosevelt’s effort to clean up America’s food processing industry got a major boost when Doubleday released Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, on February 26, 1906. Senator Albert Beveridge delivered a copy of The Jungle to Roosevelt at the White House. Roosevelt read the book that night. The next day, he passed the book to Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and asked him to oversee an investigation of the meatpacking industry. Roosevelt and Wilson assigned Labor Commissioner Charles Neil and humanitarian James Bronson the task of conducting surprise inspections of Chicago meatpacking factories. Although the factory owners did everything they could get away with to impede the inspections, what Neil and Bronson found confirmed most of the horrors depicted in Sinclair’s novel. Their subsequent report filled Roosevelt with disgust and indignation. He forwarded their report to James Wadsworth, who chaired the House agriculture committee, and called for decisive action: “The information given me seems to show conclusively that as now carried on the business is both a menace to health and an outrage on decen-

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cy. No legislation that is not drastic and thoroughgoing will be of avail.” 22 The result was the passage of two bills in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Meat Inspection Act. The Pure Food and Drug Act required all food and drug products that were sold across state lines to have their ingredients marked on the package and to be free of a list of harmful ingredients. The Meat Inspection Act empowered the Agriculture Department to inspect meat and egg processing plants whose products were sold across state lines. Inspections included all livestock and poultry before they were slaughtered to ensure they were healthy, then each carcass to ensure it was properly slaughtered, and every plant’s facilities to ensure that sanitation standards prevailed. For both acts, the Departments of Treasury, Agriculture, and Commerce and Labor were responsible for developing appropriate standards. Those guilty of violating these laws could be fined up to $500 and spend a year in jail. The Agriculture Department’s Chemical Bureau was charged with testing all food and drug products for what became a lengthening list of banned harmful ingredients. Conservatives, of course, condemned such regulations as unconstitutional and anti-business, and did what they could to kill the proposed bills. The National Manufacturers’ Association and Chicago Board of Trade sent protest letters to the president that condemned his latest crusade. Roosevelt dismissed the anti-regulation objections as nonsense. In reality, regulations championed markets and the American consumers and producers dependent on them from predators: “The misdeeds of those who are responsible for the abuses we design to cure will bring discredit and damage not only upon them but upon the innocent stock growers, the ranchmen and farmers of the country. The only way permanently to protect these innocent stock growers, these farmers and ranchmen, is to secure by law the thorough and adequate inspection for which I have asked.” 23 He warned the meatpacking and other food processing industries that if they did not yield, he would release the Neil-Bronson report, which would so disgust the American public that they would demand the instant cleanup of the industry backed by the boycott of processed meat and other canned foods. Nelson Aldrich led the obstruction in the Senate by bottling up the Pure Food and Drug Act in the Interstate Commerce Committee that he chaired. But support among his own constituents for the bill was so overwhelming that Aldrich finally yielded and he released the bill. The Pure Food Bill passed the Senate by 63 to 4 on February 21. In May, Senator Beveridge of Ohio outflanked committee obstruction of the Meat Inspection Act by amending it to that year’s Agriculture Appropriation Bill, which passed with overwhelming support in each house. Roosevelt signed the Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drug Acts into law on June 30, 1906. Of course, these were just the first decisive steps on the

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long, politically arduous road of protecting the American people from predators in the food industrial complex. Subsequent bills strengthened the originals. Among the first times Roosevelt publicly asserted his notion of a square deal was for black Americans. He did so in Butte, Montana, which suffered from racial tensions and violence. A black delegation presented him a small silver scale of justice. Displaying the gift, Roosevelt remarked: “This comes in the shape I appreciate—the scales of justice held even.” He then added: “I fought beside the colored troops at Santiago, and I hold that if a man is good enough to be put up and shot at then he is good enough for me to do what I can to get him a square deal.” 24 Actually Roosevelt had decidedly mixed feelings about black Americans. 25 Privately he believed that “as a race and in the mass they are altogether inferior to whites.” 26 He was a pragmatist on racial relations and called on fellow whites to share his attitude: “I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent, but of one thing I am sure . . . that he is here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise and honorable thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have.” 27 Roosevelt celebrated individual blacks with extraordinary achievements. One of his first acts as president was richly symbolic and highly controversial. He invited Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House on October 16, 1901. 28 Washington was born a slave, educated at Hampton College, founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Alabama in 1881, and knit together a national network of black educators, ministers, businessmen, and politicians, known as the Tuskegee Machine and dedicated to improving political, economic, social, and education conditions for African Americans. In his 1896 Atlanta Address, he called for a compromise on race relations, whereby blacks would refrain from demanding immediate political equality if the states ensured that all black children enjoyed a good education. Roosevelt later lauded Washington as “the highest type of all-round man that I have ever met.” 29 Racists across the country condemned Roosevelt’s act. An article by the Richmond Times was typical of the viciousness: “It means that the President is willing that negroes shall mingle freely with whites in the social circle—that white women may receive attentions from negro men; it means that there is no racial reason in his opinion why whites and blacks may not marry and intermarry, why the Anglo-Saxon may not mix negro blood with his blood.” The Memphis Scimitar insisted that Roosevelt’s invitation was “the damnable outrage ever perpetuated by any citizen of the United States.” 30 Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Caroli-

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na, known as Pitchfork Ben, warned that: “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again.” 31 This racist avalanche of bile infuriated Roosevelt: “The idiot or vicious . . . element of the south is crazy because I had Booker T. Washington to dine. I shall have him to dine just as often as I like.” 32 But quiet pleadings from Republican Party leaders tempered Roosevelt’s attitude. His embrace of Washington would cost Republicans not just votes in the south but from across the country. Although Roosevelt did welcome Washington back to the White House, they would never again dine together. Roosevelt struggled to balance justice and politics. During his first sixteen months as president, he did not cause a stir when, of the nearly 3,000 federal positions, he appointed thirteen blacks to federal positions to replace blacks already holding those token positions. Southern racists erupted in fury, however, when he named William Crum the tariff collector for the port of Charleston, South Carolina, in place of a white man. The nomination squeezed through the Senate despite “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman’s vow to kill it. Roosevelt then committed an even more provocative act when he defended Minnie Cox, a black woman, whom racists had terrorized into resigning from the post office in Indianola, Mississippi. He tried to talk her into resuming her post. When she demurred for fear of being lynched, he kept her on the federal payroll and shut down the post office, forcing locals to collect their mail at Greenville thirty miles distant. These actions, however symbolic, provoked eruptions of white racist hatred and black gratitude. Washington wrote him that: “No President has had the gratitude and loyal support of a race to the extent that you have it now.” 33 All along Roosevelt struggled to finesse a terrible racial dilemma: “I have been greatly puzzled to account for the yell of bitter anger caused by my action, and I have found it difficult to know how far I ought to go at certain points, and exactly what I ought to say . . . I have felt that it would be a base and cowardly act not to appoint occasional colored men. I did not want needlessly to excite alarm and resentment. On the other hand, in the interest of both the white and the black in the Southern States, I could not afford to contrive at, and thereby strengthen, a movement of retrogression which in its essence was aimed at depriving all colored men, good and bad, intelligent and degrade, alike, of the elementary rights of citizenship.” 34 Lynchings and other mob violence enraged Roosevelt. Tolerating any such act can lead to anarchy: “Every violent man in the community is encouraged by every case of lynching in which the lynchers go unpunished” and “take the law into his own hands whenever it suits his convenience. In the same way the use of torture by the mob . . . is sure to spread until it is applied more or less indiscriminately. . . . The spirit of

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lawlessness grows with what it feeds on.” He called on all patriotic Americans to “denounce such crimes and to support those engaged in putting them down. As a people we claim the right to speak with peculiar emphasis for freedom and for fair treatment of all men without regard to differences of race, fortune, creed, or color. We forfeit the right to speak when we commit or condone such crimes as these of which I speak.” 35 Roosevelt’s most controversial racial act was his handling of murder allegations against three companies of the 25th Infantry, a black regiment. 36 Hatred between the black soldiers at Fort Brown, Texas, and the white residents of adjacent Brownsville, had simmered ever since the 25th arrived on July 28, 1906. The whites denied the black troops access to their shops and bars, and hurled racist remarks at them in the streets. On August 13, 1906, this hatred reached a critical point when a fight broke out between a merchant and a black soldier. The city council passed an ordinance barring blacks from the town. This infuriated the black troops who muttered threats. That evening, Major Charles Penrose, the 25th’s white commander, ordered his men to stay in their barracks. By some accounts, most obeyed his order, while that night around thirty soldiers swarmed from their base and through the streets of Brownsville, firing their rifles and yelling taunts. They killed a bartender and wounded a police officer, whose arm was later amputated, before withdrawing to their barracks. Amid the carnage were around seventy spent cartridges. Roosevelt ordered the 25th transferred to nearby Fort Ringgold while the army investigated the crime. The threat of white vigilante violence against the blacks caused Roosevelt to dispatch the 25th to Fort Reno, Oklahoma. A series of investigations could not determine who fired the shots. Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald interviewed twelve leading suspects but could not extract any information from them. Inspector General Earnest Garlington spent weeks questioning the soldiers but they still refused to implicate anyone involved in the shootings. Without evidence other than spent cartridges the county court could not indict anyone. The conspiracy of black silence to cover up the murder of one man and crippling of another enraged Roosevelt: “The colored man who fails to condemn crime in another colored man . . . is the worst enemy of his own people, as well as the enemy to all the people.” 37 He reconsidered his liberal assumptions about their race: “I had never really believed there was much justification for the claim of the Southern whites that the decent Negroes would actively or passively shield their own wrongdoers; or at least I had never realized the extent to which this statement was true; but this Brownsville business has given me the most serious concern on this very point.” 38 On November 5, 1906, nearly five months after the incident, the commander-in-chief ordered 167 men, including six Medal of Honor winners, of the three implicated companies discharged dishonorably, barred from

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reenlisting in the American army or navy, and denied any federal pensions or health benefits. Ever since then most legal scholars have criticized Roosevelt’s decision. The Constitution guarantees due process in all legal matters, allows jury trials in criminal cases, assumes that suspects are innocent until proven guilty, and protects suspects against self-incrimination. These rights are also included in the articles of war and the separate system of military justice allowed by the Constitution. Roosevelt violated all these rights when he summarily and dishonorably dismissed 167 soldiers. Critics accused Roosevelt of having committed a legal lynching of those black men. The Constitution League took up the cause of the dismissed soldiers. Joseph Foraker, one of Roosevelt’s worst Senate nemeses, introduced the Brownsville Resolution that called on the army to provide all evidence related to the case to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. After a thirteen month investigation, the committee released a 3,000-page report on March 10, 1908. By nine to four the members concluded that Roosevelt’s dishonorable discharge of the soldiers was proper. The soldiers had obstructed justice in refusing to testify. Meanwhile, the barrage of criticism enraged Roosevelt: “I have been amazed and indignant at the attitude of the negroes and of shortsighted white sentimentalists to my action. It has been shown conclusively that some of these troops made a midnight murderous and entirely unprovoked assault upon the citizens of Brownsville. The fact that some of their number had been slighted by some of the citizens of Brownsville is not to be considered for a moment as provocation for such a murderous assault.” 39 He grabbed a chance to square off with Foraker during the annual Gridiron Dinner between the president and 265 prominent politicians and journalists. The occasion is supposed to be an evening of goodnatured remarks. Roosevelt broke that protocol by excoriating Foraker for challenging his role as commander-in-chief. During his time to reply, Foraker did not mince words in condemning the president for violating the soldiers’ rights. The Senate Committee on Military Affairs revisited the Brownsville incident for another prolonged investigation. On February 23, 1909, the committee issued a report recommending that the discharged soldiers could apply for reenlistment and be accepted if they could somehow prove they had nothing to do with the violence or cover up. The army accepted only fourteen of the seventy who applied. The issue lay dormant until the publication of John Weaver’s book, The Brownsville Raid in 1970. This inspired an investigation by Congress and the army which concluded that the accused were innocent. President Richard Nixon pardoned the troops in 1972. Roosevelt tried to retake the high moral ground during his annual address of December 3, 1906. He condemned lynching for conjuring “into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell

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therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered. Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration . . . and . . . trouble for the next generation of Americans.” 40 In condemning lynching, he was confident that “I have acted as a president must act if he intends to use whatever influence he may have on the side of decency and civilization in the South.” 41 Of course racism was neither confined to the south nor to whites who murdered blacks accused of committing crimes. To varying degrees and ways, racism burned through the hearts and minds and behavior of nearly all Americans from all backgrounds and appearances. There was little he could do about this, especially given the array of other far more pressing problems to overcome on his political agenda. The best he could do was to encourage all Americans to develop and advance themselves, while judging others by their respective merits and morality rather than skin color. Roosevelt did what he could to promote racial, religious, and gender equality among Americans. He was the first president to appoint a Jew to a cabinet post, Oscar Straus as Commerce Secretary in 1906. During his last year in the White House, he boasted that “I have one Catholic in my cabinet, and have had another, and I have a Jew in the Cabinet; and part of my object in each appointment was to implant in the minds of our fellow Americans of the Catholic or of Jewish faith, or of foreign ancestry or birth, the knowledge that they have in this country just the same rights and opportunities as anyone else, just the same chance of reward for doing the highest kind of service.” 42 Roosevelt believed in “putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with men—including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as men.” 43 He first expressed this ideal in his Harvard University thesis entitled “The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law.” Yet, despite these firm beliefs, he did not crusade for political, economic, and social equality between men and women during his presidency. To have done so would have been quixotic rather than progressive as he depleted precious political capital in a then unwinnable cause. That time came just three years after he left the White House. During the 1912 Progressive Party national convention, he had social activist Jane Addams second his nomination as the presidential candidate, and he championed equal civil and voting rights for women with men. In his own relations with women, he always exercised respect for each’s individuality along with a gentlemanly courtesy for their gender, such as rising whenever any women entered the room. Although Roosevelt prided himself in being an “unhyphenated American,” he recognized and appreciated that the nation was founded by colonists and enriched by additional newcomers, many of whom re-

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tained an identity with their ancestral lands. Yet the United States should not accept everyone: “We cannot have too much immigration of the right kind, and we should have none of the wrong kind. The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country.” 44 To ensure this, he called for overhauling naturalization laws to encourage enterprising, creative, adaptive individuals and to screen out, in his words, anarchists, idiots, and paupers. 45 Over time those newcomers would become enterprising, patriotic Americans, thus exemplifying “the only kind of Americanism that really counts . . . the Americanism of the spirit.” 46 America faced a bewildering interconnected array of threats and problems as the new century dawned. For Roosevelt, no threat was worse than plutocracy whose corruption, exploitation, and repression choked American security, prosperity, institutions, and values. Rhetorically, he ended his presidency as contemptuous of plutocracy as when he began it. His 1908 annual message climaxed with these scorching words: “Just as the blackmailer and the bribe giver stand on the same evil eminence of infamy, so the man who makes an enormous fortune by corrupting legislatures and municipalities and fleecing his stockholder and the public, stands on the same moral level with the creature who fattens on the blood money of the gambling-house and the saloon.” 47 Yet Roosevelt could only condemn and was powerless to contain let alone eradicate the plutocracy that acted like a cancer metastasizing within American democracy. NOTES 1. Roosevelt to Ray Baker, August 27, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:909. 2. Roosevelt to Winfield Durbin, August 6, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 3:542. 3. Patricia O’Toole, “TR and the Tyranny of Mere Wealth,” The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 1 (Winter 2007), 44–46. 4. Roosevelt address to Congress, December 5, 1906, Roosevelt Works, 17:315–16. 5. Roosevelt to Charles Bonaparte, January 2, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:884, 885, 887. 6. Theodore Roosevelt, “Rights of Property and Abuses of Wealth,” October 21, 1907, Roosevelt Policy, 2:634. 7. Roosevelt address, “The Man with the Muckraker,” April 14, 1906, Roosevelt Works, 15:421. 8. For good studies of labor, labor policies, and Roosevelt’s impact, see: Irving Greenberg, Theodore Roosevelt and Labor, 1900–1918 (New York: Garland Publications, 1988); Fred Greenbaum, “Ambivalent Friends: Progressive Era Politicians and Organized Labor, 1902–1940,” Labor’s Heritage, vol. 6, no. 1 (1994), 62–76; David Brian Robertson, Capital, Labor, and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to the New Deal (Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor, A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers’ Compensation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 9. Roosevelt annual message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Works, 17:90–160. 10. Roosevelt to Ray Baker, August 27, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:909.

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11. For good studies on the coal strike, see: Robert J. Cornell, The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1971); Jonathan Grossman, “The Coal Strike of 1902: The Turning Point in U.S. Policy,” Monthly Labor Review, vol. 98, no. 10 (1975), 21–28. 12. Roosevelt to Lyman Abbott, September 5, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:592. 13. Roosevelt to Mark Hanna, September 27, 1902, Roosevelt Letters, 3:329–30. 14. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925, 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926–1935), 2:430–33. 15. Roosevelt to Mark Hanna, October 3, 1902, Roosevelt Letters, 3:338. 16. Brands, T.R., 457. 17. Roosevelt to John Woodard, October 19, 1902, Roosevelt Letters, 3:357. 18. Roosevelt to William Day, January 11, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:904. 19. For the child labor reports, see: U.S. Industrial Commission, Final Report, vol. 19 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902); Thomas Adams and Helen Sumner, Labor Problems: A Textbook (New York: Macmillan, 1905); “National Child Labor Committee, Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting,” Annals, vol. 27 (February 1906), 371–99; Florence Kelly, “The Federal Government and the Working Children,” Annals, vol. 27 (February 1906), 289–92. For good studies on Roosevelt’s child labor policy, see: Stephen B. Wood, Constitutional Politics in the Progressive Era: Child Labor and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Walter Trattner, Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970); Ruth Engs, The Progressive Era’s Health Reform Movement: A Historical Dictionary (New York: Praeger, 2003). 20. Roosevelt annual address, December 5, 1905, Roosevelt Addresses, 2:637. 21. William H. Harbaugh, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961, 1975), 103–9. 22. Roosevelt to James Wadsworth, May 31, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:292. 23. Roosevelt to James Wadsworth, June 8, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:296. 24. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 233. 25. For good books on Roosevelt, blacks, and other races, see: Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1980); David W. Southern, The Progressive Era and Race: Reaction and Reform, 1900–1917 (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005). For good articles, see: Max J. Skidmore, “Theodore Roosevelt on Race and Gender,” Journal of American Culture, vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 1998), 35–45; Gary Gerstle, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism,” The Journal of American History, vol. 86, no. 3 (December 1999), 1280–1307. 26. Roosevelt to Owen Wister, April 27, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 5:226. 27. Roosevelt to Albion Tourgee, November 8, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:190–91. 28. Deborah Davis, Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation (New York: Atria Books, 2012). 29. Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, 18 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972–1989), 1:439. 30. Both quotes from Brands, T.R., 423. 31. John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid: The Book that Prompted Congressional Action to Rectify a U.S. President’s Shocking Act of Racism (College Station: Texas A & M, 1992), 99. 32. Roosevelt to Curtis Guild, October 28, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:184. 33. Booker T. Washington to Theodore Roosevelt, January 23, 1903, Booker T. Washington Papers, 7:11. 34. Roosevelt to Carl Schurz, December 24, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:680–81. 35. Roosevelt to Winfield Durbin, August 6, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 3:542. 36. For good studies on Brownsville, see: Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971); John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station: Texas A & M Press, 1970, 1992); Bruecker,

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Thomas, “Prelude to Brownsville: The Twenty-Fifth Infantry at Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, 1903–1906,” Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 2 (1996), 95–106. 37. Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 238. 38. Roosevelt to Ray Baker, March 30, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:634. 39. Roosevelt to Samuel McBee, November 27, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:509. 40. Roosevelt Annual Address, December 3, 1906, Papers Relating to the Foreign Policy of the United States, Part I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), xvi. 41. Roosevelt to Carl Schurz, December 26, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:682. 42. Roosevelt to Lyman Abbott, May 29, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1041–42. 43. Roosevelt Autobiography, 91. 44. Roosevelt Annual Message, December 7, 1903, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:657. 45. Roosevelt Annual Message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:549–50. 46. Roosevelt Autobiography, 40. 47. Roosevelt, “The Campaign against Privilege,” January 31, 1908, Roosevelt Policy, 2:725.

TWELVE The Imperialist

In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or importance, to the exercise of an international police power. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 Nothing can justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American army. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2

The initial twin pillars of Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy were the Monroe and Open Door Doctrines. 3 Under the Monroe Doctrine, the United States asserted a sphere of influence over the Western Hemisphere and warned other great powers against any imperialism in this realm. Under the Open Door Doctrine, the United States asserted the right to trade freely in China and other weak independent countries in Asia and elsewhere around the world, and warned other great powers against violating that right in these regions of common interest. A farsighted secretary of state devised each policy. John Quincy Adams penned the doctrine that President James Monroe declared in 1823. John Hay issued the first Open Door letter to Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Japan in 1899, when they appeared ready to divvy up China among them, and issued follow-up letters in 1900 and 1902. To these policies, Roosevelt added his own policy that became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. 4 If the Monroe Doctrine opposed any imperialism by other great powers in the Western Hemisphere, the Corollary asserted America’s duty and right to intervene and restore order in any country that suffered anarchy and violence, and thus threatened America’s economic and strategic interests there. He first articulated the Corollary as the centerpiece of his 1904 State of the Union address: “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as else165

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where, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or importance, to the exercise of an international police power.” He assured people in the Western Hemisphere and around the world whom this policy offended or frightened that: “We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.” He insisted on America’s benign intentions toward the countries of the Western Hemisphere: “It is not true that the United States has any land hunger . . . as regards other nations, save such as are for their welfare. All that we desire is to see all neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. . . . If a nation shows that it knows how to act with decency in industrial and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, then it need fear no interference from the United States . . . our interests, and those of our southern neighbors, are in reality identical.” 5 Intervention would be a reluctant last resort: “The United States should assume an attitude of protection and regulation in regard to all these little states in the neighborhood of the Caribbean. I hope it will be deferred as long as possible, but I fear it is inevitable.” 6 Roosevelt was an unabashed imperialist, but insisted that he championed a distinct moral version for the modern age. Simply put, imperialism is the conquest and colonization of one people by another. As such, imperialism is as old as history and humanity’s prehistory. He condemned as “short-sighted” those who “speak of all wars of conquest as necessarily evil.” He viewed history through a Social Darwinian microscope whereby different races struggled against one another to survive and, ideally, flourish. Over time only the fittest emerged as great races to rule others. Thus was imperialism natural and could be progressive: “a conquest may be fraught either with evil or with good for mankind according to the comparative worth of the conquering and the conquered peoples.” 7 For instance, historically some empires like the Roman provided peace and prosperity to the vanquished, while others like the Mongol were largely rapacious. Roosevelt believed that most contemporary imperialism was progressive. The ethic of “the White Man’s Burden,” whose sentiment long preceded Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem with that name, required imperial powers to civilize their subject races to the often very distant point where they could be freed to join the ranks of civilized races. Indeed, for Roosevelt, the “most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drove the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him.” 8 He asserted this view throughout his writings,

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especially his four volume Winning of the West series, subtitled “An Account of the Exploration and Settlements of the Country from the Alleghenies to the Pacific.” 9 Ideally, colonies were trusts whereby the colonial power gradually prepared the subject peoples for self-rule. Under the best of circumstances, this process could take decades but possibly centuries. A people’s fitness for independence depended on its level of civilization and that in turned depended on its national character: “Freedom does not mean absence of all restraint. It merely means the substitution of selfrestraint for external restraint, and therefore, it can be used only by people capable of self-restraint.” 10 This involved “a slow, steady, resolute development of those substantial qualities, such as the love of justice, the love of fair play, the spirit of self-reliance, of moderation . . . alone enable a people to govern themselves.” 11 He readily acknowledged the tension between America’s democracy and civilizing mission. During his 1910 address at Oxford University, he explained that “I belong to a nation which is trying, on a scale hitherto unexampled, to work out the problems of government for, of, and by the people, while at the same time doing the international duty of a great power.” 12 Roosevelt was a man of his time who used expressions of his time like civilized races and savage races. He was not racist in the contemporary sense of hating people who look physically different from oneself. Race for Roosevelt was synonymous with nation. He lauded some nations and scorned others, depending on their relative fitness to adapt and thrive in the international struggle for survival. For instance, he contrasted two Asia nations: “Japan, shaking off the lethargy of centuries, has taken her rank among civilized, modern powers . . . while China, by her misfortune, has given us an object-lesson in the utter folly of attempting to exist as a nation at all, if both rich and defenseless.” 13 Roosevelt wielded these principles to guide and justify his foreign policies. The idea that he was a warmonger president is a gross caricature. He saw the world differently from the White House than from his previous political or bureaucratic perches. The assistant naval secretary who zealously pushed for war with Spain over Cuba became a wise prudent owl as president. Indeed he was a chess master in global politics as he peered multiple moves ahead on an array of regional chessboards. His “speak softly but carry a big stick” maxim exemplified his foreign policies. As Roosevelt scanned far beyond the contiguous United States to the ends of the earth he saw no definitive American allies or adversaries, only American interests of varying importance in various regions and countries. Ideally, a president devised policies that appropriately defended or enhanced each interest. Nearly all interests had some economic content; the greater the economic importance, the more likely that they were strategic or worth fighting for. However, some emotional interests

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like pride and influence lacked a price tag. At times hard economic interests might conflict with soft emotional interests. Ultimately each country’s power is limited in varying degrees and ways. Leaders must make tough choices over when to assert power and what array of power to assert. Each foreign crisis that threatened American interests posed unique challenges and thus demanded a unique policy. Roosevelt explained that it was “difficult to know just how far it is best to leave the nations alone and how far there must be interference, and also how far we can with justice prevent interference by others; because in each case the equities vary.” 14 In the late nineteenth century, the United States joined the ranks of countries with the world’s largest economies and militaries. The interests and power of America, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia varied from one issue, country, and region to the next. The United States might find common interest with one or more of the other great powers over one issue and conflict over another issue. Of the great powers, America had the fewest conflicts and most common interests with Britain and France. Although the United States upheld its policy dating to George Washington of “no entangling alliances,” a tacit understanding bound America, Britain, and France as partners in resolving issues of mutual interest. Each acknowledged and backed the other’s colonies and spheres of influence. 15 Two great powers worried Roosevelt the most. When he became president, Germany was just three decades old—the creation of Prussian imperialism in three victorious wars—and was trying to forge a global empire of markets, protectorates, and colonies. Berlin had or would challenge American interests in the Atlantic and Pacific basins in places like Venezuela, Colombia, Santo Domingo, the Virgin Islands, Mexico, Samoa, and the Philippines. Although Japan potentially threatened American interests only in the Pacific basin, Roosevelt worried as much about Tokyo’s intentions and passions as he did those of Berlin. He greatly admired the Japanese for transforming themselves from an isolated, feudal realm into a modern nation within a couple of generations. He viewed Japan’s emergence among the great powers as more progressive than threatening. Japan could at once check the other great powers and help civilize backward peoples. Yet he foresaw that Japan would “be as formidable an industrial competitor as Germany” and “the leading industrial nation of the Pacific.” Japan was “a great civilized nation. . . . There are some things she can teach us, and some things she can learn from us.” 16 Of the rival powers, Roosevelt had the least respect and most contempt for Russia. “For years,” he fumed, “Russia has pursued a policy of consistent opposition to us in the East, and of literally fathomless mendacity.” 17 He saw “nothing of permanent good that can come to Russia, either for herself or for the rest of the world, until her people begin to

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tread the path of orderly freedom, or civil liberty, and of a measure of self-government. Whatever may be the theoretical advantages of a despotism, they are incompatible with the growth of intelligence and individuality in a civilized people. Either there must be stagnation in the Russian people, or there must be . . . a gradual but a very real growth of governmental institutions to meet the . . . need for liberty.” 18 Roosevelt was astonishingly prescient about the future of global politics. Looking forward, he saw clear threats: “Russians and Americans, in their individual capacity, have nothing whatever in common . . . a people with a great future as we have, but a people with poisons working in it.” He predicted that Russia “will sometime experience a red terror which will make the French Revolution pale.” 19 He made an even more astonishing prediction about China: “Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe.” 20 Roosevelt defended or enhanced American interests by playing off the great powers against each other to prevent any one of them or an alliance among them from dominating. The worst threats to American interests were not the aggression of great powers but the corruption, incompetence, and brutality of governments in poor, weak countries. He sought to forge concerts of power among key countries to resolve serious problems that divided them and to promote common interests that united them. Roosevelt was a master of personal diplomacy who reveled in working with his counterparts and their diplomats to resolve problems. He regularly consulted with two key ambassadors in Washington, Jules Jusserand of France and Hermann Speck von Sternberg of Germany, and, to a lesser extent, Kentaro Kaneko of Japan. Tactically he could be blunt or nuanced, discrete or blustering. Yet he was nearly always sensitive to that very powerful and volatile human feeling of pride. In victory he carefully avoided gratuitous boasts or triumphal displays that humiliated his vanquished opponent. Like Cyrano de Bergerac, after secretly advising leaders like Wilhelm II and Nicolas II, he let them take credit for acting on his advice in ways that enhanced their mutual interests. He understood that shared endeavors, or male bonding, could diminish mutual antagonisms and accelerate the compromises vital for deals. He enjoyed playing “tennis court diplomacy” where the vigor, rules, and laughter ideally broke down barriers and forged trust. His Rock Creek expeditions where he invited diplomats for hours of hiking, scrambling up and down hills, and wading chilly streams worked best with those who enjoyed the experience and could provoke humiliation and resentment in those who fell behind or refused to join in. Overall he suffered only one weakness as diplomat-in-chief. He believed that America under his leadership could only promote good and thus any government or group that opposed him was inherently wrong. This obviously handi-

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capped his ability to see issues through his opponents’ eyes and thus find better ways of reaching compromises. Two secretaries of state served Roosevelt, John Hay until his death on July 1, 1905, and then Elihu Root. He considered Hay “one of the most delightful of companions, one of the most charming of all men of cultivation and action. Our views on foreign affairs coincided absolutely.” 21 Yet Hay was “at his best at a dinner table or in a drawing room,” while as “secretary of state under me he accomplished little . . . his usefulness to me was almost exclusively the usefulness of a fine figurehead. He was always afraid of Senators and Congressmen.” 22 In contrast, he had nothing but praise for Root: “To deny Root credit for what the Department of States has done under me as president is a good deal like denying credit to Sherman and Sheridan because they were under Grant. . . . For instance, during the last three years, the bulk of the most important work . . . has been . . . with the South and Central American States. . . . This work has been entirely Root’s. My part in it has been little beyond cordially backing him up.” 23 He sought to mass enough hard and soft military power to back up his foreign policies. 24 Getting the hard power was not difficult. As for the army, he was satisfied with the 85,557 soldiers in 1901; that number remained essentially flat over the decade. However, a more powerful navy was crucial to deterring foreign aggression and seizing opportunities that advanced American interests. Congress obliged by doubling the number of battleships to 16 and doubling navy personnel from 19,000 to 44,500 by the time he left office. All along, he advocated bigger battleships with bigger engines and bigger guns so that America’s navy steamed faster and shot farther than potential enemies. From 1903, his ideal model would bristle with twelve cannons with twelve-inch bores in rotating turrets. As such, he rejected the existing model warship of cannons with smaller but various calibers to respond to a variety of tactical needs. He worked with the Navy Bureau of Construction’s engineers to eliminate the hodgepodge of battleship guns in favor of large guns. His ideal battleship was aimed at battles of annihilation against enemy fleets. An actual naval battle of annihilation during the Russo-Japanese War forced him to reconsider his assumptions. During the battle of Tsushima in May 1905, Japan’s mediumsized guns bested Russia’s larger guns and wiped out the Russian fleet. Despite this evidence, Roosevelt stuck to his guns. 25 Although the Navy Department’s General Board recommended continuing this program to reach 48 battleships by 1920, he rejected this advice. By August 1906, as he scanned the world’s ports and oceans, he reckoned that, regarding “our own navy . . . in number of units it is now as large as it need be.” 26 He was soon forced to reconsider that declaration. Britain’s unveiling of the Dreadnought class of battleships in 1906, rendered obsolete all

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existing battleships including the model that he had helped design and was currently being constructed. Berlin soon announced that it would build its own version of Dreadnoughts within a few years. Other great powers, including the United States, would have to follow suit or risk falling ever further behind in naval power. Roosevelt tried to head off an expensive and dangerous naval arms race by proposing to include at an international conference at The Hague in 1907, negotiations among the great powers to cap their number and types of warships. He hoped that “we might at least be able to limit the size of battleships, and I should put the limit below the size of the Dreadnought. Let the English have two or three ships of the Dreadnought stamp that they have already built, but let all nations agree that hereafter no ship to exceed say fifteen thousand tons shall be built.” 27 He dispatched Andrew Carnegie, the steel titan and humanitarian, to make the rounds of the great powers and talk them into his proposal. Unfortunately, Kaiser Wilhelm vehemently rejected any notion of naval limitation talks, exclaiming, “Every state should build what suits it! It doesn’t concern anyone else.” 28 Despite this rebuff, Roosevelt refused to join the naval arms race since for now it was confined to Britain and Germany. As long as Britain kept its considerable lead in the number of battleships and other warships, German power would be contained. In his December 1906 address to Congress, he simply asked for funds to build an additional battleship each year. He understood the dynamic among technological, economic, and military power. New technologies, especially those with military applications, fascinated him. His first glimpse of the military future actually appeared when he was the assistant navy secretary. In 1898, he witnessed an unmanned “flying machine” skim for a hundred yards or so over the Potomac River; the contraption was created by Samuel Langley, who headed the Smithsonian Institute. Roosevelt immediately understood the implications: “The machine has worked. It seems to me worthwhile for this Government to try whether it will not work on a large enough scale to be of use in the event of war.” He called for a four man committee of scientists and officers to study the military and economic possibilities of flying machines. He was able to get Congress to earmark $50,000 for the project. Unfortunately Langley was unable to create a workable airplane. It was not until December 17, 1903, that Orville and Wilbur Wright became the first men to build and fly an airplane. The Aero Club of America formed in 1906, to lobby the government to promote both civilian and military aviation by developing airports, offering subsidies to inventors and producers, and purchasing aircraft. In December 1907, Roosevelt had the War Department open bids by private companies to supply three aircraft to develop for tasks like reconnaissance, transportation, and combat. The Wright brothers won the bid and their airplane broke records for flight times at Fort Myers in September 1908. Unfortunately, the initial

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enthusiasm deflated after a flight when Orville Wright’s airplane crashed, injuring him and killing his passenger, an army lieutenant. 29 Roosevelt’s next encounter with warfare’s revolutionary future came on August 25, 1905, when he spent fifty-five minutes submerged in a submarine off Oyster Bay; during his sojourn he characteristically insisted on taking the controls himself. Upon surfacing, he exuberantly declared: “I believe a great deal can be done with these submarines.” 30 Although Admiral George Dewey and most Navy Board members shared his enthusiasm, most other naval officers disdained submarines for the glories of commanding battleships. Despite this resistance, Roosevelt and Dewey talked Congress into appropriating funds for the Navy Board to develop submarines. 31 While Roosevelt’s mind churned continuously over grand strategy, he had plenty of gray matter left for relatively minute changes that enhanced naval power. For instance, he sought ways to improve the quality of coal supplied to the navy and the means of conveying it into the storage holds of warships. For the army he mulled minute changes in weapons, training, and equipment. Among the takeaways from his Rough Rider experience was the need for smaller spurs that were less likely to impede walking. Accounts of massed, frenzied Japanese banzai attacks with soldiers thrusting bayonets and officers slashing with samurai swords inspired him to call on the army to emphasize bayonet and sword training for American troops. This infatuation was fleeting as he realized that “a really good man with a loaded rifle who has no bayonet will at close quarters normally beat a really good man who relies on the bayonet.” 32 He then advocated improved marksmanship. Roosevelt and his advisors debated some issues throughout his presidency without resolving them. He recognized that rates of fire could be as important as accuracy. The greater the volume of lead riddling a position, the greater the tendency of troops at the receiving end to fearfully hug the earth rather than fire back. In Cuba, Spaniards firing Mausers enjoyed a faster rate of fire and better accuracy over Americans armed with Krags and Springfields. Should the army invest in developing its own rifle that fired faster and more accurately or buy an existing foreign model? America’s Gatling guns could throw a storm of lead toward the enemy, but were horse drawn, required several men to operate, and tended swiftly to overheat and jam. In contrast, water-cooled German Maxim machine guns spewed 600 bullets a minute, jammed much less often, and were carried and fired by just two men, with one pulling the trigger and the other feeding through long flexible bandoliers of bullets. Roosevelt and his advisors debated whether to develop a better version of the Gatling gun or buy Maxims. A related critical question was how to deploy machine guns. Should they be scattered among regiments or concentrated in a special regiment? Should they accompany cavalry as well

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as infantry? Answers to these questions would critically affect the subsequent tactics. Roosevelt was just as devoted to enhancing the military’s soft power by promoting better leadership, morale, organization, and fighting ability. He propounded an array of military reforms that challenged the entrenched mentalities and interests of conservatives in the military. He alienated many officers by proposing to eliminate inefficient bureaus and replace them with army and navy general staffs capped by a joint chief of staff. He alienated many officers by requiring rotations between Washington and field commands. He alienated the Marine Corps by calling for its abolition and integration with the army. He alienated out-of-shape, overweight officers by requiring annual fitness tests that included arduous hikes. He alienated incapable officers by calling for merit rather than seniority to determine promotions. He alienated capable and incapable officers alike when he elevated his favorites over their heads. He alienated grizzled veterans of the Civil War and Indian wars by all the fame he boasted after his “crowded hour” under fire in Cuba. The army and navy alike split bitterly between small groups of mostly younger, outspoken advocates of reform and everyone else who defended the status quo. Conservative blocs in the army and navy collaborated with powerful senators and representatives to coldcock, waterdown, or stall Roosevelt’s reform proposals. In the Senate, Albert Beveridge of Indiana backed and Eugene Hale of Maine blocked his efforts. As the highly conservative chair of the Naval Affairs Committee, Hale was the man to convince. Joseph Hawley of Connecticut, who chaired the Senate Military Affairs Committee, was more flexible; he eventually approved Roosevelt’s plan to establish an army chief of staff and encourage aging officers to retire early. Most reforms that Roosevelt proposed would have boosted the military’s administrative and field effectiveness. He overruled army objections and formed an army general staff and a joint board of admirals and generals in 1903, but the navy resisted establishing its own general staff until 1915. The Joint Board began devising contingency plans for wars with various countries, eventually assigning code names of blue for the United States, black for Germany, orange for Japan, red for Britain, green for Mexico, and so on. The fitness requirements might have rendered American officers and troops as physically tough as their European counterparts. After investigating just how fit his army officers were actually to wage war on campaign, he “was really shocked at what I found. Many of the older officers were so unfit physically that their condition would have excited laughter, had it not been so serious, to think that they belong to the military arm of the Government.” 33 He found that many “older officers . . . get ossified, and then they are very difficult to deal with in places calling for qualities which they have never exercised or had the chance to exercise; and for a

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flexibility for which they are not now adopted.” 34 His fitness tests provoked grumbling among most officers. Army and navy officers respectively either had to walk fifty or twenty-five miles or ride a horse a hundred or fifty miles in three days. To protect the unfit against being surpassed by the fit, the navy actually reprimanded three officers who walked the fifty miles in one long grueling day and forced them to repeat it over three days since they had not strictly complied with the regulation. Roosevelt tried to set an example when he and three aides rode ninety-eight miles in seventeen hours from the White House to Warrenton, Virginia, and back during a snowstorm in January 1909. 35 Roosevelt eventually was able to push through reforms that based promotions on merit rather than seniority. He induced 134 aging officers to retire in return for being promoted one rank and so enjoy higher pensions. He wielded his presidential power to appoint generals as a way to clear away some of the clogged seniority system. In all, he appointed 39 colonels to brigadier generals with the understanding that they would serve a year or two before retiring. His most famed and criticized attempt to fast-track the most talented officers came in 1906, when he elevated Captain John Pershing, known as “Black Jack” for serving as a lieutenant with the 10th black cavalry, to brigadier general over the heads of 264 captains, 364 majors, 131 lieutenant colonels, and 110 colonels; Pershing would go on to command the army expedition into northern Mexico in 1916 and the army in France in 1917 and 1918. 36 Roosevelt’s most controversial “reform” was his attempt to abolish the Marine Corps so that “no vestige of their organization should be allowed to remain.” His justification was that the marines were “pandering to every political influence. . . . They could not get along with the navy, and as a separate command with the army the conditions would be intolerable.” 37 He actually got the marines off ships and onto land as the first step toward dissolving them into the army. Marine supporters in Congress, led by Thomas Butler who headed the House Naval Affairs Committee, thwarted Roosevelt with a classic trade off. He attached a rider to a naval budget bill that ensured the corps’ survival and returned the marines to ships in return for the construction of two more battleships. Roosevelt’s animus against the Marine Corps is puzzling. The marines spearheaded his attempts to restore order in various Latin American countries. Their deployment in Panama in November 1903, intimidated the Colombian commander into standing down, embarking, and sailing away with his troops. Around the world, Roosevelt’s most daunting military challenge was in the Philippines, where he inherited a guerrilla war. 38 There was irony in his inheritance. He had been an outspoken advocate for taking the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. Now he saw the islands as a liability rather than an asset: “From a military standpoint the Philippines

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form our heel of Achilles.” 39 To govern the Filipinos, he tried to apply imperial principles that he had long advocated. He explained his grand vision in his first annual address to Congress on December 3, 1901: “In dealing with the Filipino people we must show both patience and strength, forbearance and steadfast resolution. Our aim is high. . . . We hope to do for them what has never before been done for any peoples of the tropics—to make them fit for self-government after the fashion of the really free nations.” 40 The ongoing rebellion was all but inevitable after the McKinley administration chose to keep rather than free and protect the Philippines. This intention became clear in December 1898, after the publication of the Treaty of Paris’s terms that transferred the Philippines from Spain to the United States. Emilio Aguinaldo, who headed the would-be independent Filipino government and army, hoped that Americans who opposed colonization would prevent the Senate from ratifying the treaty. After learning that the Senate was poised for ratification, he chose to fight. His men attacked American troops on February 4, 1899, which led first to a conventional then a guerilla war. By December 1899, the Americans had routed the Filipino army. Rather than accept defeat, Aguinaldo dispersed his remaining forces to fight a hit and run war against the invaders. Although Aguinaldo was captured on March 23, 1900, and pledged allegiance to the United States on April 19, the guerilla war smoldered on. America paid an increasingly higher human, financial, and moral cost for attempting to conquer and colonize the Philippines. The eventual victors and vanquished fought a war without mercy against each other. The turning point came on December 20, 1900, when General Arthur MacArthur issued orders to suppress the insurgency with whatever possible means; unofficially, he encouraged his officers to disregard the military legal code. The result was a strategy to destroy the rebels that was as merciless as what Spanish General Weyler had done in Cuba. American troops herded peasants into concentration camps, slaughtered most armed Filipinos, and tortured the survivors into revealing secrets. Meanwhile, the Americans tried to build a viable Filipino government, army, and economy. On March 29, 1900, Governor General Elwell Otis issued a blueprint for municipal governments with elected politicians and officials chosen by merit. Guerillas who laid down their arms and pledged loyalty to the government received amnesty. In July 1900, McKinley appointed William Howard Taft to be the first civilian governor general, and in July 1901 replaced MacArthur with General Adna Chafee. Taft oversaw the construction of sewers, schools, electrical grids, paved roads, water purification plants, hospitals, and other vital infrastructure for Manila and other cities under American control, and the implementation of a modern legal code and court system. Honest, efficient management of customs revenues helped pay for both these projects and the colonial government, including administrators, judges, po-

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lice, and teachers. Tragically, the army’s atrocities in regions with guerrillas continued. Commanding General Nelson Miles opposed America’s conquest of the Philippines. After receiving a copy of a secret report on army atrocities from Major Cornelius Gardener, who governed Tayabas province, he publicly revealed and condemned the crimes. Roosevelt shot back, denouncing Miles for aiding “persons interested in discrediting the work . . . done by the civil and military authorities in the Philippines . . . not with the desire of producing any beneficial result, but with the political design of discrediting the army of which he is the head.” 41 Actually, American soldiers had committed torture, rape, looting, destruction, and murder on a vast scale. According to Gardener’s report and subsequent investigations, the worst offender was General Jacob Smith, better known as “Hell-Roaring Jake,” who unleashed a genocidal war against Filipinos on Samar Island: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” 42 Smith dismissed murdering Filipinos as “shooting niggers.” 43 Although Roosevelt approved of tough methods to crush the insurgency, he recognized that Smith and other officers had gone too far: “I do not like torture or needless brutality of any kind, and I do not believe in the officers of high rank continually using language which is certain to make the less intelligent or more brutal of their subordinates commit occasional outrages.” 44 He had War Secretary Root cable General Chaffee that: “The president wants to know . . . all the facts . . . for the very reason that the President intends to back up the army in the heartiest fashion in every lawful and legitimate method of doing its work. He also intends to see that the most vigorous care is exercised to detect and prevent any cruelty or brutality and that men who are guilty thereof are punished. Great as the provocation has been in dealing with foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder, and torture against our men, nothing can justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American army.” 45 Of course, only a small portion of “all the facts” could never be known. And, in fact, Roosevelt had been aware that the army was committing atrocities four months before they became front page news stories. 46 He wanted to believe that any atrocities were the exception rather than the rule, that “our men have done well, and on the whole have been exceedingly merciful; but there have been some blots on the record.” He understood how a guerrilla war against an alien people in an alien land could bring out the worst in even the best of men: “The enemy were very treacherous and it was well-nigh impossible to find out who among all the pretended friends really had committed outrages, and in order to find out, not a few of the officers” committed torture. 47

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But Roosevelt became deeply discouraged as report after report revealed that the army inflicted horrors universally rather than sporadically. During a speech at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day 1902, he pledged that his administration would do whatever was necessary to ensure that American soldiers upheld rather than sullied the nation’s honor: “Determined and unswerving effort must be made, and has been made and is being made, to find out every instance of barbarity on the part of our troops, to punish those guilty of it, and to take, if possible, even stronger measures than have already been taken to minimize or prevent the occurrence of all such acts in the future.” 48 An investigation by the Senate Committee on the Philippines, chaired by Henry Cabot Lodge, opened on January 2, 1902. Over the next several months the committee compiled enough evidence to persecute 44 soldiers for war crimes, of which 39 were convicted. Torture included the “water cure,” described by Lieutenant Grover Flint as the procedure whereby a victim is strapped down “and then water is poured onto his face, down his throat and nose . . . until the man gives some sign of giving in or becomes unconscious. . . . His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning, but who cannot drown.” 49 That was just one way that Americans tortured Filipinos; others included beatings, burnings, hangings, brandings, and mutilations. General Smith was the highest ranking officer indicted. Roosevelt forced him to resign. An international dimension emerged that complicated America’s efforts to completely conquer the Philippines. Like a feudal lord, the Catholic Church owned vast swaths of land in which hundreds of thousands of peasants toiled. In 1901, around 60,000 peasants revolted, expelled the friars, and divided 400,000 acres of land among themselves. This posed a quandary for the Roosevelt administration. Under the Treaty of Paris, the United States agreed to protect all existing property owners. Yet forcefully returning the land to the friars would push the peasants into the arms of the guerrillas. Roosevelt concluded that the only sensible response was to acknowledge peasant ownership and then buy the land on their behalf from the Vatican. He sent Taft to the Vatican to cut a deal, while mobilizing several American bishops and influential Catholics to gently pressure the pontiff and his staff to accept a reasonable price. Taft and Pope Leo XIII eventually split the difference in their opening bids; the United States would pay the Vatican $7.5 million for title to the land. Roosevelt declared on July 4, 1902, that the guerilla war in the Philippines was over. This was grossly premature. The army fought Muslim rebels in Mindanao until 1913, and insurgencies in Leyte and Samar from 1905 to 1907, and in Cavite in 1909. He wished that the American “people were prepared permanently, in a duty-loving spirit, and looking forward to a couple of generations of continuous manifestation of this spirit, to assume control of the Philippine Islands for the good of the Filipinos. But . . . I gravely question whether this is the case.” He recognized how

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volatile and fickle public opinion was: “In the excitement of the Spanish War people wanted to take the islands. They had an idea they would be a valuable possession. Now they think they are of no value. . . . It is very difficult to awaken any public interests in providing any adequate defense of the islands.” 50 As for Philippine independence, by 1904, he wearily admitted his pessimism: “I believe that they will gradually grow to fit themselves for self-government, but I am not certain that they will so grow, and I have no idea how long the growth will take.” America faced a hard dilemma: “If they do not show themselves fit, then it would be folly to give them anything resembling what Cuba has been given, and the first thing to do is to educate them . . . in self-government and civilization. I wish carefully to refrain from making a promise which even our own people might misunderstand and which the Filipinos would certainly misunderstand.” The only thing to do was to stay the course. 51 By 1907, he was eager to rid America of the burden, writing Taft that “I should be glad to see the islands made independent,” which might soon be a possibility “if they handle themselves wisely in their legislative session.” 52 He deplored the tendency of Americans to want to exploit the Philippines for economic gain while not investing enough to defend let alone economically develop the country. He tried and failed repeatedly to get Congress to cut tariffs for Philippine products from 1902 to 1903, from 1904 to 1906, and from 1906 to 1909. He bleakly noted the result of these rejections for the Filipinos was “great depression, not merely physical but moral.” 53 He concluded that keeping “the islands without treating them generously and at the same time without adequately fortifying them and without building up a navy second only to Great Britain, would be disastrous in the extreme.” 54 Here again Roosevelt was prescient as the Japanese conquered the Philippines in 1942. For centuries visionaries had dreamt of building a canal across the slender isthmus between North and South America. 55 A canal would spur global trade and wealth as ships avoided the months of hard journey around South America’s tip to sail between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The country that built and owned the canal would enjoy an economic and strategic edge over its rivals; the gatekeeper could reward and punish other countries by permitting or denying transit. Yet, a mix of geographic, geopolitical, and technological obstacles stymied any efforts to realize that vision. Only two feasible canal routes existed, one across Colombia’s province of Panama, the other across Nicaragua. Neither country had the financial, technological, or political power to build its own canal. By the late nineteenth century, countries like the United States, Britain, France, and Germany potentially could muster the will, money, and engineering to do so, but had other priorities and got in each other’s way of doing so. That array of obstacles might have persisted another generation or so had Theodore Roosevelt not become president

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and acted decisively to acquire the right to build, run, and defend a canal across Panama, then actually began construction. 56 America’s territorial expansion to the Pacific coast made securing transit rights across the isthmus a priority. The United States acquired the Oregon Territory from Britain by diplomacy in 1846, and the Southwest Territory from Mexico by conquest in 1848. These acquisitions immediately began paying off when gold was discovered in California in 1848, sparking a population and economic boom. Washington signed two treaties that shaped the fate of the Western Hemisphere’s isthmus for the next five decades. Under the 1846 Treaty of New Granada, the United States committed itself to protecting Colombia, then called New Granada, in return for the right to build and defend a transit route “upon any modes of communication that may now exist, or that may be thereafter constructed.” American presidents since then had interpreted and acted upon the principle that the treaty granted the United States extra-territorial rights for a railroad in the short-term and a canal whenever it was financially and technologically feasible. Under the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the United States and Britain agreed to jointly build and defend a canal somewhere across the isthmus, and ceded the right to do so unilaterally. American entrepreneurs built a railroad across Panama and a railroad and steamship route across Nicaragua, with ports at either end; the 47mile Panama railroad cost $8 million and five years to build, and was completed in 1855. These routes cut 8,000 miles from the 13,000 mile ocean journey between New York and San Francisco. The Nicaragua route was actually 500 miles shorter and two days quicker than the Panama route. 57 Washington never lost sight of the canal vision. Over the next half century, the United States launched seven expeditions to chart waters and survey lands for potential routes and in 1870 formed the Interoceanic Canal Commission to determine the costs for various routes. Americans had mastered canal construction with the 363-mile Erie Canal completed in 1825, the most impressive; these canals, however, were for small shallow-draft boats not oceangoing ships. Despite all these American efforts, the French beat them to the punch. In 1878, Colombia granted a 99-year lease to a French company to build a Panama canal in return for an immediate payment of 750,000 francs and an expanding share of revenues from 5 percent to 8 percent in 25 year allotments. Leading this effort was Ferdinand de Lesseps, who completed the Suez Canal in 1869. The challenges of constructing a Panama canal dwarfed his previous effort. It took a decade to dig the Suez Canal across 105 miles of mostly flat desert. Although the best route across Panama was about fifty miles long, it passed through rugged rain forest capped by a 275-foot divide. The worst obstacle was tropical diseases, especially yellow fever and malaria, which decimated the workforce. The

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French were unable literally to move enough mountains and kill enough mosquitos to finish the canal. After raising and spending $287 million over a decade, the company declared bankruptcy in 1889. It was not until 1894, that a consortium of investors named the New Panama Canal Company purchased the shares then fruitlessly sought enough money either to resume construction or be bought out. America’s war victory against Spain and acquisition of a small empire in the Caribbean and Pacific by 1899, made the need for a canal urgent. President McKinley authorized Secretary of State Hay to disentangle America from the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. Hay negotiated a treaty with Ambassador Julian Pauncefote that granted America’s right to build but not defend a canal to be open to all nations. On February 5, 1900, McKinley submitted the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty to the Senate. A group of powerful senators led by Lodge attacked the treaty for not including tenets whereby Britain acknowledged the Monroe Doctrine and America’s right to defend its canal. Roosevelt fired off a letter to Hay arguing that “if that canal is open to the warships of an enemy it is a menace to us in time of war; it is an added burden, an additional strategic point to be guarded by our fleet. If fortified by us, it becomes one of the most potent sources of our possible sea strength.” 58 The Senate ratified the treaty only after attaching amendments that entitled the United States solely to fortify a canal. London rejected the revised version. McKinley had Hay resume talks with Pauncefote, but made it known that without a favorable treaty by December 1901, the United States would build a canal anyway. On November 18, 1901, the diplomats signed a second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty whereby Britain granted the United States the exclusive right to build and defend an isthmus canal. The Senate ratified the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty on December 16, 1901. As vice president and then as president, Roosevelt avidly followed these critical events. An engineering report in December 1901 convinced him that a Panama route was superior to a Nicaragua route. A Panama canal would be shorter, have fewer locks, and would cost about half as much to construct and maintain. Transit on a 49-mile Panama canal would take twelve hours rather than thirty-three hours on a 183-mile Nicaragua canal. A Panama route needed only one artificial harbor as opposed to two for Nicaragua. In March, Roosevelt authorized Hay to begin talks with Tomas Herran, Colombia’s ambassador, for a canal treaty. Meanwhile, Congress headed in a different direction. On November 20, 1901, the Isthmian Canal Commission issued a report that favored a Nicaraguan route. On January 8, 1902, the House of Representatives approved this route by 308 to 2. The Senate was in no hurry. It was not until June 4, 1902, that the Committee on Interoceanic Canals voted seven to four for the Nicaragua route. Yet, attached to this bill was an amendment

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by Senator John Spooner that favored the Panama route, authorized the president to pay no more than $40 million to buy out the New Panama Canal Company’s rights, and an additional $130 million to build the canal within a ten-mile-wide strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Then a spectacular act of nature tipped the political balance between the two routes. A volcano erupted in Nicaragua. This minor eruption came after a horrific eruption in Martinique the previous month that killed over 10,000 people. Opponents of a Nicaragua canal pointed out that Panama had no volcanos. The Senate committee converted the Spooner amendment into a separate bill and sent it to the floor. The Senate voted 42 to 34 for the Spooner Bill on June 19, the House of Representatives 259 to 8 on June 26, and Roosevelt signed it into law on June 28, 1902. Meanwhile, Hay had grown increasingly exasperated trying to negotiate a canal treaty with Colombia. Like other Latin American countries, Colombia had been locked into a vicious cycle of violence, instability, corruption, and poverty since it won independence from Spain. The current dictator was Jose Manuel Marroquin, who overthrew President Manuel Antonio Sanclemente and seized the presidential palace on July 31, 1900. Marroquin rejected the $100,000 annual payment as too low. On January 21, 1903, Roosevelt authorized raising it to $250,000, but warned that he would negotiate with Nicaragua if Colombia did not take the offer. The following day, on January 22, 1903, Hay and Herran signed a treaty that granted the United States a ninety-nine year lease to build and operate but not defend a canal across Panama within a six-mile land zone and three miles out to sea at either end for an initial payment of $10 million and annual payments thereafter of $250,000; Colombia retained sovereignty over the canal and was in charge of security; the United States agreed to pay $40 million to purchase the existing rights from the New Panama Canal Company. The next step was ratification. On March 14, the United States Senate ratified the Hay-Herran Treaty with the overwhelming vote of 73 to 5. Arthur Beaupre, America’s minister in Bogota, explained that Marroquin would get Colombia’s Senate to approve the treaty only if he and his underlings got more money, especially $10 million of the $40 million whereby the United States bought out the New Panama Canal Company. This enraged Roosevelt: “The Colombia people proved absolutely impossible to deal with. They are not merely corrupt. They are governmentally utterly incompetent. They wanted to blackmail us and blackmail the French company; but the main trouble was that they would not or could not act on any terms. The treaty we offered them went further in their interests than we by rights ought to have gone and it would have given them a stability and power such as no other Spanish-American republic possessed. . . . But in spite of the plainest warnings they persisted in

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slitting their own throats from ear to ear.” 59 He was not the first American president to complain about self-defeating overwhelming Latin American greed, corruption, incompetence, and false pride, and he would not be the last. Diplomatically Roosevelt was back to square one. He had several choices. He could offer more money to Colombia. He could imaginatively interpret America’s 1846 treaty with Colombia to dig the canal anyway, although that would undoubtedly lead to war. He could try to talk Congress into authorizing a Nicaragua Canal and then cut a deal with Managua for the right. Finally, he could back independence for Panama and cut a deal with that new government. The last option made the most sense. But first Roosevelt tried one last time to convince the Colombians of the folly of their behavior. On June 8, he had Hay cable Beaupre this diplomatic message to convey to his hosts: “The Colombian government apparently does not appreciate the gravity of the situation. The canal negotiations were initiated by Colombia, and were energetically pressed upon this government for several years. . . . If Colombia should now reject the treaty or unduly delay its ratification, the friendly understanding between the two countries would be so seriously compromised that action might be taken by the Congress next winter which every friend of Colombia might regret.” 60 To bolster this pressure, he issued a blunter message that the New York World reported on June 14: “President Roosevelt is determined to have the Panama Canal route. He has no intention of beginning negotiations for the Nicaragua route. . . . The State of Panama, which embraces all the proposed canal zone, stands ready to secede from Colombia and enter into a canal treaty with the United States . . . giving this government the equivalent of absolute sovereignty over the canal zone. . . . In return the President of the United States should promptly recognize the new Government when established, and at once appoint a Minister to negotiate and sign a canal treaty.” 61 And that is exactly what happened six months later. Although the Colombians excoriated what Roosevelt subsequently did, they could never credibly insist that they received no warning that if they rejected the treaty they would squander a great opportunity and provoke a national disaster. Hoping that Roosevelt was bluffing, they called his bluff, and so lost Panama and the money for a canal. Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick” policy worked only on people not blinded by delusions of grandeur, greed, and wishful thinking. Over the next two months Beaupre periodically informed Hay of Colombia’s latest demands for more money both below and on the diplomatic table, and conveyed Hay’s firm reply that the treaty was not renegotiable. After Colombia’s Senate formally and unanimously rejected the treaty on August 12, Roosevelt began the policy of promoting Panamanian independence in return for a canal treaty.

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Dr. Manuel Amador Guerrero led a coterie of Panama’s elite that on July 25, 1903, secretly committed themselves to independence. Amador sent Gabriel Duque, who edited the Panama Star and Herald newspaper, to meet Hay on September 3. Hay expressed American interest in Panamanian independence but pledged no specific support. A key ally of the independence movement was Philippe Bunau-Varilla, the New Panama Canal Company’s president. Roosevelt welcomed him for an intense talk at the White House on October 9. Roosevelt was cagey to Bunau-Varilla’s queries about just what he would do if Panama’s independence movement actually tried to take over the country and expel the Colombians. While he would “be delighted if Panama were an independent state,” to “say so publicly would amount to an instigation of a revolt, and therefore I cannot say it.” 62 Yet each man emerged from the meeting convinced he had found in the other what he needed to get what he wanted. Roosevelt had Hay meet with Bunau-Varilla on October 15, get details of Panama’s preparations to assert independence, and convey vague support for the venture. The turning point in Roosevelt’s policy came on October 16, when he received a briefing from Captain Chauncey Humphreys and Lieutenant Grayson Murphy who had just returned from an undercover intelligence gathering mission to Panama. They reported that the elite was ready to assert independence and desired American assistance. Roosevelt issued orders for the Pacific Squadron under Admiral Henry Glass to steam for Acapulco, Mexico, while the scattered Caribbean squadron should converge on Colon, Panama. The Panamanian uprising was scheduled for November 4. The odds for its success rose on October 28, when Amador got General Ruben Varon, who commanded the Padilla, one of two Colombian gunboats anchored at Colon, to join the rebels for $35,000. Then, on November 2, the battleship U.S.S. Nashville, commanded by Captain John Hubbard, dropped anchor at Colon. Hubbard had orders to secure the railroad with marines and late the next morning orders to prevent any Colombian troops from landing. A Colombian transport ship packed with 500 troops commanded by General Juan Tovar arrived that night. Early the next morning, Hubbard had not yet received orders to prevent Tovar and his battalion from disembarking. It was up to Colonel James Shaler, the railroad supervisor, to act decisively. In a move worthy of a Hollywood comedy, Shaler detached the Colombian officers from their men. In response to Tovar’s request to transport his battalion to Panama City, Shaler explained that he only had enough train cars available to send him and his sixteen officers. He promised to convey the rest of the battalion later that day. Tovar left Colonel Elisee Torres in charge of the battalion then journeyed with the rest of his officers to Panama City. Oscar Malmros, the American consul in Colon, also kept his cool as he watched the Colombian battalion

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disembark. He cabled Washington that the revolution was pending and would likely succeed despite the Colombian troops. Shaler and Porfilio Melendez, Colon’s police chief, concocted a plan of putting Torres and his troops in all the cars but the last one, which would be reserved for their arms and ammunition; that car would be detached when the train rolled toward Panama City. Meanwhile, that morning in Panama City, the plotters burst into the governor’s palace and gave Governor Jose Domingo de Obaldia a choice of either supporting Panama’s independence or being imprisoned. Obaldia joined their cause. Meanwhile, General Esteban Huerta, who commanded Panama City’s garrison, sold his allegiance for $65,000 and that of his men for $50 each. Huerta then convinced General Francisco Castro, who commanded all Columbian troops, to join the movement. When Tovar and his officers arrived in Panama City, Huerta had his men arrest them. The only resistance came from the Colombian gunboat Bogota, whose captain ordered several shells fired on the city after learning of the uprising. One of the shells killed a man, the only casualty. A shore battery then opened fire on the gunboat, which moved beyond range. As the day lengthened into late afternoon, Torres grew increasingly anxious. Finally, he demanded that Shaler convey him and his men to Panama City. Shaler said that he would happy to do so but two things prevented him from acting immediately. First, there were not enough cars available to squeeze in all the men. Second, the colonel needed to buy a ticket for each man. This stunned Torres who explained that he did not have enough money to pay for everyone. Could he pay on credit? Shaler said yes but only with the governor’s signature. Torres could journey to Panama City, get the governor’s written permission, return to his battalion, pack his men aboard, and finally head back to Panama City. Torres prepared to do so until Shaler informed him of another catch. The train and telegraph would shut down promptly at dusk. He promised the colonel that he would send his men across early the next morning. Torres agreed, having no idea of what had happened at the other end of the railroad. That night Vice Consul Felix Erhman cabled the White House that the coup had succeeded and the conspirators were forming a provisional government led by three consuls. The only chance of thwarting the coup was Torres and his battalion at the Colon train station. Roosevelt cabled Hubbard to do everything possible to prevent Torres and his men from reaching Panama City. Early the next morning Hubbard came ashore with 42 marines and hurried to the station. Hubbard informed Torres that he and his battalion could not board the train. Torres fumed but could do nothing. The morning train from Panama City arrived with word of the coup. Torres demanded if the news was true. Police Chief Porfilio Melendez offered to explain the situation to Torres over drinks at the Astor Hotel.

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When Melendez asked Torres to surrender with his men, the colonel leapt to his feet and shouted that unless Tovar and his men were released and the rebels capitulated, he would “kill every U.S. citizen in the place.” Torres then ordered his men to surround the station. Hubbard fortified his men in a stone warehouse near the station and prepared to fight the Colombians. He managed to get a message to the Nashville to train its guns on the Colombian troop transport. That evening the U.S.S. Dixie dropped anchor off Colon and 400 marines disembarked. Meanwhile, Torres agreed to withdraw his troops to the Colombian transport for $8,000. Over the next week the rest of America’s Caribbean fleet dropped anchor off Colon while the Pacific fleet steamed to Panama City. Roosevelt recognized Panama’s independence on November 6. Philippe Bunau-Varilla returned to the White House on November 13, this time as Panama’s ambassador. The treaty took little time to draft since it was just a slightly revised version of the Hay-Herran treaty. The United States would pay Panama $10 million up front and $250,000 annually thereafter for the right to build, run, and defend a canal within a ten-mile zone across the country and three miles out to sea at either end in perpetuity. Bunau-Varilla ran into a buzz-saw of anger when he unveiled the treaty back in Panama. He had actually signed a worse deal than Colombia which granted only a six-mile-wide zone for 99 years. Nonetheless, Panama’s Senate unanimously approved the treaty on December 2. Roosevelt was determined to prove that his Panama policy was within the boundaries of America’s constitution and international law. This eluded him. During a cabinet meeting, Attorney General Knox could find no legal justification for what he did. In desperation Roosevelt implored War Secretary Root, “Have I answered the charges.” Root could not resist the sardonic reply, “You certainly have, Mr. President. You have shown that you were accused of seduction and you have conclusively proved that you were guilty of rape.” 63 Roosevelt convened Congress in special session to garner support for his Panama policy and canal treaty. He needed the Senate swiftly to ratify the treaty and both houses to appropriate the payoff. Disingenuously, he insisted that “I did not foment the revolution on the Isthmus.” At the same time he condemned Colombia’s government for “signing their death warrant when they acted in such infamous bad faith about the signing of the treaty. Unless Congress overrides me, which I do not think probable, Colombia’s grip on Panama is gone forever.” 64 He also declared that “if the Panamanians had not revolted, I should have recommended Congress to take possession of the Isthmus by force of arms; and . . . I had actually written the first draft of my message to this effect.” 65 Roosevelt systematically defended his policy toward Panama in his annual address to Congress, which he delivered on December 7, 1903. He explained that the 1846 Treaty of Grenada granted the United States the

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extraterritorial right to build and protect a transit route across Panama. Since then Washington had exercised that right to defend its route ten times, four unilaterally and six at Colombia’s request to quell disorder. The most recent time was the previous month when American military forces had displayed but not exercised deadly force to deter a Colombian threat to the American-owned railroad, property, and personnel. He cited 53 examples of violence, upheaval, and attempts to assert independence in Panama. Colombian officials pocketed the transit fees from America’s railroad rather than investing them in hospitals, schools, roads, sewers, drinking water, and electricity that might have alleviated the pervasive poverty. He rejected any notion of submitting to Colombia’s “extortion.” He insisted that the “interest of international commerce” and “the interest of this country . . . demands that the canal should be begun with no needless delays. The refusal of Colombia properly to respond to our sincere and earnest efforts to come to an agreement, or to pay heed to the many concessions we have made, renders it . . . necessary that the United States should take immediate action.” Of the two options, negotiating a canal treaty with Nicaragua or buying the rights to the French-owned New Panama Canal Company, “the latter course is the one demanded by the interests of this Nation.” He then asked Congress to fully back that policy. 66 The Senate approved the treaty by 66 to 14 on February 23, 1904. To realize his dream of an isthmus canal, Roosevelt midwifed Panama’s birth as a new nation. The canal’s construction depended on many crucial forces, including Panama’s political stability. Panama appeared to be off to a good start. The independence leaders swiftly drafted a democratic constitution with a congress, supreme court, and president limited to one term. Manuel Amador became Panama’s first president on February 26, 1904. The $10 million that Panama received after ratifying the canal treaty was a huge nest egg that could financially sustain the country for the foreseeable future if it was wisely invested. The United States guaranteed Panama’s security. Only Panama’s leaders could ruin their nation’s fortuitous beginning by succumbing to the Latin American curse of greed, corruption, favoritism, incompetence, vengeance, and violence. Tragically, Panama’s leaders did succumb. The canal’s construction slowed and its costs soared. To run and develop the Canal Zone, Roosevelt appointed General George Davis as the governor general and a seven man Isthmian Canal Commission chaired by Admiral John Walker. War Secretary Taft would oversee their progress. This team was determined to avoid the mistakes and overcome the obstacles that doomed the French company’s effort. Devastating diseases, inadequate technologies, and corruption had defeated the French attempt to build a canal. The first step was to eradicate yellow fever and malaria. Colonel William Gorgas led the anti-disease campaign modeled on a just completed successful effort in Havana, Cuba. Gorgas and his scientists systematically eliminated the species of

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mosquito responsible for transmitting malaria and yellow fever by fumigating the air where they flew and poisoning the water where they bred. The next step was to revamp the railroad and build spurs to the key sites, while deploying state-of-the-art earth-moving equipment. Unfortunately, these construction challenges overwhelmed the first chief engineer, John Wallace. The project did not take off until 1905, when John Stevens replaced him. Stevens mobilized 3,500 men along the route clearing jungle, dynamiting, gouging and displacing the earth, and constructing locks. Roosevelt visited Panama in November 1906. Weather-wise his timing amid the rainy season could not have been worse. Yet he reveled in getting soaked stomping through the mud from one worker to the next, pummeling hands and exhorting efforts. Manipulating the levels of a steam shovel, he was thrilled to claw earth from the future canal. He would have to impatiently await the Panama Canal’s completion eight years later in 1914. The final bill was $90 million and 5,609 lives. 67 Roosevelt would reckon that price reasonable for such an extraordinary achievement. The Philippines was not the only country that forced Roosevelt to confront the dilemmas of his imperialist outlook and policies. Cuba posed an increasingly complex problem. 68 Affixes to bills by Senators Henry Teller of Colorado and Orville Platt of New York determined the broad outlines of American policy toward Cuba. The Teller amendment to the 1898 war declaration pledged that the United States would not colonize Cuba. The Platt amendment to the 1901 army appropriation bill asserted an American protectorate over Cuba by taking over its foreign affairs and finance, and reserving the right to impose order with military force should anarchy erupt; the United States would only withdraw its troops from Cuba if a stable government were in place that placed its security and a strategic port, eventually Guantanamo, in American hands. The logic behind the Platt amendment was most colorfully expressed by General William Shafter: “Self-government! Why these people are no more fit for self-government than gun-powder is for hell!” 69 The Platt amendment became a tenet of Cuba’s 1901 constitution and the foundation for the 1903 treaty between the United States and Cuba. The Americans initially occupied Cuba with 45,000 troops, three times the number needed to defeat the Spanish. General Leonard Wood commanded both the provisional government and occupation army. A key step in Cuba’s peaceful occupation came in February 1899, when McKinley talked General Maximo Gomez, who commanded the rebel army, to dissolve it and send his men home. McKinley promised that America’s occupation would end as soon as a stable Cuban government was formed. During his two and a half years in charge, Wood governed justly and progressively. American engineers constructed sewage, water, and electricity systems for Havana and other major towns, built dozens of

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hospitals and 3,000 schools, paved streets, rebuilt railroads, and dredged ports. Cuba was far cleaner, healthier, schooled, and prosperous than before the American occupation. A major step in America’s tutelage of Cubans in self-rule came in January 1902, when Wood turned over the government to Tomas Estrada Palma, Cuba’s first elected president. The next vital step came at the presidential palace in Havana in May 1902, when Wood declared the end of America’s military occupation of Cuba. Wood had mixed feelings about these transfers of power. He was relieved that the Americans were leaving but was dismayed that the Cubans were incapable of properly governing themselves. He expected that anarchy was inevitable. His fear was prescient. Violence soon erupted between rival Cuban factions. General Enrique Castillo led a revolt against President Tomas Estrada Palma. Both sides asked Washington to intervene on its behalf. Roosevelt sent William Howard Taft to serve as Cuba’s governor-general and two warships to Havana to show support for the beleaguered government; while Taft disembarked, for now the marines stayed aboard. He explained that “I have just been notified by the Cuban government that they intend to ask us forcibly to intervene . . . and I have sent them a most emphatic protest against them doing so. I loathe the thought of assuming any control over the island such as we have over Porto Rico and the Philippines.” 70 Complicating his problems with Cuba was obstructionism by some in Congress. Senator Joseph Foraker criticized Roosevelt for sending the warships, pointedly reminding him that America’s treaty with Cuba empowered Congress rather than the White House to approve any dispatch of troops to that country. Roosevelt defended his decision, arguing that “I am sure you will agree with me that it would not have been wise to summon Congress to consider the situation in Cuba, which was changing from week to week.” 71 Yet, on the other hand, he reluctantly concluded that: “We cannot permanently see Cuba a prey to misrule and anarchy.” 72 A huge obstacle to restoring order to Cuba was the corruption, ineptness, and intransigence of Palma and his cronies. Palma initially rejected Roosevelt’s advice to work with Taft and talk with the rebels. Roosevelt wrote Taft that: “I do not believe we should, simply because Palma has turned sulky and will not act like a patriot, put ourselves in the place of his unpopular government and face all the likelihood of a long drawn out and very destructive guerrilla warfare.” 73 He warned Cuba via its ambassador in Washington, that anyone “responsible for armed revolt and outrage . . . is an enemy of Cuba” and “Cuban independence.” The United States would intervene only if Cuba “has fallen into the insurrectionary habit” and “lacks the self-restraint necessary to secure peaceful selfgovernment.” He called on “all Cuban patriots to band together, to sink all differences and personal ambitions, and to remember that the only way they can preserve the independence of their republic is to prevent

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the necessity of outside interference.” He reminded the Cubans that by treaty America was empowered to maintain order and stability in their country, and explained that he had appointed Taft as Cuba’s provisional governor general to quell the chaos. 74 He was well aware of how delicate the situation’s psychology was. He cautioned Taft to “avoid the use of the word intervention in any proclamation or paper of yours and if possible place the landing of our sailors and marines on grounds of conservation of American interests emphasizing the temporary character of the landing.” 75 It took Taft only three and a half weeks, from September 19 to October 13, 1906, to restore order. A key step came on September 29, when he finally got Palma and his cabinet to resign. He then talked Castillo and his followers into standing down. He reorganized the government’s finances and began paying overdue bills. Roosevelt congratulated Taft on his progress, told him that he was sending him a backup force of 6,000 troops, while cautioning him that any fighting “should be between Cubans who are upholding order and the bandits. I am anxious that there should be no bloodshed between Americans and Cubans.” 76 With his work done, Taft turned over the governorship to Charles Magoon on October 13. Taft had performed short-term political miracles. Over the long-term, Cuban stability and prosperity were inseparable. Cuba’s political and economic leaders asked that America open its market to Cuban exports. Roosevelt made a speech calling on Americans to help nurture Cuba’s political and economic development, then called on Congress to pass a bill that reduced American tariffs by 20 percent for Cuban products and eliminated them for sugar, its largest export. American sugar interests killed the bill. Nonetheless, Cuba remained stable if corrupt and poor. After finally withdrawing American troops on January 29, 1909, Roosevelt finally fulfilled a much earlier boast: “Not a European nation would have given up Cuba as we gave it up.” 77 President Theodore Roosevelt asserted imperialism in three countries, the Philippines, Cuba, and Panama. In the first two countries he inherited the spoils of America’s victory over Spain but the third was his own initiative. Of the three, only the subjection of the Philippines involved war, although it was an especially vicious guerrilla war that eventually ended only after American troops slaughtered as many as a couple hundred thousand Filipinos. The McKinley administration could have avoided that horrific war had it asserted a protectorate rather than colony over the Philippines that embraced and nurtured rather than suppressed the independence movement led by Emilio Aguinaldo. Although Roosevelt was not then part of McKinley’s government, he enthusiastically supported its policy to colonize the Philippines. As president Roosevelt carried on a political effort to win Filipino hearts and minds that paral-

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leled the military and police effort to crush the uprising. The Americans tried to develop the Philippines by building economic and social infrastructure like roads, ports, electricity, sewage, water, and schools, while nurturing the population for eventual self-rule by turning over ever more government duties to the natives. The Americans avoided a guerrilla war in Cuba by assuming a protectorate over that country while asserting the same nation-building efforts that they deployed in the Philippines. Roosevelt’s imperialism was at once the most blatant, sophisticated, and successful in Panama where he engineered its independence from Colombia in a virtually bloodless coup, and then got the new government to grant the United States the right to build and defend a canal across the country linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The efforts of the Roosevelt and subsequent administrations to develop the Philippines, Cuba, and Panama politically and economically failed in all three countries where deeply entrenched vicious cycles of mass corruption, poverty, violence, incompetence, and authoritarianism proved to be unbreakable. Today the Philippines and Panama have illiberal democracies while Cuba is a communist dictatorship, and most people in all three countries remain mired in poverty. Roosevelt’s imperialist legacy has only one unsullied dimension. The Panama Canal has enriched not just America and its host country but the global economy. And for that alone, he was perhaps justified in his boast that: “I am, as I expected to be, a pretty good imperialist.” 78 NOTES 1. Roosevelt annual message, December 6, 1904, Roosevelt Addresses, 2:176–77. 2. Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1938), 1:342–43. 3. For good books on Roosevelt’s foreign policies, see: Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956); David H. Burton, Theodore Roosevelt: Confident Imperialist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968); Raymond A. Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and International Relations (Waltham, MA: Ginn-Blaisdell, 1970); Frederick W. Marks III, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979); James R. Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt and World Order: Police Power in International Relations (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006). For good articles, see: David Burton, “The Influence of the American West on the Imperialist Philosophy of Theodore Roosevelt,” Arizona and the West, vol. 4, no. 1 (Spring 1962), 5–26; David Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Social Darwinism and Views on Imperialism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 26, no. 1 (1965), 103–18; Richard Collin, “Symbiosis versus Hegemony: New Directions in the Foreign Relations Historiography of Theodore Roosevelt,” Diplomatic History, vol. 19, no. 3 (1995), 473–97; Frank Ninkovich, “Theodore Roosevelt: Civilization as Ideology,” Diplomatic History, vol. 10, no. 3 (1966), 211–45; Jeffrey Engel, “The Democratic Language of American Imperialism: Race, Order, and Theodore Roosevelt’s Personifications of Foreign Policy Evil,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 671–89; Serge Ricard, “Theodore Roosevelt: Imperialist or Global Strategist in the New Expansionist Age?” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 639–57; William Tilchin, “For the Present

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and the Future: The Well-Conceived, Successful, and Farsighted Statecraft of President Theodore Roosevelt,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 658–70; Simon J. Rofe, and John M. Thompson, “Internationalism in Isolationist Times: Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and a Rooseveltian Maxim,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies, vol. 9, no. 1 (2011), 46–62. For good studies on Roosevelt’s Caribbean policies, see: Howard C. Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927); Dana G. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964); Richard H. Collin, Theodore Roosevelt’s Caribbean: The Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Latin American Context (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990); Richard Collin, “The Caribbean Theater Transformed: Britain, France, Germany, and the U.S., 1900–1906,” American Neptune, vol. 52, no. 2 (1992), 102–12. 4. For good studies on the Roosevelt Corollary, see: Vesser, Cyrus, “Inventing Dollar Diplomacy: The Gilded Age Origins of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” Diplomatic History, vol. 27, no. 3 (2003), 301–26; Serge Ricard, “The Roosevelt Corollary,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1 (2006), 17–26; Matthias Maass, “The Catalyst for the Roosevelt Corollary: Arbitrating the 1902–1903 Venezuelan Crisis and Its Impact on the Development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 20, no. 3 (2009), 383–402. 5. Roosevelt annual message, December 6, 1904, Roosevelt Addresses, 2:176–77. 6. Roosevelt to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., February 10, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:724. 7. Roosevelt, Winning of the West, 3:175–76. 8. Roosevelt, Winning of the West, 3:45–46. 9. Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West: An Account of the Exploration and Settlements of the Country from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, 4 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1889–1896). 10. Roosevelt to Charles Eliot, April 4, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:769. 11. Roosevelt address, National University in Cairo, March 28, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt, African and European Addresses (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 25. 12. “The World’s Development,” Theodore Roosevelt’s Speeches in Europe (New York: C.S. Hammond, 1910), 120–25. 13. Roosevelt address, San Francisco, May 13, 1903, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:393. 14. Roosevelt to Edward Hale, December 17, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:209. 15. William N. Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). 16. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, June 16, 1905, 4:1230–31. 17. Roosevelt to George Meyer, December 26, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1079–80. 18. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, June 13, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:829. 19. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, August 13, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:647. 20. Beale, Roosevelt and the Rise of America, 174. 21. Roosevelt Autobiography, 212. 22. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, January 28, 1909, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1489–90. 23. Roosevelt to Andrew Carnegie, February 26, 1909, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1539. 24. For good studies on the American military during this era, see: Richard D. Challener, Admirals, Generals, and American Foreign Policy, 1898–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973); James L. Abrahamson, America Arms for a New Century: The Making of a Great Military Power (New York: Free Press, 1981). For good articles on the army, see: Oyos, Matthew, “Theodore Roosevelt, Congress, and the Military: U.S. Civil-Military Relations in the Early Twentieth Century,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2 (June 2000), 312–30; Matthew Oyos, “Courage, Careers, and Comrades: Theodore Roosevelt and the United States Army Corps,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 10, no. 1 (2011), 23–59. For good books on the navy and Roosevelt’s influence during this era, see: William R. Braidsted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897–1909 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958); Gordon C. O’Gara, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of the Modern Navy

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(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969); Henry J. Hendrix, The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009); Henry J. Hendrix, Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009). For good articles, see: Seward Livermore, “The American Navy as a Factor in World Politics, 1903–1913,” American Historical Review, vol. 63, no. 4 (1958), 863–79; Albert C. Stillson, “Military Policy without Guidance: Theodore Roosevelt’s Navy,” Military Affairs, vol. 25, no. 1 (1961), 18–31; John Grenville, “American Naval Preparations for War with Spain, 1896–1898,” Journal of American Studies, vol. 2, no. 1 (1968), 33–47; Peter Karsten, “The Nature of ‘Influence’: Roosevelt, Mahan, and the Concept of Sea Power,” American Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4 (1971), 585–600; Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs, vol. 48, no. 4 (1984), 174–79; Peri Arnold, “Policy Leadership I the Progressive Presidency: The Case of Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Policy and His Search for Strategic Resources,” American Political Development, vol. 10, no. 2 (1996), 333–59; Matthew Oyos, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Implements of War,” Journal of Military History, vol. 60, no. 4 (1996), 631–55; Simon J. Rofe, “Under the Influence of Mahan: Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and their Understanding of American National Interest,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 732–45; Carl Hodge, “A Whiff of Cordite: Theodore Roosevelt and the Transoceanic Naval Arms Race, 1897–1909,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 712–31. 25. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992). 26. Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid, August 7, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 4:348–49. 27. Roosevelt to Andrew Carnegie, September 6, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:398–99. 28. Frederick Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs, vol. 48, no. 4 (1984), 177. 29. Roosevelt to John Long, March 25, 30, 1896, Roosevelt Letters, 1:799, 2:806; Bill Robie, For the Greatest Achievement: A History of the Aero Clubs of America and the National Aeronautic Association (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993), 20–22; James Tobin, To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight (New York: Free Press, 2004); Charles J. Gross, “George Owen Squier and the Origins of American Military Aviation,” Journal of American Military Aviation, vol. 54 (July 1990), 284–85. 30. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, September 6, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 5:15. 31. Richard Knowles Morris, John P. Holland, 1841–1914: The Inventor of the Modern Submarine (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1966); Robert L. O’Connell, Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the U.S. Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 32. Roosevelt to Adna Chaffee, July 3, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1261. 33. Roosevelt Autobiography, 31. 34. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, March 12, 1901, 3:11. 35. Roosevelt Autobiography, 31. 36. Edward Renehan, The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in War and Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 132; Frank E. Vandiver, Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1977). 37. Butt Letters, 184–85. 38. For good books on the Philippine war and Roosevelt policy, see: John Taylor, The Philippine Insurrection against the United States, 5 vols. (Pasay City, Philippines: Eugenio Lopez Foundation, 1971); H.W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); John Gates, Schoolboys and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1898–1903 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973); Richard E. Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philip-

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pine-American War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Oscar M. Alfonzo, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines (New York: Oriole Editions, 1974); Richard E. Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and the PhilippineAmerican War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Stuart Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Brian Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990); Brian Linn, The Philippine War, 1899–1903 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); David J. Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007); Gregg Jones, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream (New York: New American Library, 2012). For good articles, see: William Braisted, “The Philippine Naval Base Problem, 1898–1909,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (1954), 21–40; Matthew Jacobson, “Imperial Amnesia: Teddy Roosevelt, the Philippines, and the Modern Art of Forgetting,” Radical History Review, no. 73 (1999), 116–27; Gregory Wright, “The United States and the Philippines’ War for National Liberation,” Bulletin of the American Historical Collection, vol. 32, no. 4 (2004), 31–47; Annick Cizel, “Nation-Building in the Philippines: Rooseveltian Statecraft for Imperial Modernization in an Emergent Transatlantic World Order,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008), 690–711; Thompson, J. Lee, Theodore Roosevelt Abroad: Nature, Empire, and the Journey of an American President (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 39. Roosevelt to Silas McBee, August 27, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:776. 40. Roosevelt, first annual address, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Works, 17:128. 41. Roosevelt to Elihu Root, March 19, 1902, Roosevelt Letters, 3:244. 42. Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990), 191. 43. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, July 19, 1902, Roosevelt Letters, 3:298. 44. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, July 19, 1902, Roosevelt Letters, 3:298. 45. Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1938), 1:342–43. 46. Morris, Theodore Rex, 101. 47. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, July 19, 1902, Roosevelt Letters, 3:297–98. 48. Roosevelt speech, May 30, 1902, Bishop Letters, 220. 49. Lieutenant Grover Flint Testimony on Atrocities, 57th Congress, 1 session, 1902, Senate Document 331, vol. 25, no. 33, part 1; Louise Barnett, Atrocity and American Military Justice in Southeast Asia: Trial by Army (New York: Routledge, 2010), 88. 50. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, August 21, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:761. 51. Roosevelt to James Schurman, August 26, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:906–7. 52. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, August 21, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:762. 53. Roosevelt to Joseph Cannon, March 2, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:605. 54. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, August 21, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:762. 55. For good books on Roosevelt’s policy toward Panama, see: David McCullough, The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977); Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal; The Crisis in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Richard H. Collin, Theodore Roosevelt’s Caribbean: The Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Latin American Context (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). For good articles, see: Robert A. Friedlander, “A Reassessment of Roosevelt’s Role in the Panamanian Revolution of 1903,” The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 2 (June 1961), 535–43; James Vivian, “The ‘Taking’ of the Panama Canal Zone: Myth and

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Reality,” Diplomatic History, vol. 4, no. 1 (1980), 95–100; J. Hogan, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Heroes of Panama,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1 (1998), 79–94. 56. For an excellent book, see: David McCullough, The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977). For good articles on Roosevelt’s policy toward Panama, see: Robert A. Friedlander, “A Reassessment of Roosevelt’s Role in the Panamanian Revolution of 1903,” The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 2 (June 1961), 535–43; James Vivian, “The ‘Taking’ of the Panama Canal Zone: Myth and Reality,” Diplomatic History, vol. 4, no. 1 (1980), 95–100; J. Hogan, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Heroes of Panama,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1 (1998), 79–94. 57. McCullough, Path between the Seas, 32–39. 58. Roosevelt to John Hay, February 18, 1900, Roosevelt Letters, 2:1192. 59. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, November 9, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:651. 60. The Story of Panama, Hearings on the Rainey Resolution before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913), 146. 61. New York World, June 14, 1903. 62. Roosevelt to Albert Shaw, October 10, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:628. 63. Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1938), 1:404–5. 64. Roosevelt to Albert Shaw, November 6, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:649. 65. Roosevelt to William Thayer, July 2, 1915, Hay Letters, 2:328. 66. Roosevelt address, December 7, 1903, Roosevelt Autobiography, chapter 14 appendix, 274–89. 67. McCullough, Path between the Seas, 610–11. 68. For good studies on Roosevelt’s Cuba policy, see: David Healy, The United States in Cuba, 1898–1902 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963); Alan R. Millett, The Politics of Intervention: The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1906–1909 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968); Louis Perez, Cuba between Empires (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983); Christopher Abel, “Controlling the Big Stick: Theodore Roosevelt and the Cuban Crisis of 1906,” Naval War College Review, vol. 40, no. 3 (1987), 88–98. 69. David Healy, The United States in Cuba, 36. 70. Roosevelt to Joseph Foraker, September 28, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:430. 71. Roosevelt to Joseph Foraker, September 28, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:430–31. 72. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, September 9, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:401. 73. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, September 25, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:423. 74. Roosevelt to Don Gonzalo de Quesada, September 14, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:411–12. 75. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, September 26, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:424. 76. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, October 2, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:437–38. 77. Roosevelt to Silas McBee, August 27, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:775. 78. Roosevelt to Arthur Lee, October 6, 1909, Roosevelt Letters, 7:32.

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I want to make things so pleasant for Japan . . . that with entire selfrespect they can propose or assent to such a proposition. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 I trust you notice that the American battleship fleet has completed its tour of South America on scheduled time, and is now having target practice off the Mexican coast. (Theodore Roosevelt to Kaiser Wilhelm II) 2

Theodore Roosevelt insisted that power and duty were inseparable at every political level from interpersonal to international. This truism was as old as humanity but becomes increasingly vital as countries become increasingly interdependent. With globalization international and national interests converge. 3 Those who are stronger must work together to help those who are weaker. In serving others one serves oneself: “As our modern life goes on, ever accelerating in rapidity, and the nations are drawn closer together for good and for evil and this nation grows in comparison with friends and rivals, it is impossible to adhere to the policy of isolation. We cannot avoid responsibilities, and we must meet them . . . manfully. . . . We cannot avoid, as a nation, the fact that on the east and west we look across the waters at Europe and Asia.” 4 Interests will continue to clash but governments should exhaust all peaceful means to resolve them before wielding force. The more powerful one’s army and navy, the less likely they will draw blood, and the more likely they will inspire reason in oneself and others. While those principles serve as enduring foreign policy guidelines, what specifically an administration does will vary considerably from one issue to the next. The key is first to identify the nature of the foreign threat or opportunity, and then to select the most appropriate available 195

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array of hard and soft power resources that best protects or enhances American national interests. Among the first diplomatic challenges where Roosevelt applied his principles was a boundary dispute between America and Canada. 5 In one of history’s greatest land deals, the United States bought Alaska for $7.2 million from Russia in 1867. Ottawa promptly proposed and Washington rejected a commission to delineate the boundary. The question over just where to draw the line between Alaska and Canada lay dormant until the Klondike gold rush began in 1896. Around 100,000 ambitious people joined the rush over the next few years and 30,000, mostly Americans settled in the Lynn Canal region that served as a trailhead for getting to Canada’s distant Klondike. Ottawa asserted a claim to that region. President McKinley rejected the claim but offered to lease land to Canadian businesses and proposed a joint commission to determine the frontier. On October 20, 1899, Secretary of State Hay signed a protocol that let Canadians lease land in the region. For Roosevelt the question of who legally owned that territory was indisputable. Agreements between the British and Russian governments in 1828 and the Russian American Company and Hudson Bay Company in 1838 recognized that region as Russian so it was now American. After becoming president, he repudiated the protocol and insisted that the United States had sole title to the territory grounded on the 1828 and 1838 agreements along with subsequent British, Russian, American, and Canadian maps. Ottawa protested and asked London to back its claim. The British did so reluctantly; they recognized that America’s legal claim was rock-solid but feared alienating their Canadian provincials. In March 1902, Roosevelt authorized Hay to propose an arbitration commission with three Americans, two Canadians, and one Briton with a majority vote to decide the issue. He also made it clear that if gold were discovered in the region he would immediately dispatch troops to defend that American territory. Hay and Michael Herbert, who became British ambassador after Julian Pauncefote died in May 1902, haggled over the issue on and off for the next eight months. On January 24, 1903, they signed the Hay-Herbert Treaty that authorized a six man commission, with each side providing three “impartial jurists of repute,” to resolve the dispute. To get the Senate to ratify the treaty, Roosevelt designated such American nationalists as senators Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and George Turner of Washington, and Secretary of State Elihu Root, as the commissioners. The Canadians protested these choices as lacking partiality. Roosevelt then asserted a diplomatic offensive in London formally via secretary of legation Henry White and informally via Oliver Wendell Holmes and Arthur Lee, and his English friend Cecil Rice to get the British to pressure the Canadians to appoint commissioners that would decide the question on legal rather than political grounds. Regardless of

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who composed the commission, they would literally work under the gun. Roosevelt again asserted that he would dispatch troops to defend the region if the commission deadlocked. For seven weeks the commission members carefully analyzed the documents. Then, on October 20, 1903, by a vote of four to two, with British commission Richard Webster, Lord Alverstone siding with the three Americans, the commission ruled that the United States owned the disputed territory. The Canadians fumed but were legally required to yield. Roosevelt chalked up his latest diplomatic victory. Venezuela’s political history since winning independence in 1821 was as dismal as that of other Latin American countries. Independence did not bring freedom. Instead Venezuela was locked into a vicious cycle of violence, corruption, poverty, and dictatorship that persists today and for the indefinite future. In 1902, Cipriano Castro, the latest caudillo or strongman, had held the presidential palace since 1899. During those four years he and his cronies had plundered the treasury, shook down loot from as many rich Venezuelans and foreign investors as possible, and stopped payments on debts that Venezuela owed lenders from a dozen foreign countries. The pressure rose by foreign victims on their governments to force Castro to pay what Venezuela legally owed. On November 11, 1902, Kaiser Wilhelm II and King Edward VII agreed to mass warships before Venezuelan ports to pressure Castro’s regime. As their respective governments began to implement that policy, word reached the White House of what was transpiring. How Roosevelt handled this crisis exemplified his “talk softly but carry a bit stick” policy. 6 His first reaction was to sympathize with the creditors. Just a year and a half earlier, in July 1901, when he was vice president, he had proclaimed: “If any South American country misbehaves toward any European country, let the European country spank it.” 7 He tolerated retaliation by European states against deadbeat Latin American countries “as long as the punishment did not take the form of seizure of territory and its more or less permanent occupation by some old-world power. At this particular point such seizure of territory would have been a direct menace to the United States because it would have threatened or partially controlled the approach to the projected isthmian canal.” 8 Now he bristled at word of warnings by German officials that if Venezuela could not pay what it owed with money, it would pay with land. He was determined to uphold the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that committed the United States to preventing European states from seizing any new colonies in the Western Hemisphere. Fortuitously, naval exercises for America’s Caribbean squadron were scheduled for waters near Puerto Rico that month. Roosevelt decided to transform this exercise into a massive show of force by ordering other Atlantic squadrons to the West Indies. By November 21, four battleships,

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four cruisers, two gunboats, and 600 marines under the command of Admiral George Dewey, whose fleet had demolished the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in 1898, were anchored off Isla Culebra, Puerto Rico, while two battleships and four cruisers under Admiral George Sumner were steaming to a rendezvous north of Trinidad. Berlin and London had their ambassadors inform Hay on November 25, that Britain and Germany would pressure Venezuela to pay what it owed. Roosevelt upped his ante on December 4, when he had Navy Secretary William Moody dispatch more warships to the Caribbean until 53 American warships vastly outgunned the combined German and British fleet of 29 warships. On December 7, the German and British ambassadors told Castro that they were shutting their embassies in Caracas and the combined fleet would soon blockade Venezuela’s ports if he did not pay up. Roosevelt deftly split the German-British alliance by pressuring Berlin and ignoring London. He was confident that Britain would swiftly back down from a military showdown with America, given its worsening burdens of warring against the Boers in South Africa and defending its global empire, along with the vulnerability of Canada to an American invasion. On December 8, he summoned German ambassador Theodor von Holleben and told him “to inform his government that if no notification for arbitration came during the next ten days I would be obliged to order Admiral Dewey to take his fleet to the Venezuelan coast and see that German forces did not take possession of any territory.” He then presented a map and showed Holleben “that there was no spot in the world where Germany in the event of conflict would be at a greater disadvantage than in the Caribbean Sea.” 9 Wilhelm had until December 18 to agree to submit the dispute to an international arbitration panel or else. Holleben assured him that Germany had no intention of seizing territory in Venezuela or elsewhere in Latin America. The crisis turned violent on December 9, when the British and German fleet sank four Venezuelan gunboats to raise the pressure on Castro. The next day Roosevelt summoned Holleben, demanded whether the kaiser had accepted arbitration, and after hearing no, told him that “Dewey would be ordered to sail twenty-four hours in advance of the time I had set.” 10 Holleben hurried away to cable word of Roosevelt’s determination and the shorter time with which Germany must act. On December 11, Italy issued its own ultimatum and eventually a small Italian squadron joined forces with the German and British fleet. This swelling assertion of allied power worked. On December 16, Castro asked the White House to arbitrate the dispute. Roosevelt agreed, but only after he raised the pressure. As Hay informed London and Berlin that Castro had accepted arbitration, Roosevelt leaked a report to the press that Dewey’s fleet was steaming to Trinidad to join Sumner’s fleet.

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The British and German governments agreed on December 18 and 19, respectively, to accept arbitration. Roosevelt later recalled with pride: “Less than twenty-four hours before the time I had appointed for calling the order to Dewey, the Ambassador notified me that His Imperial Majesty the German Emperor had directed him to request me to undertake arbitration myself.” Wilhelm agreed to back down after Roosevelt accepted a vital face-saving act—he would destroy all written records that revealed what the kaiser had done. Roosevelt later went even further by summoning Dewey to the White House for a private scolding after the admiral publicly boasted of having taught Wilhelm a lesson. Roosevelt admonished Dewey to avoid saying anything that might “foment trouble between ourselves and any foreign power, or who delight in giving the impression that we are walking about with a chip on our shoulder. We are too big a people to be able to be careless in what we say.” 11 Having displayed his big stick, spoken softly but firmly, and gotten results, Roosevelt now pointedly ordered the American fleet to scatter to various ports for the Christmas holidays. The allied blockade continued. German warships bombarded several Venezuelan costal forts on January 17. Talks opened at Washington. On February 13, 1903, Venezuela agreed to a payment plan with Britain, Germany, and Italy that involved stretching out the payments, lowering the interest rate, writing off some of the debt, and devoting 30 percent of the customs revenues to payments. The allies lifted their blockade on February 19. A dispute then arose between the three allies and seven other repayment claimants, including the United States, over who would get paid in what order for how much. On May 7, 1903, these ten countries agreed to take their dispute to the International Arbitration Court at The Hague, Netherlands. On February 22, 1904, the court ruled that the three blockading countries deserved priority in any repayments. For Roosevelt, his handling of the Venezuelan crisis and especially Wilhelm exemplified his “speak softly but carry a big stick” policy: “I succeeded in impressing upon the Kaiser, quietly and unofficially, and with equal courtesy and emphasis, that the violation of the Monroe Doctrine by territorial aggrandizement on his part around the Caribbean meant war, not ultimately, but immediately and without delay.” 12 A crisis in the Dominican Republic erupted in 1904 that resembled earlier crises in Venezuela and Cuba. The country was locked into a vicious cycle of poverty, corruption, incompetence, violence, and authoritarianism. Over the decades Americans had invested in ranches, plantations, and other businesses there amid a worsening rebel insurgency against the government. From 1893 to 1901, an American company ran the country’s customs, but the government took over that vital source of revenue and looted it. The latest dictator, General Carlos Morales, took power in 1902 and was as venal and inept as his predecessors. By February 1904,

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the Dominican Republic’s government owed $32 million to foreign, mostly European investors, and was increasingly struggling to make payments. As in other Latin American countries, many of the Dominican elite actually called for being ruled by Americans rather than their own countrymen. An outburst of violence in February forced Roosevelt to act. Gunman killed an American sailor ashore and fired on an American warship docked in Santo Domingo’s harbor. Roosevelt authorized the warship’s captain to take what measures he deemed essential for protecting American lives and property. The captain ordered his gunners to open fire on guerrilla positions in the hills and sent his marines ashore to restore order in the town. Roosevelt explained his policy: “Santo Domingo is drifting into chaos after a hundred years of freedom” and so “shows itself utterly incompetent for government work. Most reluctantly I have been obliged to take the initial step of interference there. I hope it will be a good while before I have to go further.” 13 Morales sent Foreign Minister Juan Sanchez to the White House in February 1904, to implore Roosevelt to annex the Dominican Republic. The president politely declined the offer. Later he expressed his frustration that “I have been hoping and praying . . . that the Santo Dominicans would behave so that I would not have to act in any way. I want to do nothing but what a policeman has to do in Santo Domingo. As for annexing the island, I have about the same desire to annex it as a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong-end-to. Is that strong enough?” 14 The International Arbitration Court rebuffed his appeal for it to resolve the crisis. As the situation worsened over the next year, Roosevelt reluctantly agreed to form a temporary protectorate over the Dominican Republic. On February 7, 1905, diplomats from the two countries signed a treaty that entrusted Washington with the country’s defense and foreign policy, along with customs collection if the government defaulted. In March, an Italian warship dropped anchor in Santo Domingo’s harbor and demanded that the government pay what it owed. The government pleaded bankruptcy. Roosevelt arranged for American officials to collect the country’s customs revenues, place them in a New York bank, and divvy out 45 percent of the money to the Dominican government and the rest to the foreign creditors in proportion to their claims. Although Santo Domingo agreed, the Senate split over the deal. Advocates could not muster enough votes to surpass the two-thirds threshold until 1908. The Senate vote was symbolic since it merely put an official stamp on an ongoing American operation that resolved the crisis. For most of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, the “Eastern Question,” or Ottoman Empire’s fate, took an inordinate amount of diplomatic attention among the great powers. That “sick man

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of Europe” was tottering from internal decay and international pressure from Russia and Austria that wanted to grab territory if it collapsed. America’s interest in the Ottoman Empire was limited to ensuring an open door for its merchants and missionaries whose disruptive presence inadvertently helped undermine Ottoman rule. In recent years, Sultan Abd al-Hamid had tried to limit the ability of merchants to reap profits and of missionaries to save souls. With growing irritation, Roosevelt listened to the complaints of those two interest groups. Their problems were low on the list of American national security interests. Yet any affront to America’s open door policy encouraged other foreign governments to defy Washington. In August 1904, he had a big stick with which to speak softly to Constantinople about its obstructionist policy. Admiral Theodore Jewell’s fleet of six battleships and eight cruisers was currently anchored at Tangier to pressure Morocco’s sultan to free two Americans kidnapped by a rebel leader. He ordered Jewell to sail from Tangiers to Smyrna. Within days of the massive American fleet’s arrival, Roosevelt got word from Constantinople that the sultan had agreed to treat Americans, especially missionaries who ran schools, just like those from other countries. The president then ordered Jewell to steam his fleet back to Tangiers. Roosevelt acted decisively when he learned that Ion Perdicaris, who headed America’s small community in Tangiers, and his nephew Cromwell Varley had been kidnapped by bandits led by Ahmed ben Mohammed el Raisuli on May 18, 1904. 15 Raisuli’s motive was vengeance. For four years, Sultan Abedlazziz IV’s regime had held him prisoner before releasing him after he pledged undying loyalty. Now, as the price of freedom for the hostages, Raisuli demanded autonomy for his Berber tribe in the Rif Mountains, the release of all remaining prisoners from his tribe held by the sultan, the dismissal of the pasha or governor who had imprisoned him, the governorship of two wealthy Moroccan provinces, and 70,000 silver Spanish dollars. To reinforce his points, he had the throat of the sultan’s messenger slit after he disdainfully rejected any concessions in return for foreign hostages. Upon hearing of the murder, Roosevelt told Hay that “our position must now be to demand the death of those who harm [Perdicaris] if he is harmed.” 16 Roosevelt ordered three squadrons to sail for Tangiers, Admiral Albert Barker’s four battleships from the North Atlantic, Admiral French Chadwick’s two cruisers and two gunboats from the South Atlantic, and Admiral Theodore Jewell’s three cruisers from northern European waters. The hope was that an American fleet in Tangiers would help the sultan reconsider his policy of not negotiating with Raisuli. He had Hay cable Samuel Gummere, America’s consul in Tangiers, this message: “President wishes everything possible done to secure the release of Perdicaris. He wishes it clearly understood that if Perdicaris is murdered, this

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government will demand the life of the murderer. . . . You are to avoid in all your official action anything which may be regarded as an encouragement to brigandage or blackmail.” 17 Roosevelt received Raisuli’s latest demand on June 15; he now insisted on governing four provinces. Clearly his demands would expand with his impatience. At this Roosevelt asked Hay to consult with Britain and France on mounting a joint campaign against Raisuli. Neither the British nor the French approved the idea. The French were especially leery of any American or other foreign involvement in a country that they intended to conquer for themselves. Further dampening any notion of a rescue was the State Department’s evidence that Perdicaris was not an American citizen after all; apparently he had renounced his citizenship during the Civil War to avoid taxation and conscription, and had become a Greek citizen. Ironically, Roosevelt was asserting America’s available military and diplomatic might to rescue a tax- and draft-dodger who rejected the United States. Roosevelt fumed at having publicly committed himself to saving such a wretch. But how would he and America look if he reneged on the technicality that it was Greece’s duty to rescue its own citizen? Roosevelt angrily stayed the course. Without any power to pressure Raisuli, he could only squeeze the sultan. He had Hay cable this stark message to Gummere to convey to the sultan: “We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.” 18 Hay cautioned Gummere not to land marines or takeover the customs house without specific White House orders. The American pressure finally forced the sultan to submit to Raisuli’s demands on June 21. Raisuli released his hostages and the crisis ended, but not Roosevelt’s involvement in Morocco. A crisis erupted in March 1905, when Kaiser Wilhelm met with Sultan Abedlazziz at Tangiers, and talked him into resisting French demands for a protectorate over his realm. He also pressured the sultan to grant Germany naval base rights at Agadir. The French, their confidence boosted by a defensive alliance with the British signed in 1904, asserted that Morocco was in France’s sphere of influence and warned Wilhelm to stay away. The French and Germans moved troops closer to their respective borders. Although neither power wanted war, neither wanted to back down and perhaps encourage future aggression from the other. What was needed was a face-saving way for Paris and Berlin simultaneously to compromise with each declaring a limited victory. Wilhelm secretly asked Roosevelt to convene a conference to arbitrate their conflicting claims. The crisis’s gravity compelled Roosevelt to do so: “I felt in honor bound to try to prevent a war if I could, in the first place, because I should have felt such a war to be a real calamity to civilization; and in the next place, as I was already trying to bring peace between Russia and Japan, I felt that a new conflict might result in what would literally be a world conflagration; and finally for the sake of France.” 19

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The conference opened at Algeciras, Spain, just across the Gibraltar Straits from Morocco, on January 16, 1906. Delegations from thirteen countries, including the United States, were present to assert their respective interests in Morocco. A deadlock ensued over the question of who should create and control a modern police force for Morocco. To break the deadlock, Roosevelt had War Secretary Root present Wilhelm on February 19 a four point plan: 1. Moroccan officers and men would serve as the sultan’s police force; 2. an international bank with shares equally financed by the great powers would pay for the police force; 3. French and Spanish officers would train, pay, and control the police force; and 4. Morocco would maintain an open door for trade, investment, and law for all nations. On February 22, Ambasssdor Sternberg conveyed Wilhelm’s reply that he would accept every suggestion except French and Spanish control over Morocco’s police, which should be under international control. On March 7, Roosevelt cabled a stern warning directly to Wilhelm: “If the conference should fail because of Germany’s insisting upon pressing France beyond the measure of concession described in this proposed arrangement, the general opinion of Europe and America would be unfavorable, and Germany would lose that increase of credit and moral power that the making of this arrangement would secure to her . . . I most sincerely hope that Your Majesty will take this view and throw upon France the responsibility for rejecting, if it is to be rejected, the suggested arrangement.” A week later Wilhelm replied that he “was gladly willing to take your advice as a basis of an understanding” but continued to reject French and Spanish control of the police. This infuriated Roosevelt who warned Sternberg that he would publish all his secret correspondence with the kaiser and the ambassador if Wilhelm did not yield. Faced with the humiliating disclosure of Roosevelt’s months of delicate diplomacy designed to save him from his own aggressive follies, Wilhelm accepted all four points. 20 Roosevelt wielded flattery hoping to prevent Wilhelm from suddenly getting cold feet over the deal. In a publicized speech to the German diplomatic corps, he congratulated the kaiser for “the work that has been accomplished in the Algeciras convention which” was “held chiefly because of the initiative of Germany.” He explained that although the conference’s specific issues were not crucial to the United States, “it is always our concern to see justice obtain everywhere . . . and to work for the cause of international peace and good will . . . I hope and believe that the conference” will strengthen “relations between the mighty empire of Germany and the mighty republic of France.” 21 It took another eight weeks for diplomats to work out the details. Under the Treaty of Algeciras signed on April 7, 1906, Morocco essentially became a French protectorate, although Spain shared control of the police, and each signatory contributed to an international bank for which it would have one vote on the board to France’s three votes. The long-

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smoldering crisis ended when Morocco ratified the treaty on June 18. As for the United States, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty without a reservation stating that America was not legally committed to involvement in any European political questions. The Senate’s rejection diplomatically meant little. What mattered was Roosevelt’s decisive secret intervention in pressuring Wilhelm to compromise and stand down. Two powerful interest groups shaped American policy toward China, merchants and missionaries. American trade with China began in 1784, when the first merchant ship dropped anchor at Canton, and since then had slowly, steadily expanded until 1839, when war erupted between Britain and China over Beijing’s attempts to enforce laws against the selling by foreigners of opium in the kingdom. The British won that war and with the 1842 treaty of Nanjing, forced China to cede Hong Kong Island, open five ports to trade, and let missionaries live and preach in China. The United States received the same trade and proselytizing privileges as Britain with the 1844 Treaty of Wangxia. Ever more American missionaries journeyed to China to save, in their minds, 400 million souls. The British and French fought and eventually defeated China from 1856 to 1860; under the 1860 Convention of Beijing, the Chinese opened more of their kingdom to foreign trade and investment. The United States soon got the same privileges. Over the next thirty years, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan forced China’s government to concede enclaves of territory in which each enjoyed exclusive privileges. The restrictions on American trade and investments increased to the point where, on September 6, 1899, President McKinley had Secretary of State Hay issue diplomat notes to Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan asking them to confirm that they would uphold China’s sovereignty and American equal rights to trade and invest in China. Although each country either did not reply or replied vaguely, Hay issued a second round of notes on July 3, 1900, that thanked the great powers for guaranteeing an Open Door policy toward China. Western imperialism split China’s government and people between modernizers who wanted to adapt and traditionalists who wanted to resist. In November 1899, the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known derisively by westerners as the Boxers, led a revolt against the government and foreigners in China. They murdered merchants and missionaries across China and by June had besieged the foreign legations in Beijing. This inspired Dowager Empress Tz’u-hsi to declare war against the western powers on June 21. Eight countries—Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Japan, Italy, and the United States—supplied contingents to a 20,000 man army that landed at Tientsin, fought its way to Beijing, and liberated the besieged legations on August 14. On September 7, China’s government signed the Boxer Protocol with the foreign

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alliance, and promised to pay a $335 million indemnity, execute the rebel leaders, and guarantee China’s opening to foreign trade, investment, and proselytizing. America’s largest investment in China was the American China Development Company, formed in 1895 by a consortium of financial titans led by J.P. Morgan. The central investment would be an 850 mile railroad from Hankow to Canton that was estimated to cost $40 million. Beijing approved the railroad in 1898 as long as the American China Development Company did not sell the rights to another country. In 1901, business interests controlled by Belgium King Leopold II bought a controlling stake in the company. On December 23, 1904, Chinese ambassador Chentung Liang-Cheng presented Hay with a document formally revoking the railroad concession. Morgan tried to regain control by buying back a controlling portion of the shares from Leopold. This appeared to resolve the conflict until Morgan got second thoughts and tried to sell off the stock. This triggered Roosevelt’s intervention. Roosevelt feared that the railroad company’s dissolution would sully America’s image. The world would contrast the failure of Americans to build a railroad compared to the success of the British, Germans, French, and Russians to build railroads across other swaths of China. On July 18, 1905, he wrote Morgan that while “it is not my business to advise you what to do” and “I cannot expect you or any of our big business men to go into what they think will be their disadvantage. But if you are giving up this concession, if you are letting this railroad out of American hands, because you think that the Government will not back you up, I wish to assure you that in every honorable way the Government will stand by you . . . to see that you suffer no wrong whatever from the Chinese or any other Power. . . . My interest of course is simply the interest of seeing American commercial interests prosper in the Orient.” 22 He left unsaid his request that “the big business men” retain and fulfill their investment to uphold American interests and honor. On August 7, Morgan visited Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill where he explained the difficulties of doing business in China, which was why only twenty-eight miles of track had been completed and investors were dumping their shares. Roosevelt countered that bad American management and speculation was as much or more to blame than Chinese corruption and incompetence. Morgan reinvested in the company on August 30. Complicating the railroad issue was a Chinese boycott of American goods that began on August 1, 1905, in protest against discrimination against Chinese living in America and restrictions on new immigrants. Roosevelt toyed with the idea of sending an American expedition to pressure Beijing into ending the boycott, but finally recognized that the United States lacked the military power to do so. Instead he had Ambassador William Rockhill make a purely legal argument to the Chinese govern-

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ment that the boycott violated the 1858 treaty. The government finally agreed to suppress the boycott in 1906. 23 Perhaps no international problem better revealed Roosevelt’s brilliance at geopolitics and diplomacy than his understanding of and policy toward the conflict between Russia and Japan in northeast Asia. 24 A war between Russia and Japan was almost inevitable. The Russian empire had expanded eastward to the Pacific in the seventeenth century, and was currently building a railroad across the continent. Vladivostok was Russia’s principal port in the Far East, but was ice-free only half the year. Japan’s expansion in northeast Asia was much more recent. In 1854, an American fleet commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry had forced Japan to break two and a half centuries of self-imposed isolation, and form diplomatic and trade relations. A government takeover by progressives in 1868 led to political, economic, and military reforms that transformed Japan from a medieval into a modern country. That in turn emboldened and empowered Japan’s leaders to carve out an empire in northeast Asia. In 1872, the Japanese took over the Ryukyu or Okinawa Island chain. In 1894 and 1895, Japan warred victoriously against China and won a huge indemnity along with Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaotung Peninsula. The Triple Intervention by Russia, Germany, and France forced Japan to return the Liaotung Peninsula to China. The Japanese were enraged when, in 1898, Russia leased the right to build and defend a railroad south down Manchuria and the Liaotung Peninsula to Port Arthur. When China’s Boxer Rebellion erupted in 1900, Russia moved 177,000 troops into Manchuria to protect the railroad it was building. In April 1902, Russia and China signed a treaty whereby the Russians would withdraw their army from Manchuria in three stages over the next three years. In April 1903, Russia refused to implement its second withdrawal stage. Meanwhile, in 1902, Japan and Britain formed a defensive alliance whereby each would fight alongside the other if it was attacked by two or more other powers. Tokyo targeted Korea for eventual conquest. In July 1903, Tokyo offered to recognize Russia’s sphere of influence over Manchuria if St. Petersburg recognized Japan’s sphere of influence over Korea. At this point, Roosevelt asserted America’s Open Door policy toward China, including Manchuria. First, he bluntly warned Foreign Minister Juntaro Komura and Ambassador Kentaro Kaneko not to “get ‘the big head’ and enter into a general career of insolence and aggression; that such a career would undoubtedly be . . . very unpleasant to the rest of the world, but that it would in the end be still more unpleasant for Japan.” 25 Then, he issued a press release that condemned Russia for violating the “faith of all the powers as to the open door in Manchuria” and especially for barring “our people from access to the Manchurian trade.” The result

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was “the reverse of friendly relations with the United States.” 26 St. Petersburg assured Roosevelt that by October 8, 1903, Russia would apply the Open Door to all of Manchuria accept Harbin and complete the second stage of its troop withdrawal. This pledge satisfied Roosevelt but not Tokyo. St. Petersburg made a counterproposal to Tokyo with only minor differences from Japan’s original. Rather than negotiate, the Japanese chose to war against Russia. The Russo-Japanese War began on February 8, 1904, when Admiral Heihachiro Togo launched his destroyers and torpedo boats in a sneak attack against Russia’s fleet anchored in Port Arthur, and damaged two battleships and severely damaged a third battleship along with four cruisers. A Japanese army landed at Inchon, Korea, marched northward to the Yalu River, and then crossed it westward into Manchuria to sever Russia’s supply line. In April 1904, the Japanese besieged Port Arthur. In August 1904, a Japanese fleet destroyed Russia’s Far East fleet in the battle of the Yellow Sea. The land war ground to a bloody stalemate. Although Roosevelt kept America strictly on the sidelines, he calculated that a Japanese victory, as long as it was limited, served American interests better than a Russian victory. The Japanese had borrowed heavily from American financiers to pay for their war and invest in their economy. If Japan lost it might have trouble repaying its loans. An overwhelming Japanese victory, however, would disrupt the power balance: “If the Japanese win out, not only the Slav, but all of us will have to reckon with a great new force in eastern Asia.” That then might “mean a struggle between them and us in the future.” The Russo-Japanese War’s ideal result “may well be that the two powers will fight until both are fairly well exhausted and then peace will come on terms which will not mean the creation of either a yellow peril or a Slav peril.” 27 Russia faced a crisis in January 1905. Russia’s army and navy had suffered severe defeats over the previous eleven months, the war’s financial cost soared, and on January 22, troops slaughtered hundreds of demonstrators before Tsar Nicolas II’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Many people within and beyond Russia wondered whether not just a crushing Japanese victory but even the tsar’s overthrow was imminent. Roosevelt recognized that the time was ripe for a peace that preserved the power balance between Russia and Japan. In January 1905, he had Ambassador Lloyd Griscom offer Tokyo his mediation. The Japanese politely declined; they were busy planning land and sea campaigns designed to deliver knockout blows to Russia. In February, Japan’s army launched an offensive that captured Mukden three weeks later on March 10. Japan’s fleet destroyed Russia’s Baltic fleet at the battle of Tsushima Straits on May 27 and 28, 1905. In history’s most lopsided naval victory, the Japanese sank twenty-two Russian warships, including eight battleships, and captured seven more, while losing only three torpedo boats.

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With this decisive triumph, the Japanese could make peace on their terms. On May 31, Tokyo instructed Ambassador Kogoro Takahira to ask Roosevelt to mediate. 28 Roosevelt eagerly agreed and promptly summoned Ambassador Arturo Cassini to ask if Russia was interested in ending the war. After consulting with his government, Cassini rejected mediation and insisted that Russia would eventually win the war. On June 5, Roosevelt had Ambassador George von Lengerke Meyer present Tsar Nicholas a letter that bluntly explained: “It is the judgment of all outsiders . . . that the present contest is absolutely hopeless and to continue it would only result in the loss of all Russian possessions in East Asia. To avert . . . what is otherwise inevitable disaster, the President most earnestly advises that an effort be made by . . . representatives of the two Powers to discuss . . . peace. . . . If Russia will consent to such a meeting the President will try to get Japan’s consent, acting simply on his own initiative and not saying that Russia has consented.” 29 The tsar’s reply was typically Janus-faced. First he echoed the prevailing belief of his advisors and wife that Russian honor demanded fighting until victory. He was “convinced that his people did not desire peace at any price and would support him in continuing the war rather than . . . make what would be considered dishonorable terms.” Yet, having said that, Nicolas would be grateful if the president could indeed see if Tokyo was interested in talks and, if so, moderate their demands. He was anxious to get peace before the Japanese attacked Sakhalin Island, whose garrison was isolated with diminishing supplies since the battle of Tsushima destroyed the Russian fleet. 30 Within two days, Roosevelt got Tokyo to accept peace talks. On June 8, he issued the same letter to Tokyo and St. Petersburg formally urging them “not only for their own sakes, but in the interests of the whole civilized world, to open direct negotiations for peace with one another.” While he hoped that they would promptly and directly talk with each other, if need be he offered to bring them together. 31 Both the Japanese and Russian governments expressed their gratitude and asked Roosevelt to arrange the talks although they clashed over the site, with Tokyo insisting on Chefoo, China, and St. Petersburg on Paris, France. With this standoff, the Japanese and Russians asked Roosevelt to preside over talks in Washington. Roosevelt feared that Washington negotiations would exacerbate tensions amid a sweltering summer and invasive press corps. Also he would personally suffer political fallout if they failed. He asked them to negotiate at The Hague. The Russians and Japanese now both wanted an American site to benefit from his guidance. He suggested the naval base at Kittery, Maine, just across the bay from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The site would be secure, comfortable, and breezy. St. Petersburg and Tokyo agreed. He anticipated that “Japan will want to ask more than she

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ought to ask, and Russia to give less than she ought to give.” 32 To diminish that tendency, he insisted that both governments send plenipotentiaries with full powers to negotiate moderate terms for peace. He warned both sides that they were damaging their image in the world’s eyes with their harsh rhetoric and excessive demands. 33 Meanwhile, to enhance his diplomacy, Roosevelt deployed an unlikely but highly effective duo. He dispatched his daughter Alice and War Secretary Taft, who was already heading back to the Philippines on an inspection tour, on a good will visit to Tokyo. They disembarked on July 25 to adoring and curious crowds. Each was a sensation, Alice as the pretty, vivacious, cigarette-smoking all-American girl and president’s daughter, Taft as the kindly, gentle giant. Taft, of course, did the heavy diplomatic lifting of prolonged talks with Prime Minister Taro Katsura and his ministers. But Alice joined Taft for a state dinner hosted by Katsura and an audience with Emperor Meiji and his family. 34 This assertion of the softest of power was a significant reason why Tokyo eventually agreed not to insist on a huge indemnity from Russia. An existing understanding was reiterated secretly between Taft and Katsura on July 27, 1905. Katsura acknowledged Tokyo’s acceptance of America’s colonization of the Philippines. Taft acknowledged Washington’s acceptance of Japan’s sphere of influence over Korea. Katsura actually wanted to take a far more decisive diplomatic step. He invited the United States to join the defensive alliance between Japan and Britain. Taft politely declined, citing America’s long-standing tradition of avoiding entangling alliances. Although the Taft-Katsura memorandum broke no new diplomatic ground, the simple acceptance of each other’s paramount interests in the western Pacific revived the deteriorating trust of each government in the other. Roosevelt was delighted when he received the memorandum. 35 At Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt hosted each delegation separately at Oyster Bay on the way to the conference. Foreign Minister Juntaro Komura and former finance minister Sergei Witte led the respective Japanese and Russian delegations. Each plenipotentiary had a deputy and six aides. Japan’s delegation arrived first. With Komura, Roosevelt gently but firmly expressed his hope that Japan would not demand too much from Russia. Komura assured him that Japan would be flexible to a point. Roosevelt asked Witte to prepare to make significant concessions. Witte had little to offer and warned that Russia would pay no indemnity. A flotilla of the presidential yacht Mayflower and three American warships was anchored in Long Island Sound near Oyster Bay on August 5. Aboard the Mayflower, Roosevelt received the Russian and Japanese delegations and formally opened the conference. A glass of champagne was served to each delegate. Raising his glass, Roosevelt lauded the great nations represented before him and called on each delegation to establish “a just and lasting peace” between their countries for the sake of them-

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selves and all of humanity. An escort warship fired a twenty-one gun salute. Each delegation embarked on a different warship and the flotilla sailed for Portsmouth. Roosevelt remained at Sagamore Hill and closely followed the conference by telegraph. 36 The talks began on August 8. The only American present was Herbert Pierce, the assistant secretary of state. The Japanese issued a list of twelve demands to Russia, including control over Korea; Russia’s withdrawal from Manchuria; Japan’s takeover of the South Manchuria Railroad, Sakhalin Island, Port Arthur, and Dalny, and all Russian ships then anchored in neutral ports; Japanese fishing rights in Russia’s Pacific waters; restrictions on future Russian naval power in the Pacific; the destruction of Vladivostok’s fortifications and demilitarization; and a huge indemnity. One by one the Russians rejected each demand. The Japanese withdrew all their demands except three, the cession of the right to build and defend a railroad from Port Arthur through Manchuria to the Russian border, Sakhalin, and an indemnity. The Russians only agreed to transfer their railroad rights to Japan. St. Petersburg’s obduracy enraged Roosevelt, who fumed: “The Tsar is a preposterous little creature as the absolute autocrat of 150,000,000 people. He is unable to make war, and he is now unable to make peace.” 37 When the talks deadlocked in Portsmouth, diplomats Kentaro Kaneko and Roman Rosen hurried to Oyster Bay to discuss developments with Roosevelt. After several weeks of tough haggling, Roosevelt got the Russians to cede Sakhalin’s southern half to Japan in return for not paying an indemnity. In addition the Japanese would receive the right to own and protect the Manchurian Railroad. The Japanese initially rejected this deal and insisted on all of Sakhalin and the indemnity. Roosevelt wielded twin powers of practical and moral interests to convince Tokyo to take the deal. First, he explained to Kaneko that if Japan “renews her fighting merely to get money, she will not get the money, and she will turn sympathy from her in this country and elsewhere very rapidly.” 38 He then insisted to Kaneko that responsibility must accompany power. Japan “has won control of Korea and Manchuria; she has doubled her own fleet in destroying that of Russia; she has Port Arthur, Dalny, the Manchurian railroad, she has Sakhalin. Ethically . . . Japan owes a duty to the world at this crisis. The civilized world looks to her to make peace; the nations believe in her; let her show her leadership in matters ethical no less than in matters military.” 39 The Japanese conceded and the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on September 5, 1905. Although the treaty ended the war, riots erupted in Tokyo with word that Japan had forgone an indemnity. The Japanese and Russians split Manchuria into their respective spheres of influence over the south and north. Tokyo forced the Koreans to accept a Japanese protectorate in November 1905 then brutally colonized Korea in 1910.

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For his diplomacy, Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize by proxy on December 10, 1906. He pledged to make the $37,000 award the foundation for an Industrial Peace Foundation to be established in Washington. He would not appear in Oslo to address the Nobel committee until the year after he left the White House. Roosevelt foresaw future geopolitics in the Pacific basin with trepidation. His biggest fear was that Japan “might get the ‘big head’ and enter into a general career of insolence and aggression” that “may possibly mean a struggle between them and us in the future.” 40 The other great powers in East Asia—America, Russia, Britain, Germany, and France—had global interests that stretched their abilities and attention to the limit. Japan, in contrast, had “but one care, one interest, one burden” in East Asia and the western Pacific, to which it could focus its power. 41 He intended to counter that challenge by having Americans “treat the Japanese in a spirit of courtesy . . . with generosity and justice. At the same time I wish to see our navy constantly built up and each ship kept at the highest possible point of efficiency as a fighting unit. If we follow this course we shall have no trouble with the Japanese or anyone else. But if we bluster; if we behave rather badly to other nations; if we show that we regard the Japanese as an inferior and alien race . . . then we invite disaster.” 42 Roosevelt’s fears were realized in October 1906, when a crisis erupted and threatened to poison relations between Washington and Tokyo. 43 The potential for this crisis had swelled for several decades. The 1849 Gold Rush inspired the first wave of East Asian immigrants to California, and thereafter they kept coming to escape poverty in their homelands for a better life in America. California’s white working population faced a worsening threat from the Asians, who were mostly Chinese, because they worked longer hours under worse conditions for less pay. Congress tried to address the issue by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1888, and then strengthening it in 1892 and 1902. But these laws did not prevent Chinese from sneaking into the country nor stem the still legal immigration of Japanese and other East Asians; many entered the United States through Hawaii after Washington annexed it in 1898. According to the 1910 census, of the 41,346 Japanese in California, 4,518 lived in San Francisco. 44 Nature rather than racism was the primary cause for a decision that led to the crisis. On April 18, 1906, an earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco, including most of its schools. On October 11, 1906, San Francisco’s School Board ordered the 93 Japanese students to attend the Chinese public school, which was renamed the Oriental Public School. The Japanese government vehemently protested. The San Francisco school crisis involved two racist peoples in conflict with each other. White Californian racists resented the influx of Asian labor that worked longer hours for less pay than themselves, and in doing so diverted business and wealth

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away from themselves. Japanese racists hated having to send their children to school with children from other Asian countries that they considered inferior to Japan; the Japanese believed that they should be treated equally with white Americans. Prominent politicians and newspaper editors in Japan and America hurled increasingly racist and threatening rhetoric against each other. Roosevelt at once understood, sympathized, and criticized both the Californians and Japanese. He recognized that some Californian businesses and workers suffered from the influx of poor Asians willing to work for a fraction of current wages. Yet he was angry that a city and a state had entangled the United States in an international crisis. He admired the Japanese as a “civilized people” that were rapidly modernizing their country, and so shared the Japanese view of Chinese and Koreans as inferior to Japanese. Yet he was angry that Tokyo was rattling sabers over a local incident involving 93 children. He admitted to War Secretary Root that “I am more concerned over the Japanese situation than almost any other. Thank heaven we have the navy in good shape.” 45 Roosevelt sought a deal that simultaneously protected American workers and Japanese pride. In a tough letter to California Governor James Gillett, he blasted San Francisco’s mayor and the school board’s decision “as a foolish and wanton insult to Japan . . . a great and friendly nation.” He was especially scathing of those responsible for scapegoating schoolchildren when the real issue was over the flood of Japanese laborers. He promised to work with Tokyo to curtail immigration. Meanwhile, he demanded that Gillett stifle the anti-Japanese “agitation which is harmful to the country.” 46 He then called on San Francisco’s mayor and school board, and California’s congressional delegation to meet with him at the White House on February 8, 1907. It took a week for him to forge a deal with them. On February 15, the Californians agreed to let Japanese children attend schools with Caucasian children if Roosevelt got Tokyo to stop issuing passports to Japanese laborers who sought to come to America. On March 13, San Francisco’s school board rescinded its segregation order for Japanese students. Meanwhile, Roosevelt tried to talk Tokyo into “an agreement with Japan where the laborers of each country shall be kept out of the other country. I want to make things so pleasant for Japan . . . that with entire self-respect they can propose or assent to such a proposition.” 47 Of course, probably no Americans wanted to be wage laborers in Japan. Yet promoting this fiction would save face for Japan. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who thirty-five years later planned the Pearl Harbor attack, insisted that Japanese laborers be allowed to immigrate to America as freely as European laborers. Roosevelt gently explained to Yamamoto that he was asking the United States to do something that Japan would refuse to do if the situation was reversed: “If American laboring men came in and cut down the wages of Japanese laboring men they would be shut out of

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Japan in one moment. I told him emphatically that it was not possible to admit Japanese laborers into the United States.” Indeed, Tokyo “already has in force restrictions against American laborers coming to Japan.” 48 Under the Gentlemen’s Agreement of February 15, 1907, Tokyo promised to curtail Japanese immigration to the United States, Washington desisted from formally restricting Japanese immigrants. Tokyo broke its part of the bargain. The Japanese not only came anyway, smuggled ashore at West Coast ports or over the border from Mexico where they faced few restrictions, but the number of illegal aliens soared. The White House received reports of Japanese men organizing themselves into military groups in Mexico. Tensions soared when antiJapanese riots erupted in San Francisco in May 1907. Roosevelt worried that Japanese deceit would provoke “a very dangerous agitation in Congress next year for their total exclusion by a law modeled after our Chinese exclusion act.” 49 Bilateral relations reached a critical point after American troops repelled an invasion by Japanese seal poachers of Alaska’s Prililof Islands, and killed five, wounded two, and captured another twelve. Tokyo protested the killings, arguing that poaching was a misdemeanor, and demanded that the soldiers be indicted for murder. Roosevelt eventually finessed this demand by describing the poachers as burglars and thus felons who a homeowner has the right to use deadly force to repel. 50 Roosevelt continued to press for a diplomatic solution. All along his policy toward Japan was committed “to do exact justice to them; to show them every consideration and courtesy; to ask nothing from them that we should not be willing to grant them in return ourselves.” 51 In all, six diplomatic notes passed between the White House and Tokyo to deal with the issue. It was not until 1908 that Tokyo actually fulfilled its promise to stop issuing passports to laborers bound for America. They did so only after Roosevelt wielded a mighty stick behind his soft talk. Roosevelt worried that war was increasingly likely although “there is literally not one reason why war should ensue.” If war erupted, fanatics on both sides of the Pacific would be responsible, namely “unscrupulous, foolish newspapers and certain jingoes and labor leaders, and a corresponding people in Japan” who “do all they can to cause trouble between the two countries.” He found “this whole Japanese business . . . puzzling. I suppose because there are such deep racial differences that it is very hard for any of us of European descent to understand them or be understood by them.” He assumed that “nothing that has been done affords the slightest justification or excuse for the Japanese thinking of war.” And perhaps that was the problem. Japanese “heads seem to be swollen to a marvelous degree” with their industrial and military buildup, and their war victories against first China then Russia. 52 The American navy faced a severe disadvantage should war erupt with Japan. While Japan’s fleet was concentrated in the Pacific, America’s

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fleet was split between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans with a nearly two month journey around Cape Horn at Latin America’s southern tip between America’s west and east coasts; the Panama Canal would not open until 1914. He recognized that the Philippines was more a strategic and economic liability than asset. “The Philippines is our Achilles Heel,” he concluded. “They are all that makes the present situation with Japan dangerous.” 53 He reasoned that “the only thing that will prevent war is the Japanese feeling that we will not be beaten, and this feeling we can only excite by keeping and making our navy efficient in the highest degree.” 54 The best way to do that was an around the world shakedown cruise of the entire sixteen battleship fleet along with ten support ships. The ships would be painted white as a symbol of peace. That Great White Fleet would sail not just to intimidate the Japanese but all other sea powers, especially the Germans. Roosevelt was at Hampton Roads on December 16, 1907, to launch the Great White Fleet with its “sixteen messengers of peace” on its round the world journey. 55 The White Fleet’s cruise apparently realized its key objective. Anti-American rants from Japanese politicians and newspapers sharply resided the closer the fleet got to Tokyo Bay and ceased after its arrival. In May 1908, Tokyo signed an arbitration treaty with the United States. Under the Root-Takahira agreement of November 1908, Washington recognized Japan’s sphere of influences in Korea and Manchuria, while Tokyo pledged not to interfere in America’s colony of the Philippines and pledged to uphold the open door in China. Roosevelt then asked Congress to appropriate money for an American exhibit at Japan’s world fair in 1909. He also got Congress to approve the construction and manning of two battleships a year for the next decade. The Japanese were not the only nation that Roosevelt wanted his White Great Fleet to impress. During its journey, he sent a friendly and respectful letter to German Kaiser Wilhelm, although with this sharp ending: “I trust you notice that the American battleship fleet has completed its tour of South America on scheduled time, and is now having target practice off the Mexican coast.” 56 The Great White Fleet returned to Hampton Roads on February 22, 1909, just ten days before Roosevelt would leave the White House. Roosevelt was there to greet the fleet’s arrival. With five hundred yards between them, the file of sixteen battleships and ten support ships was seven miles long. Each warship fired a twenty-one gun salute and its band played the “Star Spangled Banner” as it passed the president. In all, the Great White Fleet reflected the essence of Roosevelt’s foreign policies. He explained that any peacetime assertion of power “should be accompanied with every manifestation of politeness and friendship . . . the policy of speaking softly and carrying a big stick. I want to make it evident to every foreign nation that I intend to do justice and neither to wrong them nor to hurt their self-respect.” 57

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As he left the presidency on March 4, 1909, Roosevelt took enormous pride that because of his policies America was “at absolute peace, and there was no nation in the world with whom a war cloud threatened, no nation in the world whom we had wronged, or from whom we had anything to fear. The cruise of the battle fleet was not the least of the causes which ensured so peaceful an outlook.” 58 NOTES 1. Roosevelt to Lyman Abbott, January 3, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:537. 2. Roosevelt to Kaiser Wilhelm II, April 4, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:992–93. 3. For good studies on Roosevelt’s internationalism, see: William Olson, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Conception of an International League,” World Affairs Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4 (1959), 329–53; Warren Kuehli, “The World-Federation League: A Neglected Chapter in the History of a Movement,” World Affairs Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4 (1960), 349–64; Tom Lansford, “Regime Formation and Maturation in the White House: The Rise of Internationalism during the Administration of Theodore Roosevelt,” White House Studies, vol. 1, no. 4 (2001), 505–24. 4. Thomas M. Keene, The Theoretical Roots of U.S. Foreign Policy: Machiavelli and American Unilateralism (New York: Routledge, 2006), 71. 5. John A. Munro, ed., The Alaska Boundary Dispute (Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970); David G. Haglund and Tudor Onea, “Victory without Triumph: Theodore Roosevelt, Honour, and the Alaska Panhandle Dispute,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 19, no. 1 (March 2009), 20–41. 6. For a good book, see: Brian Stuart McBeth, Gunboats, Corruption, and Claims: Foreign Intervention in Venezuela, 1899–1908 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001). For good articles, see: Seward Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt, the American Navy, and the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902–03,” American Historical Review, vol. 51, no. 3 (1946), 452–71; Embert Hendrickson, “Roosevelt’s Second Venezuelan Controversy,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 50, no. 3 (1970), 482–98; Paul Holbo, “Perilous Obscurity: Public Diplomacy and the Press in the Venezuelan Crisis, 1902–1903,” Historian, vol. 32, no. 3 (1970), 428–48; Ronald Spector, “Roosevelt, the Navy, and the Venezuelan Controversy, 1902–1903,” American Neptune, vol. 32, no. 4 (1972), 257–63; Edward Parsons, “The German-American Crisis of 1902–1903,” Historian, vol. 33, no. 3 (1971), 436–52; Kevin Anderson, “The Venezuelan Claims Controversy at the Hague, 1903,” Historian, vol. 57, no. 3 (1995), 525–36; Nancy Mitchell, “The Height of the German Challenge: The Venezuelan Blockade,” Diplomatic History, vol. 20, no. 2 (1996), 185–209; Edmund Morris, “‘A Matter of Extreme Urgency’: Theodore Roosevelt, Wilhelm II, and the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902,” Naval War College Review, vol. 55, no. 2 (2002), 73–85; Matthias Maass, “The Catalyst for the Roosevelt Corollary: Arbitrating the 1902–1903 Venezuelan Crisis and Its Impact on the Development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 20, no. 3 (2009), 383–402. 7. Brian Stuart McBeth, Gunboats, Corruption, and Claims: Foreign Intervention in Venezuela, 1899–1908 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 84. 8. Roosevelt to William Thayer, August 21, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1102. 9. Roosevelt to William Thayer, August 21, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1103. 10. Roosevelt to William Thayer, August 21, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1103. 11. Frederick Palmer, With My Own Eyes: A Personal Story of Battle Years (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1933), 128–29; Bishop Letters, 1:239; Ronald Spector, Admiral of the New Empire: The Life and Career of George Dewey (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 145–46. 12. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, November 1, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 5:63.

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13. Roosevelt to Theodore Roosevelt junior, February 10, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:724. 14. Roosevelt to Joseph Bishop, February 23, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 1:431. 15. For good articles on relations with Morocco and the Perdicaris incident, see: Harold E. Davis, “The Citizenship of John Perdicaris,” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 13, no. 4 (December 1941), 517–26; Richard Collin, “The Lure of Morocco: A Sidelight on United States Economic and Foreign Policy, 1904–1912,” North Dakota Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 4 (1969), 25–42; Thomas Etzold, “Protection or Politics? ‘Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead,” History, vol. 37, no. 2 (1975), 297–304. 16. Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 136. 17. Morris, Theodore Rex, 329. 18. Lewis L. Gould, Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 150. 19. Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid, April 28, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:236. 20. Elihu Root to Wilhelm II, February 19, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:143; Hermann Speck von Sternberg to Roosevelt, February 22, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:144; Roosevelt to Wilhelm II, March 7, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:245–46; Wilhelm II to Roosevelt, March 13, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 6:246; Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid, April 28, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:249. 21. Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid, April 28, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:250. 22. Roosevelt to J.P. Morgan, July 18, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1278. 23. Guanhua Wang, In Search of Justice: The 1905–1906 Chinese Anti-American Boycott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 24. For good books on the Russo-Japanese war and Roosevelt’s peacemaking role, see: Peter Padsfield, The Battleship Era (London: R. Hart Davis, 1972); David Evans and Mark Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997); Richard M. Connaughton, The War of the Rising Sun and the Tumbling Bear: A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War (London: Cassel Military Paperbacks, 2007). For good articles, see: Edward Parsons, “Roosevelt’s Containment of the Russo-Japanese War,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 38, no. 1 (1969), 21–43; Greg Russell, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Diplomacy and the Quest for Great Power Equilibrium in Asia,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3, (September 2008), 433–55. 25. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, June 13, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:830. 26. Beale, Roosevelt and the Rise of American Power, 197. 27. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, March 19, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:759–61. 28. For the most insightful letters and memorandum for this phase of negotiations, see: Roosevelt to George Meyer, February 6, May 24, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:115–16, 1190–91; Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, February 27, May 26, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1129, 1194–95; Roosevelt to John Hay, April 2, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:114, 1156–58; Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, May 15, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1179–82. 29. Roosevelt Memorandum to State Department, June 5, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1204. 30. George Meyer to Roosevelt, June 6, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1223. 31. Roosevelt to the governments of Russia and Japan, June 8, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1224. 32. Roosevelt to Kermit Roosevelt, June 11, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1210. 33. For the most insightful letters and memorandum for this phase of negotiations, see: Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, June 5, 16, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1202–6, 1221–33; Roosevelt to State Department, June 5, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1203–4; Roosevelt to Oscar Straus, June 15, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1220; Roosevelt to the governments of Japan and Russia, June 8, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1224; Kogoro Takahira to Roosevelt, May 28, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1221–22; George Meyer to Roosevelt, June 6, 16, 117, 905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1223, 1227, 1231; Japanese foreign ministry to Roosevelt, June 10, 1905, Russian Letters, 4:1224; Russian foreign ministry to Roosevelt, June

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12, 1905, Russian Letters, 4:1225; Roosevelt to Arturo Cassini, June 15, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1225–26; Roosevelt to Kogoro Takahira (2 letters), June 15, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1226, 1228; Roosevelt to George Meyer, June 16, 19, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1227–28, 1241–42; Roosevelt to Lloyd Griscom, June 16, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1228–29; Roosevelt to Cecil Spring Rice, June 16, July 24, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1233–34, 1283–87. 34. Elsie Clews Parsons, “Congressional Junket in Japan: The Taft Party of 1905 Meets the Mikaido,” New York Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 4 (1957), 385–406. 35. Roosevelt to William Taft, July 31, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1293; Raymond A. Esthus, “The Taft-Katsura Agreement—Reality or Myth?” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 31, no. 1 (March 1959), 46–51. 36. For the most insightful letters and memorandum for this phase of negotiations, see: Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, August 21, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1306–7; Roosevelt to Jean Jusserand, August 21, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1307–8; Roosevelt to George Meyer, August 21, 23, 25 (2 letters), 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1306–7, 1312, 1314–15, 1322–23; Roosevelt to Tsar Nicolas II, August 21 (2 letters), 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1307–8, 1321; Roosevelt to Kentaro Kaneko, August 22, 23, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1308–10, 1312–14; Roosevelt to Henry Durand, August 23, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1310–11; Roosevelt to Juntaro Komura, August 28, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1319–20. 37. Roosevelt to John Hay, April 2, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1158. 38. Roosevelt to Kentaro Kaneko, August 22, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1309. 39. Roosevelt to Kentaro Kaneko, August 23, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1313. 40. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, June 13, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:831–32. 41. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, June 13, 1904; March 19, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:830, 760. 42. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, June 16, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1233–34. 43. For good books on Roosevelt policies toward Japan, see: Thomas A. Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American Crisis (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1945); Raymond A. Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966); Charles E. Neu, An Uncertain Future: Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 1906–1909 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). For good articles, see: Esthus, Raymond A., “The Taft-Katsura Agreement—Reality or Myth?” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 31, no. 1 (March 1959), 46–51; Charles E. Neu, “Theodore Roosevelt and American Involvement in the Far East, 1901–1909,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 35, no. 4 (1966), 433–49; Daniel McFarland, The Japanese Question: San Francisco Education in 1906; David Brudnoy, “Race and the San Francisco Board Incident: Contemporary Evaluations,” California Historical Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 3 (1971), 295–312; Masuda Hajimu, “Rumors of War: Immigration Disputes and the Social Construction of American-Japanese Relations, 1905–1913,” Diplomatic History, vol. 33, no. 1 (2009), 1–37. 44. David Brudnoy, “Race and the San Francisco Board Incident: Contemporary Evaluations,” California Historical Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 3 (1971), 303. 45. Roosevelt to Elihu Root, July 13, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:717. 46. Roosevelt to James Gillett, March 11, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:610–14. 47. Roosevelt to Lyman Abbott, January 3, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:537. 48. Roosevelt to Elihu Root, July 13, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:718. 49. Roosevelt to Elihu Root, July 13, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:718. 50. Raymond Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 132–38. 51. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, July 16, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:721. 52. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, July 16, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:720–21.

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53. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, August 21, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:762. 54. Roosevelt to Hermann Speck von Sternberg, July 16, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:721. 55. For good studies on the Great White Fleet, see: James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988); Kenneth Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet: American Sea Power Comes of Age (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 1998); Leroy Dorsey, “Sailing in to the ‘Wonderous Now’: The Myth of the American Navy’s World Cruise,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 83, no. 4 (1997), 447–65. 56. Roosevelt to Kaiser Wilhelm II, April 4, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:992–93. 57. Roosevelt to Thomas Reid, December 4, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1410. 58. Roosevelt Autobiography, 303.

FOURTEEN The Conservationist

We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem in our National life. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

For decades before entering the White House, Theodore Roosevelt understood with growing alarm the dilemma that Americans were destroying the natural resources that fueled their prosperity. 4 The problem was as old as the nation. The first European settlers came to America believing there was an endless cornucopia of natural resources to exploit. This mentality and behavior persisted despite the swelling hard contrary evidence. As in all other realms of politics, Roosevelt insisted that government had to do for nature what the private sector had failed to do. Conserving the nation’s natural resources so that future generations could enjoy them was as much a moral as a practical issue. To succeed Roosevelt had to simultaneously change government policies, business practices, and people’s minds. He condemned the policy of treating natural resources like “a disconnected series of pork-barrel problems whose only real interest was their effect on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman.” He explained that greed was not good but a cancer on the nation’s natural heritage: “Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers.” 5 He urged Americans to understand and act on the reality that: “We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.” 6 He explained that: “We have tended to live with an eye single to 219

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present, and have permitted the reckless waste and destruction of much of our National wealth. The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem in our National life.” 7 Indeed “many of these resources which we have been in the habit of calling inexhaustible are being rapidly exhausted, or in certain regions have actually disappeared.” 8 He called on Americans to join the government in managing “the water, the wood, the grasses, so that we will hand them on to our children and children’s children in better and not worse shape than we got them.” 9 Roosevelt built his conservation legacy on that of his predecessors in the White House from Ulysses Grant through William McKinley. Over the previous three decades, Washington enacted several laws that began to protect fragments of what remained from America’s natural heritage. As national parks, Congress established Yellowstone in 1872, Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant in 1890, and Mount Rainer in 1899, and protected three other areas that eventually became national parks. The 1891 Forest Reserve Act empowered the president to designate forest reserves on federal land. The 1894 Lacey Act empowered the federal government to guard Yellowstone and other national parks against poachers and other predatory businesses. The 1900 Lacey Act outlawed the transportation of protected birds across state lines, making it the first federal wildlife protection law. Congress established a series of agencies to map and manage America’s natural resources, including the Fish Commission in 1871, the Geological Survey in 1879, the Division of Forestry in 1881, and the Biological Survey in 1885. When Roosevelt became president, there were 40 forest reserves with 43 million acres. Alongside Roosevelt a handful of conservation Davids squared off with countless business Goliaths over the fate of America’s natural heritage and future security. Lobby groups and think tanks included the Sportsman Club founded in 1844, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1848, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866, the American Forestry Association in 1875, the Appalachian Club in 1876, the Cosmos Club in 1878, the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1883, the Audubon Society in 1886, the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887, the National Geographic Society in 1888, and the Sierra Club in 1892. Then there were magazines dedicated partly or wholly to conservation, including The Atlantic Monthly, Field and Stream, Scribner’s, McClure’s, Collier’s, Outlook, and Century. Two brilliant naturalists achieved fame on opposite sides of the country, John Burroughs in New York and John Muir in California. Burroughs and Muir were second generation Transcendentalists who saw divinity in nature and wrote lyrically and powerfully about the practical, moral, and aesthetic reasons to preserve as much of nature as possible. 10

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These allies shared a common outlook but tended to lean one way or the other between emphasizing nature’s conservation or preservation. Conservationists asserted the wise and multiple use of natural resources so that future generations enjoyed the same or more material benefits. Environmentalists sought to preserve or restore as much wild nature as possible for aesthetic and spiritual ends. When it came to policy, the better angels of conservation and preservation advocates perched on Roosevelt’s opposite shoulders and whispered passionately into the available ear. This alliance faced a daunting array of corporate titans and organizations dedicated to controlling and exploiting without limit America’s natural heritage. Then as now voracious business interests hid behind Trojan horse–like labels such as the National Domain League and Western Conservation League that were committed to consuming rather than conserving national resources. Roosevelt explained the proper grand strategy: “The work of preservation must be carried on in such a way as to make it evident that we are working in the interest of the people as a whole, not in the interest of any particular class; and that the people benefited beyond all others are those who dwell nearest to the regions in which the reserves are placed.” 11 His conservation point-man was Gifford Pinchot, who he later lauded as “the man to whom the nation owes most for what has been accomplished as regards the preservation of the natural resources of our country.” 12 Like Roosevelt, Pinchot was born into the elite, loved nature, and was a rigorous outdoorsman. 13 He studied science at Yale then forestry at the National Forestry School in Nancy, France. He applied his learning to managing the 200 acres of woods surrounding the Biltmore estate near Ashland, North Carolina. In 1892, he moved to New York City to start a forestry consultant business. In 1896, President Cleveland tapped him to join the National Forest Commission, and in 1898, President McKinley made him head of the Interior Department’s Forestry Division. Of all his conservation policies, Roosevelt probably most cherished those that protected wildlife. He explained that wildlife to hunt, watch, or just leave alone was a precious natural resource that unrestricted hunting was destroying. He insisted that true hunters were true conservationists and sought a middle way between extremes: “Game butchery is as objectionable as any other form of wanton cruelty or barbarity. But to protest against all hunting of game is a sign of softness of head, not of soundness of heart.” 14 He argued that “Every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and of wild life should strike hands with the farsighted men who wish to preserve our game-beasts, game-birds, and game-fish—indeed all the living creatures of prairie and woodland and seashore—from wanton destruction. Above all, we should recognize that the effort toward this end is essentially a democratic movement. It is entirely within our power as a nation to preserve large tracts of wilder-

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ness, which are valueless for agricultural purposes and unfit for settlement, as playgrounds for rich and poor alike. . . . But this end can only be achieved by wise laws and by a resolute enforcement of the laws.” 15 Roosevelt’s first national wildlife refuge protected birds. He loved birds from his early childhood until his last breath, thrilling at the beauty of their songs, colors, shapes, and flight. He was outraged that hunters were destroying many bird species to supply plumes for lady’s hats. Pelican Island was the heart of the Indian River Lagoon in Florida, which, with 4,300 species of animals and plants, is America’s richest ecosystem. The Audubon Society and American Ornithologist Union pleaded with Roosevelt to save Pelican Island’s bird population, which poachers were slaughtering to extinction’s brink. Roosevelt asked his advisors if anything prevented him from protecting Pelican Island. When they could not think of any restraint, he quipped, “I so declare it.” 16 He issued an executive order declaring Pelican Island a wildlife refuge on March 14, 1903, and hired rangers to protect it. This was his first decisive step in a crusade to stem the devastation of America’s wildlife, a devastation that he had enthusiastically participated in. His own unrestricted hunting had certainly contributed to the decimation of wildlife, including killing some of the last remaining buffalo. It was as much an act of repentance as conservation when he reintroduced buffalo to the southern plains in the Wichita Forest Reserve on June 2, 1905, and to the northern plains with the National Bison Range Act of May 23, 1908. The clear-cutting of the nation’s forests was a worsening national security problem. He explained that the vital natural resources of forest, soil, and water were interdependent with the destruction of one leading to the destruction of the others: “The forests are natural reservoirs. By restraining the streams in flood and replenishing them in drought they make possible the use of waters otherwise wasted. They prevent the soil from washing, and so protect the storage reservoirs from filing up with silt. Forest conservation is therefore an essential condition of water conservation.” 17 And the conservation of both was essential to human prosperity: “the forest reserves contribute to the highest degree to the permanent prosperity of the people who depend on them. If ever the time should come when the western forests are destroyed, there will disappear with them the prosperity of the stockman, the miner, the lumberman, and the railroad, and, most important of all, the small ranchman who cultivates his own land.” 18 He condemned those “who find it to their immense pecuniary benefit to destroy the forests by lumbering. . . . A big lumbering company, impatient for immediate returns and not caring to look far enough ahead, will often deliberately destroy all the good timber in a region, hoping afterward to move on to some new country.” 19 He tried to convince loggers that conserving the forest served not only American

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interests but their own long-term profits: “I earnestly desire that the movement for the preservation of the forests shall come from the lumbermen themselves.” 20 It was essential that “forest reserves should be set apart forever for the use and benefit of our people as a whole and not sacrificed to the shortsighted greed of a few.” 21 With enormous satisfaction, Roosevelt signed on February 1, 1905, the National Forest Act, which shifted the care of the nation’s forests from the Interior Department to the Agriculture Department, and renamed the Forest Bureau the Forest Service. He did so to emphasize the point that the forests were a crop like any other and should be managed wisely. He also sought to liberate the Forest Bureau from the Interior Department that catered to the powerful businesses that it was supposed to regulate. The Agriculture Department was then less corrupted by business interests. What he did not anticipate was the anti-conservation orientation of congressional agriculture committees. Forest reserves were renamed national forests on March 4, 1907. During his presidency, Roosevelt more than quadrupled the size of the national forests from 43 million acres to 194 million acres, and the number of national forest employees from around 500 to over 3,000. An attempt by logging interests to stop him actually spurred him into a burst of protecting more forests. Senator Charles Fulton of Oregon attached a poison pill amendment to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill on February 22, 1907. The amendment transferred the power to control 16 million acres of national forests in six northwestern states from the president to Congress, and forbade the designation of any new forest lands in those states without congressional approval. Both houses of Congress swiftly passed the bill and sent it to the White House on February 25. Roosevelt typically acted decisively to this challenge. On March 2, he designated 16 million acres of federal land in those states protected within 32 new national forests. Logging corporations sued. In 1910, the Supreme Court upheld Roosevelt’s act in Light versus the United States and United States versus Grimaud. Water was just as vital a natural resource as forest. Roosevelt explained the need to conserve water in a series of speeches beginning with his first annual address on December 3, 1901. Dams provided irrigation water and mitigated flooding. Only government had the power to construct dams, “an undertaking too vast for private effort.” 22 Water ultimately should be in the hands of public rather than private hands: “The doctrine of private ownership of water apart from land cannot prevail without causing enduring wrong.” 23 He called for a public-private partnership to manage water resources in arid regions. Roosevelt triumphantly signed the Reclamation Act or Newlands Act, after its sponsor Representative Francis Newlands, into law on June 17, 1902. The Reclamation Act established the federal Bureau of Land Man-

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agement and the Reclamation Service, later renamed the Bureau of Reclamation, which was empowered to conserve the nation’s water by constructing dams and irrigation systems to control flooding and grow crops on arid lands, and to improve navigation on rivers and lakes. In all, he launched 28 large-scale water conservation projects that eventually irrigated 3 million acres of crops. He set up the Inland Waterways Commission to spur regional planning among states sharing the same watersheds. Yet, as always, big business interests threatened to steal the public resources generated by Washington. He ordered that the “speculation in lands reclaimed by the government must be checked at whatever cost” to fulfill the “requirements of the Reclamation Act that the size of the farm unit shall be limited in each region to the area which will comfortably support one family.” 24 Roosevelt proudly signed the Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities, also known as the National Monuments Act, on June 6, 1906. The law empowered the president to preserve as national monuments any “historic landmarks, historic preservation structures, and other objects of scientific interests.” He thrilled at each of the 18 national monuments that he declared, none more so than the Grand Canyon on January 11, 1908. His first sight of the Grand Canyon rendered the normally loquacious Roosevelt struggling to express himself: “I don’t exactly know what words to use in describing it. It is beautiful and terrible and unearthly.” 25 He was certain of one thing. Greed should not be permitted to exploit and violate such majesty: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it—keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you.” 26 Other national monuments of spectacular scenery or culture included Mesa Verde for its Anasazi ruins, Muir Woods for its redwoods, and the unique geological wonders of Mount Shasta, Devils Tower, and the Petrified Forest. In addition to national monuments, he created five national parks, including Crater Lake, Wind Cave, Sully Hill, Mesa Verde, and Platt. He acted decisively when he learned that “valuable coal lands were in danger of passing into private ownership without adequate money return to the Government and without safeguard against monopoly.” In all, he protected 68 million acres of coal lands. 27 Roosevelt was also concerned with promoting America’s artistic heritage. In December 1907, he called on Congress to create “a national gallery of art” to enhance not just “the artistic but . . . the material welfare of the country.” 28 He appointed a Fine Arts Council that brought together some of the nation’s leading artists, architects, painters, and sculptors to advise the government on how to beautify the capital. He tapped the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to design the national coin, and was delighted that the result was “the most beautiful coinage since the decay of Hellenistic Greece.” 29

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Roosevelt committed an important symbolic act on November 11, 1907, when he signed 46 invitations, one for each governor and three science advisors, to attend a conservation conference at the White House from May 13 to 15, 1908. The president and the governors would determine the amount of natural resources available to the United States, how long they might last at present consumption rates, and what could be done to use them wisely so that future generations could benefit from them. In his invitation, he explained: “We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.” 30 He opened the conference by explaining that he had gathered them “so that we may join together to consider the question of the conservation and use of the great fundamental sources of wealth of this Nation. . . . It is the chief material question that confronts us.” He then detailed how much the nation had depleted and squandered its natural resources of water, soil, timber, and minerals. He asked the delegates “to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation.” He insisted that the “time has come for a change. As a people we have the right and duty . . . of requiring and doing justice, to protect ourselves and our children against the wasteful development of our natural resources.” 31 Conservation trumped private property rights. Only government could provide the long-term vision and guidance vital to overcoming the destructive force of greed and thus preserve American prosperity and security. The delegations then got to work discussing the issues through such committees as soil, forests, ores and related materials, mineral fuels, land laws, grazing and stock raising, sanitation, relations between rail and water transportation, reclamation, and conservation as a national policy. The conference issued a “Declaration of the Governors” that embraced conservation as essential for America’s future prosperity. The governors’ conference inspired the establishment of thirty-six state conservation commissions culminating with the National Conservation Commission on June 8, 1908. The National Conservation report was issued on January 11, 1909. 32 Roosevelt touted the commission’s report as “one of the most fundamentally important documents ever laid before the American people.” 33 Conservation was not just vital to American security and wealth but to all countries. Roosevelt had Pinchot convey invitations to Lord Earl Grey, Canada’s governor general, and Porfirio Diaz, Mexico’s president to attend a North American conservation conference on February 18, 1909. He then followed this up on February 19, 1909, by having Secretary of State Robert Bacon send formal invitations to the heads of 58 countries

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for a conservation conference in Washington in March 1909. His successor, President Taft, canceled the conference. Although many presidents have contributed to conserving and preserving American natural heritage, none was more prolific and wide-ranging than Roosevelt. In all, he established 6 new national parks, 18 national monuments, 20 dam and irrigation projects, 55 wildlife preserves, 137 national forests, and commissions on public lands, inland waterways, farming, and national conservation, while expanding the national forests from 43 million to 194 million acres. 34 Not all of his conservation policies were farsighted. He saw cougars and wolves as rivals with human hunters for game, and so sought to exterminate rather than preserve them. Ironically, Roosevelt the ultimate Darwinist championed a form of hunting that actually reverses evolution. Trophy hunting and fishing steadily produces smaller versions of targeted species. The destruction of the largest animals leaves the smaller surviving males to pass on their genes. Wetlands were another vital natural resource that he did not appreciate; he sought to drain rather than protect them. He targeted Florida for a massive hydraulic system to transform the Everglades into crop and pasture lands. Although this project did not happen during his presidency, it eventually did with longterm disastrous results. Dams provide irrigation and drinking water, mitigate flooding and droughts, and can be fitted with hydroelectricity generators, a non-polluting source of energy. What’s not to like? Critics condemn Roosevelt’s Reclamation Act for literally and perhaps figuratively damming America. Each dam involves an economic, environmental, and moral trade-off. Dams destroy an existing ecosystem, are expensive to build and maintain, and steadily silt up, while irrigation leads to soil salination. Nowhere was this more devastating than in the arid west. There a gigantic hydraulic system has settled tens of millions of people atop an artificial civilization that otherwise would have never existed and one day will crumble to dust as aquifers and surface waters are sucked dry or polluted. Yet Roosevelt cannot be faulted for not foreseeing these catastrophes that even Cassandras like John Muir only vaguely anticipated. Roosevelt genuinely revered nature. He expressed the adventure and spirituality that he sought in nature in this beautiful passage: “But there are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm. There is delight in the hardy life of the open, in long rides rifle in hand, in the thrill of the fight with dangerous game. Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide wastes spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and charged only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.” 35

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NOTES 1. Roosevelt to Gifford Pinchot, August 24, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:382. 2. “Theodore Roosevelt before National Editorial Association, June 10, 1907,” Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 6 (New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1910), 1310–11. 3. Roosevelt to governors, November 11, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:838–39. 4. For good books on conservation and preservation, see: Samuel Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959); Hans Huth, Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972); William K. Wyant, Westward In Eden: The Public Lands and the Conservation Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Roderick Nash, ed., The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). For good books on Roosevelt and conservation, see: Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt the Naturalist (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956); Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (New York: Harpers, 1985); W. Todd Benson, President Theodore Roosevelt’s Conservation Legacy (Haverford, PA: Infinity Publications, 2003); H. Paul Jeffers, Roosevelt the Explorer: Teddy Roosevelt’s Amazing Adventures as a Naturalist, Conservationist, and Explorer (New York: Taylor Trade, 2003); Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (New York: Harper, 2010). For good articles, see: Leroy Dorsey, “The Frontier Myth in Presidential Rhetoric: Theodore Roosevelt’s Campaign for Conservation,” Western Journal of Communications, vol. 59, no. 1 (1995), 1–19; Daniel O. Buehler, “Permanence and Change in Roosevelt’s Conservation Jeremiad,” Western Journal of Communications, vol. 62, no. 4 (Fall 1998), 439–58. 5. Roosevelt Autobiography, 218, 175. 6. Roosevelt to Gifford Pinchot, August 24, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:382. 7. “Theodore Roosevelt before National Editorial Association, June 10, 1907,” Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 6 (New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1910), 1310–11. 8. Roosevelt address, Memphis, October 4, 1907, Roosevelt Works, 16:117. 9. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 111. 10. For good overviews of the related conservation and environmental movements, see: William K. Wyant, Westward in Eden: The Public Lands and the Conservation Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The Environmental Movement (New York: Island Press, 2003); Roderick Nash and Gar Miller, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). For Muir and Burroughs, see: Stephen B. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Edward Renehan, John Burroughs: An American Naturalist (New York: Black Sun Press, 1998). 11. Brinkley, Wilderness Warrior, 556. 12. Roosevelt Autobiography, 217. 13. For good books on Pinchot, see: Harold T. Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot: Private and Public Forester (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970); Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (Washington, DC: Islands Press, 2001); Char Miller, Seeking the Greatest Good: the Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013). 14. Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 13–14.

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15. Theodore Roosevelt, Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 332. 16. Cutright, Roosevelt, 223. 17. Roosevelt Annual Message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:561. 18. Roosevelt to Gifford Pinchot, August 24, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:382–83. 19. Roosevelt Annual Message, December 3, 1907, Theodore Roosevelt, Presidential Addresses and State Papers (New York: Review of Reviews Company, 1910), 1543. 20. Roosevelt to Frederick Weyerhaeuser, March 5, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:441. 21. Roosevelt Annual Message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:560–61. 22. Roosevelt, Annual Message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:561. 23. Roosevelt, Annual Message, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:565. 24. Roosevelt to Gifford Pinchot, August 24, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:382. 25. Roosevelt to John Hay, August 9, 1903, Roosevelt Letters, 3:557. 26. Roosevelt address, “Grand Canyon,” May 6, 1903, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:370. 27. Roosevelt Autobiography, 224. 28. Roosevelt annual address, December 3, 1907, Theodore Roosevelt, Presidential Addresses and State Papers (New York: Review of Reviews Company, 1910), 1558. 29. Roosevelt Autobiography, 231. 30. Roosevelt to governors, November 11, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 5:838–39. 31. Theodore Roosevelt, “Opening Address by the President,” Proceedings of a National Conference of Governors in the White House, Washington, DC, May 13–15, 1908, ed. W.J. McGee (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 3–12. 32. David Clinton, “The World Conservation Congress: A Study in International Commitment,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 7, no. 2 (1996), 290–313. 33. Theodore Roosevelt, “Opening Address by the President,” Proceedings of a National Conference of Governors in the White House, Washington D.C., May 13–15, 1908, ed. W.J. McGee (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 3–12. 34. For lists of each in chronological order, see Brinkley, Wilderness Warrior, 825–30. 35. Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), xxi.

FIFTEEN The Mistake of His Life

I would cut my hand off right there if I could recall that written statement. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 “I do not believe that any President has ever had as thoroughly good a time as I have had.” (Theodore Roosevelt) 2

Amid his presidency’s virtually nonstop barrage of politicking and policies was the 1904 election. To strengthen and expand his stunning array of accomplishments Theodore Roosevelt needed to actually get elected to the White House. He faced no significant opposition within the Republican Party. Although his progressive policies, especially his antitrust lawsuits, enraged conservatives, none dared to square off against him; Mark Hanna, the conservative boss and Roosevelt’s nemesis, died on February 15, 1904. The Republican Party held its presidential convention at Chicago from June 21 to 23. Roosevelt received 994 unanimous votes on the first ballot. As his running mate, he tapped Senator Charles Fairbanks of Indiana who the delegates approved by acclamation. The Democrats nominated Federal Judge Alton Parker of New York and Senator Henry Davis of West Virginia for president and vice president, respectively. Roosevelt won a resounding victory on November 8, 1904, with 7,630457 votes or 56.4 percent and 336 electors to Parker’s 5,083,880 votes or 37.6 percent and 140 electors, and 33 of the 45 states. He privately boasted that “I have the greatest popular majority and the greatest electoral majority ever given to a candidate for president.” Indeed the “only states that went against me were those in which no free discussion is allowed and in which fraud and violence have rendered the voting a farce.” 3 He was speaking, of course, about the southern states which enshrined a Jim Crow racism to replace their enslavement of blacks. He enjoyed the continued Republican domination of Congress. In the Senate, 229

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the Republicans picked up three seats to bring their total to 58, while the Democrats lost a seat, leaving them with 32, and the Silver Republicans lost their two seats. In the House, the Republicans won 41 more seats, boosting their total to 250, while the Democrats lost 40 seats, dropping them to 136. 4 Amid this heady triumph, Roosevelt made a remark that he believed at the time but almost immediately regretted. When asked by a Washington Post journalist whether he would be a candidate in 1912, he replied: “The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form. Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.” 5 He later quipped that “I would cut my hand off right there if I could recall that written statement.” 6 Roosevelt hoped to redeem his mistake by passing the presidential baton to his protégé William Howard Taft. He first shared this idea with his cabinet on March 9, 1906, and forged a consensus that Taft was the best potential candidate for 1908. 7 He later shared with his son Kermit his earnest hope that the Republican Party “shall be able to nominate Taft for president. Of course this is to be kept strictly quiet as I cannot, as President, take any part in getting him the nomination.” 8 Taft was certainly highly qualified to be the nation’s chief executive. 9 His highest aim, however, was being not the president but the chief justice. Yet, citing his devotion to his existing duties, he had declined three separate offers by Roosevelt to take a Supreme Court seat. All along his first and greatest love was the law, which he studied at Cincinnati Law School after getting a bachelor’s degree at Yale. Upon passing the bar in 1880, he was appointed the assistant prosecutor for Hamilton County, Ohio. He first entered federal service in 1890, when President Benjamin Harrison made him the Fifth District Court’s solicitor general. After two years, he became a judge for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals where he served until 1901; during his last two years there he somehow found time to be the dean and teach constitutional law at the University of Cincinnati. In July 1901, President William McKinley tapped him to be governor general of the Philippines, where he served until December 1903. During that time, he journeyed to Rome to talk Pope Leo XIII into selling church lands in the Philippines, then to Washington to talk Congress into buying them for $7 million, and finally back to the Philippines to distribute titles to those lands to the poor. Roosevelt asked Taft to replace Elihu Root as the war secretary. In was during his tenure at the War Department from February 1904 to June 1908 that Taft and Roosevelt deeply bonded. When Cuba erupted in violence, Roosevelt sent Taft there for a month in fall 1906 to bring peace as the governor general. Taft was renowned for his hearty mirth and immense girth but he was much more than the stereotypical jolly fat man. He was highly intelligent, having graduated second in a class of 121 at Yale. Yet he was not intellec-

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tually curious or broadly knowledgeable. His favorite activities were eating, golf, bridge, and sleep. Although he was a wrestling champion at Yale, he was a gentle giant. He skyrocketed through the court system then various administrative posts because of his sterling reputation for wisdom and honesty worthy of Solomon in his judgments and proceedings. He was a loving, tender husband to his wife Helen and a loving father to their three children. Helen was politically tougher, savvier, and more ambitious than him. With her eyes fixed on the White House, she talked her husband into declining Roosevelt’s three offers of Supreme Court seats. After Taft won the presidency, she quipped that all he lacked for the job was “not knowing or caring about the way politics is played.” 10 What did Roosevelt see in Taft? 11 He greatly valued him for his administrative brilliance, incorruptibility, and loyalty, once telling Taft: “If only there were three of you; I could appoint one of you to the court, one to the War Department, and one to the Philippines.” 12 But he cherished Taft for deeper reasons. Historian H.W. Brands argued that for Roosevelt, Taft played the role of a younger brother much as Henry Cabot Lodge did as an older brother. 13 Roosevelt had failed to rescue his actual younger brother Eliot from the debauchery and alcoholism that eventually killed him. Subconsciously he was determined to compensate for that failure. With Taft, he enjoyed a bright, cheerful, hardworking, and seemingly obedient surrogate brother whose political career he could nurture to the White House. No sibling rivalry then seemed to mar the relationship. That would emerge later. For now, Roosevelt took great “comfort to feel that the man I love and admire and respect encounters the difficulties that I encounter” in their reform crusades and against their political foes. 14 He assumed that Taft shared his progressive agenda and outlook: “He and I view public affairs exactly alike.” In tapping Taft to take his place, he hoped to “achieve all that could be achieved by continuing me in the office.” 15 But Roosevelt projected his own values on his trusted protégé whose loyalty he mistook for conviction. Actually Taft was as conservative as Roosevelt was progressive, but hid his views from duty, courtesy, and a natural shyness. As a Hamiltonian, Roosevelt asserted that the president could do anything that the Constitution did not forbid him from doing. As a Jeffersonian, Taft believed that the president could only do what the Constitution explicitly stated that he could do. Roosevelt believed that the nation’s problems could only be quelled with bold, innovative leadership. Decades on various courts deeply imbedded in Taft’s mentality the principle that precedent trumped innovation. Taft faced six declared rivals for the nomination along with a possible seventh, Roosevelt himself. Taft had only a shadow of the president’s popularity. That was immediately apparent when Lodge opened the Republican Party conference at Chicago’s Coliseum on June 16. Lodge’s

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most formidable task was trying to bring order to the delegates that broke into spontaneous cheers of “We want Teddy!” This was despite Roosevelt’s efforts over the three previous weeks “to prevent a break among the delegations” and convince them that “he stood for exactly the same principles and policies that I did.” 16 Later that day, Taft won the nomination with 702 votes to 68 for Philander Knox, 67 to Charles Hughes, 58 for Joseph Cannon, 40 for Charles Fairbanks, 25 for Robert La Follette, 16 for Joseph Foraker, and 3 for Roosevelt. This done, all the delegates endorsed Taft. In the first vote the delegates approved Representative James Sherman of New York to be Taft’s running mate. Taft and Sherman faced the Democratic nominees, William Jennings Bryan for president and Senator John Kern of Indiana as his running mate. As the election neared, the Democrats found a way to embarrass Roosevelt and hopefully by extension the Republican Party. They reacted to rumors that he had wielded the secret service to spy on some of his foes by amending a bill to restrict the secret service only to activities that protected the president. He denied the rumors and condemned the amendment. In a special message to the House of Representatives on January 4, 1908, he pitched fuel on the political flames by asserting: “The chief argument in favor of the provision was that the Congressmen did not themselves wish to be investigated by Secret Service men,” so the amendment “could be of benefit only to the criminal class.” 17 In doing so he at once insinuated that the secret service had indeed spied on politicians and smeared all congressmen as worthy of being investigated. The House of Representatives voted 212 to 35 to rebuke Roosevelt for showing disrespect for their institution. In the Senate, Nelson Aldrich called for investigating his conduct in the White House but could not rally enough support. Spearheaded by the New York World, Democratic newspapers continued to snipe at the lame duck president. When Roosevelt responded with a flurry of his own condemnations, Joseph Pulitzer, the World’s owner, accused him of “deliberate misstatements of fact.” An incensed Roosevelt asked the Justice Department and federal district attorney Henry Stimson if he could sue Pulitzer, who he condemned for being “one of these creatures of the gutter of such unspeakable degradation that to him even eminence on a dunghill seems enviable.” 18 He grudgingly took their advice not to do so. Taft won 7,678,395 votes or 51.6 percent and 321 electors to Bryan’s 6,408,984 or 43.0 percent and 162 electors. He would enjoy Republican majorities in Congress. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans lost five seats but still retained 219, while the Democrats rose to 167. In

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the Senate, the Republicans lost a seat to bring them down to 60, but still nearly twice as many as the 32 Democrats. Taft’s victory was bittersweet for Roosevelt. He confidently predicted that “Taft will carry on the work substantially as I carried it on. His policies, principles, purposes, and ideals are the same as mine . . . I have the profound satisfaction of knowing that he will do all in his power to further every one of the great causes for which I have fought and that he will persevere in every one of the great governmental policies in which I most firmly believe.” He reflected on what he did and what he might have done as president: “Of course, if I had conscientiously felt at liberty to run again . . . I should greatly have liked to do so . . . I do not believe that any President has ever had as thoroughly good a time as I have had . . . I have achieved a greater proportion than I dared think possible . . . I shall leave the White House without a pang . . . I am looking forward eagerly and keenly to being a private citizen again.” 19 Way back in September 1901, when Roosevelt had taken the oath as president, his friend Nicolas Butler remarked: “I do not fear for you in the presidency, Theodore. Your most difficult task will come when you finally leave the White House. . . . It will be a lot harder for you to be an exPresident than a President.” 20 Butler’s prediction would prove to be all too true. NOTES 1. H.H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), 138. 2. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, November 6, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1328–29. 3. Roosevelt to Kermit Roosevelt, November 10, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1024. 4. Lewis L. Gould, Reform and Regulation: American Politics, 1900–1916 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978), 48–49. 5. Washington Post, November 9, 1904. 6. H.H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents, 138. 7. Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), 1:317. 8. Roosevelt to Kermit Roosevelt, April 23, 1907, Roosevelt Letters, 655–56. 9. For good books on all or parts of Taft’s life and the Republican Party’s conservative wing, see: Norman Wilensky, Conservatives in the Progressive Era: The Taft Republicans of 1912 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965); Judith Icke Anderson, William Howard Taft: An Intimidate History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981); Donald Anderson, William Howard Taft: A Conservative’s Conception of the White House (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973); Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1986); David H. Burton, William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker (Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press, 2004); James Chace, Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs: The Election That Changed the Country (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Gould, Lewis L., The William Howard Taft Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009). 10. Donald Anderson, William Howard Taft: A Conservative’s Conception of the Presidency (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), 58.

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11. For good books on the relationship between Roosevelt and Taft, see: David Henry Burton, Taft, Roosevelt, and the Limits of Friendship (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University, 2005); Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013). 12. Anderson, Taft, 12. 13. Brands, T.R., 595. 14. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, August 2, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:342. 15. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1085. 16. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1085. 17. Walter J. Oleszek, ed., The Cannon Centenary Conference: The Changing Nature of the Speakership (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2003), 187. 18. Roosevelt to Henry Stimson, December 9, 1909, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1416–17. 19. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, November 6, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1328–29. 20. Lilian Rixey, Bamie: Theodore Roosevelt’s Remarkable Sister (New York: David McKay, 1963), 176.

3

The Unfinished Business

SIXTEEN The Elder Statesman

My political career is ended. No man in American public life has ever reached the crest of the wave as I appear to have done without the wave’s breaking and engulfing him. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1

Theodore Roosevelt’s instinct on leaving the White House was to get as far from it as possible. 2 He eagerly grasped the time to fulfill a childhood dream and go on safari in Africa. As always he dreamed big. This would be no ordinary hunting trip, but a scientific expedition that journeyed for months and mapped East Africa’s natural and human world. Taking specimens, trophies some might call it, would be central to the endeavor. His expedition would be the largest ever undertaken in that region. Then, after Africa, he would head to Europe for a grand tour of seeing the sights, hobnobbing with kings and commoners, making provocative speeches, accepting honorary degrees, and advocating a peace league before the Nobel Prize committee. 3 More than a desire for a grand adventure inspired his safari. Although Roosevelt had passed on the torch of national power, for his numerous enemies he remained a hated and now far more vulnerable political target. It would be an enormous relief to leave behind all the grasping politicians, vengeful enemies, and pesky journalists. Just as important was courtesy to the protégé who took his place. He reasoned that if “I am where they can’t get at me, and where I cannot hear what is going on, I cannot be supposed to wish to interfere with the methods of my successor.” 4 News of his expedition was music in the ears of his enemies. At least one of Roosevelt’s foes saw a potential bonus in the expedition beyond just getting him out of the country. J.P. Morgan reputedly raised a glass of champagne with some of his robber baron cronies and quipped: “America expects that every lion will do its duty.” 5 237

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Roosevelt’s vision would be expensive. He got the Smithsonian Institute to sponsor the expedition’s entire cost except for the personal expense of himself and his son Kermit who accompanied him. He originally estimated a $50,000 budget, split $20,000 for him and his son and $30,000 for other expenses. The final bill was nearly double that, requiring the Smithsonian to launch a major fund-raising drive to fill the gap. Although their worldviews differed on crucial issues, Andrew Carnegie was happy to be the expedition’s most generous private donor. As for his own expenses, Roosevelt’s pockets were not deep enough. He cut an extraordinary deal with Scribner’s Magazine to pay him $50,000 for five articles on the expedition and give him 20 percent royalties for publishing his book on his experiences. 6 Roosevelt and Kermit steamed from New York on March 23, and stepped ashore at Mombasa, Kenya, on April 21. At Mombasa, Roosevelt gathered hundreds of bearers and tons of supplies. The expedition disappeared into the African wilderness for what became an eleven month journey that ended on March 14 at Khartoum, where he dismissed his last laborers and deposed of his remaining equipment and provisions. Along the way his expedition cut a bloody swath through East Africa’s wildlife. In all Roosevelt and his companions slaughtered “4,900 mammals, 4,000 birds, 500 fish, and 2,000 reptiles—approximately 11,400 items, plus 10,000 plant specimens and a small collection of ethnological objects.” Roosevelt himself shot “9 lions, 8 elephants, 6 buffalo, 13 rhino, 7 giraffes, 7 hippos, 2 ostriches, 3 pythons, 1 crocodile, 5 wildebeest, 20 zebras, 177 antelope of various species, from elaud to dik-dik, 6 monkeys, and 32 other animals and birds: 296 ‘items’ in all.” Kermit’s toll of wildlife was a mere 216. 7 Although he escaped injury, he could not escape the press. A small contingent of journalists tagged along, mostly to his irritation although he spun them as deftly as he had the White House press corps. 8 After emerging from the African wilderness at Khartoum, Roosevelt the hunter morphed into Roosevelt the elder statesman. There he tarried with the British consul and got a guided tour of the battlefield of Omdurman, where General Horatio Kitchener’s troops had crushed the Islamist army led by the Mahdi. He had similar get-togethers, ostensibly social but inevitably diplomatic with British officials farther down the Nile at Cairo and Alexandria. His addresses in Khartoum and Cairo kicked up diplomatic storms, when he derided the notion that the natives could govern themselves and he called on the British to crush any rebellions and stay the imperial course. From Alexandria, he embarked for Naples to begin a grand European tour. His official purpose in Europe was travel broken by addresses at the universities of the Sorbonne, Berlin, Cambridge, and Oxford, where he received honorary degrees, and the Nobel Committee in Oslo. Yet no head of state could resist or avoid inviting for talks and dinners a former president who appeared in his realm. In all, Roosevelt met the monarchs

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of Italy, Austro-Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Britain, as well as the French president. Beneath those lofty positions was a swarm of businessmen, journalists, socialites, and academics who sought meetings. Honoring American values of religious freedom kept him from an audience with Pope Pius X. The Vatican stipulated that the pope could only see the ex-president if he did not meet with an American Methodist group in Rome critical of the Catholic Church. Roosevelt wrote America’s ambassador in Rome that, “although it would be a real pleasure for me to be presented to the Holy Father, for whom I entertain a high respect both personally and as the head of a great Church . . . I must decline to make any stipulations or to submit to any conditions which in any way limit my freedom of conduct.” 9 He contrasted two popes, the one he had conducted diplomacy with as president and the current pontiff: “My relations with Pope Leo XIII . . . had been more than cordial, as he was a broad-minded man, with a genuine knowledge of foreign affairs, and of the needs of the time. . . . His successor was a worthy narrowly limited parish priest, completely under the control of his Secretary of State, Merry del Val.” 10 He wrote a letter to Outlook magazine, explaining the politics behind his thwarted desire to meet the pope and assurances that he highly regarded all Christians of any sect. 11 Roosevelt was hardly starry-eyed being ushered into vast palaces and being introduced to the likes of Wilhelm II, George V, Franz Josef I, Victor Emmanuel III, the respective monarchs of such powerful states as Germany, Britain, Austro-Hungary, and Italy, along with the monarchs of lesser realms like Haakon IV of Norway, Frederick VIII of Denmark, first in their realms and then again in London to attend Edward VII’s funeral along with Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands, Albert I of Belgium, Alfonso XIII of Spain, and George I of Greece. As an American progressive he disdained “the feeling . . . of so many Americans as desiring to be presented to the different sovereigns” and “strongly objected to Americans marrying into their titled families.” 12 But the royals all wanted to see him and he enjoyed in greatly varying ways each gettogether. The Austro-Hungarian court astonished him for “living in a world as remote from mine as if it had been France before the Revolution.” 13 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo in June 1914 sparked World War I, struck him as “a furious reactionary in every way, political and ecclesiastical.” 14 He experienced quite different sensations with Norway that was “as funny a kingdom as was ever imagined outside of opera bouffee . . . as if Vermont should offhand try the experiment of having a king.” Yet he lauded the Norwegians as “a fine, serious, powerful lot of men and women” with “the most genuinely democratic society to be found in Europe.” 15 Roosevelt’s most chilling and eye-opening encounters were his three sessions and hours of time with Germany’s kaiser. His assessment was

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certainly helped by Wilhelm’s fluency in English so that they could enjoy frank exchanges without the delays and uncertainties of translations. He had long viewed Germany and Wilhelm with trepidation as the country expanded economically and militarily, accentuated by the kaiser’s more disturbing bellicose speeches that reached America and the rest of the English-speaking world. He came away from the kaiser alarmed for the future, ominously telling Edith that “I am absolutely certain now that we’re all in for it. Facts and figures . . . aren’t half as convincing as the direct scrutiny as of a thing—especially such a monstrous thing as this!” 16 During all their talks Wilhelm revealed his one-track mind, to Roosevelt’s irritation: “I tried him with everything I knew, but the only subject on which I could strike fire was war. He knows military history and technique. He knows armies, and that is all. I couldn’t get a spark from him on anything else.” 17 When Roosevelt suggested capping the naval arms race, Wilhelm sternly asserted that Germany’s buildup would continue for global prestige and protection. He hastened to add that he bore nothing but good will toward Britain and its royal family with whom he was related by blood: “I was brought up in England, very largely; I feel myself partly an Englishman.” 18 Most revealing of the kaiser’s character and ambitions was the military parade that Roosevelt attended beside him. Wilhelm’s words and demeanor bloated with arrogance and condescension as his infantry, cavalry, and artillery paraded past. This convinced Roosevelt that the kaiser “was actually, as far as I can discover, one of the last of those curious creatures who sincerely believed himself to be a demi-god.” 19 Edward VII’s death on May 6, 1910, disrupted Roosevelt’s grand tour as Europe’s heads of state and their entourages hastened to attend the funeral. Roosevelt was happy to accept Taft’s request to represent him in London. After his bleak sojourn in Berlin, Roosevelt’s weeks in Britain came as a relief despite the official mourning. He spent most of his time making the diplomatic rounds with other delegations. To do so with a style proper to his status, the British government kindly lent him a “royal carriage, a military attaché, two British aides-de-camp, six grenadier guards, and even a bugler, to herald his comings and goings.” 20 Roosevelt savored or despised the company of individuals, not classes. Yet generally he felt more comfortable with commoners than royals because “their ways of looking at life were more like mine, and their attitude toward the great social and economic questions more like those of my friends in America.” With French republicans, “I could . . . feel a sympathy somewhat akin to that which I felt in talking with English Liberals.” He was received by huge, joyful crowds in every country except Germany: “The Germans did not like me, and did not like my country; and under the circumstance they behaved entirely correctly, showing me every civility and making no pretense of an enthusiasm which was not present.” 21

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At Oslo on May 5, Roosevelt was finally able to thank in person the Nobel committee for the peace prize they had awarded him four years earlier. His reputation for erudition and controversy ensured that all 1,800 seats in the National Theater were filled. His speech was among the most uncomfortable he ever delivered. It was bad enough that a bad case of bronchitis forced him to rasp his words. Even worse, he had to bend his words to avoid displeasing his African expedition’s most generous sponsor. Andrew Carnegie had urged him in a letter to make arms control his speech’s theme and then journey to Berlin to pressure Wilhelm into embracing the cause. Roosevelt bristled as much at the condescending tone as the content of Carnegie’s letter: “Here is what I would say prior to lobbying the Kaiser, were I in your place.” 22 Roosevelt had at best mixed feelings for Carnegie, at once grateful for his generosity and contemptuous of his pacifism: “Carnegie’s purposes as regards international peace are good, although his methods are often a little absurd.” 23 Carnegie was just as repelled by the medium through which he sought to realize his vision, finding “a trace of the savage in that original compound.” 24 During his speech, Roosevelt tossed a line Carnegie’s way by saying something should be done as soon as possible about the naval arms race, but offered no specifics. Then he went far beyond what Carnegie then advocated by asserting: “It would be a master stroke if those great Powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others.” 25 What Roosevelt had in mind resembled more “the concert” of European powers that emerged from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 than “the general assemblies” of the League of Nations and United Nations that emerged from the ruins of the First and Second World Wars. For the next four decades after 1815, the five great powers—Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia—had avoided war among themselves while crushing any liberal or nationalist revolts in their respective realms or spheres of influence. More recently, the great powers had managed to prevent several limited wars among them from spreading across the continent and eventually round the globe. However, four years after Roosevelt’s speech, their diplomacy would fail catastrophically. Roosevelt envisioned joining the United States with the other great powers as a global police force to keep peace among themselves and suppress any threats of war or chaos elsewhere. Naturally, each great power would be solely responsible for its colonies and spheres of influence, although assistance could be requested from the others if needed. Where spheres of influence overlapped, the great powers would negotiate clear lines of demarcation and mutual concessions to defuse tensions that might lead to war. Just as naturally, the Western Hemisphere would remain America’s sphere of influence, although Washington would con-

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tinue to tolerate the handful of lingering small and unthreatening European colonies. During his acceptance speech at the University of Berlin, where he received an honorary doctorate, Roosevelt expounded his conception of history, Germany’s place in that history, and, most notably, his pessimism for the future. The related military, industrial, communications, financial, and transportation revolutions were a double-edged sword that at once promoted unprecedented prosperity for humanity and destructive power for governments. He issued this dire warning: “Forces for good and evil are everywhere evident, each acting with a hundred- or a thousand-fold the intensity with which it acted in former ages. . . . The machine is so highly geared, the tension and strain are so great, the effort and the output have alike so increased, that there is cause to dread the ruin that would come from any great accident, from any breakdown, and also the ruin that may come from the mere wearing out of the machine itself.” 26 His words were prescient. Roosevelt’s most controversial address was before leading members of Britain’s government, economy, and society at London’s Guildhall. Throughout he weaved compliments, admonitions, and warnings for Britain’s imperial enterprise and foreign policy. He explained that his remarks were inspired by nearly a year’s observations in British Africa combined with his understanding of history. First, he lauded the British for having “given Egypt . . . probably a better government than it has ever had before; for never in history the poor man in history . . . had been treated with as much justice and mercy.” He then bluntly asserted that “in certain critical points, you have erred; and it is for you to make good your error.” The “error” was in appeasing rather than suppressing Islamic fundamentalism which he feared posed a worsening threat to British rule not just in Egypt but in other Muslim lands. He presented stark black and white choices for British policymakers: “Now, either you have the right to be in Egypt or you have not. Either it is or it is not your duty to establish and keep order. If you feel that you have not the right to be in Egypt, if you do not wish to establish and to keep order there, why, then by all means get out of Egypt.” 27 In all, he appeared to issue to Britain’s ruling elite a message similar to Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” message to America’s ruling elite a decade earlier. The reaction was mixed. Some excoriated and others lauded Roosevelt for presuming to lecture the British on their imperial duties. 28 During his address at the University of Paris, Roosevelt uttered perhaps his most quoted lines: It is not the critic who counts nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiant-

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ly; who errs, and comes short again and again . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. 29

NOTES 1. Lawrence E. Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Doubleday, 1919), 53. 2. For good books on Roosevelt’s post-presidential life, see: George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper, 1958); Joseph L. Gardner, Departing Glory: Theodore Roosevelt as Ex-President (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973); Patricia O’Toole, When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005); Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010). 3. For good books and articles on his African and European journey, see: Bartle Bull, Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure (New York: Carol and Graf, 2006); John C. O’Laughlin, From the Jungle through Europe with Roosevelt (Boston: Chapple Publishing, 1910); J. Lee Thompson, Theodore Roosevelt Abroad: Nature, Empire, and the Journey of an American President (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). See also: H. Paul Jeffers, Roosevelt the Explorer: Teddy Roosevelt’s Amazing Adventures as a Naturalist, Conservationist, and Explorer (New York: Taylor Trade, 2003); Ian Tyrell, “To the Halls of Europe: Theodore Roosevelt’s African Jaunt and the Campaign to Save Nature by Killing It,” Australian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, vol. 2 (2012–13), 5–16. 4. Corinne R. Robinson, My Brother Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 251. 5. Brand, T.R., 646. 6. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 583; Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910). 7. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 593, 26. 8. Gary Rice, “Trailing a Celebrity: Press Coverage of Theodore Roosevelt’s African Safari, 1909–1910,” Roosevelt Association Journal, vol. 22, no. 3 (Fall 1999), 4–16. 9. Roosevelt to John Leishman, March 25, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:63–64. 10. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, October 1, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:354. 11. Roosevelt to Lyman Abbott, April 3, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:358. 12. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, October 1, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:365, 370. 13. Roosevelt to Lyman Abbot, April 3, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:370. 14. Roosevelt to David Grey, October 5, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:409. 15. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, October 1, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:385. 16. Earle Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, Private Citizen (New York: Fleming Revel, 1932), 129–30. 17. Oscar King Davis, Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, 1898–1918 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 92. 18. Theodore Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, October 1, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:396. 19. Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, 123. 20. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 60. 21. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, October 1, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:375, 380, 391. 22. Joseph Frazer Wall, Andrew Carnegie (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 931. 23. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, October 1, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:377. 24. Wall, Carnegie, 380.

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25. Roosevelt Nobel Prize Address, May 5, 1910, Roosevelt Works, 18:414. 26. Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: History as Literature and other Essays (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 26:119. 27. Douglas Sladen, Cairo: The City of “Arabian Nights” (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1911), 374. 28. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 73–74, 79. 29. Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: History as Literature and other Essays (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 26:143.

SEVENTEEN The New Nationalist

We have fallen back down the hill you have led us up and there is a general belief that the special interests are once more in substantial control of both Congresses and the Administration. (Gifford Pinchot) 1 The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not of the master of the commonwealth. . . . The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 We must drive the special interests out of politics. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

Theodore Roosevelt finally returned to America aboard the luxury cruise-liner Kaiserin August Victoria after experiencing a myriad of adventures worthy of Odysseus since he sallied forth nearly a year and a half earlier. President William Taft and New York City Mayor William Gaynor arranged a homecoming worthy of his status and achievements. A flotilla composed of a battleship, five destroyers, and numerous lesser naval vessels escorted the cruise-liner into New York Bay on June 18, 1910. As the flotilla churned past, Fort Wadsworth fired a twenty-one gun salute. The ships anchored in mid bay. The mayor, Roosevelt’s family members that had not accompanied him, and an entourage of officials sailed toward the cruise-liner aboard the presidential yacht, accompanied by four other yachts packed with well-wishers from the city and national elite. The Roosevelts ascended from the cruise-liner to the presidential yacht as the battleship fired a twenty-one gun salute. They stepped ashore at Manhattan’s Battery where the mayor and ex-president made speeches. They then got into automobiles for a ticker-tape parade up Broadway then Fifth Avenue escorted by Rough Riders on horseback and martial bands playing an array of patriotic tunes. The parade culminated 245

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at Grand Army Plaza near Central Park. Archie Butt keenly observed his old friend that day and saw something new: “To me he had ceased to be an American, but had become a world citizen. His horizon seemed to be greater, his mental scope more encompassing. . . . He is bigger, broader, capable of greater good or greater evil, I don’t know which, than when he left.” 4 Late that day the Roosevelt family finally reached their beloved home of Sagamore Hill at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Somewhere along the way on that very long day, Roosevelt quipped to a New York Times reporter, “One thing I now want is privacy.” 5 This was one wish beyond even Roosevelt’s protean powers. No matter how far Roosevelt had journeyed away from American politics, it had a way of catching up to him and the news was discouraging. His protégé in the White House was proving to be his own man in ways that appeared to threaten rather than expand Roosevelt’s legacy. 6 Progressives lamented that big business had reasserted its hegemony over the White House and the Republican Party. Taft opened the national forests and other public lands to unlimited exploitation by logging and mining corporations, gagged the National Conservation Commission, and killed Roosevelt’s plans for a World Conservation Conference. An already conservative federal judicial system became much more so under Taft; he ensured that the five Supreme Court justices, 13 Court of Appeals judges, and 38 District Court judges that he appointed all shared his strict constructivist views of the Constitution. Atop the substantive policy divergences with his predecessor, Taft inflicted some symbolic insults to Roosevelt, whose skin was not as thick as he pretended it was. In what seemed a deliberate snub, Roosevelt learned that Taft refused to refer to him as “colonel,” his preferred address, remarking to an aide that “mister” was “good enough.” 7 Taft fired Gifford Pinchot, a Roosevelt protégé, as national forest chief. A letter from Pinchot warned Roosevelt: “We have fallen back down the hill you have led us up and there is a general belief that the special interests are once more in substantial control of both Congresses and the Administration.” 8 Roosevelt replied that “I very keenly share your disappointment with Taft and in a way perhaps feel it even more deeply than you do, because it was I who made him president.” 9 Most progressives saw Roosevelt as their movement’s white knight and urged him to rescue America and his legacy. A chorus of prominent voices pressured him to reenter the political arena. Herbert Croly did so indirectly through his book The Promise of American Life, which presented many of Roosevelt’s core beliefs, acts, and visions. 10 Boosters set up Roosevelt Clubs to champion their man to once again lead the Republican Party and progressive movement.

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Although Roosevelt admitted feeling that he “could cry over Taft,” he resisted the temptation to openly criticize let alone break with the White House. As for the 1912 presidential election, he insisted that “I would not consider another nomination unless it was practically universally demanded.” 11 Of course, this spurred his supporters to redouble their efforts to make that happen. To one plea, he replied: “My political career is ended. No man in American public life has ever reached the crest of the wave as I appear to have done without the wave’s breaking and engulfing him.” 12 He not only rejected reentering politics but made several vows of political silence to Taft. 13 For a long time he was good to his word. He even politely declined Taft’s invitation to visit him in the White House: “I don’t think it well for an ex-president to go to the White House, or indeed go to Washington, except when he cannot help it.” 14 Nonetheless, he privately vented his views to a succession of progressive leaders within and beyond the Republican Party who visited him at Sagamore Hill. The choices put him in a quandary: “I am a practical politician and a believer in practical politics, but at the same time I am a Republican primarily because the Republican Party is the best instrument through which to do good to the nation and we have got to keep the instrument in right shape.” 15 Or was it? If the Republican Party had ceased to be a vehicle for progress, then was it time for a practical man to find one better? Democrat Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma succinctly captured his political dilemma: Colonel Roosevelt is now in the most difficult and delicate positioning of his career. Has he the power to stand this greatest draft on his talent or his tact? . . . If he is to continue to progress, he must leave behind those whom he has created in his own image. If he does not now progress, he will be left behind by the great popular procession of which he delighted to imagine himself both the leader and the creator. I trust that the progressives will have just cause to rejoice at his return . . . I hope that enlightened, rational reform will find in Roosevelt the ablest reformer, otherwise there may be more fiction than fact in this back from Elba talk [that ended with] Waterloo and a night without a dawn. 16

Roosevelt clung to the hope that somehow progressives could pressure Taft into championing their values rather than those of corporate interests. Taft was certainly the lesser evil if in 1912 the Democrats once again nominated a radical like William Jennings Bryan. For now, Roosevelt looked ahead not to 1912 but to the upcoming 1910 elections. He explained to Henry Cabot Lodge that “the greatest service I can render to Taft . . . to secure his renomination . . . is to try and help the Republican Party to win at the polls this Fall, and that I am trying to do.” 17

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With this justification, he embarked on a sixteen state speaking tour during August 1910. Although promoting his progressive agenda was each speech’s core, at first he referred favorably to Taft. Then he was flabbergasted to learn that Taft had nodded approval for William Barnes, New York’s Republican boss, to back Vice President James Sherman rather than Roosevelt to chair the party’s September convention. Taft did so to bolster the odds that New York’s Republican Party would support him rather than Roosevelt in 1912. The effect on Roosevelt, however, was to make his insurgency more rather than less likely. Roosevelt made the nation’s headlines with his speech at Osawatomie, Kansas on August 31. Just the choice of that site stirred controversy. Not far from there, John Brown and his abolitionist followers had slaughtered five pro-slavery ruffians in 1856. Before a crowd of 30,000 people, Roosevelt portrayed America’s problems and solutions in starkly black and white terms by championing the people against the corporations: “The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not of the master of the commonwealth. . . . The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being.” He advocated a “New Nationalism” that would assert the people’s power over the corporations that corrupted the American political system and economy. The only way to do that was with strict regulations whereby “all money received or expended for campaign purposes should be publicly accounted for.” He called for freeing all levels of American government “from the sinister influence or control of special interests. . . . We must drive the special interests out of politics.” 18 But this was just the beginning of reforms critical to fulfilling America’s promise. He blistered the Supreme Court for backing corporations that exploited the people and demanded that justices be appointed that championed citizen rights over business profits. 19 He called for regulations that ensured the conservation of the nation’s natural resources, promoted workplace safety, protected women and child laborers, and trained young people for jobs. Enhanced powers for the Federal Bureau of Corporations and Interstate Commerce Commission would enforce these regulations. Rightfully the rich would pay for these reforms with income taxes and inheritance taxes. The speech provoked loud nationwide choruses of praise and condemnation. An editorial in the New York Evening Post presciently captured the significant possibilities latent in what Roosevelt had said and not said: “He never once mentioned the party to which he is supposed to belong . . . nor referred in the remotest way to the President. . . . What are we to make of this? Are we to infer that Mr. Roosevelt proposes to found and head a new party, made up of elements from the old ones? Is this

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speech to be taken as a bold bid for the Presidency in 1912?” 20 Of course, the answers were yes to these questions although Roosevelt would not cross that political Rubicon for another two years. The notion of the popular recall of judges outraged Taft, who argued: “We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.” 21 He was determined to wield his presidential powers to uphold the principle of judicial supremacy and impartiality. In August 1911, the Senate approved Arizona’s statehood with a constitution that permitted the recall of judges. He vetoed the Arizona statehood bill. This forced Arizona’s leaders to excise the offending tenet and then resubmit the state’s constitution, which Congress again approved. Taft then signed the bill. Confronted with the firestorm of controversy over his popular recall speech, Roosevelt himself concluded that he had gone too far. He admitted to Lodge that “I had no business to take the position in the fashion that I did.” 22 He was especially contrite for his vehemence in attacking Supreme Court decisions favoring big business. He struck a more moderate tone in his article, “Criticism of the Court,” in Outlook magazine published later that month. 23 More pointedly, he had a cordial and wellpublicized lunch with Taft at Republican Party elder Henry White’s mansion at New Haven, Connecticut, on September 19. Roosevelt attended New York’s Republican Party convention at Saratoga as a delegate. Although he was only one among more than a thousand others, all eyes were on him from the time the convention opened on September 27. He made the most of the opportunity. He ran against Sherman to chair the convention. To defeat him, party boss Wilham Barnes pulled political levers behind the scenes and had one of his underlings, Abe Gruber, make a speech attacking his candidacy. Nonetheless, Roosevelt won with 567 votes to Sherman’s 445. In his victory speech, he called on the party to reembrace progressivism. He stirred controversy by making only a passing reference “to our able, upright, and distinguished president, William Howard Taft.” 24 Elihu Root, now a senator from New York, expressed the commonsense attitude that many Republican Party elders had toward Roosevelt’s progressive agenda: “If it means having the federal government do the things which it can do better than the states and which are within the limits of its present constitutional power, I am for it. If it means more than that, I am against it.” At the same time, Root was condescending to Roosevelt, greeting him after his speech with these words: “Theodore, you are still the same great, overgrown boy as ever.” 25 The convention’s next order of business was choosing a gubernatorial candidate to replace Charles Hughes, who gave up the governor’s mansion for a Supreme Court seat. Here again Roosevelt triumphed when his candidate, squeaky-clean Manhattan lawyer Henry Stimson, beat Barnes’s man, congressman William Bennett, by 684 to 232 votes. His

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power was so great that he even got smokers among delegates to curb their nasty habit inside the hall, scolding them for showing “an utter lack of consideration for the rest of those present.” 26 He was exultant at how he and his followers had dominated the convention, boasting: “We have beaten the reactionary machine, and the progressives are in charge of the party organization.” 27 Roosevelt then reembarked on the campaign trail for progressive Republican candidates across the country. He soon kicked up the latest controversy. On October 22, he condemned Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Simeon Baldwin as a reactionary for having ruled two years earlier in the 1909 Hoxie versus New Haven Railroad case that the corporation owed no compensation to an employee who lost a leg on the job. Ever since then corporations had cited that case to argue for abolishing worker safety regulations, including the Federal Employers’ Liability Law, that Roosevelt had enacted as president. When Baldwin denounced Roosevelt’s criticism as libelous, he responded with a long letter that concluded: “My criticism of you as a reactionary was based, not upon what you may have said as a law writer, but upon what you did as a judge.” 28 The election results on November 8, 1910, came as a shock after all the exaltation and hope that Roosevelt had generated in himself and his followers. After sixteen years of Republican control, the Democrats retook the House of Representatives with 229 seats to 164 Republicans, a 57 seat gain; a socialist won a seat in Milwaukee. This stunning seesaw in power, however, did not reflect the actual vote as each party drew about 5.8 million supporters to the polls. Although the Republicans held the Senate, they lost twelve seats, bringing their total down to 48, while the Democrats’ share rose to 44. Criticism for the national Republican losses mostly targeted President Taft, the ostensive party leader, rather than ex-president Roosevelt. Nonetheless, Roosevelt suffered a blow to his prestige when Democrats trounced Republicans across New York, winning all the executive offices up for grabs from the governor on down. In a six man race, Stimson ran a close second with 622,299 votes to John Dix’s 689,700. As for New York representatives to Congress, the Democrats took 23 of the 37 seats, including the district that embraced Oyster Bay, Roosevelt’s hometown. Franklin Roosevelt, a fifth cousin, won a New York senate seat. Roosevelt suffered yet another sting when he learned that his antagonist Simeon Baldwin was elected Connecticut’s governor. Roosevelt holed up at Sagamore Hill for a few weeks to ponder his political future. The next presidential election was two years away and he was determined to be well positioned across the country when the Republican Party’s 1912 national convention met. He expanded his New Nationalism speech into a book and got it published to bolster his leadership over the progressive movement. He wielded his editorship of Outlook magazine to

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feed its readers a steady diet of his thinking on an array of issues. The bottom line was his call for the American people to join “the great movement of our day, the Progressive Nationalist movement against special privilege and in favor of an honest and efficient political and industrial democracy.” He snorted disdainfully at “the dishonest man of swollen riches whose wealth has been made in ways which he desires to conceal from the law, and the politician who does not really believe in the right of the people to rule and who prefers to trust to corruption and class favoritism rather than to honesty and to fair dealing in politics.” 29 However, Roosevelt politely rebuffed an invitation to join the newly established National Progressive Republican League with Robert La Follette, a former Wisconsin governor and current U.S. senator, its most prominent member. While he agreed with most of the League’s agenda, he drew the line at enacting popular initiatives, referendums, and recalls as preempting traditional legislative duties with too much potentially volatile, hasty, and disruptive direct democracy. As for La Follette, he had mixed feelings: “He is an able, forceful enthusiast. With most of his policies I am in entire accord. He is, however, an extremist, and has the touch of fanaticism which makes a man at times heedless of means in attaining his ends.” 30 The feelings of many progressives toward Roosevelt were just as mixed. A belief spread among progressive leaders that his prominence in the movement had ended. Among them was Journalist Ray Baker, who “felt that his work had passed its apex: that he could not return to his former power. There was a lack, somewhere, of his old grip on things. The movement has gone beyond him.” 31 Indeed, Roosevelt mulled his own doubts. With his political career in limbo, he fantasized about reviving his military career when a worsening civil war in Mexico threatened to spill over into the United States. He wrote an impassioned letter to Taft, recalling his Rough Rider triumphs and asking permission to raise and lead a volunteer regiment if a war erupted. Taft expressed his gratitude but did not believe his services would be needed. 32 How much this rejection contributed to Roosevelt’s breaking his vow of public silence and confronting Taft over an issue is impossible to say, but that is what he did. Temperamentally and philosophically, Taft was far better suited for the Supreme Court than the White House. For him, the law and courts were superior to politics for resolving serious differences. Before becoming president, he had headed the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes. As president, he endorsed the establishment of a powerful international arbitration court to settle conflicts, especially those that might otherwise lead to war. He saw no “reason why matters of national honor should not be referred to a court.” 33 As an American nationalist, Roosevelt abhorred the idea of handing over a crucial element of American sovereignty to an interna-

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tional court. That a sitting American president had endorsed the idea filled him with trepidation and rage. He was determined to kill the concept before it got any political traction. In an essay for Outlook magazine, he insisted that the “United States ought never specifically to bind itself to arbitrate questions respecting its honor, independence, and integrity.” 34 The criticism from Roosevelt and others spurred Taft’s efforts to realize his vision. Naturally the best way to do so was to forge a bipartisan consensus. He joined New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson and other prominent public figures to issue statements in the Christian Herald in September 1911. In his essay, Taft declared himself to be an unapologetic pacifist: “I yield to no one in my love of peace, in my hatred of war. If I have my way and am able to secure the assent of other powers, I shall submit to the Senate arbitration treaties broader in their terms than any that body has heretofore ratified.” 35 To this, Roosevelt replied: “I sincerely believe in the principle of arbitration . . . but I believe that the effort to apply it where it is not practical cannot do serious harm. Confused thinking and a willingness to substitute words for thought, even though inspired by an entirely amiable sentimentality, do not tend toward sound action.” He declared that anyone who put America’s fate in foreign hands “was not fit to hold the exalted position to which he had been elected. 36 Taft defended himself: “I don’t think that it indicates that a man lacks personal courage if he does not want to fight, but prefers to submit questions of national honor to a board of arbitration.” 37 He then embarked on a nationwide campaign to drum up public support for his arbitration treaty. Although Roosevelt blasted the sitting president on many grounds, Taft exceeded him as a progressive in two key areas, trusts and taxes. During his four years as president, his administration filed 90 antitrust suits compared to 44 during Roosevelt’s nearly eight years as president. Taft also imposed a one percent tax on businesses with net incomes greater than $5,000 and the sixteenth constitutional amendment for an income tax on households. Indeed Roosevelt was deeply offended when Taft launched antitrust lawsuits against two monopolies that he had approved as president, U.S. Steel on October 26, 1911, and International Harvester on April 12, 1912. 38 The very public battles between Roosevelt and Taft over the arbitration treaty and antitrust suits against U.S. Steel and International Harvester severed the last strands of sentiment and respect between them. Thereafter, although they were civil in their few encounters, their bitterness for what each saw as the other’s betrayal prevailed. Historian H.W. Brands writes insightfully that the rift between them “broke Taft’s heart; it would have broken Roosevelt’s if he hadn’t long ago placed his heart out of the reach of such things.” 39

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NOTES 1. Gifford Pinchot to Theodore Roosevelt, December 31, 1909, Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (New York: Islands Press, 1947, 1998), 489. 2. Roosevelt speech at Osawatomie, August 31, 1910, Roosevelt Works, 17:10–11. 3. Roosevelt speech at Osawatomie, August 31, 1910, Roosevelt Works, 17:10–11. 4. Butt Letters, 1:396. 5. For accounts of this day, see Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 82–87. 6. For good books on all or parts of Taft’s life, see: Judith Anderson, William Howard Taft: An Intimidate History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981); Donald Anderson, William Howard Taft: A Conservative’s Conception of the White House (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973); Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1986); David H. Burton, William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker (Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press, 2004); James Chace, Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs: The Election That Changed the Country (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Lewis L. Gould, The William Howard Taft Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009). For the conservatism of Taft and the Republican Party, see: Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963); Kenneth W. Hechler, Insurgency: Personalities and Politics of the Taft Era (New York: AMS Press, 1970); Jonathan Lurie, William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). For good books on the relationship between Roosevelt and Taft, see: David Henry Burton, Taft, Roosevelt, and the Limits of Friendship (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University, 2005); Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013). 7. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 609. 8. Gifford Pinchot to Theodore Roosevelt, December 31, 1909, Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (New York: Islands Press, 1947, 1998), 489. 9. Roosevelt to Gifford Pinchot, June 28, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:95. 10. Thomas Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909). 11. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 101. 12. Lawrence E. Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Doubleday, 1919), 53. 13. Butt Letters, 1:404. 14. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, June 20, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:93. 15. Roosevelt to Nick Longworth, July 22, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:106. 16. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 91. 17. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 19, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:102. 18. Roosevelt speech at Osawatomie, August 31, 1910, Roosevelt Works, 17:10–11. 19. For Roosevelt’s views of the judiciary, see: S. Habibuddin, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Attitude toward the Judiciary,” Indian Journal of Politics, vol. 9, no. 1 (1975); Stephen Stagner, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions and the Due Process Debate,” American Journal of Legal History, vol. 24 (1980), 257–72. 20. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 110. 21. Gary Murphy, “‘Mr. Roosevelt is Guilty’: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for Constitutionalism, 1910–1912,” Journal of American Studies, vol. 36, no. 3 (2002), 449. 22. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 21, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:134. 23. Theodore Roosevelt, “Criticism of the Court,” Outlook, September 24, 1910. 24. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 214. 25. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 115. 26. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 115. 27. Oscar King Davis, Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 226. 28. Roosevelt to Simeon Baldwin, November 2, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:149–52. 29. New Outlook, January 14, 1911, 97:58.

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30. Brands, T.R., 683. 31. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 128. 32. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, March 14, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:243–44. 33. Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1986), 1:738039. 34. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Arbitration Treaty with Great Britain,” Outlook, May 20, 1911. 35. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 146. 36. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Peace of Righteousness,” Outlook, September 9, 1911. 37. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 147. 38. James German, “Taft, Roosevelt, and U.S. Steel,” Historian, vol. 34, no. 4 (1972), 598–613. 39. Brands, T.R., 664.

EIGHTEEN The Man in the Arena

My hat is in the ring. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 I feel as fit as a bull moose. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 Mr. Taft never discovered that I was dangerous to the people until I discovered he was useless to the people. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

Theodore Roosevelt faced three daunting obstacles to winning the Republican nomination and then the general election for the presidency in 1912. 4 No one had ever run for a third term. Robert La Follette would compete with him for progressive voters. President Taft and his followers controlled the Republican Party’s national organization and thus the power to dispense patronage. Nonetheless, in December 1911, Roosevelt began spreading word that he would challenge Taft for the nomination, although reluctantly from duty to the country: “I am really sorry for Taft. I am sure that he means well, but he means well feebly. . . . He is utterly unfit for leadership and this is a time when we need leadership. All kinds of people influence him on the unimportant things where he does not know his own mind but generally makes up his mind wrong; and on the important things he does not know his own mind and changes it every which way.” 5 With Frank Knox and John O’Laughlin as his point men, Roosevelt knit together a national network of Republican governors to jointly urge him to run for the Republican nomination for president. Alexander Revell, a Chicago millionaire, and Truman Newbury, his former navy secretary, formed a national campaign committee and headquartered it at Chicago’s Congress Hotel on January 16, 1912; they served respectfully as the chair and treasurer. On February 11, eight governors—Hiram Johnson of California, Walter Snubbs of Kansas, Chester Aldrich of Nebraska, Chase Osborn of Michigan, William Glasscock of West Virginia, Robert Vessey 255

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of South Dakota, Herbert Hadley of Missouri, and Joseph Carey of Wyoming—joined Revell, Newbury, Knox, O’Laughlin, and other prominent backers to openly call on Roosevelt to declare his candidacy: “A principle is of no avail without a man; a cause is lost without a leader. It is our opinion that this is the sentiment of the majority of the people of the United States.” 6 Although Roosevelt thanked those men privately, he still hesitated to publicly declare his candidacy. Instead, he kicked in his latest political hornet’s nest at Columbus, Ohio, on February 21, when he delivered a speech entitled “A Charter of Democracy.” He capped his vigorous assertion of the progressive agenda by advocating public recall votes on both judicial decisions and judges. In doing so, he appealed to a higher morality: “The application of every American constitution must be to obtain justice between man and man by means of genuine popular self-government. If the Constitution is successfully invoked to nullify the effort to remedy injustice it is proof positive either that the Constitution needs immediate amendment or else that it is being wrongfully and improperly construed.” 7 Critics blasted him for advocating “mob rule” and wondered if he had lost his mind. Even many of his closest supporters equivocated at backing such a radical proposal. 8 When asked his view of the controversy, Henry Cabot Lodge delicately explained: “I am opposed to the constitutional change advocated by Colonel Roosevelt . . . but I cannot personally oppose him who has been my lifelong friend, and for this reason I can take no part whatever in the campaign for the political nomination.” 9 Roosevelt’s crowd-pleasing extreme views worried Taft, who observed: “The Colonel has put himself ahead of many of the radicals and many of his old friends are falling away from him but he may be making two for every one he loses.” 10 It was not until the next day on his way back to Oyster Bay, that Roosevelt finally admitted the obvious. While changing trains at Cleveland, he coined his latest colloquialism when a reporter asked him if he intended to run for the presidency. “My hat is in the ring,” he declared. “The fight is on and I am stripped to the buff.” 11 All along Roosevelt promoted himself as Lincoln’s heir in championing the cause of the downtrodden: “I am for the human right of the overworked girl or the crippled working man or working woman against the so-called property right of the employer; I am for the right of the workmen against the factory owner or mine owner who runs the company store; I am for the right of the legislature to prohibit men, women, and children being huddled like pigs in a tenement house room as against the property right of the owner of the tenement house.” 12 Alas, the contest swung from the sublime to the ridiculous as the contenders got in a nasty mud-fight, with Taft calling Roosevelt a “dangerous egotist” and Roosevelt returning fire by calling Taft a “fathead”

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and “reactionary.” Roosevelt landed a more sophisticated rhetorical blow when he told reporters: “Mr. Taft never discovered that I was dangerous to the people until I discovered he was useless to the people.” 13 All along Roosevelt jabbed with gusto but Taft fought back half-heartedly. At one point a reporter found him slumped in his train car, his hands wearily holding up his head. “Roosevelt was my closest friend,” Taft said, then wept bitterly. 14 Roosevelt’s prospects in a general election appeared to be excellent. Public opinion polls gave him a wide lead not only over Taft but other possible candidates. The trouble was that Taft’s political machine dominated the Republican national organization and thus the convention. Roosevelt recognized the conundrum: “Taft will be nominated. This is not a thing we can say in public, because of course such a statement discourages men; but I am in this fight purely for a principle, win or lose.” 15 The states split between two ways of choosing convention delegates, primaries where voters decided and conventions where delegates decided. Of the twelve state primary elections, Roosevelt won nine, including Taft’s home-state of Ohio, with 278 delegates, La Follette two with 36 delegates, and Taft only one with 48 delegates. As for popular votes, Roosevelt enjoyed a huge lead with 1,157,397 to Taft’s 761,716 and La Follette’s 351,043. Then there were the thirty-six state conventions which Taft’s machine dominated. 16 On the convention’s eve, Roosevelt addressed 5,000 of his followers at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. For nearly two hours he harangued the crowd with an item by item celebration of the progressive agenda. His last lines were a startling climax: “We fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future; unheeding of our individual fates; with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.” 17 The delegates leapt to their feet cheering. A band played “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Roosevelt lingered, grinning wildly and pummeling the hands of his ecstatic supporters. The Republican convention that opened on June 18 at Chicago’s coliseum was among the most raucous in the party’s history. 18 Roosevelt’s followers packed the arena and loudly cheered their man. Meanwhile, behind firmly closed doors, Taft’s coterie struck down one effort after another by Roosevelt’s coterie to democratize the convention. Of the 254 contested open state delegates, the Republican Party machine awarded 235 to Taft, 19 to Roosevelt and none to La Follette. With the deck staked against him, Roosevelt asked his delegates to abstain from voting and walk out of the convention. During the final vote on June 22, Taft won his party’s renomination with 561 votes to Roosevelt’s 107 and La Follette’s 36. Roosevelt’s showing would have been more impressive if it included the 322 delegates who walked out and La Follette’s handful, but would

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have still fallen far short of victory. Roosevelt condemned Taft’s nomination as “a fraud upon the rank and file of the Republican Party.” 19 For a viable run as a third candidate, Roosevelt had to create a new political party virtually from scratch. 20 He already had a network of powerful backers, including senators, congressmen, governors, and corporate titans, while millions of Americans eagerly waited to vote for him. But somehow he had to mobilize all that with state organizations and a national committee. Senator Joseph Dixon of Montana, who had managed his primary campaign, headed his campaign. George Perkins, who made his millions with J.P. Morgan’s corporate empire, raised and dispensed millions of campaign dollars. The country was split into three regions, with Gifford Pinchot, William White, and Hiram Johnson respectively in charge of winning the east, center, and west. Roosevelt knit together a nationwide coalition of progressive organizations like the National Conference of Charities and Correction, the Men and Religion Forward Movement, the National Women’s Trade Union League, the National Women’s Suffrage Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Child Labor Committee that supplied moral heft if few voters or funds. On July 7, headquarters released the word for delegates to convene at Chicago’s Coliseum in early August to create a Progressive Party and nominate a candidate to run for the White House. Delegates would effectively select themselves. All the delegates who showed up would be sorted among states with votes proportional to each state’s population. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party convened at Baltimore from June 25 to July 2, and nominated Woodrow Wilson for president. 21 Roosevelt described Wilson as “a good man who has in no way shown that he possesses any special fitness to be president. Until he was fifty years old, as a . . . professor and college president he advocated with skill, intelligence, and good breeding the outworn doctrines which were responsible for four-fifths of the political problems of the United States. . . . Then he ran as Governor of New Jersey and . . . discovered that he could get nowhere advocating the doctrines he had advocated, and instantly turned an absolute somersault so far as at least half these doctrines. . . . He is an able man and . . . could speedily acquaint himself with these problems. . . . But he is not a nationalist, he has no real and deep-seated conviction of the things that I regard as most vital.” 22 This was a typically insightful assessment. Although both men claimed to be progressives, Roosevelt’s version was as deep and broad as Wilson’s was shallow and narrow. 23 Wilson could not escape his roots as the son of a small-town southern Presbyterian preacher. He did not openly espouse a progressive agenda until his successful campaign to be New Jersey’s governor in 1910. Governor Wilson did accomplish some of that agenda, including the establishment of a public utilities commission em-

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powered to set rates and regulate the industry, a primary election law, and a tougher law against corruption. But Wilson remained a Jeffersonian who favored a mostly weak, passive, reactive national government that let each state determine what was best for itself. As for the place of blacks in America, he was a red-blooded southern Democrat who backed the array of Jim Crow laws that imposed segregation and restricted voting. Wilson called his economic proposals of antitrust, tariff revision, and banking reform his New Freedom to counter the appeal of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism. But this could not obscure let alone bridge the ideological chasm between them with Jeffersonism and Hamiltonism glaring at each other from opposing brinks. Over 2,000 delegates attended the Progressive Party convention that opened at Chicago’s coliseum on August 5. In a richly symbolic gesture, Roosevelt asked Jane Addams, the nation’s most prominent female social activist, to second his nomination as the Progressive Party’s candidate for president. To no one’s surprise, Roosevelt won unanimously by a deafening acclamation. His acceptance speech on August 6 was entitled, “A Confession of Faith.” After the speech as he heartily shook hands, a reporter asked him how he felt. “Fit as a bull moose,” he quipped, and supporters swiftly dubbed the Progressive Party the Bull Moose Party. Factions and contradictions characterized the hastily cobbled together Progressive Party. The worst divide was over race. Although Roosevelt was generally contemptuous of the notion of state’s rights, he left the fate of blacks in the hands of each state. When all white and integrated delegations showed up from the same southern state, he only let the former in the convention door. This rejection of southern blacks cost the Progressive Party what little chance they had of enticing northern blacks from naturally supporting Taft and the Republican Party. Roosevelt asserted the essence of his progressive crusade with these revolutionary words: “Behind the ostensible Government sits enthroned an invisible Government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politicians, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. . . . This government belongs to the People. Its resources, its businesses, its laws, its institutions, should be utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.” 24 Roosevelt had a long list of progressive things to do as president, including national health insurance, women’s suffrage, direct election of senators, direct primaries for parties to determine their state and federal candidates, popular referendums on controversial court decisions, government management of monopolies and oligopolies, national retirement pensions, an eight hour workday, campaign finance restriction and disclosure, inheritance and income taxes on the rich, compensation for job-related injuries, the registration of lobbyists, a minimum wage for

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women, and the recording and publication of congressional committee proceedings. With this agenda, he steamed ideologically between Wilson and Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party candidate, trying to attract middle-class voters from the former and laboring-class voters from the latter. 25 What middle or lower income voter would object to an eight hour workday, compensation for workplace injuries, or national health insurance and retirement pensions with inheritance and income taxes to pay for vital reforms? He jabbed his finger toward the big business titans that blocked reforms, and proclaimed: “We stand for popular government, for the overthrow of the crooked boss and the crooked financier. We stand against the dictation which has corrupted the political management and the economic policy of this republic, and which treats with sneering derision every attempt to replace our government on a basis of human equity.” 26 He did not let his dazzling progressive vision blind him when he assessed his prospects, writing Kermit that “I do not for a moment believe that we will win. The chances are overwhelmingly in favor of Wilson, with Taft and myself nearly even, and I hope with me a little ahead.” As the campaign ground on, he grew more discouraged, confessing to Kermit that “I am hoarse and dirty and filled with a bored loathing of myself whenever I get up to speak.” 27 Nonetheless, between his nomination on August 7 and October 14, Roosevelt delivered over 150 speeches in thirty-two states. Milwaukee was his last stop for October 14. It had been a typical packed day. In the morning he gave a speech in Gary, Indiana, hopped a train to lunch with important supporters in Chicago, and then headed on to Milwaukee, where he and his entourage checked into the Gilpatrick Hotel. Around eight o’clock that evening Roosevelt and half a dozen followers left the hotel for cars that would drive them to the coliseum where an enthusiastic crowd eagerly awaited his arrival. As Roosevelt paused and turned to wave to onlookers, a man stepped from the crowd, drew a pistol, and fired. 28 The ball struck Roosevelt in his right chest and knocked him to the ground. His followers tackled and subdued the man. Roosevelt staggered to his feet and shouted, “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him.” He gripped the man’s face and stared into it. “What did you do it for?” When the man refused to speak, he told his bodyguards to take him to the police. Roosevelt reached beneath his layers of clothes, touched the wound, and withdrew his blood-covered hand. He dismissed his aides’ pleas that they rush him to the hospital and demanded that they immediately take him to the coliseum. They reluctantly complied. Word of the thwarted assassination swiftly spread. As he stepped behind the podium, cries erupted from the crowd asking if the rumors were true. “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” Roosevelt re-

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plied. “But it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” 29 He then asked the crowd for silence so that he could read his fifty-page speech. As he removed the folded paper from his breast pocket, he was stunned to see that the bullet had perforated it. That folded paper along with his steel glasses case, his jacket, his overcoat, and his muscular chest probably saved his life. Roosevelt spoke for an hour and a half as the pain worsened and he increasingly gasped his words. Upon finishing, he turned to his aides and said he was now ready to go to the hospital. The doctors found the bullet lodged behind a rib just a few inches from his heart. They chose to leave the bullet imbedded rather than risk an operation that might kill him. They insisted that Roosevelt stay at least two days in the hospital to ensure that he was out of danger. He made the most of his stay by talking to reporters and issuing this statement that further enhanced his mythic image: “It matters little about me, but it matters all about the cause we fight for. If one soldier who happens to carry the flag is stricken another will take it from his hands and carry on. . . . Tell the people not to worry about me . . . for . . . always the cause is there.” 30 As for the gunman’s fate, an interrogation revealed him to be John Schrank, a German immigrant and saloonkeeper, who had stalked Roosevelt on the campaign trail for two weeks and motives: “I intended to kill Theodore Roosevelt, the third termer. I did not want to kill the candidate of the Progressive Party.” Schrank was convicted of assault with the intent to murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in an insane asylum. When asked if he liked to hunt, Schrank replied, “Only Bull Moose.” He was kind enough to bequeath his bullet to the New York Historical Society. Roosevelt was just as light-hearted and forgiving a victim. He pronounced Schrank no more insane than Robert La Follette or Eugene Debs and insisted he had “not the slightest feeling against” his would-be assassin. 31 Roosevelt recovered at his home at Sagamore Hill. Then on November 2, he journeyed to Manhattan to speak forty-five minutes before 16,000 people packing Madison Square Garden, even though he still suffered intense pain. It was a close election that Roosevelt might have won had he faced only Wilson and only popular votes been counted. On November 5, Wilson garnered a third more popular votes than Roosevelt, with 6,293,019 or 41.84 percent to 4,119,507 or 27.40 percent, while 3,484,956 or 23.17 percent went to Taft and 900,873 or 1.60 percent to Debs. Typically the electoral college vote did not reflect the popular vote, with a landslide of 435 or 81.92 percent for Wilson, 88 or 16.57 percent for Roosevelt, and a mere 8 or 1.51 percent for Taft. Wilson took 40 states, Roosevelt six, and Taft two. Wilson won the home states of both Roosevelt and Taft. The Democrats captured Congress. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats

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widened their already formidable lead from 229 to 290 seats; the Republicans plummeted from 164 to 134; the Progressive Party took 10 seats and the Socialist Party retained its single seat. In the Senate, the Democrats went from 46 to 51 seats, the Republicans fell from 48 to 44, and the Progressives lost one of their two seats. 32 Roosevelt reacted to his loss with a typical mix of candor and assessment: “Well, we have gone down in a smashing defeat. Whether it is a Waterloo or a Bull Run, only time can tell.” He admitted that “I had expected defeat but I had expected that we would make a better showing.” He cited the forces contributing to his defeat: “I suppose that I ought not to expect that in three months we could form a new Party that would do as well as we have actually done. We had all the money, all the newspapers and all the political machinery against us and, above all, we had the habit of thought of the immense mass of dull unimaginative men who simply vote according to the party symbol.” 33 He then promised that “the Progressive Movement must and will go forward. The alternative is oscillation between the greedy arrogance of a party directed by conscienceless millionaires and the greedy envy of a part directed by reckless and unscrupulous demagogues.” 34 His role in the movement, however, would change dramatically in the coming years. NOTES 1. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925, 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926–1935), 4:476–77. 2. Mark Dawidziak, ed., Theodore Roosevelt for Nature Lovers (New York: Globe Pequot, 2017), 168. 3. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 187. 4. For good books on the 1912 election, see: Brett Flehlinger, The 1912 Election and the Power of Progressivism: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford, 2002); James Chace, Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs: The Election That Changed the Country (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Lewis L Gould., ed., Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008). 5. Roosevelt to Charles Willard, December 11, 1911, Roosevelt Letters, 7:454. 6. Andrew C. Pavord, “The Gamble for Power: Theodore Roosevelt’s Decision to Run for the Presidency in 1912,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 3 (Summer 1996), 640. 7. Patricia O’Toole, ed., In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 75. 8. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 169–70. 9. Henry Cabot Lodge, Press Statement, February [n.d.], 1912, Lodge Letters, 2:423. 10. Archibald Butt to Clara Butt, February 23, 1912, Butt Letters, 2:848. 11. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925, 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926–1935), 4:476–77. 12. Frank Moore and Allen Churchill, eds., The New International Yearbook: A Compendium of the World’s Progress for the Year 1912 (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1913), 547. 13. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 187. 14. Pringle, Taft, 2:791–92.

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15. Roosevelt to Truman Newberry, February 20, 1912, Roosevelt Letters, 7:506. 16. Lewis L. Gould, Reform and Regulation: American Politics, 1900–1916 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978), 115–16. 17. Roosevelt address, Chicago, June 17, 1912, Roosevelt Works, 17:231. 18. Gould, Reform and Regulation, 115–20. 19. Roosevelt address, August 6, 1912, Roosevelt Works, 17:261. 20. For good books on Roosevelt and the progressive movement, see: George E. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1946); I.F. Cadenhead, Theodore Roosevelt: The Paradox of Progressivism (Woodbury, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1974); John A. Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978); Sidney M. Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009). 21. For good biographies of Wilson, see: Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947); John Milton Cooper, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). 22. Roosevelt to Horace Plunkett, August 3, 1912, Roosevelt Letters, 7:592. 23. For comparisons of Roosevelt and Wilson, see: John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); George W. Ruiz, “The Ideological Convergence of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 1989), 159–77; Lewis L. Gould, “Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and the Emergence of the Modern Presidency: An Introductory Essay,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1 (1989), 41–50. 24. Roosevelt Autobiography, 317. 25. For good books on Debs and the socialist movement, see: Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897–1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952); H. Wayne Morgan, Eugene V. Debs: Socialist for President (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1962); Bernard J. Brommel, Eugene V. Debs Spokesman for Labor and Socialism (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 1978). 26. Sidney M. Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 189. 27. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 230, 239. 28. For good books on the assassination attempt, see: Oliver Remey, Henry Cochems, and Joseph Bloodgood, The Attempted Assassination of Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt (Milwaukee, WI: Progressive Publishing Company, 1912); Willard M. Oliver and Nancy E. Marion, Killing the President: Assassinations, Attempts, and Rumored Attempts on U.S. Commanders-in-Chief (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2010). 29. Roosevelt speech, Milwaukee, October 14, 1910, Roosevelt Works, 19:441–52. 30. Willard M. Oliver and Nancy E. Marion, Killing the President, 82. 31. Roosevelt to John Strachey, December 16, 1912, Roosevelt Letters, 7:676–77. 32. Gould, Reform and Regulation, 146; Gable, Bull Moose Years, 131–32. 33. Brands, T.R., 725. 34. Brands, T.R., 725.

NINETEEN The Last Chances

But the Progressive Movement must and will go forward. The alternative is oscillation between the greedy arrogance of a party directed by conscienceless millionaires and the greedy envy of a party directed by reckless and unscrupulous demagogues. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 When it is evident that a leader’s day is past, the one service he can render is to step aside and leave the ground clear for the development of a successor. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 To be neutral between right and wrong is to serve wrong. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3 My dear sir you forget that I have commanded troops in action in the most important battle fought by the United States army during the last half century. (Theodore Roosevelt) 4 Once it was true that this country could not endure half free and half slave. Today it is true that it cannot endure half American and half foreign. The hyphen is incompatible with patriotism. (Theodore Roosevelt) 5

Once again Roosevelt had to decide what to do with the rest of his life after his political career had apparently ended. And once again he decided that for now a prolonged wilderness adventure was the best way to sooth his bruised psyche. This time he headed to Brazil, where for years he had fantasized about exploring a vast unmapped swath of rainforest. 6 His inspiration was rooted in three books written by John Augustine Zahm, a Notre Dame professor and priest, Evolution and Dogma, Up the Orinoco and Down the Magdalena, and Along the Andes and Down the Amazon. 7 The catalyst for his adventure was an invitation from Lauro Muller, Brazil’s foreign affairs minister, to join forces with Colonel Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, who had discovered the headwaters of the myster265

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ious Rio da Duvida or River of Doubt as recently as 1909, to survey the entire river and discover where it led. The idea could not have excited Roosevelt more: “I want to be the first to go down the unknown river.” 8 He rounded up pledges of financial and logistical support from the American Museum of Natural History to supplement that offered by Brazil’s government. Roosevelt, his son Kermit, and naturalist George Cherrie reached Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 9, 1913. From there they journeyed by steamboats up the Rio Plata then the Paraguay River to Caceres, where they met Rondon and fifteen porters. From there they packed into dugout canoes and paddled until they could go no farther. They then had to drag their canoes on muddy trails over the plateau. They set off down the River of Doubt on February 27. They did not reach the first vestige of civilization until April 15. Roosevelt’s Brazilian expedition was as arduous and dangerous as his East Africa expedition had been comfortable and safe. The timing could not have been worse. The rainy season was just starting and inundated the lands along their route, driving off animals that they might otherwise have hunted for food. The contrast with the African expedition could not have been starker. The Brazilian rain forest was a dark, gloomy maze where spotting wildlife was extremely difficult. Roosevelt longed for the East African savanna swarming with immense herds. They suffered malnutrition, malaria, dysentery, boils, and rashes. Mosquitoes, wasps, flies, bees, and other insect pests constantly plagued them. Their canoes kept smashing against the rapids, which forced them to set aside days to hollow out replacements. One man drowned. Another man went insane, murdered a companion, and fled into the jungle. Kermit nearly drowned and for weeks struggled with fever. Roosevelt injured his leg, which festered and a fever rendered him delirious. Indians lurked in the forest and occasionally fired an arrow as the canoes passed. The journey’s only positive physical effect on Roosevelt was to squeeze fifty-five pounds of corpulence from him. Unfortunately, his voracious and undisciplined appetite soon regained those hard-won losses. Roosevelt and his colleagues had committed extraordinary feats of survival and discovery. He always played down the expedition’s sheer misery, admitting only that their experience “lacked a good deal of being undiluted pleasure.” 9 The River of Doubt proved to be the world’s longest unknown river, nearly a thousand miles in length. He was modest about his achievement, correcting people who attributed him with discovering the river by insisting that he had only mapped it. Nonetheless, the Brazilian government graciously renamed the Rio Duvida the Rio Roosevelt. After returning to America, Roosevelt scrutinized the Wilson administration and grudgingly found much to like. Wilson enacted much of the

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Progressive Party’s agenda, thus at once fulfilling its vision and devastating its political relevance. The honeymoon did not last long. Wilson signed a friendship and trade treaty with Colombia with a clause whereby the United States expressed “sincere regret” and would pay $25 million in compensation for Roosevelt’s policy that led to Panama’s independence and the Panama Canal’s construction. This naturally incensed Roosevelt, who released to the press a two thousand–word protest. He condemned the Wilson administration’s “handling of our foreign affairs” for making “the United States a figure of fun in the international world. The proposed Colombian treaty . . . will rightly render us an object of contemptuous derision to every great nation.” He then attacked Wilson’s military intervention in Mexico for “wavering between peace and war” and thus “designed to combine the disadvantages of both, and feebly lending first toward one and then toward the other.” He contrasted the loss of nineteen American lives in Wilson’s military operation that ended in failure with his own policy that won independence for Panama and the Canal Zone for the United States without bloodshed. 10 Privately his contempt was even more searing. He condemned Wilson as “almost as much of a prize jackass as” Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who was a “contemptible figure” hopelessly ignorant of how to promote American interests in a complex world filled with opportunities and threats. 11 Securely ensconced in the White House, Wilson could afford to be generous if condescending toward Roosevelt, describing him as: “a great big boy. There is a sweetness about him that is very compelling. You can’t resist the man. I can easily understand why his followers are so fond of him.” 12 Wilson kept his public temper even as Roosevelt’s criticisms of his policies worsened. “The way to treat an adversary like Roosevelt,” he explained, “is to gaze at the stars over his head.” 13 The Outlook’s board of trustees quietly asked Roosevelt to resign as editor while still annually contributing ten essays for publication. He accepted their explanation that readership was declining because too many people associated Outlook as a Roosevelt mouthpiece rather than an independent progressive magazine. Unsaid but understood was that Roosevelt’s defeat as the progressive movement’s leader in the 1912 should be his last hurrah as he passed the torch to dynamic younger leaders. Roosevelt unenthusiastically attended the Progressive Party convention in Chicago in 1914. By now he had lost faith in the party and privately pronounced this moratorium: “When we failed to establish ourselves at the very outset as the second party, it became overwhelmingly probable that politics would soon sink back into the conditions that had been normal for the previous half century, that is, into a two-party system, the Republicans and Democrats alternating in the first and second place. Under such circumstances it was likely that we would keep only the men

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of high principle and good reasoning power and the cranks. The men in between left us.” 14 Roosevelt spread the word that he would relinquish any claims to leadership of the progressive movement. He admitted to William White that: “It is perfectly obvious that the bulk of our people are heartily tired of me.” Thus he would “fight in the ranks as long as I live for the cause and the platform for which we fought in 1912. But at present any attempt on my part which could be construed . . . into the belief that I was still aspiring to some leadership in the movement would . . . do real harm. . . . When it is evident that a leader’s day is past, the one service he can render is to step aside and leave the ground clear for the development of a successor. It seems to me that such is now the case as regards me.” As for the Progressive movement, several key forces combined to defeat it: “The public grew to identify us with the lunatic fringe. . . . The fundamental trouble was that the country was sick and tired of reform. . . . Not only did the people wish to beat all the reform leaders but they wished to beat the reform legislation. . . . The identification of progressivism with prohibition in so many states hurt us. . . . The average man was tired of decency in politics.” Nonetheless, he believed “that what we did was worthwhile. Our movement in 1912 was the loftiest and sanest movement in our politics since the days of Lincoln and the platform we issued was the only great constructive platform for the social and economic justice . . . since the days of the Civil War.” And looking far ahead, Roosevelt was confident that “the revulsion is only temporary. The people are sure to wake up in the end. Our cause will eventually triumph, even although under other leaders and under another name.” 15 The Progressive Party died as swiftly as it was conceived. Progressive candidates lost every national and state election on November 3, 1914, except for two: Hiram Johnson won the race to be California’s governor and the sole Progressive member of the House of Representatives retained his seat. The number of votes for progressive candidates was only half that of 1912, although as a midterm election turnout was lower for all political parties. As for Roosevelt, a survey of 9,000 prominent Americans by Lawyer and Banker magazine listed him last of twelve names of the nation’s political leaders; indeed, he received only eleven of the 9,000 votes. 16 Roosevelt began inching back toward the Republican Party. In July 1914, he refused to see a group of New York progressives who wanted him to run for governor in 1914. On July 26, he publicly declared his intention to support reformer Harvey Hinman as the Republican Party candidate against party boss William Barnes. He blasted New York’s “system of bipartisan boss rule” that made it “impossible to secure the economic, social, and industrial reforms to which we are pledged until this invisible government of the party bosses working through the alli-

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ance between crooked business and crooked politics is rooted out of our governmental system.” 17 Barnes sued Roosevelt for libel and demanded $50,000 in compensation. The trial opened in April 1915. Roosevelt lost the initial round when Judge William Andrews rejected his motion to dismiss the case because the constitutional right to freedom of speech protected his words. He now had to convince a jury that his accusation that Barnes was a corrupt political boss was true. But to his shock, Andrews cut him short when he announced his intention to do so and began his arguments. As if the judge’s bias for Barnes and against him was not daunting enough, he faced the brilliant lawyer William Ivins, who represented Barnes. Roosevelt skilfully parried most thrusts by Ivins, then struck repeatedly by wielding Barnes’s own statements reported in the press against him. His defense team got hold of and presented a ledger book that revealed some of the enormous wealth that Barnes had won through government contracts to his printing company. Ivins pointed out that the ledger books proved nothing illegal. Barnes appeared to respond calmly and reasonably to a barrage of defense questions. It appeared that Roosevelt was going to lose. Then, on May 20, to the astonishment of all, the jurors returned a verdict of not guilty after forty ballots. An exultant Roosevelt jumped to his feet to shake hands with each juror and promise that “I will try all my life to act in private affairs so that no one of you will have cause to regret the verdict you have given this morning.” The victory did not come cheap. The lawyer’s bill came to $31,159.64, which, combined with other expenses, brought the total to more than $40,000. 18 Meanwhile, Roosevelt scored another sweetheart writing deal, this time with Metropolitan magazine, with its progressive outlook. For three years from 1915 through 1918, he annually received $25,000 for essays on domestic and international issues with the total coming to 50,000 words, and was paid the same rate for any words beyond the total. This literary outlet helped lift a bit his spirits that had been deeply depressed since the 1912 election. William White, in a congratulatory letter, expressed his confidence that Roosevelt would use the chance to replenish his “cistern” that had gone “dry on politics.” Roosevelt replied that “I am more like a corpse than like the cistern of which you spoke.” 19 After World War I erupted in August 1914, Roosevelt initially backed President Wilson’s policy of neutrality and offer to the belligerents to mediate a peace settlement without victors. 20 He defied the temptation to say more, explaining that as an ex-president, “my public attitude must be one of entire impartiality.” 21 But he soon broke his silence and severed his support. Wilson interpreted the word neutrality to mean treating both sides the same, a stance that Roosevelt condemned as utter folly. He insisted that “in a really tremendous world struggle, with a great moral issue involved, neutrality does not serve righteousness, for to be neutral

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between right and wrong is to serve wrong.” 22 A German and AustroHungarian victory over Britain, France, and Russia that destroyed the European and global power balance threatened American national security. Without naming names, he advocated a neutrality that avoided combat while tilting toward the side that least threatened or most favored the United States. He detailed his views in the book, America and the World War that appeared in 1915. It was not among his better efforts. He cobbled together many sections from his previous writings and repeated many of the same points. He called for American neutrality to be protected by a powerful navy and army that could take sides if necessary to protect national security. He advocated an international concert of the great powers to keep a peace guided by a new round of agreements that bolstered the Hague conventions of 1897 and 1907, the latter of which he had proudly signed after the Senate ratified it. 23 The conflagration devastating Europe stirred Roosevelt’s primal side: “it is a dreadful thing that this world war should exist. But after all there is an element of splendid heroism in it, shown on both sides and by all of the nations involved.” 24 He praised rather than condemned the belligerents: “The storm that is raging in Europe is terrible and evil, but it is also grand and noble. Untried men who live at ease will do well to remember that there is a certain sublimity even in Milton’s defeated archangel, but none whatever in the spirits who keep neutral, who remained at peace, and dared side neither with hell nor with heaven.” 25 Wilson gradually abandoned his strict neutrality for the tilted neutrality that Roosevelt advocated. The combined national interests of making money and confronting threats gave him little choice in the matter. The British blockade of the Central Powers denied those markets to American exporters, while the allied powers demanded ever more loans and goods. On February 18, 1915, Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare against any ships sailing to the allies put American property and lives in the line of fire. Wilson responded by warning Berlin that the United States would defend its right to freedom of the seas and rethink its neutrality should German submarines sink any American ships. Public opinion shifted sharply with word that on May 7, 1915, a German submarine had sunk the British vessel Lusitania, killing 1,195 of the 1,959 people aboard including 128 of 139 Americans. The horror of those deaths overshadowed the reality that the Lusitania carried war supplies and thus was technically a valid target according to international law. Although Wilson condemned the sinking, he insisted that his neutrality policy best secured the United States. To Roosevelt and others who argued that turning the other check to German belligerence was dishonorable, Wilson replied: “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.” 26 Wilson’s appeasement policy and words enraged Roosevelt. He privately insisted that “the murder of the thousand men, women, and chil-

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dren in the Lusitania is due, solely, to Wilson’s cowardice and weakness in failing to take energetic action.” He then lumped Secretary of State Bryan with President Wilson as “abject creatures and they won’t go to war unless they are kicked into it.” 27 He condemned Wilson for “his adroit, unscrupulous cunning, his readiness to about-face, his timidity about any manly assertion of our rights, and his pandering to the feelings of those who love ease and the chance of material profit, and his lack of all conviction and willingness to follow every gust of popular opinion.” 28 Roosevelt assumed that sooner or later America would be dragged into World War I. If so, his last great hope for a fitting capstone to his life would be to receive a major general’s commission and organize a division for the American army fighting in France. He began formulating his plans, tapping potential officers, and lobbying for congressional approval nearly a year before the United States formally declared war. Oddly for a man normally so well informed, his division would be entirely composed of cavalry, an utter anachronism in an age of machine guns, trenches, and barbed wire. And as if to underline his plan’s absurdity, while trying to climb into the saddle at Sagamore Hill, his horse threw him and he broke two ribs. This setback did not deter his desire for himself along with his sons to fulfill their duty and win glory for their country and family. He stated that “I should expect all four to go in, if there were a serious war, and I would of course go in myself.” 29 He was encouraged when his old friend and commander, General Leonard Wood, invited him to his army training camp near Plattsburgh, New York, in August 1916. Wood had devised a four-week regimen for young men that taught them the rudiments of military life, including marching, shooting, and conditioning. The graduates then returned to civilian life with a certificate that could earn them an officer’s commission should America go to war. Roosevelt’s latest book-length jeremiad, Fear God and Take Your Own Part, appeared in May 1916, a year after Wilson called for strict accountability for German attacks on Americans. 30 Roosevelt pointed out that since then the Germans had sunk seven American ships and killed over two hundred American citizens, and had also launched a sabotage campaign against American war factories and ships packed with supplies heading to Britain or France. The book became a bestseller. Two laudatory books about Roosevelt appeared around the same time, Julian Street’s The Most Interesting American and Charles G. Wilson’s Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of His Career. 31 Roosevelt issued a newsworthy statement to the press on March 9, 1916. He would not be a candidate in the Progressive Party primaries for that year’s presidential candidate. He blasted the Wilson administration and Democratic Party for political “hypocrisy and degrees of infamy” as the likelihood increased of America getting dragged into the war in Europe. He called on the delegates to the Progressive Party convention at

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Chicago to pick candidates for the presidency and other races who would be committed to American rather than regional or special interests. 32 A chance for a political comeback flickered briefly when the Progressive and Republican Party conventions overlapped in Chicago in early June. On June 8, 1916, five prominent members of each party met to discuss running a common presidential candidate. George Perkins, the Progressive Party chair, and his associates pressed for a Roosevelt candidacy. The Republicans tried to convince the Progressives to join them in supporting Senator Charles Fairbanks of Indiana. They amiably agreed to disagree before parting. On June 10, the Progressives unanimously nominated Roosevelt as their presidential candidate. The Republicans nominated Charles Evans Hughes, a former New York governor and currently a Supreme Court justice. The nomination posed a quandary for Roosevelt. He would have happily accepted the candidacy of both parties, but was certain to suffer a humiliating defeat as the Progressive candidate. He immediately declined the nomination and, on June 22, released a long statement explaining why and asking Progressives to support Republican candidate Hughes; although he was grateful for their support, the American people were simply not ready for a third party and that Progressives had to unite behind Republican Party candidate Hughes to defeat Wilson, whose leadership he condemned. 33 Wilson won a decisive victory on November 7, 1916, with 9,126,868 votes or 49.2 percent of the total and 30 states worth 277 electoral votes to 8,548,728 votes or 46.1 percent of the total and 18 states worth 254 electoral votes for Hughes. The Democrats retained the Senate with 56 to 40 seats, but the Republicans held a razor-thin edge in the House of Representatives with 216 to 214 Democrats along with three Progressive seats and one each for the Socialist and Prohibition parties. 34 Among Wilson’s campaign slogans was, “He kept us out of the war.” He reneged on that promise on April 2, 1917, when he asked Congress to declare war against Germany after German submarines sank three American merchant ships. Congress overwhelmingly voted for war by 82 to 62 in the Senate and 373 to 50 in the House of Representatives. Roosevelt now was all public praise for the man he had disparaged for years. Behind the scenes, he redoubled his efforts to wring a major general’s commission from the White House. He fired off letters to War Secretary Newton Baker and other influential members of the administration and Congress, asking them to talk the president into granting him a major general’s commission. He fantasized about a glorious death on the battlefield. “I shall not come back, my boys may not come back, my grandchildren may be left alone but they will carry forward the family name.” 35 He tried to arrange a meeting with Wilson but was told that the president’s schedule was full. He struggled to repress his disappointment as he explained his urgency: “I can’t say anything more about organizing

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a division to go to the firing line until I find out something more about the policy of the government. I am sorry not to have seen the President.” 36 He tried again to see Wilson on April 9, this time by stopping at the White House without an appointment. He explained his strategy: “I’ll take my chances on his trying to snub me. He can’t do it! I’d like to see him try it!” This time Wilson, undoubtedly with a deep sigh, found time hopefully to put the awkward business behind him. Each man mustered all his political skills to get what he wanted. First came the hearty handshakes, the broad smiles, the inquiries about family, friends, health, and the amusing anecdotes. Then, each deftly made his case. Roosevelt passionately expounded his at length. Wilson gently and succinctly explained why a volunteer force would not fit with the conscription army that he envisioned, but promised to consider the possibility. After leaving the White House, Roosevelt hid his disappointment as he stepped before reporters. “The President received me with the utmost courtesy and consideration,” he explained, and would decide “in his own good time.” 37 That “good time” soon arrived. On April 15, Roosevelt received a letter from Secretary of War Baker rejecting his request. Should any volunteer forces be raised, Baker explained, they would be commanded only by regular officers “who have devoted their lives exclusively to the study and pursuit of military matters, and have made a professional study of the recent changes of the art of war.” In other words, dilettantes with dreams of leading cavalry charges in an age of machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches waste everyone’s valuable time by applying. It took Roosevelt a week to shake off the pain of that humiliating letter. He vented his feelings with an eighteen-page letter that asserted his qualifications for the job: “My dear sir you forget that I have commanded troops in action in the most important battle fought by the United States army during the last half century.” He then argued that army bureaucracy tends to squeeze the dynamism and creativity from career officers. Only decisive leadership could break the bloody stalemate across Europe. 38 Baker’s reply politely but firmly restated the policy. In a separate letter, he did accede to Roosevelt’s request that his son Quentin be accepted into the army flying school. 39 Although deeply discouraged, Roosevelt played his second to last card. On April 22, he began buttonholing key senators and representatives for a bill that authorized the raising of volunteer units. To George Chamberlain, the Senate Military Affairs Committee chair, he argued: “Let us use volunteer forces, in connection with a portion of the regular army, in order at the earliest possible moment . . . to put our flag on the firing line. We owe this to humanity.” 40 Democrat Chamberlain was just as reluctant as the Wilson administration to empower a loose cannon like Roosevelt to raise and lead a division on the Western Front. Henry Cabot Lodge, the Foreign Relations Committee chair, came to Roosevelt’s res-

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cue by talking Chamberlain into having his committee consider amending the pending Draft Bill by letting the president appoint four major generals for volunteer divisions; Senator Warren Harding of Ohio sponsored the amendment. Although Roosevelt’s name appears nowhere in the Draft Bill, Lodge expressed his hope that Wilson would include him as one of the four major generals. After all, the ex-president “is known in Europe as is no other American. His presence there would be . . . an encouragement to the soldiers from the allied nations.” Then there was the sheer decency of giving Roosevelt “an opportunity if he desires, to give his life for what he regards as the most sacred of all causes.” 41 Roosevelt’s final card was potentially powerful. Since publicly announcing his intention to raise a division, thousands of men had written him hoping to be accepted. His aides were busy compiling an expanding list of addresses for a mass mailing with information on where to show up. All he needed was the official green light to swiftly mobilize his division. Meanwhile, he had to determine just where and how to feed, house, equip, train, and pay his troops, although presumably the government would supply all that. Word that Roosevelt was raising a division was electrifying news for France’s government and high command. Field Marshall Joseph Joffre, who was visiting Washington, asked Baker when he might expect Roosevelt’s division at the front. To Joffre’s disappointment, Baker explained how unlikely that would be. Roosevelt and Joffre met on May 9. Among the array of issues they discussed was the possibility of the French supplying all of the volunteer division’s needs. That, however, would mean that the division would fight in the French rather than American army. Learning of their meeting, Baker fired off his latest letter designed to smother Roosevelt’s hopes: “Since the responsibility for action and decision in this matter rests upon me, you will have to regard the determination I have already indicated as final, unless changing circumstances require a re-study of the whole question.” 42 The Volunteer Bill passed both houses of Congress and Wilson signed it into law on May 13. The immediate effect was to require all able-bodied men between 21 and 31 years old to register for the draft. When asked by reporters, Wilson acknowledged that the bill empowered him to commission Roosevelt a major general. Knowing how popular that appointment would be in America and among the allies, Wilson generously and disingenuously stated: “It would be very agreeable for me to pay Mr. Roosevelt this compliment, and the Allies the compliment, of sending to their aid one of our most distinguished public men, and an ex-president who has rendered many conspicuous public services and proved his gallantry in many striking ways. Politically, too, it would no doubt have a very fine effect.” He then diplomatically explained why that would most likely not happen: “But this is not the time . . . for any action not calculated to

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contribute to the immediate success of the war. The business now at hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific definiteness and precision.” 43 Roosevelt then turned his formidable lobbying skills to General John Pershing, whom Wilson had named to command America’s army in France. Pershing owed his soaring rise through the army hierarchy largely to Roosevelt. In 1905, Roosevelt had promoted Pershing to general ahead of 805 officers with seniority. He did so because he had observed how tough, decisive, and farsighted Pershing was during the 1898 Cuban campaign. He confined his request, however, to Pershing finding positions for his sons Theodore and Archibald. Pershing promised to put them on his staff. Pershing, however grateful for Roosevelt’s previous decisive intervention on his behalf, left unsaid that he had no desire to have such a domineering intellect and personality as one of his division commanders. 44 Wilson received a letter from French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, asking him to approve Roosevelt’s volunteer division. Clemenceau’s blunt, condescending, and critical tone stunned Wilson: “It is possible that your mind, enclosed in its austere legal frontiers . . . has failed to be impressed by the vital hold which personalities like Roosevelt have on popular imagination. The name of Roosevelt has this legendary force in our country at this time.” He asked Wilson to send France’s weary soldiers and civilians Roosevelt to “gladden their hearts.” 45 Few presidents have been as thin-skinned and stubborn as Wilson. These searing words reinforced rather than weakened his determination to deny Roosevelt a command cherished not just by him but by millions of others on both sides of the Atlantic. He disdained the French prime minister’s letter as unworthy of a reply. This was the first of countless conflicts between Wilson and Clemenceau that would hamper allied efforts first to win the war and then to win the peace. As for the former president, Wilson explained that “the best way to treat Mr. Roosevelt is to take no notice of him. That breaks his heart and is the best punishment that can be administered.” 46 Meanwhile, to rub salt in the wounds of Roosevelt and his legions of adoring supporters, Wilson issued a major general’s commission to William Howard Taft, although his “command” was confined to the Red Cross rather than troops. Roosevelt tried to hide his pain at the meanspirited act by privately quipping, “Major General Taft! How the Kaiser must have trembled when he heard the news.” 47 Taft himself set aside his own hurts from his conflicts with Roosevelt by graciously remarking: “I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for Colonel Roosevelt. Here he is, the one man in the country most capable of doing things, of handling the big things in Washington, denied the opportunity.” 48 Although crushed that he was confined to the sidelines, Roosevelt took enormous pride that all four of his sons were soldiers. He wrote Ted that “you and your brothers are playing your parts in the greatest of the

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world’s great days, and what man of spirit does not envy you?” 49 He weathered enormous stress worrying about them and accepting the bitter reality that his last chance to valiantly serve his country was dead. He admitted to his doctor that “I feel myself slipping a bit both mentally and physically. I’m an abnormal eater and I can’t see how you’re going to do much good.” 50 Dr. Jack Cooper did him considerable good by talking him into embarking on a weight-loss program and writing his latest book. Roosevelt shed some pounds and compiled The Foes of Our Own Household from revised versions of twelve recent articles for Metropolitan magazine. 51 Then, in February 1918, an abscess and fistula in his rectum, abscesses in his ears, and a flare-up of malaria forced him into the hospital. Surgery eliminated the abscesses and fistula, while quinine alleviated his malaria. Fearful for his life, his doctors kept him in the hospital before finally releasing him. He returned to Sagamore Hill, feeble, dizzy, and deaf in one ear. After recovering, Roosevelt poured his energies into promoting patriotism, which to him meant an American identity unsullied by association with any other: “The overwhelming issue at this moment is whether or not we are a real nation, able to command unfaltering loyalty from all our citizens and to secure the respect of the outside powers.” 52 He denounced hyphenated Americans, insisting that “when it comes to dealing with the safety of the nation, we should act as Americans and nothing more.” 53 He insisted that “once it was true that this country could not endure half free and half slave. Today it is true that it cannot endure half American and half foreign. The hyphen is incompatible with patriotism.” 54 He warned that “we have less to fear from foes without than from foes within; for the former will be formidable only as the latter breaks our strength.” 55 Tragic news reached Sagamore Hill in July 1918. Quentin was shot down and killed during a reconnaissance mission. Roosevelt’s public reaction was predictably stoic: “Quentin’s mother and I are very glad that he got to the front and had a chance to render some service to his country, and to show the stuff there was in him before his fate befell him.” 56 When Edith Wharton encouraged him to release his feelings by writing about Quentin, he confessed that his grief was so overwhelming that “I should break down if I tried.” 57 He took refuge in insisting that his son had died nobly for a great cause: “It is very dreadful that the young should die and the old be left, especially when the young are those who above all others should be the leaders of the next generation. But they have died with high honor, and not in vain; for it is they, and those like them, who have saved the soul of the world.” 58 His other sons returned scarred physically and perhaps emotionally. Poison gas hospitalized Ted and later at the front a bullet hit his left leg. Shrapnel shattered Archie’s knee and broke his arm. Malaria sickened Kermit. But at least they were alive. As for Roosevelt, illness, lethargy, and depression fouled his last seven months of life.

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NOTES 1. Brands, T.R., 725. 2. Roosevelt to William White, November 7, 1914, Roosevelt Letters, 8:836–38. 3. Roosevelt to John Strachey, February 22, 1914, Roosevelt Letters, 8:903. 4. Roosevelt to Newton Baker, April 23, 1917, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1176–84. 5. Theodore Roosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 27. 6. For good books on Roosevelt’s South American adventure, see: Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Rainforest (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914); John Augustine Zahm, Through South America’s Southland: With an Account of the Roosevelt Scientific Expedition to South America (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1916), Joseph Ornig, My Last Chance to be a Boy: Theodore Roosevelt’s South American Expedition of 1913–1914 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1994); Candice Millard, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (New York: Doubleday, 2005). See also: H. Paul Jeffers, Roosevelt the Explorer: Teddy Roosevelt’s Amazing Adventures as a Naturalist, Conservationist, and Explorer (New York: Taylor Trade, 2003). 7. John Augustine Zahm, Evolution and Dogma (Chicago: D.H. McBride Company, 1896), John Augustine Zahm, Up the Orinoco and Down the Magdalena (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1910), John Augustine Zahm, Along the Andes and Down the Amazon (New York: D. Appleton Company, 1911). 8. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 308. 9. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 354. 10. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 359–60. 11. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 9, 1913, Roosevelt Letters, 7:747; Roosevelt to Arthur Lee, August 22, 1914, Roosevelt Letters, 7:809. 12. Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him (New York: AMS Press, 1921, 1970), 287–88. 13. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925, 5 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926–1935), 5:202. 14. Roosevelt to William White, November 7, 1914, Roosevelt Letters, 8:835. 15. Roosevelt to William White, November 7, 1914, Roosevelt Letters, 8:836–38. 16. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 392. 17. John Robert Greene, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Barnes Libel Case: A Reappraisal,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 1989), 95. 18. For the best accounts, see: George T. Blakey, “Calling a Boss a Boss: Did Roosevelt Libel Barnes in 1915,” New York History, vol. 60, no. 2, (April 1979), 194–216; Stewart F. Hancock, “Barnes v. Roosevelt: Theater in the Courtroom,” New York State Bar Association, vol. 63, no. 8 (December 1991), 5–26; John Robert Greene, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Barnes Libel Case: A Reappraisal,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 1989), 95–105; Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 404–24, 426–27, 696. 19. Roosevelt to William White, January 4, 1915, Roosevelt Letters, 8:871. 20. J. Lee Thompson, Never Call Retreat: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 21. Roosevelt to Arthur Lee, August 22, 1914, Roosevelt Letters, 7:812. 22. Roosevelt to John Strachey, February 22, 1914, Roosevelt Letters, 8:903. 23. Theodore Roosevelt, America and the World War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915); Roosevelt Works, 20:1–216. 24. J. Lee Thompson, Never Call Retreat: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 21. 25. Theodore Roosevelt, America and the World War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 277. 26. August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York: Vintage, 1991), 364. 27. Roosevelt to Archie Roosevelt, May 19, 1915, Roosevelt Letters, 8:922. 28. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, February 4, 1916, Lodge Letters, 8:1013. 29. Roosevelt to Frank McCoy, July 10, 1915, Roosevelt Letters, 8:947–48.

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30. Theodore Roosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons Company, 1915). 31. Julian Street, The Most Interesting American (New York: Century Company, 1916); Charles G. Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of His Career (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916). 32. Roosevelt statement, March 9, 1916, Roosevelt Works, 17:410–13. 33. Roosevelt statement, June 22, 1916, Roosevelt Works, 17:414–24. 34. S.D. Lovell, The Presidential Election of 1916 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980). 35. Frederick Wood, ed., Roosevelt as We Knew Him: Personal Recollections of 150 Friends (New York: John C. Winston Company, 1927), 421. 36. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 483, 485. 37. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 486–87. 38. Roosevelt to Newton Baker, April 23, 1917, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1176–84. 39. Frederick Palmer, Newton D. Baker: America at War (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931), 1:206. 40. Roosevelt to George Chamberlain, April 12, 1917, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1171. 41. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 490–91. 42. Palmer, Newton D. Baker, 1:202. 43. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 494. 44. Roosevelt to John Pershing, May 20, 1917, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1192–93; Robert Cowley, ed., The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War (New York: Random House, 2004), 417. 45. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 495–96. 46. Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Random House, 2002), 487. 47. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 502. 48. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 516. 49. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 509. 50. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 508. 51. Theodore Roosevelt, The Foes of Our Own Household (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1917). 52. Roosevelt to Charles Bonaparte, December 31, 1915, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1000. 53. Roosevelt to Gifford Pinchot, February 8, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1017. 54. Theodore Roosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 27. 55. Roosevelt, “The Foes of Our Own Household,” Roosevelt Works, 19:25. 56. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 529. 57. Roosevelt to Edith Wharton, August 15, 1918, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1403. 58. Roosevelt to James Bryce, August 7, 1918, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1358.

TWENTY The Legacy

It is not the critic who counts nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. (Theodore Roosevelt) 1 Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are part of the same Great Adventure. (Theodore Roosevelt) 2 But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living. (Theodore Roosevelt) 3

A lung embolism, blood clot, or heart attack killed Theodore Roosevelt on January 6, 1919; we will never know for sure. The family honored his wish to “be buried among the people of Oyster Bay, and that the funeral service would be conducted entirely by those friends among whom he had lived so long and happily.” 4 Two days after his death the service took place at Christ Episcopal Church followed by his burial at Young’s Memorial Cemetery on a low hill overlooking the bay. The most prominent mourners present included Henry Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, Leonard Wood, Al Smith, Hiram Johnson, Charles Evans Hughes, Philander Chase Knox, Thomas Marshall, and William Howard Taft. The family entrusted no one to eulogize such an extraordinary life. President Woodrow Wilson was as generous to Roosevelt in death as he had been meanspirited in life. He was negotiating peace terms with the war allies in Paris when he learned of Roosevelt’s death. He had Vice President Mar279

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shall attend the funeral and burial, and ordered flags at federal buildings hung at half-mast for a month. News of his death stirred an outpouring of grief and commemorations of his life across the nation. The New York Evening Post’s obituary exalted him: “Something like a superman in the political sphere has passed away. He saw the nation steadily and he saw it whole. . . . Never have we had a politician who, with such an appearance of effortless ease, drew after him great masses and molded them to his will.” 5 Lodge called him “one of the most lovable as well as one of the cleverest and most daring men I have ever known.” 6 Although Mark Twain deplored his imperialist policies and attitudes, he lauded him as “one of the most likeable men that I am acquainted with.” 7 Dazzled by long talks with Roosevelt, H.G. Wells celebrated him as “the seeking mind of America. . . . His range of reading is amazing; he seems to be echoing with all the thought of his time, he has receptivity to the point of genius. And he does not merely receive, he digests and reconstructs. . . . He assimilates contemporary thought, delocalizes it and reverberates it. He is America for the first time vocal to itself.” 8 His most devoted followers eventually built monuments to him. The Women’s Roosevelt Memorial Association reconstructed his birthplace at 28 East Twentieth Street as a museum. The Roosevelt Memorial Association erected statues in Washington, DC, and Oyster Bay. Sagamore Hill eventually became a national park. Gutzon Borglum chiseled Roosevelt’s face alongside those of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln from the granite cliff of Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, which became a national park. This outpouring of praise eclipsed the reality that Roosevelt was hardly universally loved or respected then or since. 9 He had many enemies who greeted his death with relief. Of the recorded comments of his foes, H.L. Mencken’s was the harshest: “The man was a liar, a braggart, a bully, and a fraud. But let us not speak evil of the dead.” 10 The array of reactions were mostly reactions to his larger than life personality, of the nonstop barrage of brilliance, energy, and ego that he either shared or inflicted on those around him. People either loved or hated him passionately. Among the many reasons that Roosevelt’s popularity endures is that he appeared to personify the archetypical American man, enterprising, virile, outgoing, and adventurous. 11 He proudly described himself as a pure American, with no hyphen designating a divided loyalty. Related to this all-American image was that Roosevelt was both an easterner and a westerner, the yin and yang of his American soul. He wrote that it was out West that “the romance of my life began,” but also he got “into the mind and soul of the average American.” For all that, “I owe more than I can ever express to the West.” 12 His western experiences definitely toughened him, developed his confidence, and purged some of his sorrow and rage after the deaths of his wife and mother.

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So what was Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy? One is powerful to the extent that one’s acts and words reverberate and shape humanity during one’s life and long after one’s death. Each generation of historians has generously ranked him among the top halfdozen presidents. 13 H. W. Brand’s view was typical: “the frustrating fact for Roosevelt was that, as much as Americans loved him, they didn’t particularly heed him, and he died having failed to accomplish the major continuing task of his career: the reform of the Republican Party. For nearly forty years, with time off for his Progressive sabbatical, he tried to reinject the spirit of Lincoln into the party of Lincoln. . . . But he failed. Yet if Roosevelt failed to change his party, he succeeded in changing the country . . . Roosevelt established the principle that the people of the United States, acting through their government, have a right to regulate the private economy in the public interest. Under Roosevelt the exercise of this right took such forms as antitrust suits, consumer protection laws, maximum rates for railroads, and federal stewardship of natural resources.” 14 Theodore Roosevelt’s achievements at once reflected, shaped, and transcended his epoch. He is best known for his progressive achievements in the White House. Perhaps no president has more carefully studied politics as a profession and consciously developed himself. Grover Cleveland pronounced him “the most perfectly equipped and most effective politician thus far seen in the Presidency.” 15 As president, the big stick was whatever powers of his office—oratory, reasoning, laws, compromises, regulations, congressional allies, and public opinion—he could muster to solve a problem and get a job done. He insisted that the Constitution was a living organ rather than a fossilized monument; that it should evolve with America; that it was designed to be adapted by each generation of leaders to overcome challenges and seize opportunities unforeseen by the framers. For Roosevelt, the framers clearly asserted their intent in the Constitution’s preamble that reads “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Not just the purposes but the powers of government are crystal clear. The Constitution permits the government to do whatever it does not explicitly forbid. He insisted that “the Constitution should be treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment, and not as a straightjacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth.” 16 He improved the standards and quality of life for countless American workers and consumers by pushing through Congress the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Meat Inspection Act, the Employers Liability Act, the

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Workman Compensation Act, and the Railroad Rate Regulation Act; trustbusting through 44 lawsuits, most notably against Northern Securities and Standard Oil; acting as arbitrator to resolve debilitating manufacturing and mining strikes in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada; and establishing regulatory agencies like the Department of Commerce and Labor, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, and the Bureau of Corporations. As a result, most Americans were economically much better off when Roosevelt exited the White House than when he entered it. From 1901 to 1909, the economy expanded from $297.9 billion to $382.1 billion or by more than a quarter, while prices rose 12.88 percent or half the growth rate. In all, the average person’s real income adjusted for inflation rose from $4,464 to $5,017 or 11.2 percent, a sharp rise for just eight years. Yet the increase in income could have been higher. Two reasons account for the economy expanding faster than the average person. The most important was the influx of 8,795,000 immigrants from 1901 to 1910, who stymied wage increases. Then there was Wall Street, which devoured the lion’s share of the expanding economic pie at the expense of Main Street. Nonetheless, the Roosevelt years were good for most people, especially farmers as a farm’s average value rose from $5,471 to $6,444 or 11.7 percent, and the number of farms rose from 5,737,000 in 1901 to 6,361,000 in 1909. The portion of women who worked full-time rose from 20 percent to 25 percent between 1900 and 1910. Life expectancy rose from 49.1 years in 1901 to 52.1 in 1909. How much Roosevelt’s antitrust, labor, and public health policies contributed to this progress is impossible to determine. Despite his array of new programs, he was a fiscal conservative who cut a lot of fat from government, raised revenues, and so actually reduced the national debt by $73,157,000 from $1,221,472,000 in 1901 to $1,148,315,000 in 1909. Nonetheless, he inherited a budget surplus and bequeathed a budget deficit. In 1901, the Treasury received $587,685,000 in revenues and spent $524,617,000 for a $63,069,000 surplus, and, in 1909, received $601,666,000 and spent $659,000,000, for a $57,334,000 deficit. 17 Roosevelt’s foreign policies boiled down to defending or enhancing vital American interests by the most appropriate means. This involved blocking foreign imperialism in the Western Hemisphere; ensuring that American merchants, investors, and missionaries enjoyed open doors for their efforts around the world; restoring order to countries plagued by poverty, corruption, and violence that threatened America’s economic and strategic interests; brokering peace in conflicts or wars between the great powers; forging concerts among the great powers to resolve common international problems; backing the civilizing efforts of great powers in their respective protectorates and colonies; and promoting the end of the naval arms race by capping each great power’s number and type of warship. Henry Kissinger lauded Roosevelt for approaching “the global

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balance of power with a sophistication matched by no other American president.” 18 Roosevelt’s proudest foreign policy achievements as president were winning Panama’s independence from Colombia and America’s right to build, run, and defend a canal across Panama. He accomplished this only by asserting the full array of his presidential powers: “If I had acted strictly according to precedent, I should have turned the whole matter over to Congress, in which case, Congress would be ably debating it at this moment, and the canal would be fifty years in the future.” 19 Roosevelt greatest legacy was conserving or outright preserving critical swaths of America’s natural, historic, and cultural heritage. During his seven and a half years as president, he established 6 national parks, 18 national monuments, 55 wildlife refuges, and 137 national forests, altogether protecting more than 230 million acres of public lands from destruction by the forces of greed and creed. He empowered himself and future presidents by getting Congress to pass the Preservation of Antiquities or National Monuments Act and National Forest Act, and establish the Forest Service, Reclamation Service, and Bureau of Land Management. He raised environmental consciousness by convening at the White House the National Conservation Conference of governors. Yet not all of his natural resources policies were progressive. His predator control programs disrupted many ecosystems and his Reclamation Act of massive dams and irrigation projects established cities and farmlands in deserts. President Roosevelt racked up a long list of firsts. It was Roosevelt who changed the official name for the president’s residence from Executive Mansion to White House. More importantly he modernized the White House. From April to November 1902, the Roosevelt family, the advisors, and the staff vacated the mansion as workers remodeled the east wing living quarters, built a west wing of offices, shored up many sagging floors and crumbling walls, installed the latest wiring for electricity and telephones, stripped garish Victorian furnishings, and restored the elegant style of the early republic. He and Edith turned White House receptions and dinners into salons for leading scientists, writers, and artists from America and beyond. He modernized the White House symbolically as well. He was the first president to have a black man, Booker T. Washington, dine with him at the White House, the first to appoint a Jew to a cabinet position, and the first to advocate equal rights and the vote for women. He was the youngest man to become president, the first to be born in a big city, and the first to journey overseas while in office. He was the first government official to call for Washington to develop warplanes and the first president to ride in an airplane, although it was two years after he left the White House. He was the first president to advocate that Washington develop submarines and the first to ride in one. He was the first president to host a conference on care for dependent children. He was the first leader of any country to convene a national and

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then an international conference dedicated to the conservation of natural resources. Even before entering the White House, he skillfully wielded power to get most of what he wanted as a New York state assemblyman, Federal civil service commissioner, New York police commissioner, assistant navy secretary, and New York governor. Indeed, in a mere two years Governor Roosevelt chalked up as many progressive economic, political, and environmental reforms as during his presidency, including improving standards for the civil service, workplace hours and safety, and processed foods; cutting taxes for the middle class and poor; raising taxes on the rich and corporations; requiring corporations to open their books to stockholders and state regulators; ending racial segregation in public education by letting children go to schools in their neighborhoods; establishing commissions to investigate and persecute government corruption; expanding the Adirondack and Catskill State Parks; and establishing Palisades State Park. As Colonel Roosevelt, he proved to be a courageous and inspiring leader who spearheaded charges that overran enemy positions on Kettle Hill and San Juan Heights during the Spanish-American War. After leaving the White House he briefly spearheaded the progressive movement devoted to promoting prosperity, rights, duties, and democracy for all Americans, and was the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate in the 1912 election. He led scientific expeditions that explored East Africa’s savanna and Brazil’s rain forest. The expanse of his protean achievements is illustrated by the two greatest tributes bestowed upon him, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 and the Medal of Honor posthumously in 2001. He remains the first and only person ever awarded the highest honors for promoting peace and war. Among Roosevelt’s greatest legacies are his writings. 20 He wrote 38 books and hundreds of essays on politics, history, and nature, many heavily autobiographical in displaying what he did or thought. His writing was above all prolific with a style at times lyrical, at times methodical, and a substance at times shallow, at times sublime. His numerous accounts of his own life were as selective and sanitized as most other autobiographies. An anonymous Atlantic Monthly reviewer captured the strengths and weaknesses of Roosevelt the author: “Few writers of American history have covered a wider or better field of research, or are more in sympathy with the best modern method of studying history from original sources. His style is natural, simple, and picturesque, without any attempt at fine writing. . . . He has . . . fresh and original thoughts, has opened new lines of investigation, and has written paragraphs, and some chapters of singular felicity.” The most significant drawback was that “Mr. Roosevelt, in making so good a work, has clearly shown that he could make a better one, if he would take more time in doing so.” 21 Although the reviewer was reacting to the first volume of Roosevelt’s

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Winning of the West series, the same words could describe nearly all of his books. Roosevelt recognized his writing flaws and strove to do better. Despite his prodigious output, he struggled as a writer. He lamented that his Naval War of 1812 was “so dry that they would have made a dictionary seem light reading by comparison.” 22 He admitted to novelist Owen Wister that “I wish I could make my writings touch a higher plane, but I don’t well see how I can, and I am not sure that I could do much by devoting more time to them. I go over them a good deal and recast, supply, or omit sentences and even paragraphs, but I don’t make the reconstruction complete in the way that you do.” 23 Since the invention of script how many writers have uttered the same complaints? He shared valuable insights into writing history: “The true historian will bring the past before our eyes as if it were the present. . . . He must ever remember that while the worst offense of which one can be guilty is to write vividly and inaccurately, yet that unless he writes vividly he cannot write truthfully; for no amount of dull, painstaking detail will sum up the whole truth unless the genius is there to paint the whole truth.” 24 H.W. Brands observed that writing evoked a better angel of his nature: “Roosevelt’s literary humility contrasted starkly with his political arrogance. As a historian he accepted, almost meekly, criticism of a kind that would have set his blood boiling as a politician. To some extent this owed to his awareness that as an historian he was an amateur in a field increasingly claimed by professionals.” 25 Roosevelt could have become a truly great writer had he devoted his working time completely to it. What is astonishing is how much and well he wrote given his incredible array of other nearly nonstop activities. He explained to his historian idol, Francis Parkman, that: “I have always intended to devote myself to essentially American [political] work; and literature must be my mistress.” 26 Nonetheless, his writings greatly influenced and were influenced by the thinking of three cutting-edge historians, Alfred Mahan on naval history and strategy, Frederick Turner on the frontier’s impact on American history, and Herbert Croly on progressivism. And these were just the most prominent writers. For Roosevelt, “the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home” and “the greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily married.” 27 He passed his most carefree times with his family. 28 He wrote idyllically of his home life: “At Sagamore Hill we love a great many things—birds and trees and books, and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and children and hard work and the joy of life. We have great fireplaces, and in them the logs roar and crackle during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for the hot still afternoons of summer.” 29

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What kind of husband was he? He deeply loved his two wives and apparently never openly fancied let alone dallied with any other women. He had a passionate, doting, all too brief relationship with Alice. He enjoyed a happy second marriage with Edith despite violating his own strict principle: “I utterly disbelieve in and disapprove of second marriages. I have always considered that they argued weakness in a man’s character.” 30 Edith was as reserved as her husband was extroverted. 31 She was very bright, well read, fluent in French, adept at grand and small talk alike, and, most vitally, knew how to rein in her husband when he got too exuberant or hotheaded. She was an engaged if emotionally aloof mother to six children. She was an outstanding hostess in her husband’s series of official duties. Roosevelt deeply appreciated the role that Edith played in his life. In a letter to his son Ted, he explained their relationship: “Mother, always tender, gentle, and considerate, and always loving, yet when necessary pointed out where I was thoughtless and therefore inconsiderate and selfish, instead of submitting to it. Had she not done this it would in the end have made her life very much harder, and mine very less happy.” 32 Nonetheless, Sagamore Hill was Roosevelt’s man cave, packed with his books, trophies, guns, and memorabilia; Edith had only her bedroom to call her own and decorate as she wished. What kind of father was he? 33 Roosevelt was often away from home for long periods of time, which he tried to make up for after he returned. As a big kid himself, he loved romping with his children for an hour or so each day when they were little, and they adored him for it. He could turn a walk through the woods or along the seashore into both a natural history class and a grand adventure that gave his children a sense of wonder with the world. But he set tough physical, intellectual, and moral standards that each child struggled with through his or her life. And he did not spare the rod when a child misbehaved: “Mrs. Roosevelt and I have no scruples whatever against corporal punishment.” 34 It was not easy being a Roosevelt son. Roosevelt was especially tough on his first-born boy and namesake. Edith recognized the emotional toll on Ted, and much later admitted to him: “As I look back, you fared worst because Father tried to ‘roughen’ you, but happily was too busy to exert the same pressure on the others.” 35 Ted suffered an emotional breakdown when he was ten years old. Yet he recovered and became an overachiever like his father, surpassing him as a warrior; he fought in both world wars, rose to brigadier general, and was America’s most decorated soldier, even winning a Medal of Honor. And then there was Alice whose mother died during her birth; Roosevelt abandoned Alice to his sister to raise and headed west to overcome his sorrow. 36 Throughout his life he was as distant from Alice as he was close to his other children; he refused to discuss her mother with her, behavior that naturally left her resentful and saddened. “Father doesn’t love me,” she wrote plaintively in her dairy, “that is to say one eighth as

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much as the other children.” 37 Although she was naturally impetuous, trying to get her disinterested father’s attention undoubtedly explains much of her deliberately provocative behavior. “Princess Alice” enjoyed shocking high society with outrageous antics and slicing comments. When a friend wondered why Roosevelt did not rein in his wayward daughter, he replied: “I can be president of the United States or I can attend Alice. I can’t do both.” 38 What kind of sibling was he? He deeply loved all three, Anna, Elliot, and Corinne. He was closest to his older sister Anna; he confided to her intimate thoughts that he could not share even with his most intimate male friends. In return, she gave him excellent political and social advice, and, as a hardheaded guardian of the family finances, struggled to curb her younger brother’s free-spending ways. 39 Roosevelt’s most challenging family problem was Elliot, an alcoholic who could not hold a job and had fathered a child out of wedlock with a servant; the woman launched a paternity suit against him. Roosevelt settled the suit out of court and actually tried but failed to get Elliot committed to an insane asylum. Elliot drank himself to death in 1894. Roosevelt revealed how twisted his sense of “honor” could become when he admitted: “if it was mere death one could stand it; it is the shame that is so fearful.” Yet his sister Corinne revealed that Roosevelt “cried like a little child for a long time” when he heard of Elliot’s death. 40 Roosevelt offers a model of how to live fully. Of all the maxims that guided him, one perhaps best captured the rest: “But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.” 41 He scorned kill-joy Puritans. Life should be lived ecstatically rather than as a grim chore to be endured to the bitter end. He elaborated these views a month after his son Quentin’s death in combat with an uplifting eulogy not just for him and his comrades but for all of humanity: “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are part of the same Great Adventure. Never yet was a country worth dying for unless its sons and daughters thought of life as something concerned only with the selfish evanescence of the individual, but as a link in the great chain of creation and causation, so that each person is seen in his true relations as an essential part of the whole, whose life must be made to serve the larger and continuing life of the whole.” 42 Historian George Mowry explained that “Theodore Roosevelt was so many things to so many men because he was also many things to himself.” 43 He devoted himself to understanding the world and living as completely within it as he possibly could, and encouraging others to do the same. From his childhood, he strove to be a Renaissance man, continually expanding his knowledge of the world and wielding that knowledge to better mankind. He insatiably devoured knowledge from the

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books, minds, and evidence around him. He recognized the dynamic between the substance and style of life. For instance, he was a voracious reader for both pleasure and edification: “Personally the books by which I have profited infinitely more than by any others have been those in which profit was a by-product of the pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked reading them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment.” 44 Roosevelt upheld very strict standards for himself as a politician and encouraged all others to emulate him: “I do not believe . . . that any man should ever attempt to make politics his only career. It is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend on his staying in office. Such a feeling prevents him from being of real service to the people while in office, and always puts him under the heaviest strain of pressure to barter his convictions for the sake of holding office.” 45 Through his political career, he tried “not to think of the future at all, but would proceed on the assumption that each office I held would be the last I ever should hold, and that I would confine myself to trying to do my work as well as possible while I held that office . . . this was the only way in which I could either enjoy myself or render good service to the country.” 46 When Roosevelt was police commissioner, two journalists and friends, Jacob Riis and Lincoln Steffens, overstepped a boundary that provoked an insightful outburst. Deeply impressed by the courage, energy, and decisiveness with which he fulfilled his duties, they asked him if he aspired to become president. Roosevelt erupted in anger that they “would put such ideas in my head.” He insisted that they never “remind a man on a political job that he may be President. It almost kills him politically. He loses his nerve; he can’t do his work; he gives up the very traits that are making him a possibility . . . I am going to do great things here, hard things that require all the courage, ability, work that I am capable. . . . But if I get to thinking of what it might lead to. . . .” 47 Even in his day but increasingly since then, Roosevelt’s most controversial dimension was his outspoken Social Darwinism. 48 For him, history was driven by the dynamic between great men and great “races,” the nineteenth-century name for nations, struggling against one another. In a Darwinian world, a nation survived and ideally flourished by wielding the array of appropriate hard and soft power. This struggle could be as progressive as it was inevitable if “superior” races subjected and transformed “inferior races.” He distinguished between past and present imperialism. Past imperialism involved conquering, colonizing, and exploiting other races. Contemporary imperialism was the opposite. Now civilized races subdued their lessers for their own good by gradually nurturing them from “savagery” into civilization. As such, his imperialism was targeted rather than open-ended. The United States should protect, deter,

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colonize, or fight only those countries or groups that presented clear opportunities to advance or threats against American wealth and power. Although the words for his concepts may offend some people today, he actually promoted international peacekeeping and humanitarian missions half a century before they came of age. Roosevelt clearly saw the deep flaws in American civilization and struggled throughout his life to overcome them. His guides for doing so were the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which articulated America’s ideals and institutions. Of the half-dozen goals expressed in the Constitution’s preamble, he most valued the duty to promote the general welfare or the “moral and material well-being among our citizens.” This was increasingly imperative as America’s related political, economic, and social systems were captured by “big moneyed men in whose minds money and material prosperity have finally dwarfed everything else.” 49 The result was a vicious cycle whereby plutocracy was devouring democracy and the rich got richer by exploiting the middle class and poor who got poorer. Only a progressive crusade could rescue the American people and their democracy from plutocracy: “It has been well said in the past that we have paid attention only to the accumulation of prosperity, and that from henceforth we must pay equal attention to the proper distribution of prosperity. . . . The only prosperity worth having is that which affects the mass of the people.” 50 Spearheading the crusade would be “leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great vision, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls.” 51 Farsighted men of character were superior to rigid laws in governing a democracy: “I do not have to say that the question of who is to administer the laws is always more important than the question of exactly what the law shall be.” 52 Among Roosevelt’s axioms was “keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.” He constantly sought the progressive middle ground between extremes. In doing so he had to fight two different opponents that were unwitting allies: “Every leader of a great reform has to contend, on the one hand, with the open, avowed enemies of reform, and, on the other hand, with its extreme advocates, who wish the impossible, and who join hands with their extreme opponents to defeat the rational friend of the reform.” 53 Likewise he struggled to achieve the sensible center between too little and too much economic liberty. Although he was a Social Darwinian, he rejected Market Darwinism. He deplored the market anarchy that let big businesses gobble up small business and then each other until only monopolies and oligopolies survived to dominate the economy and most American lives. To prevent this, he advocated policies that were “compatible with seeing that liberty does not become a liberty to wrong others.” 54

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Among the ways Roosevelt tried to achieve this was by trying to sublimate American materialism and greed into reform and patriotism. He issued this challenge to Americans in 1899 during a speech before the Hamilton Club of Chicago: “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignorable ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toll, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” 55 Living a strenuous life at once enriched the adherent and America; the consequences of not doing so were grim: “If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife . . . though hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.” 56 Despite the dangers America faced of plutocracy at home and adversaries abroad, Roosevelt was essentially an optimist rather than pessimist who reveled more than ranted at the age in which he lived: “At no period of the world’s history has life been so full of interest, and of possibilities of excitement and enjoyment” at “the play of vaster forces that have ever before been exerted, working, half blindly, half under control, to bring about immeasurable results.” 57 He described humanity’s development in a way that reflected his own drives and evolution: “More than ever before in the world’s history, we of today seek to penetrate the causes of the mysteries that surround not only mankind but all life, both in the present and the past. We search, we peer, we see things dimly; here and there we get a ray of clear vision, as we look before and after. We study the tremendous procession of the ages. . . . And studying, we see strange analogies in the phenomena of life and death, of birth, growth, and chance, between those physical groups of animal life which we designate as species, forms, races, and highly complex and composite entities which rise before our minds when we speak of nations and civilizations.” 58 Paradoxes and seeming contradictions afflicted Roosevelt as they do nearly anyone’s life. How could someone at once revere and decimate nature? How could someone assert the most bellicose and pacific of sentiments, often in the same speech? He was at once a Kantian and a Machiavellian, a Progressive and a Social Darwinian, a peacemaker and a warmonger. The man who condemned “boasting and blustering . . . as objectionable among nations as among individuals” was notorious for his own bouts of boasting and blustering. 59 He seemed to like teaching as much as he liked learning and was a far better talker than listener. Although most of what he had to say was alternatively insightful, provocative, lyrical, or humorous, his nonstop erudition could weary as well as enlighten those

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around him. As Taft succinctly put it: “Roosevelt blurts out everything and says a good deal that he ought to keep to himself.” 60 It was nearly impossible getting in a word let alone an argument edgewise. Journalist William White explained the dilemma and a way around it: “Now talking with Roosevelt often does no good because he does all the talking. But when you write to him and he can’t talk back, you get a chance to put in more.” 61 To those puzzled by the seeming paradoxes of his behavior and attitudes, his friend Cecil Rice offered a possibility: “You must always remember that the President is about six.” 62 This might explain a bit of his fathomless childlike curiosity and energy with which he embraced the world, and his rancor when others opposed his reform proposals. But Roosevelt was far more complex than that. His relations with nature exemplify his paradoxes. Nature was at once a temple and a trophy for him. It is hard to imagine a more voracious decimator of wildlife. For science and sport he slaughtered thousands of animals over the decades from his boyhood until nearly his own death. Although most of the creatures he shot could merely try to run or fly away, he took special delight in killing species that could kill him like cougars, grizzlies, lions, rhinoceroses, cape buffaloes, and the like. Yet his most lyrical prose describes his ecstasies amid nature. He reveled before star-strewn skies, kaleidoscope sunsets, and seemingly endless plains, forests, and jungles. And he was committed to conserving as much of what was useful and preserving as much of what was beautiful in nature for humanity as was possible. The night before Roosevelt was sworn into his second term as president, Secretary of State John Hay sent him something very special to wear, a very large gold ring. He explained: “The hair in this ring is from the head of Abraham Lincoln. . . . Please wear it tomorrow; you are one of the men who most thoroughly understand and appreciate Lincoln. I have had your monogram and Lincoln’s engraved on the ring.” 63 Roosevelt ranks with Lincoln as the most existential president. An awareness of death hovered constantly in the minds of both men and drove them to extraordinary achievements. Early in life Roosevelt grimly concluded that with death we “go out into the blackness” where “all things are the same to every man.” 64 Childhood diseases, a Harvard doctor’s prognosis that a heart condition gave him little time, his father’s early demise, and the deaths of his wife and mother on the same day compounded his natural drive to do the most with what time he had. He was obsessed with developing the unique potential of himself and all others to their greatest expressions. The point of living was to live so that “one’s duties have not been shirked, that there has been no flinching from foes, no lack of gentleness and loyalty to friends, and a reasonable measure of success in the effort to do the tasks allotted.” 65

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Will power alone was not enough to fulfill one’s dreams. As a student, actor, and subject of history, he knew how much making critical choices at crossroads and sheer chance determines ones fate. From a young age he wanted to be a hero and achieve greatness. As he scrambled to ever higher positions of public service he became increasingly aware that he was making history and sought to promote his image so that historians thereafter would judge him in the best possible light. Yet, with complete disingenuousness, he claimed to be “not in the least concerned as to whether I will have any place in history, and, indeed, I do not remember ever thinking about it . . . it does not seem to me that after a man is dead it matters very much whether it is a little longer or a little shorter before the inevitable oblivion . . . effaces the scratches on the sand which we call history.” 66 Theodore Roosevelt exemplified progressivism in every sense of the word, both for what he was and what he did throughout his life. “A man’s usefulness,” he declared, “depends on his living up to his ideals in so far as he can.” He insisted that “my power for good, whatever it may be, would be gone if I didn’t try to live up to the doctrines I have tried to preach.” 67 True leaders go down fighting for their beliefs: “I much prefer to really accomplish something good in public life, no matter at what the cost of enmity from even my political friends than to enjoy a longer term of service, fettered by endless fear, always trying to compromise, and doing nothing in the end.” 68 Looking back, he saw “nothing brilliant or outstanding in my record, except perhaps this one thing. I do the things that I believe ought to be done. And when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act.” 69 And that was the essence of Theodore Roosevelt’s art of American power. NOTES 1. Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: History as Literature and other Essays (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 26:143. 2. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Great Adventure,” Roosevelt Works, 21:26. 3. Roosevelt Autobiography, 193. 4. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 554. 5. New York Evening Post, January 6, 1919. 6. John Arthur Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Knopf, 1953), 86–87. 7. Mark Twain, Autobiography, 2 vols. (New York: Harper, 1926), 2:290–91. 8. H.G. Wells, The Future in America: A Search after Realities (New York: Harper, 1906), 246–53. 9. Stuart Sherman, “Roosevelt and the National Psychology,” The Nation, November 8, 1919. 10. Carl Bode, ed., The New Mencken Letters (New York: Dial Press, 1997), 96. For an especially critical biography, see Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 31). 11. For provocative books that explore American conceptions of manhood and Roosevelt, see: Richard H. Collin, Theodore Roosevelt, Culture, Diplomacy, and Expansionism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985); Gail Bederman, Manliness

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and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Sarah Watts, Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 12. Roosevelt Autobiography, 69. 13. Gary M. Marshall, “The Evaluation of Presidents: An Extension of the Schlesinger Polls,” The Journal of American History, vol. 57, no. 1 (June 1970), 104–13; Elmer Pilschke, “Rating Presidents and Diplomats in Chief,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4 (Fall 1985), 725–42; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 112, no. 2 (Summer 1997), 179–90; Robert K. Murray and Tim H. Blessing, Greatness in the White House (College Station: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 8–9, 15. 14. Brands, T.R., 813. 15. Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1958), 224. 16. Roosevelt Autobiography, 213. 17. Labor, Commerce, and Treasury Department statistical web sites. 18. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 41. 19. James F. Vivian, “The ‘Taking’ of the Panama Canal Zone: Myth and Reality,” Diplomatic History, vol. 4 (Winter 1980), 95–100. 20. For a provocative exploration of Roosevelt as a writer and the age in which he wrote, see: Aviva F. Tauberfield, Rough Writing: Ethnic Authorship in Theodore Roosevelt’s America (New York: New York University Press, 2008). 21. Anonymous review of Theodore Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, Atlantic Monthly, November 1889. 22. Roosevelt Autobiography, 18. 23. Wister, Roosevelt, 41. 24. Roosevelt Address to the American Historical Society, Roosevelt Works, 13:23. 25. Brands, T.R., 263–64. 26. Roosevelt to Francis Parkman, July 13, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:173. 27. Roosevelt Autobiography, 36, 193. 28. For good books on Roosevelt and his family, see: Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill (New York: Macmillan, 1954); Edward Renehan, The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in War and Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Betty Boyd Caroli, The Roosevelt Women (New York: Basic Books, 1998). 29. Roosevelt Autobiography, 183. 30. Brands, T.R., 195. 31. For good books on Edith, see: Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady (New York: Modern Library, 2009); Lewis L. Gould, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Creating the Modern First Lady (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013). 32. Roosevelt to Theodore Roosevelt junior, March 21, 1910, Roosevelt Letters, 7:60. 33. For good psychological insights, see: Brands, T.R., viii–xii, 194, 518–21. 34. Roosevelt to Virginia Arnold, May 10, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:261. 35. Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 50. 36. For good books on Alice, see: James Brough, Princess Alice (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975); Carol Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (New York: Putnam, 1988); Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (New York: Viking, 2007). 37. Brands, T.R., 520. 38. Owen Wister, Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship, 1880–1919 (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 87. 39. Lilian Rixey, Bamie: Theodore Roosevelt’s Remarkable Sister (New York: David McKay, 1963). 40. Richard Zacks, Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up SinLoving New York (New York: Doubleday, 2012), 127, 130.

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41. Roosevelt Autobiography, 193. 42. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Great Adventure,” Roosevelt Works, 21:26. 43. George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 110. 44. Roosevelt Autobiography, 185. 45. Roosevelt Autobiography, 36. 46. Roosevelt Autobiography, 52. 47. Lincoln Steffens, An Autobiography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936), 258–60. 48. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955, 1992). 49. Roosevelt to Paul Dana, April 18, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:817. 50. Roosevelt, “A Charter of Democracy,” February 21, 1912, Roosevelt Works, 17:124. 51. Roosevelt speech, Carnegie Hall, March 20, 1912, Roosevelt Works, 17:170. 52. Roosevelt to Henry Nelson, April 8, 1901, Roosevelt Letters, 3:44. 53. James R. Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt and the World Order: Police Power in International Relations (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006), 18. 54. Roosevelt, annual message, December 3, 1907, Roosevelt Addresses, 1494. 55. Roosevelt, “Strenuous Life Speech,” Hamilton Club Chicago, April 10, 1899, Roosevelt Works, 15:281. 56. Theodore Roosevelt, “American Ideals: The Strenuous Life,” Roosevelt Works, 13:331. 57. Theodore Roosevelt, American Ideals and other Essays, Social and Political (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 19:94. 58. Theodore Roosevelt, History as Literature and Other Essays (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 26:41. 59. Roosevelt address, Chicago, April 2, 1904, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:265. 60. Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), 219. 61. Lewis Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 9. 62. Stephen Gwynn, ed., The Letters and Friendships of Cecil Spring Rice, 2 vols. (New York: Free Press, 1929, 1972), 1:437. 63. John Hay to Theodore Roosevelt, March 3, 1905, Hay Letters, 3:328. 64. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, March 9, 1905, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1132. 65. Roosevelt to Oliver Wendell Holmes, December 5, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1060. 66. Roosevelt to William White, November 28, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:517. 67. Roosevelt to William Bigelow, March 29, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:803. 68. Roosevelt to Francis Parkman, July 13, 1889, Roosevelt Letters, 1:173. 69. Noel T. Busch, TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt and His Influence on Our Times (New York: Reynal, 1963), 11.

Abbreviations

Adam Letters

Henry Adams, The Letters of Henry Adams, 2 vols., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930.

Bishop Letters

Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, Shown in His Own Letters, 2 vols., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.

Booker T. Washington Papers

Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, 14 vols., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972–1989.

Butt Letters

Archie Butt, The Letters of Archie Butt, Personal Aide to President Roosevelt, ed., Abbott, Lawrence, New York: Doubleday, 1924.

Butt, Taft, and Roosevelt

Archie Butt, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, 2 vols., Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1930.

Cowles Letters

Anna Roosevelt Cowles, Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 1870–1918, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924.

Hay Letters

John Hay, The Life and Letters of John Hay, ed. William Roscoe Thayer, 2 vols., New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1915.

Lodge Letters

Henry Cabot Lodge, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge and Charles F. Redmond, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. 295

296

Abbreviations

Roosevelt Addresses

Theodore Roosevelt, Presidential Messages and State Papers of Theodore Roosevelt, 2 vols., New York: Kraus Reprint, 1970.

Roosevelt Autobiography

Theodore Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, New York: Seven Treasures Publications, 1920, 2009.

Roosevelt Letters

Theodore Roosevelt, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 8 vols., ed. Elting E. Morison, John M. Blum, and John J. Buckley, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951–1954.

Roosevelt Policy

Theodore Roosevelt, The Roosevelt Policy: Speeches, Letters, and State Papers Relating to Corporate Wealth and Closely Allied Topics, 3 vols., ed. William Griffith, New York: The Current Literature Publishing Company, 1919; New York: Kraus Reprint Company, 1971.

Roosevelt Works

Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: Memorial Edition, 24 vols., edited by Hermann Hagedon, New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1923–1926.

U.S. Foreign Relations

United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, annual.

Wilson Papers

Arthur Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966–1994.

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Index

Abedlazziz IV (sultan), 201, 202 Adams, Brooks, 59 Adams, Charles Francis, 65, 110 Adams, Henry, 57, 127 Adams, John Quincy, 8, 165 Addams, Jane, 160, 259 Aero Club, 171 Africa, 237 Agricultural Appropriations Bill, 223 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 101, 175, 189 Al-Hamid, Abd, 200 Albert I (king), 239 Aldrich, Charles, 255 Aldrich, Nelson, 134, 140, 144, 155, 232 Aldrich-Vreeland Currency Act, 144 Alfonso XIII (king), 239 Algeciras Conference, 12, 203 Alger, Russell, 99, 101, 107, 117 Alhwardt, Hermann, 78 Allison, William, 85, 133 Alverstone, Richard Webster, Lord, 196 Alvord, Tom, 33 Amador Guerrero, Manuel, 183, 186 America and the World War (Roosevelt), 269 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 220 American-China Development Company, 205 American Federation of Labor, 137 American Forestry Association, 220 American Historical Society, 59 American Museum of Natural History, 266 American Ornithologists Union, 220, 222 American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, 251

American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 220 Andrew, Avery, 75, 81 Andrews, William, 269 Anti-Imperialist League, 110 Anti-Trust Division, 139 Anti-Trust Policy, 136–145, 252, 281 Apache, 101 Appalachian Club, 220 Archbold, John, 142 Arlington Cemetery, 177 Arrow War, 204 Arthur, Chester, 22, 40, 61, 63 Atlantic Monthly, 220, 284 Audubon Society, 220, 222 Austro-Hungary, 204, 238, 239, 241, 269 Bacon, Robert, 225 Bacon, Theodore, 117 Baker, Newton, 272, 273, 274 Baker, Ray, 251 Baldwin, Simeon, 250 Bank of the United States, 144 Barber, Albert, 201 Barnes, William, 249, 268–269 Battle of Guasimas, 104–105 Battle of San Juan/Kettle Hill, 1, 4, 105–106, 107, 284 Beaupre, Arthur, 181, 182 Beijing Convention, 204 Belgium, 205, 238, 239 Bellamy, William, 55 Bennett, William, 249 Beveridge, Albert, 133, 154, 155, 173 Biological Survey, 220 Bissell, Wilson, 69 Black, Frank, 113, 114, 116, 118 Blaine, James, 40, 41, 46, 47 Blanco, Roman, 92 Boone and Crockett Club, 57, 220 317

318

Index

Borglum, Gutzon, 280 Bourke, Eddie, 79 Boxer Protocol, 204 Boxer Rebellion, 204, 206 Brazil, 4, 265, 266 Britain, 12, 56, 88, 92, 109, 165, 168, 170, 173, 178, 179, 180, 196, 197–200, 202, 204, 205, 206, 211, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 269, 270, 271 Bronson, James, 154 Bryan, William Jennings, 86, 126, 127, 151, 232, 247, 267, 270 Bunau-Varilla, Philippe, 183, 185 Bureau of Census, 63, 64 Bureau of Corporations, 139, 140, 142, 248, 281 Bureau of Land Management, 223, 283 Bureau of Reclamation, 223, 283 Burroughs, John, 220 Butler, Nicholas, 233 Butler, Thomas, 174 Butt, Archie, 245 Byrnes, Thomas, 76 Callahan, Pat, 79 Canada, 196, 225 Canelejas, Jose, 92 Cannon, Joseph, 94, 134, 232 Canovas, Antonio, 90, 92 Carey, Joseph, 255 Caribbean, 88 Carlisle, John, 69 Carnegie, Andrew, 110, 141, 143, 144, 171, 238, 241 Carnegie Steel Company, 143 Caroline Islands, 90 Cassini, Arturo, 208 Castillo, Enrique, 188, 189 Castro, Cipriano, 197 Central America, 170 Century, 220 Cervera, Pascual, 102, 106 Chadwick, French, 201 Chafee, Adna, 175, 176 Chamberlain, George, 273 Chandler, William, 89, 125 Chapin, Alfred, 36 Chapman, John, 114, 115 Chengtung Liang-Chen, 205

Cherrie, George, 266 Child, Richard, 10 China, 88, 165, 167, 169, 204–205, 206, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 Chinese Exclusion Act, 211 Choate, Joseph, 116 Christian Herald, 252 Civil Rights, 156–159, 160 Civil Service Act, 66 Civil War, 22, 59, 62, 85, 108, 118, 173, 202, 268 Clark, Edward, 152 Clarkson, John, 62 Clay, Henry, 8, 31 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 179 Clemenceau, Georges, 275 Cleveland, Grover, 36, 37, 38, 41, 46, 47, 57, 59, 68, 69, 70, 109, 120, 126, 139, 152, 281 Clinton, Bill, 10 Colliers, 220 Colombia/New Granada, 3, 14, 168, 174, 178, 179, 180–185, 189, 267, 283 Columbia University, 29, 30 Commission of Civil Service, 60–71, 135 Commission of Fish, 220 Commission of Inland Waterways, 223 Commission of Interoceanic/Isthmian Canal, 179, 180 Commission of Interstate Commerce, 138, 139, 140, 248 Commission of National Conservation, 225, 283 Commission of National Monetary, 144 Conference on Care of Dependent Children, 154 Congress, 8, 57, 69, 94–95, 124, 134–135, 136, 144, 150, 153, 154, 170, 172, 174, 177, 180, 182, 185, 189, 203, 232, 246, 272, 273, 283 Conkling, Roscoe, 22, 31, 32, 63 Conlin, Peter, 81, 82 Conservation Conference, 225 Constitution, 2, 3, 8, 31, 158, 231, 246, 248, 249, 289 Cooper, Jack, 273 Cooper, James Fenimore, 24 Cortelyou, George, 4, 128, 133, 144

Index Cosmos Club, 220 Costello, J.J., 25 Cox, Minnie, 157 Crane, Murray, 4 Crater Lake, 224 Croker, Richard, 77, 116, 120 Croly, Herbert, 246 Crum, William, 157 Cuba, 4, 88, 90, 91–95, 108, 109, 167, 187–189, 199 Curtis, Georg, 61 Czolgosz, Leon, 128 Davis, George, 186 Davis, Henry, 229 Darwin, Charles, 23 Day, William, 135, 153 Debs, Eugene, 260, 261 Declaration of Independence, 2, 3, 31, 289 Declaration of the Governors, 225 Deering Harvester, 143 Democratic Party, 31, 46, 68, 86, 91, 126, 127, 229, 232, 247, 258, 261, 267, 271–272; New York Democratic Party, 32, 33, 36, 38, 55, 70, 75, 76, 77, 80, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 179, 250 Denmark, 238, 239 Department of Agriculture United States, 223 Department of Commerce and Labor, 139, 281 Department of Interior, 223 Department of Justice, 138, 139, 232, 281 Department of Navy, 170 Department of War, 230, 231 Depuy de Lome, Enrique, 92 Devery, William, 76 Dewey, George, 89, 93, 95, 100, 101, 108, 172, 199 Diaz, Porfilio, 225 Dix, John, 250 Dixon, Joseph, 258 Dole, Samuel, 109 Dolliver, Jonathan, 140 Dominican Republic, 168, 199–200 Dow, Wilmot, 45, 48, 49, 52

319

Draft Bill, 273 Draper, William, 65 Duque, Gabriel, 183 Edmunds, George, 40, 41 Edward VII (king), 197, 239, 242 Egypt, 24, 179, 238, 242 Elkins/Anti-Rebate Bill, 139 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 24 Employment Liability Act, 153 Enloe, Benjamin, 69 Enloe Bill, 69 Erhman, Felix, 184 Europe, 24, 237 Evening Sun, 78 Ewart, Hamilton, 64, 65 Expediting Act, 139 Fairbanks, Charles, 229, 232, 272 Farragut, David, 89 Farrar, Elbert, 36 Fear God and Take Your Own Part (Roosevelt), 271 Federal Employers’ Liability Act, 250, 281 Federal Reserve, 144 Federal Steel Company, 143 Federalist Papers, 8, 31 Ferris, Sylvane, 38, 45, 52, 136 Field and Stream, 57, 67, 220 Fine Arts Council, 224 Finnegan, Mike, 49 First Volunteer Cavalry/Rough Riders, 1, 101–102, 103, 107, 110, 116, 117, 136, 172 Fitch, Ashbel, 82 Flint, Grover, 177 The Foes of Our Own Household (Roosevelt), 275 Foraker, Joseph, 125, 134, 159, 188, 232 Ford, John, 119 Forest Reserve Act, 57, 219 Forestry Division/Service, 220, 221, 223, 283 France, 12, 92, 109, 165, 168, 178, 179, 186, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 211, 221, 238, 239, 240, 241, 269, 271 Franz Ferdinand (crown prince), 86 Franz Josef I (emperor), 239

320

Index

French Revolution, 169, 239 Frick, Henry, 140, 144 Fulton, Charles, 223 Gage, Lyman, 133 Garcia, Calixto, 104 Gardener, Cornelius, 176 Gardiner, Asa, 120 Garfield, James, 40, 61, 136, 142 Gary, Elbert, 143, 144 Gaynor, William, 245 General Grant, 220 Gentlemen’s Agreement, 195, 212 Geological Survey, 220 George I (king), 239 George V (king), 239 George, Henry, 55, 56 Germany, 12, 14, 24, 88, 92, 109, 165, 168, 169, 170, 173, 178, 197–199, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 211, 214, 238, 239, 240, 242, 269, 270, 271 Geronimo, 101 Gillett, James, 212 Glass, Henry, 183 Glassrock, William, 255 Godkin, Edwin, 60 Gomez, Maximo, 187 Gompers, Samuel, 137 Gorgas, William, 186 Gould, Jay, 34, 35, 37 Gouverneur Morris (Roosevelt), 58 Grace, William, 55 Grand Canyon, 224 Grant, Frederick, 75, 81, 82 Grant, Ulysses, 51, 170, 220 Great Northern Railroad, 141 Great White Fleet, 14, 214–215 Greece, 202, 239 Gresham, Walter, 69 Grey, Earl, 225 Grinnell, George, 57, 67 Griscom, Lloyd, 207 Gruber, Abe, 249 Guam, 109 Gunmere, Samuel, 201, 202 Haakon IV (king), 86 Hadley, Herbert, 255 Hale, Eugene, 173

Hamilton, Alexander, 7, 8, 31 Hamilton Club, 290 Hamiltonian, 1, 8, 231, 258 Hampton College, 156 Hanford, Benjamin, 117 Hanna, Mark, 86, 87, 124, 125, 127, 134, 151, 229 Harding, Warren, 273 Harper’s Weekly, 61 Harriman, John, 141, 142 Harrison, Benjamin, 5, 55, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 109, 139 Harte, Bret, 65 Harvard University, 24, 26, 41, 160 Hatch Act, 70 Hatton, Frank, 64 Hawaii, 85, 88, 90, 109 Hawley, Joseph, 173 Hay, John, 108, 133, 170, 180, 182, 185, 196, 201, 202, 204, 205, 291 Hay-Herbert Treaty, 196 Hay-Herrán Treaty, 185 Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 180 Hayes, Rutherford, 22 Hearst, William, 9, 91, 92 Hepburn/Railroad Rate Regulation Bill, 140 Hepburn, William, 140 Herbert, Hilary, 69 Herbert, Michael, 196 Herran, Thomas, 180 Hess, Jake, 32 Hewitt, Abram, 55, 56 Hill, James, 141 Hinman, Harvey, 268 Hitchcock, Ethan, 133 Hitchcock, Frank, 136 Hobart, Garret, 123 Hobbes, Thomas, 7 Holmes, Oliver Wendall, 135, 196 Holy Land, 24 Hong Kong, 204 House of Representatives, 47, 64, 66, 68, 85, 170, 229, 232 Howell, John, 89 Hubbard, John, 183, 184 Huerta, Esteban, 184 Hughes, Charles, 232, 249, 272, 279 Humphreys, Chauncey, 183

Index Hunt, Jacob, 34, 36 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (Roosevelt), 58 Huxley, Aldous, 23 Indian Rights Association, 67 International Harvester, 143, 252 Interstate Commerce Act, 138 Italy, 199, 200, 238, 239 Jamaica, 88 James, Henry, 10, 65, 110 Japan, 12, 14, 88, 90, 92, 165, 167, 168, 169, 173, 204, 206–211, 211–214 Jaudenes, Firmin, 108 Jefferson, Thomas, 5, 86, 280 Jeffersonian, 1, 8, 231, 258 Jerome, Lovel, 114 Jewell, Theodore, 201 Joffre, Joseph, 274 Johnson, Hiram, 255, 258, 268, 279 Johnston, George, 69 Jusserand, Jules, 169 Kaneko, Kentaro, 169, 206, 210 Kantian, 289 Katsura, Taro, 209 Keep, Charles, 136 Keep Commission, 136 Kennedy, John, 10 Kent, Joseph, 103 Kenya, 238 Kern, John, 232 King, Clarence, 65 Kipling, Rudyard, 65, 166, 242 Kitchener, Horatio, 238 Knox, Frank, 255 Knox, Philander, 133, 140, 141, 151, 152, 185, 232, 279 Komura, Juntaro, 206, 209 Korea, 206, 209, 210, 214 Lacey Act, 57, 220 Lacey, John, 57 La Follette, Robert, 144, 232, 251, 255, 257 La Forge, John, 65 Lamont, David, 69 Langley, Samuel, 171

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Latin America, 90, 186, 197, 199 Lawton, Henry, 103, 105 Lawyer and Banker, 268 League of Nations, 241 Lee, Arthur, 196 Leo XIII (pope), 177, 230, 239 Leopold II (king), 205 Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 179 Lexow, Clarence, 77 Library of Congress, 5 Liliuokalani (queen regnant), 109 Linares, Arsenio, 105, 106 Lincoln, Abraham, 7, 8, 10, 31, 256, 280, 281, 291 Little Missouri Stockman’s Association, 50 Livingston, Stanley, 24 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 41, 46, 57, 59, 60, 63, 64, 87, 113, 117, 123, 125, 133, 177, 180, 196, 231, 247, 249, 256, 273, 279, 280 Long, Chester, 140 Long, John, 87, 89, 93, 95, 101, 108, 125, 133 Lyman, Charles, 60, 69 MacArthur, Arthur, 175 Machiavellian, 289 Magoon, Charles, 189 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 58, 59, 88 Malmros, Oscar, 183 Maria Christina (queen), 90 Mariana Islands, 90 Market Darwinism, 289 Marshall, George Perkins, 24 Marshall, John, 8 Marshall, Thomas, 279 Matthews, Brander, 65 McClure’s, 142, 220 McKinley, William, 64, 85–86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 101, 107, 109, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 133, 134, 139, 151, 175, 180, 187, 189, 196, 204, 220, 230 McNair, Frederick, 89 Meat Inspection Act, 155, 281 Meiji (emperor), 209 Melendez, Porfilio, 183, 184 Mellon, Andrew, 140 Memphis Scimitar, 156

322

Index

Men and Religion Forward Movement, 258 Mencken, H.L., 280 Merrifield, Bill, 38, 45, 52, 136 Merritt, Wesley, 108 Mesa Verde, 224 Metropolitan, 269 Mexican Expedition, 174 Mexico, 31, 173, 178, 179, 183, 214, 225, 251, 267 Meyer, George von Lengerke, 208 Miles, Nelson, 99, 101, 102, 107, 176 Military Policy, 170–174, 198, 201 Milwaukee Company, 143 Mitchell, John, 151, 152 Monroe Doctrine, 13, 165, 180, 197 Monroe, James, 165 Montana Stockgrowers Association, 51 Moody, William, 135 Moore, William, 143 Morales, Carlos, 199 Mores, Antoine de Vallombrosa, 47, 48 Morgan, John Pierpont, 30, 140, 141, 143, 144, 205, 237, 258 Morocco, 201–203 Morton, Levi, 80, 81, 82, 85, 95 Morton, Sterling, 69 Motojo, Patricio, 100 Mount Rainer, 220 Mount Rushmore, 15, 280 Muir, John, 220, 226 Muir Woods, 224 Muller, Lauro, 265 Murphy, Grayson, 183 Murray, John, 32, 33 The Nation, 60 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 258 National Bison Range, 222 National Child Labor Committee, 151, 258 National Conference of Charities, 258 National Domain League, 221 National Forest Act, 223, 283 National Geographic Society, 220 National Monuments Act, 283

National Progressive Republican League, 251 National Steel Company, 143 National Woman’s Suffrage Association, 258 National Woman’s Trade Union League, 258 The Naval History of the War of 1812 (Roosevelt), 5, 24, 58, 87, 285 Neil, Charles, 154 Netherlands, 199, 238, 239 New Panama Canal Company, 179, 180, 183, 185 New York, 40, 55, 85, 220, 221, 250, 272; Adirondack State Park, 21, 120, 284; Albany, 39, 40, 68; Ambler Dairy Product Act, 120; Beet Sugar Act, 120; Board of Election, 76; Bronx Zoo, 57; Buffalo, 36; Carnegie Hall, 116; Catskill State Park, 120, 284; Civil Service Reform Bill, 120; Cooper Union, 78; Erie Canal, 113, 118, 179; Fifth Avenue Hotel, 115, 118; Ford Bill, 119; Independent Party, 114, 115, 117; Lake Champlain, 128; Lexow Commission, 77; Long Island, 4; Mount Marcy, 128; New York City, 1, 9, 21, 22, 27, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 55–56, 63, 76, 81, 91, 154, 245, 261; Palisade State Park, 120, 284; Pan American Exposition, 128; Plattsburgh, 271; Raines Law, 80; Saratoga, 51, 249; State Capitol, 118; State Government, 33, 39, 40, 68; Tammany Hall, 33, 75, 76, 77, 80, 116; Utica, 40, 41 New York Evening Post, 248, 280 New York Journal, 9, 91 New York Times, 246 New York World, 9, 35, 91, 182, 232 New York Zoological Society, 57 Newbury, Truman, 255 Newlands, Francis, 109, 223 Nicaragua, 88, 179, 181, 182 Nicholas II (emperor), 169, 207, 208 Nixon, Frederick, 119 Northern Pacific Corporation, 47, 50

Index Northern Securities Company, 141, 142, 281 Norway, 87, 238, 239 Notre Dame University, 265 Oberly, John, 67 Odell, Benjamin, 113, 116, 125 O’Laughlin, John, 255 Olbadia, Jose Domingo, 184 O’Maury, Lawrence, 136 O’Neal, William, 34 Open Door Policy, 165, 204, 206 Opium War, 204 Osborn, Chase, 255 Otis, Elwell, 175 Outlook, 220, 251, 267 Pact of Biak-na-Bato, 101 Paddock, Eldridge, 48 Palma, Tomas Estrada, 187–189 Panama/Panama Canal, 3, 14, 174, 178–187, 189, 190, 267, 283 Pankhurst, Charles, 77 Park Protection/Lacey Act, 57 Parker, Alton, 229 Parker, Andrew, 75, 81, 82 Parkman, Francis, 58, 285 Patterson, Charles, 33 Paul, George, 63, 65 Pauncefote, Julian, 180, 196 Payn, Louis, 124–125 Pelican Island, 222 Pendleton Civil Service Act, 61 Pendleton, George, 61 Perdicaris, Ion, 201, 202 Perkins, George, 143, 258, 272 Perry, Matthew, 206 Pershing, John, 174, 275 Pescadore Islands, 88, 206 Petrified Forest, 224 Philippines, 13, 90, 109, 168, 174–177, 187, 189, 209, 230, 231 Pinchot, Gifford, 136, 221, 225, 246, 258 Pius X (pope), 239 Platt, Orville, 133, 187 Platt, Thomas, 69, 81, 86, 87, 113–114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 124, 125 Plano, 143 Populist Party, 68, 86, 126

323

Portsmouth Conference/RussoJapanese War, 1, 12, 209–211 Pratt, Spencer, 101 Prescott, William, 58 Presidency, 8, 9, 57 Proctor, John, 55, 89, 95 Progressive/Bull Moose Party, 160, 258, 259–262, 266, 267, 268, 271–272 Prussia, 241 Puerto Rico, 88, 90, 108, 109, 197 Pulitzer, Joseph, 9, 91, 232 Pure Food and Drug Act, 155, 281 Quay, Matthew, 86, 125 Quigg, Lemeul, 113–114 Quincy, Josiah, 69 Railroad Rate Regulation Act, 281 Raines, John, 80 Raisuli, Ahmed ben Mohammad el, 201–202 Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (Roosevelt), 58 Reagan, Ronald, 10 Reclamation/Newlands Act, 223 Reed, Thomas, 59, 64, 81, 85 Reid, Mayne, 24 Remington, Frederick, 65, 91 Republican Party, 31, 41, 46, 60, 62, 63, 68, 85, 86, 91, 125, 127, 142, 151, 152, 157, 229, 230, 231, 232, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 255, 257, 261, 267, 268, 271–272, 281; New York Republican Party, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 40, 55, 69, 70, 75, 76, 80, 81, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 250 Revell, Alexander, 255 Rice, Cecil, 6, 57, 65, 196, 290 Richmond Times, 156 Riis, Jacob, 78, 288 Rockefeller, John, 142, 144 Rockhill, William, 205 Roosevelt, Alice (daughter), 11, 39, 57, 209, 286 Roosevelt, Alice (wife), 1, 11, 26–27, 38, 39, 286 Roosevelt, Anna (sister), 21, 22, 40, 65, 75, 280 Roosevelt, Archibald (son), 57, 275, 276

324

Index

Roosevelt, Corinne (sister), 21, 39, 280 Roosevelt, Edith (wife), 1, 56–57, 65, 69, 93, 135, 286 Roosevelt, Elliot (brother), 11, 21, 39, 231, 280 Roosevelt, Ethel (daughter), 57 Roosevelt, Franklin, 10, 250 Roosevelt, James, 35 Roosevelt, Kermit (son), 57, 230, 238, 260, 266, 276 Roosevelt, Martha (mother), 11, 22, 39 Roosevelt, Quentin (son), 11, 57, 276, 287 Roosevelt, Robert, 23 Roosevelt, Theodore: Africa expedition, 237–238, 284; Albany, 38; appearance and mannerisms, 9, 15, 23, 32; Assistant Naval Secretary, 1, 87–95; at Columbia University, 29, 30; at Harvard University, 24, 26, 41; beliefs, 1, 3, 4, 5–14, 23, 25, 26, 29, 31, 34, 41, 46, 61, 75, 87, 88, 137–138, 149–150, 156, 157, 165–167, 176, 195, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 241, 248, 250, 256, 259, 276, 280, 281, 287–292; Brazil River of Doubt expedition, 4, 265–266, 284; character, 4, 67; childhood, 21–23; Civil Service Commissioner, 1, 59–71, 75; conservation policies, 6, 7, 219–226, 283; courage/strength/fist fights/square offs, 4–5, 23, 33, 46, 48, 49, 51, 81; domestic reform policies, 6, 7, 133–145, 149–161, 281; education, 23–24, 29; family, 1, 57, 95, 286, 287; foreign policies, 6, 7, 12–14, 165–190, 195–214, 283; health and injuries, 4, 21, 46, 260–261, 275, 276; hunting and nature, 4, 23, 49, 51, 238, 291; intellect, 1, 5; manipulation of mass media, 9, 135; Medal of Honor, 1, 117, 284; military service, 99–110; New York Assemblyman, 1, 29–41, 60; New York City, 21, 38, 39; New York City Mayor, 55, 69; New York City Police Commissioner, 1, 70, 75–82; New York Governor, 1, 113–120, 123, 124; Nobel Peace Prize, 1, 12, 211, 237,

241, 284; Oyster Bay, 27, 51, 116, 209, 280; personality, 1, 11, 23; psychology, 22, 23, 25–26; publications, 5, 57, 284–285; rancher, 1, 4, 38, 40, 45–52, 56, 67; reform policies, 33, 35, 70, 78, 82, 119, 120, 124, 284; Sagamore Hill, 35, 51, 56, 57, 75, 115, 116, 128, 210, 246, 247, 250, 256, 261, 271, 279, 285; Serenity, 21; speaking and oratory, 10, 25; Vice President, 1, 123–128; Washington, DC, 65, 116; White House, 124. See also Algeciras Conference; Anti-Trust Policy; Battle of Guasimas; Battle of San Juan/Kettle Hill; Civil Rights; Conference on Care of Dependent Children; Conservation Conference; Declaration of the Governors; First Volunteer Cavalry/Rough Riders; Great White Fleet; Keep Commission; Military Policy; Panama/Panama Canal; Portsmouth Conference/Russo-Japanese War Roosevelt, Theodore (father), 21, 22, 25–26, 31 Roosevelt, Theodore (son), 11, 57, 275, 276, 286 Root, Elihu, 6, 55, 69, 116, 125, 136, 170, 176, 185, 196, 203, 212, 230, 249, 279 Root-Takahira Agreement, 214 Rosen, Roman, 210 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 7 Rukyu/Okinawan Islands, 206 Russia, 12, 165, 168–169, 196, 204, 205, 206–211, 213, 241, 269 Russo-Japanese War, 170, 206–211 Sagasta, Praxedes, 90, 92, 94 Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 65, 224 Samoa, 168 Sanchez, Juan, 200 Sargent, Dudley, 26 Schrank, John, 261 Schurz, Carl, 68, 110 Scribner’s, 220, 238 Senate, 8, 22, 47, 68, 69, 159, 170, 173, 180, 185, 232 Sequoia, 220

Index Sewall, Bill, 26, 45, 48, 49, 52 Shafter, William, 102, 103, 105, 107, 187 Shaler, James, 183, 184 Sheard, Titus, 38 Sheridan, Phil, 170 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 139, 142, 152 Sherman, James, 232, 248, 249 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 170 Shidy, Hamilton, 63, 64, 65 Sierra Club, 220 Silva Rondon, Candido Mariano da, 265, 266 Silver Party, 68, 86, 229 Sinclair, Upton, 142, 154 Singapore, 101 Sioux, 67 Smith, Al, 279 Smith, Charles, 133 Smith, Jacob, 173, 177 Smithsonian Institute, 238 Snubbs, Walter, 255 Social Darwinian, 7, 58, 166, 288, 289 Socialist Party, 260, 261; New York Socialist Labor Party, 117 Society for the Prevention of Crime, 77 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 153 Spain, 85, 89, 90–95, 99, 167, 175, 203 Spanish American War, 1, 4, 90–95, 99–110, 174, 275; American Forces, 100; Camp Wikoff/Montauk, 108; Chickamauga, 102; Cuba, 107; Daiquiri, 103; Declaration of War, 94; El Caney, 105; Guasimas, 104–105; Havana, 92, 93, 102; Hong Kong, 93, 100, 101; Manila, 108; Manila Bay, 100, 109; Philippines, 93, 101, 108; Puerto Rico, 103, 107; San Juan/Kettle Hill, 1, 4, 105–106, 107; Santiago, 103, 106, 107, 108, 156; Siboney, 103; Spanish Forces, 100, 102, 172; Tampa, 102, 103; Teller Amendment, 95, 187; Treaty of Paris, 109, 175; USS Maine, 92, 93, 94 Spaulding, John, 152 Speck, Hermann, 169 Spinney, George, 34 Spooner, John, 133, 180 Sportsman Club, 220

325

Standard Oil Company, 142, 143, 281 State Trust Company, 125 Steffens, Lincoln, 149, 288 Sternberg, Herman Speck von, 203 Stevens, John, 186 Stevenson, Adlai, 126 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 65 Stimson, Henry, 232, 249, 250 Straus, Oscar, 160 The Strenuous Life (Roosevelt), 59 Strew, W.W., 32 Strong, William, 69, 70, 80, 82 Sudan, 238 Sully Hill, 224 Sumner, Samuel, 105 Sweden, 238 Swift, Lucius, 63 Taft-Katsura Agreement, 209 Taft, William, 11, 127, 142, 145, 175, 177, 186, 188–189, 209, 230–232, 247, 247–248, 249, 251–252, 255, 256–257, 261, 275, 279 Taiwan, 88 Takahira, Kogoro, 207 Tarbell, Ida, 142 Taft, Helen, 230 Teller, Henry, 95, 187 Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, 144 Thomas Hart Benton (Roosevelt), 58 Thompson, Hugh, 60 Tillman, Benjamin, 156, 157 Togo, Heihachiro, 207 Toral, Jose, 106 Torres, Elisee, 183, 184 Tovar, Juan, 183, 184 Tracey, Benjamin, 68 Treaty of Nanjing, 204 Treaty of New Granada, 179, 185 Treaty of Paris, 109 Treaty of Portsmouth, 210 Treaty of Wangxia, 204 Trevelyan, George, 65 Trimble, William, 32 Turkey/Ottoman Empire, 24, 200–201 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 59, 285 Turner, George, 196

326

Index

Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, 156 Twain, Mark, 65, 110, 280 Tzu-u-hsi (empress), 204 United Copper Company, 143 United Mine Workers, 151–152 United Nations, 241 United States: 1884 election, 40, 47; 1888 election, 59; 1892 election, 68; 1896 election, 86; 1900 election, 127; 1904 election, 229; 1908 election, 232; 1910 election, 250; 1912 election, 261; 1916 election, 272; Army, 99, 170, 172–174; corruption, 6, 31, 60, 61, 67, 76, 77, 79, 136; identity, 2; Marines, 173, 174; monopolies, oligopolies, trusts, 2, 137; Native Americans, 48, 67, 173; natural resources, 47, 219, 222; Naval Academy, 88; Navy, 89, 170–171; Panic of 1907, 144; population, 137, 153; socioeconomic conditions, 2, 10, 30, 31, 36, 281. See also Apache; Geronimo; Sioux United States Steel, 140, 144, 252 United States Supreme Court and Federal Courts, 8, 75, 76, 135, 139, 153, 230, 246, 248, 251; Hoxie v. New Haven Railroad, 250; Light v. United States, 223; Northern Securities v. United States, 141; United States v. E.C. Knight, 139; United States v. Grimaud, 223; United States v. Northern Securities, 141 University of Cincinnati, 230 Uruguay, 266 Val, Merry del, 239 Van Wyck, Augustus, 116, 117 Vatican City, 177 Venezuela, 168, 197–199 Vesey, Robert, 255 Victor Emmanuel III (king), 239 Virgin Islands, 168 Volunteer Bill, 274 Vreeland, Edward, 144 Wadsworth, James, 154

Walker, John, 186 Wall Street, 144 Wallace, John, 186 Wallace, William, 63 Wannamaker, John, 62, 63, 65, 66 Ward, Hamilton, 34, 35, 36 Warder, Bushnell, and Glessner, 143 Washington, Booker T., 156, 157, 283 Washington, DC, 154 Washington, George, 7, 8, 280 Washington Post, 65 Weaver, James, 68 Wells, H.G., 280 Welsh, Herbert, 67 Westbrook, Theodore, 34, 35, 36 Western Conservation League, 221 Weyler, Valeriano, 90, 175 Wharton, Edith, 65 Wheeler, Joseph, 103, 105, 107, 117 White, Henry, 249 White House, 283 White Man’s Burden, 110, 166, 242 White, William, 10, 258, 268, 269, 290 Whitman, Walt, 58 Wichita Forest Reserve, 222 Wilde, Oscar, 32, 33 The Wilderness Hunter (Roosevelt), 58 Wilhelm II (emperor), 169, 171, 197, 199, 202–203, 214, 239, 241 Wilhelmina (queen), 239 Williams, Alexander, 75, 76 Wilson, Charles, 271 Wilson, James, 154 Wilson, Woodrow, 10, 252, 258, 261, 266–267, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 279 Wind Cave, 224 Wine, Beer, and Liquor Sellers’ Association, 79, 80 The Winning of the West (Roosevelt), 5, 166, 284 Wister, Owen, 57 Witte Sergei, 209 Women’s Roosevelt Memorial Association, 280 Wood, Leonard, 4, 93, 101, 102, 104, 110, 127, 133, 187, 271, 279 Workman Compensation Act, 153, 281

Index World War I, 11, 86, 174, 269, 270, 271, 272 World War II, 212 Wright, Orville, 171 Wright, Wilbur, 171

Yamamoto, Isoroku, 212 Yellowstone National Park, 57, 220 Yosemite, 220 Young, Samuel, 104, 105 Zahn, John, 265

Yale University, 221, 230

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About the Author

William R. Nester is the award-winning author of thirty-seven books on American national security, international relations, military history, and the nature of power. He is a professor at St. John’s University in New York.

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