Authors: Edmund Morris
58
“My hat”
Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.477. The earliest version of this famous quote, consisting of the first sentence only, appears in a no-headline special dispatch out of Cleveland to
The New York Times
on 22 Feb. 1912, printed in the following day’s paper. TR appears to have said it on board his train to a local county commissioner, William F. Eirick, who leaked their conversation as follows. Q: “Colonel, I have a question I want to ask.” A: “I know what it is. I’ll make a statement on Monday. My hat is in the ring.” A separate article in the same issue reports that TR seemed surprised when his remark was repeated to him by newsmen on his return journey, but did not deny making it. He used it again in a letter to Governor Hadley on 29 Feb. (TR,
Letters
, 7.513.) Where Mark Sullivan got the second sentence from is unclear.
59
“I will accept”
TR,
Letters
, 7.511. “The Colonel made a mistake when he said he would ‘accept’ the nomination,” George Harvey remarked in
Harper’s Weekly
, 20 Apr. 1912. “What he meant to say was that he would ‘intercept’ it.”
60
Grant thought
Robert Grant’s letter to James Ford Rhodes, 22 Mar. 1912, on which the rest of this chapter is based, is printed as an appendix in TR,
Letters
, 8.1456–61. See also White,
Autobiography
, 451–52.
61
William Roscoe Thayer
See his account of this evening in Thayer,
TR
, 351–55.
62
Dante’s phrase
“
Vidi e conobbi l’ombra di colui / Che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto
” (I saw and recognized the shade of him / Who through cowardice made the great refusal), Dante,
The Inferno
, canto 3, line 60. In TR’s time, this was believed to refer to Pietro da Morrone, later Pope Celestine V.
63
feeling saddened
Thayer,
TR
, 354.
1
Epigraph
Robinson, C
ollected Poems
, 62.
2
The contrary forces
Alexander Lambert address to the Roosevelt Memorial Association, 20 Sept. 1923, transcript in HP;
Boston Globe
, 29 Feb. 1912. See also Dr. Lambert’s account in TR,
Works
, 3.xix. Either he or TR misidentified Hallowell as “General.”
3
“I am alone”
Quoted in TR,
Works
, 3.xix. Notwithstanding his assertion to Robert Grant that he felt “as fine as silk,” TR was evidently under considerable stress during his Boston visit. Twice, he turned and snapped at reporters and photographers badgering him.
(Boston Globe
, 29 Feb. 1912.) This was in such contrast to his normal bonhomie as to suggest deep doubt about the course he had chosen.
4
In a cultural essay
TR, “Productive Scholarship,”
The Outlook
, 13 Jan. 1912, reprinted in TR,
Works
, 14.340–48. TR was proud of this essay, and sent a copy to Edith Wharton. The novelist had visited Sagamore Hill in the fall of 1911 and been charmed. “The house was like one big library, and the whole tranquil place breathed of the love of books and of the country.… I felt immediately at home there.” TR to Edith Wharton, 5 Jan. 1912, EW; Edith Wharton,
A Backward Glance
(New York, 1933, 1985), 316–17.
5
“We made”
White,
Autobiography
, 458.
6
“Gentlemen, the first”
Ibid., 453.
7
Bourne had been
“I am keenly aware,” TR wrote Henry L. Stimson on 2 Feb. 1912, “that there are not a few among the men who claim to be leaders in the progressive movement who bear an unpleasant resemblance to the lamented Robespierre and his fellow progressives of 1791 and ‘92.” TR,
Letters
, 7.494.
8
“I move that”
White,
Autobiography
, 453.
9
“This rebellion”
Ibid., 452.
10
“He aims”
James H. Morse diary, 29–30 Mar., 27 Apr. 1912 (JHMD); Elihu Root quoted in Adams,
Letters
, 6.515.
11
“I never thought”
Lodge,
Selections
, 2.423–24; Putnam,
TR
, chap. 25. As senior senator from the Bay State, Henry Cabot Lodge had been embarrassed by TR’s aggressive defense of judicial recall, in a speech before the Massachusetts legislature on 26 February: “All I ask is that the people themselves … shall be given a chance to declare whether they will stand by the Supreme Court of the nation when it stands for human rights, or by the chief court of their own state when it stands against human rights. If that be revolution, make the most of it.”
Boston Globe
, 27 Feb. 1912.
12
I am opposed
Ibid., 2.423.
13
“My dear fellow”
TR,
Letters
, 7.515.
14
“He will either”
Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 846–47.
15
Butt listened
Ibid., 844.
16
“If the old”
Ibid., 848.
17
By early March
,
The New York Times
, 27 Feb., 2 Mar. 1912.
18
a $50,000 startup budget
See Stoddard,
As I Knew Them
, 399.
19
Roosevelt, in contrast
The Washington Post
, 1 Mar. 1912. It must be understood that opinion polls, in 1912, were local rather than national. They were conducted mainly by newspapers soliciting readers.
20
“You understand”
TR,
Letters
, 7.506.
21
One day he allowed
The following paragraphs derive from the account, dated 2 Mar. 1912, in Baker, notebook N, 16 (RSB).
22
men like Ward and Flinn
Flinn, like many of Roosevelt Republican insiders in 1912, was less interested in “social and industrial justice” than in self-advancement.
23
charms of Ormsby McHarg
Mowry,
TR
, 200, 238. TR was not initially aware that McHarg, an energetic turncoat who had worked for and against him in the past, had gone south in his aid. But he heard enough about McHarg’s methods to send him a “posterity letter” on 4 Mar. 1912, stating that he would appreciate “your personal assurance that you never endeavored by promises of patronage or by use of money … to try to influence any man to support me.” (TR,
Letters
, 7.516.) McHarg was glad to supply the assurance, and glad to continue supplying delegates.
24
seven Harvard men
TR,
Letters
, 7.517.
25
It followed that
The New York Times
, 21 Mar. 1912; Mowry,
TR
, 230–32.
26
a progressive enthusiast
Mowry,
TR
, 232.
27
On 19 March
, Morris,
The Rise of TR
, 200;
The New York Times
, 20 Mar. 1912; TR,
Letters
, 7.525; Stoddard,
As I Knew Them
, 402. The truth, as so often in the grassroots squabbles of 1912, was almost comically petty, with overtones of the great battle of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. TR was in fact the preference of conservatives in the North Dakota GOP, if only because their leader, whose name was Hanna, was opposed to a progressive rival, whose name was Gronna. After Hanna and Gronna, egged on by La Follette, had flailed each other to exhaustion, the forces of reform prevailed. See Mowry,
TR
, 231.
28
“The prairies”
Bourne,
British Documents
, pt. 1, ser. C, 15.81.
29
“I tend to get”
TR,
Letters
, 7.526–29, 532.
30
A childhood friend
Frances Theodora Parsons,
Perchance Some Day
(privately printed, 1951), 238. For the teenage relationship of Fanny Parsons and TR, see Morris,
The Rise of TR
, 50–52.
31
Carnegie Hall was crammed
The New York Times
, 21 Mar. 1912; TR,
Letters
, 7.529.
32
“It will be”
The New York Times
, 21 Mar. 1912.
33
“The courts should”
Ibid.; TR,
Works
, 19.206–8. William Draper Lewis of the University of Pennsylvania Law School suggested in a scholarly article that TR was clearly talking about judicial
opinions
on the constitutionality of acts, rather than
decisions
on practical points of law. (Stagner, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions.”) See also William Draper Lewis,
The Life of Theodore Roosevelt
(Philadelphia, 1919), 340–42.
34
sheet after sheet
The New York Times
, 21 Mar. 1912.
35
The leader for
TR,
Works
, 19.222–23. See also Abbott,
Impressions of TR
, 80–83, and for an affecting account of how this speech was written, Lewis,
TR
, 444–46. The latter source makes plain that Corinne Roosevelt Robinson erred in assuming that TR improvised his peroration.
(My Brother TR
, 267.) It was in fact carefully written out in pencil on “several soiled sheets of gray tissue manuscript,” which TR kept separate from the text he intended to give out to the press. Evidently he did not want to blunt the drama of
viva voce
delivery of one of his most eloquent utterances.
36
“Roosevelt, confound him”
Abbott,
Impressions of TR
, 82–83. The political oratory of TR and WW in 1912 has been collected in two complementary anthologies: Lewis L. Gould, ed.,
Bull Moose on the Stump: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt
(Lawrence, Kan., 2008) and John W. Davidson, ed.,
A Crossroads of Freedom: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Woodrow Wilson
(New Haven, Conn., 1956).
Historiographical Note:
Since few stenographic records of what TR actually said on the campaign trail in 1912 are available in TRC or TRP, Gould’s anthology relies much on contemporary newspaper reports. So does this biography. Journalistic transcripts, however, often vary considerably one from another. They may simply reproduce TR’s own typed speech scripts, handed out in the form of press releases (but he was inclined to reshuffle or even toss aside such scripts on the podium, talking off the cuff when the mood struck him). Throughout his public career, he could be cavalier, even with the scripts of his major addresses printed as urtext in TR,
Works
. The improvisational humor he used to temper his seriousness can only be imagined—along with the radiance of the personality that infused these frequently dull texts with life. For a rare example of TR interacting with his audience, see Gould,
Bull Moose
, 18–30.
37
Republicans amenable
The New York Times
, 27 Mar. 1912.
38
It turned out that
Ibid., 27, 28 Mar. 1912.
39
The net results
Ibid., 27, 31 Mar. 1912.
40
He received the news
TR took a three-day swing to Portland, Maine, after his Carnegie Hall speech, then campaigned in the Midwest from 26 to 30 Mar.
41
“They are stealing”
The New York Times
, 28 Mar. 1912; Pringle,
Taft
, 771.
42
Roosevelt roared
Chicago Tribune
and
The New York Times
, 28 Mar. 1912.
43
He was back
On 2 Apr., Republicans in Wisconsin, a progressive primary state that TR had ceded to its favorite son, awarded 133,354 votes to La Follette and 47,514 to Taft. TR netted 628.
44
At the top
Owen Wister, who had not seen TR for several years, briefly traveled with him during this campaign swing. “The energy, the action, the hammered words, the blaze of genial, jocund power, the prompt and marvelous application of some special sentence to some special place—I can call it nothing but gigantic.” Wister,
Roosevelt
, 307.
45
a major address
In this uncompromising speech, TR castigated the august
Joseph Choate and other Wall Street lawyers who had united in opposition to the referendum and recall, and compared their conservatism to that of New Yorkers defending the Dred Scott decision of 1857. See TR, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions” in TR,
Works
, 19.255ff., and, for a rare expression of contemporary legal support, Peter S. Grosscup, “Recall of Judicial Decisions Approved,”
Ohio Law Bulletin
, 22 Apr. 1912.
46
“No one can explain”
Adams,
Letters
, 6.532. Under intense pressure from TR and Medill McCormick’s
Chicago Tribune
, Governor Charles Deneen had followed the example of Governor Hughes of New York in 1910, and called a special session of the Illinois legislature to authorize a direct, preferential presidential primary. It did so on 30 Mar., undeterred by William B. McKinley’s ban on “changes in the rules of the game while the game is in progress.” Other legislatures were encouraged to move just as fast, and do the same. Matthew James Glover, “Theodore Roosevelt Wins Illinois’ First Presidential Primary,” unpublished ms. (AC).
47
“The
Titanic
is wrecked”
Adams,
Letters
, 6.534. For the next few days Adams obsessedly drew comparisons between the great shipwreck and the blow that TR, iceberg-like, had inflicted on the GOP. The former called into question the efficiency of modern mechanics; the latter, the smooth workings of the American political system. “We are drifting at sea in the ice, and can’t get ashore.… Our Theodore is not a bird of happy omen. He loves to destroy.” Adams,
Letters
, 6.534–38.