Authors: Edmund Morris
5
Merely to look
Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 3, 315–16; Wister,
Roosevelt
, 146. Taft’s weight in early 1904 is given at 330 pounds by Horace D. Taft in
Memories and Opinions
(New York, 1942), 114. Taft was six feet two inches tall.
6
he was periodically
Hoover,
Forty-Two Years in the White House
, 269. Taft’s scrapbooks in WHT consist largely of souvenir menus.
7
Yet he was not
Taft,
Memories and Opinions
, 107–8; Thompson,
Party Leaders
, 308.
8
The Supreme Court
Taft to TR, 27 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Helen H. Taft,
Recollections of Full Years
(New York, 1914), 269.
9
“Who do you suppose”
The story of Taft’s two refusals of the Supreme Court in 1902 and 1903 is told in TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 358–59, 368, 382–83, 407, and 413. Donald Anderson,
William Howard Taft
, 10–12, advances the theory that TR wanted to eliminate Taft as a potential rival in 1904. But Taft was surely almost as far out of the way in the Philippines as he would have been on the bench. A more plausible theory is that Elihu Root (who personally recommended the Governor as his successor) was planning for a Taft presidency in 1908, as both the logical consequence of, and conservative correction to, TR’s reform-minded administration. Henry W. Taft to Taft, 10 Jan. 1903 (WHT).
10
TWO DAYS LATER
George Cortelyou memorandum of meeting, 29 Jan. 1904 (ER); Albert Shaw, “Reminiscences” (ALS); Charles Willis Thompson in New York
Sun
, 3 Nov. 1938; Wister,
Roosevelt
, 162; Elihu Root to William H. Taft, 16 Apr. 1903 (ER).
11
Roosevelt rambled on
George Cortelyou memorandum of meeting, 29 Jan. 1904 (ER).
12
“I thank you”
Ibid.
13
The following evening
Montage by Clifford Berryman in
The Washington Post
, 31 Jan. 1904; Washington
Evening Star, 1
Feb. 1904.
14
“How is your health”
The Washington Post
, 16 Feb. 1904; Beer,
Hanna
, 621. “I have had quite a pull with this infernal ‘grip,’ ” Hanna had written Myron Herrick earlier in the day. “I think it [the Gridiron dinner] will brace me up.” He complained that Roosevelt had been “poisoned” against him by Senator Foraker. But he added significantly, “We must organize our full strength [in Ohio] and choose the Roosevelt delegates from among our friends” (copy in TRP).
15
The jingling cavalrymen
Hanna occupied the entire second floor of the Arlington Hotel, on Lafayette Square.
The Washington Post
, 2 Feb. 1904; Philadelphia
Press
, 27 Mar. 1905.
16
Day followed upon
Sir Mortimer Durand to A. S. Hardy, 4 Jan. 1904 (HMD);
Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, 190–92, 200; Alice Roosevelt diary, 22 Jan. 1904 (ARL).
17
Something about Alice’s
Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, 200.
18
Roosevelt took a
William Sturgis Bigelow to TR, 2 Feb. 1904 (TRP); Kerr,
Bully Father
, 147; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 706–9;
The Washington Post
, 28 Jan. 1904; Gatewood,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy
, 87. The white man had been recommended by Mrs. Cox.
19
“He is not safe”
The New York Times
, 4 Feb. 1904;
Review of Reviews
, Mar. 1904; speech copy in GBC.
20
When Root used
Whitelaw Reid to TR, 9 Feb. 1904 (TRP); Franklin Murphy to TR, 9 Feb. 1904, and TR to Root, 4 Feb. 1904 (ER). One week after this speech, Governor Odell of New York came out strongly for TR. “It was time to set a back fire,” Root wrote TR. “I do not think that I realized how far down the disaffection had gone” (15 Feb. 1904 [TRP]).
21
Late on the evening
George Cortelyou, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 Apr. 1906 (MHM); Washington
Evening Star
, 5 Feb. 1904.
22
“My dear Mr.”
Mark Hanna to TR, 5 Feb. 1904, facsimile in Croly,
Marcus Alonzo Hanna
, 452.
23
The Senator lay
Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 May 1905 (MHM).
24
HALF A WORLD
Foreign Relations 1904
, 413. The image of “claps of thunder” is Hay’s.
25
Minister Kogoro
John Hay diary, 11 Feb. 1904 (JH);
Foreign Relations 1904
, 32–35; Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, 201, 215–16; James Garfield diary, 10 Feb. 1904 (JRG); Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 16 Feb. 1904 (JJ). Zabriskie,
American-Russian Rivalry
, 103–4, points out that not only did Washington favor Japan at this stage of the war, but that Japan, heavily financed by American loans, was in effect “fighting the battle of the United States” in the Far East. As far as the Roosevelt Administration was concerned, a victorious Japan might be easier to deal with than a victorious Russia, already “overbalancing” dangerously in Manchuria. TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 724.
26
UNCONSCIOUS
The following account of the death of Mark Hanna is based on J. B. Morrow’s interviews with Mrs. Hanna (18 May 1905), John Coit Spooner (10 Mar. 1905), and George Cortelyou (18 Apr. 1906), all in MHM; medical bulletins, 12–15 Feb., in Presidential scrapbook (TRP);
The Washington Post
and Washington
Evening Star
, 12–16 Feb. 1904; and Beer,
Hanna
, 622–24.
27
The cosmopolitan curiosity
The book TR was reading was E. de Michelis’s
L’Origine degli Indo-Europei
(Turin, 1903). Its Italian text gave him much difficulty, but he read it through to the end. “I have been much impressed with it, owing to the clear grasp of the author of the … relations between languages and races—his understanding, for instance, that Aryan is a linguistic and not a biological term.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 795.
28
He had not done
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 554; John T. Flynn, “Mark Hanna: Big Business in Politics,”
Scribner’s
, Aug. 1933. These sources give the low estimate of Hanna’s wealth. According to Alfred H. Lewis in
Saturday Evening Post
, 26 Dec. 1903, “He is worth every splinter of 30 millions.”
29
“May you soon”
Croly,
Marcus Alonzo Hanna
, 454–55.
30
Governors, generals
TR did, however, cross the square later that night to pay his respects to Mrs. Hanna. For two modern, sympathetic assessments of the great Senator, see Harvey Ploster, “Mark Hanna and the Republican Hierarchy, 1897–1904” (M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1964), and Gerald W. Wolff, “Mark Hanna’s Goal: American Harmony,”
Ohio History
79.3–4 (1970).
31
By now, most
Foreign Relations 1904
, 543–51; John Hay to Elihu Root, 12 Mar. 1904 (TD). For modern support for this view, see Friedlander, “Reassessment,” and Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, 96–105.
32
The little republic
McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 398; Bishop,
Theodore Roosevelt
, vol. 1, 304–5.
33
Roosevelt and his successors
Foreign Relations 1904
, 544. Colón and Panama City were excluded from the zone, although the United States undertook to provide their sanitation, water supply, and security services. Panamanian independence was guaranteed; compensation was fixed at a ten-million-dollar initial payment, plus annual rent of $250,000, to begin after nine years.
34
But Bunau-Varilla
Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla.”
35
“for the honor”
Philippe Bunau-Varilla to Manuel Amador Guerrero, 23 Feb. 1904 (PBV). Amador had been inaugurated four days before.
36
AN ENORMOUS MAP
Dorwart,
Office of Naval Intelligence
, 81–82; New York
World
, 27 Feb. 1904; TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 721; Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 277.
37
Cecil Spring Rice
Spring Rice to EKR, 29 Dec. 1903 (received 4 Feb. 1904) (TRP). During the Russo-Japanese War, Spring Rice deliberately addressed some of his more outspoken letters to EKR, in order to avoid surveillance and suspicion at either end. Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 286.
38
Roosevelt, replying
TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 760–61.
39
“very drastic”
C. S. Mellen to TR, 19 Feb. 1904 (TRP).
40
“All I can do”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 750.
41
During the Alaska
New York
Sun
, 15 Mar. 1904; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to TR, 19 Feb. 1904 (TRP).
42
Justice William Rufus Day
The following short biographical sketches are based on Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds.,
The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions
(New York, 1969–1978), vols. 2 and 3.
43
(“the last of the”)
Ibid., vol. 2, 216.
44
By noon, the
The following account is based on a detailed story (with group portrait) in the New York
Herald
, 15 Mar. 1904, and another in the Philadelphia
Press
, same date. The decision is published in
U.S. Reports
, vol. 193, 197ff. The best analysis of the proceedings remains that of Meyer, “Northern Securities Case,” chap. 8.
45
his clear, sharp voice
Fuller described Holmes’s voice as “incisive as the edge of a knife” (Novick,
Honorable Justice
, 271). The Library of Congress preserves a sound recording of Holmes broadcasting to the American people, in tones unblunted by time, on his ninetieth birthday.
46
“No scheme or”
U.S. Reports
, vol. 193, 320–22, 327; New York
Herald
, 15 Mar. 1904.
47
It was five
Philander Knox scrapbook (PCK); New York
Sun
, 15 Mar. 1904. TR’s other lunch guests were James Cardinal Gibbons, Austrian Ambassador Baron von Hengervár Hengelmüller, and the writer William Roscoe Thayer. Thayer,
John Hay
, vol. 2, 351.
48
The dimensions of
Lamoreaux,
Great Merger Movement
, 169.
49
“Great cases,”
The following quotations are from
U.S. Reports
, vol. 193, 400–411. Other details from New York
Sun
and Philadelphia
Press
, 15 Mar. 1904.
50
“I am happy”
This was the first of the great High Court dissents for which Holmes was to become famous. “The trouble with Wendell,” an exasperated Bostonian friend complained, “is that he likes to play with his mind” (M. A. De Wolfe Howe,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1841–1882
[Cambridge, Mass., 1957–1963], vol. 1, 255). As John Blum points out, TR miscalculated in thinking Holmes a reformer. The justice was “a profound skeptic” who “deeply distrusted
popular passion.” In this case, Holmes felt that most of his brethren had been carried away by the temporary, and unreasoning, antitrust mood of the times. His decision not to go along was therefore “entirely in character.” Blum,
Progressive Presidents
, 35.
51
So by a margin
Knox, after leaving the Justice Department later that year, reacted dismissively to a question about the historical significance of his
Northern Securities
suit. The case was regarded as “of surpassing importance” by the press, he said, but had proved “of less real value to the government than many others that attracted no general attention.” It had been, “in a sense, a test case”
(Philadelphia Ledger
, 12 June 1904). Knox’s use of the phrase
real value
reflects his essentially pragmatic nature. What mattered to TR was its
symbolic
value, reaffirming the right of a federal democracy to regulate big business. Modern historical assessments, however, tend to agree with Knox. See the cynical words of Albro Martin in
James J. Hill
, 520, or the more balanced assessments in Thorelli,
Federal Antitrust Policy
, 473–74 and 562–63. Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 499, argues that
Northern Securities
led, paradoxically, to more, not less, corporate consolidation.
52
“I could carve”
John Hay diary, 15 Mar. 1904 (JH); Harbaugh,
Life and Times
, 161–62; Lodge,
Selections
, 518. See also Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 564.
53
“I have such”
Novick,
Honorable Justice
, 272. TR was writing affectionately to Holmes again by the fall of 1904 (TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 989). Many years later, the Justice claimed that TR “looked on my dissent as a political departure (or, I suspect, more truly, couldn’t forgive anyone who stood in his way).” When these words were written, TR was dead, and Holmes’s tone conveys a certain octogenarian crotchetiness. Mark De Wolfe Howe, ed.,
Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874–1932
(Cambridge, Mass., 1941), vol. 2, 61–62.