Theodore Rex (81 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
Aboard the
Brooklyn
, he and Admiral Chadwick had decided that the United States could not tolerate any more “double dealing and treachery,” either on the part of Raisuli or the Moroccan government. “We have come to a point when our position has now become undignified and humiliating,” Gummeré cabled Hay. Chadwick joined him in suggesting “an ultimatum immediately for large indemnity for every day’s further delay and that Marines will be landed and customs seized.”
BY NOW
, Root’s voice had strengthened, and most delegates were with him. They applauded his depersonalized summary of the Administration’s fiscal, antitrust, agricultural, and foreign policies. They received in silence the news
that five battleships, four cruisers, four monitors, and thirty-four torpedo destroyers and torpedo boats had joined the Navy since 1900, while another thirteen battleships and thirteen cruisers were under construction. As Root approached his peroration, the applause grew louder and more frequent. He began to refer delicately to William McKinley’s “successor.” He quoted the honest pledge of “unbroken” continuity given at Buffalo on 14 September 1901, to further cheers. “Our President,” he declared with a sweeping gesture, “has taken the whole people into his confidence.”
“
All except the members of the National Committee,” Senator Scott murmured.
Root did not enunciate the words “Theodore Roosevelt” until his final sentence, at 1:18
P.M.
There was a gratifying roar, but it died in thirty seconds. At 2:10
P.M.
, the convention adjourned for the day, and Henry Cabot Lodge’s Committee on Resolutions began to write the party platform. Simultaneously, Consul Gummeré’s cable arrived in Washington.
HAY PONDERED THE
cable overnight. More and more, he dreaded an American show of force. European reactions would be negative, and could turn hostile when—as now seemed certain—Mr. Perdicaris was revealed to be a Greek. A report from Athens confirmed that one “Ioannis Perdicaris” had applied for Greek citizenship there, at the start of the American Civil War.
Ioannis
certainly sounded similar to
Ion
.
Unable to confront Roosevelt with this news, Hay asked a deputy, Gaillard Hunt, to take the Perdicaris file over to the White House, along with a recommendation that Raisuli and the Sultan be given a final warning. As Commander-in-Chief (not to mention political candidate) Roosevelt must consider the risks.
Hunt came back and said that the President had not been at all pleased with the contents of the file. However, he had authorized Hay’s suggested ultimatum. Rightly or wrongly, Raisuli believed Mr. Perdicaris to be American; he had therefore done deliberate violence to the whole concept of American citizenship. For that he must be held responsible, and the Sultan responsible for him.
ONCE AGAIN IT
was afternoon in Morocco as Roosevelt conducted his mid-morning audience, and delegates in the Chicago Coliseum awaited the noon opening gavel.
Hay, drafting his ultimatum, hit upon “a concise impropriety” to gratify the aggressive Gummeré. It nicely balanced the more cautious phraseology that followed:
WE WANT PERDICARIS ALIVE OR RAISULI DEAD. FURTHER THAN THIS WE DESIRE LEAST POSSIBLE COMPLICATIONS WITH MOROCCO OR OTHER POWERS. YOU WILL NOT ARRANGE FOR LANDING MARINES OR SEIZING CUSTOM HOUSE WITHOUT SPECIFIC DIRECTIONS FROM THE DEPARTMENT
.
Hay could not resist showing his draft to Edwin M. Hood, the veteran State Department correspondent for the Scripps-McRae news service. “Think I’ll send it,” he said, as one old newspaperman to another.
“
Then I will too,” Hood replied. The message went out over government and news wires simultaneously.
But by the time it reached Morocco, Gummeré had no need for it. An up-country sheik announced that he would make his village available for the exchange of hostages and ransom on the next morning, 23 June.
HOOD’S DISPATCH REACHED
Chicago at about 3:00
P.M.
, and a copy was delivered to the permanent chairman of the convention, Joseph Cannon. He let it lie on his desk while Henry Cabot Lodge read the Republican Party platform for 1904.
“
We declare our constant adherence to the following principles,” Lodge shouted. His voice rang with the earnestness of a politician determined to say as little as possible. He was noncommittal on the tariff, trust control, labor relations, and foreign policy. The future of the Philippines was left vague. Disfranchised Negroes got a few words of sympathy, insurgent Republicans none. There was no call for railroad rate regulation, no acknowledgment of the Iowa Idea, no mention of the power war between Governor LaFollette and Senator Spooner. (The latter’s Old Guard delegation doggedly occupied Wisconsin floor space, courtesy of the Committee on Credentials.)
When Lodge finished, Cannon called for acceptance of the platform. There was a unanimous, if apathetic, chorus of ayes. Cannon, smiling, took up his slip of paper. “With the consent of the Convention, the Chair will direct the Clerk to read a dispatch from Washington … received through the courtesy of the Scripps-McRae Newspaper Association.”
“
Bulletin,”
the clerk read.
“Washington, June 22. Secretary of State Hay has sent instructions to Consul General Samuel R. Gummeré, as follows: ‘We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.’ ”
After two days of procedural torpor, the convention reacted galvanically to Hay’s “concise impropriety.” Delegates jumped on their chairs and shouted with delight. “Roosevelt and Hay know what they are doing,” a Kansan exulted. “Our people like courage. We’ll stand for anything those men do.”
Cannon quickly adjourned the session, content to let enthusiasm build for the nominations.
A FEW MINUTES
before eleven o’clock on Thursday, 23 June, Frank S. Black, a former Governor of New York, rose to nominate the President. Immensely tall and craggy, he glared through professional spectacles and shook a boyish thatch of hair. “From every nook and corner of the country,” he orated, “rises but a single choice to fill the most exalted office in the world.” Applause welled up, as if echoing his metaphor. Roosevelt had chosen well. Black—his predecessor in Albany—was the party’s best speaker, more poetic than Spooner, less preachy than Hoar.
After some more flights of populist imagery, Black got down to the personal. He reminded the convention that Roosevelt, for all his fame as a soldier, was by nature a writer and scholar. “A profound student of history, he is today the greatest history maker in the world.” However, “the fate of nations is still decided by their wars.” The peace that scholars craved was probably illusory, certainly temporary:
Events are numberless and mighty, and no man can tell which wire runs around the world. The nation basking today in the quiet of contentment and repose may be still on the deadly circuit and tomorrow writhing in the toils of war. This is the time when great figures must be kept in front. If the pressure is great, the material to resist it must be granite and iron. Whether we wish it or not, America is abroad in this world. Her interests are on every street, her name is on every tongue. Those interests so sacred and stupendous should be trusted only to the care of those whose power, skill and courage have been tested and approved.
(Applause)
And in the man whom you will choose, the highest sense of every nation in the world beholds a man who typifies as no other living American does, the spirit and purposes of the twentieth century.
It was just eleven o’clock. “Gentlemen,” Black roared, “I nominate for President of the United States … Theodore Roosevelt of New York!”
An elemental din built and built, and for twenty-one minutes the convention rocked in pandemonium. Three sergeants at arms carried in Roosevelt’s portrait, crudely rendered in crayon, yet big enough to blot out most of Mark Hanna’s. They swung the President from side to side, while he gazed with waxy eyes at the party he could at last call his own.
THE REAL ROOSEVELT
received the news of his nomination, along with that of Fairbanks for Vice President, and confirmation of Cortelyou as Chairman,
just after lunch, as he sat with Edith and Alice on the White House portico. His secretary, Loeb, brought the telegram. The vote had been unanimous, but every state from Alabama to Wyoming had insisted on recording its tally separately, making 994 votes out of 994.