Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

In his opinion, those bullets at Buffalo had been fired, not merely at a man, but at the very heart of the American Republic. They were an assault upon representative government and civilized order. Unable to contain his rage, he leaned forward and blurted an excoriation of Czolgosz into the rain. “If it had been I who had been shot, he wouldn’t have got away so easily.… I’d have guzzled him first.”

In Dresden, his German tutor claimed first honors. “He will surely one day be a great professor,” she remembered telling his mother. “Or who knows, he may even become President of the United States.” In Albany, an old girlfriend mused on the “strange prophetic quality in Theodore.” Ever since her first crush on him, Fanny Parsons had felt a “mystical” certainty that he would lead his country to world power.

At last, Root managed to continue. “I have been asked, on behalf of the Cabinet of the late President … to request that, for reasons of weight affecting the administration of the government, you should proceed to take the constitutional office of the President of the United States.”

“It only remains,” one Fleet Street wag suggested, “for [us] to take American coal to Newcastle.” Behind the joke lay real concern: the United States was already supplying beer to Germany, pottery to Bohemia, and oranges to Valencia.

Continental comment was reported to be cooler. Misgivings about Roosevelt’s peculiar brand of Pan-Americanism had been expressed in both Paris and St. Petersburg. In Berlin, the Kreuz-Zeitung feared that the new President might be “anti-German.” But the Neueste Nachrichten recalled that as a teenager he had lived and studied with a Dresden family. Surely this meant that he would have more sympathy than his predecessors for the Teutonic point of view.

A gulf, not merely of years but of ideology, separated him from these heroes of the past. They had fought to preserve the Union; he had fought to create a world power. The old soldiers had cheered when the young soldiers liberated Cuba, but they fell silent when similar “freedoms” were imposed on Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. They had watched with worried eyes as the Stars and Stripes rose over Hawaii, Wake Island, and half of Samoa, and Secretary Hay began negotiations to purchase the Danish West Indies. Was their beloved republic, they asked, taking on the trappings of an imperial power?

The old soldiers remained fiercely opposed to expansionism. They asked how a nation that had won its own independence in a colonial war could force dependence upon others.

Ideologically, Roosevelt was committed to a conservative view of the trusts. Personally, he felt a certain ambivalence. He saw “grave dangers” in unrestricted combination, yet he could not deny that the economy functioned better now that the trusts were, in effect, running it. The price of kerosene, for example, had been declining for thirty years, courtesy of Standard Oil. America was no longer a patchwork of small self-sufficient communities.

But middle age, and the democratizing effect of war, had moderated his attitude toward organized labor.

He felt at home with conservatives. Whether or not the term applied to himself, he owed his political advancement to men of Root’s type: wealthy Republicans who belonged to the Union League Club, read the North American Review, and were coldly polite to butlers. More conservative rhetoric followed after lunch, as the other Cabinet officers on the train came in one by one to see him.

In a fundamental disagreement with Social Darwinist thinkers, Roosevelt condemned “that baleful law of natural selection which tells against the survival of some of the most desirable classes.”

Somehow he must grant a little leisure, and a little extra money, to the multitudes currently working only to survive. This would enable them to develop those noneconomic virtues—intelligence, unselfishness, courage, decency—which he loosely defined as “character.” Character determined the worth of the individual, and “what is true of the individual is also true of the nation.” At the same time, he must persuade Union League Republicans that perpetual, mild reform was true conservatism, in that it protected existing institutions from atrophy, and relieved the buildup of radical pressure.

And here—palpably, all about—was Morality. The fine white paper from that mill went under contract to Roosevelt’s good friend Edward W. Bok, publisher of Ladies’ Home Journal.

Roosevelt was relieved to hear the good news. “I don’t care a damn about stocks and bonds, but I don’t want to see them go down the first day I am President!”

Roosevelt was the first President ever to be born in a large city; he welcomed the clash of alien cultures, as long as it did not degenerate into mass collision. As such, he saw no paradox in being an opponent of the xenophobic American Protective Association,

and strong supporter of the Immigration Restriction League. But he felt that America’s first responsibility

was to its literate, native-born, ...

But the President was not looking for sympathy. “I need your advice and counsel,” he said. He also needed their resignations, but for legal reasons only. Every man must accept reappointment. “I cannot accept a declination.”

Two other guests, William Allen White and Nicholas Murray Butler, listened sympathetically. Prodigies themselves—White, at thirty-three, had a national reputation for political journalism, and Butler, at thirty-nine, was about to become president of Columbia University—they were both aware that they had reached the top of their fields, and could stay there for another forty years. Roosevelt was sure of only three and a half. Of course, the power given him dwarfed theirs, and he might win an extension of it in 1904. But that would make its final loss only harder to bear.

The word nigger had not been seen in print for years. Its sudden reappearance had the force of an obscenity. Within hours, newspapers from the Piedmont to the Yazoo were raining it and other racial epithets on the President’s head. ROOSEVELT DINES A DARKEY A RANK NEGROPHILIST

ROOSEVELT PROPOSES TO CODDLE THE SONS OF HAM

WTF?!

Although Roosevelt was a man much influenced by Mars, he was likely to be peaceable in foreign affairs. His aggression would spill out on the domestic front. (But he would be asking for trouble if he tried to bully Congress.) There was likely to be “a remarkable recrudescence” of social violence soon. While some years of prosperity lay ahead, “a crash is surely coming, and securities will drop to rock bottom.”

Like Spooner, Allison was a Hamiltonian fiscal conservative.

Not sure Hamilton was fiscally conservative...pro business for sure.

Jokes began to circulate that “Terrible Teddy” was good for nothing but dining with black men and exercising the diplomatic corps. When the jokes reached Princeton, the beaky professor who had interviewed Roosevelt at Buffalo made a public demand that he be treated with more respect. “He really determines an important part of the destinies of the world,” Woodrow Wilson said. Americans would discover soon enough that Theodore Roosevelt was “larger” than they knew, “a very interesting and a very strong man.”

The British philosopher argued that laissez-faire economics might suit one stage in a nation’s development, but not necessarily the next. Some governmental tamping-down should follow a period of explosive growth. Nor was discipline incompatible with democracy. As Knox himself put it, “Uncontrolled competition, like unregulated liberty, is not really free.”

Alone with Knox later, Roosevelt mused, “That is a most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view.” Morgan could think of the President of the United States only as “a big rival operator” with whom to cut a deal.

But what atrocities might he uncover there, to the detriment of Roosevelt’s own candidacy in 1904? “It is getting to be a case,” the President complained, “of whether I can longer permit great damage to the Army for the sake of avoiding trouble to myself.”

Petitioners visiting the Executive Office learned to keep talking, because the President usually had an open book on his desk, and was quite capable of snatching it up when the conversation flagged.

Grief; disease; desire. And now, even more privately, Edith’s failure to carry her latest baby to term. Only the most masculine activism could dispel these feminine frailties.

Her own considerable private income was not enough. “I want more,” she scribbled in her diary, “I want everything.… I care for nothing but to amuse myself in a charmingly expensive way.” She prowled round the dark house, a caged blond cheetah among its skins and stuffed trophies.

Heedless on the piazza overlooking the bay, her father used the long afternoons to catch up with his reading. His “beach book” for the season was Nicolay and Hay’s Abraham Lincoln: A History, in ten volumes. Unfazed, he read it straight through, along with his usual supply of dime novels and periodicals.

He ordered Smith’s prompt dismissal from the Army.

Roosevelt, in turn, felt convinced that of all the men in his Cabinet, Root alone had the qualities to succeed him as President.

ROOSEVELT’S DECISION TO dismiss General Smith won universal praise. Democrats congratulated him for acknowledging that there had been both cruelty and injustice in the Philippines campaign. Republicans felt that he had upheld the national honor.

Having thus briskly disposed of the doctrine of an independent judiciary, Roosevelt left Lodge to send his candidate down, and went for a cruise on the Mayflower.

In his world there was neither absolute good nor absolute evil—only shifting standards of positive and negative behavior, determined by the majority and subject to constant change. Morality was not defined by God; it was the code a given generation of men wanted to live by. Truth was “what I can’t help believing.” Yesterday’s

absolutes must give way to “the felt necessities of the time.”

MR. HENNESSY What d’ye think iv th’ man down in Pinnsylvania who says th’ Lord an’ him is partners in a coal mine? MR. DOOLEY Has he divided th’ profits?

“Anthracite mining,” he said, “is a business and not a religious, sentimental, or academic proposition.”

Sounds vaguely familiar.

At a time when most men prosper somewhat some men always prosper greatly; and it is as true now as when the tower of Siloam fell upon all alike, that good fortune does not come solely to the just, nor bad fortune solely to the unjust. When the weather is good for crops it is also good for weeds. (Applause)

Yet Roosevelt’s equal compulsion to follow every strong statement with a qualifier caused the speech to degenerate into a series of contradictions on the pros and cons of regulatory law. By the time he sat down, much of his audience had wandered off.

Poor families burned coconut shells, available at fifteen cents a sack from candy companies, to keep warm. From New York, Mayor Seth Low wired the President: “I CANNOT EMPHASIZE TOO STRONGLY THE IMMENSE INJUSTICES OF THE EXISTING COAL SITUATION.… MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE … WILL ENDURE REAL SUFFERING IF PRESENT CONDITIONS CONTINUE.”

“They say (and this is literal) ‘We don’t care whether you are to blame or not. Coal is going up, and the party in power must be punished.’ ” He made a characteristic inquiry. “Is there anything we can appear to do?”

Roosevelt, of course, had already suggested much the same thing. Cleveland had always been a bit slow. Nevertheless, his counsel represented eight years of presidential experience. Here was the brute disciplinarian of 1894 recommending reason over force.

Roosevelt noted that Poland’s ancient kings had also been hampered by irresponsible subjects. “I must not be drawn into any violent step which would bring reaction and disaster afterward.”

“The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution.”

Roosevelt rode back at full speed. He was both disappointed and upset, on reaching the pond, to find a stunned, bloody, mud-caked runt tied to a tree. At 235 pounds, the bear was not much bigger than he. He refused to shoot. “Put it out of its misery,” he said. Somebody dispatched it with a knife. The hunt continued for another three days, but the curse of that tortured bear kept Roosevelt’s bullets cold. He did not know, as he crashed vainly through the mists, that the outside world was already applauding his “sportsmanlike” refusal to kill for killing’s sake.

This great parlor was so changed that only people remembering the days of President Monroe could view it without shock. Charles McKim had scraped, chipped, and burned away eighty-four years’ accretion of fust and filigree, leaving nothing but the original walls.

He understood that uninhibited private language did not necessarily translate into policy. However,

The results were not encouraging. In almost every engagement, Black’s tighter track curves, the sheer range and accuracy of its lead shot, combined to scatter Blue all over the table.