Theodore Roosevelt: the man as I knew him

Preface

I HAVE always counted as one of the highest honors, joys and blessings of my life the intimate personal friendship of Theodore Roosevelt for the last twenty-four years: As pastor of the Park Avenue Methodist Church in New York City, we were associated with him in his work as Police Commissioner' in closing Sunday saloons and were engaged with him in the desperate fight against evil and crime in the great city.

Two motives prompted me to write this book. First, tor pay a personal tribute of affection to him. Every line of this book is an appreciation of his great ability and a stream of love flows between the lines from beginning to end. I have traced him from his birth in the city home through the days of his boyhood and early education, to Harvard University; through a series of public offices such as no one man ever filled outlining the important features of his administration in each, and his mighty influence upon individual and national destiny. He destroyed the illegal combination of corporations in their convi PREFACE

spiracy against the government and saved tlie republic from the ruin which they threatened. He compelled the rich man and the most influential to obey the law as completely as the poorest man, which made him the idol of the common people and also of the honest rich. He so loved his country that he gave himself absolutely to its service, as well as his four boys, whonj he loved better than his life. Mention has been made of his titanic achievement in building the Panama Canal. While he was in the White House, he revealed to me some of the deepest secrets of his heart, which I question whether he ever mentioned to any mortal outside of his own family. Some of these are quoted in this work, because they contain such immortal principles that I know he would like to have me tell them to my fellow countrymen. We have referred to him as an author with his thirty-five splendid volumes and have shown his literary style and made quotations from some of his books, and have watched him as a naturalist among the flowers and birds, the insects, and the big game of the forest, and made a record of some of the things he said about them. The second reason for writing this book was that in some modest way I might hold up this magnificent specimen of manhood as a model and inspiration to my fellowmen. We look into his home and find the ideal husband and father whose happiness and rugged virtues have sweetened and sanctified the name of home and

PREFACE vii

been a blessed inspiration to every borne in tbe land. We have referred to bis courage, believing bim to be one of tbe bravest men in history. We have related the incidents of the fights with grizzly bear and man-eating lion, and of his standing with both shoes full of blood and making his speech after he had been shot, an act of sublime heroism.

We have told of his confronting the most dangerous men and of his moral courage ; of his personal and political integrity, which no penny of graft ever dared approach and against which there was no breath of scandal; of his indomitable industry; of his loyalty personified, which burned with such a flame that he set the whole nation afire with Americanism and triumphant democracy. There is here noted his lifelong hostility to the saloon, his demand for war prohibition, and friendliness to national constitutional prohibition, and of his friendliness to woman suffrage. We have chapters which give at length Theodore Eoosevelt as a Christian; his article on the Bible, in which he holds that it is the basis of individual character and of public virtue; his belief in Christ as a personal Saviour ; the incident of his joining the church, which we received from his old pastor ; of him as a practical preacher of righteousness, demanding the doing as well as the hearing of the Word; his belief in a future life and his words on the death of his son, killed in the great war.

viii PREFACE

Space is given to the estimate of Theodore Roosevelt by Dr. Albert Shaw, the editor of The Review of Reviews, one of the most intimate friends the Colonel ever had in the world, which article was prepared especially for this book; and also an editorial in The Outlook by Dr. Lyman Abbott, another one of the dearest friends of the Colonel, which he gave me for use here. General George W. Goethals gave to us for this volume some words on the relation of President Roosevelt to the building of the Panama Canal.

The book has been brought down to date and an account of his death and funeral services have been recorded. The sorrow of the world was expressed in cable messages from President Wilson, the King and Queen of England, Lloyd George, Rudyard Kipling and others abroad and at home.

Copious extracts from notable memorial services have been furnished by their authors for use in this volume, including those of Henry Cabot Lodge in Washington, Charles E. Hughes, Chauncey Depew, Bishop Luther B. Wilson in New York, Gifford Pinchot in Philadelphia, Will H. Hayes in Indianapolis, Chancellor James R. Day at Albany and Archdeacon Carnegie at Westminster Abbey.

Touching tributes have also been given to us by Gen. Leonard Wood, Sec. Franklin K. Lane, Cardinal Gibbons, Rabbi H. P. Mendes, Mr. John M. Parker, a merchant friend and others.

PREFACE ix

[We have devoted a chapter to Colonel Eoosevelt's sons and family- with a sketch of their life and heroic deeds, and a chapter to what the friends of Oyster Bay think and say about him, for publication here.

In estimating Theodore Eoosevelt, I have illustrated the various elements of his character and life; by many incidents of our personal relationship that have never been printed, and hence are unknown to any one but himself and to me.

In treating Theodore Roosevelt, the man, as I knew him, I have given a concise and yet comprehensive history and biography of my friend and all the great events and salient points of his character. This volume has been prepared with the hope that rich and poor, high and low, political friend and enemy might find interest and profit in reading it. Theodore Roosevelt's rugged virtues will appeal to every man with high hopes and ambitions, looking for the best models and desiring to make the most of himself ; to every working man who knows how the great leader loved him and worked so hard for him; to every man who recognizes how valuable truth and honor and industry are as elements of manhood and success ; to every public servant, from the humblest office-holder to the ruler of the nation, who would scorn a bribe as he would a scorpion and give himself up wholly to the public good; to every woman who loves the name of home; to every young man or

X PREFACE

woman who cherishes the highest ideals and plans of life. This book is sent out stained with my tears and those of the nation; with sorrow in our hearts that we shall see his face no more, but bright with hope that his spirit will remain, with us, and that we shall see him again, and breathing a prayer that it may be used for the happiness and benefit of our fellowmen, and the establishment of Christ's Kingdom on earth, to which Theodore Roosevelt, the man and the Christian, devoted his life.

F. C. I.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page

I Washington — Lincoln — Roosevelt . . 23

II His Birthplace and Boyhood 37

III At Harvard 59

IV Member of State Assembly 71

V Ranch Life 83

VI Civil Service Commission 95

VII Police Commissioner of New York . . 107

VIII Spanish-American War 121

IX Governor of New York 131

X The Citizen and the Public Man. . 143

XI The Vice-Presidency 153

XII Theodore Roosevelt as President by

Dr. Albert Shaw 163

XIII Panama Canal — General Goethals. 181

XIV Heart Secrets Told in a Walk to

the White House 193

XV Interviewed President on Governor

Hughes' Renomination 203

XVI Theodore Roosevelt a Hercules —

Big Stick — Naturalist — Author. 213 XVII Hercules Continued — Hunter — Explorer — Progressive 225

XVIII Sagamore Hill 245

XIX Theodore Roosevelt's Sons 259

XX Friends at Oyster Bay 279

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Xll

Contents

Chapter

XXI

XXII

Chapter I Washington— Lincoln— Roosevelt

JULIUS and Augustus Caesar, the great emperors, were deified by the Romans, and they perpetuated their names in the months which the two emperors had named for themselves — July, after Julius, and August, after Augustus. If we were giving names to the months in our country nowadays, we would call one Washington, another Lincoln, and another Roosevelt, the last, of course, for the month of June with its roses. The reverence and affection of Americans for these three heroes is akin to the devotion of the Romans for the Caesars.

After the first agonizing cry at the sudden death of Theodore Roosevelt there burst forth spontaneously from the nation's heart praises of the departed hero that reached the borderline of idolatry. Roosevelt took his place instantly among the trio of immortals. He had been dead but one month and six days when the people indicated the place they intended to give him in permanent history. They hung up his picture on Lincoln's birthday with that of Washington and Lincoln. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes to the gulf, and throughout our island possessions, in the halls of art, the palaces of the rich and the cottages of the poor, were hung the pictures of Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt.

These three heroes represented the three important eras of the nation's history — Washington, its birth; Lincoln, its salvation, and Roosevelt, its perpetuity. Washington had been dead only ten years when Lincoln was born, and Roosevelt was a boy six years old when Lincoln died, so that the lives of these three giants practically span the birth, the growth and the glory of the American commonwealth.

It would be difficult to compare these national heroes. They were so singularly adapted to the periods in which they lived, and to the tragic services they were called upon to perform, that each seems complete and incomparable as a leader in his time. They were dissimilar in many particulars. Washington and Lincoln were each over six feet high ; Roosevelt was comparatively short and stout. Washington was clean-shaven; Lincoln had a beard, and Roosevelt a mustache.

Washington wore silk stockings and silver shoe buckles ; Roosevelt belonged to the silk stocking colony in New York and wore fine shoes ; Lincoln never had a pair of stockings on his feet till he was a man grown, and no shoes except in snowtime, and those rude ones made by his father's hand. Washington and Roosevelt wore fine clothes ; Lincoln up to the time he was twenty-one years of age wore deerskin pants, deerskin vest and a coonskin cap with the tail left on, and his cabin was surrounded with wolves and bears. Lincoln's father was exceedingly poor; Washington's father was in comfortable circumstances; Roosevelt's father was counted a millionaire.

There was not only a difference in surroundings, but in mental characteristics, between these heroes. In purely intellectual force Washington was perhaps not the equal of Lincoln or Roosevelt. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall and Benjamin Franklin possibly had a sturdier type of intellect. But Washington's faculties were so evenly balanced and true, he was such a great general, such a wise statesman, so absolutely devoted to his country, that he took a place head and shoulders above them all as the leader in the founding of the republic.

Lincoln had one of the greatest intellects the world has ever known. Without schools, books, culture, or travel, by the sheer force of his mind and heart, he gripped the nation, commanded its armies and navies and saved the Union.

Theodore Roosevelt had a prodigious intellect. He did not think so. He insisted that it was only of the ordinary type, and that what he had become or done was the result of desperately hard work and dogged persistency. We decline to accept this estimate of him. He was an intellectual prodigy, if there ever was one. He had Lincoln's rugged, virile type of mind with an added versatility which reading, study, writing and travel alone can give. For nearly a score of years he did the hard thinking for the statesmen of the nation. Political friend and foe waited for him to solve the perplexing problems of state and announce the result.

A little over a year ago I called at Colonel Roosevelt's office on an important matter, and though the outer room was full of those who had appointments to meet him, he sent for me to come into his room. * * Take that chair, ' ' he said, * ' and pull it up close to mine, and sit down and don't say a word to me. I have sent for you to come in and sit up close to me. It reminds

26 THEODOEE KOOSEVELT

me of the good old times we had, and the good new ones we have been having as well. ' ' He said, ' * I have got to sign this big pile of letters here and get them into the mail, and then I will listen to what you have on your mind." I replied, *'I have this which came into my mind since I entered the room ; you can hear it while you write. It is this : I wonder what the people will pay for those letters and that signature a hundred, a thousand years from now. I venture to say that name scratched by your pen will bring from $100 up a hundred years from now, and many thousands of dollars five hundred or a thousand years from now." I continued, **Your fame is secure for the centuries to come." I expected a witty answer, such as he usually gave me under such circumstances. But he did not give it. I looked at his face and it was serious. He saw I was serious and not joking, and he did not joke, but said, **It is lovely in you to say such nice things." And I said to myself while he went on signing his letters that he knew he belonged to humanity, to the universal heart, to the ages; that he felt within himself the symptoms of his earthly immortality, and that he would have a place in history with Washington and Lincoln.

Washington was courtly and serious, but devoid of humor when compared with the other two. Lincoln was at the same time the saddest and the funniest man in the country. His native wit has never been surpassed in our land. Roosevelt had a humor which, though perhaps not so irresistible as that of Lincoln, was just as abounding and healthful. Either could have made a Mark Twain in literature if he had cared to, Roosevelt, with all his desperate contests, with all his perplexing problems, with his incessant toils, was of a playful spirit, had a beautiful family life, and was possibly the happiest man in the nation. He said he was.

These three national heroes, dissimilar as they were in earthly circumstances and intellectual characteristics, were similar in many regards; in all of those basic elements so necessary in the building up of individual character and a healthy state. The three were the greatest-hearted men the nation ever had. If their intellect was a huge mountain losing itself in the clouds, their affections were a deep blue, boundless sea. "Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt were superlative in their truth and honesty. Washington's hatchet will cut its way down the centuries; Honest Abe will for ages be a title more honorable than any king ever wore ; Roosevelt, ** clean as a hound's tooth," will be known for generations to come.

Another element of immortality this trio had in common was absolute unselfishness. Neither the Father of his Country, nor the great Emancipator, nor Roosevelt ever lived a day for himself. Washington always lived for family, fellows and country. Lincoln was a martyr to his country, and so was Roosevelt, as much as though he had fallen on the field of battle. The fires of patriotism literally consumed him. If either of these men had been* capable of telling a white lie, or had failed to fight the wrong at any cost, or had cherished a personal motive of avarice or inordinate ambition, he might have gotten to be President, but he never would have been a national hero or remembered in history.

Our three heroes were similar in their deep religious instincts. They were all godly men, all Christian men. Each of these three captains carried the banner of the Cross. Washington set a beautiful example to the new republic by his religious devotion and habit. He asserted that his prayer to the God of Battles brought help in the conflict. He was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church. Lincoln was a profoundly religious man. He did not join any church, but he attended church services regularly and was a firm believer in the Bible and the Christian faith. Lincoln once told Bishop Simpson, whose lectures on the state of the country during the Civil War were said by the President to be worth 100,000 men to the Union army, and who delivered Lincoln's funeral address, that he felt that God had called him to lead the nation in its tragical time, and had given him wisdom, courage, strength and victory in the conflict.

Everybody knows that Theodore Roosevelt was intensely religious; that he did not hesitate, on all proper occasions, to announce publicly his faith in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. He was a devoted member of the Dutch Reformed Church and attended its services regularly. He told me that his firm faith in God, and his actual knowledge of Him bad been the chief motive in his individual character and his public service. Some think it smart and big to doubt. But the people of America believe. They want the human element in their heroes and the superhuman elements as well. They want them earthbom and born from above too. It will take a nation a long time to die, which has as its heroes Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt, the crown of whose greatness was their goodness.

The similarity of these heroes, in those moral elements without which there can be no real manhood in any calling or position, was increased by the law of imitation. Lincoln tried his best to become like Washington. When a boy he came across a life of Washington at a neighbor's home and borrowed it.

Reading it one night, tired out, he tucked the book in a crack between the logs. That night a rain storm pelted in and spoiled it. In distress he hurried over to the neighbors and said, *'See what has happened, I have not a cent in the world, and if I, had there are no books for sale around here. What shall I do? Now take the price of it out of my hide." The man replied, "Abe, you pull fodder for me for three days and you may have it, and we will call it square." And he did. He fairly devoured the volume, and from that day his thoughts and conduct were influenced by those of Washington.

Roosevelt copied Washington and Lincoln, especially the latter. Lincoln appealed to every faculty of his soul. He studied his character, read his speeches, examined his administration, marvelled at his statesmanship and tried to become like him. He had in him, by nature, many of the qualities of Lincoln, and he gained others by a lifelong admiration and imitation of him. He insisted that any man or party which had strayed away from the principles advocated by Lincoln was on the wrong track.

In 1909 the centenary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln was observed. On the first day of that year President Roosevelt addressed from the White House to Dr. Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, a characteristic letter in which he commented on the famous Bixby letter of the martyr President. This letter of President Roosevelt was as follows:

The White House, Washington, Januaby 1, 1909.

To THE Editor of the Review of Reviews :

The deeds and words of the great men of the nation, and above all the character of each of the foremost men of the nation, are one and all assets of inestimable value to the

Republic. Lincoln's work and Lincoln's words should be, and I think more and more are, part of those formative influences which tend to become living forces for good citizenship among our people. There is one of his letters which has always appealed to me particularly. It is the one running as follows:

Executive Mansion, Washington, Novembee 21, 1864.

To Mas. BixBY, Boston, Mass.

Dear Madam: I have been shown, in the files of the War Department, a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

Any man who has occupied the office of President realizes the incredible amount of administrative work with which the President has to deal even in time of peace. He is of necessity a very busy man, a much-driven man, from whose mind there can never be absent, for many minutes at a time, the consideration of some problem of importance, or of some matter of less importance which yet causes worry and strain. Under such circumstances, it is not easy for a President, even in times of peace, to turn from the affairs that are of moment to all the people and consider affairs that are of moment to but one person.

While this is true of times of peace, it is, of course, infinitely more true of times of war. No President who has ever sat in the White House has borne the burden that Lincoln bore, or been under the ceaseless strain which he endured. It did not let up by day or by night. Ever he had to consider problems of the widest importance, ever to run risks of greatest magnitude; and ever, tlirough and across his plans to meet these great dangers and responsibilities, was shot the woof of an infinite number of small annoyances. He worked out his great task while unceasingly beset by the need of attending as best he could to a multitude of small tasks.

It is a touching thing that the great leader, while thus driven and absorbed, could yet so often turn aside for the moment to do some deed of personal kindness; and it is a fortunate thing for the nation that in addition to doing so well each deed, great or small, he possessed that marvelous gift of expression which enabled him, quite unconsciously, to choose the very words best fit to commemorate each deed. His Gettysburg speech and his second inaugural are two of the half-dozen greatest speeches ever made — I am tempted to call them the two greatest ever made. They are great in their wisdom, and dignity, and earnestness, and in a loftiness of thought and expression which makes them akin tO the utterances of the prophets of the Old Testament.

In a totally different way, but in strongest and most human fashion, such utterances as his answer to the serenaders immediately after his second election, and his letter, which I have quoted above, appeal to us and make our hearts thrill. The mother of whom he wrote stood in our sense on a loftier plane of patriotism than the mighty President himself. Her memory, and the memory of her sons whom she bore for the Union, should be kept green in our minds ; for she and they, in life and death, typified all that is best and highest in our national existence. The deed itself, and the words of the great man which commemorate that deed, should form one of those heritages for all Americans which it is of inestimable consequence that America should possess.

Theodore Roosevelt.

In this letter Mr. Eoosevelt thinks Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg and his Second Inaugural Address are the greatest ones ever delivered. He himself has some addresses, whose periods are in the class of Lincoln's masterpieces. One of these is this description of Lincoln:

"After long years of iron effort, and of failure thait came more often than victory, he at last rose to the leadership of the Republic, at the moment when that leadership had become the stupendous world-task of the time. He grew to know greatness, but never ease. Success came to him, but never happiness, save that which springs from doing well a painful and vital task. Power was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deepened on his brow, but his eyes were undimmed by either hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders were bowed, but his steel thews never faltered as he bore for a burden the destinies of his people. His great and tender heart shrank from giving pain ; and the task allotted him was to pour out like water the life-blood of the young men, and to feel in his every fiber the sorrow of the women. Disaster saddened but never dismayed him. As the red years of war went by they found him ever doing his duty in the present, ever facing the future with fearless front, high of heart, and dauntless of soul. Unbroken by hatred, unshaken by scorn, he worked and suffered for the people. Triumph was his at the last ; and barely had he tasted it before murder found him, and the kindly, patient, fearless eyes were closed forever."

Roosevelt's comparison of Washington and Lincoln will make a fitting close for this chapter. It is this:

"As a people we are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they differed in externals, the Virginia-landed gentleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, they were alike in the great qualities which made each able to render service to his nation, and to all mankind, such as no other man of his generation could or did render. Each had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these lofty ideals was guided by the soundest common sense. Each possessed inflexible courage in adversity, and a soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each possessed all the gentler virtues commonly exhibited by good men who lack rugged strength of character. Each possessed, also, all the strong qualities commonly exhibited by those towering masters of mankind who have, too often, shown themselves devoid of so much as the understanding of the words by which we signify the qualities of duty, of mercy, of devotion to the right, of lofty disinterestedness in battling for the good of others. There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these, no other two good men as great. Widely though the problems of to-day differ from the problems set for solution to Washington when he founded this nation, to Lincoln when he saved it and freed the slave, yet the qualities they showed in meeting these problems are exactly the same as those we should show in doing our work to-day."

This thing he did, exhibited the same qualities that Washington and Lincoln did in the settlement of the problems of his time and with them makes up the trio of immortal American heroes.

Chapter II His Birthplace And Boyhood

AS the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt is only ten minutes' walk from where I am writing, I thought I would go over and see what it looked like and describe it outside and in, as a proper setting for this chapter on his birth and childhood. To my deep regret I found that the old house had been torn down and a little two-story brick business building had been put up in its place. I entered the store and asked the man if that was the site on which Roosevelt was born. He said, "Yes," and that the old house had been taken away about a year before. I asked him if any part of the old building had been left in the new. He said, *'No." I continued, "Is there not, about the place, a window out of which Theodore looked, or a piece of flooring over which he romped, or a banister down which he slid?" He answered, "Not one!" "I am sorry," I said, "for there are thousands of people who would cross a continent or come the length of an ocean to look at the place where Theodore Roosevelt was born, and pay their homage at this shrine."

"Well, just here in this sweatshop district, which sixty years ago was a rich, fashionable, residential neighborhood, here at No. 28 East 20th Street, just off Broadway, New York Citv, Theodore Roosevelt was born October 27, 1858. At his advent no bells were rung, no whistles blown, no newspaper mentioned the fact, no president or king sent congratulations. It is not likely that many persons living on the same block, even, ever heard that such a child had been born, so silent and small are the beginnings of greatness, are the beginnings of life itself. I suspect that if any one had been there, that beautiful October day, with spirit ears keen enough, he would have heard the angels, with their harps, serenading the child that heaven had sent to earth. So on this little piece of ground, a few feet front and a few feet deep, was born the babe that grew to be the giant who set all the bells to ringing, the whistles to blowing, the bands to playing, the children to laughing, the multitude to shouting, the battle-drums to beating, and the millions to practical service for their fellowmen and for the public good. The old birthplace, four stories high, was the foundation and first story of the magnificent structure of the Roosevelt character and life.