Theodore Roosevelt and his time shown in his own letters

Front matter

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIME. 2 Vols.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. An Autobiography

Introduction

Five years or more before his death Theodore Eoosevelt said he wished me to write the history of the period which covered his public career. His reason was that I had been in his close confidence during the greater part of that period and knew the inside of every movement nearly as well as he knew it himself. We talked often on the subject and in the early spring of 1918 the project took definite form. He turned over to me for exclusive use all his personal and official correspondence together with other material relating to his public career from the time he was elected to the New York Legislature in November, 1881, till his life ended.

I began w^ork at once, and at the time of his death I had completed the first draft of the story of his public life down to the year 1905, and had received his approval of it. At different stages of the work I went over with him what I had written and had the inestimable advantage of his suggestions, obtaining from him incidents and anecdotes which added immeasurably to the interest and historical value of the narrative, making it virtually his own. Between us we evolved a general plan for the history, which was to let the story of his career be told, as far as possible, in his own letters, utterances and acts.

This was an arduous but not a difficult task to perform. It was arduous because the material was virtually inexhaustible, but it was not difficult because of the quality of Roosevelt's letters. One of his private secretaries has estimated that during his public career he wrote 150,000 letters. Copies of these have been preserved. With them viii INTRODUCTION

are the original letters of the many correspondents that he had in all parts of the world — authors, poets, historians, artists, explorers, naturalists, statesmen, prime ministers, kings, emperors. He not only touched life at all points, but on its intellectual side touched the highest points in every land. Not only is the correspondence limitless in its range, but from beginning to end it is Roosevelt himself and hence unlike the correspondence of any other person. Emerson, in his observations upon great men, says that *'He is great who never reminds us of others." No man ever met this test more fully than Theodore Roosevelt. Nature has made many millions of men but she has made only one Theodore Roosevelt. From the beginning to the end of his life he was himself and was unlike any one else. It was this clearly defined personality, at once unique and commanding, w^hich concentrated upon him the attention of the world and made his name familiar in all civilized lands. Fame of this phenomenal sort is given only to a dominating personality. Its bestowal is to be explained only by an examination of the man as revealed in his words and acts. Roosevelt's letters not merely reflect his personality, they reveal it with all the fulness of a frank and truthful man talking to tried and trusted friends. His letters are not merely like his talk, they are his talk — frank and free, with rays of irrepressible and always joyous humor playing about it, and with deft and sure thrusts at the foibles, vanities, perv^ersities, and weaknesses of mankind. Few men have had a keener insight into human motives or could detect more quickly the real nature of them. When he sat down to write or to dictate a letter to a congenial friend, he did not compose, he talked. Whatever was uppermost in his mind at the time came out without restraint or reservation. As he wrote most freely in moments of greatest stress, at the height of crises created by himself in his struggle for the triumph of causes dear to his heart, his letters give us a veritable ''inside history" of his time. They push aside the screen that hides the

INTRODUCTION

IX wires which control great events and we see them operating before our eyes. We see, in very tinith, history in the making, shown and explained to us by the man who himself is making it.

We get also a complete self -revelation of the man, of the motives, desires, and principles which guided his life. It is this quality of self-revelation, more than any other perhaps, which makes his letters so admirable a vehicle for telling the story of his career. Many writers have sought to depict the man Roosevelt, and many others will repeat the effort, but none has, and none can, depict him as he really was with that vivid clearness in which he stands selfrevealed in his letters. All sides of this many-sided man are disclosed there— the intellectual, which covered all fields of human knowledge, ancient and modern; the political, which shows him to have been a sagacious statesman of the first rank rather than a politician, for as a politician he repeatedly broke the fundamental rules of the game ; the executive and administrator first of a great State and then of a great nation, whose motto was action, action and still more action, and who accomplished great and supposedly impossible tasks by the driving force of his character ; the diplomatist and peacemaker, a role which he played with greater success than any other man of his time ; and finally, the inspiring and uplifting leader of his countrymen, the intense, vigilant, militant, uncompromising patriot, eager to serve the nation in peace or in war, who throughout his life was first and always an American.

It is the purpose of the present study of the man and his time to let his words and acts tell the story of his career and also of the epoch which it constitutes in American history, an epoch in which he was the leading and molding fig-ure. As the narrative concerns itself chiefly with his public career, it passes briefly over his ancestry, childhood and youth, a full account of which he has given in his 'Autobiography,' and begins in detail with his entry into political life.

X INTRODUCTION

While in a few instances, in order to maintain the continuity of the narrative, the present record overlaps the 'Autobiography,' it really supplements and completes it, and the two works together constitute authentically the Life and Letters of Theodore Roosevelt as designed by himself.

J. B. B.

September, 1920.

CONTENTS VOL. I.

PAGE

[ntroduction

CHAPTER

I. Ancestry, Childhood and Youth .... 1

II. Legislature — First Term 6

III. Legislature — Second Term 17

IV. Legislature — Third Term 24

V. First Appearance in National Politics. Mr.

Blaine's Candidacy 33

VI. Literary Labors — Tilt with Jefferson Davis

— Candidate for Mayor 39

VII. Civil Service Commissioner 43

VIII. Police Commissioner 58

IX. Assistant Secretary of the Navy .... 70^

X. The War with Spain .92

XI. Governor of New York — First Year . . . 109

XII. Governor of New York — Second Year . . 128

XIII. Nominated and Elected Vice President . . 134

XIV. President — Early Declarations of Policy . 148 XV. The Booker Washington Incident . . . 165

XVI. Controversies with General Miles . . . 171

XVII. The Northern Securities Suit 182

XVIII. Incidents of a Busy Year 188

XIX. Coal Strike Settlement 198

_^ XX. The Kaiser and Venezuela 221

XXI. Popular Approval — Views on Various Subjects 230 XXII. For President in 1904 — Futile Opposition —

His Own Attitude 243

XXIII. Notable Sentiments in Speeches and Letters —

Alaska Boundary — Wide Range of Reading 256 xi

CHAPTER

V XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX. ^ "^ XXXI.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

Contents

PAr;B

Securing the Panama Canal— Concluded . 291

National Convention and Campaign of 1904 312 Attitude toward Campaign Contributions —

Chapter I Ancestry, Childhood And Youth

Theodoee Roosevelt, the second of that name, was born in New York City on October 27, 1858. His ancestors on the paternal side were of Holland stock, and on the maternal side were Scotch, Irish, Huguenot and English descent. The first Roosevelt to come to America was Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt, who reached New Amsterdam about 1644, and from that time for seven generations, from father to son, every one of his descendants was born in New York City. They were mainly merchants who held prominent positions in the affairs of the city and in its commercial and social life, before, during and after the Revolutionary War.

The ancestors of the grandmother of the second Theodore came to Pennsylvania with William Penn, those of his mother came to Georgia from Scotland, her grandfather being the first Revolutionary President of Georgia. Some of the Roosevelt ancestors on both sides served respectably, but without distinction, in the army during the Revolution, and others rendered similar service in the Continental Congress and in local legislatures. Those in the South were for the most part planters. Two brothers of Roosevelt's mother served in the. Confederate navy during the Civil War, one as admiral, who was the builder of the famous Confederate war sloop Alabama, and the other as midshipman on the same vessel.

These facts about Roosevelt's ancestry are taken from his < Autobiography' (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920) which contains much interesting information about his forbears, with affectionate tributes to those immediately preceding him, and charming reminiscences of his childhood. His letters supply some additional material which is well worth quoting. He invariably discouraged efforts to make him appear as an ''infant prodigy" who had given early signs of future greatness. During his first term as President, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, then editor of the Century magazine, expressed a desire to publish a sketch of his childhood days with photographs of him at various stages of growth. In avowing his objection to the project, Roosevelt wrote to Mr. Gilder, on August 20, 1903 :

*'For reasons which I am wholly unable to explain even to myself I somehow rather shrink from having a sketch of my younger days prepared. Perhaps my reason for caring little for the sketch of my younger days is that as far as I can remember they were absolutely commonplace. I was a rather sickly, rather timid little boy, very fond of desultory reading and of natural history, and not excelling in any form of sport. Owing to my asthma I was not able to go to school, and I was nervous and self-conscious, so that as far as I can remember my belief is that I was rather below than above my average playmate in point of leadership; though as I had an imaginative temperament this sometimes made up for my other short-comings. Altogether, while, thanks to my father and mother, I had a very happy childhood I am inclined to look back at it with some wonder that I should have come out of it as well as I have ! It was not until after I was sixteen that I began to show any prowess, or even ordinary capacity; up to that time, except making collections of natural history, reading a good deal in certain narrowly Umited fields and indulging in the usual scribbling of the small boy who does not excel in sport, I cannot remember that I did anything that even lifted me up to the average."

His love for his father, whom he spoke of always as the best man he had ever known, amounted to adoration. Writ-

ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 3

ing to Edward S. Martin, on November 26, 1900, he said: * ' I was fortunate enough in having a father whom I have always been able to regard as an ideal man. It sounds^ little like cant to say what I am going to say, but he really ' did combine the strength and courage and will and energy i of the strongest man with the tenderness, cleanness and^ purity of a woman. I was a sickly and timid boy. He not only took great and untiring care of me — some of my earliest remembrances are of nights when he would walk up and down mth me for an hour at a time in his arms when I was a wretched mite suffering acutely with asthma — but he also most wisely refused to coddle me, and made me feel that I must force myself to hold my own with other boys and prepare to do the rough work of the world. I cannot say that he ever put it into words, but he certainly gave me the feeling that I was always to Jie^both^ decent and ..maiily, and that if I were manly nobodjLwpuld laugh at my^ beiijg_decfint. In all my childhood he never laid hand on me but once, but I always knew perfectly well that in case it became necessary he would not have the slightest hesitancy in doing so again, and alike from my love and respect, and in a certain sense, my fear of him, I would have hated and dreaded beyond measure to have him know that I had been guilty of a lie, or of cruelty, or of bullying, or of uncleanness or of cowardice. Gradually I grew to have the feeling on my own account, and not merely on his.

''There were many things I tried to do because he did them, which I found afterwards were not in my line. For instance, I taught Sunday school all through college, but afterwards gave it up, just as on experiment I could not do the charitable work which he had done. In doing my Sunday school work I was very much struck by the fact that the other men who did it only possessed one side of his character. My ordinary companions in college would, I think, have had a tendency to look down upon me for doing Sunday school work if I had not also been a corking boxer, a good runner, and a genial member of the Porcellian Club. I went in for boxing and wrestling a good deal, and I really think that while this was partly because I liked them as sports, it was even more because I intended to be a middling decent fellow, and I did not intend that any one should laugh at me with impunity because I was decent. It is exactly the same thing with history. In most countries the Bourgeoisie — the moral, respectable, commercial, middle class — are looked upon with a certain contempt which is justified by their timidity and; unwarlikeness. But the minute a middle class produces men like Hawkins and Frobisher on the seas, or men such as the average Union soldier in the Civil War, it acquires the hearty respect of others which it merits."

It is easy to trace in this tribute of supreme filial devotion the influences which molded the son's character and laid firm and sure the strong foundations upon which he built his subsequent career, winning world-wide fame and honor and the enduring faith and aifectiou of his countrymen.

He was, as he said in his letter, a sickly and timid boy. Cordially supported and encouraged by his father, he began quite early to improve his physical condition through regular gymnastic exercises, including boxing lessons. When he was ten years old he was taken on a trip to Europe which he ''thoroughly hated" and from which he gained nothing, and a second one four years later which he "enjoyed thoroughly" and profited by. On his return from this second trip he began serious study under a private tutor (Arthur Cutler, later founder of the Cutler School in Xew York) in preparation for college, and in the fall of 1876, having by his systematic exercise brought himself into excellent physical condition, he entered Harvard University.

"I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard," he says in his 'Autobiography, ' ' ' and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me in after life." Before he left Harvard in 1880 he had begun the writing of his "History of the Naval War of 1812," which he completed in the follomng year and published in 1882. Although he said later of the opening

ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 5

chapters that they ''were so dry that they would have made a dictionary seem light reading by comparison," the book had such genuine historical merit that it has remained till this day as the standard work on the subject.

On October 27, 1880, he married Alice Hathaway Lee, daughter of George Cabot Lee. She died on February 14, 1884, leaving one child, Alice, who became the wife of Nicholas Longworth on Februar^^ 17, 1906. On December 2, 1886, he married in London Edith Kermit Carow, daughter of Charles Carow of New York. By this marriage there were five children, Theodore, Kermit, Archibald, Quentin and Ethel.

Chapter II

Theodore Roosevelt's public career began in January, 1882, when at the age of 23 he entered the New York Legislature as a member of its lower house. He had been graduated from Harvard in 1880 and had spent the following year in the study of law. His inclination toward the legal profession was not strengthened by his studies for it seemed to him that some of the teachings of the law books and of the class-room were against rather than in favor of the attainment of justice. Then, too, the standards set by many successful lawyers who were in the service of great corporations, were incompatible with the idealism which he, in common with other high-minded men, entertained. It was a period, not yet closed, in which many of the ablest and most eminent members of the bar devoted their talents, not so much to the strict observance of the law, as to finding ways by which their clients could \'iolate the spirit if not the letter of the law and escape its penalties. The effect of studies under these conditions made an impression upon young Roosevelt's mind which was never wholly effaced, but which deepened and strengthened as time went on and found expression later in his action as President in the direction of regulating and controlling the conduct of great corporations.

While studying law he began to take an active interest in politics and his comfortable financial condition enabled him to give time and attention to political matters which he would otherwise have been obliged to concentrate upon earning a livelihood. He had been left by his father sufficient means to permit him to make the earning of additional money a secondary matter. He said in after life that it was the possession of this inheritance which enabled him to accept offices at a salary inadequate for the support of himself and his family and through which he secured advancement in public life. Instead of making his inheritance the excuse for an idle and purposeless life, as many another man in like situation has done, he used it as an aid to a life of action and public usefulness.

In 1880, the machinery of party organization in New York City was entirely in the hands of men who made politics a profession by means of which they earned a livelihood. As the Republican party was in a hopeless minority in the city, the men in control of its organization used it mainly as a basis for combinations or ''deals" with Tammany Hall, receiving in return minor offices from the Tammany authorities and various other favors. The Republican district organizations formed social and political clubs and these selected all the candidates for office, who were usually men who could be depended upon to ''obey orders," that is, to act as the party bosses commanded. It was somewhat difficult for a man of young Roosevelt's type to become a member of a district club, as candidates had to be regularly proposed and elected, as in any other club.

When Roosevelt declared his intention of becoming a member of the club in his district, which was known as the "silk-stocking" district of the city because of the wealth and social eminence of a large proportion of its voting population, his friends ridiculed him, saying that the men in control of city politics were not gentlemen, but saloonkeepers, street-car conductors and the like, and that he would not only be unable to exert any influence but would be subjected to unpleasantness and even brutality. His reply was characteristic of the man. ' ' I answered, ' ' he says in his 'Autobiography,' "that if. this were so it merely meant that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that the other people did — and that I intended to be one of the governing class; that if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have to quit, but I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold

my own in the rough and tumble."

He was admitted to membership and after a year's association had so held his own as to become on good terms with enough of his fellow members to win their nomination for member of the Assembly, or lower branch of the Legislature, in spite of the fact that he had been an open opponent of their machine methods and had fought a losing fight with them on more than one occasion. There was no doubt in their minds about his anti-machine sentiments or about his inflexible determination to uphold them at any and all times. In fact, they obtained fresh light on the subject as soon as he was nominated. The Assembly district included sections of Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and the party leaders thought at first they would take him on a personal canvass through the liquor saloons along Sixth Avenue. The canvass ended with the first saloon. The candidate was introduced with proper solemnity to the proprietor, who was an important political personage, and who began to catechize him as a suppliant for favor. When he said that he expected Roosevelt as member to treat the liquor interests fairly, he got a rather sharp reply that all interests would be treated fairly, and when he added that he regarded existing licenses as too high he got in response an assurance that the candidate did not consider them high enough and would endeavor to have them made higher. The interview at this point assumed so stormy an aspect that the candidate was withdrawn by his backers on a plea of pressing engagements elsewhere, and no other saloons were visited, it being explained to him that he would better confine his energies to his friends in Fifth Avenue and leave to others the burdens of the canvass in Sixth Avenue.

These details of the first steps of Roosevelt in political life are given as throwing important light upon his subsequent career, for they disclose the same characteristics that he displayed in all its later stages.

He was successful in the election, and in January, 1882, took his seat in the Legislature a new man in politics, totally unknown outside the limits of the district that he represented. He had at the time no intention or expectation of abandoning the profession of law for a political career. He wrote immediately after his election, to a classmate, Charles Gr. Washburn of Worcester, Mass., that finding it would not interfere with his law studies he had accepted the nomination, ''but don't," he added, "think I am going to go into politics after this year, for I am not. ' ' Almost from the moment of his entrance he took a commanding position among his associates. The Assembly was nearly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, the latter having a bare majority of one vote. The Democrats themselves were divided between Tammany and anti-Tammany members. The half dozen Tammany members sought to dictate the nomination for Speaker by putting up a candidate of their own, thus depriving the regularly nominated Democratic candidate of a majority. There was thus provided an ideal situation for a "deal" between the machine Republican members and the handful of Tammany members in favor of the nomination of a Speaker who would divide the patronage of the Assembly between his supporters. "Deals" of this character had been a well- ' established custom for many years, whenever the opportunity arose, and one was confidently anticipated at this time. In fact, the first steps of it had been taken, when the new and unknown member from New York arose to explain his vote while the deadlock was in progress. He said that the Democrats were in the majority and should be permitted to organize the Assembly. No harm was being done by the delay, and he was convinced after talking with gentlemen among his constituents who had large commercial interests that they would be relieved rather than annoyed by the absence of legislation. The Democrats were responsible for the delay and they would receive whatever blame the people might administer for it. As for the Republicans, they were opposed to any combination with the Democrats. The effect of this unexpected speech was instantaneous and, so far as the proposed "deal" was concerned, deadly.

As it was the first utterance of Roosevelt as a holder of public office it is interesting to record the comments that were made on it by the newspapers at the time. One said : '* Assemblyman Roosevelt made a very favorable impres- *sion by his first speech." Another: "His sensible and well-delivered remarks brought him many hearty congratulations from the older members. ' ' An Albany correspondent of another: *'The next orator was Mr. Theodore Roosevelt of the twenty-first, a Republican. This young gentleman has been dubbed 'Oscar Wilde' by his admiring colleagues, who were much amused by his elastic movements, voluminous laughter and wealth of mouth. But his speech to-day was well-considered and put." Another correspondent, like the one just quoted, writing for a Democratic journal, felt moved to ridicule while bestowing praise: ''Young Mr. Roosevelt of New York, a blond young man with eyeglasses, English side whiskers, and Dundreaiy drawl in his speech, made his maiden effort as an orator. He objected to talk of Republican aid to the Democrats. . . . The older Republican members who have been trying to make party capital by representing the State as going to ruin because the Democrats did not organize the Legislature, wriggled uneasily in their seats when young Mr. Roosevelt pictured the complacency of the people over the deadlock. There was no way to stop him, however, and he got through without interruption. An effort to undo what he said to-day will probably be made to-morrow. ' '

It was impossible to undo it for the simple reason that daylight had been let into the scheme by ''Young Mr. Roosevelt" — he was to be accused of the "atrocious crime of being a young man" for many years afterwards — and the "deal" was abandoned, for political trickery of that sort must be carried on in secret or it cannot succeed. The anti-Tammany candidate for Speaker was elected by aid of the Tammany votes and Roosevelt had scored his first victory over the united powers of evil in politics.

The second victory followed quickly on the steps of the

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, NEW YORK LEGISLATURE, 1881

' first. An effort was made to regain what had been lost in the Speakership contest by a scheme to deprive the Speaker of the power to appoint subordinate oflScers in the Assem-

< bly, lodging it in the hands of the clerk, who was a Repub-

^ lican. The defeated Tammany members had united with the Republican "dealers" in this project. A Republican caucus was held and a resolution was introduced by an

, expert Republican ''dealer" to approve the plan. Mr. Roosevelt, who had been joined by a half-dozen other young members who shared his independent views, denounced the plan so vigorously that it was defeated by a nearly unanimous vote. The press of the State had been fully aroused by the action which Roosevelt had taken in the Speakership contest and its hearty approval of his course had made Republican members very timid about opposing him.

He had been made a member of the Committee on Cities, and as soon as the Speakership controversy was settled he turned his attention to needed legislation for the city oi. New York, bringing in a bill which pro^dded for the election of Aldermen by Assembly Districts and the election of the President of the Board by the city at large. This abolished the existing method which included a system of minority representation that had worked chiefly in the interest of ' ' deals ' ' and the consequent success of the most undesirable candidates, and assured the choice of a President of the Board who, because of the method of his election, would be a less objectionable person than was possible under the old system. The measure was fought viciously by the politicians of both parties but was supported warmly by the reputable press of the city and was enacted. It was the first step toward an improvement in the quality of the membership of the Board of Aldermen, and was the basis of further steps in the same direction in subsequent years.

The action of his first legislative session which attracted most widespread attention and subjected Roosevelt to abuse and ridicule was his effort to secure the impeachment of a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State. The Justice had been charged in the press with allowing himself to be used as an instrument in their business by men connected with railway interests in New York City. Roosevelt introduced a resolution calling for an investigation by the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly. In support of it he made a carefully prepared speech, setting forth in detail the charges in the case. Strong opposition was at once made to the resolution, led by one of the oldest Eepublican leaders in the Assembly and warmly espoused by the leader or boss of Tammany Hall. It was the old combination that Roosevelt had fought and overcome in the Speakership contest.