Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [242]
Before doing so, however, Ivins wanted jurors to hear the Colonel’s exact words of July 1914—words addressed to more than two and a half million newspaper readers, and written “with the same care and the same skill that he had shown in preparing The Winning of the West and African Game Trails.”
It was evident that Ivins’s strategy was to appeal to the anti-intellectualism ingrained in the average American juror. He was subtly portraying Roosevelt as a littérateur, an elitist, a poison-pen scribe who visited his political prejudices upon those less “privileged” than himself. Reading with dramatic incisiveness, Ivins gave life to the words complained of by Barnes:
In New York State we see at its worst the development of the system of bipartisan boss rule.
In New York State the two political machines are completely dominated, the one by Mr. Barnes, the other by Mr. Murphy.
The state government is rotten throughout in almost all its departments, and this is directly due to the dominance in politics of Mr. Murphy and his sub-bosses … aided and abetted where necessary by Mr. Barnes and the sub-bosses of Mr. Barnes.
Mr. Murphy and Mr. Barnes are of exactly the same political type.
Roosevelt sat mutely listening, his elbow on the defense table, his head wedged against one fist. He seemed unaware of the stares of fifty reporters ranged near him. Each had a small silk American flag to raise whenever a dispatch was ready to be picked up by court attendants.
It occurred to Louis Siebold, Washington correspondent of the New York World, that the Colonel was more than just tired, or worried about his ill wife. He was depressed.
After lunch, Ivins called Roosevelt as his first witness.
IVINS Have you read the statement complained of in the complaint?
TR I wrote it.…(laughter)
IVINS Did you write it of and concerning the plaintiff William Barnes, Jr.?
TR I did.
“That is all,” Ivins said, returning to his table. Roosevelt sat dumbfounded while the silk flags fluttered, releasing the news that the plaintiff had already rested its case.
Bowers, courtly and trim-bearded, came to the Colonel’s rescue with some questions about the highlights of his career. Inevitably these led to the Battle of San Juan. Had Bowers consulted Elihu Root beforehand, as Ivins had, he might have learned that the quickest way to get his client to make a fool of himself was to mention Cuba.
TR My regiment was in the Santiago fight and lost in killed and wounded, over a third—
IVINS I object to the number lost in killed and wounded as immaterial in this case.
COURT We all know what the result of that battle was.
Roosevelt recited his later résumé. Since coming back from Brazil, he said, he had worked as a writer, with some side activity in politics.
Bowers asked him to describe his early relations with Senator Thomas Platt, the “Easy Boss” of New York State and Barnes’s political mentor. It was an adroit defense move, because it forestalled what was sure to be the prosecution’s main line of questioning. Ivins jumped up. “Why all this 1899? Case is in praesenti, if your Honor please.” Andrews overruled him.
Roosevelt said that he had worked with Platt throughout his two years as governor, and thus gotten to know Barnes as their mutual go-between. Bowers asked if he remembered any meetings in which Platt or Barnes had tried to stop him calling for a franchise tax on big businesses. Roosevelt said he did, but to the attorney’s frustration, he could not recall how many, or what either man had