Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [388]
37 La Follette, in contrast La Follette, Autobiography, 605–7, 609; Wister, Roosevelt, 299–301; William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White (New York, 1946), 449. All three authors were eyewitnesses. See also La Follette, Robert M. La Follette, 1.399–403, and Margulies, “La Follette.” The various accounts differ only slightly in details.
38 “That was” TR, Letters, 7.499; The New York Times, 4 Feb. 1912; La Follette, Robert M. La Follette, 1.399; White, Autobiography, 448; Benjamin P. De Witt, The Progressive Movement (New York, 1915), 39–40. “In my judgment,” Gifford Pinchot wired the Minnesota Progressive Republican League, “La Follette’s condition is so serious that further candidacy is impossible.” The New York Times, 12 Feb. 1912.
39 “Politics are hateful” Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 376.
40 He brushed aside Margulies, “La Follette.”
41 Roosevelt supporters bolted The New York Times, 7 Feb. 1912. There was a similar bolt by progressives in Nebraska on 14 Feb. Ibid., 15 Feb. 1912.
42 On the ninth For the text of the governors’ petition, see TR, Letters, 7.511.
43 A principle is The New York Times, 11 Feb. 1912. With the implicit endorsement of Hiram Johnson of California, the total of governors appealing to TR was actually nine.
44 Taft, seriously disturbed The New York Times, 13 Feb. 1912.
45 Actually, he meant This was revealed by Mark Sullivan, writing with some discretion when Taft was still alive. Sullivan, Our Times, 4.480.
46 “If I were any” TR, Letters, 7.503.
47 He admitted Ibid., 7.498; Mowry, TR, 226.
48 “It seems to me” Root to TR, 12 Feb. 1912 (TRP).
49 “The time has come” TR, Letters, 7.504.
50 Little more than two Ibid., 7.495; TR, “Judges and Progress,” The Outlook, 6 Jan. 1912. In his letter of reply to Stimson, TR’s professed scruples about the recall of the judiciary, extending all the way up from the state to Supreme Court level, were so hedged with conditionals and veiled threats as to leave little doubt that he would move to implement it if reelected President. (TR, Letters, 7.494–95.) Eleven years later, Stimson was still puzzled as to what made TR change his mind about running for the nomination after his disclaimer of 7 Jan. 1912. Hermann Hagedorn, “Some Notes on Colonel Roosevelt from Henry L. Stimson,” 12 Dec. 1923 (TRB).
51 Roosevelt set The following quotations from TR’s speech, entitled “A Charter of Democracy,” are taken from The New York Times, 22 Feb. 1912. The version printed in TR, Works, 19.163–97 is almost identical with the newspaper transcript, except that “I” is usually rendered as “we” (i.e., the Progressive Party), and a few extra passages, apparently written much later, have been interpolated.
Historical Note: TR has been much criticized by biographers for the alleged impulsiveness and political indiscretion of his Ohio address. But it was one of his most deliberate and long-prepared orations. A sequential line of judicial criticism can be traced back to his article, “Judges and Progress” in The Outlook, 6 Jan. 1912, itself essentially a repetition of complaints he had made about the social insensitivity of the New York Court of Appeals at Carnegie Hall on 20 Oct. 1911. That speech in turn harked back through his attacks on Judge Baldwin to his address to the Colorado state legislature on 29 Aug. 1910—inspired, as he admitted, by his conversation with former justice William H. Moody the preceding spring. Whether or not George Mowry and John Allen Gable are correct in calling TR’s Ohio address an “egregious mistake” and “serious blunder,” it was hardly impulsive. He extensively discussed its draft contents with Herbert Croly, James Garfield, Frank Munsey, William L. Ward, Oscar Straus, and other advisers, including a disapproving Gifford Pinchot. Straus was surprised at his inflexible determination to include the recall proposal. (See above, 614; Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 395–96; Straus, Under Four Administrations, 310–11;