Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [390]
4 In a cultural essay TR, “Productive Scholarship,” The Outlook, 13 Jan. 1912, reprinted in TR, Works, 14.340–48. TR was proud of this essay, and sent a copy to Edith Wharton. The novelist had visited Sagamore Hill in the fall of 1911 and been charmed. “The house was like one big library, and the whole tranquil place breathed of the love of books and of the country.… I felt immediately at home there.” TR to Edith Wharton, 5 Jan. 1912, EW; Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (New York, 1933, 1985), 316–17.
5 “We made” White, Autobiography, 458.
6 “Gentlemen, the first” Ibid., 453.
7 Bourne had been “I am keenly aware,” TR wrote Henry L. Stimson on 2 Feb. 1912, “that there are not a few among the men who claim to be leaders in the progressive movement who bear an unpleasant resemblance to the lamented Robespierre and his fellow progressives of 1791 and ‘92.” TR, Letters, 7.494.
8 “I move that” White, Autobiography, 453.
9 “This rebellion” Ibid., 452.
10 “He aims” James H. Morse diary, 29–30 Mar., 27 Apr. 1912 (JHMD); Elihu Root quoted in Adams, Letters, 6.515.
11 “I never thought” Lodge, Selections, 2.423–24; Putnam, TR, chap. 25. As senior senator from the Bay State, Henry Cabot Lodge had been embarrassed by TR’s aggressive defense of judicial recall, in a speech before the Massachusetts legislature on 26 February: “All I ask is that the people themselves … shall be given a chance to declare whether they will stand by the Supreme Court of the nation when it stands for human rights, or by the chief court of their own state when it stands against human rights. If that be revolution, make the most of it.” Boston Globe, 27 Feb. 1912.
12 I am opposed Ibid., 2.423.
13 “My dear fellow” TR, Letters, 7.515.
14 “He will either” Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 846–47.
15 Butt listened Ibid., 844.
16 “If the old” Ibid., 848.
17 By early March, The New York Times, 27 Feb., 2 Mar. 1912.
18 a $50,000 startup budget See Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 399.
19 Roosevelt, in contrast The Washington Post, 1 Mar. 1912. It must be understood that opinion polls, in 1912, were local rather than national. They were conducted mainly by newspapers soliciting readers.
20 “You understand” TR, Letters, 7.506.
21 One day he allowed The following paragraphs derive from the account, dated 2 Mar. 1912, in Baker, notebook N, 16 (RSB).
22 men like Ward and Flinn Flinn, like many of Roosevelt Republican insiders in 1912, was less interested in “social and industrial justice” than in self-advancement.
23 charms of Ormsby McHarg Mowry, TR, 200, 238. TR was not initially aware that McHarg, an energetic turncoat who had worked for and against him in the past, had gone south in his aid. But he heard enough about McHarg’s methods to send him a “posterity letter” on 4 Mar. 1912, stating that he would appreciate “your personal assurance that you never endeavored by promises of patronage or by use of money … to try to influence any man to support me.” (TR, Letters, 7.516.) McHarg was glad to supply the assurance, and glad to continue supplying delegates.
24 seven Harvard men TR, Letters, 7.517.
25 It followed that The New York Times, 21 Mar. 1912; Mowry, TR, 230–32.
26 a progressive enthusiast Mowry, TR, 232.
27 On 19 March, Morris, The Rise of TR, 200; The New York Times, 20 Mar. 1912; TR, Letters, 7.525; Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 402. The truth, as so often in the grassroots squabbles of 1912, was almost comically petty, with overtones of the great battle of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. TR was in fact the preference of conservatives in the North Dakota GOP, if only because their leader, whose name was Hanna, was opposed to a progressive rival, whose name was Gronna. After Hanna and Gronna, egged on by La Follette, had flailed each other to exhaustion, the forces of reform prevailed. See Mowry, TR, 231.
28 “The prairies” Bourne, British Documents, pt. 1, ser. C, 15.81.
29 “I tend