Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [397]
49 “Mr. Chairman,” he said Proceedings of the 15th RNC, 32. Except where otherwise indicated, all convention quotations are taken from this source.
50 William Barnes, Jr. The New York Times, 20 June 1912; Proceedings of the 15th RNC, 32.
51 Hadley said For the negotiations that permitted Hadley to make his move, see Rosewater, Back Stage in 1912, 153–59.
52 The latest New York Times estimate 16 June 1912.
53 “Elihu Root is the ablest” Proceedings of the 15th RNC, 43. TR’s original tribute, abbreviated by Hedges, was even more fulsome: “He is the greatest man who has appeared in the public life of any country in any position, on either side of the ocean in my time.” Quoted by Walter Wellman in American Review of Reviews, Jan. 1904. For another cadenza of superlatives about Root, written when TR was on the Nile in 1910, see TR, Letters, 7.48.
54 “Cousin Theodore” Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 26.
55 for the first time Gould, Four Hats in the Ring, 72.
56 rows of emptying benches Atlanta Constitution, 19 June 1912.
57 Hadley, elegant in White, Autobiography, 471; Proceedings of the 15th RNC, 108.
58 “Are you going to abide” The New York Times, 20 June 1912.
59 “I will support” Ibid.
60 Instantly every Roosevelt delegate Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 26, 40–41. For a verbal portrait of Root as chairman, see White, Autobiography, 470–71.
61 The demonstration was The New York Times, 20 June 1912. See also Sullivan, Our Times, 4.528–30, and Bryan, A Tale of Two Conventions, 45–47, 55–56.
62 “That question is not” Proceedings of the 15th RNC, 144–46.
63 “No man can be” Ibid., 160. “In other words,” Owen Wister wrote, “the counterfeit Taft coins were allowed to decide that they were genuine, and the genuine Roosevelt coins were counterfeit.” Wister, Roosevelt, 312.
64 That night the woman Lowell (Mass.) Sun, 20 June 1912. Suspicions among Taft leaders that the demonstration was not entirely spontaneous were confirmed when it transpired that Mrs. Davis had tried out her portrait-waving stunt two nights earlier, jumping onto a table in the Congress Hotel and stimulating great enthusiasm among Roosevelt supporters. Later in the week she was seen visiting with Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The New York Times, 22 June 1912.
65 But throughout the day Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 31–33; W. Franklin Knox in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 267–79; Travers Carman in Abbott, Impressions of TR, 84–85; Davis, Released for Publication, 302–10; Gould, Four Hats in the Ring, 72–73; TR, Letters, 7.570. According to Carman, an eyewitness, the representative of 38 Southern delegates offered him all their nominating votes if he would agree to an organization-controlled platform. These votes, added to the most recent assessment of TR’s core strength, would assure him of victory. Two aides urged him to accept. He put his hands on their shoulders and said, “I have grown to regard you both as brothers. Let no act or word of yours make that relationship impossible.” This is, however, but one of many conflicting stories in the above sources as to what transpired between TR and Hadley (who came to see him with a group of supporters seeking permission to make the governor a compromise candidate), and between TR and other negotiants whose names he chose not to reveal. After the convention, Hadley said that TR was promised “Washington and Texas” for cooperating with the Taft forces; Knox said TR wanted “at least four states” as his price; and TR himself stated that he was offered “Washington (not California or Texas),” but insisted on all or nothing. The truth is probably impossible to ascertain. But as Mowry remarks, “The facts clearly indicate that the Colonel would have tolerated no nomination but his own.” (Mowry, TR, 251–52.) See also Rosewater, Back Stage in 1912, 180–81.
66 “receiver of stolen goods” This phrase, commonly attributed to TR, was first hurled at Root by William Flinn, in the aftermath of the chairmanship vote. Proceedings of the 15th RNC, 88.
67 unconvicted felons The