Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [398]
68 He knew what venality See TR’s subsequent essay, “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” in TR, Works, 19.318ff. For an analysis of the rage that gripped TR in Chicago, by a friend who was worried by it, see White, Autobiography, 464. “Ambition, I am satisfied, was not the governing passion.”
69 “I never saw” Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 305. Stoddard was active in the campaign and conferred frequently with TR and the Executive Committee.
70 “Theodore, remember” Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 381.
71 The last of his visitors [Clinton W. Gilbert], The Mirrors of Washington: With Fourteen Cartoons by Cesare (New York, 1922), 250. See also Claudius O. Johnson, Borah of Idaho (New York, 1936), 137–40. Borah at this time was under pressure from William Barnes, Jr., to run for vice president with Charles Evans Hughes, should the latter emerge as a compromise candidate. Ibid., 139.
72 Their cheers and oratory Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 305. Possibly TR heard William Flinn bellowing from a tabletop: “I am going to follow Theodore Roosevelt, the greatest leader of men of this day, and we are going to carry Pennsylvania for him.” The New York Times, 20 June 1912.
73 “My fortune” Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 306. See also Amos Pinchot, History of the Progressive Party, 1912–1916 (New York, 1958), 164–65. Some authorities, notably Gable, “The Bull Moose Years” (diss.), 43–44, believe that this incident took place the following evening, Thursday 20 June. The sequence of events, however, suggests Wednesday evening—or more precisely, the small hours of Thursday morning.
74 “You see” [Gilbert], The Mirrors of Washington, 250. According to another insider account, the final straw that broke TR’s back was the news that the GOP Credentials Committee had voted to severely reduce the time its protesting members needed to present their cases. George Henry Payne, The Birth of the New Party, or, Progressive Democracy (New York, 1912), 25–26.
75 When he arrived The committee bolt, reportedly ordered by TR, occurred at 11:45 p.m. The New York Times, 20 June 1912.
76 “As far as I” Pringle, Taft, 808–9.
77 After he left The New York Times, 20 June 1912; Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 34–35.
78 a period of uneasy calm Bryan, A Tale of Two Conventions, 61.
79 After that he was The New York Times, 21 June 1912; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 200.
80 It is no pleasant Bryan, A Tale of Two Conventions, 64–65.
81 This could not have been achieved The “crisis” moment that Bryan had anticipated occurred when two Californian delegates for Taft were seated in defiance of that state’s primary rules by a vote of 542 to 529. “Had this vote gone the other way, there would unquestionably have been a general break for Roosevelt.” Lewis, TR, 359, 363–64.
82 “If you don’t look out” The New York Times, 22 June 1912.
83 During the umpteenth Ibid., 22 June 1912.
84 The atmosphere on Saturday Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 41–43. Instead of “Amen” at the end of the opening prayer, one delegate called out, “Toot toot.” During the course of the day, as Root tried to move things along, a delegate from Mississippi arose in mock complaint. “Mr. Chairman, I make the point of order that the steam roller is exceeding the speed limit.” Lowell (Mass.) Sun, 22 June 1912.
85 The Roosevelt family Lowell (Mass.) Sun, The New York Times, 22 June 1912; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 202.
86 She joined in Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 42; The New York Times, 22 June 1912. “They are all white hot,” ERD wrote that day to her friend Dorothy Straight. 22 June 1912 (ERDP).
87 racked with tuberculosis White, Autobiography, 470.
88 But the pertinent The full text of TR’s message is in TR, Letters, 7.562–63.
89 Sirs, I have heard Proceedings of the 15th RNC, 378–79.
90 a howl of rage Lewis, TR, 361. It was this act, more than any other by Root, that caused TR to break from him, saying that the Massachusetts delegation had been “publicly raped,” and contemptuously