Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [403]
53 They were scrubbed Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 40–41; White, Autobiography, 483–84.
54 White was struck White, Autobiography, 483. A photograph reproduced in The New York Times, 7 Aug. 1912, dramatically shows how many women attended the convention. Woman suffrage was still considered a states’ rights issue in the early months of 1912. Only six states (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, California, and Washington) allowed women to vote. For TR’s belated, but unqualified conversion to the cause, see TR, Letters, 7.595–96.
55 too fond of battleships TR, Letters, 7.594. TR, in turn, regretfully wrote of Miss Addams, “She is a disciple of Tolstoy.” Ibid., 7.833.
56 She had agreed The Washington Post, 6 Aug. 1912; Chicago Tribune, 6 Aug. 1912. Jane Addams (1860–1935) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She first became famous in the 1890s as the founder of Hull House, a pioneer social settlement in Chicago, and later as a writer and lecturer on social problems. For TR’s courtship of Miss Addams, and her subsequent role in the formation of the Progressive Party, see Katherine Joslin, Jane Addams (Urbana, Ill., 2004), 133ff.
57 an opening prayer The devout quality of the convention was established by this prayer, which occupies seven full pages of the typed “Proceedings.”
58 The former senator Atlanta Constitution and Boston Globe, 6 Aug. 1912; Stoddard, As I Knew Them, 408–9. O. K. Davis amusingly reports that TR had to be dissuaded from delivering his acceptance speech from the balcony of the Congress Hotel. Davis, Released for Publication, 320–26.
59 in the days of McKinley This phrase forms the title of one of the great presidential biographies, by Margaret Leech (New York, 1959).
60 His ego In his unpublished “Autobiography of an American Boy,” Beveridge wrote, “This miracle of the invisible powers in my behalf has strengthened the sureness of achievement which is so vital a part of me” (BEV). For a contemporary sketch (1910), see Dreier, Heroes of Insurgency, 103–22.
61 “We stand for” “Pass Prosperity Around”: Speech of Albert J. Beveridge (Progressive Party pamphlet [AC]). Nervous at first, Beveridge seemed to be in competition with Warren Harding for alliterative mastery: “Parties exist for the people, not the people for the parties. Yet for years the politicians have made the people do the work of the parties instead of the parties doing the work for the people.” Speech scholars contemplating a monograph on the extraordinary fondness of politicians for the letter p should note TR’s own attraction to it. See Morris, The Rise of TR, 224–25.
62 “It was not a convention” The New York Times, 6 Aug. 1912.
63 Enthusiasm became ecstasy Except where otherwise indicated, this account of the second day of the Progressive convention is based on The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Atlanta Constitution, 7 Aug., and The Washington Post, 8 Aug. 1912. The survey of attendees derives mainly from Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 34–59. Black delegates attended on the second day of the convention not only from the Northern states TR had mentioned in his letter to Joel Harris, but also from Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. By the peculiar political standards of the time, these Southern states were considered to be “border” territory, with their electoral votes not yet wholly lost either to the Republican or Progressive parties. Lewis L. Gould to author, 2 Dec. 2008, AC.
64 Two black Northern These same delegates had conspicuously boycotted the previous day’s proceedings, in a show of sympathy for their excluded Southern brothers. Atlanta Constitution, 6 Aug. 1912.
65 Roosevelt led the singing Atlanta Constitution, 7 Aug. 1912.
66 “I have been” The New York Times, 7 Aug. 1912.
67 Senator Root’s mocking prophecy Quoted in Adams, Letters, 6.515.
68 His smile betrayed A reporter sitting just below TR in the press box noted, “It was evident that the fanaticism had got past him, and that he himself had no realization