Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [109]
EPILOGUE:
HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN
There’ll be girls for ev’ry body in that good, good old town,
For dere’s Miss Consola Davis an dere’s Miss Gondolia Brown;
And dere’s Miss Johanna Beasly she am dressed all in red,
I just hugged her and I kissed her and to me then she said
Please oh, please, Oh, do not let me fall,
You’re all mine and I love you best of all,
And you must be my man, or I’ll have no man at all,
There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight, my baby.
ROOSEVELT REMAINED IN North Dakota for the remainder of August and early September. Even while hunting and camping, the police commissioner continued to do good work for the party. While he was away, Roosevelt’s article on the American vice presidency appeared in the journal Review of Reviews. While giving an overview of the history of the office, and pointing out the absurdity of Bryan running with two vice presidential nominees, one a Democrat and one a Populist, Roosevelt used the article to excoriate Bryan and Tom Watson. Roosevelt called Bryan a “sham and a compromise,” as he represented a middle ground in the “Popocrat” coalition. Watson, however, Roosevelt viewed as truly destructive. “Mr. Watson would be a more startling, more attractive, and more dangerous figure,” Roosevelt wrote, “for if he got the chance he would lash the nation with a whip of scorpions, while Mr. Bryan would be content with the torture of ordinary thongs.” The article prompted Watson to write to Roosevelt directly, objecting to its “trenchant” tone. Roosevelt apparently did not reply, although he showed the “really very interesting letter” to his friend Lodge.
In North Dakota, as always, politics was never far from Roosevelt’s mind. He talked politics with his cowboy friends, and during his return trip he stopped at the Republican headquarters in Chicago. On September 11, only one day after returning, Roosevelt gave a speech in New York attacking free silver and accusing the Democrats of menacing the Supreme Court and the Constitution. Within a week he and Lodge were campaigning throughout upstate New York, seeking to counter the influence of Bryan, who had just swung through the area on his way back to Lincoln. Roosevelt called the trip “very successful and pleasant.” Mark Hanna apparently agreed, as he subsequently sent Roosevelt on a trip west through Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota, which also copied Bryan’s path through those states. Hanna saw Roosevelt, an easterner familiar to those in the West, as a perfect foil to Bryan’s influence, foreshadowing Roosevelt’s role as vice presidential candidate during the 1900 election.
After their campaign trip through New York state, Lodge and Roosevelt took a rather large detour to “drop in” on William McKinley in Canton. For Lodge, safe in his Senate seat for the next thirty years, this was perhaps little more than a courtesy call on the Republican Party leader and next president of the United States. It also served to soothe some bruised feelings, as both Lodge and Roosevelt had supported another candidate over McKinley’s ascension to Speaker of the House in 1890 and had opposed McKinley’s nomination in June. For Roosevelt, the visit, like his many visits to Hanna in New York and his speaking tours for the party, served a more important purpose: to permit him to leave his position as police commissioner and take up a new post in a McKinley administration.
Even with his service to the party that fall, securing Roosevelt a Washington post took some cajoling by his friends. The main obstacle appeared to be McKinley himself. He feared that Roosevelt was something of a hothead with an independent streak who might possess, in Lodge’s own summary of McKinley’s feelings, “preconceived plans which he would wish to drive through the moment he got in.” Roosevelt had