The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [131]
At six o’clock the negotiants emerged for dinner, greeted one another politely, and arranged themselves in enigmatic groups of tables. Newspapermen tried to guess, from the movement of complimentary bottles of champagne, which way the political currents were flowing; but the bottles circulated in all directions. A Sun reporter captured something of the tension in the atmosphere. “Bagg’s Hotel is filled to suffocation tonight,” he cabled. “There are no Blaine hurrahs, or Arthur enthusiasm, or Edmunds sentiment here. The old party managers are simply … groping in the dark for the coming man. There is harmony everywhere; but it is the harmony of men who are afraid of each other.”23
To Boss Miller’s bewilderment, Roosevelt proved no more tractable after dinner than he had been before. He not only rejected an offer to send one Independent delegate-at-large, i.e., himself, to Chicago, along with three Blaine men, but also refused to make the ratio two and two. News of the second rejection, which leaked out about midnight, greatly excited Chairman Warren, who offered the Independents three places on the ticket, in exchange for just one Arthur supporter; but Roosevelt also rejected that. At 2:30 A.M., the President’s men made their final, humiliating offer, an offer so weak it amounted to capitulation. All four delegates-at-large could be Independents for Edmunds, as long as there was no danger of them ultimately switching to Blaine. Roosevelt graciously accepted, knowing very well who the leader of those delegates would be.24
THERE WAS SOMETHING faintly comic, to newspaper reporters, about the sight of machine Republicans filing through the streets next morning in somber black, their tall silk hats shining in the sun. They looked for all the world like mourners at a funeral. Boss Miller walked alone, a large, portly, graying man with troubled eyes.25 Roosevelt’s rejection of his advances last night had stunned and shamed him; his mood today was not improved by an editorial in the World calling him “a pigmy” in comparision with his “giant” predecessor, Roscoe Conkling.
Arthur’s men were equally sullen and silent as they trooped into the Opera House.26 There was a round of polite applause for Chairman Warren when he mounted the stage. More applause, rather less polite, greeted Warner Miller. He took an aisle seat next to Titus Sheard on “Wood Pulp Row,” the section allotted to Herkimer County. Roosevelt, with his usual unerring sense of timing, waited until all three dignitaries were settled before making his own entrance. Then he stomped briskly down the hall, to the sound of mounting applause “that was taken up by the gallery and prolonged for some moments” after he sat down—a mere yard away from Miller, on the opposite side of the aisle. Casually draping a leg over the chair in front, he allowed his personality to penetrate every corner of the auditorium. From that moment on, there was no doubt as to who was controlling the convention. When Chairman Warren had finished calling the roll, “he simply cast his eye” over toward Roosevelt, who leaped up and proposed that an Edmunds man be nominated temporary chairman of the meeting. The motion was approved.27
BY LATE AFTERNOON, when the votes for delegates-at-large were counted, it was plain that Warner Miller had, as the Sun correspondent put it, “been pulverized finer than his own pulp.” Roosevelt’s name led the list with 472 votes. His three colleagues, all Independents, were President Andrew D. White of Cornell University with 407; State Senator John J. Gilbert with 342; and Edwin Packard, a millionaire spice merchant