The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [136]
Vastly outnumbering these men of the future were the “Old Guard”—veteran party members who had voted for Frémont and shed their blood for Lincoln and Grant; men who had prospered mightily under the “spoils system” for almost a quarter of a century of Republican power. They held the party and its orthodox ideology so holy that some of them cast their delegate badges in gold.63 Those from the West, and from Pennsylvania, arrived full of whiskey and love for James G. Blaine; those from the South, and from Wall Street, formed glee clubs to sing the praises of President Arthur. Both groups brought bags of “boodle” to purchase the votes of uncommitted delegates. They looked askance at the Edmunds men, who not only refused to be bought, but sanctimoniously shut up shop on Sunday morning. Independents were promptly accused of having more ice than blood in their blue Northeastern veins, and it became standard procedure, whenever anybody like Henry Cabot Lodge walked by, for members of the Old Guard to turn up their coat collars and shiver ostentatiously.64
The “schoolboy” Roosevelt, with his “inexhaustible supply of insufferable dudism and conceit,”65 aroused their particular scorn, even though they could not help being impressed by his mental powers. One old delegate remarked, after meeting him, that “all the brains intended for others of the Roosevelt family had evidently fallen into the cranium of young Theodore.”66
To see the Chicago Convention as far as possible through Roosevelt’s eyes, it is necessary to remember how desperately he had been driving himself through the last three months, how full of private grief he was, and how he longed during this final crescendo of political bedlam for the silence and solace of the Badlands. The events of the next week may best be visualized through a red blur of fatigue, which thickened as day followed night with barely a pause for sleep.
MIDNIGHT, MONDAY, 2 JUNE. Every room, stairway, and corridor in the Grand Pacific Hotel is crammed with garrulous, perspiring delegates. It takes one reporter a quarter of an hour to fight his way up from the lobby to Arthur headquarters, on the third floor. “All the corrupt element in the Republican party,” he notes en route, “seems to be concentrated here working in behalf of Blaine.”67 Brass bands thump in the streets outside, the President’s glee clubs roar discordantly, and tabletop orators shout themselves hoarse; but the most omnipresent sound is the soft rustle of “boodle.” Thomas Collier Platt of New York, Blaine’s unofficial treasurer, is rumored to be paying the highest price for votes. Arthur men are running out of money in the effort to compete with him, and impatiently await the arrival of a $50,000 parcel from New York City.68 Meanwhile they bolster their bribes with promises of federal jobs. Some wily colored delegates, trading on the white man’s traditional inability to distinguish one black face from another, sell themselves over and over to both major candidates, stocking up on free cheese and whiskey, and steadily escalating their prices. The going rate for a black Arkansas vote is already $1,000.
“Niggers,” growls one Arthur lieutenant, “come higher at this convention than any since the war.”69
10:00 A.M., TUESDAY, 3 JUNE. Warm, radiant spring weather.70 The lake “velvety-violet,” the trees along Michigan Avenue dense with new leaves. Atop the arched glass roof of Exposition Hall, a hundred flags flutter and snap. Ten thousand people mill excitedly about: spectator tickets are selling at $40 each.71
Inside the hall, an immense, luminous space, so bright with red, white, and blue bunting that at first it sends a tiny stab of pain into the eyes. An acre or more of light cane chairs, banked up row upon row like the seats of a Roman amphitheater. Parterres, galleries, even the high, wide-open windows are already packed with human flesh. Somewhere a band is playing Gilbert and Sullivan. In the distance, at the focal point of the