The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [17]
From his mother, Teedie acquired several refined French traits. Although her forebears were predominantly Scots—James Bulloch of Glasgow emigrated to Charleston in 1729—they had early married into the Huguenot family of de Veaux.23 Mittie, with her rococo beauty and elegance of manner, could have been mistaken for a Frenchwoman, and she passed on to Teedie a certain Gallic volubility.
The Bullochs also contributed aristocratic qualities, not shared by the Roosevelts. Whereas Oom Klaes had been a man of the soil, ranking far below Governor Pieter Stuyvesant, James Bulloch was a learned planter who could entertain Governor James Edward Oglethorpe on equal terms.24 Unlike the Roosevelts, who with two or three exceptions preferred the security of commerce to the glamor of politics,25 the Bullochs stepped naturally into positions of power. Among his direct maternal ancestors Teedie could count six distinguished politicians, including Archibald Bulloch, the first President of Revolutionary Georgia.26
Few Americans, surely, have been born into such a perfectly balanced home environment as the son of Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt. There was a harmony of Southern refinement and Northern vigor, feminine humor and masculine seriousness, and—later on—the rewards of privilege and the responsibilities of charity. Through the front window of the house Teedie looked down on carriages and cobblestones, and heard coming from Broadway and Fifth Avenue the rumble and throb of a great city. Through the rear window he gazed out into another world, an enormous, block-wide garden full of trees and flowers, roamed by ornamental peacocks.27 Were it not for the weight of asthma in his lungs, he might consider himself a child of Paradise.
But then, five months after his second birthday, Southern cannons fired upon Fort Sumter, and the harmonies of 28 East Twentieth Street were jarred into discord.
WHEN WAR WAS DECLARED, on 12 April 1861, Teedie and his six-year-old sister Anna (“Bamie”) had been joined by a fourteen-month-old brother, Elliott (“Ellie”), and Mittie Roosevelt was already pregnant with her final child, Corinne (“Conie”), who arrived in the fall. No sooner had the last been born than Theodore Senior left home, and sadness filled the house.28
He had spent most of the summer agonizing, to the tramp of mustering regiments, over what role he should play in the war. Although he was not yet thirty, and in prime physical shape, his domestic situation was such that he could not contemplate taking up arms. Under his roof lived three women—Grandmother Bulloch, Mittie, and her sister Annie—who owned slaves and a plantation and were passionate in their support of the Confederacy. (Mittie allegedly once hung out the Stars and Bars after a Southern victory.) Two of Mrs. Bulloch’s sons were fighting for the South. Could he fire upon, or receive the bullets of, his brothers-in-law? In anguish Theodore Senior did what many of his wealthy friends were doing. He hired a substitute soldier.29
Yet as a strong Lincoln Republican, his “troublesome conscience” would not let him rest. A certain strain developed between himself and his wife, although their mutual love never wavered. “I wish we sympathized together on this question of so vital moment to our country,” he told her gently. “I know you cannot understand my feelings and of course do not expect it.”30 Eventually he announced that he had decided to aid the war effort in a civilian capacity, and, true to his nature, soon found a charitable cause.
Already, in these early days of war, millions of government dollars were flowing through the pockets of Union soldiers and into the hands of sutlers, who infested military camps, hawking bottles of liquor hidden in loaves of bread. The sutlers charged such exorbitant prices that their customers soon had no money left to send home to their families. It was to right this wrong that Theodore Senior set off to Washington, and, conquering his natural distaste for politics, began to