The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [177]
DOUBTLESS HE INTENDED to attend the Republican County Convention as an observer. But during the afternoon he was visited by a group of influential Republicans, who, on behalf of party bosses, asked if he would accept the nomination for Mayor. This bombshell took him completely by surprise.10 As a loyal party man, he could not refuse the honor; as a loyal (and still secret) fiancé, he could not reveal that he had a transatlantic steamship ticket in his pocket. Edith was looking forward to a leisurely, three-month honeymoon in Europe after their wedding, and would surely resent being hurried back to New York so that he could prepare to take office on 1 January. Moreover she was hardly the type to spend the next two years shaking ill-manicured hands at municipal receptions. All this was assuming he won, of course. If he lost…
But the party bosses were expecting an answer. Roosevelt agreed, “with the most genuine reluctance,” to allow his name to be put before the convention.11 The emissaries departed, leaving him alone. Night came on. He remained ensconced in his club, waiting for the inevitable news from the Opera House.
HE HAD A LOT to think about during those solitary hours. Why had Johnny O’Brien, Jake Hess, Barney Biglin, and all the rest of the machine men offered him this unexpected honor? He was, after all, their ancient enemy. Perhaps they wished to reward him for his support of James G. Blaine in 1884; more likely they hoped he would lure the Independents back into the Republican fold, in order to have a united party behind Blaine—again—in 1888. Or perhaps they imagined (as many did) that he was a millionaire, and might contribute a liberal assessment to the campaign chest.12 They would soon learn the likelihood of that: half his capital was tied up in Dakota, and the interest on the remainder would barely support him and Edith at Sagamore Hill.13
A cynical hypothesis which he did not want to consider, but which would come up in the press, was that the party bosses had decided no Republican could win a three-way contest for the mayoralty, and merely wanted a few thousand votes to trade on Election Day.14 Certainly the campaign odds were against him. The Democrats had just nominated Representative Abram S. Hewitt, a man of mature years, vast wealth, moderate opinions, and impeccable breeding.15 Hewitt also happened to be an industrialist, famous for his enlightened attitude to labor (during the depression years 1873–78 he ran his steel works at a loss in order to safeguard the jobs of his employees).16 He would doubtless attract all but the most extreme George followers, along with those Republicans who felt nervous about Roosevelt’s youth. Only yesterday, the Nation had editorialized: “Mr. Hewitt is just the kind of man New York should always have for Mayor,” and Roosevelt’s instinct told him the voters would agree on 2 November.17
All in all, he concluded, it was “a perfectly hopeless contest, the chance of success being so very small that it may be left out of account … I have over forty thousand majority against me.” However, there was that chance; he had taken on older men before, and beaten them: his pugnacious soul rejoiced at the overwhelming challenge. He would make “a rattling good canvass” for the mayoralty, and would not be disgraced if he ran second. The only disaster would be to run third. But that seemed unlikely: in his opinion Henry George was “mainly wind.”18
SEVEN BLOCKS AWAY, in the bakingly hot, tobacco-blue auditorium of the Grand Opera House, Chauncey Depew, the Republican party’s most unctuous orator, was persuading delegates that the idea of a young mayor for this, “the third city of the world,” was a brilliant one. “Every Republican