The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [208]
This cheerful optimism was not shared by his Republican friends, nor by Postmaster General Wanamaker, who was reported “enraged” by the press coverage enjoyed by Roosevelt on tour.54 To investigate discreetly was one thing; to cross-examine senior Post Office executives in public, and express his contempt for them afterward, at dictating speed, was another. Even the loyal Cabot Lodge warned him to keep out of the headlines until he was more settled in his job. “I cry peccavi,” Roosevelt replied, “and will assume a statesmanlike reserve of manner whenever reporters come near me.”55
Reserved or not, he could not quell his bubbling good humor. Things were going particularly well for that other Roosevelt, the man of letters. Volumes One and Two of The Winning of the West had been published during his absence, to panegyrical newspaper reviews. “No book published for many years,” remarked the Tribune, “has shown a closer grasp of its subject, a more thorough fitness in the writer, or more honest and careful methods of treatment. Nor must the literary ability and skill displayed throughout be overlooked. Many episodes … are written with remarkable dramatic and narrative power. The Winning of the West is, in short, an admirable and deeply interesting book, and will take its place with the most valuable and indispensable works in the library of American history.”56
He would have to wait for several months for more learned opinions, but in the meantime he could cherish a complimentary letter from the great Parkman himself. “I am much pleased you like the book,” Roosevelt wrote in acknowledgment. “I have always intended to devote myself to essentially American work; and literature must be my mistress perforce, for although I enjoy politics I appreciate perfectly the exceedingly short nature of my tenure.”57
If John Wanamaker had had his way, Roosevelt’s tenure would have been the shortest in the history of the Civil Service Commission. The Postmaster General was reluctant—and the President even more so—to fire Postmaster Paul for abuse of the merit system, even though that individual was a Democratic holdover. The precedent thus established would mean that Roosevelt, in future, could demand the dismissal of Republican postmasters for the same reason. In any case, Wanamaker did not like being told what to do in his own department by a junior member of the Administration. His chance for revenge came at the beginning of July, when Roosevelt came to him in great agitation to report that Paul had dismissed Hamilton Shidy for treachery and insubordination. Wanamaker curtly refused to intervene.58
This placed Roosevelt in a highly embarrassing position. As Shidy’s promised protector, he was in honor bound to find him another federal job. But as Civil Service Commissioner, he was in honor bound to enforce the law. How could he give patronage to a confessed falsifier of government records? How could he, in all conscience, not do so? Wanamaker, of course, understood his dilemma, and knew that the best way out was for him to resign. “That hypocritical haberdasher!” Roosevelt exploded. “He is an ill-constitutioned creature, oily, with bristles sticking up through the oil.”59
On 10 July a telegram summoned the three Commissioners to the White House. Roosevelt may have wondered if he was about to go the same way as Shidy, but he was pleasantly surprised by Harrison’s attitude. “The old boy is with us,” he told Lodge. “The Indianapolis business gave him an awful wrench, but he has swallowed the medicine, and in his talk with us today did not express the least dissatisfaction with any of our deeds or utterances.”60
Fortified by these signs of Presidential approval,