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By Root 3220 0

damaging than his own. Yet Wanamaker had ignored this evidence in favor of the remaining third, which had obviously been gathered with intent to whitewash. “I have never sheltered myself behind my subordinates,” said Roosevelt loftily, “and I decline to let the Postmaster-General shelter himself behind his.” He would not accuse Wanamaker of an official cover-up, but “if the investigation in which this testimony was taken had been made with the deliberate intent of shielding the accused, covering up their wrongdoing, and attempting to perjure themselves, so that the [Post] Office could be cleared from the effect of their former truthful confessions, it would have been managed precisely as it actually was managed.”

In conclusion Roosevelt noted that the Postmaster General was in the habit of saying he cherished nothing but goodwill toward the Civil Service Commission. “I regret to say that I must emphatically dissent from this statement. Many of his actions … during the past two years seem to be explicable only on the ground of dislike of the Commission, and of willingness to hamper its work.”110

It was a masterly performance. Roosevelt kept tight rein over his temper, let the facts speak for themselves, and stepped from the stand with an air of complete self-assurance. The reaction of the editors of The New York Times next morning typified that of honest men across the nation:

We do not remember an instance in the history of our Government in which an officer of the Government, appointed by the President and charged with independent duties of a most responsible and important character, has felt called upon to go before a Congressional Committee and submit to it statements so damaging to the character of another officer of the Government of still higher rank … Nor do we see how Mr. Roosevelt could have refused to do what he has done. He has been forced to it, and by conduct on the part of Mr. Wanamaker that is entirely inexcusable and without any decent motive. It may be said that Mr. Roosevelt has taken upon himself to accuse Mr. Wanamaker of what amounts to untruthfulness … That is not a pleasing position to be occupied by a gentleman who is a Cabinet officer and a person of conspicuous pretensions to piety. But Mr. Roosevelt showed that Mr. Wanamaker had adopted and acted on statements that he knew were false … that he bore himself generally with a curious mingling of smug impertinence and cowardice … The exposure he has suffered from Mr. Roosevelt is merciless and humiliating, but it is clearly deserved.

The majority report of the investigating committee, dated 22 June, used even stronger language. It described Wanamaker’s testimony as “evasive” and “garbled,” and said he was clearly in “desperate straits.” The Postmaster General’s “extraordinary” failure to act in the Baltimore case indicated “either a determination not to enforce the law or negligence therein to the last degree.” As for the testimony taken by his inspectors, it “confirmed and corroborated fully” that taken in the original investigation.111 The righteousness of the law was upheld, and Theodore Roosevelt could enjoy the sweetest political triumph of his career as Commissioner.

THE STORY OF the rest of the Harrison Administration can be briefly told. At 3:20 A.M. on the morning after the investigating committee filed the above-quoted report, Grover Cleveland was renominated by the Democrats for President of the United States.112 This news, coinciding as it did with the public disgrace of John Wanamaker, and reports of “scandalous” use of patronage in the renomination of Benjamin Harrison at Minneapolis,113 came as a signal for all disillusioned reformers to desert the Republican party, as they had in 1884. Although memories of office-looting under the Democrats still lingered, they were neither as recent nor as disturbing as those publicized by the Republican Civil Service Commissioner. “Poor Harrison!” remarked the New York Sun. “If he has erred, he has been punished. The irrepressible, belligerent and enthusiastic Roosevelt has made him suffer,