• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3163 0

he fought under Harrison. “As far as my work is concerned,” he grumbled, “the two Administrations are much of a muchness.”57 There were the same “mean, sneaky little acts of petty spoilsmongering” in government; the same looting of federal offices across the nation, which Roosevelt combated with his usual weapons of publicity and aggressive investigation; the same pleas for extra funds and extra staff (“we are now, in all, five thousand papers behind”); the same fiery reports and five-thousand-word letters bombarding members of Congress; the same obstinate lobbying at the White House for extensions of the classified service; the same compulsive attacks upon porcine opponents, such as Assistant Secretary of State Josiah P. Quincy, hunting for patronage “as a pig hunts truffles,” and Secretary of the Interior Hoke Smith, “with his twinkling little green pig’s eyes.”58

All this, of course, meant that Roosevelt was having fun. As Cecil Spring Rice remarked, “Teddy is consumed with energy as long as he is doing something and fighting somebody … he always finds something to do and somebody to fight. Poor Cabot must be successful; while Teddy is happiest when he conquers but quite happy if he only fights.”59

He continued utterly to dominate the Civil Service Commission, not without some protest on the part of General George D. Johnston, Hugh Thompson’s old and crotchety successor. On several occasions their altercations grew so violent that Roosevelt said only a sense of propriety restrained him from “going down among the spittoons with the general.”60 Things became dangerous when Johnston, who wore a pistol at all times, objected to Roosevelt’s office being carpeted before his. Roosevelt had a private talk with President Cleveland, and the general was offered two remote diplomatic posts, in Vancouver and Siam. He refused both, whereupon Cleveland summarily removed him.61

This enabled Roosevelt to bring in a new Commissioner, John R. Procter, of Kentucky. Procter was a tall, scholarly geologist and Civil Service Reformer who had caught Roosevelt’s eye in the spring of 1893, and whom he had then hoped—in vain—would replace “silly well-meaning Lyman.”62 Now, with Procter in, he at last had “a first-class man” he could groom to take over, and continue his policies as Civil Service Commissioner. Roosevelt was beginning to talk of stepping down after one more winter in Washington, “although I am not at all sure as to what I shall do afterwards.”63

MANY WRITERS OTHER THAN Henry Adams have compared Theodore Roosevelt’s career to that of an express locomotive, speeding toward an inevitable destination. The simile may be extended to describe his two static years under President Cleveland as a mid-journey pause to stoke up with coal and generate a new head of steam. The first signs that he was about to get under way again occurred in the late summer of 1894: there was the lift of a signal, a flickering of needles, the anguish of a personal farewell, a groan of loosening brakes. From now on Roosevelt’s acceleration would be continuous—almost frighteningly so to some observers, but very exhilarating to himself.

Sometime during the first week in August, Congressman Lemuel Ely Quigg of New York, an attractive, prematurely grizzled political schemer, dropped a subtle hint regarding Roosevelt’s future. What a pity it was, he sighed, that Roosevelt was possessed of “such a variety of indiscretions, fads and animosities” that it would be impossible to nominate him for Mayor of New York in the fall.64 The odds of a Republican victory in that city were higher than they had been for years; what was more, there seemed to be a good chance of getting a reform ticket elected. Roosevelt rejected Quigg’s hint good-humoredly (“I have run once!”), but ambition stirred within him. He had never quite gotten over his failure to capture control of his native city in 1886, and the temptation to try and transcend that failure soon became irresistible. He broached the subject with Edith, but she protested vehemently. To run for Mayor, she said, would require