The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [309]
On 8 December, he heard that Dewey had sailed for the Far East, but by now he was so busy writing the report of his Personnel Board that he paid little attention. The eight-thousand-word document, submitted the following day, proposed a bill for the prompt amalgamation of line and staff, on the grounds that engineers, in an industrial age, could no longer be held separate from or inferior to officers above deck. Roosevelt inserted one of his typical historical parallels, showing how in the mid-seventeenth century sailormen and sea-soldiers had to unite and resolve their differences in much the same way. “We are not making a revolution,” he wrote, “we are merely recognizing and giving shape to an evolution.”124
Secretary Long complimented him highly on the report,125 as did many naval academics and newspaper editors. The New York Evening Post expressed “admiration” for his “grasp and breadth of view” of highly complicated material. “If profound study, evident freedom from bias, and command of the subject could place a report above criticism … nothing would be left to do but the enactment by Congress of the proposed bill.”126
Shortly before Christmas the mammalogist C. Hart Merriam announced that a new species of Olympic Mountain elk had been named Cervus Roosevelti in honor of the founder of the Boone & Crockett Club. “It is fitting that the noblest deer of America should perpetuate the name of one who, in the midst of a busy public career, has found time to study our larger mammals in their native haunts and has written the best accounts we have ever had of their habits and chase.”127
And so the year ended with a crescendo of praise for Assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt, who was now recognized to be one of the best-informed and most influential men in Washington.128 He was also, as the Boston Sunday Globe pointed out, by far the most entertaining performer in “the great theater of our national life.” But “it would never do … to permit such a man to get into the Presidency. He would produce national insomnia.”129
“From the neck up, at least, McKinley was every inch a President.”
President William McKinley at the time of the Spanish-American War. (Illustration 22.2)
CHAPTER 23
The Lieutenant Colonel
“What was that?” said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck.
“Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck.”
THE NEW YEAR was not twelve days old when a riot disturbed the uneasy peace of Havana, Cuba. Spanish officers smashed the presses of four local newspapers critical of the occupying army. The violence lasted about an hour, long enough to convince the nervous U.S. Consul-General, Fitzhugh Lee, that the lives of American residents were in danger. He sent home some urgent dispatches, and the State Department flashed a message to Captain Charles D. Sigsbee of the U.S.S. Maine, at Key West, Florida: “TWO DOLLARS.”1
While Captain Sigsbee pondered that cryptic cable—a prearranged code alerting him to be ready to steam for Cuba at a moment’s notice2—Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt pondered the first press reports of the riot. Next morning, Thursday, 13 January, he went into John D. Long’s office and shut the door.3
The Secretary was amusedly aware that his subordinate intended “to abandon everything and go to the front” in the event of war with Spain. Roosevelt had said so at least twice already, but today he was in such fierce earnest that Long wondered if he had not gone “daft in the matter.”
“Now, Senator, may we please have war?”
Wreck of the Maine in Havana Harbor,
February 1898—Old Glory still flying. (Illustration 23.1)
Attempting to jolly him back to his senses, the Secretary called him a “crank” and ridiculed his desire to get involved in some “bushwhacking fight” with Cuban mosquitoes. But Roosevelt would not be diverted, as Long noted somewhat pettishly in his diary.