The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [320]
Posterity will not grudge him that boast. The Navy was, indeed, in superb fighting trim as he prepared to resign from office.91 What it lacked in sheer weight of metal is made up in efficiency and combat toughness. Never before had it been so strategically deployed; never was it so ready for instant action.92 In comparison, the Spanish Navy, though numerically superior in ships and manpower, was ill-armed, untrained, and grossly mismanaged.93 Thanks to Roosevelt’s ceaseless publicizing of the service, schoolchildren across America could recognize and chant the praises of such romantic vessels as the Iowa, the Oregon, and the Vesuvius. His revolutionary Personnel Report, though not yet enacted into law, had already brought about a new harmony between staff and line officers, easing one of the Navy’s most difficult administration problems. His enthusiastic championship of torpedo-boats and submarines, not to mention Professor Langley’s “flying machine,” had pushed naval technology several years into the future. He had magnified the scope and influence of the Assistant Secretaryship. He had personally set the stage for one of the greatest sea dramas in American history. Most important of all, from the point of view of his later career, he had acquired a fund of naval expertise unmatched by any politician in the country.94 It would prove a priceless asset when he began to deal with “ships, ships, ships” again, as President of the United States.
At three o’clock in the morning on 19 April 1898, Congress resolved for Cuban independence. Without waiting for the diplomatic niceties of a final ultimatum, rejection, and declaration, the country whooped to war.95 Roosevelt was surely reminded that he had assumed his duties as Assistant Secretary of the Navy on 19 April 1897. It had taken him exactly one year to bring the war about.
DISCORDANT CRIES OF PROTEST rose above the patriotic din when news leaked out that he had applied for a position on the staff of General Fitzhugh Lee. “What on earth is this report of Roosevelt’s resignation?” wrote an agitated Henry Adams. “Is his wife dead? Has he quarreled with everybody? Is he quite mad?” Winthrop Chanler accepted the last alternative. “I really think he is going mad … Roosevelt is wild to fight and hack and hew … of course this ends his political career. Even Cabot says this.” John D. Long, too, doubted Roosevelt’s sanity. “He has lost his head,” the Secretary typed sadly in his diary. “… He means well, but it is one of those cases of aberration—desertion—vain-glory; of which he is entirely unaware.”96
Nearly every major newspaper in the country urged Roosevelt to stay on in the Navy Department, where his services were now needed more than ever. Even the Sun, while acknowledging “the instinctive glowing chivalry of his nature,” lamented the Assistant Secretary’s decision. “Is not his work of organizing war infinitely more important to the country than any part, however useful and glorious, which he could play as an officer in the field? … We are convinced that it is.” One acid opinion, expressed by John Jay Chapman of the reformist periodical Nursery, was that “his departure was the cowardly act of a brave man.”97
But all this clamor only served to convince Roosevelt that he must do what he had to do. Evidently his friends and admirers had never quite believed his vow to fight when the time for battle came. It was therefore vital that he prove himself, once and for all, a man of his word. If he backed down now, what of any future promises he might make to the American people? “I know perfectly well that one is never able to analyze with entire accuracy all of one’s motives,” he wrote in formal reply to the Sun. “But … I have always intended to act up to my preachings if occasion arose. Now the occasion has arisen, and I ought to meet it.”98
ON WEDNESDAY, 20 APRIL, President