The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [353]
Chapman simply refused to believe that the hero of San Juan Hill could write anything so petulant as the last words of this letter. “I know that you are the least astute of men,” he shot back. “… I am satisfied, however, that you misapprehend the situation and that you never will decline.”66
On 22 September, Roosevelt sat down to write an icily formal reply. “Dear Mr. Chapman … It seems to me that I would not be acting in good faith toward my fellow candidates if I permitted my name to head a ticket designed for their overthrow, a ticket moreover which cannot be put up because of objections to the fitness of character of any candidates, inasmuch as no candidates have yet been nominated.”67
Was it lingering wistfulness for his own youthful idealism, mingled perhaps with sympathy for the non-partisan workers frantically canvassing upstate in his behalf, that caused him to pigeonhole this letter for three days?68 Or did he withhold it because he wished to take on as many Independent voters as possible before nudging Chapman overboard? Lack of documentation makes a definite answer impossible. Unpleasant as the latter alternative may be, it is by far the more likely. Wistfulness and sympathy were not characteristics of Roosevelt the politician; a fierce hunger for power was. Clearly, every day he could seem to cling to both nominations increased his potential strength at the convention and in the election; the longer he kept Chapman guessing, the less chance the Independents had of finding an adequate replacement.69
Whatever his motive, he patiently suffered the abuse of Chapman, Klein, and other desperate Independents. They called him a “broken-backed half-good man,” a “dough-face,” and—publicly, when he remained obdurate—the puppet of Senator Platt and “standard-bearer of corruption” in New York State. During one meeting, he allegedly “cried like a baby” and “could hardly walk when he left.”70
Chapman’s final argument with Roosevelt, at Sagamore Hill on the afternoon of 24 September, was so violent that the Colonel accused his one-armed aggressor of provoking “an able-bodied man who could not hit back.” Chapman stormed out of the house, but returned sheepishly half an hour later to say that the last train for New York had already left Oyster Bay Station. Roosevelt, amused, let him stay for the night and supplied a conciliatory toothbrush. “We shook hands the next morning at parting,” wrote Chapman, “and avoided each other for twenty years.”71
NO SOONER HAD ROOSEVELT decided that he was strong enough to run for Governor on one ticket, than a sensational private revelation threatened to destroy his candidacy overnight. On 24 September headlines in all major newspapers shouted the story:
ROOSEVELT NOT A CITIZEN OF THIS STATE
This Is the Bomb That Gov. Black and His Friends
Are Ready to Throw Into the Saratoga
Convention72
The gunpowder in Black’s bomb was an affidavit Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt had executed just six months before, at the height of his tax problems and worries about his ailing family. It stated that he had been a legal resident of Washington, D.C., since 1 October 1897, when his lease of a Manhattan town house (actually Bamie’s place at 689 Madison Avenue) came to an end. This had effectively disqualified him as a New York State taxpayer, saving him from a personalty assessment of $50,000. But it also appeared to disqualify him from the governorship of New York, since the constitution required that all candidates must be “continuous” residents of the state for at least five years prior to nomination.73
With only three days to go before the opening of the convention, Boss Platt and Chairman Odell swung into rapid, ruthless action. The party’s most eminent lawyers, including Joseph H. Choate and Elihu