The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [360]
“It was as if the whole $22-million structure had been built just for him.”
The New York State Capitol, Albany, around the turn of the century. (Illustration 27.1)
How well this policy would succeed remained to be seen, as the housebreaking Governor climbed into bed, and got what rest he could before beginning his two-year round of official duties.
MONDAY, 2 JANUARY, dawned bright, but so cold that when the band arrived to escort Roosevelt to the Capitol, its brass instruments froze into silence, and the procession advanced only to eerie drumbeats. However, the streets were thronged with the biggest crowd of well-wishers ever seen in Albany, and the bunting on every rooftop was brilliant in the sub-zero air. Roosevelt marched along with many grins and waves of his silk topper, surrounded by a shining phalanx of the National Guard, under the command of Adjutant General Avery D. Andrews.8
As he turned the corner of Eagle Street, the white bulk of the Capitol stood out against the sky, as awesomely as it had on that other 2 January when he first walked up the hill as a young Assemblyman, seventeen years before. But then it had been an unfinished pile, with a boarded-up main entrance and mounds of rubble fringing its eastern facade. Now, in place of the rubble, there were lawns and trees, and a new marble stairway, which would have done justice to Cheops, cascading down toward him. Gubernatorial dignity prevented Roosevelt from taking the seventy-seven steps two at a time, as he would invariably do in future. While he mounted with his aides to second-floor level he had leisure to reflect on the improbable series of events that had brought him back to Albany, and the pleasing thought that he would be the first of New York’s thirty-six Governors to occupy the completed Capitol.9 It was as if the whole twenty-two-million-dollar structure had been built just for him.
After briefly seating himself behind a great desk in the Executive Office, where he had once quailed before the wrath of Grover Cleveland, Roosevelt crossed over to the Assembly Chamber. His entrance there aroused none of the old sniggers and inquiries of “Who’s the dude?” Instead, both Houses of the Legislature rose to their feet in welcome, and a band crashed out “Hail to the Chief.” Even more pleasing, perhaps, was the chorus that greeted him when he took the podium to speak:
“What’s the matter with Teddy?
HE’S—ALL—RIGHT!”10
Roosevelt’s First Annual Message was a short, conventional appeal to practical morality and the manly virtues, worded so as not to antagonize any Republican in the room. Insofar as it said anything specific, it recognized the rights of labor, called for civil service and taxation reform, proposed biennial sessions of the Legislature, and expressed concern over Democratic maladministration in New York City. About the only phrase worth remembering was the Governor’s description—or rather self-description—of the ideal public servant: he should be “an independent organization man of the best type.”11 His listeners might have wondered how the two extremes of independence and party loyalty could be combined, but Roosevelt clearly intended to show them. Their applause, therefore, was anticipatory rather than congratulatory, like that of an audience stimulated by the prologue to a suspense drama.
In the corridors afterward the same remark flew back and forth—“What was the boy governor going to do?”12
ROOSEVELT’S FIRST MAJOR CHALLENGE was to select a new Superintendent