The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [374]
Platt’s response was to make a public announcement shortly afterward that he believed Roosevelt “ought to take the Vice-Presidency both for National and State reasons.”25
Judge Saxton gracefully withdrew his conditional acceptance of the nomination, and suggested the Governor again approach Francis J. Hendricks. Roosevelt did so, but had yet to receive a reply when he encountered Platt on the afternoon of the twenty-third. The Senator still refused to consider any other Superintendent of Insurance but Payn, and threatened “war to the knife” if Roosevelt tried to oust him. With only hours to go before his self-imposed deadline expired, the Governor threw caution to the winds. He politely informed Platt that he would send in Hendricks’s name in the morning without fail—a massive bluff, considering that Hendricks had not yet given him formal permission to do so.26
A little later in the day Odell asked for a final, prewar conference with the Governor. Roosevelt said he could be found at the Union League Club that evening.
If he hoped that Odell would arrive with conciliatory messages, he was soon disillusioned. Platt, he was told, “would under no circumstances yield.” If Roosevelt insisted on opposing him, his “reputation would be destroyed,” and there would be “a lamentable smash-up” from which he would never recover politically. At this, the Governor got up to go, saying there was nothing to be gained from further talk.
ODELL (impassive and inscrutable) You have made up your mind?
ROOSEVELT I have.
ODELL You know it means your ruin?
ROOSEVELT (walking to the door) Well, we will see about that.
ODELL You understand, the fight will begin tomorrow and will be carried on to the bitter end.
ROOSEVELT Yes. (At the door.) Good night.
ODELL (as door opens) Hold on! We accept. Send in Hendricks. The Senator … will make no further opposition.
Recollecting this dialogue in his Autobiography, Roosevelt commented, “I never saw a bluff carried more resolutely to the final limit.”27 It is not certain whether by this he meant Odell’s or his own.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Wednesday, Hendricks telephoned acceptance, and on Friday afternoon Roosevelt joyfully released news of the nomination to the press. Privately, to his old Assembly colleague Henry L. Sprague, he wrote: “I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’ ”28
IN THIS CASE, the Big Stick took him as far as the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Although the proceedings there did not open until 19 June 1900, Theodore Roosevelt’s trajectory toward the vice-presidential nomination began to accelerate from the moment the New York State Senate confirmed Hendricks as Superintendent of Insurance on 31 January. The very next morning a mysteriously planted article appeared in the Sun saying that “representatives of the Republican National Committee” had visited Roosevelt in Albany and urged him to consider acceptance of the nomination. Another mysterious article in the same paper, date-lined from Washington, reported that many of the most influential Republicans in the capital, “including probably a majority of Senators and Representatives,” believed him to be “the logical candidate of the party for Vice-President.”29
It was not difficult for Roosevelt to guess which persons might have provided the Sun with this information. “I need not speak of the confidence I have in you and Lodge,” the Governor wrote plaintively to Platt that morning, “yet I can’t help feeling more and more that the Vice-Presidency is not an office in which I could do anything.…”30 Unfortunately, as he well knew,