The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [382]
The Chairman told him that it would be, as far as McKinley was concerned, a repetition of the campaign of 1896. While the Democratic nominee—William Jennings Bryan, again—stumped the country on behalf of the disadvantaged classes, the President would remain at home in Canton, Ohio, and hold his customary front-porch receptions to visiting deputations. Roosevelt would have to do most of the traveling, and most of the speechmaking; fortunately he was good at both.
The candidate was cheerfully agreeable. “I am as strong as a bull moose,” he assured Hanna, “and you can use me to the limit, taking heed of but one thing and that is my throat.” He did not wish to seem to be neglecting his duties as Governor of New York, but fortunately “July, August, September, and October are months in which there is next to no work.”83
All through that quarter of a year, accordingly, Roosevelt crossed and recrossed the country, with such numbing frequency, and such an incessant outpouring of his familiar political philosophy, as to blur the sensibilities of all but a cataloger. Suffice to say that he traveled farther and spoke more than any candidate, presidential or vice-presidential, in nineteenth-century history, with the exception of Bryan himself, four years before. But Bryan in 1900 could not match Roosevelt. By 3 November the Governor had made a total of 673 speeches in 567 towns in 24 states; he had traveled 21,209 miles and spoken an average of 20,000 words a day to 3 million people.84 The following timetable of one undated campaign day survives from the diary of an aide:
7:00 A.M. Breakfast
7:30 A.M. A speech
8:00 A.M. Reading a historical work
9:00 A.M. A speech
10:00 A.M. Dictating letters
11:00 A.M. Discussing Montana mines
11:30 A.M. A speech
12:00 Reading an ornithological work
12:30 P.M. A speech
1:00 P.M. Lunch
1:30 P.M. A speech
2:30 P.M. Reading Sir Walter Scott
3:00 P.M. Answering telegrams
3:45 P.M. A speech
4:00 P.M. Meeting the press
4:30 P.M. Reading
5:00 P.M. A speech
6:00 P.M. Reading
7:00 P.M. Supper
8–10 P.M. Speaking
11:00 P.M. Reading alone in his car
12:00 To bed.85
Inevitably, there were moments of ugliness, as when a mob of hired “muckers” assaulted him near Cripple Creek, Colorado, with rocks big enough to crush the iron guards on the caboose. A flying wedge of Rough Riders rescued the candidate from serious harm. William Jennings Bryan haughtily disbelieved reports of the incident, but said it was an outrage “if true.”86
The Rough Riders, of course, were not above staging a little playful violence themselves, as when a member of the Campaign Special shot a Populist editor for presuming to criticize “mah Colonel.” The editor survived,87 but stories like this revived Roosevelt’s forgotten “cowboy” image in the East, much to the delight of cartoonists and humorists. On 13 October, Finley Peter Dunne’s barroom philosopher “Mr. Dooley”88 summarized the campaign thus:
“Well, sir,” said Mr Dooley, “if thayse anny wan r-runnin’ in this campaign but me frind Tiddy Rosenfelt, I’d like to know who it is. It isn’t Mack, f’r he wint away three weeks ago, lavin’ a note sayin’ that he’d accipt th’ nommynation if twas offered him, an’ he ain’t been heerd fr’m since. It ain’t Bryan … ‘Tis Tiddy alone that’s r-runnin’, an’ he ain’t runnin’, he’s gallopin’.”
Mr. Dooley went on to parody a local account of one of Roosevelt’s bipartisan meetings out West.
At this moment Gov’nor Rosenfelt bit his way through th’ throng, an afther bringin’ down with a well-aimed shot th’ chairman iv th’ Dimmycratic commity … he spoke as follows: ‘Scoundhrels, cowards, hired ruffians, I know ye all well, an’ if e’er a wan iv ye comes up to this platform I’ll show ye how I feel to’ord ye, an’ fellow Raypublicans: This is th’ happiest moment iv me life. [A voice: “Kill him.”] Nivir bifure have I injiyed so much livin’ undher a Constitootion