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By Root 2953 0

Roosevelt was certainly one of the first politicians to act responsibly in view of the changing economics and class structure of late-nineteenth-century America. As such he deserves to be ranked only slightly behind Altgeld and Pingree and Jones. If his governorship, which lasted only two years (and was subject to enormous distractions in the second), was less spectacular than some, it was spectacular enough in terms of his own membership in the social and intellectual elite. One thinks of his early contempt for unions, for Henry George, for the unwashed Populists, for the rural supporters of William Jennings Bryan. Yet as Governor, Roosevelt had shown himself again and again willing to support labor against capital, and the plebeians in their struggle against his own class.

After 1900, as progressivism rated a capital P and reform governors began to crowd the political landscape, Roosevelt’s legislative record would look more and more modest, even cautious. But as a modern historian asks, “who in office was more radical in 1899?”98

WITH THE TURN of the century came private citizenship again, in preparation for the life of “a dignified nonentity” in his new job.99 Gratifying though it was to see a collected edition of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt put out by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, there was also something distressingly final about the fifteen volumes, as if he had already been tombstoned, a strenuous relic of the past.

Apart from boning up in a few issues of the Congressional Record, to see how to preside over the Senate, there was really little he could do. The frightening specter of inactivity loomed ahead. To fend it off, he left on 7 January for his first extended hunting trip in years—a chase after cougar in Colorado—and did not get back to Sagamore Hill until 23 February. A week later the Roosevelts headed southward en masse for the Inauguration on 4 March 1901. So did a party of maliciously amused organization men, headed by Senator Platt and the new Governor, Benjamin B. Odell. “We’re all off to Washington,” said Platt, “to see Teddy take the veil.”100

EPILOGUE: SEPTEMBER 1901

A strain of music closed the tale,

A low, monotonous, funeral wail,

That with its cadence, wild and sweet,

Made the long Saga more complete.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S FORMAL SERVICES to the nation as Vice-President lasted exactly four days, from 4 March to 8 March 1901.1 The Senate then adjourned until December, and Roosevelt was free to lay down his gavel and return to Oyster Bay. Before doing so he asked Associate Justice Edward D. White for advice on resuming his long-abandoned legal studies in the fall2—a sure sign of confusion and pessimism about the future.

It was pleasant, all the same, to relax with his numerous children after so many busy years. Sagamore was at its most beautiful that spring, with spreading dogwood, blooming orchards, and the “golden leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes chanting their vespers” down below.

An old friend, Fanny Smith Dana, visited him that spring. “As always, Theodore was vital and stimulating, but there was a difference. The spur of combat was absent.”3 In May he escorted Edith north to the opening of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and in July and August made two further restless trips West, to Colorado and Minnesota. “I always told you I was more of a Westerner than an Easterner,” he explained, rather vaguely, to Lincoln Steffens.4 In early fall his social schedule began to pick up, and on 4 September 1901, he arrived in Rutland, Vermont, for a short series of speaking engagements.

“He has a man of destiny behind him.”

The second Inauguration of William McKinley, 4 March 1901. (Illustration epl.1)

Sometime that day Roosevelt’s eastbound train crossed the tracks of the Presidential Special, bearing William McKinley north to the exposition in Buffalo.5

TWO DAYS LATER, on Friday, 6 September, the Vice-President attended an estate luncheon of the Vermont Fish and Game League on Isle La Motte, in Lake Champlain.6 With a thousand other guests he sat under a great marquee