The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [405]
6. N.Y. Tribune, Jan. 3.
7. Roseberry, Capitol, 31.
8. The last sentence closely follows TR in TR.Wks.XIII. 47.
9. Put.250; New York Times, Jan. 3, 1882, states that Jan. 2 was the coldest day of the winter thus far in Albany. “Those who climbed the hill to the Capitol … encountered a cold penetrating blast that chilled everything before it.”
10. The author, who prides himself on his resistance to cold, followed TR’s route in 15-degree weather; although he was well covered, and the day calm, he arrived at the Capitol groaning.
11. Phelps, Handbook; Schuyler, Montgomery, “A Dream of the New Albany,” Scribner’s, Dec. 1879; Roseberry, Capitol, 45–6. The Golden Corridor is now a row of shabby offices.
12. Trib., Jan. 3, 1882. Some Republicans were missing: the total House strength was 61.
13. See, e.g., But.233.
14. John Walsh in Kansas City Star, Feb. 12, 1922.
15. Albany correspondent of the New York Star, qu. TRB mss.; Sul.227; New York Sun, Jan. 3, 1882.
16. TR.Auto.64; N.Y. Sun correspondent (see Note 15).
17. Sul.215; HUN.23; Put.251 n.
18. Isaac Hunt, supplementary statement in HUN.34; Put.251.
19. Citations of this diary refer to the published version in Mor.1469–73.
20. Isaac Hunt has anecdotes concerning the original Ms. of this diary, which startled him considerably when he first read it in TR’s Albany room. It struck him as libelous, and indeed TR seems to have been the victim of a libel suit later in the season; whether or not the diary caused it Hunt does not say. See HUN. passim.
21. Mor.1470.
22. Ib., 1471.
23. Ib., 1469–73.
24. Ib., 1469.
25. Put.255 gives a typical ballot. (N.B.: his phrase “necessary for choice 61” applies to a day when only 120 members were voting.)
26. Auto.91; Mor.1469.
27. TR.Wks.XIII.57; Phelps, Handbook, and Albany Illustrated, passim.
28. MBR to E, Jan. 8, 1882 (FDR).
29. Anna Bulloch Gracie diaries in TRC, passim; Mrs. Joseph Alsop Sr. in TRB mss.; Anna Bulloch Gracie to E, Jan. 8, 1882 (FDR).
30. HUN.42. Hunt was nearly seventy at the time he recalled this first meeting with TR (see Bibl.). He placed it “in the early part of the first session,” saying that the caucus had been called to discuss a proposed Republican-Democratic “deal” regarding appointments. If so, the meeting took place on Feb. 21, 1882. But TR, in his Legislative Diary, Jan. 10, writes enthusiastically about some fellow-members “from the country,” doubtless including Hunt; and since there was a caucus on appointments around this time (Put.250) Hunt was probably confusing the one with the other. The author therefore assumes, as Putnam does, that the meeting took place at the earlier caucus. In any case the date matters less than Hunt’s vivid memory of TR’s appearance and behavior.
31. Hunt, supplementary statement, HUN.32.
32. Ib., 33.
33. Ib. A Harvard classmate recalled to Bradley Gilman how TR had once pounced on him, overwhelmed him with a barrage of questions, then withdrawn as suddenly and picked up something to read. “He was just bored with me. That was all. He had drained me of the information he sought.” Gilman, Roosevelt the Happy Warrior (Little, Brown, 1921) 49.
34. Hunt, supplementary statement, HUN.33.
35. HUN.75.
36. TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 13, 1882; Mor.56. Elsewhere Alice is, e.g., “Baby,” “little darling Alicey,” and “poor baby-wife.”
37. Pri.48; HUN.22; Hunt, supplementary statement, 23.
38. HUN.50; TR.Auto.65; HUN.84–5. George Spinney told the story of the blanket-tossing incident in ib. The word “balls” was erased from the typed transcript, although five symbolic spaces remain. The story sounds apocryphal, but Spinney reminded TR of it in early January 1907, and the President was highly amused. “That was a mighty good letter of yours and sounded so like the Spinney of twenty-five years ago that it made me laugh as I read it.” (Mor.5.559).
39. HUN.85 ff.; supplementary details from James Taylor in TRB mss. Other versions of this incident have TR flattening three toughs at a tavern outside town, and knocking out a Tammany spoiler