The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [80]
I was triumphantly elected.83
Theodore received the news of his victory—3,490 votes to Strew’s 1,989, almost double the usual Republican margin—distractedly. After voting on the morning of 9 November, he had retired to the library at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street and busied himself with his book, which was due at Putnam’s by Christmas. Not until an admirer called, “wishing to meet the rising star,” did he accept the fact that he was now a professional politician.84 This sudden change in status seems only to have increased his determination to become, simultaneously, a professional writer. He spent the rest of November working with total absorption on his manuscript, and by 3 December it was in the hands of the publisher.85
The Naval War of 1812, which appeared some five months later, was the first and in some ways the most enduring of Theodore Roosevelt’s thirty-eight books. Reviewers were almost unanimous in their praise of its scholarship, sweep, and originality. It was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as “the last word on the subject,” and a classic of naval history. Within two years of publication it went through three editions, and became a textbook at several colleges. In 1886, by special regulation, at least one copy was ordered placed on board every U.S. Navy vessel.86 Eleven years later, when Great Britain was preparing her own official history of the Royal Navy, the editors paid Theodore the unprecedented compliment of asking him to write the section of that work dealing with the War of 1812. For almost a century, Naval War would remain the definitive work in its field.87 Considering the author’s youth (he was twenty-one when he began it, and just twenty-three when he finished), his frequent ill health, and many distractions, the book may be considered an extraordinary achievement.
Its merits are as simple as those of any serious piece of academic writing: clarity, accuracy, and completeness, backed by massive documentation. The density of research is such that Theodore often quotes a different authority for every sentence. His impartiality in weighing facts and reaching conclusions is remarkable in view of his burgeoning Americanism. Sentiment is never allowed to interfere with statistics. Admittedly, the first chapters do not make for fascinating reading:
The 32-gun frigates … presented in broadsides 13 long 12’s below and seven 24-pound carronades above; the 38-gun frigates, 14 long 18’s below and ten 32-pound carronades above; so that a 44-gun frigate would naturally present 15 long 24’s below and twelve 42-pound carronades above, as the United States did at first.…88
And so on, for dozens of pages. Clearly he is out to inform, not entertain. And it must be admitted that his own criticism of it as “dry” is justified. The first two chapters, however masterly in their compilation and assortment of figures, are unreadable by all except the most dedicated naval strategists, and the other eight are almost as severe. There is something almost inhuman about the young author’s refusal to swashbuckle, taste the triumphs of victory and the pain of defeat, and dramatize character where well he might. Yet there twinkles, every now and again in its gray pages, a flash of sarcastic humor, usually at the expense of historians less scholarly than he:
James states that she [the United States] had but one boy aboard, and that he was seventeen years old—in which case 29 others, some of whom (as we learn from the “Life of Decatur”) were only twelve, must have grown with truly startling rapidity during the hour and a half the combat lasted.89
Elsewhere he observes that James’s remark on the