The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [156]
By mixing Darwinian-Marshian analysis with cowboy campfire yarns, and by applying his inbred prosecutorial disposition, inherited from Uncle Rob, Roosevelt was able to help sell the U.S. Congress, the departments of Agriculture and Interior, and eventually western Americans on the notion that saving natural wonders, wildlife species, timberlands, and diverse habitats was a patriotic endeavor. From his boyhood (when he drew Egyptian storks to demonstrate evolution) until his death in 1919 at age sixty (after an arduous river trek to the Amazon of Brazil), Roosevelt served as the American spokesperson for mainstreaming evolutionary theories. This was something neither Francis Parkman, Henry Adams, nor John Hay had an inclination to do—nor, for that matter, did John Burroughs, Elliott Coues, or John Muir. “He who would fully treat of man must know at least something of biology,” Roosevelt would write later in life, “and especially of that science of evolution that is inseparably connected with the great name of Darwin.”101
VI
Especially after the Forest Reserve Act and the three new national parks in California, it was natural for Roosevelt to support President Harrison for reelection in 1892. Despite their personal differences, the two men were philosophically similar. Roosevelt cheered his fellow Republican’s achievements, such as the bold appointment of Frederick Douglass as ambassador to Haiti. When Harrison resolutely confronted Britain and Canada about their overharvesting of fur seals in the Bering Sea, Roosevelt was honored to be part of his administration. When Harrison’s wife, Caroline, died of tuberculosis a few weeks before the 1892 presidential election, Roosevelt sympathized with his boss’s deep grief and distracted mind. So when Grover Cleveland routed Harrison in the election, Roosevelt, too, had a sense of loss.
As president of the Boone and Crockett Club, Roosevelt hoped that President Cleveland would build on the Forest Reserve Act of 1891. Although the overweight Cleveland—who was a cartoonist’s delight because of his girth and his walrus mustache—couldn’t be accused of being a typical outdoorsman, he was known to care deeply about the fate of big game. Therefore, Roosevelt planned to engage Cleveland, a fellow New Yorker, in saving Great Plains buffalo from extinction. Recognizing that preserving the territorial integrity of Yellowstone was the initial step if the national park movement was to succeed, Roosevelt refused to reduce the political heat just because Harrison had been rejected by the electorate. He believed that the unflinching Grover Cleveland, who had gone after Tammany Hall’s notorious Roscoe Conkling, 102 could be won over by the Boone and Crockett Club through a combination of diplomacy and arm-twisting. After all, most of Roosevelt’s fellow club members were extremely rich and were, like Cleveland, from New York state.
On December 5, 1892, as Harrison’s term was winding down, Roosevelt wrote a letter to the editor, attacking the villains—mining interests and real estate grabbers—of Cooke City, Montana, located northeast of Yellowstone National Park. To Roosevelt, this mining-camp town seemed to be frying in greed. Through unethical quid pro quos and bribes, local developers in Cooke City had, Roosevelt feared, chipped away at