The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [188]
Things may have remained at a stalemate had Henry Cabot Lodge not orchestrated a lobbying appeal to have his friend appointed as assistant secretary of the navy. As America’s foremost expert on the naval battles of the War of 1812, and having been a great success as police commissioner in New York City (where he increased the force by 1,600 men), Roosevelt seemed an ideal number two administrator for the Navy.63 McKinley had qualms but soon, as a favor to Henry Cabot Lodge and Secretary of the Interior Bliss, he agreed to appoint Roosevelt to the post. Roosevelt assumed his duties on April 19, 1897.
Although the post of assistant secretary hadn’t been created until 1861, Roosevelt now felt that he was part of a club that stretched all the way back to John Paul Jones, the naval hero of the Revolutionary War. Roosevelt remained forever grateful to Bliss for vouching for his character and helping to secure the appointment. But if McKinley and Bliss knew what Roosevelt was revealing in his private correspondence that spring, they would probably have fired him. For example, he told the British scholar Alfred Thayer Mahan that the McKinley administration planned to annex the Hawaiian Islands, cut a canal through Nicaragua, construct a modern naval fleet, and kick Spain out of the Caribbean. (Those were all programs he wanted implemented.*) In a second letter he suggested that Mahan lobby T.R.’s boss, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long, for the United States to build more battleships.
But even as Roosevelt immersed himself in military affairs, he found time to duel intellectually with Dr. C. Hart Merriam over the nature of species and subspecies. Merriam, the reviewer whose praise for The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks, back in 1877, had helped establish Roosevelt’s bona fides as a naturalist, was now chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Ornithology and Mammalogy (Biological Survey). Nobody admired Merriam more than Roosevelt, who regularly sent notes of appreciation for his steady work on behalf of biological inquiry, mammalogy, and biogeography. Roosevelt always enjoyed seeing Merriam’s name in print. There was always an air of collaboration about the two men. Sometimes, for example, Roosevelt sent Merriam sketches and drafts that he was working on. Who else but the overly conscientious Merriam would take the time to examine 27,000 specimens of white-footed mice before issuing a report on their habits?64 Every time Merriam spoke publicly in science forums, even the people in the back rows whispered in awe at his illustrious erudition. There was something about this government scientist’s deportment that demanded respect. He had a knack for making even trifles interesting.
Starting in the mid-1890s Merriam plunged headfirst into the debate over the classification of bears. Boldly he declared there were ten bears to be saved, as well as a new subspecies. Back in 1890, when Merriam, following a trip to the San Francisco Mountains of Arizona, announced his “life zone” theory (i.e., that temperature and humidity were the leading factors in species development), Roosevelt applauded the findings. But now these sudden pronouncement about bears left him baffled. Perhaps, he thought, Merriam was just overworked. So in an unusual gesture of solidarity Roosevelt tried to disagree only quietly, letting the biologist create new textbook designations.
Although Darwinism had been fully embraced in the Ivy League schools, save for a few recalcitrant professors, its crossover into the mainstream culture was fraught with dissent. Being a pioneering biologist like Merriam, one who insisted that germs were living organisms (like people), was mistakenly interpreted as tantamount to declaring Adam and Eve a farce. For hard-core creationists—who were a large majority of Americans—Merriam was pushing