Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [10]
ROOSEVELT REMAINED BEHIND to shake hands with members of his Cabinet. Asking them to prepare for an immediate meeting, he went into the hall to receive the farewells of departing guests. “God bless you, Mr. President.” “The whole country will pray for you, Mr. President.” There were tears on many faces, but he seemed unmoved.
A reporter was struck by Roosevelt’s “curious nervous tension,” so at odds with his usual boyish good cheer. “The cause of it was not at all any sense of the weight of his new position … but the reaction of a strong man to the idea that he was entering a domain where assassins lurked in the shadows and the ground might open at any moment under his feet.”
The Cabinet meeting proceeded behind closed doors. Afterward Roosevelt came out onto the porch to announce that all six officers had agreed to remain in their positions, “at least for the present.” He had similar “assurances” from his two absent Secretaries, John Hay and Lyman Gage. This was true, in the sense that both men had wired messages of support. But until he saw them in Washington, he hardly knew what their “assurances” were worth.
Business completed, Roosevelt put on his borrowed silk hat. “Let’s take a walk,” he said to Elihu Root. “It will do us both good.” A quartet of policemen fell into line behind him on the gravel path. Irritatedly, he shooed them away. “I do not want to establish the precedent of going about guarded.” The policemen touched their helmets, retreated a yard or two, and followed as before. Roosevelt headed for the gate like an escaping bull, but found Delaware Avenue blocked by cordoned-off crowds. He was forced to take leave of Root in the street, and marched back to the mansion in frustration.
Refuge was at least available in the morning room, where Cortelyou had laid a desk with pencils, an exercise book, and a copy of Messages of the Presidents. Turning to a proclamation of President Arthur, Roosevelt drew the rough pad toward him. He began to scrawl his first presidential order, making 19 September a day of official mourning. God in his infinite wisdom … The pencil hovered, then slashed back through the cliché. A great and terrible bereavement, it wrote instead, has come upon our nation. Roosevelt tried to make the last words more personal: has befallen our people. The President of the United States has been struck down.… How to describe the act of assassination? A foul and dastardly crime … the basest of all crimes … a crime so dastardly …
He struggled to reconcile his love of strong language with the need for dignified expression. It had always been thus with him: conflict between belligerence and civilized restraint, between animal brutality and human decency, between pessimism and optimism, or, as his perceptive friend Owen Wister put it, “between what he knew, and his wish not to know it.” In youth, the aggressive impulse had predominated, but in maturity he had strengthened himself to a state of containment, like a volcano sheathed in hardened lava. For three years there had been no serious fissures. At any rate, his struggle today was brief. The sentences began to shape themselves into statesmanlike prose, and soon the pencil was moving confidently. Now, therefore I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States …
AT FOUR O’CLOCK, word came that Mark Hanna’s carriage was outside. Roosevelt hurried onto the porch and watched the old man descend, trembling on a cane. Hanna was clearly broken by the death of his adored “William.” He was pallid and stooped, and his piggy feet dragged in the gravel. “The Senator,” a reporter scribbled, “seems to have aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours.” With spontaneous grace, Roosevelt ran down to meet him, hand outstretched. Hanna was surprised and moved. Shifting his soft white hat and cane, he returned the gesture.