Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [126]
And so, by polite agreement, the Venezuelan crisis faded from history. When Admiral Dewey thoughtlessly boasted that his deployment in the Caribbean had been “an object lesson to the Kaiser,” Roosevelt summoned him to the White House for a reprimand. The sight of the old warrior in medals melted his anger, but he wrote seriously afterward, “Do let me entreat you to say nothing that can be taken hold of by those anxious to foment trouble between ourselves and any foreign power, or who delight in giving the impression that as a nation we are walking about with a chip on our shoulder. We are too big a people to be able to be careless in what we say.”
THE FIFTY-SEVENTH Congress pushed on toward adjournment, shuddering against brakes applied by four determined Senators. John Tyler Morgan fanatically filibustered the Panama Canal Treaty; Quay filibustered a banking bill, to punish Aldrich for filibustering him; and Benjamin Tillman filibustered everything in sight.
Roosevelt’s “tyrannical and unconstitutional” attempts at race reform provided the big Southerner with plenty of material for harangues (one eye fiery beneath black brows, the other horribly missing; fists flailing from worn sleeves, as his voice screeched higher and higher). He had managed to bully the Senate Commerce Committee into a negative report on Dr. Crum, and threatened social violence if the full Senate overrode it: “We still have guns and ropes in the South.”
Of that Roosevelt was aware. But he also understood the tendency of most lawmakers to exaggerate their emotions:
To the Secretary of War:
This [enclosure] is austerely called to your attention by the President, who would like a full and detailed explanation, if possible with interjectional musical accompaniment, about the iniquity of making a promotion for the senior Senator from Maine and refusing to make one for the junior Senator.
Especial attention is directed to the pathos of the concluding sentence of the junior Senator’s letter. An early and inaccurate report is requested.
T.R.
March began, and the big clock in the upper chamber ticked away the last sixty hours of the session. Matters more urgent than patronage backed up against continuing filibusters: the unratified Cuban and Colombian treaties, and several vital spending measures, including the four-battleships bill. Soothsayers predicted a last-minute rush of legislation on the morning of the fourth. Surely not even “Pitchfork Ben” would allow the government to go bankrupt at noon.
Treaties were another matter. Roosevelt saw now that the Senate was cravenly going to let the clock postpone any vote on Cuban reciprocity until the next Congress. So he acted while he still had time. “I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States to convene at the Capitol in the city of Washington, on the fifth day of March at 12 o’clock noon.”
He had hardly finished dictating when complaints about his “precipitous and unnecessary action” resounded in the upper chamber. Evidently he had acted just in time. He responded by threatening to call back the House of Representatives as well, if funds were not voted in support of his naval buildup. If that meant he had to postpone