Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [139]
Fortunately for his rest, a telegram dispatched that afternoon from Cleveland did not reach him until the next morning:
THE ISSUE WHICH HAS BEEN FORCED ON ME IN THE MATTER OF OUR STATE CONVENTION THIS YEAR ENDORSING YOU FOR THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION NEXT YEAR HAS COME IN A WAY WHICH MAKES IT NECESSARY FOR ME TO OPPOSE SUCH A RESOLUTION. WHEN YOU KNOW ALL THE FACTS I AM SURE YOU WILL APPROVE MY COURSE.
M. A. HANNA
Roosevelt, fatigue forgotten, pondered this telegram excitedly as his train wound east to Walla Walla. He felt in the mood for “a knockdown and dragout fight with Hanna and the whole Wall Street crowd.” Fate had placed a big political stick in his hands.
Fate—or Joseph B. Foraker. Ohio’s wily, irascible senior Senator had for years been plotting to wrest control of the state Republican Party from Hanna. That organization was about to have its annual convention, and Foraker had issued a surprise demand that the state party endorse Theodore Roosevelt for President, one year early. This put Hanna in the impossible position of having to deny the resolution without seeming to be against the President’s nomination. Alternatively, if he confirmed it, he would seem to be engineering an endorsement for himself. Either way, he stood to lose presidential favor, while Foraker would gain power and prestige—and a possible chance at the GOP nomination in 1908.
Roosevelt saw an irresistible chance to play one Senator off the other. Hanna was clearly appealing for help. He was not in good health. If Wall Street was not so determined to have “somebody like Hanna” in the White House, he would surely have disclaimed any presidential ambition whatsoever. Roosevelt dictated a curtly formal reply, and released it to the press at Walla Walla:
YOUR TELEGRAM RECEIVED. I HAVE NOT ASKED ANY MAN FOR HIS SUPPORT. I HAVE HAD NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH RAISING THE ISSUE. INASMUCH AS IT HAS BEEN RAISED OF COURSE THOSE WHO FAVOR MY ADMINISTRATION AND MY NOMINATION WILL FAVOR ENDORSING BOTH AND THOSE WHO DO NOT WILL OPPOSE.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Hanna had no choice but to wire back that “in view of the sentiment expressed” he would not after all oppose the resolution.
Thus the President added a fifteenth endorsement to the list of states already committed to him, forced neutrality upon Hanna, gratified Foraker, and banished his own “nerve-weariness.” Benisonlike, the lilacs and locusts of Walla Walla enveloped him in their fragrance. “This whole incident,” he wrote to Lodge, “has entirely revived me.”
ROOSEVELT ARRIVED AT BUTTE, Montana, on 27 May to find that mining city divided, like the Ohio GOP, into two warring political factions. Neither bore much relation to national party lines, and both were eager to welcome him. He saw at once that the crowd “was filled with whooping enthusiasm and every kind of whiskey,” and that a riot might ensue if either camp felt slighted. Modeling his conduct on that of Mr. Pickwick at Eatanswill, he presented an equable face to both Buffs and Blues, addressing the former in the afternoon and the latter in the evening. He solved the problem of apportioning dinner tickets by asking Butte’s enormous top-hatted mayor to issue exactly one hundred seats on a fifty-fifty basis. Satisfied, the factions respectively presented him with a silvered copper vase and a silver loving cup. Roosevelt was touched by a third gift, a pair of silver scales from Butte’s black minority. “This,” he said, lifting it delicately aloft, “comes in the shape I appreciate—the scales of justice held even.”
He waited until