Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [198]
JOHN HAY FORWARDED another demand from Raisuli to Roosevelt on 15 June. The Berber now wanted control of four more Moroccan districts. “You see there is no end to the insolence of this blackguard,” Hay wrote. “I feel that it would be most inexpedient to surrender to him. We have done what we can for Perdicaris.… Who knows what he will ask next?”
The Secretary’s desire to disengage betrayed a secret embarrassment. Researchers at the State Department were beginning to suspect that Mr. Perdicaris might not be an American citizen after all. Hay was anxiously awaiting their final report. How would delegates to the Chicago convention react if the President was found to have bombarded Morocco in behalf of a fraudulent old Greek?
Roosevelt, unsuspecting, asked Hay to explore the possibility of a joint military expedition with Britain and France. “Our position must be to demand the death of those who harm him if he is harmed.”
Hay unhappily consulted with the envoys of both countries. Neither liked Roosevelt’s idea. Jules Jusserand was particularly wary: an American landing at Tangier might threaten France’s own program for total acquisition of Morocco—“pacification,” as it was called on the Quai d’Orsay. He was astute enough to sense that Hay did not really want him to agree.
“The President’s will is, more and more, predominant in public affairs,” Jusserand informed Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé. “And he hesitates less and less to follow it, despite the advice of his Cabinet officers. They, to tell the truth, resist only very weakly.”
Similar complaints came from Chicago, where the Republican National Committee was already meeting. Senator Nathan B. Scott, the acting Chairman, objected bitterly to the way George Cortelyou had been foisted upon the party. Roosevelt, hearing that the Old Guard was plotting a last-minute revolt, responded forcefully, by telegram: PEOPLE MAY AS WELL UNDERSTAND THAT IF I AM TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT THEN CORTELYOU IS TO BE CHAIRMAN…. I WILL NOT HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY. He asked for the names of the intriguers, whereupon their opposition faded, but not their resentment. “Your Uncle Theodore knows how to run things,” Scott growled at a newspaperman.
ON MONDAY, 20 JUNE, the mass of Republican delegates arrived in Chicago. They looked languorous, almost bored under their straw hats. As Henry Cabot Lodge wrote Roosevelt, “Excitement is impossible where there is no contest.”
Old-timers talked nostalgically about the last really fought-out Republican convention, in 1884. Some remembered twenty-five-year-old Theodore Roosevelt of New York, standing on a chair and yelling for a roll call in his high, harsh voice. They remembered drunken roars for James G. Blaine, glee clubs bellowing the praises of President Arthur, and that softest yet most penetrating of noises, the rustle of “boodle,” as Southern blacks sold and resold their votes.
Now, two decades later, Chicago could have been hosting a temperance chautauqua. No bunting brightened the streets. Sidewalks were bare of button-hawkers and barkers: every fakir with anything to sell had decamped to the World’s Fair in St. Louis. Dull clouds scudded over Lake Michigan. The wind felt heavy and wet.
THAT EVENING, Roosevelt dictated a letter to Kermit. “Tomorrow the National Convention meets, and barring a cataclysm I shall be nominated.… How the election will turn out no one can tell.” The possibility, however remote, that he might be beaten caused an access of pride and gratitude for nearly three years of power:
From Panama on down I have been able to accomplish certain things which will be of lasting importance in our history. Incidentally, I don’t think that any family has ever enjoyed the White House more than we have. I was thinking about it just this morning when Mother and I took breakfast on the portico and afterwards walked about the lovely grounds and looked at the stately historic old house. It is a wonderful privilege to have been here and to have been given the chance to do this work, and I should regard myself as having a small