Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [201]
“Bulletin,” the clerk read. “Washington, June 22. Secretary of State Hay has sent instructions to Consul General Samuel R. Gummeré, as follows: ‘We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.’ ”
After two days of procedural torpor, the convention reacted galvanically to Hay’s “concise impropriety.” Delegates jumped on their chairs and shouted with delight. “Roosevelt and Hay know what they are doing,” a Kansan exulted. “Our people like courage. We’ll stand for anything those men do.”
Cannon quickly adjourned the session, content to let enthusiasm build for the nominations.
A FEW MINUTES before eleven o’clock on Thursday, 23 June, Frank S. Black, a former Governor of New York, rose to nominate the President. Immensely tall and craggy, he glared through professional spectacles and shook a boyish thatch of hair. “From every nook and corner of the country,” he orated, “rises but a single choice to fill the most exalted office in the world.” Applause welled up, as if echoing his metaphor. Roosevelt had chosen well. Black—his predecessor in Albany—was the party’s best speaker, more poetic than Spooner, less preachy than Hoar.
After some more flights of populist imagery, Black got down to the personal. He reminded the convention that Roosevelt, for all his fame as a soldier, was by nature a writer and scholar. “A profound student of history, he is today the greatest history maker in the world.” However, “the fate of nations is still decided by their wars.” The peace that scholars craved was probably illusory, certainly temporary:
Events are numberless and mighty, and no man can tell which wire runs around the world. The nation basking today in the quiet of contentment and repose may be still on the deadly circuit and tomorrow writhing in the toils of war. This is the time when great figures must be kept in front. If the pressure is great, the material to resist it must be granite and iron. Whether we wish it or not, America is abroad in this world. Her interests are on every street, her name is on every tongue. Those interests so sacred and stupendous should be trusted only to the care of those whose power, skill and courage have been tested and approved. (Applause) And in the man whom you will choose, the highest sense of every nation in the world beholds a man who typifies as no other living American does, the spirit and purposes of the twentieth century.
It was just eleven o’clock. “Gentlemen,” Black roared, “I nominate for President of the United States … Theodore Roosevelt of New York!”
An elemental din built and built, and for twenty-one minutes the convention rocked in pandemonium. Three sergeants at arms carried in Roosevelt’s portrait, crudely rendered in crayon, yet big enough to blot out most of Mark Hanna’s. They swung the President from side to side, while he gazed with waxy eyes at the party he could at last call his own.
THE REAL ROOSEVELT received the news of his nomination, along with that of Fairbanks for Vice President, and confirmation of Cortelyou as Chairman, just after lunch, as he sat with Edith and Alice on the White House portico. His secretary, Loeb, brought the telegram. The vote had been unanimous, but every state from Alabama to Wyoming had insisted on recording its tally separately, making 994 votes out of 994.
With kisses on his cheeks, he walked happily to his office and met a congratulatory crowd of newsmen. He invited them in for “an Executive session,” and tilted back laughing in his big chair as they fired questions at him. Prophecies, jokes, reminiscences, and indiscretions poured out freely, enchantingly. Roosevelt asked that nothing he said be printed. And nothing ever was.
THAT EVENING, Mr. Perdicaris strolled for the last time on the village green at Tsarradan. His hurt leg had long since healed. Yesterday’s messages, to the effect that “His Chereefian Majesty was most graciously pleased to accede to the demands” of Raisuli, had come too late for quick departure. But the ransom caravan was definitely on its way,