Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [204]
Even at this moment, Parker could not express his emotions. “No,” he said, “I will reserve anything I have to say until I am officially notified.”
He stepped onto the porch, tall, cold, glowing with health, clutching the achievement of his life in his hand. Inside, breakfast awaited him, and the Democratic newspapers. They were full of disapproving accounts of Bryan’s currency-plank abandonment. One especially angry editorial caught his eye:
At this hour of writing, before the taking of the ballot, we are assuming the nomination of Judge Parker. He must at once declare, sound-money Democrats will demand that he declare, that the gold monetary standard, as now established by law, is permanent.… Judge Parker must understand that, making his canvass on this platform without a public profession of his personal belief, … he cannot expect to receive the support and votes of the sound-money Democrats of the East. They will desert him by the tens of thousands.… Better another term of Roosevelt, better Roosevelt indefinitely, than one term of a President incapable of yielding in the slightest degree to the dangerous demands of a party which confesses itself to be still insane and unsafe.
Parker ate and drank and thought, then changed into riding clothes and went out alone on horseback. Shortly before noon he returned, summoned his secretary, and dictated a telegram to William F. Sheehan, leader of the New York delegation at St. Louis.
The telegram was so blunt that Western Union called for verification. It reached the convention hall just as delegates were assembling to nominate a vice-presidential candidate. Sheehan instantly suppressed it, but he and Hill could not hide their panic, and a wave of rumor swept the Coliseum. Had Judge Parker refused to run? “The Democratic party,” Senator Tillman shouted, “can always be relied on to make a damn fool of itself at the critical time.”
After four hours, the telegram was finally read aloud from the rostrum:
I REGARD THE GOLD STANDARD AS FIRMLY AND IRREVOCABLY ESTABLISHED, AND SHALL ACT ACCORDINGLY IF THE ACTION OF THE CONVENTION SHALL BE RATIFIED BY THE PEOPLE. AS THE PLATFORM IS SILENT ON THE SUBJECT, MY VIEW SHOULD BE MADE KNOWN TO THE CONVENTION, AND IF IT IS PROVED TO BE UNSATISFACTORY TO THE MAJORITY, I REQUEST YOU TO DECLINE THE NOMINATION BEFORE ADJOURNMENT.
ALTON PARKER
Parker’s words were rather less surprising than his tone, which came as a cold slap in the convention’s hot, weary face. Sheehan and other leaders worked desperately to assure delegates that the judge meant no “dictation.” He was just merely behaving like a man “of rectitude and honor.” There was no move to withdraw the nomination, but the rest of the proceedings were anticlimactic. An eighty-year-old multimillionaire, Henry G. Davis of West Virginia, was endorsed for Vice President, in hopes that he might contribute to the campaign. Then a thousand uninspired Democrats headed for their hotel rooms.
ROOSEVELT WAS FULL of admiration for Parker’s telegram. “It was a bold and skillful move,” he wrote Henry Cabot Lodge. He doubted that the judge had any personal principles on the subject of gold. In waiting until the last minute to instruct the convention, Parker had “become a very formidable candidate and opponent.”
Professionals in both parties were similarly impressed. As Roosevelt predicted, the New York Evening Post endorsed Parker in near-adulatory terms. Other New York newspapers to support him were the Times, Herald, World, and Staats-Zeitung. The Brooklyn Eagle, Boston Herald, Detroit Free Press, Milwaukee Journal, and—worryingly—the Springfield Republican followed suit. Every one had supported McKinley in 1900.
Time would tell if the Parker wave represented a temporary swell, or some real shifting of the political current.