Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [223]
“THE WHOLE SCENE … WAS ONE OF CONSTANT MOVEMENT.”
Roosevelt’s Inauguration, 4 March 1905 (photo credit 23.1)
“My fellow citizens, no people on earth … with gratitude to the Giver of Good … under a free government … things of the body and the things of the soul … justice … power …” The wind snatched at his shouted phrases, now muffling them, now hurling them at one group of listeners, while others heard not a word.
Roosevelt read with difficulty, his silk pince-nez ribbon slapping the side of his face. Nobody, with the exception of his wife and Dr. Rixey, knew that he was losing sight in his left eye—the legacy of a recent boxing blow. He was obliged to keep a tight grasp on his cards with both hands. Close observers noticed a strange, heavy gold ring on his left third finger. It contained a strand of Abraham Lincoln’s hair. John Hay had given it to him with a request that he wear it when he was sworn in: “You are one of the men who most thoroughly understand and appreciate Lincoln.”
Hay could not have made a gesture more certain to move Roosevelt, whose worship of the Emancipator was admixed with pride that Theodore Senior had once been an habitué of Lincoln’s White House—indeed, had met the young John Hay there. The effect of the gift was to imbue the President, at least temporarily, with a Lincolnesque devotion to the Constitution as “a document which put human rights above property rights.”
Unremarked in Roosevelt’s letter of thanks to Hay (which had expressed “love” for the first time in his male, non-family correspondence) was the fact that some sort of valediction was implied: if not from President to President, then at least from the man who had served them both, in youth and age, and was now palpably ceding his last responsibility as Secretary of State. Roosevelt had declined Hay’s pro forma resignation, but clearly any settlement of the Russo-Japanese War was going to have to be put into younger, stronger hands—hands calmed, one hoped, by this precious token of statesmanship.
“Much has been given us,” the President bellowed, leaning forward into the wind, “and much will rightfully be expected of us.”
THE LENGTH OF HIS Inaugural Address was in reverse proportion to the size of those expectations. He spoke for no more than six minutes, employed few rhetorical flourishes, and said nothing of substance. Thousands of spectators cheered with some bewilderment, not understanding that the President, with a new Senate convening in special session and foreign ministries looking to him to mediate the Russo-Japanese War, was deliberately presenting as bland a public face as possible.
Afterward, Roosevelt joked to Henry Cabot Lodge, “Did you see Bacon turn pale when he heard me swear to uphold the Constitution?” Senator Augustus Bacon of Georgia, a strict constructionist, overheard this remark, as intended. “On the contrary, Mr. President, I never felt so relieved in my life.”
Count Cassini led the diplomatic corps offstage, his chest virtually armor-plated with gold and silver orders. A commensurate glittering defensiveness had begun to characterize St. Petersburg’s attitude toward any peace overture that might be construed as further meddling by the United States in Russian affairs. So impregnable was this breastwork that John Hay could not answer when Minister Takahira asked if Cassini believed external peace might help Russia achieve internal peace, or vice versa.
At two o’clock, the President entertained two hundred guests at lunch in the White House, while thirty-five thousand Rough Riders, Negro Republicans, Harvard alumni, anthracite miners, Indians (Chief Geronimo prominent in war paint and feathers), cowboys, Grand Army veterans, ward heelers, Filipino scouts, Oyster Bay neighbors, and bandsmen massed at the eastern end of