Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [330]
“I COULD NOT ASK A FINER CONCLUDING SCENE FOR MY ADMINISTRATIONS.”
The Great White Fleet returns from its round-the-world trip, 22 February 1909 (photo credit 32.2)
EPILOGUE
4 March 1909
AT A TIME when he was still able to joke about his future, William Howard Taft used to say, “It will be a cold day when I go into the White House.”
He was right, although he could not have imagined how cold. His Inauguration was the most arctic any Washingtonian could remember. For many of the visitors whose trains managed to scrabble into town, along rails carbuncled with rock-hard ice, it was the worst weather they had known in their lives. A brutal west wind drove in billows of snow. Branchloads of ice crashed from trees, some bringing down tangled decorations. Ice sheaths snapped telephone and telegraph wires, cutting off communications with the rest of the country. Freezing rain sent automobiles careening, carriage horses sliding, and streetcars to unscheduled terminals. And the sullen sky discharged such further quantities of snow that groundsmen gave up any attempt to keep the eastern Capitol plaza clear. At eleven o’clock, spectators were told that the swearing-in ceremony was being transferred indoors. Arriving guests had to find their own way to the Senate chamber, and their own seats when they got there. The rough pine platform built for the swearing-in whitened slowly as it stood abandoned, bare of all bunting.
“I KNEW THERE WOULD BE A BLIZZARD WHEN I WENT OUT.”
Roosevelt and Taft arriving at the Capitol, 4 March 1909 (photo credit epl.1)
“I knew there would be a blizzard when I went out,” said Roosevelt, with grim satisfaction.
He left the White House with Taft at ten o’clock, and they were driven to the Capitol in a twelve-team equipage whipped by flying snow. Pennsylvania Avenue was lined with empty bleachers. A few hundred well-wishers straggled along the sidewalks, walking to keep warm, easily keeping up with the presidential carriage. They cheered occasionally—“Oh, you Teddy!”—but their mood seemed more sad than celebratory. Roosevelt kept dropping his window and waving at them until the snow clouds forced him to raise it again.
Progress was so slow that the procession did not crest Capitol Hill until shortly before eleven. A small, familiar figure awaited Roosevelt and Taft at the foot of the Senate steps: that of Philander Knox, exuding triple dignity as Senator, Secretary of State-designate, and chairman of the congressional welcoming committee. He led the way to the President’s Room, where a final bureaucratic duty awaited Roosevelt: the signing of a pile of bills that had been passed overnight. The Sixtieth Congress and he were going out together. There had been precious little else they had done in tandem over the last couple of years.
Roosevelt’s entire Cabinet was on hand to witness this ritual. Scrupulous to the last, he handed each bill out to the appropriate officer for approval before taking it back and writing his name. Taft, meanwhile, played host to politicians drifting in to pay their respects.
Toward noon, the flow of visitors slowed. Roosevelt finished his work and went to join Taft. They chatted and laughed with much of their old warmth, but a sense of strain was apparent between them. They soon ran out of conversation, and sat side by side in silence until the President got up to bid farewell to a few departing guests.
One of them was Captain Butt, already transferred to Taft’s service, and not entirely happy about it. He choked as he tried to say good-bye.
“It isn’t good-bye,” Roosevelt said to soothe him. “We will meet again, and possibly you will serve me in a more important capacity than the one you have now.”
Butt had little time to ponder this strange remark, for Vice President Fairbanks had come through the door with Sherman and announced that the “march” would begin at once.
The hands of the grandfather clock