Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [359]
57 Charles Emory Smith Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 120; Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 42.
58 It did not escape Merrill, Republican Command, 34. See Fowler, John Coit Spooner, chap. 10 on the LaFollette insurgency in Wisconsin—a phenomenon that was to have enormous, if delayed, consequences for TR’s political career.
59 There was further Literary Digest, 28 Dec. 1901; Blum, Republican Roosevelt, 43; Merrill, Republican Command, 103–5. Attrition among Hanna-backed officeholders in the Postal Service began almost immediately. See the long list of new appointments in The Washington Post, 28 Jan. 1902.
60 Yet another anti-Hanna James A. Kehl, Boss Rule in the Gilded Age: Matt Quay of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, 1955), 236; New York Evening Post, 10 Dec. 1901; L. Clarke Davis to John Hay, 10 Dec. 1901 (JH).
61 ONE UNSEEMLY INCIDENT L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay, ca. 24 Dec. 1901 (copy in HKB).
62 Roosevelt had developed Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 611; James B. Martin, “The Irresistible Force and the Immovable Object: Theodore Roosevelt and Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, spring 1987. There is a comic description in Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary of General Miles “passing in review” before two observers and nearly blinding them with his effulgence. See the definition of story, example 3.
63 What angered Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 3, 98, 241; Edward Ranson, “Nelson A. Miles as Commanding General, 1895–1903,” Military Affairs 29.4 (1966).
64 Secrets embarrassing For more detail, see Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 243ff. In Root’s later words, Miles was “a real difficulty, and must … be eliminated.” To Philip Jessup, 26 Oct. 1934 (PCJ).
65 Miles played into Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 248. This was the famous Samson-Schley dispute. For details, see Edward L. Beach, The United States Navy: 200 Years (New York, 1986), 361–68.
66 His voice rose Annie Riley Hale, Bull Moose Trails (privately printed, 1912), 2–4, qu. two eyewitnesses. Ranson, “Nelson A. Miles,” prints a milder version of this interview. But all contemporary accounts have TR shouting loud enough to be heard outside the White House lawn. “Poor old Miles … it was a brutal thing” (L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay, ca. 24 Dec. 1901 [copy in HKB]).
67 “You have the” Isabel McKenna Duffield, Washington in the Nineties (San Francisco, 1929), 48; The Army and Navy Register, 4 Jan. 1902.
68 PURGED, PERHAPS William Marion Reedy in St. Louis Mirror, 19 Dec. 1901. An extra contribution to TR’s bonhomie at this time might have been the successful appearance, in Britain, of his latest scholarly work, a chapter on the War of 1812 in the sixth volume of William Laird Clowes’s The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present (London, 1901). A lengthy review in The Atheneum, 28 Dec. 1901, rated it even higher than his “excellent” Naval War of 1812 (New York, 1882). “Twenty years ago he was remarkably fair and even-minded; now he writes from the standpoint of scientific neutrality, which conveys no hint of his nationality.… It is not easy to express in measured language our sense of the merit and importance of every line of this admirable essay.”
69 Yet there was P. C. Knox to TR, 11 Dec. 1901 (TRP). See also Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 423.
70 “I should say,” William Marion Reedy in St. Louis Mirror, 19 Dec. 1901.
71 HOWLS OF MIRTH Joan Paterson Kerr, ed., A Bully Father: Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children (New York, 1995), 112–13; White House press release (hand-edited by TR), 25 Dec. 1901 (TRP).
72 The band swung White House press release, 25 Dec. 1901 (TRP).
CHAPTER 5: TURN OF A RISING TIDE
1 Divvle a bit Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 57.
2 WALTER WELLMAN, REPORTER Chicago Record-Herald, 16 Jan. 1902. TR amusedly told Hay that Senator Lodge was “frantic with fury” at press reports that he was “learning to ride, so as to go out with me,” qu. in Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 319.
3 To Wellman and Unidentified news clip, 21 Nov. 1901, Presidential scrapbook