Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [365]
37 “It is almost” Qu. in Literary Digest, 10 May 1902. General Adna R. Chaffee cabled the War Department on 5 May to say that Smith was “of unsound mind” (ER). Root’s final list of officers convicted or being disciplined for cruelty numbered as many as 350. Root to Henry Cabot Lodge, 4 May 1902 (ER). Although the Philippine insurrection was de facto President McKinley’s war, TR was at least partly responsible for the severity of its prosecution in the early months of his Administration. After the massacre at Balangiga (26–27 Sept. 1901), he had ordered General Chaffee to use “the most stern measures to pacify Samar” (Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation,” 206–7, 219). Like Root, TR was disposed to be tolerant of even culpable United States soldiers. When, e.g., Lieutenant Preston Brown was sentenced by a military court to dismissal and five years’ hard labor for killing a prisoner, TR commuted the sentence to loss of half pay for nine months, plus a slight downgrading of his place on the promotion list. Ibid., 218; 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902, S. Doc. 205, pt. 1, 42–49.
38 Roosevelt again TR, Letters, vol. 3, 313–14; William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 1 Mar. 1902; Philadelphia North American, 5 May 1902; H. Welsh to Carl Schurz, 30 Apr. 1902 (CS).
39 Like all conservatives Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 503; Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 11 July 1902 (ER); Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 32; Taylor, Philippine Insurrection, vol. 3, 358–59; Rudyard Kipling in McClure’s, Feb. 1899.
40 He may be a Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 1, 7.
41 Filipinos, Taft wrote Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 44–46. See also TR, Letters, vol. 3, 276, for Taft attempting to restrain the President on self-determination for Filipinos.
42 These sentiments, while See, e.g., Woodrow Wilson in Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1901: Filipinos were but “children” in “matters of government and justice.” They should remain “in tutelage” to the United States, and so learn “the discipline of the law.” TR’s own prepresidential epithets regarding Filipinos, turned to embarrass him when Senator Edward Carmack of Tennessee wrote them into the record: “Savages, barbarians, wild and ignorant, Apaches, Sioux” (Congressional Record, 57 Cong., 1 sess., 1901, vol. 35, pt. 1, 4673).
43 THE PRESIDENT REMAINED David Healy, The United States in Cuba: 1898–1902 (Madison, 1963), 202–3; Washington Evening Star, 29 Apr. 1902. The rumors regarding the beef trust proved accurate. Because of rising food prices, Knox’s injunction, announced in May, won further popular support for the Administration, and further recriminations from corporate conservatives. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 53; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 368; Allan Nevins, ed., Selected Writings of Abram S. Hewitt (Port Washington, N.Y., 1965 [1937]), 402.
44 “Theodore is a” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 378.
45 On 24 April TR, Letters, vol. 3, 242. See Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902, on the changeover.
46 The little white Clips in Presidential scrapbook (TRP); The Washington Post, 26 Apr. 1902. USS Dolphin is listed in Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1901 as a 240-foot cruiser (sixth class), commissioned in 1884.
47 The appointments of Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 48; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 242; Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902. Long had noticed within weeks of TR’s arrival that the President intended to take personal charge of Navy policy.
48 “big navy man” Paul T. Heffron, “William H. Moody,” in Paolo E. Coletta, ed., American Secretaries of the Navy (Annapolis, 1980), vol. 1, 464. Moody’s service as Secretary began on 1 May 1902.
49 SPRING CAME TO Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 376; Thomas Fleming, Around the Capitol (New York, 1902), 112; TR to Joel Chandler Harris, 9 June 1902 (TRP). TR and EKR were regularly seen dining alfresco on the White House portico. Their “pleasant Continental habit of eating in the open air” soon became the vogue in Washington. New York World, 26 Oct. 1902.
50 An especial closeness Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 237; Rep. James Slayden in New York World,