Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [438]
TR saw the incident as a perfect opportunity to settle several longstanding issues between the United States and the Ottoman Empire, including indifference of local officials toward the security of Christian diplomats, and discrimination and harassment suffered by American missionaries. The warships would therefore stay in Turkish waters for as long as it took to clear up such issues. On 3 Sept., Hay reported that he had told the Turkish minister “that if he does not want our ships in Turkish waters, it is very easy to cause them to depart.” The Sultan had only to settle “two or three matters which have dragged too long.” However, Hay’s prediction that this would take only “a few days” was not quite accurate. While satisfactory action regarding the shooting incident was taken by mid-Sept. (thanks to the appointment of a new governor in Beirut), the Ottoman government frustratingly refused to recognize that the Squadron’s presence was anything other than a “friendly visit.” However, TR, Hay, and Leishman continued to hope that the United States naval presence in Turkish waters would eventually persuade the Sublime Porte to deal with the relevant issues. While some minor claims were settled in Oct., nothing more substantive came about, and finally, on 1 Feb. 1904, the Squadron left Beirut (Foreign Relations 1904, 774; Still, American Sea Power, 157–64; Venzon, “Gunboat Diplomacy,” 27, 30–31). For an exhaustive treatment of both the Turkish and Moroccan crises of 1903–1904, see also Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans.”
46 the Sublime Porte The phrase Sublime Porte was used in 1904 much as the Kremlin is used today. It derived from the gate that gave access to Ottoman departments of state in Constantinople.
47 He demanded Foreign Relations 1904, 749. There is a sketch of Leishman in Lewis Einstein’s memoir, A Diplomat Looks Back (New Haven, 1968), 30; see also Hourihan, “Roosevelt and the Sultans,” passim.
48 Their high hopes Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of Parker’s notification ceremony is based on news clips that the judge himself pasted into his scrapbook, and on photographs in the Evening Mail Illustrated Sunday Magazine, 20 Aug. 1904 (ABP).
49 Parker received Excerpts from Parker’s speech are printed in Harbaugh, “Election of 1904,” 2022–23. Ironically, the cameraman was working for a moving-pictures company.
50 AFTERWARD, LOYAL Public Opinion, 18 Aug. 1904; Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 393–94; Washington Evening Star, 11 Aug. 1904.
51 Cortelyou’s textbook Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 397–400, 487–89; Republican Campaign Textbook (New York, 1904), passim.
52 The Democratic textbook Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 395, 397–400; Schlesinger and Israel, History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 3, 1986.
53 Neither party Wheaton, “Genius and the Jurist,” 399. The best that could be said about lynchings in 1904 was that the year’s total of eighty-six was down from 104 in 1903. Ziglar, “Decline of Lynching in America.”
54 the most eagerly awaited Merrill, Republican Command, 168. See, e.g., the Sun’s 3 Aug. 1904 comment on TR’s labor policies: “He is on the side of the men who are every day seeking to overthrow the Constitution.” TR was greatly annoyed by this accusation. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 876–77.
55 WITHIN DAYS OF Foreign Relations 1904, 826; Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 464; Still, American Sea Power, 158–64. See also William J. Hourihan, “The Big Stick in Turkey: American Diplomacy and Naval Operations Against the Ottoman Empire, 1903–1904,” Naval War College Review 34.5 (Sept.–Oct. 1981).
56 Roosevelt hastened TR, Letters, vol. 4, 885, 891; “I am well aware that I have no right to make war,” he wrote on 8 Aug., “and have not the dimmest or remotest intention of doing so.”
57 Thanks to Hay’s TR, Letters, vol. 4, 890; Literary Digest, 20 Aug. 1904.
58 For almost a month Review of Reviews, Oct. 1904; The Cambridge Modern History (New York, 1934), vol. 12, 590–91.
59 Farther inland Review of Reviews, Oct. 1904; Cambridge