Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [456]
Historical Note: TR’s review (and strong-arming of Scribner’s into acquiring and republishing The Children of the Night) proved something of an embarrassment to him. He was chastised by outraged literary critics for trespassing on their territory and neglecting affairs of state. Robinson’s sales and professional reputation were not much enhanced. The poet spent the next four years doing nothing at the Customs House except reading the newspaper every morning. Relieved of financial worry, he continued to drink, and wrote hardly any verse. Robinson was of the poetic ilk that finds inspiration in privation. In 1910, he dedicated one of his finest collections, The Town Down the River, to TR, and went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes. When Robinson lay dying of cancer in 1935, Kermit Roosevelt came regularly to sit with him.
44 Tensions were high Josephus Daniels, Editor in Politics (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941), 494–95; speech typescript, 19 Oct. 1905 (TRP).
45 The floors were Clarence Martin, A Glimpse of the Past: The History of Bulloch Hall (Roswell, Ga., 1987), 11.
46 “It is my very” Speech carbon, 20 Oct. 1905 (TRB). See also John Allen Gable, “My Blood Is Half Southern: President Theodore Roosevelt’s Speeches in Roswell and Atlanta, Georgia on October 20, 1905,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 17.4 (1991).
47 The farther south Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 144; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Theodore Roosevelt in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 3.3 (1973).
48 He avoided Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 238; TR on 12 Oct. 1905, qu. in Gable, “My Blood Is Half Southern.” See also Ziglar, “Decline of Lynching in America.” TR proceeded to New Orleans, whence he sailed for Washington on the USS West Virginia, celebrating his forty-seventh birthday at sea.
49 ROOSEVELT WAS SO M. A. De Wolfe Howe, James Ford Rhodes: American Historian (New York, 1929), 119, citing Rhodes’s own memo of the evening.
50 “two hundred thousand” Rendered as digits in ibid., 120.
51 (At least Alice) Howe, James Ford Rhodes, 120–21. Alice’s engagement was announced on 13 Dec. 1905. Stacy A. Rozek, “ ‘The First Daughter of the Land’: Alice Roosevelt as Presidential Celebrity, 1902–1903,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 19.1 (1989).
52 l’outrance qui Bazalgette, Théodore Roosevelt, 24. See the collection of imprecations amassed by Wagenknecht in Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt, 119–29.
Historical Note: As TR and Taft sat together on the night of 16 November 1905, Japanese guards surrounded the imperial palace in Seoul, Korea. Emperor Kojong capitulated to them. Then, in Philip Jessup’s words, “the Korean Legation in Washington transferred its archives to that of Japan, and Korea passed out of the family of nations.” Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 6.
53 A SURPRISE RESULT Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1919), 96; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 70–71.
54 “We are at this moment” McClure’s, Nov. 1905 (emphasis added).
55 “Out of hopelessness” Ibid.
56 “In our industrial” TR, Works, vol. 17, 315–16.
57 The Department of Justice Ibid., 318.
58 the law should be positive In calling for the enactment of his program, TR used the phrase affirmative action. Ibid.
59 Its prime focus Ibid., 322.
60 The President kept Ibid., 321.
61 To Aldrich, Depew Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1561.
CHAPTER 26: THE TREASON OF THE SENATE
1 But now whin “Mr. Dooley” qu. in Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 87.
2 “YOU AND I” George Baer to Stephen B. Elkins, ca. Nov. 1905, memo in PCK.
3 The railroads were weary Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 123–24; Oscar D. Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins (Pittsburgh, 1955), 266–67. For the complex (and ultimately inconclusive) story of TR’s previous “trial run” at tariff and railroad rate reform in 1904–1905, see Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Legislative Process,” and