Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [6]
AT TWO MINUTES before eight, the train stopped briefly at Albany. Loeb emerged to tell waiting reporters that Roosevelt was “very tired,” and would have no statement to make until after his inauguration. Breakfast was whisked aboard, along with the morning newspapers. Within five minutes, the special was on its way again, accelerating to sixty miles an hour.
Roosevelt, sucking down some badly needed coffee, had as much to learn from DEATH EXTRA dispatches as millions of other Americans that morning. The President’s last hours were chronicled in poignant detail. Here was Senator Mark Hanna, who loved McKinley like a brother, dropping onto gouty knees and pleading, “William, William, speak to me!” Here were doctors squirting stimulants into the dying man’s heart, to shock him into momentary recognition of his wife. And here, framed in black, were the President’s last words, pious enough to heave all the bosoms in Christendom: “Nearer, my God to Thee … His will be done!”
In rude contrast, other columns celebrated the “Tremendous Energy,” “Superb Health,” and “Strenuous Life” of McKinley’s successor. Roosevelt did not need to read these, nor the potted biographies listing his many qualifications for office. He was more interested in analyses of his political situation.
The New York World announced that he had already “definitely fixed in his mind the nomination for 1904.” His old foe Senator Hanna, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, would have to be gotten out of the way somehow. The newspaper was silent as to Roosevelt’s chances of election. No Vice President succeeding to the presidency through death had yet won another term in his own right.
The New York Press predicted that John Hay would resign as Secretary of State, followed by Treasury Secretary Lyman J. Gage. Roosevelt did not like this forecast. No matter how genuine the desire of both Secretaries—ailing, old, and bereaved—to retire, he could not afford to have them decamp before he reached the White House. It would look like a vote of no confidence. There might be serious repercussions on Wall Street, where Hay was seen as an aggressive promoter of American commercial interests abroad, and Gage as guardian of Republicanism’s holiest grail, the protective tariff.
A remarkable consensus of Democratic and Republican editorial writers held that Roosevelt would be as “conservative” as McKinley. The very unanimity of this opinion seemed contrived, as if to soothe a nervous stock market. The financial pages reported that “Severe Shocks,” “Feverish Trading,” and “Heavy Declines” had hit Wall Street on Friday, when the Gold Dollar President began to die. Roosevelt knew little about money—it was one of the few subjects that bored him—but even he could see that one false move this weekend might bring about a real panic on Monday.
AS THE NEWS of McKinley’s death flashed around the world, members of Roosevelt’s circle of acquaintance could reflect with grim satisfaction on the many times they had predicted the presidency for him. In Dresden, his German tutor claimed first honors. “He will surely one day be a great professor,” she remembered telling his mother. “Or who knows, he may even become President of the United States.”
In Albany, an old girlfriend mused on the “strange prophetic quality in Theodore.” Ever since her first crush on him, Fanny Parsons had felt a “mystical” certainty that he would lead his country to world power. In Dickinson, North Dakota, the editor of a cowboy newspaper recalled the young Roosevelt’s complete lack of surprise at being told that he was destined for the White House. In Indianapolis, Benjamin Harrison’s son reread a memo by the late President: “Should Mr. Roosevelt aspire to become President of the United States, I believe that he will be successful.” In London, a Member of Parliament checked his diary entry for the day