Theodore Roosevelt [108]
reached New York. All the way up the harbor from Sandy Hook, he was escorted by a vast concourse of vessels, large and small, tugs, steamboats, and battleships. At the Narrows, Fort Wadsworth greeted him with the Presidential salute of twenty-one guns. The revenue-cutter, Androscoggin, took him from the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, on which he had crossed the ocean, and landed him at the Battery. There an immense multitude awaited him. Mayor Gaynor bade him welcome, to which he replied briefly in affectionate words to his fellow countrymen. Then began a triumphal procession up Broadway, and up Fifth Avenue, surpassing any other which New York had seen. No other person in America had ever been so welcomed. The million or more who shouted and cheered and waved, were proud of him because of his great reception in Europe, but they admired him still more for his imperishable work at home, and loved him most of all, because they knew him as their friend and fellow, Theodore Roosevelt, their ideal American. A group of Rough Riders and two regiments of Spanish War Veterans formed his immediate escort, than whom none could have pleased him better.
His head was not turned, but his heart must have overflowed with gratitude.
Later, when the crowds had dispersed, he went into a bookstore, and some one in the street having recognized him, the word passed, and a great crowd cheered him as he came out. Telling his sister of the occurrence, he said, "And they soon will be throwing rotten apples at me!"
CHAPTER XXI. WHICH WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
Did those words of Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor--humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs--or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty four hours before he perceived, on talking with his friends, that the Republican Party during his absence had drifted far from the course he had charted. "His policies" had vanished with his control, and the men who now managed the Administration and the party regarded him, not merely with suspicion, but with aversion.
To tell the story of this conflict is the disagreeable duty of the historian of. that period, especially if he have friends and acquaintances on both sides of the feud. There are some facts not yet known; there are others which must be touched upon very delicately if at all; and, in the main, so much of the episode grew out of personal likes and dislikes that it is hard to base one's account of it on documents. In trying to get at the truth, I have been puzzled by the point-blank contradictions of antagonistic witnesses, whose veracity has not been questioned. Equally perplexing are the lapses of memory in cases where I happen to have seen letters or documents written at the time and giving real facts. The country would assuredly have been alarmed if it had suspected that, during the years from 1909 to 1912, the statesmen who had charge of it, were as liable to attacks of amnesia as they proved to be later.
The head and front of the quarrel which wrecked the Republican Party must be sought in Roosevelt's thoroughly patriotic desire to have a successor who should carry on the principles which he had fought for and had embodied in national laws during the nearly eight years of his Presidency. He felt more passionately than anybody else the need of continuing the work he had begun, not because it was his work, but because on it alone, as he thought, the reconciliation between Capital and Labor in the United States could be brought about, and the impending war of classes could be prevented. So he chose Judge Taft as the person who, he believed, would follow his lead in this undertaking. But the experience of a hundred and ten years, since Washington was succeeded by John Adams, might have taught him that no President can quite reproduce the qualities of his predecessor and that the establishment of a Presidential dynasty
His head was not turned, but his heart must have overflowed with gratitude.
Later, when the crowds had dispersed, he went into a bookstore, and some one in the street having recognized him, the word passed, and a great crowd cheered him as he came out. Telling his sister of the occurrence, he said, "And they soon will be throwing rotten apples at me!"
CHAPTER XXI. WHICH WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
Did those words of Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor--humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs--or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty four hours before he perceived, on talking with his friends, that the Republican Party during his absence had drifted far from the course he had charted. "His policies" had vanished with his control, and the men who now managed the Administration and the party regarded him, not merely with suspicion, but with aversion.
To tell the story of this conflict is the disagreeable duty of the historian of. that period, especially if he have friends and acquaintances on both sides of the feud. There are some facts not yet known; there are others which must be touched upon very delicately if at all; and, in the main, so much of the episode grew out of personal likes and dislikes that it is hard to base one's account of it on documents. In trying to get at the truth, I have been puzzled by the point-blank contradictions of antagonistic witnesses, whose veracity has not been questioned. Equally perplexing are the lapses of memory in cases where I happen to have seen letters or documents written at the time and giving real facts. The country would assuredly have been alarmed if it had suspected that, during the years from 1909 to 1912, the statesmen who had charge of it, were as liable to attacks of amnesia as they proved to be later.
The head and front of the quarrel which wrecked the Republican Party must be sought in Roosevelt's thoroughly patriotic desire to have a successor who should carry on the principles which he had fought for and had embodied in national laws during the nearly eight years of his Presidency. He felt more passionately than anybody else the need of continuing the work he had begun, not because it was his work, but because on it alone, as he thought, the reconciliation between Capital and Labor in the United States could be brought about, and the impending war of classes could be prevented. So he chose Judge Taft as the person who, he believed, would follow his lead in this undertaking. But the experience of a hundred and ten years, since Washington was succeeded by John Adams, might have taught him that no President can quite reproduce the qualities of his predecessor and that the establishment of a Presidential dynasty