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Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography
Chapter XVIII. Hits And Misses
by Thayer, William Roscoe
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In this sketch I do not attempt to follow chronological order,
except in so far as this is necessary to make clear the
connection between lines of policy, or to define the structural
growth of character. But in Roosevelt's life, as in the lives of
all of us, many events, sometimes important events, occurred and
had much notice at the moment and then faded away and left no
lasting mark. Let us take up a few of these which reveal the
President from different angles.
Since the close of the Civil War the Negro Question had brooded
over the South. The war emancipated the Southern negroes and then
politics came to embitter the question. Partly to gain a
political advantage, partly as some visionaries believed, to do
justice, and partly to punish the Southerners, the Northern
Republicans gave the Southern negroes equal political rights with
the whites. They even handed over the government of some of the
States to wholly incompetent blacks. In self-defense the whites
terrorized the blacks through such secret organizations as the
Ku-Klux Klan, and recovered their ascendancy in governing. Later,
by such specious devices as the Grandfathers' Law, they prevented
most of the blacks from voting, and relieved themselves of the
trouble of maintaining a system of intimidation. The real
difficulty being social and racial, to mix politics with it was
to envenom it.
Roosevelt took a man for what he was without regard to race,
creed, or color. He held that a negro of good manners and
education ought to be treated as a white man would be treated. He
felt keenly the sting of ostracism and he believed that if the
Southern whites would think as he did on this matter; they might
the quicker solve the Negro Question and establish human if not
friendly relations with the blacks.
The negro race at that time had a fine spokesman in Booker T.
Washington, a man who had been born a slave, was educated at the
Hampton Institute, served as teacher there, and then founded the
Tuskegee Institute for teaching negroes. He wisely saw that the
first thing to be done was to teach them trades and farming, by
which they could earn a living and make themselves useful if not
indispensable to the communities in which they settled. He did
not propose to start off to lift his race by letting them imagine
that they could blossom into black Shakespeares and dusky
Raphaels in a single generation. He himself was a man of tact,
prudence, and sagacity with trained intelligence and a natural
gift of speaking.
To him President Roosevelt turned for some suggestions as to
appointing colored persons to offices in the South. It happened
that on the day appointed for a meeting Washington reached the
White House shortly before luncheon time, and that, as they had
not finished their conference, Roosevelt asked him to stay to
luncheon. Washington hesitated politely. Roosevelt insisted. They
lunched, finished their business, and Washington went away. When
this perfectly insignificant fact was published in the papers the
next morning, the South burst into a storm of indignation and
abuse. Some of the Southern journals saw, in what was a mere
routine incident, a terrible portent, foreboding that Roosevelt
planned to put the negroes back to control the Southern whites.
Others alleged the milder motive that he was fishing for negro
votes. The common type of fire-eaters saw in it one of
Roosevelt's unpleasant ways of having fun by insulting the South.
And Southern cartoonists took an ignoble, feeble retaliation by
caricaturing even Mrs. Roosevelt.
The President did not reply publicly. As his invitation to Booker
Washington was wholly unpremeditated, he was surprised by the
rage which it caused among Southerners. But he was clear-sighted
enough to understand that, without intending it, he had made a
mistake, and this he never repeated. Nothing is more elusive than
racial antipathy, and we need not wonder that a man like
Roosevelt who, although he was most solicitous not to hurt
persons' feelings and usually acted, unless he had proof to the
contrary, on the assumption that everybody was blessed with a
modicum of good-will and common sense, should not always be able
to foresee the strange inconsistencies into which the antipathy
of the white Southerners for the blacks might lead. A little
while later there was a religious gathering in Washington of
Protestant-Episcopal ministers. They had a reception at the White
House. Their own managers made out a list of ministers to be
invited, and among the guests were a negro archdeacon and his
wife, and the negro rector of a Maryland parish. Although these
persons attended the reception, the Southern whites burst into no
frenzy of indignation against the President. Who could steer
safely amid such shoals? * The truth is that no President since
Lincoln had a kindlier feeling towards the South than Roosevelt
had. He often referred proudly to the fact that his mother came
from Georgia, and that his two Bulloch uncles fought in the
Confederate Navy. He wished to bring back complete friendship
between the sections. But he understood the difficulties, as his
explanation to Mr. James Ford Rhodes, the historian, in 1905,
amply proved. He agreed fully as to the folly of the
Congressional scheme of reconstruction based on universal negro
suffrage, but he begged Mr. Rhodes not to forget that the initial
folly lay with the Southerners themselves. The latter said, quite
properly, that he did not wonder that much bitterness still
remained in the breasts of the Southern people about the
carpet-bag negro regime. So it was not to be wondered at that in
the late sixties much bitterness should have remained in the
hearts of the Northerners over the remembrance of the senseless
folly and wickedness of the Southerners in the early sixties.
Roosevelt felt that those persons who most heartily agreed that
as it was the presence of the negro which made the problem, and
that slavery was merely the worst possible method of solving it,
we must therefore hold up to reprobation, as guilty of doing one
of the worst deeds which history records, those men who tried to
break up this Union because they were not allowed to bring
slavery and the negro into our new territory. Every step which
followed, from freeing the slave to enfranchising him, was due
only to the North being slowly and reluctantly forced to act by
the South's persistence in its folly and wickedness.
[ Leupp,231.]
The President could not say these things in public because they
tended, when coming from a man in public place, to embitter
people. But Rhodes was writing what Roosevelt hoped would prove
the great permanent history of the period, and he said that it
would be a misfortune for the country, and especially a
misfortune for the South, if they were allowed to confuse right
and wrong in perspective. He added that his difficulties with the
Southern people had come not from the North, but from the South.
He had never done anything that was not for their interest. At
present, he added, they were, as a whole, speaking well of him.
When they would begin again to speak ill, he did not know, but in
either case his duty was equally clear. *
[ February 20, 1905.]
Inviting Booker Washington to the White House was a counsel of
perfection which we must consider one of Roosevelt's misses.
Quite different was the voyage of the Great Fleet, planned by him
and carried out without hitch or delay.
We have seen that from his interest in American naval history,
which began before he left Harvard, he came to take a very deep
interest in the Navy itself, and when he was Assistant Secretary,
he worked night and day to complete its preparation for entering
the Spanish War. From the time he became President, he urged upon
Congress and the country the need of maintaining a fleet adequate
to ward off any dangers to which we might be exposed. In season
and out of season he preached, with the ardor of a propagandist,
his gospel that the Navy is the surest guarantor of peace which
this country possesses. By dint of urging he persuaded Congress
to consent to lay down one battleship of the newest type a year.
Congress was not so much reluctant as indifferent. Even the
lesson of the Spanish War failed to teach the Nation's
law-makers, or the Nation itself, that we must have a Navy to
protect us if we intended to play the role of a World Power. The
American people instinctively dreaded militarism, and so they
resisted consenting to naval or military preparations which might
expand into a great evil such as they saw controlling the nations
of Europe.
Nevertheless Roosevelt, as usual, could not be deterred by
opposition; and when the Hague Conference in 1907, through the
veto of Germany, refused to limit armaments by sea and land, he
warned Congress that one new battleship a year would not do, that
they must build four. Meanwhile, he had pushed to completion a
really formidable American Fleet, which assembled in Hampton
Roads on December 1, 1907, and ten days later weighed anchor for
parts unknown. There were sixteen battleships, commanded by Rear
Admiral Robley D. Evans. Every ship was new, having been built
since the Spanish War. The President and Mrs. Roosevelt and many
notables reviewed the Fleet from the President's yacht Mayflower,
as it passed out to sea. Later, the country learned that the
Fleet was to sail round Cape Horn, to New Zealand and Australia,
up the Pacific to San Francisco, then across to Japan, and so
steer homeward through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the
Mediterranean to Gibraltar, across the Atlantic, and back to
Hampton Roads.
The American public did not quite know what to make of this
dramatic gesture. Roosevelt's critics said, of course, that it
was the first overt display of his combativeness, and that from
this he would go on to create a great army and be ready, at the
slightest provocation, to attack any foreign Power. In fact,
however, the sending of the Great Fleet, which was wholly his
project, was designed by him to strengthen the prospect of peace
for the United States. Through it, he gave a concrete
illustration of his maxim: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick."
The Panama Canal was then half dug and would be finished in a few
years. Distant nations thought of this country as of a land
peopled by dollar-chasers, too absorbed in getting rich to think
of providing defense for themselves. The fame of Dewey's exploit
at Manila Bay had ceased to strike wonder among foreign peoples,
after they heard how small and almost contemptible, judging by
the new standards, the Squadron was by which he won his victory.
Japan, the rising young giant of the Orient, felt already strong
enough to resent any supposed insult from the United States.
Germany had embarked on her wild naval policy of creating a fleet
which would soon be able to cope with that of England.
When, however, the Great Fleet steamed into Yokohama or Bombay or
any other port, it furnished a visible evidence of the power of
the country from which it came. We could not send an army to
furnish the same object-lesson. But the Fleet must have opened
the eyes of any foreign jingoes who supposed that they might send
over with impunity their battleships and attack our ports. In
this way it served directly to discourage war against us, and
accordingly it was a powerful agent for peace. Spectacular the
voyage was without question, like so many of Roosevelt's acts,
but if you analyze it soberly, do you not admit that it was the
one obvious, simple way by which to impress upon an uncertain and
rapacious world the fact that the United States had manpower as
well as money-power, and that they were prepared to repel all
enemies?
On February 22, 1909, the White Fleet steamed back to Hampton
Roads and was received by President Roosevelt. It had performed a
great moral achievement. It had also raised the efficiency of its
officers and the discipline of its crews to the highest point.
There had been no accident; not a scratch on any ship.
"Isn't it magnificent?" said Roosevelt, as he toasted the
Admirals and Captains in the cabin of the Mayflower. "Nobody
after this will forget that the American coast is on the Pacific
as well as on the Atlantic." Ten days later he left the White
House, and after he left, the prestige of the American Fleet was
slowly frittered away.
So important is it, if we would form a just estimate of
Roosevelt, to understand his attitude towards war, that I must
refer to the subject briefly here. One of the most authoritative
observers of international politics now living, a man who has
also had the best opportunity for studying the chief statesmen of
our age, wrote me after Roosevelt's death: "I deeply grieve with
you in the loss of our friend. He was an extraordinary man. The
only point in which I ever found myself seriously differing from
him was in the value he set upon war. He did not seem to realize
how great an evil it is, and in how many ways, fascinated as he
was by the virtues which it sometimes called out; but in this
respect, also, I think his views expanded and mellowed as time
went on. His mind was so capacious as to take in Old-World
affairs in a sense which very few people outside Europe, since
Hamilton, have been able to do."
Now the truth is that neither the eminent person who wrote this
letter, nor many others among us, saw as clearly during the first
decade of this century as Roosevelt saw that war was not a remote
possibility, but a very real danger. I think that he was almost
the first in the United States to feel the menace of Germany to
the entire world. He knew the strength of her army, and when she
began to build rapidly a powerful navy, he understood that the
likelihood of her breaking the peace was more than doubled; for
with the fleet she could at pleasure go up and down the seas,
picking quarrels as she went. If war came on a great scale in
Europe, our Republic would probably be involved; we should either
take sides and so have to furnish a contingent, or we should
restrict our operations to self-defense. In either case we must
be prepared.
But Roosevelt recognized also that on the completion of the
Panama Canal we might be exposed to much international friction,
and unless we were ready to defend the Canal and its approaches,
a Foreign Power might easily do it great damage or wrest it from
us, at least for a time. Here, too, was another motive for facing
the possibility of war. We were growing up in almost childish
trust in a world filled with warlike nations, which regarded war
not only as the obvious way in which to settle disputes, but as
the easiest way to seize the territory and the wealth of rich
neighbors who could not defend themselves.
This being the condition of life as our country had to lead it,
we were criminally remiss in not taking precautions. But
Roosevelt went farther than this; he believed that, war or no
war, a nation must be able to defend itself; so must every
individual be. Every youth should have sufficient military
training to fit him to take his place at a moment's notice in the
national armament. This did not mean the maintenance of a large
standing army, or the adoption of a soul and character-killing
system of militarism like the German. It meant giving training to
every youth who was physically sound which would develop and
strengthen his body, teach him obedience, and impress upon him
his patriotic duty to his country.
I was among those who, twenty years ago, feared that Roosevelt's
projects were inspired by innate pugnacity which he could not
outgrow. Now, in this year of his death, I recognize that he was
right, and I believe that there is no one, on whom the lesson of
the Atrocious War has not been lost, who does not believe in his
gospel of military training, both for its value in promoting
physical fitness and health and in providing the country with
competent defenders. Roosevelt detested as much as anyone the
horrors of war, but, as he had too much reason to remind the
American people shortly before his death, there are things worse
than war. And when in 1919 President Charles W. Eliot becomes the
chief advocate of universal military training, we need not fear
that it is synonymous with militarism.
On one subject--a protective tariff--I think that Roosevelt was
less satisfactory than on any other. At Harvard, in our college
days, John Stuart Mill's ideas on economics prevailed, and they
were ably expounded by Charles F. Dunbar, who then stood first
among American economists. Being a consistent Individualist, and
believing that liberty is a principle which applies to commerce,
not less than to intellectual and moral freedom, Mill, of course,
insisted on Free Trade. But after Roosevelt joined the Republican
Party--in the straw vote for President, in 1880, he had voted
like a large majority of undergraduates for Bayard, a Democrat--he
adopted Protection as the right principle in theory and in
practice. The teachings of Alexander Hamilton, the wonderful
spokesman of Federalism, the champion of a strong Government
which should be beneficent because it was unselfish and
enlightened, captivated and filled him. In 1886, in his Life of
Benton, he wrote: "Free traders are apt to look at the tariff
from a sentimental standpoint; but it is in reality a purely
business matter and should be decided solely on grounds of
expediency. Political economists have pretty generally agreed
that protection is vicious in theory and harmful in practice; but
if the majority of the people in interest wish it, and it affects
only themselves, there is no earthly reason why they should not
be allowed to try the experiment to their heart's content." *
[ Roosevelt: Thomas H. Benton, 67. American Statesmen Series.]
Perhaps we ought to infer from this extract that Roosevelt, as an
historical critic, strove to preserve an open mind; as an ardent
Republican, however, he never wavered in his support of the
tariff. Even his sense of humor permitted him to swallow with out
a smile the demagogue's cant about "infant industries," or the
raising of the tariff after election by the Republicans who had
promised to reduce it. To those of us who for many years regarded
the tariff as the dividing line between the parties, his stand
was most disappointing. And when the head of one of the chief
Trusts in America cynically blurted out, "The Tariff is the
mother of Trusts," we hoped that Roosevelt, who had then begun
his stupendous battle with the Trusts, would deal them a
staggering blow by shattering the tariff. But, greatly to our
chagrin, he did nothing.
His enemies tried to explain his callousness to this reform by
hinting that he had some personal interest at stake, or that he
was under obligations to tariff magnates. Nothing could be more
absurd than these innuendoes; from the first of his career to the
last, no man ever brought proof that he had directly or
indirectly secured Roosevelt's backing by question able means.
And there were times enough when passions ran so high that any
one who could produce an iota of such testimony would have done
so. The simple fact is, that in looking over the field of
important questions which Roosevelt believed must be met by new
legislation, he looked on the tariff as unimportant in comparison
with railroads, and conservation, and the measures for public
health. I think, also, that he never studied the question
thoroughly; he threw over Mill's Individualism early in his
public career and with it went Mill's political economy. As late
as December, 1912, after the affronting Payne Aldrich Tariff Act
had been passed under his Republican successor, I reminded
Roosevelt that I had never voted for him because I did not
approve of his tariff policy. To which he replied, almost in the
words of the Benton extract in 1886, "My dear boy, the tariff is
only a question of expediency."
In this field also I fear that we must score a miss against him.
Cavour used to say that he did not need to resort to craft, which
was supposed to be a statesman's favorite instrument, he simply
told the truth and everybody was deceived. Roosevelt might have
said the same thing. His critics were always on the look out for
some ulterior motive, some trick, or cunning thrust, in what he
did; consequently they misjudged him, for he usually did the most
direct thing in the most direct way.
The Brownsville Affair proved this. On the night of August 13,
1906, several colored soldiers stationed at Fort Brown, Texas,
stole from their quarters into the near-by town of Brownsville
and shot up the inhabitants, against whom they had a grudge. As
soon as the news of the outbreak reached the fort, the rest of
the colored garrison was called out to quell it, and the guilty
soldiers, under cover of darkness, joined their companions and
were undiscovered. Next day the commander began an investigation,
but as none of the culprits confessed, the President discharged
nearly all of the three companies. There upon his critics
insinuated that Roosevelt had indulged his race hatred of the
blacks; a few years before, many of these same critics had
accused him of wishing to insult the Southern whites by inviting
Booker Washington to lunch. The reason for his action with the
Brownsville criminals was so clear that it did not need to be
stated. He intended that every soldier or sailor who wore the
uniform of the United States, be he white, yellow, or black,
should not be allowed to sully that uniform and go unpunished. He
felt the stain on the service keenly; in spite of denunciation he
trusted that the common sense of the Nation would eventually
uphold him, as it did.
A few months later he came to Cambridge to make his famous
"Mollycoddle Speech," and in greeting him, three or four of us
asked him jokingly, "How about Brownsville?" "Brownsville?" he
replied, laughing; "Brownsville will soon be forgotten, but 'Dear
Maria' will stick to me all my life." This referred to another
annoyance which had recently bothered him. He had always been
used to talk among friends about public matters and persons with
amazing unreserve. He took it for granted that those to whom he
spoke would regard his frank remarks as confidential; being
honorable himself, he assumed a similar sense of honor in his
listeners. In one instance, however, he was deceived. Among the
guests at the White House were a gentleman and his wife. The
latter was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and she had not only
all the proverbial zeal of a convert, but an amount of
indiscretion which seems incredible in any one. She often led the
conversation to Roman Catholic subjects, and especially to the
discussion of who was likely to be the next American Cardinal.
President Roosevelt had great respect for Archbishop Ireland, and
he said, frankly, that he should be glad to see the red hat go to
him. The lady's husband was appointed to a foreign Embassy, and
they were both soon thrown into an Ultramontane atmosphere, where
clerical intrigues had long furnished one of the chief amusements
of a vapid and corrupt Court. The lady, who, of course, could not
have realized the impropriety, made known the President's regard
for Archbishop Ireland. She even had letters to herself beginning
"Dear Maria," to prove the intimate terms on which she and her
husband stood with Mr. Roosevelt, and to suggest how important a
personage she was in his estimation. Assured, as she thought, of
her influence in Washington, she seems also to have aspired to
equal influence in the Vatican. That would not be the first
occasion on which Cardinals' hats had been bestowed through the
benign feminine intercession. Reports from Rome were favorable;
Archbishop Ireland's prospects looked rosy.
But the post of Cardinal is so eminent that there are always
several candidates for each vacancy. I do not know whether or not
it came about through one of Archbishop Ireland's rivals, or
through "Dear Maria's" own indiscretion, but the fact leaked out
that President Roosevelt was personally interested in Archbishop
Ireland's success. That settled the Archbishop. The Hierarchy
would never consent to be influenced by an American President,
who was also a Protestant. It might take instructions from the
Emperor of Austria or the King of Spain; it had even allowed the
German Kaiser, also a Protestant, indirectly but effectually to
block the election of Cardinal Rampolla to be Pope in 1903; but
the hint that the Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, might be
made Cardinal because the American President respected him, could
not be tolerated. The President's letters beginning "Dear Maria"
went gayly through the newspapers of the world, and the man in
the street everywhere wondered how Roosevelt could have been so
indiscreet as to have trusted so imprudent a zealot. "Dear Maria"
and her husband were recalled from their Embassy and put out of
reach of committing further indiscretions of that sort.
Archbishop Ireland never became Cardinal. In spite of the
President's forebodings, the "Dear Maria" incident did not cling
to him all his life, but sank into oblivion, while the world,
busied with matters of real importance, rushed on towards a great
catastrophe. Proofs that a man or a woman can do very foolish
things are so common that "Dear Maria" could not win lasting fame
by hers. I do not think, however, that this experience taught
Roosevelt reticence. He did not lose his faith that a sense of
honor was widespread, and would silence the tongues of the
persons whom he talked to in confidence.
No President ever spoke so openly to newspaper men as he did. He
told them many a secret with only the warning, "Mind, this is
private," and none of them betrayed him. When he entered the
White House he gathered all the newspaper men round him, and said
that no mention was to be made of Mrs. Roosevelt, or of any
detail of their family life, while they lived there. If this rule
were broken, he would refuse for the rest of his term to allow
the representative of the paper which published the unwarranted
report to enter the White House, or to receive any of the
President's communications. This rule also was religiously
observed, with the result that Mrs. Roosevelt was spared the
disgust and indignity of a vulgar publicity, which had thrown its
lurid light on more than one "First Lady of the Land" in previous
administrations, and even on the innocent Baby McKee, President
Harrison's grand-child.
We cannot too often bear in mind that Theodore Roosevelt never
forgot the Oneness of Society. If he aimed at correcting an
industrial or financial abuse by special laws. he knew that this
work could be partial only. It might promote the health of the
entire body, but it was not equivalent to sanifying that entire
body. There was no general remedy. A plaster applied to a skin
cut does not cure an internal disease. But he watched the
unexpected effects of laws and saw how that influence spread from
one field to another.
Roosevelt traced closely the course of Law and Custom to their
ultimate objects, the family and the individual. In discussing
the matter with Mr. Rhodes he cordially agreed with what the
historian said about our American rich men. He insisted that the
same thing held true of our politicians, even the worst: that the
average Roman rich man, like the average Roman public man, of the
end of the Republic and of the beginning of the Empire, makes the
corresponding man of our own time look like a self-denying,
conscientious Puritan. He did not think very highly of the
American multi-millionaire, nor of his wife, sons, and daughters
when compared with some other types of our citizens; even in
ability the plutocrat did not seem to Roosevelt to show up very
strongly save in his own narrowly limited field; and he and his
womanhood, and those of less fortune who modeled their lives upon
his and upon the lives of his wife and children, struck Roosevelt
as taking very little advantage of their opportunities. But to
denounce them with hysterical exaggeration as resembling the
unspeakable tyrants and debauchees of classic times, was simple
nonsense. Roosevelt hoped he had been of some assistance in
moving our people along the line Mr. Rhodes mentioned; that is,
along the line of a sane, moderate purpose to supervise the
business use of wealth and to curb its excesses, while keeping as
far aloof from the policy of the visionary and demagogue as from
the policy of the wealthy corruptionist.
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