PRAISE FOR THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT “Reading Morris’s comprehensive, necessarily breathless account of Roosevelt’s rise is like riding a cannonball express through the Rockies, the peaks whipping past, one exceeding another in magnificence.” —MORDECAI RICHLER “Morris has written a monumental work in every sense of the word.… The result is a book of pulsating and well-written narrative, documented by well over 100 pages of minute, immaculate notes An average reader will take a long time to read and absorb it all But read it he will The tale never lags, like its unique human subject.” —EDWIN TETLOW, The Christian Science Monitor “His prose is elegant and at the same time hard and lucid, and his sense of narrative ow is nearly awless.… The author recreates a sense of the scene and an immediacy of the situation that any skilled writer should envy and the most jaded reader should find a joy.” —DARDEN A PYRON, Miami Herald “It is a big volume, but it is exciting enough to thrill any reader Morris has an exceptional dexterity with words.… This book will undoubtedly become the standard study of Roosevelt’s rise to power.” —THOMAS CONWAY , The Boston Sunday Globe “To his task Morris brings imposing assets.… He is scrupulous in the use of his material and notably fair-minded, … [and] he can tell a very good story.” —ELTING E MORISON, The Washington Post Book World “This highly entertaining, immensely readable book is an extraordinary portrait of a most amazing man, Theodore Roosevelt … Edmund Morris is scrupulously fair He is not judgmental; he draws no sweeping conclusions Sympathetic, amused, and understanding, he is neither adoring nor worshipful.” —CAREY MC WILLIAMS, Chicago Sun-Times “Theodore Roosevelt is one of those gures who cannot be fully calibrated without the distance of history and the views of an outsider This towering biography is the rst to answer both requisites.… Orchestrating his material with a certainty and lightness of touch, Morris shuns facile psychohistory and lets Roosevelt’s life build its own edifice.” —EDWIN WARNER, Time “If you want a classic Teddy biography, one that hews close to the Theodore Roosevelt of patriotic legend, this entertaining and colorful book is for you.… TR would have enjoyed this version of his life, not only because it’s exciting, particularly the cowboy tales, but because it’s morally correct.… In no other Roosevelt biography we get a more lively and lifelike picture of the pre-presidential Roosevelt.” —NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN, Chicago Tribune “A huge book, but one that is so full of action that the reader will have di culty putting it down.… A monumental piece of writing … one of the most interesting biographies to appear in many a moon.” —JAMES H JESSE, The Nashville Banner “The documentation is almost overwhelming and the description of both events and personalities is unusually detailed and complete Morris reveals the developing personality, the complex and often contradictory character, and the multiplicity of associations of this most ubiquitous of statesmen His political career, literary activity, life as a rancher and soldier, and personal life are all abundantly covered This may well become the definitive life.” —RALPH ADAMS BROWN, Library Journal “If a novelist were to create a character as multidimensional as Theodore Roosevelt, his credibility would be severely strained One cannot nish Edmund Morris’s sympathetic study of the 26th President’s early years without feeling that if TR isn’t one of our history’s greatest men, he is surely one of the more fascinating ones.” —RICHARD SAMUEL WEST, The Philadelphia Inquirer “Morris has crafted a magni cent biography, carefully researched and gracefully written He has a keen eye for just the right quotation to enliven an incident or bring a personality to life, and his own sense of humor sparkles through.” —ALLEN J SHARE, Louisville Courier-Journal “Morris faces all the problems and contradictions.… If he were less sympathetic than he is, his treatment of these aspects might make for distortion, but as it is, it only makes for fuller understanding “He is also, I must not fail to restate, a magni cent writer You can read this book with the absorption with which you would read a great novel.… So great is Morris’s skill that the reader follows the story as breathlessly as if he did not already know the outcome.” —EDWARD WAGENKNECHT, Waltham-Newton News-Tribune “Readers of this rst volume of a biography that takes Roosevelt to his rst White House term will get some of the feeling of having received a series of doses of electric voltage.” —HARRY STEINBERG, Newsday “This volume leaves us on Sept 2, 1901 President McKinley has been shot.… America would move into the 20th century with an activist President at its helm, a man who would set the pace of a strong, involved federal government Morris is now writing that part of the story, and its publication is an event to anticipate eagerly.” —MAURICE DOLBIER, Providence Sunday Journal “This irresistible biography is a lot more than a string of dramatic anecdotes For example, there’s the magni cent prose picture of the disastrous Western winter of 1886–87.… Time and again, Mr Morris seizes such relatively minor incidents and blows them up to fill the imaginative landscape of his study.… “What does the total picture of Roosevelt add up to? … Mr Morris’s refusal to interpret analytically pays rich dividends We get to see the many contradictory sides of Theodore Roosevelt—the killer of big game and the passionate conservationist; the indefatigable writer of historical potboilers and the scholar who produced the de nitive naval history of the War of 1812; the sentimental family man and the tub-thumping advocate of imperialism—the list could go on forever.… For the time being, we can count our curiosity over them among the many reasons for looking forward to the second volume of this wonderfully absorbing biography.” —CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, The New York Times ALSO BY EDMUND MORRIS Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan Theodore Rex AUTHOR’S NOTE This Modern Library edition of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt does not di er substantially from the rst edition published in 1979, although many passages have been recast Important material deriving from recent Roosevelt scholarship has been added to the text and the documentation throughout The book has been redesigned to conform with Theodore Rex, and some illustrations have been replaced There are no major deletions 2001 Modern Library Paperback Edition Copyright © 1979 by Edmund Morris All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc This work was originally published, in slightly different form, by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan in 1979 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Morris, Edmund The rise of Theodore Roosevelt / Edmund Morris p cm Originally published: New York : Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, © 1979 eISBN: 978-0-307-77782-9 Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858–1919 Presidents—United States—Biography United States—Politics and government— 1901–1909 New York (State)—Politics and government—1865–1950 I Title E757 M883 2001 973.91′1′092—dc21 [B] 2001030520 Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com v3.1 To Sylvia CONTENTS Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Prologue: New Year’s Day, 1907 PART ONE: 1858–1886 1: The Very Small Person 2: The Mind, But Not the Body 3: The Man with the Morning in His Face 4: The Swell in the Dog-Cart 5: The Political Hack 6: The Cyclone Assemblyman 7: The Fighting Cock 8: The Dude from New York 9: The Honorable Gentleman 10: The Delegate-at-Large 11: The Cowboy of the Present 12: The Four-Eyed Maverick 13: The Long Arm of the Law 14: The Next Mayor of New York Interlude: Winter of the Blue Snow, 1886–1887 15: 16: 17: 18: 19: 20: The The The The The The PART TWO: 1887–1901 Literary Feller Silver-Plated Reform Commissioner Dear Old Beloved Brother Universe Spinner Biggest Man in New York Snake in the Grass ILLUSTRATIONS frt.1Theodore Roosevelt at the time of his Harvard entrance examinations, 1876 Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library prl.1 Theodore Roosevelt receives the American people on New Year’s Day Brown Brothers p1.1 Martha Bulloch Roosevelt at twenty-two Brown Brothers 2.1 Theodore Roosevelt Senior, aged about forty-five Author’s Collection 3.1 Theodore Roosevelt the Harvard freshman, 1877 Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, New York 4.1 Alice Hathaway Lee when Theodore Roosevelt first met her Theodore Roosevelt Association 4.2 Alice Lee, Theodore Roosevelt, and Rose Saltonstall on their “tintype spree.” Alice Sturm Collection, privately held 4.3 Theodore Roosevelt at the time of his assault on the Matterhorn, 1881 Theodore Roosevelt Association 5.1 Theodore Roosevelt at the time of his election to the New York State Assembly Theodore Roosevelt Association 6.1 The New York State Assembly Chamber in 1882 New York Public Library 6.2 Alice, Corinne, and Bamie Roosevelt, about 1882 Theodore Roosevelt Association 7.1 Assemblymen Roosevelt, Howe, Spinney, Hunt, and O’Neil Theodore Roosevelt Association 8.1 Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent-Amat Manca de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Morès North Dakota State Historical Society 9.1 Hallway of the Roosevelt mansion at West Fifty-seventh Street, New York, 1880s Sagamore Hill National Historic Site 10.1 Governor Grover Cleveland Painting by Eastman Johnson New York State Library 10.2 The first public advertisement of the Maltese Cross brand, 1884 Theodore Roosevelt Association 11.1 Theodore Roosevelt in his buckskin suit, 1884 Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library 12.1 Sagamore Hill in 1885 Theodore Roosevelt Association 12.2 Edith Kermit Carow at twenty-four Sagamore Hill National Historic Site 13.1 Deputy Sheriff Roosevelt and his prisoners Theodore Roosevelt Association 14.1 Cecil Arthur Spring Rice at thirty-five Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace col.1 Dying cow, December 1886 Painting by Charles Russell Montana Stockgrowers Association 15.1 The Meadowbrook Hunt meeting at Sagamore Hill in the 1880s Theodore Roosevelt Association 16.1 Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, by John Singer Sargent, 1890 National Portrait Gallery 16.2 Elliott Roosevelt about the time of his marriage to Anna Hall Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library 18.1 The Grand Court of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University 19.1 Police Headquarters, New York City, 1890s New York Public Library 19.2 Theodore Roosevelt as president of the New York City Police Board Theodore Roosevelt Association 20.1 Thomas Collier Platt in the 1890s Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace 20.2 New York City Police Commissioners Andrews, Parker, Roosevelt, and Grant Theodore Roosevelt Association 21.1 Mark Hanna on August 1896 New York Public Library 22.1 Assistant Secretary Roosevelt at the Naval War College, June 1897 Theodore Roosevelt Association 22.2 President William McKinley at the time of the Spanish-American War Sagamore Hill National Historic Site 23.1 Wreck of the Maine, Havana Harbor, February 1898 Sagamore Hill National Historic Site 23.2 A troop of black volunteers en route to Tampa, 1898 Theodore Roosevelt Association 24.1 Piazza of the Tampa Bay Hotel, early summer 1898 Theodore Roosevelt Collection 25.1 Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders atop San Juan Heights, Cuba Theodore Roosevelt Association 26.1 Colonel Roosevelt preparing to muster out at Camp Wikoff, Long Island Theodore Roosevelt Collection 27.1 The New York State Capitol, Albany, late nineteenth century New York Public Library 28.1 Theodore Roosevelt at the time of his election to the Vice-Presidency Theodore Roosevelt Association epl.1 The second Inauguration of William McKinley, March 1901 Theodore Roosevelt Collection ABOUT THE AUTHOR EDMUND MORRIS was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1940 He was schooled there, and studied music, history, and literature at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa After leaving Africa in 1964, he became an advertising copywriter in London He immigrated to the United States in 1968 and became a full-time writer in 1972 The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt began as a screenplay It was published in 1979 and won the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award In 1981, Morris was appointed the o cial biographer of President Ronald Reagan The resultant work, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, caused a controversy when it appeared in 1999 because of its use of a partly imaginary narrator Theodore Rex is the second volume in a planned trilogy on the life of Theodore Roosevelt Edmund Morris lives in New York City with his wife and fellow biographer, Sylvia Jukes Morris THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD Maya Angelou • Daniel J Boorstin • A S Byatt • Caleb Carr • Christopher Cerf • Ron Chernow • Shelby Foote • Stephen Jay Gould • Vartan Gregorian • Charles Johnson • Jon Krakauer • Edmund Morris • Joyce Carol Oates • Elaine Pagels • John Richardson • Salman Rushdie • Arthur Schlesinger, Jr • Carolyn See • William Styron • Gore Vidal Read on for a preview from Edmund Morris’s COLONEL ROOSEVELT LATER THAT AFTERNOON, the Mayflower hitched itself to another train and headed for Wisconsin Advance word came that a “GXLC” situation portended in Milwaukee, with plans for a grand parade and public dinner before Roosevelt’s speech Dr Terrell refused to let his patient be subjected to these strains Upon the train’s arrival in Milwaukee at six o’clock, members of the local Progressive committee came aboard, and were told that the Colonel was “extremely tired.” He would dine privately in his car, rest for an hour or so, and not use his voice until the time came for him to speak at the Auditorium Even then, he would be able to make only a few opening remarks The main text of his address would have to be read for him O K Davis explained that Roosevelt had long speeches scheduled every night for the rest of the campaign The committee chairman complained so bitterly that Roosevelt took pity on him and said to Davis, “I want to be a good Indian, O K.” From that moment he was the committee’s prisoner He was driven through a milelong, rejoicing crowd to the Gilpatrick Hotel on Third Street A hospitality suite awaited him upstairs Before sitting down to dinner, he lay back in a rocking chair and napped —something Davis had never seen him before Shortly after eight, he folded his speech typescript into his inner right jacket pocket and walked down two ights of stairs to the lobby Henry Cochems and a bodyguard named Alfred Girard preceded him He was anked on one side by Elbert Martin and Cecil Lyon, and on the other by Philip Roosevelt and Fred Leuttisch, a Party security man OUTSIDE IN THE ILL-LIT STREET, his roo ess, seven-seat automobile stood waiting A rope cordon kept the sidewalk clear, but several hundred onlookers clustered in the street beyond Martin opened the vehicle’s near rear door, and Roosevelt got in He took his customary right-hand seat while his escorts fanned out to take theirs Lyon ran round the back As he did so, the crowd in the street moved closer, cheering The Colonel stood up to bow, waving his hat in his right hand Martin stepped up from the curb to join him At that moment, he saw the gleam of a revolver no more than seven feet away The stenographer was a powerful man with athletic re exes, and was ying through the air even as John Schrank red Roosevelt was hit in the right breast and dropped without a sound Philip, too horri ed to move, thought, “He’ll never get up again.” Martin lit on Schrank and had him around the neck in a half nelson as they crashed to the ground Almost simultaneously, Leuttisch and Girard landed on top of them in a wild scrimmage Lyon, whipping out his own Texas-sized automatic, threatened to shoot anyone else who came near It was easy enough to disarm Schrank, a weedy little man who put up no resistance Meanwhile, Roosevelt had hoisted himself up in the tonneau He was shaken, but did not appear to be bleeding For the moment, nobody but he realized he had stopped a bullet Looking down, he saw that Martin was trying to break Schrank’s neck “Don’t hurt him Bring him here,” Roosevelt shouted “I want to see him.” Martin’s blind rage cleared, and while still half-throttling his prisoner, he dragged him to the side of the automobile Roosevelt reached down and, in an oddly tender gesture, took Schrank’s head in both hands, turning it upward to see if he recognized him What he saw was the dull-eyed, unmistakable expressionlessness of insanity, along with clothes that looked as though they had been slept in for weeks, and an enormous pair of shoes By now, Dr Terrell, O K Davis, and John McGrath, who were late arriving on the scene, had gotten past Lyon’s gun and clustered around their chief Roosevelt continued to stare at Schrank “What did you it for?” he asked, sounding more puzzled than angry “Oh, what’s the use? Turn him over to the police.” Girard and another o cer hustled Schrank away as the Colonel’s aides, still unsure if he had been shot, ngered his heavy army overcoat for a bullet hole They soon found it He explored further himself, not allowing anyone, even Terrell, to look His hand came out with blood on it “He pinked me, Harry,” he said to Cochems Terrell had heard enough He told the driver of the automobile to head at once to Milwaukee’s Emergency Hospital But Roosevelt, to the disbelief of everyone around him, insisted on proceeding to the Auditorium “No, Colonel,” Cochems pleaded “Let’s go to the hospital.” “You get me to that speech,” Roosevelt replied, with a savage rasp to his voice Terrell, Davis, and Philip were no more successful in their appeals The car cruised at parade speed to the Auditorium, through streets still lined with unsuspecting spectators When it reached its destination, Roosevelt walked unaided to a holding room behind the stage There, at last, he let Terrell examine his wound It was a ragged, dime-sized hole, bleeding slowly, about an inch below and to the right of his right nipple The bullet was nowhere to be seen or palpated The whole right side of his body had turned black Again he brushed aside Terrell’s demand that he seek immediate medical treatment “It’s all right, Doctor,” he said, inhaling deeply, “I don’t get any pain from this breathing.” Plastering a clean handkerchief to his chest, he pulled his shirt down and strode onstage to the podium As the Progressive Party’s senior local representative, he had the task of informing the audience—ten thousand strong, with at least as many milling outside—that Roosevelt had been the victim of an assassination attempt He spoke shakily and vaguely, afraid of causing a riot, and caused only confusion There was a cry of “Fake! Fake!” and direct appeals to the Colonel: “Are you hurt?” Roosevelt stepped forward and gestured for silence “It’s true,” he said “But it takes COCHEMS PRECEDED HIM more than that to kill a bull moose.” There was some nervous laughter, so he unbuttoned his vest and exposed his shirtfront The spreading bloodstain, larger than a man’s hand, caused screams of horror Voices called, “Turn this way—turn this way!” He obliged, then said, “I’m going to ask you to be very quiet I’ll the best I can.” Waiting for the noise to subside, he reached into his jacket pocket for his speech The fty-page typescript was folded in half He did not notice that it had been shot through until he began to read For some reason, the sight of the double starburst perforation seemed to shock him more than the blood he had seen on his ngertips He hesitated, temporarily wordless, then tried to make the crowd laugh again with his humorous falsetto: “You see, I was going to make quite a long speech.” His heart was racing, and the wound felt hot He proceeded to half-read, halfimprovise a rambling rationale of his trust-control and labor policies in a voice no longer husky but weak A knifelike pain in his ribs forced him to breathe in short gasps Two or three times, he appeared to totter Afraid that he was dying, Philip approached the podium and begged him to stop But Roosevelt swung his head toward him with such a steel-gray stare that the young man retreated, helpless After about forty- ve minutes Roosevelt asked how long he had been talking Upon being told, he said, “I’ll speak for a quarter of an hour more.” In fact, he continued for well over half an hour, throwing down page after page as was his habit (the drilled sheets snapped up as souvenirs) and improvising an appeal to followers of Senator La Follette to lend their support to the Progressive Party Although his voice remained forceful, he was clearly losing strength as well as blood Aides stationed themselves below the footlights to catch him in case he fell forward, while others sitting onstage prepared to the same behind Toward the eighty-minute mark, Roosevelt’s face was white, but he spoke on till there was no more paper in his hands Then, turning from the tumultuous applause, he said to Dr Terrell, “Now I am ready to go with you and what you want.” “HE DID NOT NOTICE THAT IT HAD BEEN SHOT THROUGH UNTIL HE BEGAN TO READ.” Roosevelt’s perforated speech manuscript and spectacle case (Illustration Credits bm.1) Incredibly, members of the audience crowded around and tried to slap his back Charles Thompson got the distinct impression that each man was intent on being the last to shake hands with Theodore Roosevelt They were pushed away, and the Colonel, walking very slowly, was led back to his car By ten o’clock he was in the care of doctors at Milwaukee’s Emergency Hospital Before being stripped and laid on the examination table he dictated a telegram to Edith, saying that he was in “excellent shape,” and that the wound was “trivial.” He also asked that somebody contact Seth Bullock, of Deadwood, South Dakota, and be sure to mention that he had been shot with “a thirty-eight on a forty-four frame.” police station, John F Schrank was being exhaustively grilled He was calm but badly bruised from being kicked and torn at by his attackers If Roosevelt had not intervened to save him, he might well have been lynched He handed over a written account of his visions of President McKinley calling for Roosevelt’s death A MEANWHILE, AT THE CITY search of his pockets turned up another note, stating it was the duty of the United States to preserve the two-term tradition Never let a third-term party emblem appear on an official ballot I willing to die for my country, god has called me, to be his instrument So help me god Innocent Guilty Eine Fester Burg ist unser Gott A mighty fortress is our God This is my body, this is my blood The mock-religious aura that had glowed around Roosevelt since he rst stood at Armageddon had reached its grotesque climax News of the drama on the Auditorium stage ashed outward along telephone and telegraph wires, jolting every night editor in the country and penetrating even into the Casino Theatre in New York, where Edith Roosevelt sat watching Johann Strauss’s The Merry Countess She emerged from a side entrance weeping “Take me to where I can talk to him or hear from him at once.” A police escort whisked her to the Progressive National Headquarters in the Manhattan Hotel, which had an open line to Milwaukee There, just before midnight, she heard that her husband’s wound had been X-rayed and dressed He was being transferred to Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, where a team of thoracic specialists would consider whether the bullet in his chest could be safely removed It lay embedded against the fourth right rib, four inches from the sternum In its upward and inward trajectory, straight toward the heart, it had had to pass through Roosevelt’s dense overcoat into his suit jacket pocket, then through a hundred glazed pages of his bifolded speech into his vest pocket, which contained a steel-reinforced spectacle case three layers thick, and on through two webs of suspender belt, shirt fabric, and undershirt flannel, before eventually finding skin and bone Even so, its final force had been enough to crack the rib “THE DULL-EYED, UNMISTAKABLE EXPRESSIONLESSNESS OF INSANITY ” John Schrank under arrest after attempting to kill Roosevelt, 14 October 1912 (Illustration Credits bm.2) Marveling at the freak coordination of all these impediments, a witness to the shooting noted that had Schrank’s slug penetrated the pleura, the Colonel would have bled to death internally in a matter of minutes “There was no other place on his body so thoroughly armored as the spot where the bullet struck.” ILLUSTRATION CREDITS From the Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass bm.1 TR’s perforated speech manuscript, 14 October 1914 bm.2 John Schrank under arrest after attempting to kill TR Also by Edmund Morris Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan Beethoven: The Universal Composer Theodore Rex Colonel Roosevelt ... of the Present 12: The Four-Eyed Maverick 13: The Long Arm of the Law 14: The Next Mayor of New York Interlude: Winter of the Blue Snow, 1886–1887 15: 16: 17: 18: 19: 20: The The The The The The... OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Morris, Edmund The rise of Theodore Roosevelt / Edmund Morris p cm Originally published: New York : Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, © 1979 eISBN: 97 8-0 -3 0 7-7 778 2-9 ... The Swell in the Dog-Cart 5: The Political Hack 6: The Cyclone Assemblyman 7: The Fighting Cock 8: The Dude from New York 9: The Honorable Gentleman 10: The Delegate-at-Large 11: The Cowboy of