=;s^:'ei^i;iliiiiSSiiffli Class E1-T5 X Book_ G)p\iiglitK^ Ba.j„ COPYKIGWT DEPOSm THE LIBRARY OF eOMGRESS. NOV, 11 190t CUA?S CL-XXc "y . / ^ i ^ ^ COP , ->. CorVKIGHT 1901 Hy E. R. DUMONT TABLE OF COiNTENTS. PAGE POEM, by Grace Duffie Boylan 7 INTRODUCTION, by General Joseph Wheeler ... 9 "A TYPICAL AMERICAN"; introduction by Opie Read 25 CHAPTER I.— Theodore Roosevelt 33 Sketch of His Life. Marked Characteristics of the Man. A Product of the Age. Blood of Heroes in His Veins. In an Age of Materialism He Stands as the Great Exponent of the Virtues. His First Historical Work. Ambitious to Do Deeds Rather than Chronicle Them. CHAPTER II.— "Birth, Lineage and Boyhood" ... 46 Descended from Good Old Holland Stock, His Auces'uors Among the Earliest American Pioneers. Delicate in Health, His Masterful Spirit V\^ins for Him a Stalwart Frame. Early Develops the Qualities of a Leader. CHAPTER III.— College Life 57 Enters College at the Age of Eighteen. Develops a Taste for Hunting and Natural History. Is Active in all College Sports, Especially Wrestling and Boxing. Graduates in 1880 with High Honors. Membership in Clubs, Etc. CHAPTER IV.— A New York Assemblyman .... 72 At Once Attracts Attention to Himself as an Uncom- promising Foe to Machine Rule and a Friend of Good Government. Striking Promise of a Remark- able Public Career. Not Even the Danger of Bodily Violence Could Deter Hira. A Rpvelatiou to the Rowdies. 2 TABLK OF CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER v.— Ik Nation' al and City Politics ... 92 Recognized as a Factor in National Afifairs. A Leader of Men, Loyal to the Best Traditions of His Party, but Intensely an American. Maintaining a Splen- did Independence. The Forlorn Hope in the Race for Election as Mayor of New York City. CHAPTER VI. — Ranching in the Bad Lands .... 109 Comrade with the Cowboys. Wins the Confidence and Esteem of Hunters, Ranchmen and Pioneers. "Busting" Bronchos. Adventures with Wild Beasts. Thrilling Fight with a Grizzly. CHAPTER YII.— Roosevelt as an Author .... 129 First Author to Become President. Beginning as Edi- tor of His College Paper, He Develops Striking Literarj' Talent. Success of His First Work, "Naval War of 1812," "Winning of the West," "The Strenuous Life and other Essays," "Oliver Cromwell. ' ' A Voluminous Writer. CHAPTER VIII,— Home Life AND Religious Tendencies 153 Romance of His Boyhood. In the Home and Family. "All Children Should Have Just as Good a Time as They Possibly Can." Holding to the Faith of His Fathers. An American Citizen Can Take His Bible and the Constitution of the United States into the Caucus. CHAPTER IX.— Ckusade for the Merit System . . 170 Roosevelt's Work in the New York Legislature Bears Fruit. ApjHiinted Civil Service Commissioner by President Harrison. Shows Great Preparation for the Work. Offends Spoilsmen of Both Parties. Ably Supported in the Senate and House. CHAPTER X.— Purifying City Politics 183 Roosevelt Appointed President of Police Board of the City of New York. "I Will Enforce the Law." Merit System Governs in Police Force. Sunday Closing Law Made Operative. Attempted Assas- sination bv Dvuainite. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 6 PAGE CHAPTER XI.— Assistant Secretary of the Navy . 199 Eebuilds the American Navy. Introduces Target Prac- tice with Powder and Ball. Active in Preparation for War with Spain. Advises Ordering Commodore Dewey to the China Station. Resigns for Active Duty in the Field. CHAPTER XII.— Formation of the "Rough Riders" 217 Friendship for General Leonard Wood. A Month Well Saved. Cowboys, Hunters and Clubmen Rally to His Standard. The Best Fighting Material that Ever Marched to the Field. Drilling, Preparing and Embarking. Landing on Cuban Soil. CHAPTER XIII.-Service in Cuba 237 Brigaded with the Forces of a Fighting Man. The Affair at Las Guasimas, and the Loss of Precious Lives. The Rough Riders Prove Their Heroism in Battle. From the Trenches to the Hospital. Graves in Alien Soil. After Peace, the Return Home. CHAPTER XIV.— Return of the Regiment .... 263 The Round Robin. Ordered Back to the United States. Sick, Wounded and Well on the Voyage Home. Landing of Rough Riders at Montauk Point. Angels of Mercy in the Hospitals. Mustered Out. Back to the Old Life, where a Rough Rider May Ride. CHAPTER XV.-GovERNOR of New York 288 Empire State Jubilantly Rewards Colonel Roosevelt with Its Highest Office. Inaugurates Reform in Every Branch of the Public Service. Establishes the Principle of Street Franchise Taxation. Dewey Day in New York. CHAPTER XVI. -Roosevelt in Chicago ..... 308 Guest of Honor at the Hamilton Club Appomattox Day Banquet. Wonderful Memory Shown in His Recog- nition of Individual Rough Riders. Characteristic Incidents of the Man. First Enunciation of the Gospel of a Strenuous Life. 4 TABI.K OP CONTENTS. TAGK CIIAPTEK X\l I. — Honors Thrust Upon Him . . . 33(3 Xominatcd tor Vice-President Agaiiist His JMnphatio Protest. 8iiiks Personal Preference at tlic Call of Piibli(; Duty. Striking Figure in the Campaign. Presiding Over the Senate. Seeks Kecreation in a Post-election Hunt for Mountain Lions. CHAPTER XVIII. — Assassination of President Mr- KiNLEY 3o-i Leon Czolgosz Strikes l")own the Uead of the Xation. Country Plunged in Sorrow. Hope and Despair Alternate. "Nearer, Jly God, To Thee." End of a Noblo Life. The Eepublic Pauses TVhile Its Prcsion him and his follows to ]icrmit their escaping. BIRTH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 51 And Mr. Roosevelt has not yet departed from the traditions or the church of his fathers. The relation begun when he sat in the high-backed pews of the old church on the "East Side" con- tinues unbroken to the present ; and wherever he has an opportunity to attend the services of that denomination, he faithfully observes his obliga- tion. It was a matter of regret to his parents that Theodore was of delicate physique. He had the sturdy spirit of all the vigorous ancestors who had gone before, and with it presented a more volatile quality than is usually found in the phlegmatic Hollander. It was as if he had caught up the strain of his race back in the cen- turies when Van Diemen sailed, and when Wil- liam of Orange battled and won. But he lacked the physical force to supjiort his purposes. Throughout boyhood he suffered in comparison with his fellows, so far as muscular powers went. As Theodore passed from boyhood into youth he seemed more and more resolved to overcome that handicap of a delicate frame ; and his effort turned to developing the strength which he so mucli desired, and which it seemed nature had intended to denv liim. 52 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Possibly the courses of liis development were aided by nature in that i)erIod of his life when he advanced toward maturity. In any event, he was successful. The sickly youth became stronger. He suffered unnumbered defeats, but never for once was his resolution chilled or his purpose altered. He would be strong. And as he attained the age of prepai'ation for college, he was fully the |)hysical equal of young men of his years. In study he was from the first almost a model scholar. Walter Scott was a dullard at school ; and General Grant graduated pretty nearly at the foot of a class of forty-four. Neither could study; and it seemed neither could learn. They developed great talents later— though in vastly different lines ; but this lad, destined for a splen- did intellectual activity in his manhood, found books to his liking, and progress in his studies both easy and delightful. One of the events in his boy-life was the acquaintance with Edith Carow, a girl of nearly his own age, and a companion in school as well as in the social intercourse that came with his added years. They were great friends, with a charming romance that continued from the time they were BIRTH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 53 children until lie left liis New York home to enter upon life at Harvard College. They had been together while at school ; and in those days which seem so far away now they had taken their games to the greensward of Union Park, and had played there day after day together. Her home, indeed, was in Fourteenth street, and but a step from the square. That was a part of the fashionable quarter at the time, and the myriad business houses had not begun their intrusion. There was plenty of reason for the intimacy. They met at the same children's parties, and studied in the same schools— until little Miss Edith was packed olT to a fashionable boarding school presided over by a Miss Comstock, who will be remembered by many of the older New Yorkers to-day. Edith 's father was a merchant, as his father had been before him; and her mother was by birth Miss Gertrude Tyler, daughter of General Tyler, of Connecticut. Her family in all its connections had been rich and prominent through many generations. The same was true of Theodore, whose father was a lawyer and a judge, and had been successively an alderman, a member of the assembly at 54 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. Albany and a congressman at AN'asliing'ton. Edith Ivermit Carow has said, in the happy, established days since her marriage, that she had "liked" Teddy Roosevelt in those distant times because he could do so much more than she could. And yet he was a child of puny strength, while she reveled in all the vigor of a healthy girlhood. It is probable the strong-willed lad impressed her with more power than he pos- sessed. He certainly suffered in comparison with many other lads of her acquaintance, of his age. But it is his brother's testimony that he never permitted himself to be thrust out of the way, nor his little friend to be imposed upon. And his ready championing of her at all times may have won him a place in her eyes for which he was indebted rather to the joromise of his spirit than the fulfilment of the flesh. Later in life Mr. Roosevelt found more than a childhood friend in the girl companion of his leisure hours. He found one who understood him, who had faith in him and encouraged him— and who came in maturer years, after sorrow had visited him, to share his home, to increase his fortune, and to make sacred his success. When young Theodore Roosevelt had ad- BIKTH, LINEAGE, BOYHOOD. 55 vanced to the age of college study, and had goue up to Harvard for the final four years of stu- dent life, he was singularly well-equipped for the labors that awaited him. So far as natural preference was concerned, he had taken the greatest delight in history, and in civil govern- ment. But so thoroughly had he made himself master of his tendencies and desires that he passed exceedingly well in mathematics— that bane of the imaginative scholar. That must have meant adherence to a course of self-discipline; for arithmetic was naturally distasteful to him. He loved to revel in books of adventure, and knew the story of his own land and those of modern western Europe, from repeated reading. But he had resolutely devoted himself to the less attractive studies— being aided, no doubt, by the rigid methods of his teachers. And the mental training so secured must be in large part chargeable with the close-knit intellectual fiber which his manhood has revealed. It was the substantial structure upon which his later fancy could build, just as his acquired physical strength formed a magazine from which his tireless energy might draw without fear of exhausting it. In the campaign of 1900 it was sometimes 56 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. said that ''Theodore Roosevelt was born with a gold spoon in his mouth." But the imputation is hardly fair. He was an average boy as to mental attainments, and considerably under the average in bodily strength. Wliatever suc- cesses he has achieved seem to have come more from an inherent will that would not brook defeat in any line rather than from peculiar advantages gratuitously bestowed upon him. He was rich, it is true, and possessed of many social advantages. But these could not have won him a place in the fields of phj^sical, mental and polit- ical activity which he has chosen. A careful esti- mate of his life must lodge much of the credit for his equipping in those years of later boyhood when his own motive was the impelling force; when he would not permit other boys to excel him in studies, and when he went systematically at such training as would render it impossible for them long to excel him in sports. And on the basis of these two elements in his boyhood has probably been builded the traits and the powers which have made him a type of very creditable American manhood. Out of these may grow, if one have the purpose to achieve it, an equal success in any line of endeavor. CHAPTER III. COLLEGE LIFE. ENTERS COLLEGE AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN— DEVELOPS A TASTE FOR HUNTING AND NATURAL HISTORY — IS ACTIVE IN ALL COL- LEGE SPORTS, ESPECIALLY VV^RESTLING AND BOXING — GRADU- ATES IN 1880 WITH HIGH HONORS — MEMBERSHIP IN CLUBS, ETC. Slender of figure and pale of face, Theodore Eoosevelt entered Harvard in the fall of the Centennial year, a youth of eighteen. He had been reared in a home of refinement and com- fortable wealth in the city of New York. He was well aware of his position in society and of what would be expected of him at home when his graduation day had arrived. He had been drilled by his parents in the knowledge of self- dependence and already had a mind leaning to investigation and discovery. At the university, Mr. Roosevelt was a unique figure. Sterling, rugged, old-fashioned honesty and a keen sense of duty brought him up sharply before every proposition, and he made it the 57 58 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. paramount business of the present to find out just what was implied in that proposition. If it squared with his ideas of right he adopted it; if not, it was rejected until he had been convinced that it contained more of virtue than of evil. His career in those student days differed very little from the swift and fearless march he has since made to the mountain peak of Americanism. He was not so strong of body then as he has since grown to be, but he did not hesitate to join in any reputable sport or serious task attemi:)ted by his fellows. In one of his later essays Mr. Roosevelt says : ' ' One plain duty of every man is to face the future as he faces the present, regardless of what it may have in store for him, and turning toward the light as he sees the light, to play his l)art manfully, as a man among men. ' ' A similar spirit seems to have animated him in all his actions, even before he had announced his inten- tion of embarking in a public career. He liter- ally fought his way through college as he has since fought his way through life, accepting nothing from any source that did not seem to him to be fair and founded in truth. Mr. Tioosevelt took with him to Cambridge a habit of hard work and a disdain for idleness. COLLEGE LIFE. 59 Had lie not been well equipped with these attri- butes his career must have been one of far less moment to his generation, for he was neither a ready student nor a rugged athlete. It is not known that he at this time set a high mark for himself as a historian, a scientist, a politician, a warrior, or a statesman, in all of which fields he has since reached distinction. If we may believe his own words he was not so much given to dreams of achievement as the average healthy youth, who has far less chances to inspire his imagination. When Julian Ralph once asked him, **Y\"hat did you expect to be or dream of being when you were a boy!" Mr. Roosevelt answered : "I do not recollect that I dreamed at all or planned at all. I simply obeyed the injunction, 'Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do that with all thy might, ' and so I took up what came along as it came. Since then I have gone on Lincoln's motto, 'Do the best; if not, then the best possi- ble.' " There seems to be no question as to the appli- cation of these precepts to his own conduct by Mr. Roosevelt while he was in college. He entered upon his studies with the same earnest- 60 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. ness and enthusiasm that he has since shown in all his undertakings, and supi)lemented them by hearty cooperation in all college sports. He says of himself previous to his arrival in Cam- bridge : ' ' I was a slender, sickly boy. I had made my health what it was. I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself so. ' ' Of his college days we have this explicit declara- tion : ' ' By the time I entered Harvard I was able to take my part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred and ran a great deal dur- ing my four years in Cambridge, and though I never came out fii'st I got more good out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself. I was very fond of wrestling and boxing. I think I was a good deal of a wrestler, and though I never won a championship, yet more than once I won my trial heats and got into the final round. ' ' Mr. Roosevelt is the first graduate of Harvard to become President of the United States since the election of John Quincy Adams to that office in 1824. But his experiences have been so varied and his occupations so general and democratic that he will be claimed as often by the plainsman, the farmer, the soldier, the sailor or the author, COLLEGE LIFE. 61 as by the members of bis college society. He began to live in a democratic way on his first day at college, and during the entire four years of his course he occupied rooms in a private house, then No. 16, now No. 88 Winthrop street. It stands at the southwest corner of Winthrop and Holyoke streets, two blocks toward the river from Massachusetts avenue, on the extreme edge of the college community, and within a stone's throw of the Charles. The house was then kept by Mrs. Richardson, who afterward moved to Somerville; she rented the four rooms of the second floor to two students. Mr. Roosevelt had the two rooms at the south- east corner of the house, the front room, a very large study, and the rear one, a very small bed- room. Compared to the rooms in use by students at Harvard now, since the building of the large private dormitories, Mr. Roosevelt's quarters were modest indeed. AVhen Mr. Roosevelt entered college he had already developed a taste for hunting and for natural history, which has since led him so often and so far through field and forest and made him an authority on the character and habits of the big game of America. His rifle and hunting- 02 THEODOKIC ROOSEVELT. kit, tlie skills and trophies of the chase, were the most (•()iisi)i('U()ns things in his room. His birds he mounted himself. Live turtles and insects were always to be found in his study, and one who lived in the house with him at the time recalls the excitement occasioned by a partic- ularly large turtle, sent him by a friend from tlie Southern seas, which escaped out of its box one night and started toward the bath-room in search of water. In the memorj^ of his classmates Mr. Roosevelt holds a warm place, notwithstanding his pro- nounced opinions and fearless haljit of expres- sion. As one of them has expressed it, he was "peculiarly earnest and mature in the way he took hold of things." Both his fellows and his teachers say he was much above the average as a student. Yet he was not easily led, even then, but was as original and as reliant on his own judg- ment as at present. In a mere matter of opinion or dogma he was always ready to cross swords with his instructors, and several of his contempo- raries in college recall with smiles some very strenuous discussions with teachers in which he was involved by liis lialiit of dcrciKling his own conviclioiis. At iiradiiatioii lie was one of the f«'W COLLEGE LIFE. 63 of liis class who took honors, his subject being natural history. Mr. Roosevelt seems at this time to have fol- lowed that all-round activity, and to have attained that high excellence in each field which is the ideal of college experience. He was well toward the top as a student, but he was far too human not to have a full share in the social and political life of the institution. In his sophomore year he was one of the forty men in his class who belonged to the Institute of 1870. In his senior year he was a member of the Porcelain Club, the Alpha Delta Phi, and the Hasty Pudding Clubs. Of the last named he was secretary. His membership in the clubs of a less social nature shows what kind of a college man he was. In rowing, baseball and football he was an ear- nest champion, although seldom an active par- ticipant. In other athletic contests he was a familiar figure. It was while at Harvard that he became proficient in boxing, an art that stood him in good stead at an important stage of his career as an assemblyman, when the argu- ment of brute force was invoked to suppress him. Boxing was a regular feature of the Harvard Athletic Association contests, and ''Teddy," as G4 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. lie was universally called, was the winner of many a lively bout. He has never been a believer in a negative policy, and some of his happiest epigrams have sprung from his knowledge of the art of self-defense. During his college days Mr. Roosevelt kept a horse and cart, the latter one of the extremely high ones that were in vogue at that time, and which to-day may be frequently seen on the boul- evards of American cities. In this he drove almost every afternoon. His love for the saddle was developed later, wlien he adopted the life of a cowboy. He was a familiar figure in the society of Boston, where his dashing and picturesque ways made him a welcome guest. There is a photograph extant, taken at this time, which shows him with a rather becoming set of whis- kers. It was taken at graduation and is highly prized by his classmates. The picture shows a 3^oung man of mature thought and sober judg- ment. ]\rr. Roosevelt had his share in college jour- nalism. During his senior year he was one of the editors of the Advocate. Albert Bushnell Hart, professor of American history in the col- lege, was editor-in-chief. It is not plain just 9 < COLLEGE LIFE. 65 what work Mr. Roosevelt did on the Advocate. The future author of ''Winning of the West" seems to have contented himself with purely edi- torial duties or to have thought too little of his writings to claim them, for the files of the paper reveal but one article signed by him, and this bears only the initial ''R." However, this arti- cle is identified by his associates on the publica- tion. It is entitled ' ' Football in Colleges, ' ' and is merely a resume of conditions of the game at Yale and Princeton, It has little of the nervous force and picturesque style of his later writings. The one Roosevelt touch is in the closing para- graph, which reads : ' ' What is most necessary is that every man should realize the necessity of faithful and honest work, every afternoon. ' ' The last two words are in italics. The utterance is characteristic of the man, and valuable in that it points thus early to his driving qualities. An incident recalled by his classmates is equally characteristic of Mr. Roosevelt and shows that he did things much the same way then that he does them now. A horse in a stable close by Mr. Roosevelt's room made a sudden noise one night, which demanded instant attention. Mr. Roosevelt had retired, but without stopping 6^ THEODORE ROOSEVELT. to change his apparel he sprang out of the window, two stories from the ground, and had quieted the trouble before the less impetuous neighbors had arrived. While in college Mr. Roosevelt held member- ship in the following clubs : The Natural History Society; the Art Club, of which Charles Elliot Norton was president; the Finance Club; the Glee Club (associate member) ; the Harvard Rifle Corps; the 0. K. Society, of which he was treasurer, and the Harvard Athletic Association, of which he was steward. Mr. Roosevelt's outdoor life, his hunting and fishing trips, and the study and cataloguing of the birds and insects of his neighborhood had aroused in him a love of natural history long before he entered college. Most of his summers were spent at the Roosevelt farm near Oyster Bay, then almost as inaccessible from New York as the Adirondacks now are, and there was plenty of opportunity for long tramps through the woods and fields in search of information. His perseverance as a boy was phenomenal. Once his curiosity was aroused concerning any living organism he allowed himself no rest until he had the whole scheme of its development down COLLEGE LIFE. 67 from the original protoplasm. He continued these studies all through his college career and at graduation had a mind well stored with the facts of natural history. In this way he laid the foundation for the investigations that have since given to his descriptions of hunting a peculiar scientific value not owned by those of any other writer. He loved the country from boyhood, and to-day credits his physical endurance to his early outdoor life. ''I belong as much to the country as to the city, ' ' he often says ; "I owe all my vigor to the country. ' ' Mr. Roosevelt's reading and research had been of such a nature as to develop his admira- tion for heroic deeds, and in college he became a close student of history, being specially attracted to the science of government and the stirring tales that accompanied the accounts of the differ- ent conquests and the formation of new powers. He never tired of reading the ''Federalist," which he calls ' ' the greatest book of its kind ever written." Mr. Ray Standard Baker, in ''A Character Sketch of Mr. Roosevelt," published in McClure's for November, 1898, says of him: ' ' No young American of the time was more thor- oughly familiar with the history of his country, 68 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. both east and west, and with the lives of its greatest men. He had studied its politics as well as its wars, and he knew every one of the noble principles on which it was founded. ' ' It was while in college that Mr. Roosevelt conceived the idea of his attractive and useful history of the "Naval War of 1812,'' and he began writing it almost as soon as he was out of Harvard. The causes that have resulted in Mr. Roose- velt 's being given the title of " A Typical Amer- ican ' ' can be easily traced in the development of his character during this formative period of his college life. ' ' Each of us, ' ' he says, ' ' who reads the Gettysburg speech, or the second inaugural address of the greatest American of the nine- teenth century, or who studies the long cam- l^aigns and lofty statesmanshii^ of that other American who was even greater, cannot but feel within him that lift toward things higher and nobler, which can never be bestowed by the enjoyment of material prosperity." Here was an aristocrat born and bred, a young man in the full enjoyment of riches, who at the very outset of his career not only chose for his model the deeds of the two greatest COLLEGE LIFE. 69 Americans, but at once declared his belief in a spiritual rather than a material government. Neither was he satisfied in merely expressing his belief in these models, but he set to work to con- form to them as far as circumstances and the changed conditions of the times would permit. He felt no sentimental timidity in declaring his faith in these ideals, but, on the contrary, he proclaimed that faith in his earliest public utter- ances, and has kei^t it with surprising tenacity through a stormy and i^erilous voyage on the sea of politics. Mr. Roosevelt graduated from the university in 1880, a Phi Beta Kappa man, and he after- ward spent some time studying in Dresden. He was now in his twenty-third year, a robust, broad-shouldered, square-jawed young man, a born fighter anxious for the conflict of life. He had no need to work; his income was ample to keep him in comfort, even luxury, all his life. He might have spent his summers at Newport and his winters on the continent, seeking in pop- ular diversions those pleasures which come almost unsought to the favorites of fortune. He might have won fame as an amateur athlete, and he had the wit, tact and presence to be one of the 70 TUEODOliE KOOSEVELT. lions of society at home and abroad. Had lie followed tliis course no one would have thought of blaming him. Whatever he gave to the world would have been accepted with the world 's usual good nature, and there would have been no fur- ther demands upon his talent or his fortune than ho was pleased to bestow. To most young men in Mr. Koosevelt's situa- tion, a life of ease and pleasure would have seemed the only one at all consistent with his inherited wealth and mental endowments. But a life of ease and indolence offered no attractions to the future Rough Rider. He craved the stir and action of conflict. His country was at peace and America was the only land in which this young patriot would look for inspiration in action. He tried the excitements of foreign travel and scaled the Jungfrau and the Matter- horn, wanning for his feats a membershij) in the .Vlpine Club of London. But these were empty honors, brave deeds enough in themselves, but uarren of results. He returned to New York and attemi)ted the study of law with his uncle, Robert B. Roosevelt. He worked at his naval history. He hunted the biggest game he could find, and followed their trails alone or with a COLLEGE LIFE. 71 single man to assist him in the duties of the camp. Then, in 1881, he attended his first primary— a primary of the Eepublican party— and discov- ered his life-work. To most young men of his education and breeding, fresh from their books, and acquainted with the greatest achievements of their countrymen, such a gathering as comes together in a i)olitical primary would have seemed unimportant, if not mean and sordid; but Mr. Roosevelt saw in that mixed company of men the foundation of free government. If it was selfish and subject to improper rule those were faults to be corrected. Here was an oppor- tunity for good fighting to some end, and it strongly attracted him. From this time on Mr. Roosevelt never lost his interest in practical politics. He went into it with the earnest intention of being useful to his fellows by doing what he could to correct the evils that had grown up in the Government, and the record of his deeds since that eventful night is an earnest of the vigorous campaign he has made along those lines. CHAPTER IV. A NEW YORK ASSEMBLYMAN. AT ONC'K ATTRACTS ATTENTION TO HIMSELF AS AN UNCOMPRO- MISING FOE TO MACHINE RULE, AND A FRIEND OF GOOD GOVERN- MENT—STRIKING PROMISE OF A REMARKABLE PUBLIC CAREER — NOT EVEN THE DANGER OF BODILY VIOLENCE COULD DETER HIM — A REVELATION TO THE ROWDIES. Mr. Eoosevelt had scarcely returned liorae when his friends asked him to become their can- didate for election to a seat in the legislature from the Twenty-first Assembly district of the State. It was not wholly distasteful to him in prospect, for the Roosevelts had been identified with public affairs for nearly two centuries ; and, besides, ho hungered for the activity which polit- ical life was likely to bring. But there was a motive still stronger than this, and one that seems to have moved him gen- erally in his actions through life. In the career which this promised service in the legislature could open to him, he saw the opportunity to do some good for his fellows. He was a wide-awake AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 73 man, a man of the world— so far as his years went, and uncommonly well-informed on practi- cal affairs. He knew that really disinterested government was not wholly the object of the law- making powers. He knew there was corruption in the halls of the assembly at Albany, and that even the public conscience of his own city— the aristocratic portions as well as those less preten- tious—was not of the sterling quality that it should be. He knew there was much shameless corruption in the tenement districts ; but he was one of the first to use that scalding term, "the wealthy criminal classes. ' ' He had a theory that, however great the diffi- culties encountered, up there at Albany or any- where else, the man who met them with honesty, resolution and common sense would be pretty likely to conquer. And he loved to conquer — if only the opposition to be overcome were suffi- ciently strong. The interesting thing about the whole propo- sition was that his fight began at the very outset of his political career. He was of that IMurray Hill district which was then the name for all exclusiveness and propriety. But the district had long been the political possession of a ring 74 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. in his own party which did not permit inde- pendence of action any more than did the less decorous rulers of the Bowery. No Democrat had the ghost of a chance for election from Mur- ray Hill ; but, similarly, no Republican had ever gone from there to the legislature at Albany with independence enough and character enough to leave his name in the memory of a single citi- zen. And it was understood very well by the gentlemen who had so skilfully manipulated the primaries and the polls that this man Roosevelt was not the person they wanted in the legislature. They did not like his square jaw. They remem- bered or heard of the Roosevelts of the past, and knew it was not a pleasant name to conjure against. They particularly dej^recated his habit of thinking for himself instead of coming to ward headquarters every morning and asking what opinions were to be entertained for the day. So the ''managers" were against him. That is why his conflict in politics began with the beginning of his political life. The first thing he did was to effect the over- throw of that corrupt coterie of politicians who had been sending vapid and inefficient men to the assembly from the Murray Hill district. AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 75 These had been in no sense representative of that excellent electorate; but they had been exceed- ingly convenient for the men who sent them to Albany. Mr. Roosevelt went at the matter with the directness that was part of his nature. The laws gave him the right to rally his friends and supporters at the primaries ; and before the old managers were aware of their peril they had exercised that commonly unused privilege of American citizenship, and had expressed their will in the selection of a candidate. Mr. Roose- velt was nominated. Then he was elected. That was by no means difficult. And the men who had been managing affairs political in Murray Hill found a stronger man at the helm. Their occupation was gone. As they had opposed him, of course it was hope- less to command him. It was equally useless to try to bully him. That was discovered at the very outset. And, these things being true, it was beyond probability that they could buy him. So that, in a period of great corruption, a pure man and a strong man took his seat in the legislature. There was an added motive for commendable action at the time. It has been stated that in his boyhood he was the playmate of Edith Carow, 76 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. and that they grew up with the avowed purpose of uniting their fortunes when they should come to maturity— when they sliould have passed school days, and the world should be their own. But while a student at Harvard he had met Miss Alice Lee, of Boston; and an attachment sprang up between them which ripened into that lirofound regard in which the lives of a man and a woman are bound in a perfect union. And in the recess following his first term in the legislature, Mr. Koosevelt and Miss Lee were married. It was a most happy union, and the following year a daughter was born to them. But in 1883, while serving his third— and last— term in the legisla- ture, Mrs. Koosevelt died ; and it seemed to her bereaved husband that one of his main incentives to a strenuous life had been taken from him. His mother 's death in the following year cast another pall upon his spirit, and the conflicts of men appeared for the first time valueless. He remained a member of the assembly for three terms. In that time he sat with bankers and bricklayers, with merchants and mechanics, with law^^ers, fanners, day-laborers, saloon- keepers and prize-fighters. Every interest in the great State was represented— even those of the AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 77 criminal. And the ' ' honorable ' ' servants of this last class were by no means modest or abashed, or at all solicitous to be recognized as anything other than what they were. Mr. Roosevelt has himself called attention to the fact that the one hundred and twenty-eight members of the assem- bly and the thirty-two men in the senate com- posed a little parliament which controlled the public affairs of a commonwealth more populous than any one of two-thirds of the kingdoms of Europe, and one which, in point of wealth, mate- rial prosperity, variety of interests, extent of territory and capacity for expansion, could fairly rank next to the powers of the first class. Though it was not at all the result for which he had started when he went to Albany, he found beyond a doubt that corruption existed there. It did not surprise him, nor shock him to the point of inability to proceed with his mission; and he wasted no time trying to correct that evil— in the sense of seeking exposure and pun- ishment for the culprits. He did a better work in proceeding openly and honestly for the accom- plishment of the measures which seemed to him of greatest benefit to the State, and to his constituents. But he had not been in the assem- 78 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. bly a week before lie was a marked man. He disarranged theories distressingly. Here was a man wlio had no private schemes to further, and no selfish principles to which ordinary motives could appeal. Demagogues could not safely rush their measures through the house, for he was likely at any time to rise with a perfectly panic- producing question. He could not be met in debate, for he was master of direct speech, quick in repartee, and perfectly willing to give and take in that combat of words which falls into disuse when corrui^tion becomes the moving power in legislation. As the "bosses" down in the Mur- ray Hill district liad discovered, these gentlemen in the legislature became convinced that he could neither be bought nor bullied. But one thing was left, and the very low grade of the assembly may be understood when it is stated that the men who sought to control the lower house, who had controlled it for years, no matter which party was in power, hired a thug to meet Mr. Roosevelt, and administer in a beat- ing the rebuke which a body of elected American legislators had decided he deserved. One night in the lobby of the old Delavan House the collision occurred. That was a famous AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 79 hostelry, since burned, where legislators from all over the State congregated every evening, and where much of the actual business of the session was transacted. It has always been a peculiarity of Mr. Eoosevelt's nature that he never "got mad" at people, no matter what the provocation. He always remembered faces, and all that had passed in his association with a man; but he never avoided that person, no matter what the latter 's conduct may have been. In legislative life that is an especially valuable trait. He could fight a man all day on the floor, and then meet him with a laugh and a jest in the evening. And so on this night, after a day when he had been a particularly sharp thorn in the side of corrup- tion, he moved about the lobby of the old hotel, chatting with friends, tossing a laugh and a good- natured thrust at those who had opposed him, and treating the whole matter from the stand- point of one who understands the motives as well as the actions of those with whom he is asso- ciated. He did not pose. He made no pretense of loftier morality than those about him, but let them draw their own conclusions from his con- duct. 80 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. At ten o'clock he started to leave the hotel. On the way from the upper portion of the lobby, where he had been chatting with fellow mem- bers, he passed the door leading to the buffet. And from that door, as by a preconcerted signal from the "honorable men" with whom he had been associating, came a group of follows, rather noisy, and full of the jostling which follows tar- rying at the wine. They were not a pleasant lot. One in particular was a pugilist called ' ' Stubby ' ' Collins ; and this bully bumped rather forcibly against Mr. Roosevelt. The latter was alone, but he saw in an instant, with the eye of a man accus- tomed to collisions, the fact that this little party had waylaid him with a purpose. He paused, fully on his guard, and then ' ' Stubby, ' ' with an appearance of the greatest indignation, struck at him, demanding angrily: "AVliat do you mean, running into me that way?" The blow did not land. The men who hired "Stubby" had not informed him that this young member of the assembly had been one of the very best boxers at Harvard, and rather liked a fight. They had simply paid the slugger a certain price to "do up" the man who could not take a hint in any other way. AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 81 In an instant Mr. Roosevelt had chosen his position. It was beyond the group of revellers, and where he could keep both them and the more aristocratic party of their employers in view. And there, standing quite alone, ' ' Stubby ' ' made his rush. In half a minute the thug was beaten. He had met far more than his match; and the two or three of his friends who tendered their assistance were gathering themselves up from the marble floor of the lobby, and wondering if there had not been a mistake. When it was all over Mr. Roosevelt walked, still smiling, down the room, and told the ' ' hon- orable" providers of this combat that he under- stood perfectly their connection with it, and that he was greatly obliged to them. He had not enjoyed himself more for a year. xVfter that the representative of the Murraj^ Hill district was treated with the consideration which his varied talents deserved. In one of his essays Mr. Roosevelt has taken occasion to lay the blame for a corrupt legisla- ture where it properly belongs ; and he does it in the most graphic manner imaginable. A young man had done good and honest work in the legis- lature, but had by no means Ijeen the pliant tool 82 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. of tlie politicians that bad government required, and so a combination was made to defeat him. Mr. Roosevelt undertook to assist his friend to a return, in spite of the opposition. A voter, a man of large interests, was inveighing bitterly against the tyranny of politicians who should conspire for the young man 's overthrow, and Mr. Roosevelt said to him : * ' Of course you will stay at the polls all day, and work for his reelection ? ' ' ''Unfortunately," said the citizen who yearned for better government, ' ' I have an engagement to go quail-shooting next Tuesday. ' ' The moral Mr. Roosevelt tried to convey was that lawmakers and officials generally were quite what the public made them; and that, above all things, the legislator was representative of the people who employed him. He had learned the men with whom he served. Some he could trust. Some he must fight. And he took up his tasks accordingly. He became in a month, without the aid of any caucus, the leader of the minority— and the best hated man in Albany. He found a large number of men who were good enough in themselves, but who were AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 83 ' ' owned ' ' by some interest or some man desiring favors at the hands of the legislators. These men would act with their party, whichever it might be, on what were regarded as unimportant matters— that is, matters touching the general good of the people. But they were held to a strict accountability^ whenever really vital mat- ters were concerned. "Vital matters" were those only which touched the pockets of the men who owned the assemblymen. Some idea of the method employed by Mr. Roosevelt in this phase of his activity may be gleaned from a passage in his essay on ' ' Phases of State Legislation. ' ' **0n one occasion there came before a com- mittee of which I happened to be a member, a perfectly proper bill in the interest of a certain corporation. The majority of the committee, six in number, were thoroughly bad men, who opposed the measure in the hope of being paid to cease their opposition. When I consented to take charge of the bill I had stipulated that not one penny should be paid to insure its passage. It therefore became necessary to see what pres- sure could be brought to bear on the recalcitrant members; and, accordingly, we had to find out who were the authors and sponsors of their polit- 84 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. ical being. Three proved to be under the control of local statesmen of the same party as them- selves, and of eqiiallj^ bad moral character. One was ruled by a politician of unsavory reputation from a different city. The fifth, a Democrat, was owned by a Republican Federal official ; and the sixth by the president of a horse-car company. A couple of letters from these two magnates forced the last members mentioned to change front on the bill with surprising alacrity. * ' But there was another side to his life in the assembly. He met there many men who were earnest and honest, and some who were efficient in securing the legislation they believed best for the public of the State, as well as for their con- stituents. Some labored without a thought of their future political prospects, or a present pecuniary reward. And while he approved them, he was forced to declare that they were not very well used by their constituents. Yet in the final conclusion of the whole matter he says the chances of a man's being retained in the public service are about ten per cent, better when he is honest than when he is dishonest, other things being equal. There was at times a distinctively humorous AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 85 view of the life. Men like Roosevelt liked tlie excitement, and the perpetual conflict. He has said in later years: "War and politics— those are the two greatest games." He liked to put forth his full powers to reach his ends ; and if he was at times saddened or angered by the viciousness or the ignorance of his colleagues, yet the latter at times unwittingly furnished him a good deal of fun. For one thing, there was a deadlock in the attempt to organize the legisla- ture of 1882. The Democrats were in a majority, but a faction fight had rent the party in twain; and days were passed without anything being ac- complished. Finally, one day the leaders of the county faction sent to the leaders of the Tam- many faction a proposition plainly headed : ' ' An Ultimatum." The word had the appearance of Latin. It was unusual. It was regarded with suspicion, because it was, in the judgment of the men addressed, plainly meant as an insult. And they replied next day with a counter proposition splendidly answering the base calumniation of yesterday by a title as follows : ' ' An Ipse Dixit to Your Ultimatum. ' ' One day a very fervid orator was speaking in favor of a bill supposed to be directed against 86 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. the contract labor system, and he wound up a sufficiently remarkable oration with the still more startling assertion that the sj^stem was ''a vital cobra which was swamping the lives of the work- ingmen. ' * Among the less desirable elements in the assembly there came to be a sort of contempt for all measures not tending to the benefit of some private person or special interest. There was a code of ethics among the corrupt which invested with dignity everything not of a public nature. Everything else was spoken of scornfully as ' ' a local bill. ' ' Entering the chamber one day while a vote was being taken, Mr. Roosevelt asked a member on the floor: " V*Tiat's up? AATiat are they voting on? " " Oh, it's a local bill — a constitutional amendment. ' ' Grover Cleveland became governor while Mr. Roosevelt served at Albany, and on one occasion vetoed a bill relating to the control of street-car companies. One of the assemblymen, discussing the veto, in an attempt to pass the measure notwithstanding its disapproval by the State executive, cried impressively: **Mr. Speaker, I recognize the hand that crops out in that veto. I have heard it before. ' ' AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 87 Some of the members from the lower New York districts had caught up the word ''shibbo- leth, ' ' and seemed to regard it as a more correct name for their national weapon, the shillalah; and the mistakes they made in consequence pro- vided Mr. Eoosevelt and his friends with food for laughter all the rest of the session. The chaimian of one of the committees was a pompous, good-natured Colonel from the Koch- ester district. He was given to indulgence in wine ; and on one occasion came, rather the worse for his potations, to a meeting of the committee which was to receive a delegation of citizens. The spokesman was a burly fellow, and the Colo- nel, not very sure of his seat— nor of anything else— glared at him malevolently. But the visi- tor's oratory had a soporific effect; and the Colonel drifted away into unconsciousness. Presently the orator, who had warmed to his work, began hammering the table, and bawling at a great rate. The Colonel was roused from his sleep. He looked around, realized some phases of the situation, partially remembered the orator, and came to the conclusion that he had seen that speaker on some previous day. It did not occur to him that he could have been asleep— and that Ob THEODORE ROOSEVELT. would have been a bad confession to make, in any event. So lie pounded on the table with his gavel, and said : **I've seen you before, sir." **This is the first day I ever was here," replied the man. "Don't tell me I lie, sir. You've addressed this committee on a previous day. I remember your face and your voice perfectly. Xo man shall speak to this committee twice. The com- mittee stands adjourned." Then there were certain legislative actions which possessed in themselves something of opera bouffe qualities. Among these were the resolutions expressing sympathy with the oppressed peoples in Europe— always couched in language offensive to some great power. One of these demanded the recall of James Russell Lowell, minister to England, because he had permitted Great Britain, without a protest, to refuse independence to Ireland. But, in the main, Mr. Roosevelt's experience in the legislature was of very great value to him. For one thing, it developed him in precisely the direction he needed at the time. He came back from those three terms at Albany with a better AN ASSEMBLYMAN. 89 idea of men and tlie means to be employed in managing them; with a better idea of public life, and the means of using it for the benefit of the people, and with a far better understanding of himself. But there was a consideration still more important: he was introduced to the nation. A young man, with the handicap of wealth and lineage and good breeding, and even with a partisan majority against him, he suc- ceeded in effecting some most important legisla- tion. New York looked toward him hopefully. The whole country realized the fact that he was one of those referred to in these words by Lord Beaconsfield : ' ' They have letters in their pockets addressed to posterity ' ' ; and it came to be very generally understood that these letters would be delivered. It is but fair to glance critically at Mr. Roose- velt's work in the legislature. It was the begin- ning of his public career, and certainly contains an earnest of w^hat might fairly be expected of him in the days that were to follow. For one thing, he secured the enactment of a civil service law. He was one of that company of reformers in both great parties, of which George William Curtis, Senator Edmunds and Grover 90 THEODORE ROOSE\^LT. Cleveland, the latter then governor of New York, were members. So far as the public service of the State went, the new law was the beginning of the merit system, and its advance from there to adoption in national legislation was immensely facilitated. He secured an investigation of the county offices of the State, by which it was discovered that the principal officials in New York county were drawing nearly a million dollars a year in fees, while discharging no duties whatever ; and all like offices were placed on a moderate— though adequate— salary system. He began that inquiry into the abuse of police powers which has continued until better condi- tions prevail, and which will result in purity of administration, unless the people of the greatest city in the country shall be timid enough or supine enough to permit known wickedness to prevail. He secured an amendment to the Constitution of the State taldng from the aldermen of New York city the supreme executive power, and plac- ing it in the hands of the mayor, where it belongs. But, above all things, he made it clear that AN ASSEMBLYMAN". 91 good government was within the reach of the people if only they really desired it, and had the courage and honesty and ability to proceed to fight for it. It was prophesied of him that he could not be reelected at the expiration of his first term ; but he had little difficulty going back— even for the third term. And it is likely he could have remained in the assembly much longer if he had so desired. But there was other work for him, and to this he turned when his task there was accomplished. CHAPTER V. IN NATIONAL AND CITY POLITICS. RECOGXIZED AS A FACTOR IX XATIOXAL AFFAIHS — A LEADER OF MEN, LOYAL TO THE BEST TRADITIONS OF HIS PARTY, BUT IXTEXSELY' AX AMERICAX — MAIXTAIXIXG A SPLEXDID IXDE- PEXDEXCE— THE FORLORX HOPE IX THE RACE FOR ELECTIOX AS MAY'OR OF XEW YORK CITY. So far from his aggressive methods and inde- pendent principles proving the causes of !Mr. Roosevelt's retirement from political life, as his enemies had predicted, these wore the very quali- ties which won for him the strong endorsement of all that was good in his party organization, and among the better classes of that party's follow- ing. He had marked out for himself a yevy defi- nite course, and his watchword was reform. AVlien he retired from the legislature, he had already become a character of national interest; and so far from being consigned to private life, he was chosen as a delegate at large to the National Republican convention in 1884, and sent unin- structed to the councils of his party. 93 IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 93 It lias been liumorously said of that period that it ''was a time of reform, with a capital R." There was a feeling among a number of men, for whom George William Curtis, editor of Harper's Weekly, was a sort of spokesman, that civil service deserved more consideration than had so far been accorded it. By that term, always inaccurate, was meant a betterment of the public service by relieving it of the incubus of the spoils system. It would have been more in accordance with the end aimed at to have emploj^ed the term ' ' merit system. ' ' For it was a known fact that most of the offices were por- tioned out to party followers on the basis of their party services, and wholly without regard to fitness for place. It was desired that selection and tenure might depend upon the degree of merit men possessed. With or without reason, Mr. Blaine was regarded generally as unfriendly to the cult advocated by Mr. Curtis, Mr. Andrew D. White and Mr. Roosevelt. But Mr. Blaine was a candidate for the nom- ination fo the presidency, and there was no sort of doubt he had marshalled an immense strength. He had been called "the magnetic statesman"; and he certainly did draw to his support a host 94 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. of politicians of most remarkable enthusiasm and energy. Because it was not believed there was much hope for the merit system in the event of Mr. Blaine's election— possibly for other rea- sons—his aspirations were frowned upon by Mr. Curtis and his friends— a very large and very respectable coDii)any. So that, in sending rep- resentatives to the convention, the Republicans of New York felt that no greater good could be achieved than in the defeat of Mr. Blaine. To that end, no specific directions bound the dele- gates. They were at liberty to use their influence in the convention in such manner as would best subserve the interests of reform in general, and to aid in the nomination of any man who stood for the aims toward which it seemed the party and the nation so certainly tended. That meant a certain conflict with what had been regarded as fealty to party, for active man- agers throughout the nation were unquestionabh' in favor of the nomination of Mr. Blaine. But Mr. Eoosevelt had long before written in his political creed: *'I do not number j^arty alle- giance among the Ten Commandments." In the face of a question of right and wrong, he recognized no loyalty to jiarty; and he felt IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 95 the matter of riglit was involved in the nomina- tion of a candidate for the presidency, because at the hour that nomination meant the approval or the condemnation of the very reform for which good men were striving. ''There are times," he had said, '' when it may be the duty of a man to break with his partj" ; and there are other times when it may be his duty to stand by his party, even when on some points he thinks that party is wrong. If we had not party allegiance our politics would become mere windy anarchy, and under present condi- tions our Government would hardly continue at all. If we had no independence, we should always be running the risk of the most degraded kind of despotism— the despotism of the party boss and the party machine. ' ' Having decided that the best interests of his party and the nation demanded the defeat of Mr. Blaine in the convention, Mr. Roosevelt and his friends made a coalition with the Edmunds forces, and labored through the days preceding the assembling of delegates, to win for the Ver- mont statesman a sufficient number to insure a nomination. The convention met in the old Exposition building, at Chicago ; and there was 96 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. a season of noise and enthusiasm from the arrival of the first delegation. Clamor and excitement were the weapons of the Blaine fol- lowing, and streets and hotels and places of public gathering were loud with hurrahs for ' ' the man from Maine, ' ' and good-humored chal- lenges to his enemies. The opponents of Mr. Blaine had no means of employing a similar plan of battle, for they had no candidate about whom the young men and the energetic party workers could rally as they could about that remarkable character. There was an abundance of stubborn antagonism to the Blaine advance, but it was rather of the negative sort. President Arthur was a candidate for renomination, but he had been a friend of Senator Coukling; and no man warm in support of Mr. Blaine could possibly be induced to endorse Mr. Arthur. Senator Edmunds was regarded, the countiy over, as a type of purity and ability in states- manship. It was quite generally believed that he represented elements quite the reverse of those for which M*!-. Blaine stood. And it was largely owing to the efforts of ^Ir. Roosevelt that the New York delegation was recognized as the major ])art of Mr. Edmunds ' strength. IN NATIONAL POLITICS, 97 The convention was notable, even in the his- tory of national assemblies. The room was the same as that in which the Grant forces had gone down four years before, grim and defiant even in defeat. And yet John A. Logan, one of the three men who led that ' ' old guard, ' ' the famous three hundred and six, was here as a candidate, and perfectly able to capture— at the very least —the second place on the ticket. Mr, Roosevelt was accorded place with the Committee on Reso- lutions. He laid little claim to a part in the formulation of the platform, for there had never been a doubt in his mind that the man to be chosen was far more clearly indicative of the policy of the party than any declaration of prin- ciples that might be made. And he devoted his energies to bringing about a coalition between the forces of President Arthur and those of Mr. Edmunds. The result was that the latter went into the convention second in strength to ''the plumed knight," a title that Mr, Blaine had worn since his nomination at Cincinnati hy Colonel Ingersoll in 1876, The student of practical politics will be inter- ested to turn back the files of some daily paper, and read the record of that convention. There 9S THLUDOIIE r.OOSKVELT, was a struggle at the beginning for the selection of a temporary chairman. The name of Mr. Lynch, a colored man from Louisiana, had been put forward, and there was a sentiment that this was for the purpose of flattering the colored men in the convention, with no purpose of doing more than to bestow honorable mention. But in a twinkling the vote of Illinois, well held in the hand of General Logan, was added to the strength of the black man, and he was chosen to the position. The act had the double elYect of winning the good will of the colored delegates to General Logan, in w^hatever service he might need them, and of convincing the Blaine follow- ing that the Illinois man would have to be reck- oned with, whatever contingencies might arise. When Mr. Roosevelt saw the result of that vote, he got up from the floor of the convention, and went out to the committee room, where he met a number of his confreres. "Blaine will be nominated," he said. "AVhy?" asked one of the most experienced politicians of the country. "Because Logan has made it possible." It was looked upon as the emotional estimate of a young man. now to i^ractical politics. The IX NATIONAL POLITICS. 99 leaders of the anti-Blaine contingent believed themselves spokesmen of all that was reputable and the custodians of all that was honorable in their party. And it was difficult for them to believe that the representatives chosen by that part}^ in every section of the countiy could refuse to follow them. But the young man from Xew York, the young man who had shattered the ring that had been sending assemblymen from Murray Hill, and who had forced a merit law through a hos- tile legislature, was right. Mr. Blaine was nominated. The first day of the convention was taken up in temporary organization. The second saw the wrangle over a platform, and the debate which waked when the attempt was made to pledge every member of the convention to the support of the ticket to be nominated. And at 10 o'clock on the morning of June 5, 1884, the hour for conflict had come. In the first ballot Mr. Blaine led, with Mr. Edmunds a close second, and the following list of "favorite sons" trailing away with unimportant votes: Arthur, Logan, Haw- ley, W. T. Sherman and Eobert Lincoln. The second ballot showed a decided gain for L.ofC. lUU THEODORE EOOSEVELT. the man from Maine. Mr. Roosevelt and his friends worked as tliey never had worked before, for they believed the nomination of that man meant the defeat of the party at the polls ; but it was to no avail. The organization of the Blaine forces had been far too thorough. Not only were the delegates in general infected with that enthusiasm which roused wherever his name was mentioned, but a careful reading of the reports, as well as the testimony of those— still living— who attended the convention, is to the effect that the galleries were packed with Blaine adherents. When '' nominations were in order," Edmund's name evoked a decorous and respectable cheering. President Arthur's nom- ination was greeted with all the applause which Federal officials, grateful for favors expected, could give it. Kobert Lincoln won but a perfunc- tory greeting. But when the blind i^reacher from Ohio told of the matchless qualities of James G. Blaine, there was a continuous and deafening roar of applause for the space of fif- teen minutes; and it began anew at intervals, and roared again when the peroration was con- cluded. Blaine was the idol of the convention ! IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 101 The fourth and last ballot was as follows : Blaine 541 Arthur 207 Edmunds 41 Logan 7 Ilawley 15 ; "^ Lincoln 2 813 Necessary to a cJioico 407 And it seemed that the young reformer from New York had lost. Yet in the course of time it was discovered by even the most practical poli- ticians of his party that every prophecy he had made was realized. The nominee of that con- vention was defeated at the i)olls in November— the first of his party to suffer such a fate in twenty- four years. It is a little curious to note that in this i)eriod of his life Mr. Roosevelt was the close personal friend of Mr. G rover Cleveland, then governor of New York, and who in this same summer was nominated as the candidate of the Democrats for the presidential chair. Both were advocates of reform in politics, and that wiser reform which goes to the fact of government. To men not lljj TULuDUltE la)()SEVELT. fully iiiluriuL'd as tu the silualiuii in New York State, Mr. Cleveland's doctrine may have been regarded as not wholly sincere; for he was a member of the i)arfy which, in a national way, was out of j)ower. And it was national politics as much as state, that they sought to purify. Jiut there was as great a degree of sincerity, very likely, in the j^osition of the Democrat as in that of the IJepublican, even in the broader field. P>ut that man who views both Mr. Cleveland and Mi-. Roosevelt, in this campaign of 1884, as seek- ers after either state or national advantage, lacks information as to the motives that con- trolled them. Mr. Cleveland, because liis party had long been out of power in the nation, lias bet^n accused of an ulterior motive in seconding those measures of reform in the public service for which Mr. Roosevelt so sturdily battled. And the latter lias been regarded as trying for the command of forces in the Empire State. But both estimates are wrong. ^Ir. Cleveland could hardly lia\'e departed in so short a time from the course which had engrossed him from the begin- ning, for he was a "York State man"; and it is doubtful if he realized then the national possibil- ities that wvvv opening before him. On the other IN NATIONAL POLITICS. 103 hand, it would be folly to accuse Mr. Roosevelt of cribbing and confining his labors to the hori- zon of state politics. He felt the need of reform there as much as did Mr. Curtis. But he saw the need of a national change of heart; and all his effort in the political arena was devoted to securing it. And yet these two men were friends. Thoy were both battling for a better government, because they both believed a better govern- ment was possible, and was— by the very exi- gency of the occasion— made necessary. Mr. Roosevelt was defeated in his labors at the national convention, and a campaign of noise and enthusiasm began immediately , and re- minded him for five months of the failure recorded against him. His personal friend, Mr. Cleveland, repre- sented the very principles, so far as reform and the merit system were concerned, for which he had battled. And yet not even the most in^'eter- ate enemy of ]\Ir. Roosevelt has ever accused him of supporting his friend in the election, at the expense of the nominee of his part^^ Therein is found the realization of his doc- trine that a man may at times follow the lead of ](14 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. his parly r\ru wlini lit- lu'lieves it to l)o wrong. It may \)nii'j; little coiiirort to the wight wlio oxiHJcts a partisan to desert Lis party at each trivial oiYeuse; but it shows none the less a political sagacity which prevents a man sacrific- ing all his influence by ''bolting" every time his suggestions arc not engrafted into law. It is a temptation ])cculiarly seductive to young men. liut it failed to win this stalwart son of New York. He voted in the convention against bind- ing the delegates to sui)port the nominee— who- ever this might be. But when that nomination was i-(.'cordcd, he gave his support to the ticket, so far as voting went. An' one of them does— EANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 119 "can afford to be without Van Dyke's 'Still Hunter, ' Dodge 's ' Plains of the Great West, ' or Caton's 'Deer and Antelope of America'; and Coues' 'Birds of the Northwest' will be valued if he cares at all for natural history. As for Irving, Hawthorne, Cooper, Lowell, and the other standbys, I suppose no man, either East or West, would willingly be long without them. And for lighter reading there are dreamy Ik Marvel, Burroughs' breezy pages, and the quaint, pathetic character sketches of the South- ern writers— Cable, Craddock, Macon, Joel Chandler Harris, and sweet Sherwood Bonner. And when one is in the Bad Lands, he feels as if they somehow look just exactly as Poe's tales and poems sound. ' ' There is a picture of the inner life of the man while engaged in a vocation that seems little related to the finer sensibilities. It may be this home was not typical of the ranches in general; and yet, since the men engaged in business there were for the most part men of means, who had been accustomed to refinements of life elsewhere, it is likely this view of Chim- ney Butte in some fair measure typifies the domestic provision of the ranchmen in general. 120 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. But it accentuates this fact: A man carries his character with liim. And it seems to have heen impossible for this man to leave behind him at any time the bond that holds the true Amer- ican to the interests and activities of the nation. An effect of it was that when he returned to the East, it was by no means the coming from the banishment that his friends there imagined. They had little of importance to tell him. He had kept pace with events, as they had ; and even the comment of the world was in his possession. It may have been a wise dispensation of Provi- dence which denied large financial returns to the men who risked such fortunes, and expended such effort in developing the cattle country of the Northwest. There is just a possibility that much prosperity would have diverted Mr. Roosevelt, at least for some years, from these public labors in his native State which came to make up so nnich of his subsequent life. But, in any event, neither the distance from the center of govern- ment nor the exactions of ranch life left a void in his career. He must have been an exceed- ingly industrious man; for in the years while there in the Bad Lands, he did much of the writ- ing which has proved him a master of composi- BUSTING A BRONCHO RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS. 121 tion, as well as a man of the most tireless action. As in the case of all new countries, there was a very lax moral code in the Bad Lands at the time Mr. Roosevelt established himself there as a ranchman. It had been the habit of some cowboys to drive into the herds they were keep- ing any stray cattle they encountered in riding about the range ; and it was equally the habit of some ranchmen, even with knowledge of this irregular possession, to accept the "findings" and have the animals branded as their own. One of the first rules enunciated by Mr. Roosevelt was that his cowboys would not be permitted to "rustle." That is, they should not permit cattle not his own to come into his herds. He was very positive about this, and his riders acted accordingly. But there was another rule, equall}^ positive. He would permit no man to take cattle belonging to him. The habit had become too well established for instant breaking, and his stock continued to be stolen. He estab- lished one case very clearly, and with one of his men rode two weeks straight after the two cul- prits who had robbed him, captured them, brought them back to Medora, and sent both to the penitentiary at Mandan. ]2'2 THEODORE ROOSE\'ELT. Tliiit was the cud of the "•rustling" in tiie Had Lands. He estaljlislied a better grade of morals than liad existed before; and be (quick- ened tlie sense of respect for law and order tiiroughout the whole cattle country. As to tlie details of ranch work, lie lias him- self left a sufiicient record. In one of his vol- umes he j!:i\('s a most graphic description of the now almost forgotten "round-up." *'A ranch- man is kept busy most of the time, but his hard- est work comes with the spring and fall round- ups, when the calves are branded, or the beeves gathered Ini- market. Oui" round-U}) district includes tlu' Reaver and Little Beaver creeks. All the ranches along the line of these two creeks, and the river spaces between, join in sending from one to four men to the round-up, each man taking eight ponies; and for every six or seven iiKMi there will be a four-horse wagon to carry the blankets and mess kit. The whole, including perhaps forty or fifty cowboys, is under the head of one first-class foreman, styled the captain of the rouiid-up. "Beginning - of his hunting books. The personal element is, of course, prevalent in them, but it is not o])trusive or out of perspective. There is no assumjition of modesty in them, no affectation of iiuli iTereiice to the writer's own share in the expe- AS AN AUTHOR. 143 riences and observations recorded. He is quite frankly and inevitably the chief actor in the tale, but not at all the hero. He takes his part with zest, and his personality lends a natural and con- stant charm to every adventure. But he is intensely interested in the game he pursues, in the country he hunts over, in his companions, in everything that presents itself to his eager and vigorous mind, to his keen and alert vision. ' ' Had he done nothing, ' ' says one of his critics, *'but write his fascinating hunting books, and lived through the experiences they relate in so simple and winning style, he would probably be more widely known in other lands than any other American save one or two." Had he not obscured his reputation as a historian by his industry in making history he would have a dis- tinct place in the circle of American writers in that field. It remains true, however, that if his life had been less full and active his literary work would in all probability have had less value, and the value would have been less peculiar. Mr. Roosevelt is most successful as a writer when the subject he has in hand most completely enlists his sympathies. His histories and biogra- phies are best and most interesting where they 144 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. are tlic uiiconsfious representation of the au- thor's nunc! and character. He has no patience with and little charity for weakness of any sort, and where the weakness sliows in a prominent cliaracter lie finds no excuse for it. Theorists are iiis abomination, and he does not stop to consider words when discussing them. Of President Jef- ferson he says : ' * Though a man whose views and theories liad a profound influence on our national life, he was i)erhaps the most incapable executive that ever filled the presidential chair; being almost purely visionary, he was utterly unable to gra})ple with the slightest actual danger, and, not even excepting his successor, Madison, it would 1)0 difTicult to imagine a man less fit to guide the state with honor and safety through the stormy times that marked the opening of the present century." But in the open, dealing with wild and pictur- escpie figures such as the early settlers of Amer- ica and their Indian foes who possessed the land before them, Mr. IJoosevelt becomes an actor in the scenes lic^ would describe, and develops sur- prising power as a writer of great force and cleaniess. Tn "The Winning of the West" he lias conhibutcd to literature four volumes of PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON HORSEBACK Kepruduced fruin Leslie's Weekly. Copyright by judge Company, igot AS AN AUTHOR. 145 great historical value. He feels the forces he describes; he has been in active alliance with them; he has known in personal intimacy the survivors and present representatives of the vic- tors in that mighty struggle, and the men who are developing what their ancestors won. His imagination is keen, his sympathies intense, his vision unclouded. There is a justness in his deductions that are often almost brutal in their plainness. ''It was impossible," he declares, "long to keep peace on the border between the ever-encroaching whites and their fickle and bloodthirsty foes. The hard, reckless, often brutalized frontiersman, greedy of land and embittered by the memories of untold injuries, regarded all Indians with sullen enmity, and could not be persuaded to distinguish between the good and the bad. The central government was as powerless to restrain as to protect these far-off unruly citizens. ' ' Into this wilderness, where men were as pitiless as the elements, and as savage as the beasts that roamed the forests, Mr. Roosevelt takes his reader with a sweep of a great dram- atist and holds him fast with the graphic fervor of his recital. The vigorous personality of the 14() TIIEODORE ROOSEVELT. writer gives to the work its greatest cliarin and most permanent value. As an essayist .Mr. IJoosevelt has the distin- giiisliing feature of coining phrases that once licard cannot be forgotten. These short, crisp si'ntences strike ui)on the ear like the report of a (iatliiiLC gun and I'ui'ce their way into the mind as the leaden missiles of that savage little fight- ing-machine force themselves into the body. In "The Strenuous Life" selections of this charac- ter may be taken at random. Here are a few of the most striking : '*A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace wliicli springs merely from lack either of desire oi- ol" i)ower to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual." "Wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry out some kind of non- remunera- tive work in science, in letters, in art, in explora- tion, in historical research— work of the type vre most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation." AS AN AUTHOR. 147 ' ' In tlie last analysis, a healthy state can only exist when the men and women who make it up lead clean, health}', vigorous lives." ' ' The man must be glad to do a man 's work, to dare and to do and to labor ; to keep himself and to keep those dependent upon him. The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the home-maker, the wise and fearless mother of man}' healthy children." * ' AVlieu men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they are on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fie sub- jects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded." ^ * It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the •nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious tri- umphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat. ' ' "Thank God for the iron in the blood of our 148 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. fatliLTs. tlic men who ujjbeld the wisdom of Lin- cohi, iiiid Ix.rc sword or rifle in the army of (1 rant I" "Tf we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues." "The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who lias lost the great, fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man, and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills stern men with empires in their brains- all those, of course, shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties." ' * Let us shrink from no strife, moral or phy- sical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, tliat we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness." l'\'W men have written more intimately, more poetically or more lovingly of nature in her vary- ing moods than Mr. Eoosevelt. There is a qual- ity of sym))athetic exj^ression in the following descriptiuu ul" the heat of a day observed from AS AN AUTHOR. 149 the veranda of a Western ranch house that is scarcely paralleled in the language : "In the hot, noon- tide hours of midsummer, the broad ranch veranda, always in the shade, is almost the only place where a man can be comfortable; but here he can sit for hours at a time, leaning back in his rocking-chair, as he reads or smokes, or with half-closed, dreamy eyes gazes across the shallow, nearly dry, river bed to the wooded bottoms opposite, and to the plateaus lying back of them. Against the sheer white faces of the cliffs, that come down without a break, the dark green tree-tops stand out in bold relief. In the hot, lifeless air all objects that are not near by seem to sway and waver. There are few sounds to break the stillness. From the upper branches of the cottonwood trees overhead, whose shimmering, tremulous leaves are hardly ever quiet, but, if the wind stirs at all, rustle and quiver and sigh all day long, comes every now and then the soft, melancholy cooing of the mourning-dove, whose voice always seems far away and expresses more than any other sound in nature the sadness of gentle, hopeless, never-ending grief. The other birds are still and very few animals move about. Now and then ]7)0 TITEODOKE ROOSEVELT. (Iw Mack shadow of a wlioeliiig vulture falls on tilt' suii-scorclied f,a-ound. The cattle, that have strung down in long files from the hills, lie iit it is doubtful if any children ever grew up more thoroughly grounded in truthfulness, in fairness and honesty. There were books in plenty, and the habit of '■ reading was cultivated. Both father and mother went with the children in their excursions in his- tory; joined them in the interesting study of birds and beasts ; so that a love for biography, and for the study of other nations and other times, and a keen appreciation of natural history, all became elements in the training of these chil- dren—in the home life of young Theodore Koosevelt. To it may be traced in large measure his own views on the ]■) roper treatment of children. In the course of a recent paper he has stated the HOME LIFE. 157 essence of those views; "All children should have just as good a time as they possibly can." For he has seen the truth— that out of a happy and innocent boyhood a happy and useful man- hood is most likely to come. It has been said that young Theodore and little Edith Carow formed a childish attachment even in the days when they played about the trees and fountains of Union Square, and the reader has learned that Mr. Roosevelt later, while a stu- dent at Harvard, met Miss Alice Lee, a beautiful young woman of Boston. Their marriage fol- lowed closely upon his graduation, and they enjoyed a year of travel and reading in Europe. A daughter, Alice, was born to them, and the home life of this young man promised to be as happy and as nearly ideal as that of his fathers before him had been. But death took his wife in the summer of 1884 ; and shortly after- ward he suffered the loss of his mother. His father had died some years before. Thereafter for three years his home life was that of a man deprived of the joys to which husband and father is entitled, yet in all ways true to the ideals of manliness and integrity which had been set before him from the beginning. Little Alice was 158 TUEODORE ROOSEVELT. cared for in tlic home of lier grandparents, in Boston, and Mr. iJoosevelt turned from the fire- side lliat liad been so large a part of bis life, and went to the West. He hunted, rode horse- back, took an active interest in the moral and material building up of the new regions around the headwaters of the Missouri river, and he engaged in such reading and thought as were best calculated to broaden and fit him for greater duties when their day should come. ^leantime Edith Kermit Carow had grown to womanhood, had graduated from the schools that were selected for her, and had traveled a great deal abroad. She was heard of now and then in Berlin, in Paris and in London, but spent the greater portion of each year at the home of her parents in New York. The childish romance in which her life and that of Theodore Roosevelt were formerlj'' united had been laid away among those tender, clinging memories which a woman cherishes but docs not discuss, and she had become a favorite in the very exclusive circles wliich she frequented. Wlien the news of Mrs. ivoosevelt's death was received there was no sin- cerer mourner than she. But two years later the old association was renewed, and the girl who HOME LIFE. 159 had played with Theodore Roosevelt in the shade of Union Square's trees became his second wife. The personality of a wife is a subject that cannot be discussed recklessly. It is enough to say that Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt is modest and retiring, devoted to her husband, and almost wholly engrossed by the duties of her home. She who reigned as a belle through three successive seasons has become the ideal mother of five happy, healthy children, and is now a most gra- cious mistress of the White House— a charming ''first lady of the land." She is accomplished, possessed of that gentle voice which is ''an excellent thing in woman," and far removed from the arrogance which in one weaker might go with so high a station. Nothing more complimentary can be said of her than that she is sensible ; nothing more hon- orable than that she is an ideal American mother, and nothing more convincing than that Alice Roosevelt, child of that first marriage, is fully and lovingly established as a daughter of this later home. With all the elements that go to make up the character of President Roosevelt, the religious tendencies should bv no means be overlooked. llld THKOUOUK lioo.SKVKLT. ill- is a ineinber of the Dutch Reformed Church, and lias attended the services of that communion since he was a cliild. His parents must have acceijted a broad and reasonable rendering of tlie ))recei)t whicli directed them to bring up their children "in tlic nurture and admonition of the Loid," for this man who has met all problems of life with courage and decision, has measured his deeds by the standard of a practical and per- fect faith. The great tenets of the Christian religion are the tenets of his creed. He does no evil. lie seeks that whicli is good. He renders un(i) every man the things that belong to that man— and he takes his own with an honest;' which is not hypocritical enough to permit sel - effacement. The church organization to which Mr. Roo-^e- velt Ijelongs has a very honorable history. M)st of the people of Holland still adhere to it, and its devotees are found all over the world. In the Ignited States they have establishments in ev^ery considerable city. The form of government is Presbyterian. Four hundred years ago the peo- ple of Holland wavered between the Lutheran and (lie Reformed cliurches. In 1571 they pub- licly professed llieir allegiance to the latter. As HOME LIFE. 161 long as they were under the sway of Spain they abstained from the use of the word ' ' reformed, ' ' but when freedom had been achieved they made their choice, and set an example which was later expressed in America— the right to ''worship God according to the dictates of their own con- sciences." The life of Theodore Roosevelt brings much for the encouragement of the practical Christian. There is no cant in his composition. He belongs to the Church, and attends in observance upon its ordinances. He contributes to the support of that gospel which was the consolation of his ancestors, both in the fatherland and in this newer country which began almost with the establishment of the Roosevelt family. But, aside from this, the man's life has been an example of the living which those precepts en- join. Above all things, he is genuine and honest. He is as fearless as were the prophets of old, and as insistent on absolute justice between man and man as even the first of the Judges could have been. Being intensely practical, he holds that religion of little value which does not make men and women better ; which does not lead them into right lives, and keep them in happiness. 162 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. In September, 1901, less than a week before that assassination of President McICinley wliich for the third time in American history placed a Vice-President in the chief executive's chair, Mr. Roosevelt vras in Chicago and remained there over Sunday. Many demands were made upon his time. He was then Vice-President, and a fig- ure so commanding that influential men sought him continually. But in the early hours of that Sabbath day he disregarded social and political obligations, went to Trinity Eeformed Church, on Marshfield avenue, and joined in the worship according to the familiar forms that had been a part of his life from the beginning. At the con- clusion of a short sermon the pastor invited him into the pulpit, and there he addressed the con- gregation. His militant Christianity was evi- denced in the very first words he uttered : * ' Be ye doers of the "Word, and not hearers only." It was the message of a man who cares little for profession, but much for performance. It was the command uttered nineteen hundred years ago by One who condemned the boastful Pharisee, yet recognized the honest effort to do right when he uttered the exclamation: ''Well done, good and faithful servant." HOME LIFE. 163 In that modest address, which has been styled a sermon, Mr. Roosevelt said: *'We must be doers— not hearers only. I am sure every one who tries to be a good Christian must feel a pecul- iar shame when he sees a hypocrite, or one who so conducts himself as to bring reproach upon Christianity. The man who observes all the ceremonials of the laws of the church but who does not carry them out in his daily life, is not a true Christian. To be doers of the Word it is necessary that we must be first hearers of the Word. Yet attendance at church is not enough. We must learn the lessons. We must study the Bible, but we must not let it end there. We must apply it in active life. The first duty of a man is to his own house. The necessity of heroic action on a great scale arises but seldom, but the hum- drum of life is with us every day. ''In business and in work, if you let Chris- tianity stop as you go out of the church door, there is little righteousness in you. You must behave to your fellowmen as you would have them behave to you. You must have pride in your work if you would succeed. A man should get justice for himself, but he should also do justice to others. Help a man to help himself, 164 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. but do not expend all your efforts in helping a man who will not help himself." Later in the day he spoke to the Gideon Band as follows : * * The Christianity that counts is the kind that is carried into a man's life. The man who does ordinary work well is working for the Lord. I do not like to see a slack man. If a man is slack in his business relations, you cannot draw upon him heavily in spiritual matters. Doubtless you remember the line in Milton where he speaks of the 'cloister virtue,' and later com- pares it with 'robust virtue.' That is what you men are teaching by precept and example. You are showing how a Christian life can be led in an active life. If you do not find in a man any outward manifestations of the Spirit, I am in- clined to doubt if it ever has been in him. I like to see fruits; and I am glad that you are pro- ducing them." It would be difficult to find a more accurate index of the man's character. Throughout his life he has been exemplifying the very principles which he presented to his hearers from the pulpit on those two occasions. When he took part in the preliminaiy^ political meetings in the Murray Ilill district, before his first election to the legis- HOME LIFE. 165 lature, lie simply put into actual practice what all the others would have cheerfully conceded as a theory. They understood that the government under which they lived was a republic, and that every citizen had a right to an equal share in its control. They would have admitted that they had no right to deny the franchise to any Amer- ican ; yet they had been denying an equal share to some fellow-citizens, and had no thought of discontinuing the practice. They had been deny- ing the franchise to Americans wherever they dared and whenever the exigencies of their party made it desirable. And they had been extending to other Americans who were of their own way of thinking vastly more than the power of a sin- gle freeman. Furthermore, if any one had asked them to subscribe to the Golden Rule just before their entrance to the caucus, they would cheer- fully have done so, and dismissed the matter as conceded, but of moment too small for considera- tion. Yet this man, Theodore Roosevelt, came to his political life with all the ingenuousness of a relig- ious neophyte, and all the enthusiasm of a patriot. His religion was of very little use to him if it could not be taken into his politics. His 1 (]C) THEODORE ROOSEVELT. political creed was a mockeiy if it did not square itself by his religion. Fortunately he convinced all those who cared to be convinced that the Ser- mon on the ]\rount, the Golden Eule and the Con- stitution of the United States were all legitimate guides for the politician. He overthrew the machine, but he took no more tlian was his right as a citizen, no more than, as a Christian, it was his duty to take. When he reached the halls of legislation at Albany he found a thoroughly established doc- trine that the Bible and the Bill of Eights were to be left in the anteroom. lie found that cor- ruption had come to be recognized as a necessary factor in the securing of even wise and needed legislation. Before he left the State capital he had established the principle that an honest man who has the courage of his convictions and the strength that should crown an American legisla- tor can secure the passage of laws without the use of bribeiy, and defeat bad measures without CTn]^loying violence. When he assailed the spoils system he needed but the simple doctrines that he had learned from tli<' Xew Testament and the catechism. Those to whom he talked confessed without reserve that HOME LIFE. 167 their jDolicy and their practice were not in con- formity with the doctrines of the Christian relig- ion ; and tliat, reduced to the last analysis, they were politically as well as religiously wrong. In their defense they may have insisted that practi- cal government made it necessary to do some things which an exact construction of law and gospel would forbid; but he taught them that better government could be secured without wrong-doing; that every end toward which statesmen might justly strive was attainable along the paths of honesty, fidelity and truth. He had no use for principles which would not admit of realization in practice, and no faith in a prac- tice which was not supported by manly and Christian princii3les. In one of his essays he has declared that the two commandments that were particularly appli- cable in American public life were the eighth and the ninth: *'Thou shalt not steal," and **Thou shalt not bear false witness." To take a thing which did not belong to him he regarded as stealing ; and the fact that he was an elected official did not absolve him. The doctrine was a new one to the men whom he encountered in his earlier activity in public affairs. When he had 108 TPIEODORE ROOSEVELT. taught his associates a more stern and righteous code of morals, he had occasion to repel their charges of insincerity by telling them they should not violate the ninth commandment. It must not be understood that Mr. Roosevelt was so strict a constructionist as to preclude the possibility of his securing practical results. Sometimes he found the best— the absolute right —not at the hour attainable; and he had as little patience with that band of irreconcilables who would have nothing unless they could have all, as he had for the graceless scamp who took with- out regard to title. ''The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty the brave and able man is simply a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness." He says in another place: ''We need absolute honesty in public life; and we shall not get it until we remember that truth-telling must go hand in hand with it, and that it is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent. ' ' Yet, speaking of the extremists who would reject every tender of partial betterment as "a compromise with the Devil, a covenant with \ \t '**^gg|; MR. ROOSEVELT AT HOME HOME LIFE. 169 Hell," he has said: ''They are morally worse instead of better than the moderates. Under very rare conditions their attitude may be right ; and because it is thus right once in a hundred times they are apt to be blind to the harm they do in the other ninety-nine cases. These men need to realize above all things that healthy growth can- not come through revolution. Hysteria in any fonn is incompatible with sane and healthy endeavor. ' ' There is no concession to wrong in this. It is simply the wisdom of a man who understands the world, and who knows that miracles have ceased. As even the Creator allots a hundred years to the maturity of an oak, so that man who would build higher the temple of his country's liberties must move by degrees; he must take advantage of available blessings, and gather the strength to be obtained from combat with foes. The religious life and example of Mr. Roose- velt seem above all things to be of that reason- able sort which makes men better ; which tends to a higher type of statesmanship ; which encour- ages a better officialdom ; which makes American citizenship and Christian citizenship more nearly convertible terms. CHAPTER TX. CRUSADE FOR THE MERIT SYSTEM. KOOSEVELT'S work in the new YORK LEGISLATURE BEARS FRC IT — APPOINTED CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER BY PRESI- DENT HARRISON — SHOWS GREAT PREPARATION FOR THE WORK— OFFENDS SPOILSMEN OF BOTH PARTIES— ABLY SUP- PORTED IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE. For several years after liis defeat for the ofiBce of mayor of New York Mr. Roosevelt took no prominent part in politics. Not that he ever lost interest in the legislation of his citj", State or coimtry. His nature and education prohibited such a course. A man who should neglect to perform the duties of citizenshij-) from any cause lie lield in less esteem even than the man who made a business of politics for the advancement of his own personal ends. There is no mistaldng his utterances on this point. " It is unfortunately true," he declares, ''especially throughout New England and the Middle States, that the general tendency among people of culture and high edu- cation has been to neglect and even to look down THE MEEIT SYSTEM. 171 Upon the rougher and manlier virtues, so that an advanced state of intellectual development is too often associated with a certain effeminacy of character. Our more intellectual men often shrink from the raw coarseness and the eager struggle of political life as if they were women. Now, however refined and virtuous a man may be, he is yet entirely out of place in the Ameri- can body politic unless he is himself of suffi- ciently coarse fiber and virile character to be more angered than hurt by an insult or injury; the timid good form a most useless as well as a most despicable portion of the community." It is impossible to conceive that a man hold- ing such sentiments would retire without good reason, even for a brief time, from the field in a war he had himself been largely instrumental in bringing about. And so we may well conclude that the period between 1886, when he made the mayoralty race, and 1889, when he was appointed by President Harrison a member of the Civil Service Commission, was employed by Mr. Roosevelt in the preparation of a plan that should put him on a fighting basis with those to whose methods he was unalterably opposed. The physical life of Mr. Roosevelt during- 17l' THEODORE ROOSEVELT. those tliree years is a familiar story. Much of the time was spent on liis ranch in the Bad Lands, where lie rode, and hunted, and wrote graphic t*iles of liis adventures— books on hunting, books on AVestern life, and books on Eastem cities, liis literary style was both vigorous and pleas- ing. His books sold well and the magazines made great demand for his writings. The public liked his breeziness, his evident sincerity, his courage, and began to get an understanding of the man. But Mr. Tioosevelt had other things in mind than any of these with which the country is familiar. His service in the assembly had shown him the seamy side of politics. He had discov- ered that the people, careless on the one hand of their duties, and, on the other, too deeply immersed in trade, or too busy in a struggle for existence to guard their rights, were being swin- dled and robbed by the very men they had chosen to protect them. He saw their need of a cham- jtion who was not only strong, resolute and brave, lint wjio was also honest, able and a patriot. Such a champion he determined to be, but the liigh purpose of his soul he concealed from eveiy one. Tn solitude and alone the prophets of old had fouud wisdom. What three years in the THE MEEIT SYSTEM. 173 wilderness did for Mr. Koosevelt is shown in his acts immediately following his return. He had gone awav a young man full of enthusiasm for good government, strong in his convictions for right and justice, fearless and ready in combat, but with few weapons and no armor; a chival- rous knight, it is true, but a knight with bare hands and uncovered head, who was forced to storm a castle skilfully built for defence and occupied by a host of trained and cunning sol- diers, ser^'ing under able, if unscrupulous gen- erals. He came back with no lower ideals, with enthusiasm unabated, with the same deep-seated hatred of sham and hyi.>ocrisy, the same contempt for weakness and cowardice, but with a greatly broadened mind, extended wisdom, and with a knowledge of men that was at once sword, shield and castle. Hard study had fortified him with the fundamental facts of all government, and days and nights of contemplation in the deep forest and on the broad prairies had given him a vision as clear and rare as the air of the moun- tain peaks. He went away the colonel of a regi- ment of patriotic recruits; he came back the general of a trained army. Impetuosity had given place to strenuous purpose, and his adver- 174 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. saries soon learned that they were now forced to fight a man as skilful as themselves in all the arts of wiir or diplomacy, who lacked neither mental nor i)hysical courage, and who, moreover, had truth on his side. How fierce and constant that battle was can best be judged by Mr. Roosevelt's three capital essays, "Machine Politics in New York Citj'," **Six Years of Civil Service Reform," and "Administering the New York Police Force." Even these give but a faint idea of the work done by Mr. Roosevelt and his colleagues in their efforts to make effective the laws looking toward purity in politics and in getting new legislation to assist in extending and completing the work. Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward civil service and the urgent need of it is succinctly set forth in the opening of his essay on that subject. "No question of internal adminstration" he declares, "is so important to the United States as the question of Civil Service reform, because the spoils system, which can be supplanted only through the agencies which have found expres- sion in the act creating the Civil Service Com- mission, has been for seventj^ years the most potent of all the forces tending to bring about the THE MERIT SYSTEM. 175 degradation of our politics. No republic can permanently endure when its politics are corrupt and base ; and the spoils system, tlie application in political life of the degrading doctrine that to the victor belong the spoils, produces corruption and degradation. The man who is in politics for the offices might just as well be in politics for the money he can get for his vote, so far as the general good is concerned. . . . The worst enemies of the republic are the demagogue and the corruptionist. The spoils-monger and the spoils-seeker invariably breed the bribe-taker and the bribe-giver, the embezzler of public funds and the corrupter of voters. Civil Service refonn is not merely a movement to better the public service. It achieves this end too; but its main purpose is to raise the tone of public life, and it is in this direction that its effects have been of incalculable good to the whole commu- nity." Mr. Roosevelt in this essay goes on to show exactly what was done during the six years he served as a member of the board, both to ad- vance the law and to hinder its advancement, and who were the more prominent among its friends and foes. It is a paper well worth the 176 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. study of any one desirous of knowing how the few really honest and capable men in the public service must fight to keep the spoilsmen from overrunning the rightful possessions of the gen- eral public, and carrying off its substance to be divided among the successful marauders. Here, as in all his chronicles of events in which he has taken active part, Mr. Roosevelt is quick to bring forward those who have been active and resolute in the cause. When Mr. Roosevelt took office on the Com- mission the only commissioner was Charles Lyman, of Connecticut, with whom he served until lie resigned in May, 1895, to accept the position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Hugh S. Thompson, ex-governor of South Caro- lina, was made commissioner at the same time with ]Mr. Roosevelt and served three years, when he resigned, and was succeeded by George D. Johnson, of Louisiana, who was removed by the President in November, 1893, being replaced by John R. Proctor, the former State geologist of Kentucky. Mr. Roosevelt declares that the Commission never varied a hand's breadth from its course throughout the six years of his service, and that Messrs. Thompson, Proctor, Lyman THE MEEIT SYSTEM. 177 and himself were always a unit on all important questions of policy and principle. ''Our aim," he says, "was always to procure the extension of the classified service as rapidly as possible, and to see that the law was administered thoroughly and fairly. ' ' It was this harmony of purpose in the Com- mission that made it possible for it to accomplish such a vast amount of work and place the Civil Service on such a firm basis that it can hardly be dislodged without an upheaval in the Govern- ment itself. Mr. Roosevelt was one of the most noted advocates of the merit system, and his enmity to the spoilsmen had won him the objurgations of press and party on numberless occasions. He brought to the discharge of his new duties all the energy exhibited in his legislative career, coupled with the wiser understanding gained by three years of close application to the study of the subject. His experience as an assemblyman had taught him that he would find sturdy oppo- sition to his plans for reform as much within his party as out of it. But he had an enthusiastic faith in the righteousness and the expediency of the Civil Service system. 178 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. His first entrance into politics was marked by fearless independence. He refused to affiliate with rings or cliques. As lie had begun so he continued, and for the first time since it had become a law Civil Sei'vice became a fact. Mr. Roosevelt not only believed in Civil Ser- vice as a theory ])nt was determined that it should become a part of the veiy fiber of the Govern- ment. He had introduced the first intelligently drawn Civil Service bill ever presented in the New York legislature. By an odd coincidence this was signed by Grover Cleveland at nearly the same time in 1883 that the Civil •Service reform measure drafted by Dorman B. Eaton, and <3hampioned by Senator George H. Pendle- ton, passed the Republican Congress at Wash- ington, and received the signature of President Arthur. Now by another strange conjunction of circumstances the author of the New York law was put in a position where the power to enforce the national measure was largely in his hands. To any one less sturdy and persistent than Mr. Roosevelt the task would have been appall- ing. Many of the Republican and Democratic politicians were opposed to the Civil Service act. ^lany members of Congress of both parties who THE MERIT SYSTEM. 179 voted for it did so on account of the tremendous popular pressure for its enactment which the assassination of President Garfield by a de- mented office-seeker two years earlier excited. These Congressmen would have been glad to see the act die of inanition, as the one signed by Grant in 1873 had died, through the refusal of Congress to make an appropriation in 1874 for its continuance. Few men in either party would have gone out of their way to advocate a contin- uance of the measure, much less to demand a rigid enforcement of its enactments ; numbers of them were ready to fight it on every possible occasion and with all the weapons in the hands of party organization. But these difficulties that would have over- whelmed a less aggressive man only stimulated the zest of Mr. Roosevelt, and he entered upon the duties of his office with an energy that startled both houses of Congress and made Civil Service reform the topic of fierce discussion all over the land. Every evasion of the law that came to the notice of the Commission was prose- cuted with a vigor that had a wholesome effect on the heads of bureaus and departments, and gave a security to Government employes they had 18(J THEODORE ROOSEVELT. never before known. * ' The widest publicity was given to wrong-doing," says Mr. Roosevelt. ** Often, even where we were unable to win the actual fight in which we were engaged, the fact of our having made it, and the further fact that we were ready to repeat it on provocation, has put a complete stop to the repetition of tho offense. As a consequence, while there have been plenty of violations and evasions of the law, yet their proportion was really very small, taking into account the extent of the service. In the aggregate it is doubtful if one per cent, of all the employes have been dismissed for political reasons. In other words, where, under the spoils system, a hundred men would have been turned out, under the Civil Service law, as administered under our supervision, ninety-nine men were kept in. ' ' In his fight for the extension of the merit system Mr. Roosevelt displayed a generalship that demonstrated his ability to lead among the very best men of the country. He was no sooner installed in Washington than he sought the sup- port of such men as Congressman (afterward Senator) Lodge of Massachusetts, Messrs. Reed, of Maine, and McKinley (afterward President) THE MEEIT SYSTEM. 181 of Ohio, among the Republicans, and Messrs. Wilson, of West Virginia, and Sayers, of Texas, among the Democrats. Among others \rhom Mr. Roosevelt mentions as having been active cham- pions of the law in the lower house were Messrs. Hopkins and Butterworth of Illinois, Mr. Green- halge of Massachusetts, Mr. Henderson of Iowa, Messrs. Payne, Tracy and Coombs of New York. Among its chief opponents were Messrs. Spinola of New York, Enloe of Tennessee, Stockdale of Mississippi, Grosvenor of Ohio, and Bowers of California. In the Senate Hoar of Massachu- setts, Allison of Iowa, Hawley of Connecticut, Wolcott of Colorado, Perkins of California, Cockrell of Missouri, and Butler of South Caro- lina always supported the Commission against unjust attack. Senator Gorman was the chief leader of the assaults upon the Commission, Senators Harris, Plumb, Stewart and Ingalls be- ing his allies. Mr. Roosevelt was so active and impartial in his enforcement of the law that when President Cleveland, in 1893, succeeded President Harri- son, he asked Mr. Roosevelt to remain in office, and so for two years more, under a Democratic President, he carried on the work of prosecuting 152 THEODORE ROOSE\TELT. offenders against the Civil Service law. In his six years* ser\'ice he added twenty thousand posts to the lists under the scope of the merit system, or more than were placed on that roll in an equal length of time before or since. I\[r. l^oosevelt had thus proved that Civil Service, honestly administered, was of practical value. Indeed, he goes so far as to say there is in American life no other cause so fruitful of harm to the body politic as the sjooils sj'stem. He does not believe that comi^etitive examinations in all cases result in securing the best men. Indeed, sucli examinations, shrewdly manipulated, may easily defeat the end aimed at. But if there is an honest desire on the part of the authorities to secure good results there is no doubt that the public service may be steadily raised to a higher state of efficiency. 'Mv. Roosevelt resigned as Civil Service Com- missioner May 5, 1895, and was appointed Police Commissioner of New York city May 24 follow- ing. CHAPTER X. PURIFYING CITY POLITICS. ROOSEVELT APPOINTED PREPJDENT OF POLICE BOARD OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK — "X WILL ENFORCE THE LAW "—MERIT SYSTEM GOVERNS IN POLICE FORCE — SUNDAY CLOSING LAW MADE OPERATIVE— ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION BY DYNAMITE. The appointment of Mr. Roosevelt by Mayor Strong to the presidency of the Police Commis- sion aroused a storm of protests from the corrupt politicians who had now come to fear and hate him with a bitterness born of repeated exposures and defeats at his hands. He had introduced into politics a new element, with which the men who controlled the machines were not at all familiar, and they resented it as a tiger resents the appearance of a higher vertebrate animal in the jungle where heretofore he has held undis- puted sway. That a man might be honest in oflSce, so far as his personal affairs were con- cerned, they could well believe. Indeed, it was necessary for the success of the machine that there should be such men in office. They were 183 1S4 THEODORE KOOSEVELT. the leaven for the loaf of elections; the **honor- a])le men" with wlilcli to fill the platforms at pub- lic ineetiuj;:s, whoso names might head the lists of representatives of the party in the public jiiints. Good men were as necessary to the machine as bad men. But their goodness must be negative ; a goodness that did not extend far beyond itself and was satisfied and complacent in llie contemplation of its own virtues. But })ositive goodness was another matter, dangerous, destructive and not to bo entertained. !Mr. Ivoosevelt, not being a negative, but a radically positive character, thej" found no place for him in their combinations. He w^ould not liave peace on any terms short of absolute bon- esty and efficiency. He had been offensive enough to the spoilsmen while be was in AYash- ington, fighting day and night for the enforce- ment of the Xaticnal Civil Service Law. To have him at the head of the Police Board of the city of New York meant war on corruption and no quarter. It was not to be borne. He must be crushed at the outset. After all, it was only one man against ten thousand, and the thousands had this one in their territory. Tliis was the feeling of the machine politi- CITY POLITICS, 185 cians in New York when, on May 5, 1895, Theo- dore Eoosevelt accepted the presidency of the newly appointed Police Board, with the under- standing that the duty of that hoard was to cut out the chief source of civic corruption in the city by cleansing the police department. At the city election the previous fall William S. Strong had been elected Mayor on an anti-Tammany plat- form, by a coalition composed partly of the regular Republicans, partly of anti-Tammany Democrats, and pjartly of independents. The business depression throughout the countn." in 1893, which resulted in a general suspension of industries, followed by idleness and vagrancy, had caused a political reaction against the Demo- cratic party, which was then in power, and this feeling no doubt contributed more or less to the success of the reform ticket ; but it is doubtful if the result would have been materially changed had the National Democratic party still held favor with the people. Crime and lawlessness had grown to such enormous proportions under the protection of the dominant party in Xew York that even the dullest and most careless citizen felt the gravity of the situation. Corrup- tion had honeycombed every department of the IbG THEODORE ROOSEVELT. city govermiicDt, and iuefficieney, dishonesty and rottenness were everywhere in evidence. Espe- cially was tiiis true of the police force. This dejtartment had ])een so long under the absolute direction of the Tanmiany leaders, and stood in such close connection both with that organization and the people, that it had become the actual hand gathering from the criminal and depraved classes an immunity tax to pass it on to the men who held sway over the politics of the city. A portion of this money naturally stuck to the fingers of the transferring hand, but the bulk of the vast sum collected from those engaged in unlawful enter- ])rises found its way into the chests of the ''machine." Tt nmst not be understood that Tammany was doing anything but what the opposing polit- ical machine would have done had it succeeded in getting such a perfect organization. There had been a time when the great Republican leaders had hoped to have this same settled advantage. They had been led by no less bril- liant a man than Senator Conklin, and no less shrewd a politician than Senator Piatt. But the laiik and file of the two parties differed some- what in character, differed just enough to make CITY POLITICS. 187 it impossible for the Republicans to hold their forces solid, whatever the issue. The influential leaders of the independent movements had gen- erally been drawn from the Republican forces, and the machine of that party had been so often crippled by defections that it was no match for the closely Imit and solidly constructed machine of its elder opponent. And so Xew York city had fallen completely under the domination of Richard Croker and his lieutenants. Mr. Roosevelt says of the conditions existing at the time : ' ' Xo man not intimately acquainted with both the lower and humbler sides of Xew York life— for there is a wide distinction between the two— can realize how far the corruption, brought about by these conditions, extended. It would be difficult to overestimate the utter rot- tenness of many branches of the city adminis- tration, but the chief center of it was in the Police Department. Except in rare instances, where prominent politicians made demands which could not be refused, both promotions and appoint- ments toward the close of Tammany rule were made almost solely for money, and the prices were discussed with cynical frankness. ' ' ^Vriters other than Mr. Roosevelt inform us 188 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. that at tills time in New York it was utterly imjiossible for a man to secure a position on the police force of Xew York city without j^ayment of a set i^rice, arranged and scheduled with, reference solely to its chances for blackmail. This tariff of charges ranged from two to three liundred dollars for appointment as a patrolman, to twelve or fifteen thousand dollars for promo- tion to the position of captain. Men who paid tlius liberally for their appoint- ments did so with the assurance, if not openly then implied, that they would not be censured for pursuing anj' scheme that would bring them a good i)rofit on the investment, so long as they were fair in the division of the spoils. There was but one way, besides that of open robbery, by which they could reimburse themselves for the original outlay and profit by the arrange- ment, and that was by blackmail. But those who were at all familiar with the situation did not hesitate to take the chances. The system of ''collections" was so elaborate and complete that the chances for loss were small and the promise of big returns was bright. livery one at all familiar with the duties of an officer of i)olice can readily understand how CITY POLITICS. 189 easily he miglit play the part of a robber with immense success, if he was confident the com- plaints that might be lodged against him would be either disregarded or pigeon-holed. Confident in his position he could le\y tribute alike on the innocent and guilty. Even the law was in his favor, and the more sumptuary the laws the better his chance for plunder. If a saloon- keei^er had a desire to conduct his business within the law, so as to be beyond the power of the black- mailing patrolman, his competitor at hand, who contributed to the corrupt fund, was allowed such liberal license that the man who would have obeyed the law was either forced out of business or compelled to adopt the dishonest practices of his neighbors. That this picture is not overdrawn may be gathered from statements of Mr. Roosevelt him- self, made in his essay on ''The New York Police," i^rinted in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1897. He avers that the system of blackmail had honeycombed every department of the city government; that while the money was collected from many different sources, chiefly from the gamblers, liquor-sellers, and the keepers of disorderly houses, yet "every form !!)() THEODORE ROOSEVELT. oi" vice and crime contributed more or less, and a great many respectable people who were igno- rant or timid, were blackmailed under pretense of forbidding or allowing them to violate obscure ordinances and the like." Into this maelstrom of crime and corruption Mr. Roosevelt charged as fearlessly as he after- ward charged at the head of his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. There was no halting for consultation about the methods to be pursued in either case. Time would not admit of it. The enemy was there before him and must be routed. "In administering the affairs of the police force we found, ' ' he says, ' ' as might have been expected, that there was no need of genius, nor indeed of any very unusual qualities. "\ATiat was needed was exercise of the plain, ordinaiy virtues, of a rather commonplace type, which all good citizens should be expected to possess. Common sense, common honest}'^, courage, en- orgy, resolution, readiness to learn and a desire to be as jDleasant with everybody as was com- patible with a strict performing of duty— those were the qualities most called for." This cata- logue of ''ordinary virtues" may well be conned by any one anxious to get a clear undei*standing CITY POUTICS. 191 of the character of Mr. Roosevelt and the causes that have led to his remarkable success. No one of them but he has kept constantly alive through- out all his active life and upon them he has builded solidly and well. Standing upon this foundation lie has reached sublime heights at an age when most men are satisfied to see the first dawn of permanent establishment. In the exercise of his duties as president of the Police Board Mr. Eoosevelt hastens to say that in spite of the wide-spread corruption which had obtained in the New York police department, the bulk of the men were heartily desirous of being honest. It was not the depravity of human nature that had brought about a state of affairs in the principal city of the republic worse in many ways than any that ever existed under an effete monarchy. It was the mildew blight of political ''bossism" reduced to a science. Every man on the force was a cog in a great Juggernaut that was rolling over the body of Independence and crushing all uprightness out of its life. It needed only to go on unchecked for a few more years to complete its work of national debase- ment. Every liberty-loving citizen may be thankful that in such a crucial time in the affairs 192 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. of his countrj' a man was at band who not only foresaw the results of the continuance of such a policy, ])ut was brave enough to attack, and strong euougli to overthrow it. Associated with Mr. Roosevelt on the board, as treasurer, was ^Ir. Aveiy D. Andrews. He was a Democrat, while Mr. Roosevelt was a Republican, but both men were big enough to put ill llie background all questions of national jDoli- tics, on which they widely differed, and enter upon the work of reorganizing the police force independently of all party bias. Had the ques- tion of party jiolicy been allowed to influence them in one single instance the work they did could never have been done. At least they would have failed in doing it. ''We understood from the start," says Mr. Roosevelt, ''that the ques- tion of party could not enter into the adminis- tration of the New York police, if that adminis- tration was to be both honest and efficient; and as a matter of fact, during my two years ' service, ^fr. Andrews and I worked in absolute harmony on every important question of policy which arose. The prevention of blackmail and corrup- tion, the repression of crime and violence, safe- guarding of life and property, securing honest CITY POLITICS. 193 elections, and rewarding efficient and punishing inefficient police service, are not, and cannot properly be made, questions of party difference. ' ' Mr. Roosevelt here shows how well he has considered the question of party fealty, and how naturally he has settled that question in his mind. If, as is here suggested, the police force of every city could be entirely released from the influence of all political parties it would speedily become a protection to the people, instead of being a menace, as is generally the case in the larger American cities. The first thing Mr. Roosevelt did after enter- ing upon his duties was to acquaint himself with the manner in which the officers of the force car- ried on their work, both good and bad. This he did by making nightly rounds in the different parts of the city, traveling quietly and unknown. In these investigations he was often accompanied by Jacob A. Riis, the author of ' ' How the Other Half Lives, ' ' a most careful and painstaking stu- dent of social questions. ' ' There were many men who helped us in our work," Mr. Roosevelt has often said, ''but among them all the man who helped us most, by advice and counsel, by stalwart, loyal friendship, and 194 THEODORE KOOSE^^:LT. l>y ardfut ebaini)ionship of all that was good against all that was evil, was Jacob A. Riis." Those wlio have followed the writings of Mr. Riis with sufiicient interest to recognize how deeply he feels the sorrows and wrongs of humanity and how thoroughly he has familiar- ized himself willi the lives of the less fortunate and unsuccessful of the great cities, will Tdc glad that Mr. Roosevelt is possessed of that trait of fairness that prompts him always to give full credit to eveiy one who is associated with him in any enterprise, whether it be the killing of a cougar, or the taking of a city. It is this charac- teristic that has enabled him to keep his hold on the hearts of the people without resorting to any of those common tricks of oratory, or descending to the level of fulsome flattery. Neither in his wi-itings nor his speeches has Mr. Roosevelt ever missed an opportunity to declare the truth as he saw it, jao matter whom it helped or hurt. This was the spirit that actuated him throughout all the bitter fight that followed his attack on the corrupt methods of the New York police. Once he had familiarized himself suffi- ciently with the situation to be sure of his ground he struck, and sti'uek hard. During his nightly CITY POLITICS. 195 rounds he had caught scores of the police in dere- liction of duty and he dismissed them at once from the service. Others whom he had found worthy he promoted. He punished and rewarded after a plan entirely his own. Politics ceased to save or help the men and the "bosses" were up in arms. The uproar that followed had never been equaled as a police sensation in Xew York. The whole force was in a state of fright. The evil element that had so long found protection through contributions to the officers of the law suddenly discovered that they were outlaws to be thrown into prison and punished whenever they were caught breaking the law. Mr. Roose- velt's life was threatened, and twice explosives were placed in his desk with the evident inten- tion of assassination. But he went steadily on with his work, alike deaf to the threats of his enemies and the supplications of his friends. In this emergency an attempt was made to have Mr. Roosevelt's appointment by Mayor Strong vetoed by the council, but it was discovered that an act of the legislature, passed some twelve years before, had taken the power of veto from the city council. Theodore Roosevelt was author of this act, and its passage had been lOf) THEODORE R00SE\'T:LT. ■jocured after one of the strongest fights he had made when a member of the assembly. Mr. Roosevelt announced that he would en- force the laws as he found them. He gave special attention to the operations of the excise law on Sunday, and after severe measures had been used with some of the more hardy saloon-keep- ers, New York at last had, in June, 1895, for the first time within the memory of living man, a "dry" Sunday. A great deal of good was done by Commissioner Roosevelt in breaking up much of tlie l)lackmail which had been levied by police- men ; in transferring and degrading officers who were notoriously responsible for the bad name the force had, and in making promotions for merit, fidelity and courage. Mr. Roosevelt's career as a police commissioner made him ex- tremely unpopular with the class at which his crusade was aimed. The fierce crusade against the saloon-keepers was brief, and its effect lasted but a few weeks. The new commissioner gave his attention to more important matters, and really made the force cleaner than it had been before. He undoubtedly gained the hearty devotion of the Injtter class of iiolicciiK'ii. Tie was most careful CITY POLITICS. 197 of tlieir comfort, and quick to see and reward merit. He was also quick to j^unisli, and this kept tlie worse half of the men on their good behavior. One important result Mr. Eoosevelt obtained in this position was the dissipation of much of the antagonism which had theretofore been ap- parent on every occasion between labor unions and the force. Men on a strike had been accus- tomed to regard the policeman as a natural enemy, but all this was changed. On one occa- sion, when a large number of operatives were out of work, Mr. Eoosevelt sent for their leaders, and, after a discussion of the situation, suggested that the strikers should organize pickets to keep their own men in order. He promised that the police should support and respect the rights of these pickets and the result was most satisfac- tory. The threat of a cordon of police was removed from the strikers, and no collisions such as had occurred on so many similar occasions took place with the guardians of the law. The attacks of the enemies which Mr. Eoose- velt 's methods raised up against him were not confined to verbal denunciation, nor expressions through the press. As has been said above, 198 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. dyuaiiiite boiiibs were left in his office. A part of his associates on the police board fought his eveiy move, aud all the skill of Xew York politicians with whom he interfered was exercised to trap him into a situation where he would become dis- credited in his work. In this they were unsuc- cessful and the stormy career of the police force continued. In the end the new commissioner conquered. He had the necessary power and the personal courage and tenacity of purpose to cany out his plans. He fought blackmail until he had practically stopped it, and he promoted and removed men without regard to color, creed or politics. He resigned in April, 1897, to be- come Assistant Secretary of the Navy. CHAPTER XI. ASSISTANT SECRETAEY OF THE NAVY. REBUILDS THE AMERICAN NAVY— INTRODUCES TARGET PRACTICE "WITH POWDER AND BALL — ACTIVE IN PREPARATION FOR WAR WITH SPAIN — ADVISES ORDERING COMMODORE DEWEY TO THE CHINA STATION — RESIGNS FOR ACTIVE DUTY IN THE FIELD. President McKinley was first inaugurated March 4, 1897. He immediately announced his cabinet selections, and as quickly thereafter as Hon. John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy^, could effect a reorganization of his department, Theodore Roosevelt was made First Assistant Secretary, and really the executive officer— the controlling and directing force— of that very important arm of the nation's power. The appointment was most fitting, as his ''Naval History of the War of 1812" had proved him as completely master of the subject as any man not trained to a naval life could possibly be. Years before a sentiment of hostility against Spain had grown up in the minds of the Ameri- can people. It was never officially recognized, 199 200 THEODORE koose\t:lt. and the Madrid govermiieDt had always been treated as a friendly power by each successive administration at Washington. It would scarcely be exact to state that the antipathy mentioned went even in the most aggressive minds to the extent of a desire for the conquest or the humiliation of Spain, beyond one single consideration. It was felt that the Spaniard should be driven from Cuba. The sur- face sentiment was that Cuba should be free. Beneath that, doubtless, rested the hope, in many minds, that the island, with all its riches and its possibilities, should be added to American terri- toiy. The terms of that accession had never been crj'stallized into anything like a national senti- ment. Probably they had never been foimu- lated in the mind of auy adventurer who made essay for the liberation of the Cuban. But the student, the observer of great affairs, the man capable of estimating international causes and effects, knew that whenever collision came— and its coming was certain— Cuba would not only be wrested from the Spanish crown, but would l)ecome a part of the territory of the United States, and that the century-old habit of hermit- age would be broken by the people of the grow- PKEPAEING FOR WAR. 201 ing American Republic. Unnumbered filibuster- ing expeditions had been directed by adventurers in America against Spanish rule in the island, and in spite of repressive efforts from Washing- ton, the whole nation was permeated with the feeling that America's relations with Cuba should be changed. It is possible there was a commercial element in the make-up of that con- clusion: the island annually exported $100,- 000,000 in produce, ninety-three per cent, of which came to the United States. It may be the sentiment of self-defense operated as a cause: the peril of the i3lague, hurrying from Havana to American cities, was a continually impending fate. But running through all other considera- tions was the one of humane feeling. The peo- ple of Cuba were grievously used by the Span- iards, and had been for three centuries. In the year 1896 it happened that a singularly savage policy of repression had been inaugurated by Spain toward the people of the island, and the whole civilized world was shocked at the atroci- ties practiced. It is idle to pause now and reca- pitulate the enormity of those offenses against justice. All mankind knows there was warrant for compelling the Spaniard to halt. I'Ol' THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Jt should also Ixj remembered that the spirit (jf Americans had been roused by the conditions obtaining in the island, and tliat common justice approved the policy of inteiTention— no matter what the national courtesy of the Government may have been. There was Narciso Lopez, who more than forty years before had led an expedi- tion for the freeing of Cuba. There was the landing of Captain Fry and his adventurers at Santiago, their capture by the Spaniards— and the execution of sixty men, mostly American citizens. There had been other adventures in the interim, and the national conventions of both great parties had declared time and again for the freedom of the island people. Extremists knew the status quo could not long be maintained. But there were few even of the wisest men who under- stood the full import of that sentiment existing throughout America, and not on the Atlantic coast alone ; nor did they even speculate on the means of directing the sentiment to a realiza- tion in fact. Mr. Roosevelt had been for years an advo- cate of a broader i^olicy for the nation. It was as clear to him that Spain must leave the West- ern continent as it should have been to Massasoit PKEPAEING FOR WAE. 203 tliat the Indians would have to leave New Eng- land. In that departure from traditional policy which must be expressed by interference in Cuba, he knew there would be a breaking up and a general readjustment of relations in every quarter of the world, and that the United States, being now fully prepared, was in a day to become a world-nation. Nothing could have been more fortunate than his selection for the chief executive office in the navy department. It was the one arm that could be made to reach around the world. And it was fortunate that so well-equipped a man came to the station. Mr. Roosevelt had studied the navy of the United States. He had compared it crit- ically with the navies of the vv^orld, both of the present and in the more remote past. He was the friend and confidant of Captain Mahan, an authority on naval matters. Pie visited the Army and Navy Club, and became familiar with the details of life in his chosen branch of the service, with the record of the officers, and with the nature of the rank and file. He knew pre- cisely how well-equipped for battle each ship was, if battle should suddenly arise. He went on a tour of inspection, and woke the officers l.'l)4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. aud meu to a realization that millions spent for ships and equipment could not alone provide an efficient navy. Within those hurrying months from the si)ring of 1807, when he was apiwinted, to the day in 1898 when he resigned, Mr. Roosevelt caused every ship to be put in readiness for actual service. He had their bunkers filled with coal, and impressed their commanders with the necessity of maintaining a supply. He had the crews filled by enlistment, and the official list weeded of material that could not be depended upon. He ordered target-practice with powder and ball— and that was an innovation which called forth a good deal of criticism at the time. It had been the general habit, not often varied, to make target-practice simply a matter of quick and orderly handling of the guns. It seemed a woeful waste of money to shoot valuable steel and iron at an inoffensive mark. But there was no other way in which to perfect officers in finding the range, or gunners in accuracy of aim. lie saw the unprepared condition of American ships in the China Sea, a condition that would be embarrassing indeed if circumstances should arise recjuiring movement against Spain in the PREPAEING FOR WAR. 205 far Pacific. And lie caused ammunition to be sent to that station, and held there pending demand. And, above all things, as the day of collision with Spain came inevitably nearer, he ordered Commodore Dewey to the China station with a fleet fully equal to all demands that could be made upon it. Meantime events in the United States were swiftly tending to war. It was impossible for a nation of the culture and justice realized in the United States to permit without protest the sav- age atrocities of the Spaniards in the West Indies. The people of Cuba had begun their revolution in 1895, and the warlike Campos had been unable to suppress them. He was recalled to Madrid, and Weyler was sent in his stead. This latter officer, ineradicably established in the enduring gallery of infamy, had served his country well in the Philippines. He had crushed a rebellion there, and he came, fresh with the laurels of an xVlva or a Caligula, to the work of throttling human freedom on the very threshold of the American Eepublic. Every day Ameri- cans were learning more and more of the cruelty of his rule. His celebrated " reconcentrado " l2(Kt THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Older, wliieli swept the population from their farms and huddled them in the towns, treating as rebels all who did not come in; abusing, insult- ing, outraging and stai'V'ing those who came, passed into history as the climax of executive barbarity. Statesmen from America, loath to move unadvisedly, went to Cuba and made a per- sonal investigation of conditions there. John M. 'rhurston, United States Senator from Nebraska, accompanied by his wife, was one of those who sought a personal assurance by a visit to the troubled island. Mrs. Thurston, worn with labor for the suffering, crushed by the spectacle of such cruelty, died on her return to AVashington ; and her husband, in one of the most notable addresses ever delivered there, pleaded for inter- vention in the name of that broad humanity which all the world could appreciate. She had been a woman of keen sensibilities and large charity. She had seen the starving and naked women and children lying in the sun, in cities to which they had been driven and from which they could not escape, gazing with unwinking, un- coniiu'ehending eyes at the visitors; and she had seen them die. When her sorrowing husband rose to address PREPARING FOR WAB. 207 the Senate lie said ; ''I have a riglit to speak. I give to you a message from silent lips ; and if I held my i3eace when such a question is under discussion, if I refrained from testifying to the atrocious cruelties inflicted upon the people of Cuba, I should falter in my trust ; I should fail in my duty to one whose heart was broken while a nation hesitated. ' ' He was one of many whose voice was for intervention, even though intervention should mean war. AVithout regard to party, the people of the United States, more unitedly than they ever had been before on a question of such import, urged Congress and the President to move for the relief of Cuba. But the executive end of the Government was— as it should have been— conservative to the last. There was to be no blind rushing into war, no official action which should precipitate a conflict between nations, if any less costly course could be found. In the very midst of that pause, when popular clamor and administrative reserve held equally balanced through the midwinter season, came the one astounding event which swelled the pop- ular clamor to a roar, and stilled utterly the voice of caution. 208 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. The Maine was blown up! Lying in the harbor of a nation still "friendly," in the ''noon of the night," an American battle-shi}) on a visit of courtesy was destroyed by a submarine mine in the supposed security of Havana harbor. Captain Sigsbee, of the sunken craft, appealed to the American l^eople for a suspension of judgment until an investigation could be had. But the nation had decided. The case had been tried. The Span- iards were found guilty in the court of American common sense. The Maine was blown up on the night of February 15, 1898. April 20 President ]\rcKinley cabled to Minister Woodford, at Ma- drid, the ultimatum of the United States : Spain must retire from Cuba and Cuban waters within thirty days, or take the consequences. The next day, before he could present the demand of his Govermnent, General Woodford was handed liis passports, by order of the ministry at Madrid, and thus officially terminated the friendly rela- tions of the two governments. It was the final act in a remarkable succession of events which proved Spain's contempt for the United States— which illustrated her remarkable ignorance both of the ])ower against which she flung her- MR. ROOSEVELT, AS ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, IN HIS OFFICE AT WASHINGTON PREPAEING FOR WAR. 209 self and the result that was morally certain to follow. April 25 Congress, responding to a special message from the President, declared war with Spain to be in existence, and that it had existed since April 21, when Spain herself had severed relations with our Government. That same day the President's proclamation was given to the world. And the end for which so many forces of humanity, of justice and of national and individ- ual interest had labored through fifty years was accomplished. The protest of a Christian nation against such savagery as heathens have not equaled was recorded. It is a little curious to reflect just here on the service Mr. Roosevelt had rendered his country in the short year of his labor in the navy depart- ment. So far as the army was concerned, there was a distressing state of ' ' unpreparedness, ' ' The word is not agreeable to the ear, but i^ expresses the situation wonderfully well. So far as numbers went, the army was wholly inade- quate. A new force had to be secured. Volun- teers must be called for. They must be armed, clothed, equipped, paid and drilled. Not one step had been taken in preparation for the event I] 10 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. wliicli all men knew was certain to come. The legal limit of the regular anny was twenty-five thousand men; and it did not contain so many. There was no clothing for the one hundred and twenty-five thousand volunteers called for by the President— and they offered themselves without delay. There were no arms for them. They lacked ammunition, especially the smokeless powder which is necessary for the best results in warfare. Not only must men be recruited, but Ihey must be officered, organized into an effective force and provided with all that an army needs for battle or for camp. On the other hand, the navy was ready. And there is no more significant fact in the whole his- tory of the period than that the arm of the serv- ice which was first called upon to bear the brunt of the struggle was prepared at the first demand. The navy struck the first blow. Commodore Dewey was infoiined at Yokohama of the strained relations between the United States and Spain, lie assembled his squadron at Hong- Kong, and was ready for any orders that might come to him. lie had plenty of coal, provided by tlie assistant secretary of the navy. He had an abundance of ammunition, which had been PREPAEING FOR WAR. 211 hurried from the United States months before. He had officers selected from the whole list in commission for their fitness and their readiness for orders. He had a crew on every ship trained to every detail of work, hardened by drill and efficient through practice. And there was not a vessel in his squadron which lacked even the smallest detail in preparation for any struggle, no matter how severe. It is idle here to tell again the battle of Manila Bay. Some have arisen with sneering criticism of the inequality in that struggle, describing the enemy 's squadron as ^ ' a lot of tubs. ' ' Yet they were capable war-vessels, and fought from the protection of forts which are always conceded to have an advantage. If Admiral Dewey had led to that task the navy of 1897 he might have won ; but he would have paid for victory in the lives of American sailors, and in the loss of vessels that at the time could ill have been spared. Prepared as he was by Mr. Roosevelt 's orders, he surpassed Salamis— and lost neither ship nor man. The event is without parallel in all the history of naval battles. Similarly, in the Western ocean, the same con- dition of ''preparedness" was observed. Mr. 212 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Roosevelt brou^lit to the duties of his office a pjreat interest in the work, as well as a tremendous energy and talent for closely studying and mas- tering his task, which had characterized him in other fields. He also brouglit to these restful members of the na\'y department some of his startling methods, and again proved himself the ' ' storm center, ' ' a name which had already been given to him, and to which he was better entitled than any other man in public life. In the fall of 1897 he was detailed to inspect the fleet in Hamp- ton I\oads, and he kept the commanders and their jackies in a ferment for a week. "\ATienever he thought of a drill he would like to see, he ordered it. The crews were called to quarters at night, and all sorts of emergency orders were given, at various hours. When the assistant secretary came back to Washington to report, he had at least mastered some of the important details of the situation, and the "Flying Squadron" was insured against any sort of surprise. So far as human foresight and official pro- vision could manage, the navy was ready. The "Fl>'ing Squadron" haunted the shores of Cuba, gathering prizes, closing the gates of harbors to reinforcements, or "bottling them up." and PREPAEING FOR WAR. 213 waiting in grim silence for the hour of their sure destruction. The powerful Oregon was summoned in haste from the Pacific, and while Spain was thus checked in the one effectual man- ner, that army which had not existed when war was declared had been recruited, armed, drilled and equipped, and had landed in Cuba. One of the most reliable histories of the war with Spain contains this passage: '^Tlie first fight by sol- diers in General Shafter's army of invasion occurred June 24, five miles from Santiago de Cuba— so far had the Americans penetrated. Two troops of the First Cavalry, two troops of the Tenth Cavalry, and four troops of Roose- velt's 'Rough Riders'— less than a thousand men in all— dismounted and attacked two thousand* Spanish soldiers in the thickets. They beat back the enemy to the very outworks of the city, but they left seventeen dead in that fierce struggle, that passage in a war for humanity. ' ' All who are familiar w^ith the records of those years know the names of the men most active in fanning the flame of war. It is safe to say that the name of Theodore Roosevelt was never men- tioned as adding fuel to that flame. But while Senator Mason thundered at the doors of the Ull THEODORE ROOSEVELT. W JiiU; House, dcmaiidiiig a declaration of war— whetlior or no; while congressmen from every section of tlic country, and from the councils of every party, were writing down their country- men as cowards for not hastening to a conflict that was more expected than jirepared for— Mr. Roosevelt was working night and day in an effort to fit the na^y for fighting. And the moment war was declared and his work there was ended, he resigned his comfortable office and hurried to the field. He could have remained as executive head of the navy department, assisting greatly in the prosecution of the war. But he ])referred to leave the ease of office to others, and take himself a share in the struggle. It was to him the nation is indebted for the formation of tliat force known as the "Rough Riders." It was due to his initiative, his energy, his contin- ual efforts that they were prepared so swiftly, and waited so early at the point of embarkation. It was due to his ability as a commander that they behaved so well under fire, and wholly due to his habit of sharing every danger and every hardshi)) with thorn that the men of his com- mand— a ud all other commands in the land PREPARING FOR WAR, 215 forces before Santiago— routed au intrenched foe. and defeated a regular army. It is not necessary to speak of him in battle, yet he bore himself well there. He gave no evi- dence of fear. He was careful in the handling of his men, and exposed them to no unnecessary peril. But he led them when they went into danger. He did not follow. And when battles were over he gave to his men all the tender care that loving duty could inspire, and shared with them, on every occasion, the glory that their deeds and his had earned. A recent writer has said of him: ''As assistant secretary of the navy, he was virtually head of the department. He was a Carnot who 'organized victory.' He foresaw the Spanish war a year before it came, and collected ammunition, insisted on the prac- tice for improving marksmanship on board all the vessels, and made the navy ready." Said the late Senator Cushman K. Davis, chairman of the committee on foreign relations: "If it had not been for Roosevelt, Dewey would not have been able to strike the blow that he dealt at Manila. Roosevelt's sagacity, energy and promptness saved us. ' ' One of the most famous L'l'I TUEODORE ROOSEVELT. piiblicatious said in a ivcont issue: ''When the war ol' 1S9S started Mr. Roosevelt was one of the first to enter it. He attracted to his banner the most t}'pical corps— college graduates, plains- men, polo-players, and cowboys— of Americans who served in the war. And he gave himself and them a world reputation as fighters. ' ' Probably never before in the history of a country has so remarkable a thing happened. Here was a man who could prepare a na\y for swift and effective assault, send it to victory with the first bugle-call of war, and then organize and lead to triumph ashore a band of fighting men who were capable of following such leadership against any foe in the world. It is not easy to discover a parallel. CHAPTER XII. FORMATION OF THE ROUGH RIDERS. FRIENDSUIP FOR COLONEL WOOD— A MONTH WELL SAVED— COV/- EOYS, CLUBMEN AND HUNTERS RALLY TO HIS STANDARD — BEST FIGHTING MATERIAL THAT EVER MARCHED TO THE FIELD— DRILLING, PREPARING AND EMBARKING— THE LANDING ON CUBAN SOIL. Mr. Roosevelt had done all that could be done in the navy department. So far as the supervi- sion and power of man could effect it, the na\7' was ready; and the striking of that blow at Spanish commerce when the Ventura was cap- tured between Key West and Havana proved the state of preparedness which existed on the ocean. The swiftly following victory of Commodore Dewey at Manila established the case even more completely, for the most remarkable victoiy in all naval history had been achieved. And now that war was surely on, this man who saw the results of his foresight and provision in that branch of the service, started to find a way in which he could assist in leading the land forces 217 21S THKODORE KOOSEVELT. in the light w hich lie liad helped to induce Amer- icans to make. Just what should be the method of i^rocedure he did not know. Tie had met in "Waslilngton in the winter of 1897-98 Dr. T^conard AVood, a surgeon in tlie regular army, who had seen active service on the frontier, and who was medical adviser of both the President and the Secretary of the Navy. Dr. Wood was a jDowerful, forceful man, and Mr. Roose- velt became very much attached to him. They rode or walked about the city, took exercise together, and each found the other the sort of man to be depended upon. As they walked or rode they talked of the certainly approaching war. Both wanted to get into the service. Both believed the struggle would be of short duration —unless some other nation in Europe should come to the assistance of Spain ; and neither had the patience to wait for the slow movements of the regular anny. Both were agreed that effect- ive blows must be struck at once by the army as by the navy ; that lives would be preserved, and treasure saved from wasting if the advances of the United States forces could be accomplished without delay. It was principally through the efforts of Mr. ROUGH EIDERS. 219 Roosevelt that Congress provided for the forma- tion of three volunteer cavaliy regiments re- cruited from the plainsmen, sharpshooters and hard riders of the Southwest ; and as soon as this was done Secretary Alger tendered him the com- mand of one of those regiments. But he had never overestimated himself. He secured for Dr. AVood the command of that regiment, for he knew the latter was fully prepared for the duty ; and he took second place. Colonel Wood, armed with his new commission, hurried to the Southwest to recruit and equip his men, while Mr. Roosevelt performed a far more important service at the time by remaining in AVashington to secure the assistance that must alwaj^s come from headquarters and which would never have been obtained if an energetic, persistent and fully informed man had not been upon the ground to compel it. "When he had made all his arrangements there, he had accomplished the remarkable feat of saving a month. Those thirty days were of the greatest possible value to the nation. Organized in the ordinary manner, with officers tT\"o thousand miles from Washington, the Rough Riders would not have been ready for service before midsummer. There was a I'llO 1 IIKODOKE lU)OSi:VKLT. prejudice against tlieiii, anyway. The depart- ments had a long-established habit of according chief consideration to the regular army. A^^len other volunteer commands were clamoring for belts and blankets, Mr. Roosevelt's regiment was waiting— armed, accoutered, drilled and ready, leaning from the piers at Tampa, and yearning for the conflict in Cuba. lie had drawn to the command men from every walk of life, and he greeted them cordially when he arrived from AVashington. Scarcely a man of his thousand but was personally loiown to him. Some were hunters. Some were cow- boys. Some were graduates of colleges, with enviable records in the field of athletic sports. Some were clubmen, possessed of wealth, but possessed of strength, energ}^ and enthusiasm as well. He understood the grim exigencies of war, and Imew that no preparation for a frolic could be proper preparation for a campaign, no mat- ter how decrepit the enemy. He could not be certain that all these rich young men had counted the cost, and he was afraid they would find it hard to serve— not for a few days, but for months, or perhaps years— in the ranks, while he, their former intimate associate, was a field-offi- ROUGH EIDERS. 221 cer. But they insisted that they knew their minds, and the event showed that they did. Before allowing them to be sworn in he gath- ered them together and explained that if they went in they must be prepared not merely to fight, but to perform the weary, monotonous labor incident to the ordinary routine of a soldier's life ; that they must be ready to face fever exactly as they were ready to face bullets ; that they were to obey unquestioningly, and to do their duty, if called upon to garrison a fort, as readily as if sent to the front. He warned them that work which was irksome and disagreeable must be performed as willingly as work that was danger- ous. He had no fears of them as to the latter, and he told them that they were entirely at lib- erty not to go; but that after they had once signed there could be no backing out. They had the option of going or of remaining at home. Not a man of them backed cut— not a man of them failed to do his whole duty. Generally they were of the fighting sort. There were sheriffs and marshals from Arizona and Texas, owners of mines who had fought their way up from the pick and shovel to the bank account. There was Buckey 'Neill of Arizona, L'L'J THEODORE ROOSEVELT. and I'aiitaiii Llewellyn of New Mexico. There was Lieutenant Ballard, who had broken u}) the "P.lack .lark'' gang on the border, and Captain Curry, a Xew Mexican gun-fighter of fame. There was ^[icali Jenkins, of South Carolina, a gentle and courteous gentleman on whom danger acted like wine; and there was Allyn Capron, fourth in a line of soldiers— rated by Mr. Roose- velt as i)erhai)s the best soldier in the regiment. One may be pardoned for quoting the fol- lowing passage from Colonel Roosevelt's own book, ''The Rough Riders": ''The men generally gave one another nick- names, largely conferred in a sjoirit of derision, their basis lying in contrast. A brave but fastid- ious member of an Eastern club, who was serv- ing in the ranks, was christened 'Tough Ike'; and his bunkie, the man who shared his shelter- tent, and who was a decidedly rough cow- puncher, gradually acquired the name of 'The Dude.' One unluclvv and simple-minded range- rider, who had never been east of the great plains in his life, unwarily boasted that he had an aunt in Xew York, and ever aftei'ward he went by the name of ' ^letropolitan Bill.' A huge, red- headed Irishman was named 'Sheenv Solomon.' EOUGH EIDERS. 223 A young Jew who developed into one of the best fighters in the regiment accepted with entire equanimity the name of 'Pork-chop.' AVe had quite a number of professional gamblers who, I am bound to say, usually made good soldiers. One who was almost abnormally quiet and gentle was called 'Hell-roarer'; while another who, in point of language and deportment, was his exact antithesis, was known as ' Prayerful James. ' ' ' Their arms were the regular army carbine, the Krag, though a few held to their favorite Winchesters, using the new models which took the Government cartridge. They did not drill with the saber. Mr. Roosevelt and Colonel Wood both knew that would be a needless waste of time, as the saber is a useless weapon in modern war- fare. They secured horses, and practiced mounted drill with great diligence ; but it turned out that they served as foot-soldiers, and some days were lost because the unprepared war de- partment was unable to send their horses to Cuba. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this war with Spain was the promptness with which men of wealth and social position volunteered for the service, and the fidelity with which they did their duty. Of those enlisted in the Rough LlL'4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Riders, Colouel Koosevelt lias said: "Their only tliouglit was liow to perfect themselves in their duties. ThoY were never so tired as not to respond witli eagerness to the slightest sugges- tion of doing something new, whether it was dangerous, or merely difficult and laborious. They not only did their duty, but were constantly on the watch for some new duty that they could construe to be theirs. Xo call was ever made upon them to which they did not respond with eager thankfulness for having the chance to answer it. Later on I worked them as hard as I knew how, and the regiment and the country will always be their debtor." Tlic ordnance bureau at "Washington, cu- riously affected with the ''mafiana" policy of the Mexican, had been sending by freight the equip- ments most needed by the Eough Riders ; but had finally yielded to Colonel Roosevelt's urging, and began the use of express trains. So that just as the last rifles, revolvers and saddles came, the Rough Riders were ordered to proceed by train to Tampa, Florida. Instantly all was joyful excitement. San Antonio, Texas, had been their headfjuarters, and they were glad to make their start from llu' city where the Alamo preserves WL ■ m-k f^ MR. ROOSEVELT AS A UNITED STATES VOLUNTEER EOUGH RIDERS. 225 the memories of Crockett, Bowie and their heroic companions in arms. The journey to Tampa occupied four days. There were more than a thousand men, and the full complement of horses. Then they had a pack-train of 150 animals ; and the train which moved the regiment was cut into seven sections, Wood commanding the first three, and Roosevelt the remaining four. They left San Antonio May 29, 1898. June 2 their camp was pitched at Tampa, with tents standing neatly in long streets, and sui^plied with every adjunct that good management could provide. They were told that marching orders would be issued imme- diately, and that they were to hold themselves in readiness. But they were also told that four troops, with all the horses, would have to be left behind. That was the bitterest disappointment any member of the Rough Riders ever knew. "I saw," says ^h\ Roosevelt, "more than one among the officers and privates burst into tears when he found he could not go." But some had to be chosen and some had to be left. One of the captains chosen was Maximilian Luna, the only man of pure Spanish blood who bore a commis- sion in the army. His people had been on the banks of the Rio Grande before the Roosevelts 226 THEODORE ROi JKVELT. caiiie to the mouth ol" the Ihulsoii, or Colonel Wood 's ancestors landed at Plymouth Rock ; and he claimed a right to go as a representative of his race in America. He demanded the i)rivi- lege of i)roving that his peoi)le were as loyal Americans as any others, and they took him. The command was ordered to be at a certain track on the night of June 6, there to take a train for Port Tampa, nine miles distant. The soldiers were there, but tlie train was not. Colonel Koose- velt hurried to the tents of brigadier-generals, and to the headquarters of major-generals; but no one knew anything at all of arrangements. The men slcjit heavily through the night, and at three o'clock in the morning they received orders to go to another track, half a mile away. Xo train was there, either; but at six o'clock a string of gravel-cars came along, and these were seized by the officers of the Rough Riders, and l)acked down the dusty, sunny nine miles to the l>ort. T.ack of system in the management of the mil- itary was still evident, for when the First Volun- teers reached the quay, they did not know where to go, nor which transport they were expected to have, thongli theii- orders to ''go on board" were ROUGH EIDERS. 227 imperative. Both Colonel Wood and Colonel Roosevelt spent a bad half-day searching for some hint as to direction, and at noon the depot quartermaster assigned them to the Yucatan, a transport lying in midstream. Colonel Wood hurried aboard and took possession, for he had discovered that this same transport had been assigned to two other regiments besides his own. It was a race to see who should first be ready to march aboard. Colonel Roosevelt ran full-speed back to the command, left a guard with the bag- gage, and double-quicked the rest of the regiment to the pier just as Colonel Wood brought the big transport to the landing. Then the men spent a hot and dusty day carrying their baggage and the camp equipment down from the distant end of the wharf, where they had been compelled to leave the train, and stowing it away in the Yuca- tan. In the evening the transport was pulled out and anchored in midstream, and the Rough Riders felt they had had a rather interesting thirty-six hours. Nothing more significant than Colonel Roose- velt 's own words can be used in describing this phase of their service. In his book ''The Rough Riders," he says: "The transports were over- 228 THEODORE roose\t;lt. loaded, tlie men being packed like sardines, not only below, but above decks. At niglit it was impossible to w^alk about without stepping over llie bodies of sleepers. The travel rations were insufficient, because the meat was very bad. If we had been given canned corned beef we would have been all right ; but instead of this the sol- diers were given a horrible stuff called 'canned fresh beef.' There was no salt in it. At the best it was stringy and tasteless. At the worst it was nauseating. Xot one-fourth of it was ever eaten at all, even when the men became very hun- gry. There were no facilities for the men to cook anything. There was no ice for them. The water was not good, and they had no fresh meat or fresh vegetables." But all their hardships were borne without grumbling. They had wanted to come, and here they were— on the first transx^ort that pushed from the pier at Port Tampa. They accepted the discomforts, and would not, for any conceiv- able consideration, have traded with their com- rades left behind there on the sand flats between Tampa and the river. Yet they were not advanc- ing toward Cuba. They were simply lying at the edge of the ocean, taking salt-water baths night EOUGH EIDERS. 229 and moruiug for nearly a week, and fighting their first big battle in controlling themselves. At last, on the evening of June 13, they received the welcome order to start, and ship after ship weighed anchor and pushed ahead under half steam, the bands playing, the flags flying, and the rigging black with soldiers cheering and shout- ing. The jubilation was short-lived, for the ships came to anchor joresently, and waited till morn- ing. Then they were again all under way ; and by mid-afternoon the whole fleet had passed out of sight of land. For six days they sailed steadily southward and eastward, the thirty odd transports moving in parallel lines, while ahead and behind and on their flanks the gray hulls of the war-ships surged through the blue water. They were guarded by every variety of craft— battle-ship, cruiser, converted yacht, and torpe- do-boat. The war-ships watched with ceaseless vigilance day and night. "When a sail of any kind appeared, instantly one of the guardians steamed toward it. Once a strange ship sailed too close, and the nearest torpedo-boat sped across the water toward it. But the stranger proved harmless, and the swift, delicate, death- fraught craft returned. 230 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. That voyage through "the sapphire s^^s" was an experience which impressed every one. Xot a man on tlie transport knew where the ship was going. It might be Cuba. Tt might be Porto Rico. They knew only that they were ordered forward by their Government, and they brought their lives in their hands as they hurried to obey. They were young and strong, eager to face what lay hidden before them. Sometimes they talked of what they might do in the future ; sometimes they lounged in groups and told stories of their previous lives in all conceivable environments, or sang through the evening hours. "The offi- cers, too, "says Colonel Eoosevelt, in one of his books, ' * had many strange experiences to relate. None had been through what was better worth telling or could tell it better than Capron. He was a great rifle-shot and wolf -hunter. He had handled his scouts, and dealt with the 'broncho' Indians, the renegades from the tribes. He knew, so far as a white man could know, their ways of thought, and how to humor them. His training and temper had fitted him to do great work in war; and he looked forward with confi- dence to what the future held. Death was the prize he drew. ROUGH KIDEKS. 231 "Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they said very little about what they dimly felt. Buckey O'Neill, however, the iron-nerved, iron-willed fighter from Arizona, the sheriff whose name was a byword of terror to every wrong-doer, white or red, the gambler who with unmoved face would stake and lose every dollar he had in the world— he alone among his comrades was a visionary, an articu- late emotionalist. He was very quiet about it, never talking unless sure of his listener; but at night when vv^e leaned on the railing to look at the Southern Cross, he was apt ^o s]:>eak of the mysteries that lie behind courage, behind ani- mal hatred and animal lust for the pleasures that have tangible shape. ' ' They had a good deal of trouble with the transports. One was towing a schooner and another a scow. Both kept lagging behind. Finally, when they had gone nearly the length of Cuba, the transport wdth the schooner fell very far behind, and then the Yucatan was ordered to drop out of the line and keep the laggard com- pany. Loaded with soldiers, wholly helpless to defend themselves in case of attack, entirely at the mercy of every round shot that might be '2'A2 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. hurled toward them, these two crowded ships, guarded by a single gunboat, the Bancroft, plunged ahead through the night, and finally overtook the rest of the fleet just as the latter turned sliarj) to the southwest— and then every one knew Santiago de Cuba was their destination. They came close to the coast on the morning of June 20, joassed Guantanamo, where just ten days before the marines had gained a footing at Crest Heights, and had given loyal American blood that the islanders might be free. The big ships, guarding the mouth of the harbor, had driven all Spanish forces from the shore north of Santiago, and the transports could at least be secure from attack while unloading. And there disembarking was accomplished. Close under the mighty bluffs that seemed to rise almost from the beach, lay the squalid little town of Daiquiri. There are mines of iron ore all around it, and a railway runs to Santiago. The place had strategic advantages. But the landing itself was a scramble— each commander taking care of himself and his men. There was still a woeful lack of system and of effective general leader- ship. The fleet had less than a fourth the num- ber of row-boats that were required for handling COL. ROOSEVELT AS A ROUGH RIDER ROUGH RIDERS. 233 the men, and there was no dock which deep- draught vessels could approach. The war-ships lent what boats they could, and the little army began its slow progress across the two miles of water that divided ships from shore, until Lieu- tenant Sharp, of the navy, commanding the Vixen, a converted yacht, recognized Colonel Roosevelt on the deck of the Yucatan, and offered to help put the Rough Riders ashore. The serv- ice was gratefully accepted. On the Vixen was a Cuban pilot who knew every mile of the coast, and he proposed to take the Yucatan within five hundred yards of the beach. He was offered a reward if he would do so; and he did. The other transports followed, and the labor was greatly lightened. In spite of the difficulties, the landing became quite a frolic for the men. The surf ran high, and the boats could not place any one on dry land. Each man carried three days ' field rations, with gun and blanket, and a hundred rounds of ammunition. But they tumbled from the boats when no nearer approach could be made, and waded or swam till the solid earth was beneath their feet. The horses were unloaded from another transport, two hundred yards from Li;;4 'lliEODVHE KUOSEVELT. shore. The process in this case was as simple as cruel. The animals were pushed overboard, and permitted to swim to land, or go down in the sea —whichever happened. Colonel Roosevelt's big horse, which his groom had named *'Raiu-in-the Face," was drowned; but the pony, "Texas," swam ashore without the slightest trouble. A few of the rich young men in the Kougli Riders' regiment had added some light artillery l)ieces to the equipment of the command, making a free gift to the Government. There were two rapid-fire Colt automatic guns, and a dynamite gun. The task of bringing these ashore without injury was a difficult one, indeed. But it was done, and late in the afternoon of June 22 the little army had been established on Spanish soil, and was ready for any contingency that might arise— but with a decided preference for fight- ing. Tf any resistance at all had been made, the landing would have been rendered difficult to the point of impossibilit}'. There had been five hun- dred Spaniards on the shore in the morning, and they had marched up and down the beach very threateningly. T>ut they had run at the first fir- ing from the gunboats, and the Americans found KOUGH KIDEKS. 235 in their places, as evening fell, a crowd of Cuban insurgents— liimgrv, dirty, and armed with every kind of weapon imaginable, but with nothing that would mark them as an allied force. Their demands, indeed, were less modest than to be led against their ancient enemies. All they wanted was food— and plenty of it. Colonel Eoosovelt's first task was to march his men about half a mile inland, to a place selected for the camping, and there to get them into the best possible shape for the morrow. The place was a bushy, dust-covered flat, with a jun- gle on one side, and fetid pools on the other. For the first time the men saw the huge land-crabs of the island, and marveled as the strange animals scuttled through the underbrush ; and tbey mar- veled even more when they heard these same creatures utter their disturbing cry in the still hours of the night. But the Eough Riders— dismounted— were in Cuba! Just fifty-two days had passed since the declaration of war. This was the only volun- teer force that reached Santiago in time to be of use in the fighting, with the single exception of the Seventy-first New York National Guard. The latter regiment had been organized for years, 236 TIIEODURE KOOSEVELT. was i'ully aniied, equipped, drilled aud provided in every way. The Rough Riders had come in less than two months' time from the absolute beginning. Before xVpril 30 not one step had been taken for their formation. Yet in this incredibly short time they were ready for the storming of San Juan hill. And they stormed it. Xever before, perhaps, in the history of a civilized country, has such dispatch been made in the preparation of a fighting force. And cer- tainly never before was an organization so quickly brought to such a degree of efficiency. The result was due solely to Colonel Roosevelt's decision, energy, and remarkable capacit}^ for leadership. The deciding element of the land force in Cuba was his personal contribution to the cause of his nation. And the recognition of this fact is probably the highest tribute that can be paid him. CHAPTER XnL SEE^^CE IN CUBA. BZJGiSiED WITH THE FOECXS OF A FIGHTIKG KaK — THE ATTAIS AT LAS CUASIMAS, a:>D THE LOSS OF P2EC10U3 LIVES— TEE EOrOH BIX/ESS P20TZ THEI2 HE20ISM I!." BATTLE— FSOM THE TSEyCHTJ-i TO THE HOSPITAL- GRAVES V.: ALIEN SOIL— AJTEE PEACE, THE BETTEK HOME. Months before the war broke out, Gen. S. M. B. Young, of the regular army, had been the guest of Mr. Roosevelt and Dr. Leonard TTood at a club in Xew York, and they had told him that when hostilities began— an event which they confidently anticipated— they were going to ''trj' and get in. " " Come to my brigade, ' ' said Gen- eral Young, ' ' and I guarantee to show you some fighting. ' ' And he kept his word. At Tampa, in those distressing days when they did not know where the Government wanted them to go, the Rough Riders were brigaded with the First and Tenth regular cavalry, under Gen- eral Young. The latter organization was com- posed of colored men. It was called the Second 237 238 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Brigade. The fust was made up of the Third, Sixth and Xiiith — tlie Latter also colored; and this was coinmanded by Brigadier-General Sum- ner. ^Major-General Joseph Wheeler com- niandc^'d the entire force— absolutely all the cavalry that saw service in the neighborhood of Santiago. The appointment of General "Wlieeler was of itself an interesting detail in the history of that war. lie had been the most dashing and formid- able cavalry commander in the Confederate army at the time of the war between the States, and President McKinley had wisely believed that the selection of such a man would be a most advantageous move in the process of unifying the nation. Ever since the Civil War the spirit of sectionalism had existed. There were men, both in the North and in the South, who refused to accept the results of the war, and whose effort seemed directed to preventing that singleness of purpose and action by which national advance could best be made. So far as lay in their power they were inflicting a harm upon their countiy by that inexcusable treason which flourishes in a time of i)eace and prosperity. With the begin- ning of the war against Spain the opportunity SERVICE IN CUBA. 239 arose to cement the sections. The South had suf- fered as much as the North from the perils of Cuba. Its sons had been treacherously slaugh- tered in the destruction of the Maine. The war- like spirit which always lived in that section was fired with the desire for reprisal ; and the unex- pected happened when the whole South, from the Ohio to the Gulf, rallied to the defense of the national flag. No other act of recognition could have meant so much as this appointment of Gen- eral Yvlieeler to the command of the cavalry forces. Of all tlic great military leaders of the Confederacy still living, he best expressed the sentiment and enjoyed the favor of his section. Besides, it was, in a military sense, a particularly appropriate nomination. General Wheeler was a soldier. Though past tlie age of sixty years, he was full of vigor, possessed of an abundance of nervous force, still the master of military detail, and a natural leader of men. His appoint- ment was one of the wisest that the President could have made ; and with him in command it was an absolute certaintj^ that the promise of General Young, that Mr. Roosevelt and his friend should see fighting, would be fulfilled. General Young was a fine type of the Amer- J4< ) THEODORK KOOSEVELT. [run lighting soldier. In the lield he eanied the same impedimenta as did Colonel Roosevelt— a mackintosh and a toothbrush ! The next day after disembarking was largely employed in getting baggage and camp equipage ashore from the ships, a labor that was made additionally difficult because the War Depart- ment had not found the right men for the control of details in the quartermaster's department. In the afternoon the orders came for the soldiers to advance. General AVheeler, trained to practi- cal fighting, first found where the enemy was, and then directed General Young to take his bri- gade forward, and be ready to strike the Span- iards in the morning. Colonel Roosevelt found his pony, ' ' Texas, ' ' much the worse for its sea voyage and the forced swim ashore, but yet able to bear its master. The mid-afternoon sun was burning hot when the march began. Colonel Roosevelt led one squadron, and Major Brodie followed with the other. The jungle trail over the hills was so narrow and steep that in places the soldiers had to proceed in single file. The advance could never have been made had the Spaniards pos- sessed the courage or the capacity for any kind MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER SERVICE IN CUBA. 241 of fightiiig. But it seemed that four hundred years of crueltj^ had reduced them from their high estate, and they knew nothing of the art of war, and nothing of the science of defense. A curious feature of this first advance was the haste which inspired even the enlisted men. General Young wanted them to hurry, so they would be in position for actual service in the morning ; and it was to be expected that he would issue orders to that effect. But the men went farther than he could have hoped, and traversed a tangle of tropical woods and vines which he could well have believed impassable. They did not halt until they were at the extreme front of the American line. They were not in good shape for marching, because of the voyage, the lack of food and water, and the difficulties in the way. Besides, they were horsemen, in large majority. The cowboys in particular, excellent fighting material, had never walked a furlong if it could be avoided; and the hard tramp over the hills and through vine-entangled morasses was particularly tiying to them. But there was no straggling. Very soon after dark they reached the little hamlet of Sibonev. The men built fires and fried their 242 THEODORi: ROOSEVELT. })ork and boiled llieir coU'ee, aud made sucli sup- \)ev as they could, tlie officers faring precisely as did the men. And the sni)i)cr was hardly fin- ished when tlie Americans had their first expe- rience with a rain-storm in Cuba. At midnight Colonel Wood returned from a visit to General Young, and brought that officer's plans for the advance in the morning. General "Wheeler, v.dio commanded, since General Shafter had not yet come ashore from the ships, had directed that the Spanish lines be struck as soon after daybreak as possible. At six o'clock in the morning General Young started with a squadron from the First Regular cavalry, and a squadron from the Tenth Regu- lars. Colonel Wood and Colonel Roosevelt took a slightly different direction to reach tlie same objective, with the Rough Riders, and the two companies from the cavalry regiment of colored men. At half past seven the Spaniards were dis- covered, holding a rocky ridge that jutted for- ward, its angle lying between the two advancing forces of the Americans. There were stone breastworks on the hill, and blockhouses behind it. Cleneral Young ordered his men to fill their canteens, and then at eight o'clock opened the SERVICE IN CUBA. 243 fight with his Hotchkiss guns, at nine hundred yards' range. The Spaniards replied, and for the first time in more than fifty years American soldiers were engaged in war with an alien nation. In the very first half -minute Colonel Roosevelt's old-time wisdom in urging the adoption of smokeless pow- der was made manifest. The Spaniards, ages behind the times in everything else, had smoke- less powder, and it added greatly to the difficul- ties the Americans had to encounter. General Young, long used to Indian warfare, and recog- nizing this as in essentials the same, pushed his men forward for a closer touch with the enemy. A passage from Colonel Roosevelt's own story of this first battle w411 be peculiarly acceptable here. ' ' The men were deployed on both sides of the road," he says, ''in such thick jungle that only here and there could they see ahead. Through this jungle ran wire fences, and when the troops got to the ridge they encountered precipitous bluffs. They were led most gallantly, as Ameri- can regular officers always lead their men; and the soldiers followed their leaders with the splen- did courage always shown by the American reg- •J44 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. iilar soldier. There was not a single straggler among tliem, and in not one instance was an attempt made by any trooper to fall out in order to assist tlie wounded, or carry back the dead; and so cool were they and so perfect their fine discipline, that in the entire engagement the exjienditure of ammunition was not over ten rounds per man. ^lajor Bell, who commanded the squadron, had his leg broken by a shot as he was leading his men. Captain Wainwright suc- ceeded to the command of the squadron. Captain Knox was shot in the abdomen. He continued for some time giving orders to his troops, and refused to allow a man from the firing-line to assist him to the rear. Lieutenant Byron was himself shot, but continued to lead his men until the wound and the heat overcame him, and he fell in a faint. . . . The Spaniards kept up a veiy heavy firing, but the regulars would not be denied, and as they climbed the ridges the Spaniards broke and fled." But the regulars did not win the fight alone. The Rough Riders, starting at six o'clock in the morning, pushed through the jungle to the left, and on up the hills. Tiffany, one of the donors of the Colt rapid-fii'ors and the dynamite gun, SEKVICE IN CUBA. 245 had— to put the matter plainly— stolen from t "e quartermaster's department a pair of mules, and was using them to transport his ''automatics," Sergeant Borrowe, in charge of the dynamite gun, had found a like stroke of enterprise impos- sible, and could not bring up his jiiece. General Wheeler has himself seen fit to declare, in his valuable book, ''The Santiago Campaign," that Sergeant Borrowe did all that lay in his power, and is wholly excusable for not bringing the dynamite gun into action. Captain Capron's troop was in the lead in that advance of Wood 's squadron up the heights. It had been chosen for the most dangerous and responsible place because of Capron's admitted capacity. The order of advance sent Sergeant Hamilton Fish first, with four men as skirmish- ers; then Capron and the rest of his troop— all dismounted, of course. Colonel Wood followed with two troops, and Colonel Eoosevelt with three. The Cuban guide at the head of the col- umn ran away as soon as the fighting commenced. There was a halt, and in the wait, while the men were obeying the order to fill their magazines with cartridges. Colonel Eoosevelt overheard two of the Rough Riders nearest him discussing 246 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. the conduct of a former cow-puncher who had quit a Texas ranch and embarked in the saloon business. So little did a ''gun fight" unnerve these heroic men from the Southwest. The three troops were ordered to deploy to the right of the trail, and to ''go in" as soon as the regulars began firing. The wait was brief. A crash in the jungle told of exploding shells, and the whole ridge flamed with fire from Span- ish guns. The air was full of the rustling sound of Mauser bullets fired by the enemy, but smoke- less powder left his position unrevealed. ' ' Grad- ually they got our range," says Colonel Eoose- velt, "and occasionally one of our men would crumple up. In no case did the man make any outcry when hit, seeming to take it as a matter of course; at the outside making only such remark as, ' Well, I got it that time. ' ' ' In war all things are new. A trooper of the Tenth, sitting by a stump and firing steadily, was told by a passing comrade : "You've got a big wound in your hip." "Oh, that's all right. It's been there for some time," he replied, unconcernedly. No one was allowed to drop out of the line to care for the wounded or remove the dead ; but SER^^CE IN CUBA. 247 the wounded, ii' able to travel, were ordered to the rear. Rowland, a New Mexican, came back from a dangerous errand on which his commander had sent him, and presently Colonel Roosevelt noticed the man was wounded, ' ' Where are you hurt, Rowland ? " he asked. ''Aw— they caved in a couple of ribs for me, I guess." Colonel Roosevelt ordered him to go to the I'ear, and make himself as comfortable as he could in the hospital. Rowland, for the first time in his service, grumbled, and was inclined to argue the case. He did not want to leave. But when the order was repeated he disappeared, and was not seen for half an hour. But in the course of the advance, Colonel Roosevelt saw him again, and exclaimed : ' ' I thought you were told to go to the hospi- tal" "Aw— I couldn't find the hospital," replied the man, a statement which his colonel doubted. And he remained on the firing-line to the end of the conflict. His conduct was typical of the heroism and fortitude of the whole American army. The fighting continued for two hours. The 248 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. difliculty of finding the enemy was most exasper- ating. Smokeless powder permitted the Span- iards to fire without disclosing their location, and the black smoke of the Americans always revealed their position. But with all that dis- advantage the glasses of the American officers finally found the enemy, and the sui')erior marks- manshii^ of the soldiers drove the red-and-yellow flag and its followers in a run from their l)reast- works. That portion of their force opposed to the right of the Rough Eiders, the left of the regular army men, withdrew completely.. Then Colo- nel Koosevelt hurried to the left, where the resist- ance, though moderated, still continued. He was not just sure what plan General Young had for the present, and received no orders. ' ' But, ' ' he says, ' ' I knew I could not be far wrong if I went forward. ' ' Nothing more truly typical of the man's life has ever been said, and no man has disclosed a characteristic more modestly, or with a more evi- dent unconsciousness of its simple strength. Here at the left the day had been costly. Captain Capron and Sergeant Hamilton Fish, one the fourth in a line of soldiers, the other the grandson of that Secretary of State who helped SERVICE IN CUBA. 249 make Grant's cabinet strong, were killed. Lieu- tenant Thomas, grandson of General Thomas, ''the hero of Chickamauga, " a boy of twenty- one, was badly wounded. Day, a nephew of that William Barker Gushing who sank the Goufed- erate ram Albemarle, in 1864, was fighting hard at the head of his men— troop L, from the Indian Territory; and when the Spanish fire was try- ing the heroism of Indians, half-breeds and cow- boys so severely, Gaptain McGlintock, hurrying to his support, was shot through the thigh. There were some red-tiled buildings about five hundred yards to the front, and from them much of the firing seemed to come. Golonel Roosevelt ordered a charge, and leaping forward, he ran at the head of his men toward the buildings. When they arrived they found heaps of warm and smoking cartridge-shells, and two dead Spanish soldiers. A position of importance had been carried. Shortly afterward Golonel Wood rejDorted that the fight was over for the time, and that the whole line of the enemy had retreated. The Rough Riders had lost eight men" killed and thirty-four wounded. One man, Isbell, a half- breed, was hit seven times. Not a man was in that equivocal list, ' ' the missing. ' ' 250 THEODORE KOOSEVELT. Thai ended the struggle oi' Jime L'-i. it was on tlie evening of the same day that a Spanish officer said, in tlie hearing of the British consul at Santiago: ''The Americans do not fight like other men. AVlien we fire, they run right toward us. We are not used to fighting men who act so. ' ' Then followed nearly a week of inaction- trial most severe for fighting men at the front. But on June 30 the order came to hold themselves in readiness, and the exasperating wait was ended. Next noon the Rough Tiiders struck camp, and, together with the entire army of invasion, marched forward. At night they slept on the summit of El Poso hill, where were some ruined buildings, and where the soldiers found a quan- tity of food, which was very welcome. The camp for the night being established, the men found a repeated proof of their colonel's quality. He might have taken one of the buildings for his headquarters, for he was at the time the superior officer in command; but he slept in the 0])en, among his men, his saddle as a pillow, his mack- intosh being his only shelter. The men were up with the dawn, and ready for the battle which was very certain to come. xVt six o'clock the cannon began booming away SERVICE IN CUBA. 251 to the right, and tlio puzzling, exasperating fight for the outposts of Santiago was on. As the troops i:>reparecl to move. Colonel Roosevelt received his one wound of the war. A Spanish shell exploded above his head, and a fragment struck his wrist. It scarcely broke the skin, and caused only the slightest pain. And although he Avas more exposed through the fighting than per- haps any other man in the army, he escaped entirely thereafter. The Eougli Eiders were ordered to cross the ford of the San Juan river, and halt for directions. There was a sunken lane just ahead, with strong barbed wire fences at each side, and a x">ractically open field to the right and the left of it. By ten o'clock the fighting was on in good earnest, though mostly to the right. Mauser bul- lets drove in sheets above the heads of the wait- ing Americans, or hit them with invariable effect as they lay behind such cover as they could secure. They wanted to go forward, but the expected orders did not come till nearly eleven o 'clock. Then Lieutenant Miley, General Shafter's representative at the front, gave a reluctant consent for the advance. Instantly Colonel Eoosevelt mounted his pony, ''Texas," 25*2 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. aud, taking liis i^ositioii at the rear of his regi- ment, where a colonel — in theory— should remain, lie began pushing the men foi-^-ard. They went in i)latoous, and as he saw those farthest in advance were continually getting mixed up with the regulars to the left, he went forward a i:)latoon at a time till he found himself at the verj^ head of the l\ougli Riders and close in the rear of the Ninth— a colored regiment— which had become "lapped over." At the crown of the first hill the Americans found themselves but five hundred yards from the Spanish position, and the futility of trying to rout the enemy by rifle firing became evident to Colonel Koosevelt. He told the officers in command of the regulars that his orders were to sui^port them in their attack on the hills, but those commanders replied that they had been ordered to do no more than wait for further orders. It was a perilous place. Men were being hit by the Spaniards continually, and even the sharpshoot- ers of the enemy were secure from punishment, because of the smokeless powder they used. Then came a military illustration of the qualities which Mr. Ivoosevelt had shown in civil life imnum- bered times. SERVICE IN CUBA. 253 '*I am ordered to support you in your attack, ' ' he said. *'Yes, sir," replied the regular army officer. ''And you are waiting for orders to ad- vance I ' ' ''Just so." "Then," looking about for a ranking officer, and finding none, ' ' I am the ranldng officer here, and I give you the order to attack. ' ' It rather took the captain by surprise, and he hesitated. "Then let my men through, sir," added the colonel of Rough Riders ; and the First Volun- teers forgot all about the popping of Spanish bullets, in their admiration for their commander, and their zest for the battle which his masterful habit insured them. But when they started through, the example proved too much for the regulars, and they all rose with a whoop, officers and men, and went forward together. Colonel Roosevelt, being mounted, could move more rapidly than the hur- rying, shooting men on foot, and he employed his advantage by assisting the other officers in getting their men in motion, and directing the different bodies to those points where the attack 254 THEODORE ROOSEVKLT. could most effectively be made. But as lie jumped his little liorse the third time across the barbed wire at the side of the lane, he dis- mounted, turned the animal loose, and ran on at the head of his men, up the hill, swinging his hat, and encouraging them. The hillside was cov- ered with soldiers, Rough Eiders and men of the First and the Ninth all mingled and swarmed upward together. They passed one after another of the en- trenchments the enemy had occupied— and which would have been held had they possessed half the lighting quality of the men who attacked. In one of these trenches Colonel Roosevelt ordered his men to lie down and wait for a better formation. When he was ready to start again of course there was an indescribable confusion. The firing on both sides was incessant and effect- ive. The Gatling guns over at the right were beating their ominous tattoo on the position of the Spaniards, and when Colonel Roosevelt shouted his order for the Rough Riders to rise and ad- vance again, they did not hear him. He jumped out of the trench and ran, and four men who were nearest wont with him. "Wlien he had run a hundred yards, and noticed that his command SERVICE IN CUBA. S.Y.) was not with liim, he told the four to lie down in the grass and bushes till he could go back and start the rest of the line. He had a thought that if he came running back with even three or four the line might get the idea of a repulse, and that the effect would be bad. And the four made no objection. They lay prone on the ground, and continued firing at the occasional heads they could see popping up over the breastworks in front of them. Colonel Roosevelt, a little nettled that his command had not acted promptly, ran back and yelled at them: ''Why didn't you charge when I told you to?" They were greatly sur- prised. "Why, we didn't hear you, Colonel," they exclaimed. ' ' Try it again. ' ' And when he tried it again, he was followed by the entire regi- ment, and by many a man from the regulars who took his cue from any force that was ready for the initiative. As they approached the crest of the hills, the Spaniards, amazed at the temerity of infantry which would charge up a hill with no heavy artil- lery to shell the works, abandoned their excellent trenches, and fled down the slopes. And when the Rough Riders and their friends gained the 250 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. suiiiitiit, they broke iuto uew cheers, for there below them, within easy sight, were the white walls and red-tiled roofs of Santiago de Cuba. That was the fight of the first of July. An interesting feature of the battle was the conduct of Major-General Joseph Wheeler. He had been so ill the day before that he had trans- ferred the command of the cavalry to General Sumner. But when the fighting began he had four stout men carry him to the field in a litter, and there resumed the direction of the forces. And he remained at the front till the day was won. In the late afternoon, when absolute quiet had reigned for an hour, an attempt at advance was made by the Spaniards. From their trenches half way down the slopes they marched out as if to attack the positions held by the Americans; and the latter greeted the demonstration with a soldier's joy. They had been at a disadvantage all morning and had carried breastworks, against rifles, and in spite of artillery support. Now they thought they were to meet the enemy on equal terms, and they started to the conflict as to a festival. But the movement of the enemy was sliort-lived. If thev ever had entertained SERVICE IN CUBA. 257 the purpose of attack, they reconsidered it, for they did not get two hundred yards from their trenches until the fire of the Americans met them, and they turned and incontinently fled back to their cover. Curiously enough, as a result of this action, General Shafter is said to have decided upon a withdrawal of the American trooi^s to a position less exposed. Against his judgment was opposed that of General Wheeler, who regarded the retrograde movement as in every way ill-advised. He urged that the army be held in its advanced position, and all the offi- cers in command, and certainly all the men in arms, seconded his contention. And the retreat was not ordered. In a paragraph from Colonel Roosevelt's own book is found a tribute to General Wheeler's judgment at this juncture: "Soon after dark General Wheeler came to the front. A very few words with him reassured us about retiring. He told us not to be under any apprehension, as he had sent word to General Shafter there was no need of it whatever ; and he was sure we would stay where we were until the chance came for advance. He was second in command, and to him more than to anv other man was due the 258 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. abandonment of the proposal to fall back— a pro- posal which, if adopted, would have meant shame and disaster. ' ' There was desultory fighting thereafter for two days, and then a demand for the city's sur- render, and a one-sided truce, by virtue of which the Americans were not allowed to attack, though the Spaniards might if they saw fit, and were pre- pared to take punishment for it. They did not take advantage of their privilege to any great extent, and so there was comparative quiet until noon of July 10, when the firing was resumed all along the entire Spanish line. It continued for an hour, and the Americans leaped to return it. No harm was done to the Rough Riders or their com- panions in arms, but a good deal of damage was inflicted on the enemy. The situation was prac- tically a siege, and until the truce was really established, every moment was one of watchful guarding, and of danger. But after that first day's fight Colonel Roosevelt and his men thor- oughly understood each other. They knew he would share every hardship and danger with them, and that he would do everything in his power for their maintenance and for their shelter and their rest. And he knew they would go SERVICE IN CUBA. 259 tlirough every peril, that they would suffer un- complainingly, and that they would obey his every order, even to the death. They had suffered for food. Stacks of com- missary stores were waiting for them on the beach at Daiquiri, for the Government had made small provision for bringing it to the front. So Colonel Roosevelt rigged up a pack-train after the first day 's fighting, when the conditions war- ranted taking a few men from the lines. And after that the Rough Riders lived better; and their spirits as well as their health improved. July 17 the city of Santiago surrendered. f^ The new Armada had been destroyed by Com- ^' modore Schley. The power of Spain in the Western world was broken. The work of the Rough Riders, and of their active commander, was ended. General Wheeler, second in command on the island, says in his book, "The Santiago Cam- paign": ''The first squadron (in the battle of Las Guasimas) was under the command of Lieu- tenant-Colonel Roosevelt, who deserves great credit for the intelligence and courage with which he handled his men." Again, after the battle of Julv 3, General Wheeler forwarded to head- Lldn THEODORE ROOSEVELT. quarters llie reports oi' iiis subalterns, and makes upon one this endorsement: *' Colonel Roosevelt and his entire command deserve high commenda- tion." The general, being by nature and train- ing a soldier, takes occasion in the book men- tioned to view the ''might have been." After the Americans had captured the city, he tried to estimate the damage that would have been inflicted upon his soldiers if a more stubborn defense had been made by the Spaniards. ''As we rode for the first time into Santiago," he says, "we were struck by the excellent manner in which the Spanish lines were fortified, and more especially by the formidable defenses with which they had barricaded the roads. The one in question, on which we were traveling, was barricaded in no less than four places, said de- fenses consisting of an enormous mass of barbed iron wire, stretched across the entire width of the road. They were not merely single lines of wire, but pieces running perpendicularly, diagonally, horizontally, and in every other direction, resem- bling nothing so much as a huge thick spider- web, with an enormous mass in the center. Behind this some ten or fifteen feet were barrels of an extraordinary size, filled with sand, stones SEKVICE IN CUBA. 261 and concrete, on the tops of which sand-bags were placed in such fashion as to leave small holes through which the Spaniards could sight their guns. It would, indeed, have been a hard task for American troops, were they never so brave and courageous, to have taken by storm a city which was protected by such defenses as these. Nothing short of artillery could have swept such obstructions out of the way, and even then they would have been more or less effective because of the narrowness of the road and the high banks on each side, which would have pre- vented getting the obstructions out of the way. Even the streets were intrenched in similar fash- ion, the people taking refuge in the upper stories of their houses. Had it come to a hand-to-hand fight, as at one time was feared, the American troops would have suffered a fearful loss, being necessarily jolaced at such a disadvantage. It was fortunate, therefore, that the surrender came when it did; for otherwise many a brave boy who has returned to resume his avocations of peace, or to do his duty as a soldier in his native land, would have found his last resting-place on Cuban soil. ' ' Instead of that a series of glorious battles had L!6i! THEODORE ROOSEVELT. been won, an honorable peace had been achieved, and to Colonel Roosevelt and the Rough Riders was left that home-coming for whicli all the nation had prayed. Let no man attempt to de- tract from the credit due to the soldiers of the regular anny, or their officers. Yet it is a matter of record that the Rough Riders were equally engaged in every fight of great or less magni- tude; and the official reports show that the casualties in Colonel Roosevelt's regiment were both more numerous and more severe than those of any of the regulars. That regiment lost more officers than any other. It lost more men Idlled, and had more wounded, and fewer missing. It very nobly sustained the honor of the American volunteer soldier. CHAPTER XIV. BETUKN OF THE REGIMENT. THE ROUND ROBIN — ORDERED BACK TO THE UNITED STATES — SICK, WOUNDED AND WELL ON THE VOTAGE HOME— LANDING OF ROUGH RIDERS AT MONTAUK POINT — ANGELS OF MERCY IN THE HOSPITALS — MUSTERED OUT— BACK TO THE OLD LIFE, WHERE A ROUGH RIDER MAY RIDE. The fighting was over. Spain had felt the force of a premonitory blow, and knew her house of cards would go down in a night if the strength of the young American giant were ever exerted to the full against her. The truce was fol- lowed with prompt orders for the Eough Eiders to retire to the hills about El Caney, and go into regular camp; for peace was assured. There had been no assault on Havana, and the Morro Castle at the gate of that harbor had not been humbled with the stroke of cannon-shot, as Amer- ican spirit had intended should be done. It had not been necessary to march the victorious army from the province of Santiago to the country 263 264 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. north and west. The isles of the sea, the heritage of the Spaniard, the present of Columbus to the crowns of Castile and Leon, had fallen at one blow into the possession of a stronger nation. No matter what were the terms of the peace; no matter what were the resolutions of Congress and the proclamations of executive officers ; when General Toral surrendered the city of Santiago de Cuba a new realm had been added to the terri- tory of the American republic. July was the month of rains, and the soldiers suffered a good deal from exposure. From beginning to end they never had been given the wagons which regulations promise those who serve in the army. To each regiment are allotted twenty-five wagons. The Rough Riders did not always have one. At times they had as many as two, but never three. They were compelled to organize pack-trains of their own, as has been noted in an earlier chapter. But they were liable to lose these every day because superior officers would see the horses and want them. As a result, it had been impossible from the beginning of the occupation of the island for Colonel Roosevelt to get to the front supplies of clothing or medi- cine for his men. On the coast at Daiquiri still THE KETUEN HOME. 265 stood heaps of barrels and bales and boxes of provisions of every kind that were needed in camp. But the problem of getting them over the fifteen miles to the front was one that defied solution. As long as the fighting lasted the men were keyed up with excitement, and refused to yield to the pain or the weakness that attacked them. But when the strain was over they suffered the collapse which must in reason follow such an expenditure of vitality, and were especially sus- ceptible to malaria. If they had received the food for which the Government had paid, the food which they should have had, it is likely the soldiers in Cuba would have come home in the best of health. As it was every man ac- quainted with the facts must realize that the offi- cers were doing very well indeed to get back with half their commands. The headquarters of the army at Washington were a good deal in a quandary as to the best disposition to make of the men. Some corre- spondents of newspapers, and some of the men themselves, with a prurient love for sensation, had published in the United States the untruth that the men were suffering from yellow fever. 266 THEODORE ROOSEVELT, It was one of the maladies of Cuban production, to escape which the war had been fought. It was to provide against the possibility of import- ing that undesirable product that many an argu- ment for ' ' free Cuba ' ' had been made. The men did not have yellow fever at all. There was a camp far to the rear where a number of Cubans afflicted with this malady were confined. Once in a while the doctors in the camps of the Ameri- can soldiers would be sure they saw a case of genuine yellow fever among the men, and would banish the unhappy wight to the hospital at the rear. In every such case yellow fever developed. Other cases, diagnosed in precisely the same man- ner, were held in the shabby camp hosj^itals, and not one of these men was ever afflicted with that malady. Every one of them proved to be suf- fering from malarial fever, and most of them recovered. But it was by no means certain that any would long remain well. The continually enlarg- ing hospitals were being more and more filled with soldiers who had not flinched either at danger or labor, and who were wholly disabled long before they would admit it. Hospital sup- plies were inadequate. Actually, no cots were THE KETL^EN HOME. 267 delivered until the day before the commands sailed from Cuba. It is doubtful if ever bung- ling officialdom used an army so shabbily. One suggestion from Washington was to remove the troops to the high country, the moun- tains in the interior of Cuba. That, when there were no wagons to serve them ten miles from the shore! Then it was suggested to move the troops no longer needed for fighting to the level land west of Santiago. That was a sugar-cane country, subject to heavy rains against which the men had no protection. They were better off right on the hills of El Caney, where at least the water from the torrents that fell hourly could run down the gullies and leave the camp un- troubled. But every officer knew the one thing needed was the removal of the troops back north —to American soil. They all knew that, but few of them felt like telling the War Department what it ought to do. Colonel Roosevelt could see no reason why the truth should not be told. He knew his rank- not in the army alone, but among men, and in the hearts of his fellow citizens. So he was one of the field-officers who wrote out and signed and forwarded to Washington, through General 268 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. Shafter, the "Round Robin," by which the re- moval of the troops from the island was urged as the one means of saving them. And three days later the command for the removal was received. It may seem a curious thing that news of an early departure for home will operate as a curative for sick men ; but it will. And many a man who had been really ill, in whose eyes were gathering the shadows which so often eclipse vision, arose from his improvised couch at El Caney and came to New York a well man. The knowledge that they were to be removed was medication to every man in the camp. Some were recorded as yellow fever patients, and these were left on the island. In nearly every case they died. Some in equally as bad health were taken aboard the transports, and these usually recovered. August 7 the Rough Riders embarked at the Daiquiri iron mines, where they had come ashore seven weeks before. It was one of the shortest campaigns on record, and the most effective. For though peace was not yet declared, it was certain the United States could get any terms desired. There were better facilities for putting THE RETURN HOME. 269 the men on board than there had been for land- ing them, and the transport Miami sailed north in the afternoon with its closely stored cargo of human freight. The crowding was not nearly so great as on the Yucatan, coming down. In the first place, there were not so many men. It was almost exclusively a passenger list of Rough Riders. Some of the space taken up before was vacated. Over there in their graves at Las Guasimas, or on the sides of the hill of San Juan, were men who had pushed about full of health in the throng that covered the decks of the Yucatan. Some were still in the field-hospitals at El Caney, or in the yellow fever circle at the rear, who would rather have shared the graves of the fallen brave of July 1 than to have missed the trip home on the Miami. Colonel Roosevelt had been advanced vir- tually to the rank of a brigadier-general at the close of service on the island, by reason of the engagements elsewhere of Colonel Wood, who had occupied that position since the truce began. And when the transport started on her home- ward voyage he was entrusted with policing the ship and the management of the men. The ship was kept in good sanitary condition, and in spite 270 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. of the tremors that attacked timid people in the United States when they read in sensational papers of the yellow fever that the soldiers were bringing home, these men were inspected on arrival, and at once were permitted to land. Their physical condition was one that need ter- rify no one ; and it certainly appealed to all that was humane in the hearts of their countrymen. Shortly after leaving the island, the captain of the ship told Colonel Eoosevelt that the stokers and engineers were inclined to disobey orders. A few of them had been drinking intoxicants, and there was the beginning of a mutiny among them. Colonel Roosevelt went straight at the root of the matter. He shrewdly guessed that many of his men had brought liquor on board, and he assembled them, the same as at roll-call, and told them there could be no drinking on the ship. There was too much at stake to permit such chances to be taken. He would take care of all the whisky his men would voluntarily give him, and would return it when they landed. After they had a chance to make this surrender, he would have a search of the ship, and would throw overboard all the liquor he found. As soon as the soldiers ' ' broke ranks ' ' they hurried THE RETUEN HOME. 271 to bring their bottles. The search revealed a few other bottles, more or less skilfully hidden, and these were consigned to the sea. That was the end of the drinldng. Then he took a number of his most reliable men to the engine-rooms, and told the mutinous people there if they failed for an instant to obey orders he would put them in irons, and set his own men to the task of pro- viding power for the ship. ' ' I could have drawn from the regiment sufficient skilled men to fill every position in the entire ship's crew, from captain to stoker, ' ' said the Colonel in comment- ing on the incident. But there was no further need of complaint. The sailors did their full duty, and the skilled men, serving in the ranks of the volunteer army, were allowed to go back to their rest and their pastimes. It was a trying voyage, even for the men who were well. It was doubly distressing for the sick. Besides Colonel Roosevelt but one other officer in the regiment had escaped disease. Richard Harding Davis has told in admirable stories of the pathos of that home-coming for the men in * * sick bay. ' ' As to the others, their occu- pations were various. A good many played cards. There was some gambling, and the commanding 272 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. officer knew it. He deprecated the practice, and never indulged in it. But lie wanted the men to have as much occupation and relaxation as was possible, and believed that the loss of a month's pay would be less of a calamity to the men than the imposition of rigid restrictions. And so disci- pline was removed so far as was consistent with maintaining order and cleanliness. Every even- ing dozens of groups would form in every part of the ship, and the men who could sing were drafted into the service of entertaining their comrades. The musical instruments tliat had escaped destruction in the marches and loss in the handling of scattered baggage, were wel- comed again. There were occasional dances, with extemporized adjuncts of dress which should distinguish the ''men" from the "women." Occasionally there were courts-martial, in which culprits were accused of absurd offenses, and tried with all the rigors of a tribunal in actual war. Usually the forfeits were to be paid in din- ners at some famous cafe in New York, when they should have reached "home." The Rough Eiders had started in with a num- ber of mascots. One was a young mountain lion, brought by the Arizona men. Another was an THE BETURN HOME. 273 eagle from New Mexico, and a third was a very- ugly, but very wise, little dog. All three had been lost time and again, but always recovered, and they made the return trip with the soldiers, the cougar trying continually to make a meal off either eagle or canine, and never succeeding. The voyage occupied nine days. The only death on board was that of a trooper who had been indiscreet enough to imbibe a large quan- tity of Cuban whisky on the evening of June 30. He had not yet recovered next morning when the march began. The fatigue and heat were too much for him, and he succumbed. He never recovered, and on the third day out from Dai- quiri he died. His body was wrapped in his hanmaock and covered with the stars and stripes, and then the burial service was read over him. At its conclusion the flag was lifted, and the hammock, weighted, was slipped over the side and into the sea. In the evening Colonel Roose- velt, making his regular rounds, noticed a cer- tain lessening of customary activity. There was a sombemess on the faces of the men which they had not worn even in the tragedy of battle. And, at the side of a gun he found a group to which one of the troopers was singing a fragment 274 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. caught from the flotsam of song that spreads over the land— "We had no costly winding-sheet, But we placed two round shot at his feet. We wrapped him about in the flag of the brave, And he was fit for a soldier's grave." The selection of Camp Wykoff was probably the best that could have been made. It was not ideal, and the same lack of preparation was noted there as at Daiquiri, and everywhere else, in the campaign. It is curious to reflect on the moun- tains of supplies for which the Government paid, and which were never placed at the disposal of the men. But that sandy beach toward the extreme east end of Long Island was healthy, if cool northern breezes, pure air and the wel- come of friends could make it so. It is likely that a better physical condition resulted from their location there. The only criticism is that departmental ability seemed so shortened that a state of "unpreparedness" remained to the very end. It is curious that mills had time to manu- facture, and railroads had time to deliver, and private citizens had time to act, and yet that millions of dollars' worth of provisions sorely needed never reached the men, or reached them only after the need had passed. THE KETURN HOME. 275 The month at Camp Wykoff provided an experience which was at least interesting. There was policing of camp, and the usual detail of barrack-keeping; but the war was over. There was no longer even a hope of further service about Havana, and no chance for a trip to Porto Eico. Spain had been driven from the West Indies, and had lost the Philippines as well. After five months of service or of waiting, the men could hope for nothing better than a return to the duties which had engaged them before that night in February when the Maine was de- stroyed. But there was no lack of occupation as the work of disbanding the army went on. For one thing, there were a good many horses at Camp Wykoff . That whole portion of the Rough Riders ' command which had been left at Tampa joined the returning veterans, and most of the camp equipage and the regimental property was once more restored to its owners. In Cuba, of course, the title '* Rough Riders" was a mis- nomer. The men did not ride, because they had no horses. Even Colonel Roosevelt, who had taken two horses to the island with him, lost one by drowning at the Daiquiri landing, and he abandoned the other, little ''Texas," just as he 276 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. started at the head of his men for the rush up San Juan hill. So that a regiment that probably could have ridden through or over every oppos- ing force in the island, had memories only of very laborious trudging on foot. But here at the eastern end of Long Island they had all the horses they wanted. They found the country back of their camps strikingly similar to the sand plains on which they had ridden before enlistment. And they took abundant exercise there. The camp, in those days, was the Mecca for New York's millions. It seemed to the soldiers that all the population of the great city came out to see them. The day of privation had passed. There was an abundance not only of the substan- tial things of life, but of delicacies as well. Every mess was enriched with dainty offerings of admirers from the city. Every train on the shoddy little railroad brought visitors, and every visitor seemed to have made it a part of the errand to bring some offering ' ' for the heroes of Santiago." Besides, the men were permitted to go to the city whenever their health and prudent discipline would permit. And wherever they went in New York, with their khaki uniforms, and the insignia THE RETURN HOME. 277 of the Rough Riders, they were most welcome guests. They had started to the coast of Cuba, from the camp at El Caney, in a state of rags and tatters. The clothing issued at the begin- ning of their service had been wholly worn out, and many of the men went to Daiquiri for embarkation absolutely barefoot. At the coast they received the clothing that had been sent to the island for them, but which incompetence had not been able to give further transiDortation ; so that they were fairly dressed when they came to their Northern camp. But some had brought along the rags of those earlier uniforms, and these tattered garments were souvenirs of pro- nounced value in the eyes of visitors. Every- thing that had been in Cuba with the Rough Riders was in demand. Autographs were con- stantly sought; and the men from the frontier, who were far more clumsy with a pen than with a revolver or a lariat, found their simple signa- tures were things of value. The more notable men among the Rough Riders could have em- ployed all their spare time complying with requests for autographs; and some of them pretty nearly achieved that record. There was another phase of the life at Camp 278 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Wykoff which cannot be overlooked. It went to the deeper things of human life. Here were men in the vigor of splendid health, who had gone through grievous peril without flinching, men who had performed acts of splendid heroism and had come back scatheless. But there were wounded men, as well. There were men on whom disease had set its stamp, and who were fighting for a return to that health which they felt was their right. There was happiness, and pleasant occupation, and enjoj^able pastime in the camp; but there was suffering, too. And among the thousands who came daily to the camp, there were very many whose errand was purely one of mercy. They left the lighter purpose of self- gratification, the whetting of curiosity, for others, and went themselves to the tents of pain. They brought such food as princes could hardly have commanded. They brought eminent j^hysi- cians, who gently and nobly added their judg- ment and advice to the thoughtful care of the regimental surgeons. In many a tent beautiful women sat reading to sick soldiers through the September afternoons. Everything that care and gratitude and appreciation could suggest was placed at the disposal of the invalids. THE EETURN HOME. 279 Miss Helen Gould was one of those whose benefactions won notice at the time. They were different from others simply because they repre- sented a greater expenditure of money ; but they were of a kind with the sendee she rendered to the soldiers throughout the war. And the thought which i^romi^ted her to so kindly a series of actions was as lofty and pure as mind of man can imagine. It was related, in quality, to the sentiment which led the sons of the rich to enlist in the ranks. If she possessed great wealth, she gave as a woman of great wealth could, and so simple and genuine was her devotion that she won a place in the hearts of the soldiers which will hold to the end of life. Her act was duplicated, perhaps in lesser degree but with like sincerity, by thousands. Eich men and women all over the country sent money to be expended for the comfort of the men. One millionaire sent an entire shipload of ice. President McKinley visited the camp with most of the members of his cabinet, employing the hours in walking through the streets of the ' ' city of tents," talldng with the soldiers, encouraging those who were sick, making sure that everything possible was being done for their comfort, and 280 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. leaving them with the profound expression of a nation's gratitude. The Secretary of War spent two days at the camp, sleeping in a tent one night, and sharing the experiences of those whose duty it was to remain. On the day of Secretary Alger's visit a rather interesting event took jjlace. Mounted drill had continued at intervals through the stay at Mon- tauk Point, largely as a measure of giving employment and diversion to the men. One day while the members of the Third cavalry were getting ready for the work, a horse threw a trooper, and ran away. It was caught and returned, and a number of Rough Riders strolled over to see the second attempt. The trooper mounted again, and again was thrown. The horse was a huge, vicious sorrel, and what is known along the Eio Grande as a ''bad bucker." None of the men of the Third could ride him. The Rough Riders jeered and mocked at them, and were dared to ride the horse, if they had any man in the command who was able. Sergeant Darnell was selected, and next day, in presence of the Secretary of War, the trial was made. In a big, open flat in front of Colonel Roosevelt's tent the big sorrel was led, and the whole camp, LANDING AT MONTAUK POINT. COLONEL ROOSEVELT AND GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER THE RETURN HOME. 281 together with hundreds of visitors, stood about watching the contest. The result was that after as fine a bit of rough riding as one woukl care to see, in which one scarcely knew whether to won- der more at the extraordinary viciousness and agile strength of the horse or at the horseman- ship and courage of the rider, Darnell came off victorious, his seat never once having been shaken. Colonel Roosevelt tells in graphic language of the final scenes of the Rough Riders as an arm of the Republic's military strength: ''The last night before we were mustered out was spent in nois}^ but entirely harmless hilarity, which I ignored. Every form of celebration took place in the ranks. A former populist candidate for attorney-general in Colorado delivered a fervent oration in favor of free silver. A number of the college boys sang ; but most of the men gave vent to their feelings by means of improvised dances. In these the Indians took the lead, pure bloods and 4ialf -breeds alike, the cowboys and miners cheerfully joining in and forming part of the howling, grunting rings that went bounding about the great fires they had kindled. ''Next morning Sergeant Wright took down 282 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. the colors, and Sergeant Guitilias the standard, for the last time. The horses, the rifles, the rest of the regimental property had been turned in. Officers and men shook hands and said good-bye to one another, and then the}'' scattered to their homes in the North and the South, the few going back to the great cities of the East, the many turning again to the plains, the mountains and the deserts of the West and the strange South- west. This was on September 15, the day which marked the close of the four months' life of a regiment of as gallant fighters as ever wore the United States unif onn. ' ' It was a scene never to be forgotten when the men filed past Colonel Roosevelt, and took their loved commander by the hand. Although the subordinate of Colonel Wood, he had been with the Rough Riders all the time— every hour of every day and night. He had been with them in camp, on rations precisely as short as their own, as wet and miserable as were they ; he had faced bullets with them, he had shared the danger of charges, and taken even more than an equal allotment of the chances of war. And he had brought them home in triumph from a glorious campaign. They shook his hand, but they said THE RETURN HOME. 283 little. Generally they looked at him as they approached, but let their eyes drop as they touched his hand. And then the relation of commander and soldier was ended. The service had been a little different from that obtaining in the regular establishment. Col- onel Roosevelt had been a good deal of a dictator, when necessary under unusual circumstances. He cared little indeed for red tape and formalities. Results were all he demanded. He had inflicted summary punishment when a case required severe discipline, and had remitted sen- tence when heroism won favor for the one-time delinquent. They were very sure that he had administered absolute justice, and had given them the benefit of every possible consideration They had been ' * resolute to do well, ' ' and he had helped them. There is an admirable passage at the conclu- sion of his book, * ' The Rough Riders ' ' ; and it so fittingly closes this portion of the story that it should be read in full : ' ' It is difficult for me to withstand the temptation to tell what has befal- len some of my men since the regiment dis- banded: how McGinty, after spending some weeks in Roosevelt hospital in New York with an 284 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. attack of fever, determined to call upon his cap- tain, Woodbury Kane, when he got out, and pro- curing a horse rode until he found Kane 's house, when he hitched his horse to a lamp-post and strolled in ; how Cherokee Bill married a wife in Hoboken, and as that pleasant city ultimately proved an uncongenial field for his activities, how I had to send both himself and his wife out to the Territory; how Happy Jack, haunted by the social methods obtaining in the best saloons of Arizona, applied for the position of 'bouncer- out' at the executive mansion when I was elected governor, and how I got him a job at railroading instead, and finally had to ship him back to his own territory as well ; how a valued friend from a cow ranch in the remote West accepted a pressing invitation to spend a few days at the home of another ex-trooper, a New Yorker of fastidious instincts, and arrived with an umbrella as his only baggage; how poor Holderman and Pollock both died and were bur- ied with military honors, all of Pollock's tribes- men coming to the burial; how Tom Isbell joined Buffalo Bill's show, and how on the other hand Rowland scornfully refused to remain in the East at all, writing to a gallant New Yorker THE RETURN HOME. 285 who had been his bunkie: 'Well, old boy, I'm glad I didn't go home with you for them people to look at, because I ain 't no buffalo nor a rinoce- ros nor a giraffe, and I don't like to be Stared at, and you know we didn 't do no hard fighting down there. I have been in closer places than that right here in Yunited States, that is better men to fight than them dam Spaniards.' In another letter Rowland tells of the fate of Tom Darnell, the rider— he who rode the bucking sorrel of the Third cavalry : ' There ain 't much news to write except that poor old Tom Darnell got killed about a month ago. Tom and another fellow had a fight, and he shot Tom through the heart and Tom was dead when he hit the floor. Tom was sure a good old boy, and I sure hated to hear of him going, and he had plenty of grit too. No man ever called on him for a fight that he didn't get it' ''My men were children of the dragon's blood, and if they had no outland foe to fight and no outlet for their daring and vigorous energy, there was always the chance of their fighting one another. But the great majority, if given the chance of hard or dangerous work availed them- selves of it with the utmost eagerness, and though 286 THEODORE roose\t:lt. fever sickened and weakened them so that many died from it during the few months follov^-iug their return, yet as a whole they are now doing fairly well. A few have shot other men or been themselves shot; a few ran for office and got elected, as Llewellyn and Luna in New Mexico, or defeated like Wilcox and Brodie in Arizona. Some have been trying hard to get to the Philip- pines; some have returned to college or to the law, or to the factory, or the counting-room. Most of them have gone back to the mine, the ranch and the hunting camp; and the great majoritj^ have taken up the threads of their lives where they dropped them when the Maine was blown up, and the country called them to arms. ' ' Perhaps no better conclusion could be found for this part of the recital than an extract from Major-General Joseph Wheeler's letter to Colo- nel Roosevelt when the army was disbanded. After sketching in outline the record of the Eough Riders, General Wheeler adds: ^'The valor displayed by you was not without sacrifice. Eighteen per cent., or nearly one in five, of the cavalry division fell on the field either killed or wounded. We mourn the loss of these heroic dead, and a grateful countiy will always revere THE EETUEN HOME. 287 their memory. Whatever may be my fate, wher- ever my steps may lead, my heart will always bum with increasing admiration for your cour- age in action, your fortitude under privation, and your constant devotion to duty in its highest sense, whether in battle, in bivouac, or upon the march. ' ' CHAPTER XV. GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. EMPIRE STATE JUBILANTLY REWARDS COLONEL ROOSEVELT WITH ITS HIGHEST OFFICE — INAUGURATES REFORM IN EVERY BRANCH OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE — ESTABLISHES THE PRIN- CIPLE OF STREET FRANCHISE TAXATION — DEWEY DAY IN NEW YORK. The fame of Roosevelt's Rough Riders had given their organizer and leader a popularity in the United States second only to that of Admiral Dewey, and for some time before he returned to New York he had been put forward prominently as a candidate for the Governorship of that State on the Republican ticket. Governor Frank S. Black had been elected by an enormous plurality two years ijreviously, and according to all tradi- tions should have been renominated. He was set aside, however, for the new hero, and in the convention at Saratoga held September 27, 1898, Colonel Roosevelt was nominated with great enthusiasm. The friends of Governor GOVEENOR OF NEW YOKK. 289 Black had fought bitterly as long as there seemed a chance for success. The charge was made that Colonel Eoosevelt was ineligible for the nomi- nation, as he had relinquished his residence in Xew York when he went to Washington to enter the Navy Department. The leading politicians were opposed to Colonel Roosevelt for other reasons than those of precedent which they offered as an argument for their support of Governor Black. They had not forgotten the ways of the young man who overturned so many precedents on his entrance to the assembly nearly twenty years before, the tenacity with which he had held to his i)rinciples when in the Civil Service Commission, nor the quiet firmness with which he had refused to obey the demands of party leaders while he was president of the Police Board. He was not the man politicians were seeking. In fact they would have rejoiced had he found ranch life so fascinating that he could not have given it up at all. He was no more entertaining as a writer of wild adventure on the frontier than as an actor in the political arena; but the entertainment was of a different sort and the men who were serving their coun- try for their own good liked the dashing colonel 290 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. far better as a hero at a distance than as a reformer in their assemblies. But the people had decided to have Colonel Roosevelt for their next Governor and the delegates to the conven- tion did not dare deny them. Senator Horace White, of Syracuse, was chairman of the convention in wliicli Colonel Roosevelt was nominated. Judge J. R. Cady, of Hudson, nominated Governor Black, and the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew presented the name of Colonel Roosevelt in the following speech: DEPEW 's SPEECH NOMINATING ROOSEVELT. ' ' Gentlemen : Not since 1863 has the Repub- lican i^arty met in convention when the condi- tions of the country were so interesting or so critical. Then the emancipation proclamation of President Lincoln, giving freedom and citizen- ship to four millions of slaves brought about a revolution in the internal policy of our Govern- ment which seemed to multitudes of patriotic men full of the gravest dangers to the Republic. The effect of the situation was the sudden and violent sundering of the ties which bound the present to the past and the future. Xew prob- lems were precipitated upon our statesmen to solve, which were not to be found in the text- GOVEENOE OF NEW YOEK. 291 books of the schools, nor in the manuals of tradi- tions of Congress. The one courageous, con- structive part which our ^^olitics has known for half a century solved those problems so success- fully that the regenerated and disenthralled republic has grown and prospered under its new birth of liberty beyond all precedent and every prediction. ' ' Now, as then, the unexpected has happened. The wildest dream ever born of the imagination of the most optimistic believer in our destiny could not foresee when McKinley was elected two years ago the on-rushing torrent of events of the past three months. We are either to be submerged by this break in the dikes erected by Washington about our Government, or we are to find by the wise utilization of the conditions forced upon us how to be safer and stronger within our old boundaries, and to add incalcula- bly to American enterprise and opportunity by becoming master of the sea, and entering with the surplus of our manufactures the markets of the world. We cannot retreat or hide. We must 'ride the waves and direct the storm.* A war has been fought and won, and vast possessions, near and far away, have been acquired. In the 292 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. short space of one hundred and thirteen days politicians and parties have been forced to meet new questions and to take sides upon startling issues. The face of the whole world has been changed. The maps of yesterday are obsolete. Columbus, looking for the Orient and its fabled treasures, sailed four hundred years ago into the land-locked harbor of Santiago, and to-day his spirit sees his bones resting under the flag of a new and great countiy, which has found the way and conquered the outposts, and is knocking at the door of the farthest East ''The wife of a cabinet officer told me that when Assistant Secretary Roosevelt announced that he had determined to resign and raise a regi- ment for the war, some of the ladies in the admin- istration thought it their duty to remonstrate with him. They said : ' Mr. Roosevelt, you have six children, the youngest a few months old, and the eldest not yet in the teens. While the country is full of young men who have no such responsi- bilities and are eager to enlist, you have no right to leave the burden upon your wife of the care, support, and bringing up of that family. ' Roose- velt 's answer was a Roosevelt answer: 'I have done as much as any one to bring on this war. GOVEKNOR OF NEW YORK. 293 because I believed it must come, and the sooner the better, and now that the war has come I have no right to ask others to do the fighting and stay at home myself. ' ' ' The regiment of Rough Riders was an origi- nal American suggestion, and to demonstrate that patriotism and indomitable courage are common to all conditions of American life. The same great qualities are found under the slouch hat of the cowboy and the elegant imported tile of New York's gilded youth. Their mannerisms are the veneers of the West and the East ; their manhood is the same. ''In that hot and pest-cursed climate of Cuba officers had opportunities for protection from miasma and fever which were not jDOSsible for the men. But the Rough Riders endured no hardships nor dangers which were not shared by their colonel. He helped them dig the ditches ; he stood beside them in the deadly damijness of the trenches. No floored tent for him if his com- rades must sleep on the ground and under the sky. In that world-famed charge of the Rough Riders through the hail of shot and up the hill of San Juan their colonel was a hundred feet in advance. The bullets whistling by him are 294 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. rapidly tliinning the ranks of those desperate fighters. The colonel trips and falls and the line wavers, but in a moment he is up again, waving his sword, climbing and shouting. He bears a charmed life. He climbs the barbed-wire fence and plunges through, yelling, 'Come on, boys; come on, and we will lick hell out of them. ' The moral force of that daring cowed and awed the Spaniards, and they fled from their fortified heights and Santiago was ours. ''Colonel Eoosevelt is the typical citizen-sol- dier. The sanitary condition of our anny in Cuba might not have been known for weeks through the regular channels of inspection and report to the various departments. Here the citizen in the colonel overcame the official routine and reticence of the soldier. His graphic letter to the Government and the round robin he ini- tiated brought suddenly and sharply to our atten- tion the frightful dangers of disease and death, and resulted in our boys being brought imme- diately home. He may have been subject to court-martial for violating the articles of war, but the humane impulses of the people gave him gratitude and applause. " It is seldom in political conflicts, when new GOVEENOK OF NEW YORK. 295 and unexpected issues have to be met and de- cided, that a candidate can be found who per- sonifies the popular and progressive side of these issues. Representative men move the masses to enthusiasm and are more easily understood than measures. Lincoln, with his immortal declara- tion, made at a time when to make it assured his defeat by Douglas for the United States Senate, that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure perma- nently half-slave and half -free,' embodied the anti-slavery doctrine. Grant, with Appomattox and the parole of honor to the Confederate anny behind him, stood for the perpetuity of union and liberty. McKinley, by his long and able advo- cacy of its principles, is the leading spirit for the protection of American industries. For this year, for this crisis, for the voters of the EmjDire State, for the young men of the country and the upward, onward and outward trend of the United States, the candidate of candidates is the hero of Santiago, the idol of the Rough Riders— Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. ' ' There were other speeches for the candidates, and then came the call of the roll. The count stood seven hundred and fifty-three votes for 296 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Koosevelt and two hundred and eighteen for Black. Judge Cady, who had placed Governor Black in nomination, immediately moved to make the nomination of Colonel Roosevelt unanimous, and Senator Hobart Krum, of Schoharie, who had been one of Governor Black's chief advisers, assured harmony in the party by saying: ''On behalf of Governor Black and on behalf of every delegate who voted for him in this convention I say they will stand by the nomination of Colonel Roosevelt, as Colonel Roosevelt has stood by the country. More than that, we will take the execu- tive chair for Colonel Roosevelt as he took the heights at San Juan." This was very eloquent, but the sequel proved that Colonel Roosevelt was himself obliged to go into the campaign and lead the forces if he wished to see victor}^ percliing upon his banner. When the nomination was made. Colonel Roosevelt went in to win as he had always done, once he had decided to make the race. The cam- paign was as picturesque and as full of surprises as even the Gascon comrades of the hero of Las Guasimas could have desired. B. B. Odell, Chairman of the State Committee and since Gov- ernor of New York, was opposed to Colonel GOVEENOR OF NEW YORK. 297 Koosevelt's stumping the State in liis own belialf. But the people wanted to see the Rough Rider and refused to show any enthusiasm for other speakers. It soon became apparent that if there was to be any " rousing of the hosts " in the campaign Colonel Roosevelt would have to do the rousing and the consent of the committee was reluctantly given for the candidate to make a tour of the State. The meetings that followed were a surprise to the oldest campaigners. The general apathy that had existed in the opening days of the campaign changed to the wildest enthusiasm. Colonel Roosevelt, by nature force- ful, direct, and theatrical in his manner and method, went backward and forward, up and down New York, accompanied by a few of his Rough Riders, dressed in their khaki unifonns. These cowboys made speeches, telling usually how much they thought of their Colonel, and recounting incidents illustrative of his kindness, good-fellowship, camaraderie and brave deeds. The tour was one of the most successful political ventures ever attempted in New York State, and gave the party managers a new conception of the man who seemed destined to win in spite of them. Colonel Roosevelt was elected over 298 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Augustus Van Wyck, candidate on the Demo- cratic ticket, and the scion of another old Dutch family, by a ])lurality of about seventeen thou- sand votes. In his conduct of the governorship Colonel Koosevelt was often at odds with Senator Piatt and the leaders of the party in the State. But while he made demands on them that would have caused active rebellion with a less pronounced character in the chair, no open breach occurred and the Governor was able to carry through many measures on which he had set his heart. He nominated men of his own selection for the Department of Public Works— which had been the source of great scandal,— and for Adju- tant-General and Surrogate of New York county. These men were selected for their special fitness to correct the evils in the office to which they were appointed, and were given the places against the claims of the party leaders' choice for the same positions. Efforts to secure the passage of a bill to improve the Civil Service in the State and to change the police system in New York city were fathered by Gov- ernor Roosevelt. While president of the Police Board of that city he had discovered that the GOVEKNOR OF NEW YORK. 299 legislation secured by the macliine politicians immediately after the new board was appointed to oflfice, under the name of the '' bi-partisan" or Lexow law, was designed to make it difficult for that board to get effective action. It modeled the government of the police force somewhat on the lines of the Polish parliament, providing for a four-headed board, so that it was difficult to get a majority, anyhow. ''But," declares the author of "American Ideals," "lest we should get such a majority, it gave each member power to veto the actions of his colleagues in certain very important matters ; and, lest we should do too much when we were unanimous, it provided that the chief of police, our nominal subordinate, should have entirely independent action in the mxost important matters, and should be practi- cally irremovable, except for proved corruj^tion ; so that he was responsible to nobody. The mayor was similarly hindered from removing any Police Commissioner, so that when one of our colleagues began obstructing the work of the board, and thwarting its efforts to improve the force, the mayor strove in vain to turn him out. In short there was a complete divorce of power and responsibility, and it was exceedingly diffi- 'jOO THEODORE ROOSEVELT. cult either to do anything, or to place anywhere the responsibility for not doing it." In Governor Roosevelt's endeavor to secure legislation which should remedy this mistake, and so further the efforts of the Police Board instead of being a hindrance to them, he was seconded by Senator Piatt, who pushed the measures, but through the dereliction of Repub- lican Senators the bills failed of passage. It was the hope that he might work these and other important reforms that made Governor Roose- velt so anxious for a second term and prompted him to fight so hard against being nominated for the vice-presidency later on. In fact he declared openly when that purpose was suggested that he would rather retire to j^rivate life than to be vice-president, qualifying that statement by saying * ' that he wished sincerely to be reelected Governor of New York because there were things to be done there that he felt he could, and ought to do." Among the achievements of Governor Roose- velt while Governor, was that of reforming the administration of the canals, making the Canal Commission non-partisan, and the application of the merit system in county offices. But the GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 301 measure that awakened the fiercest opposition, both without and within his party, was one intended to make the great corporations of the State pay their share of the general taxation. By a special message he induced the legislature in 1899, at the end of the session, to pass an act taxing as real estate the values of railroad and other franchises to use public streets. Corpora- tions and Republican leaders protested, but the Governor said he would sign the bill as it stood unless they could improve it without destroying its essential features. The fight over this measure was one of the most remarkable in the annals of legislation. Never was greater pressure brought to bear upon a body of men to force them to defeat an act that, in its every essential, attempted to place a fair and honest division of the burdens of the State upon rich and poor alike. But the great corporations had so long, through the use of an immense corruption fund, been able to escape anything like just taxation, that an effort to force them to pay their share for the protection afforded them by the Government seemed to them like an encroachment on their rights. To attempt the passage of a bill that antagonized all 302 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. the great corporations of the State of New York, and more than incidentally threatened those of all other States through the precedent, if it should be established, required a faith in his own prowess seldom found in public men. Grovernor Roosevelt seems not only to have had faith in his power to accomplish the needed legislation against all the odds, but to have resolved that the legislature should not escape doing its duty. He called an extra session, secured the passage of the bill in a modified form, and established the principle of street franchise legislation. And when the bill became a law he saw that it was enforced so that the State of New York was richer by many millions, and the burdens of taxa- tion in a measure shifted from the shoulders of the poor to the pockets of the rich. Governor Roosevelt also gave his aid to the Tenement Com- mission in its work for the betterment of the poor in New York, and in breaking up the sweat-shops through the rigid enforcement of the factory law. The remarkable i^opularity of Roosevelt as Governor was clearly shown at the time of the demonstration in New York in honor of Admiral Dewey in 1899. For a week New York city was the Mecca of GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 303 liero-worsliipers. Enthusiasm ran to a very frenzy of patriotic pride and the gray old sailor had his reward in a nation's praise. But it was observed that when the brilliant procession rep- resenting the army and the navy had passed along between the walls of cheers, the sounds were fairly lost in the shouts which burst from thousands of throats, as from one, when Roose- velt passed. He was dressed in the sober garments of his citizenhood, and was in striking contrast to the plumed and glittering warriors in front and rear. But he sat his brown horse with a trooper's ease, and although he seemed to many only a modest and peaceful gentleman, something stirred, at his coming, in the hearts of the men and women along the line of march— some emotion, untrans- latable except by cheers. It was the same the day the victorious squad- ron sailed around New York harbor through a sea of dipping flags. The battle-ships moved in stately parade between saluting forts. Multi- tudes hurrahed from the shore and from all man- ner of craft afloat in the waters. But when a certain, ordinary East river steamer appeared in line with that black-coated figure leaning 304 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. against the rail, the Olymyia herself, with the Admiral in full sight upon her bridge, could not hold the attention of the people. " Eoosevelt! Roosevelt!" they cried; until the Governor left his place and went below to keep those loyal voices from unthinking dis- courtesy toward the guest. One quality which distinguishes President Roosevelt from all his predecessors, except Lin- coln, is his keen and saving sense of humor. There never was a great and solemn ceremonial that did not have an element of comedy. And this man shows his delightful human side in the ready appreciation he has of a joke or an absurd situation. Sometimes this boyish desire to break into laughter proves annoying to himself; but his friends hold him dearer for it. The presentation of a golden loving cup from the city of New York to the victor of ^Manila bay was one of the important features of the celebra- tion. The morning following the water carnival, and countless other entertainments in his honor, found the hero weary and the skies coldly gray. The ceremony was appointed for nine o'clock but by seven a vast crowd had gathered and the space across from the city hall was filled with GOVEENOR OF NEW YORK. 305 the school cliildren of Greater New York; eacli child with the notes of " America " caged in its little throat waiting hut the signal to soar away. From a height by nine o 'clock the crowd looked like a field of clover in bloom, set shiver- ing by a cold breeze. Another hour and a dreary drizzle had begun to divert the attention of the crowd as a whole, from its aching feet to its defenseless head. No one could have gone home had he so desired. That concrete mass gave no chance for individual independence. In their flimsy frocks the little people still waited; but the song was in the clutch of croup, and never found its wings. Then the waiting was over. Admiral Dewey and the gallant gentlemen of his own and other fleets arrived with the great landsmen, General Nelson A. Miles and General Joseph Wheeler and were met by Governor Eoosevelt and Mayor Van Wyck on the platform over the steps of the city hall. All but the mayor faced the crowd. That gentleman, having his speech to make to the hero of the day, faced Dewey. He drew the manuscript from his pocket; and the moment Roosevelt saw its bulk a smile flickered over his features, only to be quickly suppressed and 306 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. replaced with an expression in keeping with the seriousness of the occasion. The Admiral, more fatigued with the honors than he had been by his matin fights at sea, looked as bored and sheepish as any bluff and valiant old soldier will when he has to stand and face the music of his own praise. He gnawed his gray mustache and gazed ahead in nervous agony. He stood on one foot and then the other, and finally, as the mayor read on and on, the subject of his elo- quence gave vent to a sigh so dejected and pro- found that Roosevelt's face quivered again with an irrepressible smile. It was plain that he was longing to laugh while he was trying to repress the inclination. Then one of those unfortunate incidents occurred. A stranger, a spectator, sud- denly caught his eyes and in that glance he broke down and burst into a laughter. It was over in a minute, and by the time the cup was really in the great sailor's hand the Governor was again all dignity. But that boyish laugh in the driz- zle and chill of that day is a heartsome thing to remember. Colonel Roosevelt, as Governor of New York, continued to keep in the public eye, as he had always done in every other position he had ever GOVEKNOK OF NEW YORK. .307 held from the day of his election to the legislature of his Dative State. He was one of the most conspicuous figures in the country and his admirers freely prophesied for him the liighest place in the gift of the people. CHAPTER XVI. ROOSEVELT IN CHICAGO. (iUEST OF HONOR AT TllK HAMILTON CLUB APPOMATTOX DAY BANQUET — WONDERFUL MEMORY SHOWN IN HIS RECOGNITION OF INDIVIDUAL ROUGH RIDERS — CHARACTERISTIC INCIDENTS OF THE MAN — FIRST ENUNCIATION OF THE GOSPEL OF A STRENUOUS LIFE. Governor Roosevelt 's executive abilities were SO clearly demonstrated by his acts before lie had been a year in the Governor's chair that he became a i:)ronounced factor in the sum of presi- dential possibilities. No slate was made without his name in the list. President McKinley was still the idol of a great majority of the jieople, but the advocates of a more virile administration were not satisfied with his pacific measures and turned naturally to the more active and out- spoken Governor of New York. The AVest was anxious to see and hear more of the man who had defied the rulers in his own party while clinging to all the better traditions of that party. It would no doubt have given great pleasure to the politi- 303 IN CHICAGO. :]{)<] cians of the Senator Piatt school, had Governor Roosevelt followed the lead of Mr. Curtis, editor of Harper's V/eeUy, and other pronounced reformers, and gone into an independent fight outside party lines. There he would not have been so dangerous to their plans. But this Gov- ernor Roosevelt declined to do. He held that to accomplish anything worth while a man must be connected with some powerful organization. If the Republican party had faults, and that it did have serious faults he had proven over and over again, he believed in correcting them, not in attempting to destroy the whole structure. At this time the Hamilton Clul), of Chicago, resolved to answer the demand of the middle West to hear Governor Roosevelt, and at the same time secure the honor of bringing him prominently before the people as a possible can- didate for the presidency. A delegation of the club was therefore sent to Xew York to invite Governor Roosevelt to be the guest of honor at the Appomattox Day banquet, to be given by the organization April 10, 1S99, at the Auditorium. Mr. Roosevelt graciously accejpted, and named as the subject of his address "The Strenuous Life. ' ' The other speakers were General John C. Black, 310 THEODOKE ROOSEVELT. ''Grant"; Honorable Even I]. Settle, of Ken- tucky, "Lee"; Postmaster-General Charles Emory Smith, ''The Union." The toast-master was Mr. Hope Reed Cody, president of the Ham- ilton Club. Preparations were made to entertain the distinguished guests on a large and sumjo- tuous scale and the banquet proved to be a most noteworthy affair. Governor Poosevelt arrived in the city on the evening preceding the banquet. A committee of the club met his train at Englewood and escorted the guest of honor to the city. At all tlie stations along the route the people were gathered in great numbers and the hero of the Spanish- Amer- ican "War was cheered to the echo whenever he appeared. At the station were hundreds of dis- tinguished citizens wearing Hamilton Club badges, and a special reception committee of the most representative citizens was awaiting him. There was also a little company of six Rough Riders, who were then residents of Chicago. They wore their faded khaki uniforms that had seen service in Cuba. They were citizens of the humbler class and w^ere given rather an incon- spicuous place among the more prosi3erous and dignified representatives of the wealthy clubs IN CHICAGO. 311 who were waiting to receive a possible President. As Governor Roosevelt stepped to the platform when the train stopped in the station his eye caught sight of the dust-stained uniforms and the cross sabers of the First United States Volun- teer Cavalry in the campaign hats of his foimer comrades, crowded far to the rear of the waiting assembly. He waved his hand to them and, ignoring the iDroffered cards of the distinguished reception committee, shouldered his way through the crowd until he could grasj) the hands of the Rough Riders. ' ' How are you, boys ? " " Basil, old man, I 'm glad to see you. ' ' Each in turn he called by name and shook heartily by the hand. He seemed quite content to chat with them, for- getful of the anxious committees who were wait- ing to escort him to his carriage and through the city. ''Come over to the Auditorium and have a visit, ' ^ he called as he was forced to turn away. And later, in the richly furnished parlors of that magnificent building, ne gave more attention to those men, who would have found entrance into the polite circles of Chicago more difficult than to the blockhouse atop of San Juan hill, than to the wealthiest and most distinguished of his admirers. 312 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. The banquet was one of the largest ever given in Chicago. The great Auditorium theater, in which it was held, was a mass of color and light. The decorations were all suggestive of a reunited union. President Hoi)e Reed Cody, in introduc- ing the speakers, said : "Ladies and Gentlemen,— Fellow Americans : The Hamilton Club welcomes you and joins you in extending most cordial greetings to our hon- ored guests. As an organization the Hamilton Club is not ashamed of its partisanship, but it is proud of its patriotism. It stands not for candi- dates, not for the selfish ambitions of any man, but for undying principle. In the past it has many times found great pleasure in calling together vast audiences of Chicago citizens, in the heat of bitterly contested political battles, and discussing with them party policies, upon which we could not all agree. To-night it finds infi- nitely greater pleasure in having brought to- gether this magnificent concourse of patriotic citizens, knowing that to the theme of this even- ing's celebration every heart in this hall beats in unison. ' ' Thirty-four years ago to-night it would, of course, have been impossible for the two sections J<^^mi WILLIAM M9KINLEY m CHICAGO. 3i;j of the country to join in celebrating Appomattox Day, but every day during the past generation the North and the South have been slowly but surely coming closer and closer and closer together, until in the year 1898 the attack of a foreign enemy tore down the curtain of sectional prejudice, and disclosed a united country. ' ' Thus is it possible for us to-night to enter- tain side by side at this banquet board, this Gen- eral of the Northern army (General Black), this true representative of the loyal South {lh\ Set- tle), this statesman (Mr. Smith), member of the President's official family, representative here of the great patriot whose head and heart have so wisely guided us during the troublesome months just past, the President of these truly United States, William McKinley; and this American soldier, who was, during the Spanish "War, the most notable and typical representative of the united arms, our honorary member, who, though dealing in ideals in American politics, is ever practical, whose leadership the Hamilton Club delights to follow. Colonel Eoosevelt, the Gov- ernor of New York." No man was ever given a more enthusiastic welcome than Governor Roosevelt on this occa- 314 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. sion. It was fully twenty minutes after he arose to speak before the cheering ceased. In his address Mr. Iioosevelt stated clearly his position at that time on the questions that were dividing the parties of the country and forming new com- binations in the i)olitical world. At this time, too, he enunciated the gospel of work with which his name has since been so closely associated. Mr. Eoosevelt spoke as follows : ' ' In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preemi- nently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who docs not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. ''A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthv of a nation as of an individual. I IX CHICAGO. 315 ask only tliat what every self-respecting Ameri- can demands from himself, and from his sons, shall be demanded of the xYmerican nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace is to be the first considera- tion in their eyes— to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of work- ing for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research— work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor ; who is 31G THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. prompt to help a friend; but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stem strife of actual life. It is hard to fail ; but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the joresent, merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good for- tune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer on the earth's surface; and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows, if the need to do so should again arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world. IN CHICAGO. 317 ''As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men wlio loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife the worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives ; we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. More- over, besides saving all the blood and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heart-break of many women, the dissolution of many homes; and we would have spared the country those months of gloom and shame, when it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if wo had thus avoided it we would have shown that we were weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth. Thank God for 318 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln and bore sword or rifle in the armies of Grant ! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves equal to the mighty days— let us, the children of the men who carried the great Civil "War to a triumphant con- clusion, praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected ; that the suffering and loss, the blackness or sorrow and desi^air, were unflinchingly faced, and the years of strife endured ; for in the end the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty Amer- ican Republic placed once more as a helmeted queen among nations. ' ' We of this generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers faced, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them. We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them ; sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk ; busying our- selves only with the wants of our bodies for the day; until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already IN CHICAGO. 319 found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and iso- lated ease is bound in the end to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill. Last year we could not help being brought face to face with the problem of war with Spain. All we could decide was whether we should shrink like cowards from the contest, or enter into it as beseemed a brave and high-spirited people ; and, once in, whether failure or success should crown our banners. So it is now. We cannot avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines. All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a way that will redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful page in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all merely amounts to dealing with them badly. We have a given problem to solve. If we under- take the solution, there is of course, always dan- 320 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. ger that we may not solve it aright ; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it cer- tain that we cannot jDossibly solve it aright. The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills ''stern men with empires in their brains"— all these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties ; shrink from seeing us build a navy and army adequate to our needs; shrink from seeing us do our share of the world's work, by bringing order out of chaos in the great, fair tropic islands from which the valor of our soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national life which is really worth leading. They believe in that cloistered life which saps the hardy virtues in a nation, as it saps them in the individual; or else they are wedded to that base spirit of gain and greed which recognizes in commercialism the be-all and end-all of national life, instead of realizing that, though an indispensable element, it is after all but one of the many elements that go to make up IN CHICAGO. 321 true national greatness. No country can long endure if its foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity wliicli comes from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activ- ity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. All honor must be paid to the architects of our material prosperity; to the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our railroads ; to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand ; for great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind. But our debt is yet greater to the men whose highest type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant. They showed by their lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; they toiled to win a competence for themselves and those dependent upon them ; but they recog- nized that there were yet other and even loftier duties— duties to the nation and duties to the race. ''We cannot sit huddled within our own bor- ders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat 322 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. even its own end ; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power without our own borders. We must build the Isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and the West. "So much foi- the commercial side. From the standpoint of international honor, the argu- ment is even stronger. The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a legacy of duty. If we drove out a media}val tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we had better not have begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no dut}^ to perform and can leave to their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be the course of infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched islands themselves. Some stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work; and we would have shown ourselves weaklings, unable to cany to successful completion the IN CHICAGO. 323 labors that great and high-spirited nations are eager to undertake. * ' The work must be done. We cannot escape our responsibility, and if we are worth our salt, we shall be glad of the chance to do the work- glad of the chance to show ourselves equal to one of the great tasks set modern civilization. But let us not deceive ourselves as to the importance of the task. Let us not be misled by vainglory into underestimating the strain it will put on our powers. Above all, let us, as we value our own self-respect, face the responsibilities with proper seriousness, courage and high resolve. We must demand the highest order of integrity and abil- ity in our public men who are to grapple with these new problems. We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources. ' ' Of course, we must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disas- ter. Let me illustrate what I mean by the army and the navy. If twenty years ago we had gone 324 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. to war, we should Imva found the navy as abso- luteh^ unprepared as the army. At that time our ships could not have encountered with success the fleets of Sixain any more than nowadays we can put untrained soldiers, no matter how brave, who are armed with archaic black powder wea- pons against well-drilled regulars armed with the highest type of modern repeating rifle. But in the early 80 's the attention of the nation became directed to our naval needs. Congress most wisely made a series of appropriations to build up a new navy, and under a succession of able and patriotic secretaries, of both political parties, the na^'y was gradually built up, until its material became equal to its splendid person- nel, with the result that last summer it leaped to its proper place as one of the most brilliant and formidable fighting navies in the entire world. We rightly pay all honor to the men controlling the navy at the time it won these great deeds, honor to Secretary Long and Admiral Dewey, to the captains who handled the ships in action, to the daring lieutenants who braved death in the smaller craft, and to the heads of bureaus at Washington who saw that the ships were so commanded, so armed, so equipped, so well JN CHICAGO. 325 engined, as to insure the best results. But let us also keep ever in mind that all of this would not have availed if it had not been for the wis- dom of the men who during the preceding fif- teen years had built up the na\y. Keep in mind the secretaries of the navy during those years; keep in mind the Senators and Congressmen who by their votes gave the money necessary to build and to armor the ships, to construct the great guns, and to train the crews; remember also those who actually did build the ships, the armor and the guns; and remember the admi- rals and captains who handled battle-ship, cruiser and torpedo-boat on the high seas, alone and in squadrons, developing the seamanship, the gun- nery and the power of acting together, which their successors utilized so gloriously at Manila and off Santiago. And, gentlemen, remember the converse, too. Eemember that justice has two sides. Be just to those who built up the na^T, and for the sake of the future of the coun- try, keep in mind those who opposed its building up. Read the Congressional Record. Find out the Senators and Congressmen who opposed the grants for building the new ships, who opposed the purchase of armor, without which the ships 326 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. were worthless; who opposed any adequate maintenance for the navy department, and strove to cut down the number of men necessary to man our fleets. The men who did these things were one and all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share in the glory of Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have no cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea cap- tains, of the renown of our flag. Their motives may or may not have been good, but their acts were heavily fraught with evil. They did ill for the national honor ; and we won in spite of their sinister opposition. ''Now, apply all this to our public men of to-day. Our anny has never been built up as it should be built up. I shall not discuss with an audience like this the puerile suggestion that a nation of seventy millions of freemen is in dan- ger of losing its liberties from the existence of an army of one hundred thousand men, three- fourths of whom will be employed in certain for- eign islands, in certain coast fortresses, and on Indian reservations. Xo man of good sense and stout heart can take such a proposition seriously. If we are such weaklings as the proposition implies, then we are unworthy of freedom in any IN CHICAGO. 327 event. To no body of men in the United States is the country so much indebted as to the splendid officers and enlisted men of the regular army and navy ; there is no body from which the country has less to fear ; and none of which it should be prouder, none which it should be more anxious to upbuild. ''Our army needs complete reorganization— not merely enlarging— and the reorganization can only come as the result of legislation. A proper general staff should be established, and the positions of ordnance, commissary and quar- termaster officers should be filled by detail from the line. Above all, the amiy must be given the chance to exercise in large bodies. Never again should we see, as we saw in the Spanish War, major-generals in command of divisions, who nad never before commanded three companies to- gether in the field. Yet incredible to relate, the recent Congress has showed a queer inability to learn some of the lessons of the war. There were large bodies of men in both branches who op- posed the declaration of war, who opposed the ratification of peace, who opposed the upbuilding of the army, and who even opposed the purchase of armor at a reasonable price for the battle-ships 328 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. and cruisers, thereby putting an absolute stop to tlie building of any new fighting ships for the navy. If during the years to come any disaster should befall our arms, afloat or ashore, and thereby any shame come to the United States, remember that the blame will lie upon the men whose names appear upon the roll-calls of Con- gress on the wrong side of these great questions. On them will lie the burden of any loss of our sol- diers and sailors, of any dishonor to the flag ; and upon you and the people of this country will lie the blame, if you do not repudiate, in no unmis- takable way, what these men have done. The blame will not rest upon the untrained com- mander of untried troops ; upon the civil officers of a department, the organization of which has been left utterly inadequate ; or upon the admi- ral with insufficient number of ships ; but upon the public men who have so lamentably failed in forethought as to refuse to remedy these evils long in advance, and upon the nation that stands behind those public men. "Bo at the present hour no small share of the responsibility for the bloodshed in the Phil- ippines, the blood of our brothers, and the blood of their wild and ignorant foes, lies at the thresh- IN CHICAGO. 329 olds of those who so long delayed the adoption of the treaty of peace, and of those who by their worse than foolish words deliberately invited a savage people to plunge into a war fraught with sure disaster for them ; a war, too, in which our own brave men who follow the flag must pay with their blood for the silly, mock-humanita- rianism of the prattlers who sit at home in peace. **The army and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation must carry, if she is to do her duty among the nations of the earth —if she is not to stand merely as the China of the "Western Hemisphere. Our proper conduct toward the tropic islands we have wrested from Spain is merely the form which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course, we are bound to handle the affairs of our own household well. We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home admin- istration of city. State and nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual ; for the wisest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of indi- vidual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own house- 330 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. hold iu order, we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world. A man's first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing his duty to the State; for if he fails in this second duty it is under the penalty of ceasing to be a freeman. In the same way, while a nation's first duty is within its own borders, it is not thereby absolved from facing its duties in the world as a whole ; and if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its right to struggle for a place among the i)eoples that shape the destiny of mankind. ' 'In the West Indies and the Philippines alike we are confronted by most difficult problems. It is cowardly to shrink from solving them in the proper way ; for solved they must be, if not by us, then by some stronger and more manful race ; if we are too weak, too selfish or too foolish to solve them, some bolder and abler people must undertake the solution. Personally I am far too firm a believer in {he greatness of my country and the power of my countrymen to admit for one moment that we shall ever be driven to the ignoble alternative. ''The problems are different for the different islands. Porto Rico is not large enough to stand IN CHICAGO. 331 alone. We must govern it wisely and well, pri- marily in the interest of its own people. Cuba is, in my judgment, entitled ultimately to settle for itself whether it shall be an independent state ;or an integral portion of the mightiest of repub- lics. But until order and stable liberty are secured, we must remain in the island to insure them; and infinite tact, judgment, moderation and courage must be shown by our military and civil representatives in keeping the island paci- fied, in relentlessly stamping out brigandage, in protecting all alike, and yet in showing proper recognition to the men who have fought for Cuban liberty. The Philippines offer a yet graver problem. Their population includes half-caste and native Christians, warlike Mos- lems, and wild pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit for self-government and show no signs of becoming fit. Others may in time become fit, but at present can only take part in self-government under a wise supervision at once firm and beneficent. TTe have driven Span- ish tyranny from the islands. If we now let it be replaced by savage anarchy, our work has been for harm and not for good. I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake the task of gov- 332 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. erning the Philippines, and who openly avow that they do fear to undertake it, or that they shrink from it because of the expense and trou- ble ; but I have even scanter patience with those who make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity, and who cant about 'liberty' and the 'consent of the governed,' in order to excuse themselves for their unwilling- ness to play the part of men. Their doctrines if carried out would make it incumbent upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out their own salvation and to decline to interfere in a single Indian reservation. Their doctrines con- demn your forefathers and mine for ever having settled in these United States. ' ' England 's rule in India and Egypt has been of great benefit to England, for it has trained up generations of men accustomed to look at the larger and loftier side of public life. It has been of even greater benefit to India and Egypt. And finally and most of all, it has advanced the cause of civilization. So, if we do our duty aright in the Philippines, we will add to that national renown which is the highest and finest part of national life ; will greatly benefit the people of the Philippine Islands ; and above all we will play IN CHICAGO. 333 our part well in the great work of uplifting man- kind. But to do this work, keep ever in mind that we must show in a very high degree the qualities of/' courage, of honesty, and of good judgment. Resistance must be stamped out. The first and all-important work to be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. We must put down armed resistance before we can accomplish anything else, and there should be no parleying, no falter- ing in dealing with our foe. As for those in our own country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are saved from being treasonable merely from the fact that they are despicable. ' ' When once we have put down armed resist- ance, when once our rule is acknowledged, then an even more difficult task will begin, for then we must see to it that the islands are adminis- tered with absolute honesty and with good judg- ment. If we let the public service of the islands be turned into the prey of the spoils politician, we shall have begun to tread the path which Spain trod to her own destruction. We must send out there only good and able men, chosen for their fitness and not because of their partisan 334 THEODORE BOOSEVELT. service, and these men must not only administer impartial justice to the natives and serve their own government with honesty and fidelity, but must show the utmost tact and firmness, remem- bering that with such people as those with whom we are to deal, weakness is the greatest of crimes, and that next to weakness comes lack of consid- eration for their principles and prejudices. ' ' I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our countiy calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth centun^ looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peo- ples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word ; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, jirovided we are certain IN CHICAGO. 335 that the strife is justified ; for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness. ' ' CHAPTER XVII. HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT AGAINST HIS EMPHATIC PRO- TEST—SINKS PERSONAL PREFERENCE AT THE CALL OF PUBLIC DUTY— STRIKING FIGURE IN THE CAMPAIGN — PRESIDING OVER THE SENATE — SEEKS RECREATION IN A POST-ELECTION HUNT FOR MOUNTAIN LIONS. Man does not always dispose of his life as he wills. Governor Roosevelt, at the executive man- sion at Albany, was in precisely the position he desired. From the beginning of his loolitical career he had protested against the abuses that existed in administration of affairs. He had exerted all his powers, in each position occupied, to impress the people of his State with the wis- dom of obeying the laws. It was not the low offenders against petty restrictive measures that offered menace to the commonweal ; but those in enviable station— men to whom much had been given, and of whom the people had a right to expect much in the way of justice and of right. As legislator, as police commissioner, as expo- S36 HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 337 nent of the merit system under national appoint- ment, and in successive campaigns, his effort had always been for a reform in the public service of his State. Wherever his activities were em- ployed he had been handicapped by the opposi- tion of forces from which he had a right to expect assistance. He had been hampered by the inertia of a system which all men conceded was bad, but which few men in politics dared to see corrected. As Governor of New York State he was in a position to put his reforms into practice. He had the power which he had lacked before. He was the dictator of the situation. Four years as chief executive of the Empire State would, it may confidently be assumed, have resulted in such a purification of public morals, such a reformation in official conduct, as the great Re- public has never known. No one knew better than he the men and the forces against which he would have to contend, and it is not likely there was another man in the State so well equipped for that struggle as he was. It was— at least for that time— the goal toward which all his training and his effort had been tending. It was the work which he had all his life been trying to do, and it would probably have proven of greater benefit 338 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. to the nation, as illustrating sensible and substan- tial rcfonn, than any other man could have con- tributed. It had been particularly gratifying to him, at the close of the war with Spain, to know that the people of his native State turned to him with the demand that he take charge of their public affairs as Governor; and it was with regret that he heard the jiremonitory summons to a higher but less useful office. As the time for the national Republican convention of 1900 approached, speculation regarding the ticket to be chosen was simplified. For first place but one name was commonly considered. President McKinley was to be given a second term. As to the choice for Vice-President, the politicians canvassed the chances of this man and of that man— but the people spoke with an increasing assertiveness for Theodore Roosevelt. Something of the man's good fortune was again revealed in the situation. The ' ' geograph- ical consideration" was satisfied in his selection. Mr. McKinley was from the West— for Ohio is ' ' west" to the dwellers in Atlantic States. What would have been the result if both had been from the same section cannot be conjectured. But he was at the same time at odds with fortune regard- HONOKS THRUST UPON HIM. 839 1 iug another consideration always of moment in tlie making of a ticket. He was by no means a ricli man. It must not be supposed that lie was a man of fallen fortunes, or that the estate which had come to him through generations of thrifty ancestors had been dissipated. That was not the case. Yet it will be remembered that the Roosevelts had never been among the magnates of the community. They had accumulated, but they had also enjoyed their wealth, and had always done good with it. There were scores of families in New York twenty times as rich as Theodore Roosevelt ; and ordinarily at least one man of wealth has been regarded as necessary on the national ticket. Here, then, were objections of his own, and other objections which his party friends were urging, all against his selection as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. Of course the fact of geography or of inadequate wealth were of small moment to him. If he had desired the place, he would have announced that desire, and have striven for it. But his life work was before him, ready to his hand. The opportunity for the great good which he desired to do had arrived. The means were in his possession. It seemed like 340 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. abandoument of duty, like turuiug back from trial and labor, like retreating in the face of an enemy to sanction in any way the suggestion that he was willing to leave that office for a greater. Nothing could be greater or more noble than the task he had set himself to joerform. So that there was no man in the nation so interested as he in silencing the demand for Theodore Roosevelt's candidacy for Vice-Presi- dent. But there he encountered the very joolitical opposition which he had set himself to oppose. The forces of his own party in Xew York which were not in accord with him knew that he should be removed from the gubernatorial chair at any cost. They had not wanted him there at the beginning, and had done all in their power to oppose liim. They would do all in their power now to promote him. So, as the national conven- tion approached, they encouraged that demand for Roosevelt. They extended the scope of their influence all over the country. In some places they went so far as to increase the clamor for his name at the head of the ticket— and many poli- ticians are still willing to assert that he could have had the nomination for the Presidential office if he had manifested the slightest desire for HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 341 it. But, the result of the machinations of the poli- ticians coincided exactly with the desires of the people for honoring this man, and as June 19 approached, the day of the convention's assem- bling, it became more and more evident that he would at least have the offer of the second place in the gift of the nation . There was no coy disclaimer, no shallow pre- tense of not wanting the honor. There was a rugged and honest declaration that he wanted to remain Governor of New York until his work there was completed. He constantly and dili- gently tried to discourage the '^Roosevelt boom" that he found at Philadelphia. He was again one of the New York delegates to the convention, as he had been to the Chicago convention of 1884. And all the power and influence he possessed was exerted in opposition to his own selection. But it was fruitless. The nation had called him, and he could not but comply. So that the ticket was made up even before the convention was called to order. As the work of the convention proceeded, Mr. McKinley was named for President, and Mr. Roosevelt rose to second that nomination. His speech was in part as follows : ''I rise to second 342 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. the nomination of William ]McKinley, because with him as leader this people has trod the path of national greatness and prosperity with the strides of a giant, and because under him we can and will succeed in the election. Exactly as in the past we have remedied tlie evils which we undertook to remedy, so now when we say that a wrong shall be righted, it most assuredly will be righted. ''We stand on the threshold of a new century, a century big with the fate of the great nations of the earth. It rests with us to decide now whether in the opening years of that century we shall march forward to fresh triumphs, or whether at the outset we shall deliberately crip- ple ourselves for the contest. Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work that must be done by the world-powers'? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent, and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager and fearless eyes, and rejoices, as a strong man, to run the race. We do not stand in the craven mood, asking to be spared the task, cringing as we gaze on the con- test. No. We challenge the proud privilege of HONORS THRUST UPOX HIM. 343 doing the work that Providence lias allotted us, and we face tlie coming years high of heart and resolute of faith that to our people is given to win such honor and renown as has never yet been granted to the peoples of the earth." He was, beyond question, the one great char- acter in the convention. The sessions were held in Philadelphia, a city hallowed by memories of trials in Eevolutiouary times, by the memories of the Declaration of Independence which had been signed there ; hallowed by the memories of that earlier Republican national convention, in 1856, when Col. John C Fremont was the first candi- date of the party for the office. And all the tra- ditions of that earlier age, when freedom and advancement called the best men in the nation to the public service seemed throbbing in the air of the big convention hall. There was no opposi- tion to Mr. McKinley's selection. Yet until the Governor of New York took his place there on the platform and began his speech seconding the nomination, there were men who feared he would himself carry oif first honors. Of course he was wholly incapable of such an act. It would have been a base treacheiy ; but the men who feared him knew the limitless reaches of his power, 344 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. knew what an idol he had become in the public eye, knew that if he had been inspired by their own code of morals he would take advantage of even that great and sacred opportunity. But he was loyal to the chief of his party. And when he had concluded his speech of seconding, his critics knew they had heard a man who was giving up an office which he wanted for the certainty of one not at all to his liking, and that no consideration on earth could induce him to be either a traitor or a coward. It is doubtful if any man in political life in this country has ever stood in a position similar to that occupied by Governor Koosevelt at the Philadelphia convention. It is certain none has acquitted himself more honorably. When the cheers over the naming of the Pres- ident had died away, there was a demand for Roosevelt for second place. No effort was needed to make his nomination sure. Not even his own opposition could prevent it. And when the roll of the convention was called, every mem- ber but one voted for Theodore Roosevelt for nomination to the office of Vice-President. That one member did not vote. It was Mr. Roosevelt himself. His letter, published a month later, accepted COLONEL ROOSEVELT DURING THE CAMPAIGN OK 190O HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 345 the honor thrust upon him, and sounded the key- note of his party, the sentiment of his country, in language too vigorous and clear to be misunder- stood. Partisan though he was, he still held to the position of a patriot; and there was no speaker or writer in the campaign less offensive to his political enemies than was this man who had proved his right to talk plainly to his fellow- countrymen. In compliment to his service in the war, numerous bands of peaceful "Rough Riders" were organized all over the nation. They included men from every walk of life. Farmers and bankers, lawyers and laboring men rode side by side in parades, all clad in the khaki suits resembling those worn by the soldiers at San Juan. It was a campaign device more useful than the ' ' log cabins ' ' of 1840, or the ' ' tanners ' clubs" of 1868. Having accepted the nomina- tion, Governor Roosevelt threw himself into the campaign with all the ardor of his nature, and contributed more largely, perhaps, to the election of the ticket than any other man in the nation. As a public speaker he was a most pronounced success. It can hardly be said he possesses the graces of a polished orator. There were scores of 346 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. men in his party and in the opposition who could compose an address of far greater literary finish. There were many men who understood the arts of the elocutionist, and could round a period with a nicer sense of dramatic requirements. But there was none, on either side, who spoke so directly to the hearts of the people, or from whose speaking the people carried away so much to remember. The campaign whicli he made has never been equaled in the number of States cov- ered, the interest excited or in the number of persons addressed, A famous weekly newspaper has said: "The campaigns of Douglas in 1856, of Greeley in 1872, and of Blaine in 1884 were historic in those respects; but not one of the candidates in those years made a tenth as many speeches as Roosevelt did in 1900. He traveled 22,000 miles, delivered 673 addresses, most of them of more than an hour's duration, visiting 567 towns, and speaking to 3,500,000 people. Most of his itinerary was in the jMiddle AVest and the trans-^Iississippi region, throughout all of which Governor Roosevelt has always been a favorite. One of these gatherings was especially notable for its size, its exuberance, the number of elements it represented, and (he imp;n'tiality with HONOKS THRUST UPON HIM. 347 which it voiced the feelings of all sections. It was in St. Louis, that central point of the merid- ians and the parallels, the mingling- place of the North and the South, the West and the East. The meeting was in the Coliseum, the largest audito- rium entered by Governor Roosevelt on his tour. In the vast hall were crowded fifteen thousand people. As many more were close to the build- ing on the outside, eager to catch a glimpse of him as he passed in and out. As he entered the hall, the cheers shook the structure, and the thou- sands of flags and handkerchiefs waved like a forest in a tornado. The audience sang 'x\mer- ica, ' in which the orator joined. The bands suc- cessively and miscellaneously played Mohn Brown's Body, "The Bonnie Blue Flag, "March- ing Through Georgia,' 'Maryland, My Mar}^- land,' 'The Red, White and Blue,' 'Dixie,' and ' The Star-Spangled Banner. ' It was a striking exhibit of the number and variety of ingredients which form the composite called the American. The demonstration was a magnificent tribute to the popularity of Governor Roosevelt, particu- larly in the West. ' ' As Rowland, the Rough Rider, had said : " We didn't do no hard fighting down there"— refer- 348 THEODOEE KOOSE\^LT. ring to the Santiago campaign. Governor Roose- velt would have been the last man to pretend the conflicts at San Juan hill and at Las Guasimas were great battles. The percentage of fatal- ity was larger than at Waterloo, it is true ; but in the sense that Hohenlinden, Gravelotte or Gettysburg were battles, he would have been first to enter a disclaimer. Yet so far as heroism is concerned, a battle is an individual affair, and those men who went up that hill at San Juan, or through the jungle at Las Guasimas, were equal in courage and in execution to the men who charged under Cardigan at Balaklava or with Pickett at Cemetery Ridge. There is a broad and generous sense of fairness in the minds of the American people ; and they rated as a hero this man who had led the fighting force. They felt, and they always will feel, that whatever suc- cess was accomplished in those hot days on the land side of Santiago was the work of Roosevelt. They were riot sure how much good had been secured by the victory, nor what disposition would be made of the positions gained. But they did know that American prestige had been ad- vanced, and that the great Republic had been lifted in the eyes of the world, and in their own HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 849 eyes. So they rallied to the standard of this man who was strenuous in peace and efficient in war, and pledged their allegiance to him. The day of voting came, and McKinley and Boosevelt were elected. The man who contrib- uted largely to that success, as to most in which he had at all been a factor, resigned the work in New York State which he would have preferred to follow, and devoted himself to the less trying —and less useful— duties of the Vice-Presidency. It has been said he was not offensive even to his political opponents in the campaign. There was a day in Colorado when a hoodlum crowd jeered at him, and when a number of irresponsibles whom shame has hidden treated this candidate for the second office in the nation much as they might have treated a bad actor. But there never was a day when they planted in his mind an antipathy against them as members of the great body of American citizens. He knew the stress of partisan hatred in the heat of a campaign. He knew the West in particular; and the incident which affronted the nation waked no lasting resentment in the mind of Roosevelt. When he had been elevated to his high office, he was Vice- President of the United States— not the favored 350 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. clioice of a party. He was an expression, so far as his office went, of the will and the desire, the purpose and the destiny, of the whole nation. Not one lingering trace of resentment lurked in his bosom. lie was the elected of the whole peo- ple. He refused to harbor enmity. When Congress assembled, he became the pre- siding officer of the Senate. Xo one knew better than he the small modicum of initiative accorded that officer. Yet there is something almost pro- phetic on this point in one of his articles, written in 1896. It was long before he could have had any thought of being elected to the office, and the point of view is, therefore, entirely outside the personal equation. Speaking of the nomination of some Vice-Presidential candidates previous to 1896, he said: "It will be noticed that most of these evils arise from the fact that the Vice-Pres- ident, under ordinaiy circumstances, possesses so little real power. He presides over the Senate, and he has in Washington a position of marked social importance; but his political weight as Vice-President is almost nil. There is always a chance that he may become President. As this is only a chance it seems quite impossible to per- suade politicians to give it the proper weight. HONOBB THRUST UPON HIM. .351 This certainly does not seem right. The Vice- President should, so far as possible, represent the same views and principles that have secured the nomination and election of the President; and he should be a man trusted and able in the event of any accident to his chief, to take up the work of the latter just where it was left." It is a little curious that a man who could have said that in 1896 should have been the first Vice- President thereafter to realize that "chance of succeeding to the Presidency. ' ' Through the months of his incumbency of the office, in the winter session, little can be said for Vice-President Roosevelt other than that he was fair in his judgments, courteous in his relations with the Senators, and always cognizant of the dignity of his position as next to the official head of the nation. Little can be said, except this: There was never a day when any band of politi- cians felt for a moment that he was under obliga- tion ; that he was owned. As he had been a stal- wart and honest man from the beginning, so he continued in his high office. And the forces of the Senate knew that its presiding officer could neither be fooled nor flattered. He was still a member of his party, but he was at the same time •t - 352 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. a Vice-President of the United States; and no influence could make liim less than that ! When Congress adjourned, when the work of that notable session had ended, Vice-President Koosevelt took advantage of the vacation to engage in a hunt which he had been contemplat- ing for years, and which j^ossessed all possible attractiveness for a man of his mettle. Of the few big animals in the United States, still wild and defiant of the hunter, the grizzly bear and the mountain lion, the latter commonly called the cougar, are the most distinctive. He had made trial with the grizzly, and the result of his hunt- ing has been told. There was a section of the country, in the wilds of Colorado, where the cougar had not been much hunted ; and there he went in the late winter and early spring of 1901. He found a hunter who possessed the necessary pack of hunting-dogs, and who knew where the dangerous animals could be found. And there the two of them hunted for a month. In that time Mr. Roosevelt killed fourteen cougars, some at the expense of great peril, all at the expense of hardship and exposure. The story of that hunt has been admirably told by Mr. Roose- velt in Scribner's Magazine for October, 1901. A FINE BOBCAT HONORS THRUST UPON HIM. 353 But, lest the imputation of an unwarranted lust for hunting should lie against him, it must be stated that natural history is greatly the gainer because of his hunt. He tells of the varying characteristics of the animals; of their range and habits and peculiarities ; and he sent to the Smithsonian Institute at Washington the skulls of all the animals killed, so that their measure- ments might be taken and added to the slender sum of information possessed by Americans as to this most distinctive of American animals. The interesting feature as to all his enterprises is that he looks below the surface. Here, at a time when he might have been pardoned for resigning him- self utterly to the delights of the chase, he was studying the characteristics of the creatures he encountered, comparing them with the rather limited data already published, and establishing the truth as existing facts provided the means. He returned from that hunt to enjoy a short summer of rest, perhaps the first he had really known since that distant day in the Murray Hill congressional district of New York, when he con- cluded to go to the assembly; and from it he was called— abundantly prepared, yet tearfully reluctant— to the chief magistracy of the nation. CHAPTER XVIII. ASSASST NATION OF PRESIDENT MC KINLET. LEON CZOLGOSZ STRIKES DOWN THE HEAD OF THE NATION — COUNTRY PLUNGED IN SORROW — HOPE AND DESPAIR ALTER- NATE — * ' NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE ' ' — END OP A NOBLE LIFE— THE REPUBLIC PAUSES WHILE ITS PRESIDENT IS LAID TO REST. The Pan- American Exposition at Buffalo was in successful progress September 5, 1901, when President McKinley left his home in the White House in Washington in the company of his wife and the members of his cabinet, together with a party of other friends, for a visit to that ''magic city" by the Falls of Niagara. Septem- ber 6 was ''President's Day," and an immense number of people had gathered to greet the chief executive of the nation. In the afternoon of that day President McKinley took his stand in the Temple of Music, with his personal and official friends about him. The crowds of people formed themselves in line, and passed for the handshake which has long been a part of executive custom, and to pay their respects to one whom all hon- 354 Mc kinley's assassination. 355 ored, whatever their political prejudice may have been. All about him were the accessories of harmo- nious sounds. A little to one side stood the mighty organ which had but an hour before breathed forth the tender passages from "The Messiah"; and the whole atmosphere seemed attuned to the sentiment of that angel band which sang to the shepherds : ' ' Peace on earth, good will to men." Hundreds had walked slowly past, shaking the hand of the President, and moving into the wider grounds, to await his reappearance for the drive from the x>laza. Farmers, business men, manufacturers, sailors and soldiers, young and old, women and children, all were represented in the lines that pressed up for the greeting and the coveted handshake. In that line, unmarked by anything that could publish his purpose to those charged with the President's safe-keeping, came Leon Czolgosz, a young man of twenty- four, in the conventional dress of the well-to-do mechanic or artisan. His right hand was half concealed beneath the breast of his coat, and about the wrist was wound, in such manner as to be observable by all, a handkerchief. It was as o56 THEODOBE ROOSEVELT. though the hand were disabled, and had been bound up. In consequence of that, he extended his left hand for tlie greeting; and President McKinley, always observant of misfortune, always tender in his consideration for those who suffer, took the left hand gently in his right, the quick sympathy beaming from his face as he bent above the citizen. In that instant, with his naked palm pressing the hand of his President, Leon Czolgosz drew from beneath his coat a revolver, and fired two shots into the body before him. Czolgosz 's hat, carried under his arm, and pressed against his side with his elbow, fell to the ground. There was an instant of unspeak- able silence, in which the most trivial of details impressed themselves on the memory of those who stood about. The report of the shots had not been heard outside of the building. Those nearest the President recovered in a fraction of a moment, and one of them leaped on the culprit —who, however, made not the slightest attempt to escape. He was thrown to the ground. He was grasped and buffeted by a score who were tardily recognizing the enormity of his frightful crime. The President staggered back, and was PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT CONFERRING WITH SENATOR HANNA ON THE WAY TO THE MILBURN HOUSE, BUFFALO, N. Y. MCKINLEY'S ASSASSINATION. ;]57 caught in the arms of those nearest him. Of all in the building, he was first to understand. And the words which welled to his whitening lips, even before the waking of conscious pain, were : ' ' May God forgive him ! ' ' He was assisted to an armchair, and physi- cians were summoned. His attention was first attracted to the assassin, who was being hustled vehemently from the building, "Don't let them hurt him," he said. Then, in a moment: ''Do not tell my wife of this. Or, if it must be done, do not frighten her. ' ' He was removed to the emergency hospital, where it was found the first ball had inflicted but a slight flesh wound, but that the second had pen- etrated the stomach. After a surgical operation, rendered instantly necessary, the President was removed to the residence of a friend, where he had been a guest since arriving in Buffalo. And there, after seven days, he died. His assassin had never before seen President McKinley. He had no personal ends to gain by the act, and no sense of revenge to gratify. He stated later in jail that he was an anarchist ; that he believed all kings and rulers should be ''re- moved," and that he had come to Buffalo for the 358 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. express purpose of killing President McKinley. He had voted for that gentleman in 1896, but since then had listened to the s^jeeches of Emma Goldman, a leader among the anarchists of the country, and had read the publications of their societies. He at no time denied his act, and at most times appeared composed and sane. When arraigned, he pleaded ' ' guilty, ' ' although the law of New York State refuses to accept the plea in capital cases. Beyond that, little is known of Czolgosz, except that he was a native of the United States, and that his father was an immi- grant from Eussian Poland. The family had lived at different places in the lower peninsula of Michigan, and no member of it had ever risen to public notice, with the exception of the father, who in 1876 made one of a j)arty that attacked a tyrannical landlord of the neighborhood, and killed him. This landlord was a nobleman from central Germany, and had brought to America quite a fortune in money. He established himself on an island near the east shore of Lake Michi- gan, and set up a sort of old-world barony. He regarded himself as vastly the superior of his neighbors, and imposed upon them grossly. He indulged in a life of lawlessness and brazen MC kinley's assassination. 359 debauchery at his island home, and scandalized the whole community. His habits became unbear- able, and his abuse of the settlers about the place continued until, driven to desperation, they gathered one night, and fired a fusilade of bul- lets into his house. He was instantly killed, and the perpetrators of the deed escaped without a trial. It was the sense of the region that the dis- solute and abusive nobleman had received pre- cisely what he deserved, and the matter dropped there. The father of Leon Czolgosz was a mem- ber of that party, and a number of the family relatives still live in Alj^ena county, where these incidents occurred. Later the father of Leon moved to Detroit, and there the lad attended pub- lic school. He is said to have been a timid child, a cowardly boy through all his years up to man- hood. He has himself complained that he ' ' never had any luck." In many respects he became a complete realization of degeneracy. He read books relating to anarchy, and advocating that doctrine. He listened to addresses by a number of the more prominent exponents of anarchy, and readily agreed with them in their denunciation of law. It is possible that the story of slaying the German baron was told and approved in his 360 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. father 's family, and that Leon came naturally to think that substantial justice could best be done without regard to the forms of law, and on the judgment of individuals who may feel themselves aggrieved. True, he was not aggrieved as an individual in this case ; but a man who advances ''ill luck" as an excuse for failure in life is likely to regard all successful men as his enemies. It is then easy to apply the other rule : that a man should settle with his enemies in such manner as will best gratify his sense of their crime's enormity. There may have been a plot among anarchists of the country, and that Czolgosz was deputed by fellow-malcontents to ''remove" the Presi- dent. For a man habitually "out of luck," he certainly rode around the country a good deal. He was in Chicago ten days before the assassina- tion, and there learned that the President was going to Buffalo October 5. He paid his fare from the Western to the Eastern city. He had kept up his dues in the anarchist "lodges" to which he belonged. He had been a worker in iron, but had left that occupation because of ill health. For two years he seems not to have had any very lucrative occupation, yet he had money. Mckinley's assassination. ;i(>l All these incidents support tlie tlieoiy that Czol- gosz was an emissary of the organized haters of law, in spite of his own statement that he com- mitted the crime on his own account, and with not even a suggestion from any one else. Just what is the truth, the future will most likely tell. Cer- tainly there was not even the harebrained reason existing in the ease of Guiteau, nor the passionate motive of Booth. It hapi)ened that a number of very excellent physicians were close at hand when the President was shot, and they gave him immediate attention. Sioecialists were summoned, and every step in the treatment was taken on the judgment and approval of the men best qualified to decide. All that first night the suspense throughout the coun- try was painfully intense. The President had not been instantly killed, and a gleam of hope came from the sick chamber when it was known he still lived at dawn. The hope grew next day when signs of improvement were detected, and published throughout the world. Messages of condolence from every capital in every land were followed with other messages of cheer at the apparent start toward recovery. Through six davs each bulletin was fairer than the last, and 362 THEODORE KOOSEVELT. it was with a double sorrow that the nation was advised on the following Friday— a week from the day of the shooting— that the President was very much worse, and could hardly hope to re- cover. And a little past midnight on the morning of Saturday he died. President McKinley knew that his end was approaching, and he fronted the grim fate with all the courage which a man of such life should have possessed. He bade farewell to his friends, and the members of his official family, and his parting with his wife was sorrowfully tender. He spoke encouraging words to all, and partic- ularly to the woman who had been his ''half of life" for more than thirty years. When the end came an examination was made by the physicians. The bullet which had pene- trated his stomach had never been removed. The surgeons thought the patient would be exx)osed to less risk by this course than if they should sub- ject him to the exhausting ordeal of further prob- ing. But in the autopsy it was found that the course of the bullet was marked with gangrene. AVhether this was the result of some substance applied to the bullet before firing, or whether the gangrene was due to another cause, could not t^^rmmmd:^:^ i ■-> < z o Mc kinley's assassination. 3(33 be determined. But the apparent improvement in President McKinley's condition had been de- ceptive. In the absence of the gangrene, he would almost certainly have recovered. With it there, death had begun from the instant the wound was inflicted. Through Sunday the body of the dead Presi- dent lay in the house of his friend, and sermons were delivered throughout the country extolling his virtues, and deprecating the horror of his taking off. The whole nation was bowed with the terrible sorrow. Mr. McKinley had always been a strong partisan, and yet he had been so gentle in manner, so courteous even to his oppo- nents, and so manly and honorable in his busi- ness and social life, that there was no bitterness in any heart toward him. Those who had differed with him in policy cheerfully conceded his up- rightness and sincerity. But, above all, there was a sentiment, more evident here than in any other case, that this man was the President of the whole nation; that he was, in some sense, the expres- sion of the purpose and the dignity of every law- abiding man and woman. It was the perfection of the national sentiment ; and every citizen felt a personal sense of bereavement, of indignation 364 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. at the felon who had stricken down this official, and of horror at the deed. Ahnost the last words of the President had been : ' ' God 's will be done ! ' ' .Vnd the general sorrow was tempered with a reverent regard for the uncomplaining victim of unreasoning crime. Monday morning the body, inclosed in a cas- ket upon which the flag of the nation was laid, started for Washington. The journey was made on a special train, which was given the right of way. All along the line were evidences of the general grief. In cities and towns bells were tolled, and flags were at half-mast. Along coun- try roads families of farmers, and pupils from district schools assembled, and waved their tear- ful salute as the crape-covered train hurried past. Tn Harrisburg a great choral society sang "Nearer, my God, to Thee"— a hymn which had been well loved by the President. Thousands gathered at tlie station in Washington, and fol- lowed respectfully and silently through the night as the casket was carried to the A\niite House. It remained tlioro until morning, and then was removed lo Ihe rotunda of the cai)itol, where a funeral service was conducted in ]^resence of a thousand friends of the Into President, and offi- Mc kinlf.y's assassination. 365 cials of the various governments represented in Washington. At the conchision of the service the great bronze doors were thrown open, and the public was admitted. For six hours the people filed past, and then the doors were closed again, and the great coffin was carried liack to the execu- tive mansion. Thursday the body of President McKinley was consigned to a vault in the cemetery at Can- ton, Ohio, the home he had chosen when a young man. The little city was crowded beyond all prec- edent. More than a hundred thousand people had come to attend the last sad rites. The entire pop- ulation of Canton was but thirtj^ thousand, and accommodations for entertainment were far from adequate. But there was no complaint at discomfort. An inclination on the part of cer- tain citizens to make money in consequence of the nation's grief— as by renting their windows, and charging exorbitant prices for food— was noted, and passed without comment. The final funeral services were held in the Canton church at which Mr. McKinley had been an attendant, of which he had been a member through all his adult life ; and then the last jour- ney began. Nominally, it was a private funeral. 366 THEODORE EOOSEVELT. Actually it was a national demonstration. More tlian twelve thousand marching men were in line. About half were the citizen soldiery of Ohio. The rest were old soldiers, or members of the civic and fraternal organizations from all over the country. The head of the cortege arrived at tlie cemetery at 3:30 o'clock in the afternoon. The roadway from the gate to the receiving vault was strewn with flowers. From the hill-tops the Pres- ident 's salute of twenty-one guns, fired at inter- vals of a minute, boomed his last official recogni- tion. As the casket was lifted from the hearse the gathered throngs stood with bared heads; and when the door of the vault was reached, eight buglers, brought from the regular army, joined in sounding "taps"— the soldier's good-night. Mrs. McKinley, who had been in delicate health for years, was unable to accompany the body of her husband to its last resting-place, and re- mained in the Canton home which his industry had provided, and his love had glorified to her using. The funeral was made the more impressive by an unprecedented action taken throughout the countrj^ While the coffin was being transferred from hearse to vault, and while the last prayers am' PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AT THE MARTYRED PRESIDENTS CASKET MC KINLEY 'S ASSASSINATION. 367 were being said, industry of all kinds, in every city of the Kepublic, was absolutely suspended. Of all the tributes paid to tlie dead President, none approached in majesty and impressiveness that utter abandonment of all occupation. From the Atlantic to the Pacific not a wheel turned in any mill, nor on any railroad, for the five min- utes of that final ceremony. Engineers, firemen, conductors, crew^s, paused for a period in their occupation, turned devoutly toward the little town where the last sad rites were being per- formed, and sent their thoughts to join in the hushed farewell. That stoi)ping of America, that pause of the United States, that wait of every citizen while the body of one dead was laid away, is impressive past all power of description. Of it a famous author has said: "Five minutes taken out of life! Five minutes snatched from activity, lost to productive effort, subtracted from material struggle ! It is an amazing thing in the most energetic, the most thrifty nation on the face of the earth. And yet that five minutes, taken from the total money value of the day, brought in return a sense of tenderness, of fra- ternity with all the other millions waiting, bowed and reverent, which nothing else could have pro- 368 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. ducecl. That five minutes was the best invest- ment that busy lives could possibly make. It brought them nearer all that was noble in the life tliat had been ended. It gave them a better con- fidence in the citizenship of America. It enacted anew the law of love, and blessed with its swift ministrations the purer patriotism. Silence and tears for the victim of malignant hate; new resolves for the upholding of law and the exten- sion of real liberty ; unbounded faith in the sta- bility of our republican institutions ; an impres- sive warning to the foes of order— such was the moment 's meaning to every loyal American, and to the world. ' ' Eighty millions of people, gathered about a bit of earth, six feet by two ! That is the specta- cle bought at a price so matchless. ' ' CHAPER XIX. SUCCEEDS TO THE PRESIDENCY. THEODORE ROOSEVELT TAKES OATH OF OFFICE— INFORMED OP HIS chief's DEATH AVHILE HUNTING IN THE ADIRONDACKS — SOL- EMN SCENES AT THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SUBLIME OBLI- GATION — DECLARES HE WILL CARRY OUT MC KINLEY 'S POLICY. Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States on Saturday, September 14, 1901. The oath of office was administered by Judge John R. Hazel, of the United States District Court, at 3:32 p.m., in Buffalo, New York, in the residence of Mr. Ansley Wilcox, a personal friend of the Vice-President, who had been his host earlier in the week when the physicians thought President McKinley would recover from the wounds inflicted by the assassin. AVhen the President was shot Colonel Roose- velt was at Isle La Motte, near Burlington, Ver- mont. He had just finished an address when he was informed of the dreadful tragedy. He has- tened at once to the side of his wounded chief, where he remained until the physicians, deceived 369 370 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. as to the deadly nature of the wounds, gave him assurance that the President would live. Then, worn by the terrible strain of the situation, he retired to the solitude of the mountains, praying that the prediction might be fulfilled. To no one of all the hosts of President McKin- ley's warmest admirers was the shock of the oiation's tragedy so severe as to him who was nearest in honor and counsel. During all his later years of public life Mr. Roosevelt had been in the confidence of President McKinley. Dur- ing the preceding campaign they had been drawn closer and closer together and a friend- ship had grown up between them that was closer than any that ever existed between two men similarly situated. The President found in this strong, energetic man a comrade he could trust in every particular. He admired his fearless espousal of practical reforms and seconded his efforts in that direction on every possible occa- sion. On the other hand, Mr. Roosevelt saw in President McKinley what many of his closest friends failed to recognize : the expansive mind that led the people onward toward the heights of civil government, but in such a gentle way and with such marked deference to their wishes tliat SUCCEEDS TO THE PRESIDENCY. 371 tliey often believed they themselves were leading liim. Colonel Roosevelt recognized the true greatness of William McKinley almost from their first introduction, and loved him always as a younger brother might have done. The attempt upon the life of the President unnerved him as nothing else had ever done. When he was told of it he turned white, and, strong man as he is, would have fallen had he not been sup- ported. When urged to speak he said : ' ' I am so inexpressibly grieved and shocked, and horrified, that I can say nothing. ' ' How great was the strain on the minds of every one during those first hours immediately following the shooting is beyond description. Some who had never looked upon the wounded President lost their reason under the stress of it. Then came the assurance of the physicians that the President would live and the pendulum swung the other way. There was praise and thanksgiving everywhere. In full confidence that the President would re- cover, Vice-President Eoosevelt retired into the solitude of the forests to add his supplications to those that were being offered up to the Author of All from every pulpit, as well as from every fire- 372 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. side in the land, for the President's recovery. Nature is his cathedral, and in her solitudes he felt himself nearer to Him who holds the fate of all nations and all peoples in the hollow of His hand. When the relapse came and the physicians were forced reluctantly to inform the world that the President could live but a few hours, a mes- sage was sent to inform the Vice-President. He was in the Adirondacks, the nearest telegraph station being Xorth Creek, New York. As soon as the message arrived at the station a number of guides were secured, and, having been given copies of the dispatch, were hurried away in search of the Vice-President. One of them found him a little before sundown at the top of Mount Marcy and delivered the sorrowful summons. The Vice-President immediately started for the Tahawas Club, some miles distant. From the club-house to North Creek station it is thirty-five miles. He reached there at 5:21 the following morning and went at once aboard a special train that was being held in readiness for him. At seven o'clock the party was in Albany, where Vice-President Roosevelt was officially informed by Secretary of State Hay of the death of Presi- dent McKinley. .cH-fi THE MOUNTAIN GUIDE FINDS MR. ROOSEVELT IN THE ADIRONDACK'S, AND SUMMONS HIM TO THE DYING PRESIDENT'S BEDSIDE SUCCEEDS TO TEE PEE.SIDE5^CY. 373 Tlie journey from Al?jany was continued over the Xew York Central RailroacL The special train was rushed across the State, arriving in Buffalo at 1 :35 p.m. Instead of alighting at the Union station, where there was sure to be a crowd assembled, jlr. Roosevelt left the train at the Terrace station, where he was met hv Mr. Ansley AVilcox and Mr. George Williams, with Mr. Will- iams ' carriage, together with a detachment of the Fourth Signal Corps and a squad of twenty mounted police. With the police and the mili- tary moving at a rapid trot in front of the car- riage and behind it, !Mr. Roosevelt drove swiftly up Delaware avenue to the house Xo. 641, which has now become one of the historic mansions of the country. It is a brick house, painted white, with a row of six stately pillars in front of a deep veranda, in the old-fashioned style of a hundred years ago. It is in one of the most beautiful parts of beauti- ful Delaware avenue, and is surrounded by tall, overbranching trees, which throw a deep shade upon the handsome lawn all the way down to the terrace, five or six feet high, which rises from the sidewalk, and upon which elevation above the street the house stands. 374 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Away back in the early part of last century the house was used by the United States officers in command of the military post at Buffalo, and stood in a large park or square that was a part of the military resen^ation. The people who gathered about the house as the cavalcade came clattering up stood by in silence as the Vice-President left the carriage, walked rapidly up the terrace steps and en- tered the house. The people of Buffalo had stood silent for so many days, as if listening for the heart-beats in that wounded body of the mar- tyred President lying in the Milburn house, that the least word seemed an intrusion on the prayer- ful silence. There was none spoken now as the man on whose shoulders had suddenly fallen all the burdens of State passed among them. Only the uncovered heads, bowed low, paid tribute to the dignity of his great office. Vice-President Roosevelt remained in the house but a few moments. His first thought was of the woman whose ever-loving and gentle help- mate had been suddenly taken away, and he started at once to pay his respects to her, and offer what consolation lay in his power. As he returned to the carriage his eye lighted on the SUCCEEDS TO THE PKESIDENCY. ^75 military and police escort still drawn up in the street. ''Send them away," he said quickly, ''I do not like the idea of a guard. ' ' As he turned to enter the carriage the Vice- President saw that his wishes in reference to the escort were heing disregarded. The military was lining up behind the carriage. ' ' Halt, ' ' he said. He spoke low and quietly, but there was a military ring in the voice that commanded obedience. ' ' I will not have a mili- tary guard," he said. ''These two policemen may go with us if you think best. No more." The orders were obeyed this time, and the car- riage moved awaj" with no other escort than the two policemen, one riding on either side. Nearly all the Cabinet ministers were at the Milburn house when Vice-President Roosevelt arrived, but he met them only as a private citizen mourning the loss of a very dear friend. The hour was too full of grief for words and the Vice- President, after a few moments, returned to the Wilcox residence. He was followed soon after by the members of the Cabinet, and at their request took the oath of office which made him President of the United States. 37() THEODORE ROOSEVELT. The new J*resideut assumed the duties of the first magistrate of the kind in the library of the Wilcox home. The room was rather small, but picturesque, "with heavy oak trimmings, and mas- sive bookcases lining the walls. Those present when Mr. Koosevelt took the oath were: Elihu Root, Secretary of War ; Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior ; John D. Long, Secre- tarj of the Navy; Charles Emory Smith, Post- master-General; Judge of the Court of Appeals Haight; ^Ir. John N. Scatcherd; Mr. and Mrs. Ansley Wilcox; Miss Wilcox; Mr. George P. Sawyer ; Doctors Mann, Park and Stockton ; Mr. and ]\Irs. Carleton Sprague ; Mr. and Mrs. John G. Milburn ; Secretary to the President, Mr. Will- iam Loeb, Jr. ; Secretary to the deceased Presi- dent, Mr. George B. Cortelyou; Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Carey; Mr. R.C. Scatcherd; Mr. J.D. Saw- yer, and Mr. William Jeffers, official telegrapher, in addition to Judge John R. Hazel, of the United States District Court, who administered the oath. The scene was a most affecting one. Secre- tary Root, who, twenty years before, had been present at a similar scene, when Vice-President Arthur took the oath after the death of President Garfield, almost broke down when he requested LIBRARY OF MR. ANSLEY WILCOX AT BUFFALO, WHERE PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TOOK THE OATH OF OFFICE SUCCEEDS TO THE PRESIDENCY. 377 Mr. Roosevelt, on behalf of the members of the Cabinet, to take the prescribed oath. There were tears in the eyes of all when Mr. Roosevelt, stand- ing in the pretty bay window, with its stained glass and hea\'y hangings forming a soft back- gronnd, lifted his hand to take the sublime obli- gation. He was pale, and his eyes were dim with tears, but the uplifted hand was as steady as though carved in marble. Then in low, but firm tones, he repeated after Judge Hazel the consti- tutional oath of office : ''I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, pre- serve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." With the final words the hand of the speaker dropped to his side and for an instant his head was bowed as if for the Divine blessing. The impressive silence was broken by Judge Hazel ; *'Mr. President, please attach your signa- ture. ' ' Turning to a small table he wrote ' ' Theo- dore Roosevelt" at the bottom of the prepared parchment. Then standing erect, the solemn dignity of the great office upon him, he said slowly : 378 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. "In this hour of deep and terrible bereave- ment, I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of Presi- dent McKinley for the peace and prosperity and honor of our beloved country." The President then invited the members of the Cabinet present to remain in office, urging upon them the necessity of their doing so that he might the more fully carry out his pledge. He said he had been assured that the absent members of the Cabinet would retain their portfolios. After a moment 's consultation among themselves the Secretaries informed the President that they had decided to forego the usual custom of pre- senting their resignations and would remain as he had requested. Thus President Roosevelt, at the very outset, paid the highest i:)0ssible tribute to the late Presi- dent McKinley 's genius and worth by adopting his policy and expressing his intention of carry- ing out all his plans of a public nature that he had outlined in any way. CHAPTER XX. CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE NATION. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TAKES THE HELM OF GOVERNMENT IN WASHINGTON — FIRST OFFICIAL ACT — AIMS TO BREAK UP SOLID SOUTH BY NEW METHODS — SUMMONS BOOKER T. WASHINGTON TO A CONFERENCE — APPOINTS REFORM DEMOCRATS TO OFFICE- FRIEND OF LABOR. President Koosevelt brought to the duties of his high office a personality with which the poli- ticians of his party found at once they had to deal, whether or not they wished to do so. All the character-building of his life since, when a delicate boy, he had been inspired to virtue by the glorious writings of that sage, Plutarch, through the years of struggle and adventure faintly chronicled in the previous chapters of this book, up to this most imi^ortant epoch in his remarkable career, now resulted in a poise that marked liim at once as a wise man of lofty vision and patriotic motives ; a man to whom the word duty meant more than all else in life : dut}^ to God, duty to country, duty to man, duty to home. His 379 380 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. initial acts when he had taken in his hands the helm of government answered to his nature, growth and development as the overture of a grand opera answers to the theme that has gone to its creation. ' 'I am going to be President of the United States and not of any section," was his first declaration to the politicians. ''I don't care the snap of my fingers for sections or sectional lines." To a group of Southern members of Congress he said: "When I was Governor of New York I was told I could make four appoint- ments in the army. AYhen I sent in the names three of the four men were from the South and the other was from New York. They were brave men, who deserved recognition for services in the Spanish War, and it did not matter to me what States they were from. ' ' The first official act of importance performed by President Roosevelt following the initial Cab- inet meeting, was signing the papers appoint- ing Mr. William Barrett Kidgley, of Springfield, Illinois, Comptroller of the Currency. The office had been previously held by Charles Gates Dawes, of Chicago, who had resigned to enter the race for United States Senator. President Mc- Kinley had already announced his intention of CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 381 appointing Mr. Ridgley and President Roosevelt gave an earnest of his intention to carry out the wishes of his predecessor at the first opportunity. His next step was to prove his fealty to the merit system. This he did in a most characteris- tic way. Booker T. Washington was invited to come to Washington and give his views to the President concerning the best way to reform the political abuses of the South. Mr. Washington is a negro, but in the founder of the Tuskegee industrial school for the people of his race, and in his manner of conducting it President Roose- velt discovered a kindred spirit, one who believed in beginning at the root of things and working toward a definite end along practical lines. He knew Professor Washington to have a better understanding of the affairs of the South than almost any other living man. He also had reason to believe in his honesty and was convinced of the soundness of his judgment. The President was not looking for prejudiced opinion, but for honest, outspoken counsel. He was seeking truth, and his sincerity and fearlessness in pursuit of it were never better exemplified than when he asked advice from this representative of an infe- rior race. 382 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Wlien Booker T. Washiugton arrived in the capital of the United States upon the invitation of the President, he went, as was his custom, to a small hotel kept for negroes, named the South- ern. All the more i:)retentious hotels in the capi- tal were closed to negroes, even though it might be one honored by the President with a summons that would have turned the head of many a public man high in the councils of his party. To this hotel President Roosevelt sent a summons from the White House. The President of the United States sought this negro, not because he was a negro, but because he was an old friend, whose judgment he regarded as better than that of most men on some questions which were of great importance to him as Chief Executive of the United States. The problem he had in mind was the distribution of federal patronage in the Southern States. Twenty-five years of expe- rience had not improved the political situation in the South. The distribution of federal patron- age, albeit through no fault of the President who had distributed it, had become a scandal which honest citizens of all sections deplored, but for which no adequate remedy had been found. This patronage had been the bone of profit over which CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 383 the so-called leaders of both parties snarled and fought, paying no heed to those questions which were so vital to the interests of the people they pretended to serve. For all their boasted strength these men had rather weakened than strengthened the parties for which they stood. It was to their advantage to do so. Democrats and Republicans alike had used the patronage placed in their hands to keep down party follow- ing rather than build it up. They did not desire a large party following, because that meant more ambitious party workers entitled to a share in the spoil. Beside the two dominant parties in the South there were, in the "Republican party at least, two factions that were as bitterly opposed to each other as the rival parties could possibly be. Each faction claimed to control the negro vote, and when it came to Presidential nominations the fac- tion that espoused the cause of the winning can- didate demanded the distribution of all the offices. They were opposed by the other faction in every act, and nothing was done or left undone that did not provoke bitter opposition. All this was familiar to President Roosevelt. He had seen it exemplified in every national con- 384 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. vention for twenty years. In the campaign of 1896 these two factions of white Republican lead- ers had espoused the cause of McKinley or that of Eeed. The party conventions were mere strug- gles for control by the leaders. The negro voters would have been satisfied with either McKinley or Reed for the candidate. But when the former was nominated and elected, the white men who had supported him in convention claimed con- trol of the federal joatronage. This was not dif- ferent from the claims of politicians in other States. The difference appeared in the fact that these few white men claimed the offices them- selves. They did not recommend negroes to office. What right had the negro to an office? The spoils belonged to those who controlled the negro vote and not to the negro who gave the vote to his controller. These white leaders were professional politi- cians. They lived by politics, and when they were on the winning side, fed well. When they were out they made up for their hunger by abus- ing those who were in. There had been in each Southern State about twice as many Republican politicians as there were federal offices. There were two white men claiming each available CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 385 place, and contesting for it. The one that got it was the other's political enemy, fighting him during the administration. The man who was out tried to destroy the man who was in. These contests between professional office-seekers who claimed to control the negro vote had made the whole subject of federal patronage in the South a public scandal. These white leaders had not strengthened the Republican party in the South. On the contrary, they had weakened it. The white leaders desired to keep the Republican party a negro party under their control, because they could use the preju- dice against the negro to prevent him from seek- ing office, and leave the whole question of patron- age to them. President Roosevelt's purpose was to change all this and, if possible, make the South as free politically as the North, at least. In the merit system he saw a way to reform the present abuse. He proposed to put the office-seeker from the South to the same test as the office-seeker from the North. He wanted primarily good men for office-holders. He wanted the postmaster named for any town or community to possess the confi- dence of the people he served. He wanted men L^-^^wtL <^.h.. 386 THEODOEE ROOSEVELT. of good ability and good reputation for collect- ors, marslials and judges. He did not care whether they controlled the negro vote or not. He preferred they should not come with such a claim. He doubted the qualifications of such men for office. He did not propose to ignore the negro in politics. The negroes had been ignored by the men who pretended to lead them, and this the President desired to correct in so far as he was able. For these reasons he sent for Booker T. Washington. He felt he could trust this man. And the President of the United States and the son of a slave sat for several hours in the ^^hite House discussing problems of the greatest im- portance to future generations of both races. And when they parted the negro bore in his hand an invitation to ex-Governor Thomas Goode Jones, of Alabama, a Democrat, to accept the appointment of a district judgeship. ''If I cannot make the Republican party in the South the dominant party, I can at least make it respectable, ' ' the President is reported to have said. *'I can appoint good men to office, even though I have to select Democrats." He de- manded that the men appointed to federal offices CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 387 should be men above reproach, and that their appointments should be made without regard to the race question. Professor Washington told President Roosevelt that he could not recommend a single man for appointment, but he named some men in whom he saw the qualities necessary to the settlement of the grave questions confronting the nation in the South. Those men were Demo- crats. They had acted with the Democratic party, not because they believed in its national politics, but because they would not act under the leadership of patronage brokers who controlled the Republican organization in their States. Professor AVashington convinced President Roosevelt that some of these men saw the danger to i3opular government in the present system, and that they were patriotic enough to help him to change it for a better system. The President decided to try and build up a Republican party in the South that should be self-respecting and independent. His first move in that direction was the message to ex-Senator Jones. As soon as he was assured that the appointment would be accepted the President tendered the district judgeship to the patriotic and able citizen of Ala- bama. In doing this President Roosevelt chal- 388 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. lenged all the precedents of party, and struck out on new and original lines. Judge Jones's qualifi- cations for the office were of the best, and no com- plaint could be made on that score. But the fact that President Koosevelt, at the very outset of his administration, should make such a wide departure from the practice previously adhered to, caused great consternation in the camps of the professional politicians, both North and South, and the President was deluged with protests from all quarters. But Mr. Roosevelt took no further heed of this demand of the partisans who still clung to the theory that 'Ho the victors belong the spoils ' ' than he had to the same class of men who appealed to him when he was Police Commissioner of New York. He replied that the merit system was as binding on the President of the United States as on the head of any of the departments, and proceeded in his search for able, honest and sincere men to fill the offices. President Roosevelt carried into his work at Washington all the tireless industry that had dis- tinguished him in every vocation. He was at his desk at 9 :30 in the morning and gave himself no rest until 4 :30 in the afternoon, with the excep- tion of a short break at the noon hour, when he CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 389 walked home for luncheon. A correspondent thus describes the President's activities: ''President Eoosevelt is out of bed b}' 7 o'clock and as a rule is at the breakfast table shortly after 8 o'clock. He leaves for the White House as soon as breakfast is over. Once he is in his big working room things begin to buzz. Mr. William Loeb, who is in reality his secretary, his stenographer and his confidential friend, hands him the letters necessary for him to see. These he reads, dictates replies and sees visitors all at the same time. ' ' This was during the first few days in Wash- ington, while he was making his home with his brother-in-law. Commander Cowles, of the navy. Meanwhile the children were investigating the rooms in the executive mansion, which was to be their future home. They ran up and down the long halls, rode in the elevators, chose the coziest corners for their future playing grounds, and enjoyed themselves as only children can when taking possession of things that are new and strange. Both the President and Mrs. Roosevelt believe in giving the children as much liberty as possible, trusting to wise instruction beforehand to keep them within bounds, and there are few 390 THEODORE BOOSEVELT. ' families in the world where gladness is so pro- nounced as in this household. Jacob A. Eiis, who has long been a close friend of President Roose- velt, writes thus simply and familiarly of him to the Sunday School Times: *'He is far from being a hard man. His heart is as tender as a woman's where it may be, as hard as steel where it must be. He loves his children as William McKinley did. When he was Police Commis- sioner of New York, we would sometimes go together to the Italian school of the Children's Aid Society, or some kindred place, and I loved of all things to hear him talk to the little ones. They did, too. I fancy he left behind him on every one of those trips a streak of little patriots to whom, as they grow up, their hour with ' Teddy ' will be a whole manual of good citizen- ship. I Imow one little girl out on Long Island who is to-day hugging the thought of the hand- shake he gave her as the most precious of her memories. And so do I, for I saw him spy her— poor, pale little thing, in her threadbare jacket- way back in the crowd of school children that swarmed about his train, and I saw him dash into the surging tide like a strong swimmer strik- ing out from the shore, make a way through the CHIEF EXECITTrVE. 391 shouting mob of youngsters clear to where she was on the outskirts, looking on hopelessly, lift and shake her hand as if his very heart were in it, and then catch the moving train on the run, while she looked after it, her face one big, happy smile. That was Eoosevelt, every inch of him. "Is such a man safe as the executive of this country of blessed homes 1 His own is one of the happiest I know of, for love is at the helm. Tt is his harbor of refuge, which he insists on preserv- ing sacred to him and his, whatever storms rage without. And in this also he is faithful to the highest of American ideals, to his country 's best traditions. The only time I saw him so angry as to nearly lose his temper was when he was told that his enemies in the police department, who never grasped the kind of man they had to do with, or were able to do it, were shadowing him nightly from his office to his home, thinking to catch him in some wrong. He flushed hotly: " 'Wliat,' he said, 'going home to my babies ! ' But his anger died in a sad little laugh of contempt. That was their way, not his. When, soon after, the opportunity came to him to pay them back in their own coin, he spurned it with loathing. He fought fair even with scoundrels. 392 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. "That kind of a man is he who has now become the chief of our great nation. A just man and fair; a man of duty and principle, never by any chance of expediency, political or personal ; a reverent man of few public professions, but of practice, private and public, ever in accord with the highest ideals of Christian manliness. In fact, I know of no one who typifies better the Christian gentleman. ' ' This is the tribute of a man who knows the President as well as one man can know another. They worked together for two years trying to crush out vice and banish poverty from the unfortunate of the great city of New York. It was a place to try men's souls, and whatever was bad or dangerous in a man was sure to come out there. And he who was his close companion through that battle of morals against vice de- clares : ' ' In no man 's hands that lives and owns American citizenship to-day are the country's honor and welfare safer than in Theodore Itoose- velt's." One of the first men to have the ear of Presi- dent Roosevelt was Leonard A. "Wood, Governor- General of Cuba. They had been comrades since they first met in "Washington, when neither had CHIEF EXECUTIVE. 30.'> any great chances for political preferment. They had gone out to war together, and now they sat in the White House, the one at the top of the lad- der, and the other with like responsibilities of a less weight upon his shoulders. President Roosevelt expressed a great desire to know as much as possible about the situation in Cuba. He believed in giving the Cubans full power over their country, and then leaving it to them whether they should finally become a part of the United States or not. President Roosevelt welcomed the representa- tives of labor, and told them he was anxious to talk with them, to know their plans, to hel]) them in every way to better the condition of honest toil. He gave ready audience to every citizen who came to him with any purpose, being as democratic in his ideas and jiracticc as it is pos- sible for any one to be. In a word, he was carry- ing out his promise concerning the policy of his predecessor, and at the same time fulfilling the pledge he made to the country that he was ''going to be President of the United States." CHAPTER XXI. THE FUTURE, WHAT MAY REASONABLY BE EXPECTED TROM SUCH A PRESIDENT OF SUCH A NATION — BELIEVING IN THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND AMERICAN CONTROL OF THE CANAL AT THE ISTHMUS, IN RECIPROCITY AND EXPANSION, MR. R00SE\T;LT IS STRONG, UPRIGHT, HONEST AND AGGRESSIVE, AND IMPLICITLY TRUSTED BY A UNITED PEOPLE — AMERICA 'S GOLDEN ERA. The life of a nation is much like the life of a man. It begins with an infancy of weakness, of reliance upon others, a seeking for guidance in the experience of those who are older, in the con- servation of all the forces available, and the development to a strength which is not taken seriously by the neighbor nations of the earth. Extension of territory and accumulation of wealth follow, with increasing time for the arts and luxuries which opportunity brings, and then the serene stages where full growth is achieved, and when the hot passions of youth have faded into the dignified serenity of established position. In this period is the nation's peril. Shakespeare 394 THE FUTURE. 395 has told us of the ' ' Seven Ages of Man " ; of the progress from infancy, through strength, to the period of decay, when human senses all have vanished, yet life still lurks in the slowly-pulsing heart ; and after that comes dissolution, and the gathering again of elements in other formations ; the disappearance of factors as they had been known before, and their reassembling in newer combinings, that shall begin again the strange experiment of life. Some flash into glorious promise, and pass before that promise is fulfilled. Some linger superfluous upon the stage, the glow of a splendid past behind them, the certainty of extinction before. So with the nations that have made proces- sion across the page of history. It is fair to gather from the record of those that have van- ished some rules that must apply to those that still exist ; for those departed have trod one way, and all their exits have led through a single gate. This nation we call the United States has seen its time of infancy. It passed impetuous boy- hood in 1812. It proved adventurous in 1848. It came to quick blows in its full maturity, and reveled in the exuberance of unmeasured strength from 1861 to 1865. Then came the time of judg- 396 THEODOKE EOOSEVELT. ment, of serene self -valuation, of conscious equality with any other, and then utility arrived. Opportunity was seized— opportunity was made. All the resources that lay in the land, that lurked in the air, that thrilled in the brains and the hearts of men were developed, until the nation in wealth, in power and in magnificence stood at the very apex of existence. After that one thing of two must come. In Rome, riches and culture crumbled the foundation stones of empire ; and she who from her seven hills had ruled the world passed through the gate, and was buried in that cemetery of the nations beside Greece, and Baby- lon, and distant Xineveh. There was a time in each when its armies marched whithersoever they pleased, and when its ships came from every port in the known world with gold in the ingot, with silks in the bale. But a nation drunk with power or debauched with vice is a nation diseased and hurrying on to death. Perhaps no country in the whole lapse of time has possessed the genius, the wealth or the power of the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. If the leaders of the nation should abandon themselves to the gratification t)f sense, if the corrosion of idleness should eat at the THE FUTURE. 397 iron of vigor and the wine of indulgence dis- solve tlie pearls of purity, there could be but a single ending to the history so splendidly begun, so magnificently maintained. It is providential that in an era of great possibilities— for either good or evil— the happier fate should be assured by the rise of this man ; that whatever of moral malaria might have fastened upon the civic health of the people was corrected by the pres- ence of a man of vigorous right, a prophet of the strenuous life, a citizen who teaches the doctrine ' ' Trust in God, and help yourself. " It is provi- dential that the right man came to the nation at the juncture in its history when it needed him. And it is a matter worthy of reflection that his whole life seems to have been dedicated to a preparation for the work which now engrosses him. Combined in his veins, as Mrs. Boylan has well said in her splendid poem, runs the blood of master races. He comes of a family which flour- ished on American soil long before the American nation was dreamed of. Hie parentage, his youth, his training, his education up to arrival at manhood, have all been steps in his prepara- tion, as clearly as was the anointing with oil which set apart the son of Jesse for the throne of 398 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Israel. His political training, his experience in office, liis hunting, his conduct of business affairs, his virile, manly strength and heroic soul— all are the attributes which the man of the hour needed— which the man of the hour must have, or the opportunity of the hour will have vanished forever. In an unusual degree the arrival of this man, so equipped, and at the time, is of the very greatest value to the nation. There can be no tendency to idleness or enervation while the in- dustry and energy of such a man provide an incentive to worthy deeds for the youth of America. Patrick Henry, in that wonderful speech before the Virginia convention, said : ' ^ There is but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. ' * The citizen of the United States can know no better rule by which to decide what shall be the mission and achievement of his country than to study the ten- dency of the past, and the probable course of the men in control at critical stages. America 's his- tory is, or should be, in the possession of the sons of the Republic. It has been a steady progress toward a definite objective, from the very begin- ning. In a way, that progress has been more a THE FUTURE. 399 result of extraordinary conditions than of cohe- sive, concerted planning. The critical time came with the close of the nineteenth century. With power at the flood, with influence untried, with every faculty up to maturity fully developed, there waited possibilities for immeasurable good, for unlimited growth abroad, and consequent unlimited advancement at home; or the proba- bility of growth's cessation— with the inevitable beginning of deterioration, moral and physical, which has come to every people who, content with achievement, has abandoned progress. With that history and tendency known, with the mighty forces understood, the manner of men at the head of affairs in the crisis completes the data required in forming judgTiient as to what the future of the nation shall be. Very fortu- nately, Theodore Roosevelt has placed himself on record as to the course he believes his country should follow, and a definite pledge as to the direction in which his influence shall be exerted. At Minneapolis, Minnesota, he delivered a speech September 2, before the blow at his chief had fal- len at Buffalo; and in those lines the lamp by which the student may be guided is set aflame. 400 THEODORE ROOSE\^LT. From that speech the following illustrative pas- sages are taken : In his admirable series of studies of twentieth-century problems, Dr. Lyman Abbott has pointed out that we are a nation of pioneers; that the first colonists to our shores were pioneers, and that pioneers selected out from among the descendants of these early pioneers, mingled with others selected afresh from the old world, pushed westward into the wilderness and laid the foundations for new commonwealths. They were men of hope and expectation, of enterprise and energy; for the men of dull content or more dull despair had no part in the great movement into and across the new world. Our country has been populated by pioneers, and there- fore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more expansive power than any other in the wide world. You whom I am now addressing stand for the most part but one generation removed from these pioneers. You are typi- cal Americans, for you have done the great, the characteristic, the typical work of our American life. In making homes and carving out careers for yourselves and your children, you have built up this State. Throughout our history the success of the horaemaker has been but another name for the upbuilding of the nation. We have but little room among our people for the timid, the irresolute, and the idle; and it is no less true that there is scant room in the world at large for the nation with mighty thews that dares not to be great. Sometimes we hear those who do not work spoken of with envy. Surely the wilfully idle need arouse in the breast of a healthy man no emotion stronger than that of contempt— at the outside no emotion stronger than angry contempt. The feeling of envy would have in it an admission of inferiority on our part, to which the men who know not the sterner joys of life are not entitled. THE FUTURE. 401 Poverty is a bitter thing, but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral and intellec- tual flabbiness to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits, the pursuit of mere pleasure, as a sufficient end in itself. The wilfully idle man, like the wilfully barren woman, has no place in a sane, healthy and vigorous community. Moreover, the gross and hideous selfishness for which each stands defeats even its own miserable aims. Exactly as infinitely the happiest woman is she who has borne and brought up many healthy chil- dren, so infinitely the happiest man is he who has toiled hard and successfully in his life work. The work may be done in a thousand different ways; with the brain or the hands, in the study, the field, or the workshop ; if it is honest work, honestly done, and well worth doing, that is all we have a right to ask. Every father and mother here, if they are wise, will bring up their children not to shirk difficulties, but to meet and over- come them; not to strive after a life of ignoble ease, but to strive to do their duty, first to themselves and their families, and then to the whole State; and this duty must inevitably take the shape of work in some form or other. It is not possible ever to insure prosperity merely by law. Something for good can be done by law, and bad laws can do an infinity of mischief; but, after all, the best law can only prevent wrong and injustice and give to the thrifty, the far- seeing and the hard-working a chance to exercise to the best advantage their special and peculiar abilities. No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is highly undesirable on the one hand to weaken individual initiative, and on the other hand that, in a constantly increasing number of cases, we shall find 402 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past we have shackled force. It is not only highly desirable, but necessary, that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of -wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous com- petitors who have no conscience, and will do right only under fear of punishment. There is but the scantiest justification for most of the outcry against the men of wealth as such, and it ought to be unnecessary to state that any appeal which directly or indirectly leads to suspicion and hatred among ourselves, which tends to limit opportunity, and, therefore, to shut the door of success against poor men of talent, and, finally, which entails the pos- sibility of lawlessness and violence, is an attack upon the fun- damental properties of American citizenship. Our interests are at bottom common ; in the long run we go up or go down together. -^ Yet more and more it is evident that the State, and, if nec- essary, the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combina- tions which derive a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right should be exercised with caution and self-restraint, but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises. So much for our duties, each to himself and each to his neighbor, within the limits of our own country. But our coun- try, as it strides forward with ever-increasing rapidity to a fore- most place among the world powers, must necessarily find, more and more, that it has world duties also. There are excellent people who believe that we can shirk these duties and yet retain our self-respect; but these good people are in error. Other good people seek to deter us from THE FUTURE. 403 treading the path of hard but lofty duty by bidding us remem- ber that all nations that have achieved greatness, that have expanded and played their part as world powers, have in the end passed away. So they have ; so have all others. The weak and the stationary have vanished as surely as, and more rapidly than, those whose citizens felt within them the life that impels generous souls to great and noble effort. This is another way of stating the universal law of death, which is itself part of the universal law of life. The man who works, the man who does great deeds, in the end dies as surely as the veriest idler who cumbers the earth's surface; but he leaves behind him the great fact that he has done his work well. So it is with nations. While the nation that has dared to be great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny of the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation that has played the part of the weakling must also die; and, whereas the nation that has done nothing leaves nothing behind it, the nation that has done a great work really continues, though in changed form, forevermore. The Eoman has passed away, exactly as all nations of antiquity which did not expand when he expanded have passed away; but their very memory has vanished, while he himself is still a living force throughout the wide world in our entire civilization of to-day, and will so con- tinue through countless generations, through untold ages. It is because we believe with all our heart and soul in the greatness of this country, because we feel the thrill of hardy life in our veins, and are confident that to us is given the priv- ilege of playing 'a leading part in the century that has just opened, that we hail with eager delight the opportunity to do whatever task Providence may allot us. We admit with all sincerity that our first duty is within our own household ; that we must not merely talk, but act, in favor of cleanliness and decency and righteousness in all political, sofinl and civic matters. No prosperity and no glory can save a nation that is rotten at heart. We must ever keep the core 404 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. of our national being sound, and see to it that not only our citizens in private life, but above all, our statesmen in public life, practice the old, common-place virtues which from time immemorial have lain at the root of all true national well- being. Yet while this is our first duty, it is not our whole duty. Exactly as each man, while doing first his duty to his wife and the children within his home, must yet, if he hopes to amount to much, strive mightily in the world outside his home, so our nation, while first of all seeing to its own domestic well-being, must not shrink from playing its part among the great nations without. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self- glorification, and above all in loose-tongucd denunciation of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power. Let us make it evident that we intend to do justice. Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice being done us in return. Let us further make it evident that we use no words which we are not prepared to back up with deeds, and that, while our speech is always moderate, we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people. This is the attitude we should take as regards the Monroe doctrine. There is not the least need of blustering about it. Still less should it be used as a pretext for our own aggrandize- ment at the expense of any other American State. But most emphatically we must make it evident that we intend on this point ever to maintain the old American position. Indeed, it is hard to understand how any man can take any other position now that we are all looking forward to the building of the isthmian canal. THE FUTURE. 405 Commercially, as far as this doctrine is concerned, all we wish is a fair field and no favor; but if we are wise we shall strenuously insist that under no pretext whatsoever shall there be any territorial aggrandizement on American soil by any European power, and this, no matter what form the territorial aggrandizement may take. We most earnestly hope and believe that the chance of our having any hostile military complication with any foreign power is small. But that there will come a strain, a jar, here and there, from commercial and agricultural— that is, from industrial— competition is almost inevitable. Here, again, we have got to remember that our first duty is to our own people, and yet that we can get justice best by doing justice. We must continue the policy that has been so brilliantly successful in the past, and so shape our economic system as to give every advantage to the skill, energy and intel- ligence of our farmers, merchants, manufacturers and wage- workers ; and yet we must also remember, in dealing with other nations, that benefits must be given when benefits are sought. Throughout a large part of our national career our history has been one of expansion, the expansion being of different kinds at different times. This expansion is not a matter of regret but of pride. It is vain to tell a people as masterful as ours that the spirit of enterprise is not safe. The true Ameri- can has never feared to run risks when the prize to be won was of sufficient value. No nation capable of self-government and of developing by its own efforts a sane and orderly civilization, no matter how small it may be, has anything to fear from us. Our dealings with Cuba illustrate this, and should be forever a subject of just national pride. We speak in no spirit of arrogance when we state as a sim- ple historic fact that never in recent years has any great nation acted with such disinterestedness as we have shown in Cuba. We freed the island from the Spanish yoke. We then earnestly 4()G THEODORE ROOSEVELT. dill our best to help the Cubans in the establishment of free education, of law and order, of material prosperity, of the cleanliness necessary to sanitary well-being in their great cities. We did all this at great expense of treasure, at some expense of life; and now we are establishing them in a free and inde- pendent commonwealth, and have asked in return nothing what- ever save that at no time shall their independence be prostituted to the advantage of some foreign rival of ours or so as to men- ace our well-being. To have failed to ?.sk this would have amounted to national stultification on our part. In the Philippines we have brought peace, and we are at this moment giving them such freedom and self-government as they could never under any conceivable conditions hove obtained had we turned them loose to sink into a welter of blood and confusion, or to become the prey of some strong tyranny without or within. We are not trying to subjugate a people; we are trying to develop them and make them a law- abiding, industrious and educated people, and we hope ulti- mately a self-governing people. We have done our duty to ourselves, and we have done the higher duty of promoting the civilization of mankind. The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the hand-maiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced by justice and by strength lie at the foundation of civiHzation. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law— nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization. There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit at homo if we are permanently to succeed; and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad. THE FUTUEE. 40? Barbarism Las and can have no place in a civilized world. It is our duty toward the people living in barbarism to see that they are freed from their chains, and we can only free them by destroying barbarism itself. The missionary, the merchant and the soldier may each have to play a part in this destruction and in the consequent uplifting of the people. Exactly as it is the duty of a civilized power scrupulously to respect the rights of all weaker civilized powers and gladly to help those who are struggling toward civilization, so it is its duty to put down savagery and barbarism. As in such a work human instruments must be used, and as human instruments are imperfect, at times there will be injus- tice; at times merchant, or soldier, or even missionary may do wrong. Let us instantly condemn and rectify such wrong when it occurs, and if possible punish the wrongdoer. But, shame, thrice shame to us if we are so foolish as to make such occa- sional wrongdoing an excuse for failing to perform a great and righteous task. So it must be in the future. We gird up our loins as a nation with the stem purpose to play our part manfully in win- ning the ultimate triumph, and therefore we turn scornfully aside from the paths of mere ease and idleness and with unfaltering steps tread the rough road of endeavor, smiting down the wrong and battling for the right as Greatheart smote and battled in Bunyan 's immortal story. September 5, 1901, the day before his assassi- nation, President jSleKinley delivered a speech at the Pan-American Exposition, in Buffalo, which fairly and clearly expressed his view of the nation's obligations and duties, and his estimate of the Republic's immeasurable possibilities. The address has become prophetic. The views 408 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. must be regarded as the crystallized sentiment of the nation, and the iiolicy as that which the American people will resolutely follow. From that notahle speech these words are chosen: Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world's advancement. They stimulate the energy, enter- prise and intellect of the people and quicken human genius. They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of informa- tion to the student. To the commissioners of the Dominion of Canada and the British colonies, the French colonies, the repub- lics of Mexico and of Central and South America, and the commissioners of Cuba and Porto Rico, TNho share with us in this undertaking, we give the hand of fellowship and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science, education and manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new century. Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. The same important news is read, though in different languages, the same day in all Christendom. The telegraph keeps us advised of what is occurring everywhere, and the press foreshadows, with more or less accuracy, the plans and purposes of the nations. Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known in every commercial mart, and the investments of the people extend beyond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a mile of steam railroad on the globe. Now there are enough miles to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of electric telegraph; now we have a vast mileage travers- ing all lands and all seas. God and man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. And as we are brought more and more in touch with each other the less occasion is there for misunderstanding and the stronger THE FUTURE. 4()<) the disposition when we have differences to adjust them in the court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum for the settle- ment of international disputes. Our industrial enterprises, which have grown to such great proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people and the welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has devel- oped so enormously and our products have so multiplied that the problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate attention. Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what we have. No other policy will get more. In these times of marvelous business energy and gain we ought to be looking to the future, strengthening the weak places in our industrial ami commercial systems that we may be reaily for any storm or strain. By sensible trade arrangements which will not interrupt our home production, we shall extend the outlets for our increasing surplus. A system which provides a mutual exchange of com- modities is manifestly essential to the continued healthful growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible it would not be best for us or for those with whom we deal. We should take from our customers such of their products as we can use without harm to our industries and labor. Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established. What we produce beyond our domestic consump- tion must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and produc- tions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good will and friendly traile rela- tions will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in liar- 410 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. iiiony with the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are not. If, perchance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad? Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. New lines of steamers have already been put in commission between the Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the west- ern coast of Jlexico and Central and South America. These should be followed up with direct steamship lines between the eastern coast of the United States and South American ports. One of the needs of the times is direct commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the fields of consumption that we have but barely touched. Next in advantage to having the thing to sell is to have the convenience to carry it to the buyer. We must encourage our merchant marine. We must have more ships. They must be under the American flag, built and manned and ownetl by Americans. These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense; they will be messengers of peace and amity wherever they go. We must build the isthmian canal, which will unite the two oceans and give a straight line of water communication with the western coast of Central and South America and Mexico. The construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer postponed. In the furtherance of these objects of national interest and concern you are performing an important part. The good work will go on. It cannot be stopped. These buildings will disappear; this creation of art and beauty and industry will perish from sight, but their influence will remain to • Make It live beyond Its too short living With praises and thanksgiving." ()ur cariust prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe THE FUTURE. 411 prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth. The day of President McKinlev's death, the day Theodore Roosevelt assumed the duties and recorded the oath which made liiin cliief execu- tive of tlie nation, he pledged himself to carry out the policy of his predecessor, in eveiy detail which went to the peace and prosperity, the liber- ties and the laws of his country. Here, then, is the *'lamp" by which a forecast may be fashioned. The United States will maintain, in its domestic economy, the policies which had affected trade and commerce in the past. There will be a read- justment of tariff duties, a removal of the tax where it is no longer necessary, a reduction where that can be done in accordance with public inter- est, and an extension and encouragement of trade with the nations beyond our borders. There will be a jealous preservation of the ]\Ionroe doctrine, yet a maintaining of peace in the family of na- tions. And the canal across the Central Amer- ican isthmus will be built by Americans, financed with American money, and kept within the con- trol of Americans, whether peace or war shall come. We know the materials which constitute the 41:^ THEODORE ROOSEVELT. nation. AVe know the tendency of i)u])lic men in this portentous era. And we know the temper of the man whose influence, above that of other men, shall direct the advance of the great Repub- lic. Nothing more conclusively illustrating President Roosevelt's position in this juncture can be presented than his recent remarks when the subject of his reelection to his high office was suggested to him, and was used as a means of inducing him to appoint to office a man wliom he had learned was unfit. ''I am going to select the best men for public positions. Men appointed to high public places must be high in morals and in many other re- spects. If the American people care to show their ai)in"oval of my course as President during the three years and a half I have to serve, l)y placing me at the head of the Republican ticket in 1904, I should feel deeply grateful. It would be an honor it would be difficult for any man to decline. But if I have to pander to any cliques, combinations, or movements for their approval, I would not give a snap of my finger for it, or a nomination for it under such circumstances. My endorsement must come from the people of the country. ' ' THE FUTURE. 41.'? When an earlier triumph came to him, Mr. Roosevelt was asked by a friend what had been his motto through life, and he replied : * * I have never had any motto, except this: 'What thy hands find to do, do it with thy might. ' " This is the story of Theodore Roosevelt, tvvTuty-sixth President of the United States, in the hour when the nation enters its golden era. THE END. / /