The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (124 page)
Read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Online
Authors: Edmund Morris
H
AGGARD, SMUDGE-EYED
, drugged, and occasionally tearful as the inevitability of war forced itself upon him, President McKinley managed to maintain statesmanlike decorum at least through the end of March.
78
While Congress debated the
Maine
report, he sent an ultimatum to Madrid courteously demanding a declaration of armistice in Cuba, effective 1 April. His terms stipulated that he be mediator of any subsequent negotiations for peace between the Spanish Government and the
insurrectos
. If no agreement was reached by 1 October (i.e., five weeks before the fall elections), McKinley would assume the role of final arbiter. He also insisted that all
reconcentrado
prisoners be set free, and that Spain cooperate with the United States in relief efforts.
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On Thursday, the last day of the month, Queen María Christina’s ministers agreed to all points of McKinley’s ultimatum except that of armistice. If the
insurrectos
wished to declare a truce themselves, well and good; Spain would not end four centuries of New World dominion with an ignominious acceptance of defeat.
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McKinley saw no flexibility, only obstructionism, in this reply. After a weekend of sleepless deliberation, he decided, around midnight on 3 April, that he could not afford to gamble with Cuba, or with Congress, or with the Republican party any longer. The will of the American people, reiterated ad nauseam by Assistant Secretary Roosevelt (whom in self-defense, he had finally stopped seeing), must be heeded. McKinley went to bed and next morning began work on a war message to Congress.
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T
HE IMMINENCE OF WAR
, like the imminence of death, is enough to give the most ardent soul a momentary pause, to reaffirm basic truths and articulate thoughts long held in suppression. In such frame of mind did Theodore Roosevelt write one of his best letters, to William Sturgis Bigelow, while Madrid pondered McKinley’s ultimatum. For once he wrote calmly, reasonably, without any attempt at vulgar bravado:
I say quite sincerely that I shall not go for my own pleasure. On the contrary if I should consult purely my own feelings I should earnestly hope that we would have peace. I like life very much. I have always led a joyous life. I like thought, and I like action, and it will be very bitter to me to leave my wife and children; and while I think I could face death with dignity, I have no desire before my time has come to go out into the everlasting darkness.… So I shall not go into a war with any undue exhilaration of spirits or in a frame in any way approaching recklessness or levity; but my best work here is done.
… One of the commonest taunts directed at men like myself is that we are armchair and parlor jingoes who wish to see others do what we only advocate doing. I care very
little for such a taunt, except as it affects my usefulness, but I cannot afford to disregard the fact that my power for good, whatever it may be, would be gone if I didn’t try to live up to the doctrines I have tried to preach.
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Bigelow, unimpressed, told Secretary Long that Roosevelt might by the same token “wear no clothes in the street to prove that he is not a negro.”
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T
HE
P
RESIDENT HAD DECIDED
to send his war message up to the Hill on Monday, 4 April, but hints from Madrid that further concessions might be made
mañana
caused a postponement until Wednesday the sixth. Belligerents in Congress, who now comprised a majority, did not see why they should have to wait two more days, or for that matter two more hours, before settling with “the butchers of Spain.” When the message was postponed a second time, in order to allow for free evacuation of American citizens from Cuba, frustrated legislators crowded the White House so threateningly that McKinley was obliged to lock the precious document in a safe. “By God,” one Senator growled to Assistant Secretary of State Rufus Day, “don’t your President know where the war-declaring power is lodged?”
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As always, Theodore Roosevelt produced the most quotable insult. “McKinley has no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.”
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7 April was Holy Thursday in Havana. Under lowering skies, bands throughout the city played soothing sacred music. On Good Friday, Roosevelt assured his classmate Bob Bacon that he did not want to annex Cuba, only to free it from “medieval” fiefdom: “Let us fight on the broad grounds of securing the independence of a people who, whether they amount to much or not, have been treated with hideous brutality by their oppressors.” On Saturday the American Minister in Madrid was told that at the behest of the Pope, Spain would declare an armistice in Cuba after all. On Easter Sunday, the Minister followed up with a personal appeal to McKinley: “I hope nothing will now be done to humiliate Spain.” But on Monday, 11 April, the President finally sent his message to
Congress. Debate still rages as to whether by doing so McKinley confessed his inability to hold the dogs of war any longer, or whether a study of Cuban history persuaded him that Spain’s promises were not to be believed. If he wanted peace, why did he not keep the message locked up, and announce that, thanks to the armistice, a diplomatic victory was at hand? If he wanted war, why did he not send in the message sooner? Perhaps the President realized that nothing he thought or said was of much consequence now. America, as Theodore Roosevelt kept saying, “needed” a war. “I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable condition of affairs which is at our doors,” McKinley told Congress. “Prepared to execute every obligation imposed upon me by the Constitution and the law, I await your action.”
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D
URING THE WEEK THAT
Congress took to debate McKinley’s message—pausing, once, to roar out an impromptu chorus of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”
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—Roosevelt redoubled his efforts to secure a commission in the Army. There was no question of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy applying for service at sea—“I shall be useless on a ship”—and he was equally determined not to become “part of the garrison in a fort.”
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Preliminary mobilization was ordered on 15 April, well in advance of any declaration of war, and he at once began to pester the Secretary of War, Russell A. Alger, and General-in-Chief Nelson A. Miles. Neither man impressed him. “Alger has no force whatsoever … Miles is a brave peacock,” he wrote in a new pocket diary. “They both told me they could put 100,000 men in Tampa in 24 hours! The folly, the lack of preparation, are almost inconceivable.”
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Frustration at the slowness of Congress to act, at his own inability to get a place in any New York regiment, vented itself in further jabs of angry ink. “The President still feebly is trying for peace. His weakness and vacillation are even more ludicrous than painful.… Reed … is malignantly bent on preventing all preparation for war.” Fortunately there was one department in the Administration ready and willing to fight. “Long is at last awake … I have the Navy in good shape.”
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Posterity will not grudge him that boast. The Navy was, indeed, in superb fighting trim as he prepared to resign from office.
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What it lacked in sheer weight of metal is made up in efficiency and combat toughness. Never before had it been so strategically deployed; never was it so ready for instant action.
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In comparison, the Spanish Navy, though numerically superior in ships and manpower, was ill-armed, untrained, and grossly mismanaged.
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Thanks to Roosevelt’s ceaseless publicizing of the service, schoolchildren across America could recognize and chant the praises of such romantic vessels as the
Iowa
, the
Oregon
, and the
Vesuvius
. His revolutionary Personnel Report, though not yet enacted into law, had already brought about a new harmony between staff and line officers, easing one of the Navy’s most difficult administration problems. His enthusiastic championship of torpedo-boats and submarines, not to mention Professor Langley’s “flying machine,” had pushed naval technology several years into the future. He had magnified the scope and influence of the Assistant Secretaryship. He had personally set the stage for one of the greatest sea dramas in American history. Most important of all, from the point of view of his later career, he had acquired a fund of naval expertise unmatched by any politician in the country.
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It would prove a priceless asset when he began to deal with “ships, ships, ships” again, as President of the United States.
At three o’clock in the morning on 19 April 1898, Congress resolved for Cuban independence. Without waiting for the diplomatic niceties of a final ultimatum, rejection, and declaration, the country whooped to war.
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Roosevelt was surely reminded that he had assumed his duties as Assistant Secretary of the Navy on 19 April 1897. It had taken him exactly one year to bring the war about.
D
ISCORDANT CRIES OF PROTEST
rose above the patriotic din when news leaked out that he had applied for a position on the staff of General Fitzhugh Lee. “What on earth is this report of Roosevelt’s resignation?” wrote an agitated Henry Adams. “Is his wife dead? Has he quarreled with everybody? Is he quite mad?” Winthrop
Chanler accepted the last alternative. “I really think he is going mad … Roosevelt is wild to fight and hack and hew … of course this ends his political career. Even Cabot says this.” John D. Long, too, doubted Roosevelt’s sanity. “He has lost his head,” the Secretary typed sadly in his diary. “… He means well, but it is one of those cases of aberration—desertion—vain-glory; of which he is entirely unaware.”
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Nearly every major newspaper in the country urged Roosevelt to stay on in the Navy Department, where his services were now needed more than ever. Even the
Sun
, while acknowledging “the instinctive glowing chivalry of his nature,” lamented the Assistant Secretary’s decision. “Is not his work of organizing war infinitely more important to the country than any part, however useful and glorious, which he could play as an officer in the field? … We are convinced that it is.” One acid opinion, expressed by John Jay Chapman of the reformist periodical
Nursery
, was that “his departure was the cowardly act of a brave man.”
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