The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (68 page)
Read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Online
Authors: Edmund Morris
As he neared his destination, he could see people converging upon it from all points of the compass, on foot, on horseback, and in white-topped wagons. The streets of Dickinson itself were filled with “the largest crowd ever assembled in Stark County,” most of whom were already very drunk.
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At ten o’clock the parade got under way. So many spectators decided to join in that the sidewalks were soon deserted. The Declaration was read aloud in the public square, followed by mass singing of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” The crowd then adjourned to Town Hall for a free lunch. When every cowboy had eaten his considerable fill, the master of ceremonies, Dr. Stickney, introduced the afternoon’s speakers. “The Honorable Theodore Roosevelt” stood up last, looking surprisingly awkward and nervous.
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With all his boyish soul, he loved and revered the Fourth of July.
The flags, the floats, the brass bands—even Thomas Jefferson’s prose somehow thrilled him. This particular Independence Day (the first ever held in Western Dakota) found him feeling especially patriotic. He was filled, not only with the spirit of Manifest Destiny, but with “the real and healthy democracy of the round-up.” The completion of another book, the modest success of his two ranches, his fame as the captor of Redhead Finnegan, the joyful thought of his impending remarriage, all conspired further to elevate his mood. These things, plus the sight of hundreds of serious, sunburned faces turned his way, brought out the best and the worst in him—his genuine love for America and Americans, and his vainglorious tendency to preach. To one sophisticated member of the audience, Roosevelt’s oration was a cliché-ridden “failure”; yet the majority of those present were profoundly affected by it. Regular roars of applause bolstered the straining, squeaky rhetoric:
Like all Americans, I like big things; big prairies, big forests and mountains, big wheat-fields, railroads, and herds of cattle too, big factories, steamboats, and everything else. But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefitted by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue … each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune. Here we are not ruled over by others, as is the case in Europe; here we rule ourselves.…
Arthur Packard, who was listening intently, noticed that Roosevelt’s high voice became almost a shriek as passion took him.
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When we thus rule ourselves, we have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them. In a new portion of the country, especially here in the Far West, it is peculiarly important to do so … I am, myself, at heart as much a Westerner as an Easterner; I am proud, indeed, to be considered one of yourselves, and I address you
in this rather solemn strain today, only because of my pride in you, and because your welfare, moral as well as material, is so near my heart.
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He sat down to a voluntary from the brass band. The audience cheered heartily, but briefly. Everybody was anxious to adjourn to the racecourse and watch the Cowboys take on the Indians.
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M
UCH LATER THAT DAY
Roosevelt and Arthur Packard sat rocking on the westbound freight to Medora, while fireworks popped in the darkening sky behind them. For a while they discussed the speech, which had greatly inspired Packard, and Roosevelt confessed his longings to return to public life. “It was during this talk,” Packard said years afterward, “that I first realized the potential bigness of the man. One could not help believing he was in deadly earnest in his consecration to the highest ideals of citizenship.”
Roosevelt told Packard that he was thinking of accepting a minor appointment which had been offered him in New York—the presidency of the Board of Health. Henry Cabot Lodge thought the job infra dig, but he was not so sure: he felt he could do his best work “in a public and political way.”
The young editor’s reaction was immediate. “Then you will become President of the United States.”
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Roosevelt did not seem in the least surprised by this remark. Indeed, Packard got the impression that he had already thought the matter over and come to the same conclusion. “If your prophecy comes true,” he said at last, “I will do my part to make a good one.”
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T
HREE DAYS LATER
, Roosevelt left unexpectedly for New York. If he hoped to find the Board of Health job open to him, he was disappointed: the incumbent had simply refused to resign, despite an indictment for official corruption.
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Clearly little had changed for the better in municipal politics.
He spent three weeks checking the manuscript of
Benton
in the
Astor Library, then—yet again—kissed “cunning little yellow headed Baby Lee” good-bye, and headed back to the Badlands in a mood of restless melancholy.
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It was ironic that at this time of resurgent political ambition he could see “nothing whatever ahead.”
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The city of his birth, his child, his home, his future wife, all lay behind him, pulling his thoughts back East, even as the train hauled him West. Much as he loved Dakota, he knew now that his destiny lay elsewhere: it must have been difficult to escape the feeling that he was traveling in altogether the wrong direction.
Arriving at Medora on 5 August, he found letters from Edith confirming a December wedding in London.
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From now on he could only count the days that separated him from her.
T
HE CRIES OF A NEWBORN BABY
greeted Roosevelt at Elkhorn next day. Mrs. Sewall had just presented her husband with a son. Mrs. Dow, not to be outdone, produced a son of her own less than a week later.
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“The population of my ranch,” Roosevelt informed Bamie, “is increasing in a rather alarming manner.”
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The squalling of these two new arrivals, not to mention the jam-smeared face of little Kitty Sewall, and Elkhorn’s growing air of alien domesticity, seemed to emphasize his bachelor status and growing sense of misplacement. It was as if the house were no longer his own, and he merely the guest of his social inferiors.
Still restless, he hurried off to Mandan, where he witnessed the conviction and sentencing to three years in prison of Redhead Finnegan and the half-breed Burnsted. He withdrew his charge against Pfaffenbach, saying “he did not have enough sense to do anything good or bad.” The old man expressed fervent gratitude, and Roosevelt said that was the first time he had ever been thanked for calling somebody a fool.
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Notwithstanding his legal triumph, Roosevelt seemed to be under considerable nervous strain during the several days he spent in Mandan. A reporter from the
Bismarck Tribune
remarked on his “facial contortions and rapid succession of squints and gestures.”
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His hosts were surprised to hear him pacing the floor of his room and groaning over and over again, “I have no constancy! I have no
constancy!”
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Evidently Edith’s recent letter had evoked once again the guilty memory of Alice Lee.
About this time Roosevelt heard reports of a border clash with Mexico which, in his fertile imagination, seemed likely to lead to major hostilities.
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Instantly he conceived the idea of raising “an entire regiment of cowboys,” and wrote to Secretary of War William C. Endicott notifying him that he was “at the service of the government.” From Mandan he beseeched Lodge: “Will you tell me at once if war becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behind hand that I might not hear the news for a week … as my chance of doing anything in the future worth doing seems to grow continually smaller I intend to grasp at every opportunity that turns up.” But Secretary Endicott decided to settle the dispute diplomatically, to Roosevelt’s obvious disappointment. “If a war had come off,” he mused wistfully, “I would surely have had behind me as utterly reckless a set of desperadoes as ever sat in the saddle.”
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T
HE HOT
A
UGUST DAYS
dragged on. Plagued by a recurrent “caged wolf feeling,” Roosevelt also began to worry about Dakota’s continuing drought. It happened to coincide with record new immigrations of cattle, which his Stockmen’s Association had tried in vain to prevent. Three years before, when he first came West, the range had been overgrassed and undergrazed; now the situation was reversed.
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He began to wonder if Sewall’s forebodings about the Badlands as “not much of a cattle country” might have been justified.
Between 21 August and 18 September, Roosevelt went with Bill Merrifield on a shooting expedition to the Coeur d’Alene mountains of northern Idaho. His prey this time was “problematic bear and visionary white goat.”
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Although he managed to kill two of the latter—America’s rarest and most difficult game—he confessed that he “never felt less enthusiastic over a hunting trip.”
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On returning to Medora, Roosevelt was “savagely irritated” to read newspaper gossip that he was engaged to Edith Carow. How the secret got out is to this day a mystery. He was forced to write an embarrassed letter of confirmation to Bamie. “I am engaged to
Edith and before Christmas I shall cross the ocean and marry her. You are the first person to whom I have breathed a word on this subject … I utterly disbelieve in and disapprove of second marriages; I have always considered that they argued weakness in a man’s character. You could not reproach me one half as bitterly for my inconstancy and unfaithfulness as I reproach myself. Were I sure there was a heaven my one prayer would be I might never go there, lest I should meet those I loved on earth who are dead.”
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