T heodore R oosevelt A ssociation
JOURNAL
V O L U M E
X X X I ,
NUMBER
4
•
FALL
2010
2
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Officers of the Theodore Roosevelt Association
Executive Committee
Tweed Roosevelt
President
Harry N. Lembeck
Dr. William N. Tilchin
Richard D. Williams
LtCol Gregory A. Wynn, USMC
The Hon. Lee Yeakel
Vice President
Trustees, Class of 2012
RADM P. W. Parcells, USN (Ret.)
J. Randall Baird
RADM Stanley W. Bryant, USN (Ret.)
Rudolph J. Carmenaty
Robert B. Charles
Gary A. Clinton
Barbara J. Comstock
Walter Fish
Fritz Gordner
Randy C. Hatzenbuhler
Jonathan J. Hoffman
Stephen B. Jeffries
CDR Theodore Roosevelt Kramer, USN (Ret.)
Harry N. Lembeck
Joseph W. Mikalic
RADM Richard J. O’Hanlon, USN
RADM P. W. Parcells, USN (Ret.)
Genna Rollins
Elizabeth E. Roosevelt
Tweed Roosevelt
William D. Schaub
Keith Simon
Owen Smith
Tefft Smith
James M. Strock
Dr. John E. Willson
Anne R. Yeakel
Vice President
Dr. William N. Tilchin
Vice President
Barbara Berryman Brandt
Immediate Past President
Stephen B. Jeffries
Treasurer
Elizabeth E. Roosevelt
Assistant Treasurer
Genna Rollins
Secretary
Mark A. Ames
Lowell E. Baier
Michele Bryant
David A. Folz
Dr. Gary P. Kearney
Simon C. Roosevelt
William D. Schaub
LtCol Gregory A. Wynn, USMC
The Hon. Lee Yeakel
Trustees for Life
Barbara Berryman Brandt
Robert D. Dalziel
Norman Parsons
Oscar S. Straus II
Honorary Trustee
The Hon. George H. W. Bush
Trustees, Class of 2011
VADM David Architzel, USN
Paula Pierce Beazley
CAPT David Ross Bryant, USN (Ret.)
Thomas A. Campbell
Matthew J. Glover
Helen Williams Holman
Rogina L. Jeffries
Dr. Gary P. Kearney
CAPT Theodore Roosevelt Kramer, Jr., USN (Ret.)
Amy Krueger
Cordelia D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt III
Simon C. Roosevelt
Trustees, Class of 2013
Mark A. Ames
Lowell E. Baier
Larry Bodine
CAPT Frank L. Boushee, USN (Ret.)
Michele Bryant
David A. Folz
Robert L. Friedman
Anna Carlson Gannett
Timothy P. Glas
Nicole E. Goldstein
Steven M. Greeley
Dr. Michael S. Harris
James E. Pehta
Kermit Roosevelt III
Shawn R. Thomas
Dr. David R. Webb, Jr.
Advisory Board, Class of 2011
Dr. Douglas G. Brinkley
Bernadette Castro
Perry Dean Floyd
Mrs. Oliver R. Grace
David McCullough
Prof. Charles E. Neu
Prof. Serge Ricard
Sheila Schafer
Lawrence D. Seymour
Prof. Samuel J. Thomas
The Hon. William J. vanden Heuvel
Advisory Board, Class of 2012
Prof. H. W. Brands
Prof. David H. Burton
Wallace Finley Dailey
Carl F. Flemer, Jr.
Prof. Richard P. Harmond
Prof. Michael Kort
Edmund Morris
Sylvia Jukes Morris
Dr. David Rosenberg
Dr. John G. Staudt
Advisory Board, Class of 2013
Dominick F. Antonelli
John P. Avlon
The Hon. Senator Kent Conrad
Prof. John Milton Cooper, Jr.
Prof. Stacy A. Cordery
Prof. Douglas Eden
The Hon. Peter T. King
The Hon. Rick A. Lazio
Dr. James G. Lewis
Molly L. Quackenbush
Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
Dr. Cornelis A. van Minnen
Prof. Robert Wexelblatt
Front and back cover illustrations:
Cartoon of April 14, 1910, with Theodore
Roosevelt lecturing the heads of state of
Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain,
while the Republican elephant beseeches
him to come home; cartoon of June 15, 1910,
with TR receiving a grand welcome upon his
thunderous return from his fifteen months
abroad (covers of Puck magazine)
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
3
Permanent
Recognition for
Hermann Hagedorn and
Dr. John A. Gable
The Executive Committee of the Theodore Roosevelt
Association has voted to award the designation “Director
Emeritus” to the two most distinguished executive directors
in the history of the TRA. Thus, henceforward, both Hermann
Hagedorn and Dr. John A. Gable will carry this title.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
is published quarterly by the
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ASSOCIATION
www.theodoreroosevelt.org
P.O. Box 719
Oyster Bay, NY 11771
Tweed Roosevelt
President
Terrence C. Brown
Executive Director
Hermann Hagedorn (1919-1957)
Director Emeritus
Dr. John A. Gable (1974-2005)
Director Emeritus
Two New Pages
In this issue, the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal is
initiating an editor’s page and a TRA executive director’s page.
The former, to appear regularly on page 4, is titled “Faithfully
Yours,” while the latter, to appear regularly on page 5, is called
“Grass Roots.”
Major TR
Conference in Paris
On June 17-18, 2011, the Observatoire de la Politique
Américaine of the Institut du Monde Anglophone at the Sorbonne
Nouvelle (Université Paris III) in Paris, France, will be hosting
a major TR conference. The topic of this conference is “The
Legacies of Theodore Roosevelt: Imperialism and Progressivism,
1912-2012.” One of the two organizers is TRA Advisory Board
member Professor Serge Ricard. Two of the papers will be
delivered by Professor Michael Kort, also a member of the TRA
Advisory Board, and Dr. William Tilchin, editor of the Theodore
Roosevelt Association Journal. The title of Dr. Tilchin’s paper
is “Anticipating and Forging the Future: Theodore Roosevelt’s
Foreign Policy Legacy.” The organizers’ plan is for papers
presented at this conference to be published in a collected volume
in 2012.
Dr. William N. Tilchin
Editor of the Journal
Wallace Finley Dailey
Journal Photographic Consultant
James Stroud
Journal Designer
Print & Bind
Nittany Valley Offset
Guidelines for unsolicited submissions: Send three double-spaced
printed copies to Professor William Tilchin, Editor, Theodore Roosevelt
Association Journal, College of General Studies, Boston University,
871 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Also provide an
electronic copy as an e-mail attachment addressed to [email protected].
Notes should be rendered as endnotes structured in accordance with
the specifications of The Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions
accepted for publication may be edited for style and length.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, established in 1975 by
Dr. John Allen Gable and edited by him through 2004, is a refereed
journal. Articles appearing in the TRA Journal are abstracted in
American History and Life and Historical Abstracts.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association is a national historical society
and public service organization founded in 1919 and chartered by a
special act of Congress in 1920. We are a not-for-profit corporation of
the District of Columbia, with offices in New York State. A copy of the
last audited financial report of the Theodore Roosevelt Association,
filed with the Department of State of the State of New York, may be
obtained by writing either the New York State Department of State,
Office of Charities Registration, Albany, NY 11231, or the Theodore
Roosevelt Association, P.O. Box 719, Oyster Bay, NY 11771.
The fiscal year of the Association is July 1 – June 30.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association has members in all fifty states,
and membership is open to all.
The annual meeting of the Board of Trustees is held on or near
Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday, October 27. The day-to-day affairs
of the Association are administered by the Executive Committee,
elected annually by the Board of Trustees. The members of the
Board of Trustees are elected in three classes, each class with a term
of three years.
4
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Notes from the Editor
many readers of the TRA Journal are indeed old friends of mine,
and that I have a long-standing connection with many others
both through the articles and reviews I have written for various
editions beginning in 1984 and through the issues produced
since 2007, when I assumed the position of editor. Moreover,
I have been a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association—
dedicated to advancing its purposes and its well-being—for
thirty years. Therefore, “Faithfully Yours” appears to be just the
right label for my new page.
photo by Marcia Tilchin
This edition of the TRA Journal presents pieces by Michael
Winder and by regular columnists Gregory Wynn and Tweed
Roosevelt. In addition, there are two book reviews: the first, to
which the front and back cover images are related, by Robert
Wexelblatt; the second, by myself, a feature review of James
Bradley’s The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and
War.
William Tilchin.
In an elegantly handwritten four-page personal letter to me
of November 24, 2001, Dr. John A. Gable, a good friend with whom
I frequently corresponded, closed with “Faithfully yours, John”;
he then explained in a P.S. that “Faithfully yours” was “a closing
TR sometimes used to old friends.” (The “Faithfully yours” at
the top of this page is John’s, photocopied from that letter.) In
this issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, on the
advice of TRA President and TRA Journal columnist Tweed
Roosevelt, I am initiating an editor’s page. Its purpose will be to
enable me to communicate directly with readers of the Journal at
the outset of every issue. I intend to utilize this page to preview
the edition at hand, as well as to share thoughts on various other
matters. Needing a name for the page, it occurred to me that
Carefully reading Bradley’s mean-spirited and stunningly
ignorant volume in preparation for writing my review was
not among the more pleasant or edifying assignments I have
undertaken as a historian. Quite the contrary: It was a painful
experience. I knew that this was a very bad book when I first
leafed through it, but it took a close reading to reveal to me just
how bad it really is. It is, simply put, one of the worst books
I have ever encountered on any subject. In my review, while
I have chosen not to try to hide my indignation, I have also
attempted to combine that indignation with sharp scholarly
precision. Readers of the TRA Journal undoubtedly will let me
know whether I have succeeded in this rather challenging dual
endeavor.
Readers can look forward to a far more uplifting feature
review in the Winter-Spring 2011 edition of the Journal. Douglas
Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the
Crusade for America will be the focal point of a probing review
essay by environmental historian Mark Harvey.
I will close this first installment of “Faithfully Yours” by
declaring that it is a privilege for me to serve as the editor of this
distinguished publication. I will continue to make every effort to
ensure that each issue is of the very highest quality.
William Tilchin
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
5
Grass Roots
Notes from the Executive Director
The fertile soil within the membership of the Theodore
Roosevelt Association has yielded extensive programming in
recent months. And now that news is reaching members in
several regular ways. There is a new energy assuring future
harvests.
Launched at the Ninety-first Annual Meeting in Seattle were
plans to increase the membership at the chapter level, as new
educational and public service programming begins and ongoing
programs are invigorated. The North Dakota Bully Spirit
Chapter and the Pelican Island Chapter in Vero Beach, Florida,
swell the number of TRA chapters to fifteen. Participation in a
chapter is now an automatic benefit of your basic dues.
The monthly e-newsletter will soon be known as “THE
ARENA” and will bring regular updates on TRA activities. None-mail members have received their first postcard. It features
a photograph of TR as assistant secretary of the navy. Thanks
go to Wallace Dailey for selecting some hidden gems for TRA
missives. As an additional source of information, the mailing
page for the TRA Journal now offers “Mark Your Calendars.”
The holidays redoubled the fundraising efforts for the
Teddy’s Bears for Kids program. In New York, at the Theodore
Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, monies were raised
to ensure that the 75,000th Teddy Bear since the start of the
program will be presented in 2011. The TRA will be partnering
with a professional basketball team for that milestone.
At the Ninety-first Annual Dinner, Tweed Roosevelt,
President of the TRA, called on all to bring forth proposals. He
did so, however, with the distinct caveat that the willingness and
energy to make those ideas reality should be included with each
proposal.
During my first several months I have addressed the expense
side of your budget with a razor-sharp #2. This has included the
office space. The current lease expires March 1, 2011, and that
has given the TRA an opportunity to bring its facilities into line
with its operations and its resources.
I have become accustomed to Oyster Bay. The town is
growing on me. It was an honor to be on the dais for the
rededication of the Proctor statue in the center of town. Oyster
Terry Brown, Freedomland, Bronx, NY, August 1960, age 10.
Bay will always be the TRA’s home base. P.O. Box 719, 11771
will always be the portal.
But the time has come to branch out as well. It is my pleasure
to announce that, at the invitation of Shirley McKinney, the
superintendent of historic sites in Manhattan for the National
Park Service, the TRA will have a wonderful space at the TR
Birthplace NHS as of March 1.
So, armed with an EZ Pass for the tolls to Long Island,
a Metro North train ticket for the ride to New York City, a
blackberry, and a laptop, I am taking the TRA to the people.
In the spirit of TR . . .
Terry Brown
6
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ASSOCIATION JOURNAL
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
CONTENTS
“Doing My Duty”: Twenty Pages and an Important Legacy
The Material Culture of Theodore Roosevelt #2 by Gregory A. Wynn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 7-10
Theodore Roosevelt and the Mormons
by Michael K. Winder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 11- 19
Who Was Gorringe, and Why Does He Matter?
Forgotten Fragments #9 by Tweed Roosevelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 20-34
Review of J. Lee Thompson, Theodore Roosevelt Abroad: Nature, Empire, and the Journey of an American President
by Robert Wexelblatt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 35-37
An Outrage Pure and Simple (a feature review of James Bradley, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War)
by William N. Tilchin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 39-45
TR-Era Images
by Art Koch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 46
Presidential Snapshot #14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 47
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
7
THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF
THEODORE ROOSEVELT (#2)
a column by Gregory A. Wynn
Gregory A. Wynn and Andy Wynn.
An obscure and rare pamphlet produced in 1862 is the only
published work of Theodore Roosevelt, Senior. Co-authored
with William E. Dodge, Jr., and Theodore B. Bronson, it is
titled United States Allotment System: Report to the President
of the United States of the Commissioners from the State of New
York. Within this report is the genesis of the allotment system
in military pay that is a critical element of service-member and
family support to this day.
I find it tiresome that writers routinely characterize
Theodore Roosevelt’s feelings toward his father’s role in the
Civil War as “humiliated,” “embarrassed,” and “ashamed,” to
name just a few adjectives. Some even suggest further that TR’s
strident viewpoints—which ebbed and flowed throughout his
life—were a direct result of these feelings regarding his father’s
service, or apparent lack thereof. This is nonsense: There is
very little of any substantive value in the historical record—
certainly nothing from TR himself—to indicate that Roosevelt
had any such feelings. Writers cling to a comment made by
Corinne Roosevelt Robinson’s daughter, Corinne Robinson
Alsop, provided in an interview with Roosevelt biographer
Carleton Putnam, that “his sister Corinne in retrospect felt
strongly that her elder brother’s aggressive personal passion for
active military service in any national emergency was in part
compensation for an unspoken disappointment in his father’s
course in 1861.”1 Notably, this presumption does not appear in
Corinne Roosevelt Robinson’s own detailed chapter in regard
to TR Senior’s Civil War role in her book My Brother Theodore
Roosevelt.2 This twice-removed conjecture and overextension of
logic regarding TR’s sophisticated and complex positions must
be put to rest. It is over-analysis at its worst. Undoubtedly, as
a young boy, caught up in the national fervor of the time, TR
may have wished his father to be in uniform. TR Senior did hire
a substitute, as did future President Grover Cleveland. While
perfectly legal, by some this was frowned upon and considered
unmanly.3 Yet, let’s remember the Roosevelt family’s conflicting
northern and southern allegiances. As glaring testimony to
this issue, in one letter home to his wife Mittie (Martha Bulloch
Roosevelt), TR Sr. would write: “I wish we sympathized together
on this question of so vital moment to our country, but I know
you cannot understand my feelings, and of course I do not expect
it. [signed:] Your Loving Husband Who Wants Very Much To See
You.”4 Corinne Alsop would also say, “He felt he had to explain it
Gregory A. Wynn Theodore Roosevelt Collection
photo by Art Koch
“DOING MY DUTY”: TWENTY PAGES AND
AN IMPORTANT LEGACY
An early Theodore Roosevelt calling card introducing William E. Dodge,
Jr., who served on the Allotment Commission with TR Senior, to Henry
Cabot Lodge. Of particular interest, Roosevelt seldom used “T. R.” as a
form of signature. Perhaps the nature of a calling card, TR’s relationship
with Lodge, and limited space drove the use of his initials.
8
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
always, about the father he admired so hugely.”5 Perhaps there
was an element of defensiveness in TR’s otherwise unqualified
respect for his father. But to characterize it as embarrassment or
humiliation is too much. To assume that his deep commitment to
service, particularly in times of national need, sprang from some
deep-rooted shame is equally absurd. In my opinion, the author
who has handled this matter with the greatest insight and
finesse is Kathleen Dalton in her fine book Theodore Roosevelt:
A Strenuous Life.6
do not want you to miss me, but remember that I would never
have felt satisfied with myself after this war is over if I had done
nothing, and that I do feel now that I am only doing my duty.”8
An allotment is a predetermined amount of money removed
from the pay of a member of the armed forces and automatically
sent to his or her family. Now, in the twenty-first century,
an allotment can be designated to pay bills, to contribute to
retirement and savings accounts, and to send home to one’s
family. It is an established and important aspect of military
pay, which almost every member of the armed services regularly
utilizes. It has not always been so. During the Civil War, army
encampments were a mix of martial display and societal scourge.
Everything from gambling to liquor to women was available to
the weak of spirit and the mischievous—but all at a price, which
ultimately the soldiers’ families would pay. Often no part of their
meager pay would make it past the wagons of the “sutlers,” as the
purveyors of these vices were called. To remedy this, Theodore Sr.
and his colleagues lobbied President Abraham Lincoln directly
for legislation which would establish an Allotment Commission
and a system through which soldiers could send a portion of their
earnings home. This was a natural extension of TR Sr.’s work
with the poor and the orphans of Manhattan, although now his
efforts would extend throughout the theater of the war.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
Enough said. Now, conversely, what we do have in the
historical record is TR’s enormous pride in and respect for
his father: “No one whom I have ever met approached his
combination of enjoyment of life and performance of duty.”7 And
the father created his own legacy with intrepidity and dedication
during the Civil War, at which time he would write to Mittie: “I
Title page of the Allotment Commission’s report to President Lincoln.
After months of lobbying, drafting a bill, and gaining
congressional sanction, presidential approval was required. So
TR Sr. arranged a call at the White House—not difficult for a
man of stature at the time. After briefly stating his business
to John Hay (thus forming a Roosevelt-Hay connection that
decades later would see Hay serving as President Theodore
Roosevelt’s secretary of state), TR Sr. was received promptly by
President Lincoln. The presence of these two large, impressive
men in one room must have been a sight to see: the youthful
and enthusiastic Theodore (twenty-nine at the time) with the
brooding Lincoln. The rambunctious ten-year-old Willie Lincoln
entering the room (“the President’s expression of face then for
the first time softened into a very pleasant smile”9) further
heightened the scene. Lincoln endorsed Roosevelt’s paperwork
for the commission. And with a presidential signature, Theodore
Senior, William Dodge, Jr., and Theodore Bronson were named
as the allotment commissioners for New York State.
So TR Sr. went and did his part in the war. For nearly two
years he was away from his family, with only brief visits home.
The touching wartime correspondence, so familiar to generations
that have sent loved ones to war, between him and Mittie was
a mix of emotion, vignettes of their children, and a portrait of
Theodore’s dogged determination to help others. One such letter
from Mittie read, “Teedie [the future President] was afraid last
night that there was a bear in your dressing room. . . . He is
the most affectionate, endearing little creature in his ways, but
begins to require his papa’s discipline badly. He is brimming full
of mischief and has to be watched all the time.”10 For his part,
Theodore Senior would write home in January 1862:
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
9
reports, such as: “Our work was impeded and rendered very
arduous by the severe weather of mid-winter, and the horrible
condition of the roads. For many weeks the mud lay so deep
along the Potomac, as to make it difficult to go from one part
of a camp to another. This gloomy weather, and the inactivity
of winter quarters, had a depressing effect upon the men, and
rendered them less willing to take advantage of the system.”13
The final pages of the report are an itemized tally of contributing
regiments, with a total allotment to families and personal funds
of over five million dollars.
The report on this effort is a pamphlet with black covers
(“wraps” in bibliophile terms) marked on the front “United States
Allotment System.” It is a mere twenty pages in length. But
within it are wide-ranging suggestions to improve the financial
health and morals of New York State soldiers and their families.
“If the volunteer has a family or friends dependent upon him,” it
reads at one point, “this sum will be a great aid in the need and
distress which always follow war; and, if he has no one to care
for, the amount regularly deposited in a Savings Bank, or with
some friend, will accumulate and form a fund, most valuable—
especially if he should return disabled.”12 There are also some
interesting narratives, unusual for typically dry presidential
It was thankless work and unknown to the vast majority of
Americans at the time. Bearing the worst of camp conditions,
weather, and, at times, combat, the commissioners’ efforts for
months in the field were often not welcomed by solders, by their
officers, and particularly by sutlers. In a letter home, TR Sr.
would write: “The sutlers here are serious obstacles in getting
allotments. As soon as we see a Regiment and persuade the men
to make allotments, they send around an agent to dissuade them
from signing their names, convincing them that it is a swindle
because they want the money to be spent in Camp and go into
their pockets instead of being sent home to the poor families of
the men, who are in such want.”14 But to the wives and children
left destitute by the
absence of their fighting
men (and their wages),
the allotment system
was an incredible
accomplishment, which
was noticed by the
President. During this
period, TR Sr. would
have an audience with
President Lincoln at
an exclusive White
House dinner, after
which he would write
home to Mittie: “No
one in the army lower
than a division general,
not even a brigadier,
was invited. . . . Some
complained of the
supper but I have rarely
seen a better and often
a worse one. Terrapin,
birds,
ducks,
and
everything else were in
great profusion.”15
Gregory A. Wynn Theodore Roosevelt Collection
I have stood on the damp ground talking to the troops and
taking their names for six hours at a time. . . . The delays
were so great that I stood out with one of these companies
after seven o’clock at night, with one soldier holding a
candle while I took down the names of those who desired
to send money home. . . . One man, after putting down five
dollars a month, said suddenly: “My old woman has always
been good to me, and if you please, change it to ten.” In
a moment, half a dozen others followed his example and
doubled their allotments.11
A letter of 1863 from Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., in his hand, on Allotment Commission letterhead, requesting information
on a particular soldier’s allotment. Interestingly, the reverse of this letter details the chain of command and endorsements
through which this request was answered.
After his debut
at the White House,
Theodore
Roosevelt,
Sr., spent many more
months in the field—
10
during which he had one partner quit and numerous other
adventures ranging from derailed trains to a night of drinking
until dawn with an Irish regiment—rallying the soldiers to
his cause.16 As the war came to a close, Theodore Senior had
been responsible for providing millions of dollars to families
and dependents, while he himself had received no monetary
compensation for his work. Additionally, he contributed to other
war organizations such as the Loyal Publication Society (which
attempted to enlighten the public about the reasons for the
war), he was one of the organizers of the Protective War Claims
Association (which collected back pay and pensions for soldiers),
and he was a founder of the Soldier’s Employment Bureau (which
tried to find work for crippled veterans).
So, as I wrote in the recent statement announcing this
column, the items examined here have less to do with the
physical objects themselves than with revealing or illuminating
an unknown or curious aspect of TR.17 I think it is important
to illustrate his father’s lasting contribution to our military
families. Truly, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., personified what his
son would later describe as “the man in the arena.”18 While the
son’s accomplishments would far eclipse those of the father, TR
Sr.’s initiative in allotments for families of America’s fighting
men became institutionalized and today is an accepted and
encouraged activity for those who serve far from home. This
Roosevelt legacy is but a footnote to the history of the Civil
War, but one with tremendous and lasting import. In a joint
resolution, the New York State Legislature issued TR Sr. a formal
message of appreciation.19 Having led Marines for my entire
adult life, I have personally taken advantage of this system
and seen its benefits for Marines and their families. So, was
TR “humiliated,” “embarrassed,” or “ashamed”? I do not believe
so. This widespread but incorrect theory mischaracterizes
Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas of commitment and service and does
a disservice to his father’s legacy.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
March 1, 1862, quoted in Robinson, My Brother
Theodore Roosevelt, p. 29.
5
Quoted in Dalton, TR: A Strenuous Life, p. 171.
David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1981) has a more detailed
and equally compelling narrative pertaining to this
question—and a superb portrait of TR Sr.
6
Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An
Autobiography (New York: The MacMillan Company,
1913), p. 12 (italics added).
7
TR Sr. to Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, January 1, 1862,
quoted in Robinson, My Brother Theodore Roosevelt, p.
23.
8
9
McCullough, Mornings on Horseback, p. 59.
10
Quoted in ibid., p. 59.
11
Quoted in ibid., p. 61.
Theodore Roosevelt [Sr.], William E. Dodge, Jr., and
Theodore B. Bronson, United States Allotment System:
Report to the President of the United States of the
Commissioners for the State of New York (New York:
George F. Nesbitt & Co., 1862), pp. 3-4.
12
13
Ibid., p. 7.
TR Sr. to Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, February
14, 1862, quoted in Robinson, My Brother Theodore
Roosevelt, p. 28.
14
TR Sr. to Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, February 7,
1862, quoted in ibid., p. 25.
15
Robinson, My Brother Theodore Roosevelt, p. 31, and
McCullough, Mornings on Horseback, p. 61.
16
Endnotes
Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative
Years, 1858-1886 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1958), pp. 48-49.
1
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. XXXI,
No. 3, Summer 2010, p. 3.
17
For this column, I have revised and updated an
article I wrote titled “The Man in the Arena: The Civil
War Legacy of Theodore Roosevelt Senior,” published in
The Rail Splitter: A Journal for the Lincoln Collector,
Spring 2002, pp. 1, 4-6.
18
Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, My Brother Theodore
Roosevelt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921).
This is a superb source for the wartime correspondence
between TR Sr. and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt.
2
Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous
Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), p. 27.
3
4
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., to Martha Bulloch Roosevelt,
19
Putnam, TR: Formative Years, p. 51.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
11
Theodore Roosevelt and the Mormons
by Michael K. Winder
America’s twenty-sixth President was a pivotal figure in
many major ways, from helping the republic on its way to global
might, to causing the nation to think about conservation in a
new, very different way. For the members of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons), Theodore
Roosevelt also stands as a pivotal figure—the President who
first openly embraced them as a people and welcomed them into
national life.
Meeting the Mormons as Vice Presidential Candidate
As the forty-one-year-old Theodore Roosevelt campaigned
as William McKinley’s running mate in the election of 1900, he
was aided in Utah and Idaho by John Henry Smith of the LDS
Church’s governing Council of the Twelve Apostles and his son
George Albert Smith, a future apostle and church president.
“They had been on the political hustings together,” it was said of
Roosevelt and the Smith boys, “and thereafter a strong bond of
friendship had grown between them.”1
Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square. On September 21, Roosevelt
met with LDS Church President Lorenzo Snow.4 Although
the Mormons of Utah and Idaho had delivered a strong antiMcKinley vote in 1896, with Roosevelt on the ticket in 1900 they
committed their electoral votes to the Republicans.
George Albert Smith met the Rough Rider again in
September 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York, when he spent the afternoon with him in the home
of Ansley Wilcox.5 The visit took place around the time of the
shooting of President McKinley, an event that would elevate
Roosevelt to the White House.
LDS apostles Joseph F. Smith and John Henry Smith wrote a
warm letter of support to Theodore Roosevelt the week following
McKinley’s assassination.6 On March 19, 1902, John Henry
Smith and Ben E. Rich called upon President Roosevelt. “He
received us with open arms and expressed his personal regard
for us,” wrote Elder Smith, “and said he would do anything he
could for us.”7
In Utah, the vivacious governor of New York spoke to the
Saints at the Logan Tabernacle, at Brigham City, and at the Salt
LDS Church Archives
That fall Roosevelt became further acquainted with the
Latter-day Saints while speaking in Rexburg, Idaho. There, Ben
E. Rich, who had returned home from a break while serving as
president of the Southern States Mission, introduced Roosevelt
to the audience with great eloquence. The vice presidential
candidate was very pleased with the introduction and invited
Rich to join him in his private car on the railway trip from
Idaho Falls to Utah. The candidate said he had some questions
concerning the LDS Church, and the mission president said he
was happy to answer them. They spent the better part of the
night talking about the church and its teachings, going through
hundreds of questions. Roosevelt was a member of the Dutch
Reformed Church, which preached a strict moral code. With
his strong views on temperance, integrity, and chastity and his
appreciation of large families, there would have been much in
the Latter-day Saint doctrine that TR would have appreciated.
In the early morning hours, when Rich left Roosevelt’s private
car, TR thanked him and said he had “never listened to a more
interesting account of a great people and a great religion.”2
During the rail journey, Elder Rich gave Governor Roosevelt a
copy of the Book of Mormon, which Latter-day Saints view as
another testament of Jesus Christ, alongside the Bible.3
Ben E. Rich, an LDS mission president who first befriended Roosevelt
when he introduced him as a vice presidential candidate to a crowd in
Idaho in 1900.
12
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
came to me of his own accord, and not only assured me that
he was not a polygamist, but, I may add, assured me that
he had never had any relations with any woman excepting
his own wife. . . . I looked into the facts very thoroughly,
became convinced that Senator Smoot had told me the truth,
and treated him exactly as I did all other Senators—that is,
strictly on his merits as a public servant.11
Roosevelt and Apostle-Senator Reed Smoot
In January 1903, a Mormon apostle, Reed Smoot, was
elected to represent Utah as a U.S. senator and was met
immediately with backlash from senators who felt that a highranking clergyman from the LDS Church should not be allowed
to be seated. The Mormons had renounced the practice of
polygamy in 1890, but many were still suspicious of the church
and its desire to follow the laws. Until 1907 the Smoot Hearings
continued in Congress, and in the end the United States Senate
voted against expelling Senator Smoot. It was during this time
of public scrutiny of the church that Theodore Roosevelt weighed
in most consequentially on the side of the Mormons.
Part of Roosevelt’s investigation was an interview with nonMormon C. E. Loose, a colonel who had been stationed in Utah.
Roosevelt asked, “Is Smoot a polygamist?” “No,” Loose replied.
“Are Mormons good Americans?” Roosevelt continued. “Yes, and
I know because I know them,” said Loose.12
Another part of Roosevelt’s investigation occurred when
John Henry Smith and Ben E. Rich called upon him. They were
introduced to the President in his office by Senator Thomas
Kearns, the non-Mormon senator from Utah who was not always
friendly to the church. After Kearns spoke, the President replied,
“I know both of these men better than I know you. They are my
personal friends.” He asked his Mormon friends, whom he had
first met in the 1900 campaign, if Reed Smoot was a polygamist,
or if he had ever been a polygamist. When they replied no to
both questions, TR said, “By all that’s holy, I say to you that Reed
Smoot is entitled to his seat in the Senate under the Constitution,
and the fact that he is a high church officer makes no difference.
I shall do all in my power to help him retain his seat.”13 “If Mr.
Smoot,” President Roosevelt wrote later, “or anyone else for that
matter had disobeyed the law, he should, of course, be turned out,
but if he had obeyed the law and was an upright and reputable
man in his public and private relations, it would be an outrage to
turn him out because of his religious belief.”14
Early on, Theodore Roosevelt met with Smoot privately and
became convinced of his innocence.8 When Smoot first called on
the President, “he came across a crowded room to shake hands
with me,” related Smoot, and “received me warmly and bade me
welcome to Washington.”9 They then left the crowd for a private
discussion. At the conclusion the President declared, “Mr. Smoot,
you are a good enough American for me.”10 Later, TR related that
Smoot
LDS Church Archives
The President’s support of Reed Smoot was a major turning
point in the development of the relationship between the LDS
Church and the American public, and Roosevelt took some heat
for the courageous act. “The President of the United States is
an open friend of the Senator from Utah,” declared Senator Fred
Dubois (D-ID) to a group of GOP Congressmen. “You Republicans
join with the President in wanting the Mormon vote. You have
got it. They are with you. . . . But it has cost you moral support
of the Christian women and men of the United States.”15 It was
reported that protesters of the President’s pro-Mormon stance
“were cussing Roosevelt up-hill and down-dale” over the matter.16
However, an editorial in the Wilmington [Delaware] News
asked sympathetically, “Why shouldn’t he support a Mormon
Republican as well as any other Republican? . . . To suggest that
President Roosevelt sanctions polygamy is to go wild.”17
Mormon Apostle and United States Senator Reed Smoot.
In February 1903, when Smoot first came to Washington,
having Teddy Roosevelt as the Republican nominee in 1904 was
far from a done deal. Ohio Senator Marcus Hanna thought TR a
“damned cowboy” who was an undeserving accidental President,
and he craved the GOP nomination himself. Smoot quickly told
the President “that I will stand or fall with [you].” Roosevelt
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
13
accepted Smoot’s statement with the expectation that Smoot
could deliver the Mormon vote, which would be essential in a close
convention fight and perhaps also in the election. Theoretically,
a Mormon apostle could deliver Utah and Idaho and help turn
the tide in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Arizona. Smoot
worked hard to deliver support for Roosevelt, and the President
in turn agreed to assist Smoot “in every way in his power.”18 In
a letter to Joseph F. Smith, the church president, Smoot pleaded:
“The President is counting on a Roosevelt delegation, and I ask
you to help me to accomplish the same, for if I do not, I may
just as well go home as far as influence with the administration
is concerned.”19 When Hanna died unexpectedly in February
1904, Smoot wrote the church president: “I am very thankful
that I had an understanding with President Roosevelt before
this happened.”20
Roosevelt was proud of his role in saving Reed Smoot, “and
inferentially the Mormon Church.” Smoot’s daughter and a
friend were attending a White House reception in 1908, when
President Roosevelt held up the line upon hearing the name
Smoot. TR then informed the entire company that he himself
“was responsible for the favorable vote.”21
In April 1904, Roosevelt honored LDS President Joseph
F. Smith and apostles John Henry Smith and Reed Smoot
with a place on the reviewing stand with him at the World’s
Fair parade in St. Louis, Missouri.22 During the social event
the Mormon leaders discussed with the President a current
problem of missionaries being restricted in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s
Germany. Roosevelt volunteered that “it was his intention to do
what he could for the Mormon missionaries who were suffering
persecution in Germany.”23
TR’s Utah Visit and the Election of 1904
While other Presidents had visited Utah, it was Roosevelt
who first openly embraced the entire population, both Mormon
and non-Mormon. On May 29, 1903, hundreds of Latter-day
Saints lined the streets to greet President Roosevelt when
he arrived for his visit to Salt Lake City. Years later it was
remembered, “When Theodore Roosevelt came, he led the troop of
shouting Rough Riders on a wild dash up the street.”24 He spoke
in the Tabernacle on Temple Square. “He received me with open
arms as an old-time friend,” Apostle John Henry Smith wrote
of the occasion.25 From the pulpit of the Tabernacle, Roosevelt
declared, “It is not so much what you Mormons did as where you
did it that distinguished you.”26 He went on:
Here in this state the pioneers, and those who came after
them, took the land that would not ordinarily be chosen as
a land that would yield returns for little effort. You took a
territory which at the outset was called after the desert,27
and you literally—not figuratively—you literally made the
Salt Lake Herald cartoonist Alan L. Lovey caricatured Roosevelt’s
delight in Church President Joseph F. Smith’s testimony before
Congress in the Smoot Hearings and in learning of his very large
family. Lovey played off of Roosevelt’s strong encouragement of large
families as one more reason why the President liked the Mormons.
wilderness blossom as the rose. The fundamental element in
building up Utah has been the work of the citizens of Utah.
And you did it because your people entered in to possess
the land, and to leave it after them to their children and to
their children’s children. You here, whom I am addressing,
and your predecessors, did not come here to exploit the land
and then go somewhere else. You came in, as the governor
of the state has said, as home makers, to make homes for
yourselves and for those who should come after you. And
this is the only way in which a state can be built up. And
I say to all of you, and all of your people, from one ocean
to another, especially the people of the arid and semi-arid
regions, the people of the great plains, the people of the
mountains, approach the problem of taking care of the
physical resources of the country in the spirit that has made
Utah what it is.28
Due to his unprecedented support for the Saints, the church
hierarchy clearly wanted to see Roosevelt reelected in 1904.
Even the church’s missionary program, in which all young men
are asked to enlist, was called in to help. Samuel O. Bennion
recalled, “I was preparing to go on my mission. I called on
President Joseph F. Smith, according to appointment, and told
him I was ready to go. He said to me, ‘Brother Bennion, you
stay here and help elect Theodore Roosevelt, and then go.’ And
I did.”29
In an October 4, 1904, meeting of the Twelve Apostles in
the Salt Lake Temple, Elder Hyrum M. Smith spoke about the
need to put good people in office. With the election only one
14
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
managers were pleased with the Mormon
voters.”31 Smoot was also pleased, “for
without his [Roosevelt’s] friendship, I am
positive it will be impossible for me to
win out.”32
Good Feelings Between the Saints
and TR
Hyrum Mack Smith, an apostle and
son of then Church President Joseph
F. Smith, gave voice to many Mormons’
feelings towards the twenty-sixth
President during his address at the
annual general conference of the church
in 1905:
We believe that in President Roosevelt
we have an unprejudiced friend; and
we know that in the Latter-day Saints
President Roosevelt will find loyalty
to the government and the greatest
friendship towards him. There are
no people in the nation more friendly
to him; and they will remain so just
as long as he remains true to the
cause of humanity. . . . I believe that
President Roosevelt is a man who
has the courage of his convictions.
He is fairly well acquainted with us,
and he is not a man that is moved by
public clamor or prejudice. I believe
that he will honestly and truly stand
by his great policy of a “square deal
to all men,” and that he will accord
us our portion of the “square deal.”
. . . I believe he is a man who so long
as he believes our cause just, will be
willing to do something for us.33
Elder Hyrum Mack Smith praised
the “Trust-Buster” Roosevelt not only for
his friendship with the Mormons, but for
his courageous politics as well: “No man
will say that the hero of San Juan Hill is a coward. No man will
say that one who boldly, and almost alone, stands out against
the oppression of the people by wicked men and by trusts, is a
coward. . . . He is not a coward; he is a brave man.”34
The people of Salt Lake City were in a condition of high anticipation for the May 1903 visit by
President Roosevelt, as shown by this newspaper that appeared the day before the visit.
month away, he spoke in favor of President Roosevelt and said
he “believed him to be a good man because of his love for his wife
and children.”30 Come election day, Roosevelt indeed had many
friends among the Mormons—both within the church hierarchy
and among the lay members. In Utah, Roosevelt won easily,
with 61% to Democrat Alton Parker’s 33%. Idaho also posted
tremendous support for Roosevelt, with the Mormon counties
there doing more than their share. Consequently, the report
came back to Utah that “Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican
When Elder John Henry Smith was in Washington with
his wife in February of 1906, TR welcomed his visit and warmly
received him on two separate occasions.35 Their son George
Albert Smith once called at the White House to see “Teddy.”
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
When he saw the large crowd waiting he decided not to intrude
and merely left his card with the clerk so the President would
know he had called. However, before he could exit the White
House, the clerk overtook him and said that the President
wanted to see him. “I am very glad to see you,” said the dynamic
President, “and I never want you to come to Washington while I
am President of the United States without coming to see me.”36
In October 1907 the President visited Tennessee. The LDS
magazine Improvement Era noted how TR’s visit there helped
Mormon missionary work:
When President Theodore Roosevelt made a visit to
Chattanooga, Tennessee, there was a parade from the
hotel three blocks to the Chattanooga auditorium. [Mission
president and previous acquaintance of Roosevelt] Ben E.
Rich stood at the curb behind the ropes, and as the group
marched past with the President at the head, the mission
president called, “How do you do, Mr. President?”
Recognizing the voice, the President stopped and walked
over to the curb and shook hands with Elder Rich, asking
him how he was faring in the mission field. The President
was concerned with the mobbings of the elders in the South
and closed the short discussion with: “I think now by this
recognition that you will have more friends in the South,”
and the presidential parade continued on to its appointed
meeting.
The President of the United States was right. Newspapers
reported the incident, and afterwards Ben E. Rich was
looked upon and treated in Chattanooga as a person of
importance and distinction.37
15
Elder Smith’s remarks were not the only pro-Roosevelt
sentiments expressed during that conference. “I want to say to
you that this people never had a better friend in the White House
than Theodore Roosevelt,” reported Ben E. Rich, now president
of the Eastern States Mission. “There has never been a man
there that understood this people as he understood them. He
has been, and he is, your friend. Many a conversation have I
had with him concerning the struggles of this people, and the
building up of this land.”40
Even after leaving the White House, Roosevelt continued
to be a friend to the Mormons. During an anti-Mormon
propaganda surge in 1910-1911, the Rough Rider stepped in to
help defuse the situation. In the April 15, 1911, issue of Collier’s,
a popular magazine published in New York, a letter appeared
from Theodore Roosevelt refuting charges made against Utah
Senator Reed Smoot and the church.41 Here he publicly lauded
the Latter-day Saints for their pro-family stances, their morality,
and their chastity:
I have known monogamous Mormons whose standard of
domestic life and morality and whose attitude toward the
relations of men and women was as high as that of the best
citizens of any other creed; indeed, among these Mormons
the standard of sexual morality was unusually high. Their
children were numerous, healthy, and well brought up; their
young men were less apt than their neighbors to indulge
in that course of vicious sexual dissipation so degrading
to manhood and so brutal in the degradation it inflicts on
women.42
Roosevelt’s Post-Presidency and Legacy with the Saints
We have recently noted the change of Presidents of the United
States, the passing from the presidency of this great nation of
ours one of the most heroic, earnest, devoted and thoroughly
honest men. His efforts toward the reformation of our land
should be a joy to every American citizen. While he may, in
his zeal, have made mistakes, I believe that, in the writings
of historians of the future, one of the brightest names in the
history of the race will be that of the man who has served this
nation so faithfully and well—Theodore Roosevelt.39
Utah State Historical Society
William Howard Taft succeeded Roosevelt in 1909, and on
Taft’s inauguration day Roosevelt bid his farewell to Senator
Smoot at the Capitol, thanking him for the support and loyalty
he had received from the Mormon apostle.38 The month following
Roosevelt’s departure from the White House, his longtime
supporter Elder John Henry Smith praised him during general
conference:
Theodore Roosevelt parading down Main Street in Salt Lake City to an
enthusiastic reception.
16
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Roosevelt also denounced any prejudice towards the Saints,
but was quick to point out that the church must forever leave
plural marriage behind if it is to prosper:
The Mormon has the same right to his form of religious
belief that the Jew and the [mainstream] Christian have
to theirs; but like the Jew and the [mainstream] Christian,
he must not practice conduct which is in contravention of
the law of the land. . . . Any effort, openly or covertly, to
reintroduce polygamy in the Mormon Church would merely
mean that that Church had set its face toward destruction.
The people of the United States will not tolerate polygamy.
. . . In so far as the Mormons will stand against all hideous
and degrading tendencies of this kind, they will set a good
example of citizenship.43
Roosevelt continued his friendship with Senator Smoot
in his later years.44 For example, he sent his support to Smoot
during a fight over the Ship Purchase Bill in 1915,45 lunched with
him at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in 1916,46 and invited
Smoot to visit him at his home in Oyster Bay in November 1917.
After the afternoon together, Smoot confided in his diary: “The
Colonel is aging a little and I don’t believe
his mind is as quick as it used to be.”47
Many years later he related the visit in a
general conference address:
Deseret News
The last time I visited Theodore
Roosevelt he was a very, very sick man.
It was some time before his death. In
our conversation he expressed the
opinion that the time was near at
hand when he would be taken to the
Beyond. He said: “I have tried to live
a Christian life, I believe in God, I
have tried to wrong no man. I expect
to continue my work beyond.” He was
strong enough to rise from his chair
after a two hours’ visit, and I had to
leave to catch a train from New York
to Washington. He arose with a great
deal of energy, and putting his arm
around me he said: “Reed, there are
trying times coming for our country. I
expect you to defend the rights of the
people and the Constitution of the
United States as long as you live.” I
promised him upon that occasion that
I would do my best.48
Roosevelt was the first President of the United States to speak in the Mormon Tabernacle on
Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where he was very complimentary.
Upon Roosevelt’s death in January
1919, Reed Smoot gave the Associated
Press a statement on the ex-President’s
life and character. Smoot was also one of
the few friends invited to the simple and
private funeral, where the only song was
Roosevelt’s favorite hymn (also a popular
one in Mormon congregations), “How Firm
a Foundation.” “His death is a great loss
to America and the world,” penned Smoot
in his diary. “He was among the greatest
Americans.”49
Later, Elder George Albert Smith
was invited to attend the dedication of
a memorial to the late President. In
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
expressing regrets at being unable to attend, Smith wrote in his
RSVP: “Teddy Roosevelt was one of my dearest friends, and I
would have been glad to be present to do honor to him.”50
In the LDS general conference following Roosevelt’s
death, Elder Richard R. Lyman proclaimed from the pulpit:
“I recognized, long before the death of Theodore Roosevelt,
that the Lord raised him up to stir the hearts of men to civic
righteousness, as perhaps no man could have stirred them.”51
LDS historians recognized that “Theodore Roosevelt did more
than any President before him to help alleviate the public
animosity toward the Latter-day Saints.”52
Heber J. Grant reminisced to Smoot: “I believe that Roosevelt
felt that we were right. I think he was nearer converted to the
truth than any man who ever occupied the presidential chair.”54
Smoot agreed, and he was baptized on Roosevelt’s behalf in the
Salt Lake Temple on October 26, 1925.55 Based on LDS theology,
the deceased has the option while in the world of spirits either to
accept such an ordinance done on his behalf or to reject it.
Another Mormon ordinance done on behalf of the dead is a
marriage “sealing,” where a deceased couple can be represented
in being sealed together as husband and wife for “time and all
eternity,” as opposed to merely “till death do us part.” Wellintentioned Mormons had Roosevelt sealed to his second wife,
Edith Kermit Carow, on March 5, 1949, in the LDS temple in
Manti, Utah. Others had his beloved first wife, Alice Hathaway
Lee, sealed to Theodore on December 11, 1992, in the LDS temple
in Seattle.56 According to LDS theology, Theodore Roosevelt could
choose in the afterlife to accept one, both, or neither of these
sealing rites. These acts of love offered to Roosevelt in Mormon
Utah State Historical Society
Many Mormon leaders felt that Roosevelt was “seriously
interested in Mormonism” and one of the “most receptive”
Presidents to the LDS theology, largely as a result of the various
conversations that had occurred with Reed Smoot and Roosevelt’s
admiration of large Mormon families and their tobacco- and
alcohol-free lifestyles.53 Five years after TR’s death LDS President
17
Theodore Roosevelt (left) at the Saltair resort on the shores of the Great Salt Lake with Utah’s first governor, Heber M. Wells (center), and others during
TR’s May 1903 visit to Utah.
18
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Deseret Book, 1990), pp. 39, 125.
“That Missionary Ben E. Rich,” Improvement Era,
Vol. LV, No. 6, June 1952. Copies of the LDS magazine
Improvement Era are at the LDS Church Historical
Archives, Salt Lake City, UT. Also, John K. Carmack,
Tolerance: Principles, Practices, Obstacles, Limits (Salt
Lake City: Bookcraft, 1993), p. 91.
2
“Presentation of the Book of Mormon to Rulers of the
World,” Improvement Era, Vol. XLIII, No. 7, July 1940.
3
Jean Bickmore White, ed., Church, State, and Politics:
The Diaries of John Henry Smith (Salt Lake City:
Signature Books, 1990), p. 464.
Library of Congress
4
Former Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Tracy, President Theodore
Roosevelt, and Senator Reed Smoot in Ogden, Utah, May 29, 1903.
temples continue to show the devotion and gratitude that the
Latter-day Saints have towards the twenty-sixth President, even
decades after his death.
5
Gibbons, George Albert Smith, p. 39.
6
White, ed., Church, State, and Politics, p. 494.
7
Ibid., p. 505.
Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History
of the Mormon Church (New York: Four Walls Eight
Windows, 2002), p. 343.
8
Stan Larson, ed., A Ministry of Meetings: The Apostolic
Diaries of Rudger Clawson (Salt Lake City: Signature
Books, 1993), pp. 572-573.
9
Reed Smoot to Joseph F. Smith, November 10, 1903,
quoted in Milton R. Merrill, Reed Smoot: Apostle in
Politics (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1990), p.
41.
10
Michael K. Winder is a member of the Utah Board of State
History and the author of Presidents and Prophets: The Story
of America’s Presidents and the LDS Church (American Fork,
UT: Covenant Communications, 2007). He has recently presented
papers on Abraham Lincoln and the Mormons as part of the
Lincoln Bicentennial in both Springfield, Illinois, and Salt Lake
City, Utah. He holds an Honors B.A. in History and an M.B.A.
from the University of Utah and earned a leadership certificate at
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Winder
is a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the Ronald
Reagan Club, the Mormon History Association, and the Center
for the Study of the Presidency. He is also the mayor of West
Valley City, Utah’s second largest city, and president of the Utah
League of Cities and Towns.
Endnotes
Francis M. Gibbons, George Albert Smith: Kind and
Caring Christian, Prophet of God (Salt Lake City:
1
“Theodore Roosevelt Refutes Anti-Mormon
Falsehoods: His Testimony as to Mormon Character;
Advice Concerning Polygamy,” pamphlet reprinting
April 15, 1911, Collier’s article (Salt Lake City: Eborn
Books, 1995), p. 9.
11
Harlow E. Smoot, interview, September 1949, quoted
in Merrill, Reed Smoot, p. 28.
12
13
TR, quoted in Carmack, Tolerance, p. 91.
TR, quoted in “A Mormon in the New Cabinet,”
Improvement Era, Vol. LVI, No. 3, March 1953.
14
15
Congressional Record, Vol. 41, 1907, p. 3408.
16
Salt Lake Herald, April 16, 1906.
17
Wilmington News, December 6, 1906.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
18
Merrill, Reed Smoot, pp. 83-85.
Reed Smoot to Joseph F. Smith, February 5, 1904,
quoted in ibid., p. 85.
19
19
Harvard S. Heath, ed., In the World: The Diaries of
Reed Smoot (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997),
p. 9.
38
Elder John Henry Smith, Conference Report, April
1909, Third Day—Morning Session, p. 117.
39
Reed Smoot to Joseph F. Smith, February 16, 1904,
quoted in Merrill, Reed Smoot, p. 86.
20
Elder Ben E. Rich, Conference Report, Spring 1909,
pp. 47-48.
40
21
Merrill, Reed Smoot, p. 83.
22
White, ed., Church, State, and Politics, p. 521.
23
Larson, ed., Ministry of Meetings, pp. 593-594.
Deseret News 2003 Church Almanac (Salt Lake City:
Deseret News, 2002), p. 550.
41
“Theodore Roosevelt
Falsehoods,” pp. 10-11.
42
“The Achievement of Civilization, Recollections of
East Brigham Street,” Improvement Era, Vol. XVIII,
No. 9, July 1915.
24
25
White, ed., Church, State, and Politics, p. 522.
Elder Melvin J. Ballard, Conference Report, October
1935, Afternoon Meeting, p. 46. Copies of Conference
Reports are located in the LDS Church Historical
Archives, Salt Lake City.
26
When Utah was first settled, the territory was called
“Deseret,” which meant “honeybee,” but which TR may
have thought meant “desert.”
Refutes
Anti-Mormon
43
Ibid.
44
Heath, ed., Diaries of Reed Smoot, p. 46, n. 9.
45
Ibid., entry of February 10, 1915, p. 261.
46
Ibid., entry of March 31, 1916, pp. 310-311.
47
Ibid., entry of November 27, 1917, p. 376.
27
TR, quoted in Improvement Era, Vol. XIII, No. 11,
September 1910.
28
Elder Samuel O. Bennion, Conference Report, October
1944, Second Day—Morning Meeting, p. 65.
29
Elder Reed Smoot, Conference Report, October 1935,
Afternoon Meeting, p. 117.
48
Heath, ed., Diaries of Reed Smoot, pp. 407-408,
including n. 1. TR mentions his favorite hymn in
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: The Modern
Library, 2002), p. 533.
49
50
30
Larson, ed., Ministry of Meetings, p. 775.
Gibbons, George Albert Smith, p. 126.
Elder Richard R. Lyman, Conference Report, October
1919, Afternoon Session, p. 120.
51
31
Merrill, Reed Smoot, p. 90.
Reed Smoot to Joseph F. Smith, November 24, 1905,
quoted in ibid., p. 91.
32
Elder Hyrum Mack Smith, Conference Report, Spring
1905, p. 49.
Arnold K. Garr, “Theodore Roosevelt,” in Arnold
K. Garr et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint
History (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000), p. 1044.
52
33
53
34
Elder Hyrum Mack Smith, Conference Report, Spring
1905, p. 48.
54
On February 5, 1906, and February 28, 1906, entries
in White, ed., Church, State, and Politics, pp. 561, 564.
55
35
36
Gibbons, George Albert Smith, pp. 125-126.
Heber J. Grant to Reed Smoot, December 16, 1924,
quoted in ibid., p. 132.
International Genealogical Index (IGI), accessible by
Latter-day Saints at www.familysearch.org. Temple
ordinances are posted in the IGI.
56
37
“That Missionary Ben E. Rich.”
Merrill, Reed Smoot, p. 155.
Ibid.
20
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
FORGOTTEN FRAGMENTS (#9)
a column by Tweed Roosevelt
WHO WAS GORRINGE, AND WHY DOES HE MATTER?
photo by Will Kincaid
an elegant way of describing this phenomenon, as stated
by the theory’s original proponent, Edward Lorenz, an MIT
meteorologist: “The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil [may] set
off a tornado in Texas.”
Tweed Roosevelt.
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are
infinitely the most important.
Sherlock Holmes
A Very Consequential Meeting
I have been intrigued by the notion that sometimes
seemingly insignificant events in a man’s life can have enormous
consequences for his future, for those around him, and sometimes
for an entire country or even the world. The Ancients were well
aware of this, distinguishing chance from fate, and writing about
it in plays and philosophical treatises. Recently mathematicians
have come up with a whole new branch of their science called
Chaos Theory that attempts to quantify similar situations found
in the natural world, and they have concluded that predicting
the future in most regards, including the weather more than
a few days out, may be fundamentally impossible. They have
For Theodore Roosevelt, one of these butterflies was a man
named Gorringe, which rhymes with orange (thought to be one
of only two words in the English language that rhyme with no
other words in the dictionary). TR met Henry H. Gorringe at
a dinner for the Free Trade Club at New York City’s Clark’s
Tavern on May 28, 1883. This event has been considered so
inconsequential that many of TR’s biographers—Henry F.
Pringle, William H. Harbaugh, and Kathleen Dalton included—
don’t even mention it, while others give it only a few sentences,
with Edmund Morris, as usual, going farther than the rest. And
yet, if this meeting had not occurred TR probably would never
have become President. Gorringe, you see, was promoting a
hunting lodge in Medora, North Dakota, and during that May
evening he convinced TR to go there to hunt buffalo. Thus began
TR’s adventures in the west. Most agree that this was a turning
point on his road to the White House; and he himself was fond
of saying that if it had not been for his time in North Dakota he
would not have been President. In all probability he was right.
Therefore, an apparently inconsequential meeting turned out to
be a critical event that had enormous consequences.
This meeting was so important that I have often wondered if
it was purely accidental or if, perhaps, it was destined to happen.
I have come to the conclusion that, if not exactly destined to
happen, it was at least very likely given the circumstances. In
order to make my reasons for this clear I have to tell you a story,
in fact several stories.
Egypt and the Obelisks
It all started in the spring of 2008 during my daughter
Amanda’s last semester at Union College. I asked her what she
wanted for a graduation present, and she said: “Daddy, I want
to go to Egypt, and I want to go with you.” Needless to say, I was
delighted. I immediately began planning the trip. First I called
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
21
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk, or How Cleopatra’s Needle Came to New York and
What Happened When It Got There (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993)
my senior tutor from Harvard, Andy Jameson, who is an expert
on Egypt, asking for his advice. It turned out he had retired,
so I suggested he come along as our guide. I then plunged into
research, learning as much as I could about Egyptian history.
At some point, I ran across a reference to a United States naval
officer, Lieutenant Commander Gorringe, who had been in charge
of the task of bringing an Egyptian obelisk to America. This very
odd name (currently no one by that name is listed in any of the
New England or New York phone books) rang a vague bell that
seemed to me to have a TR connection. Eventually I remembered
the TR-Gorringe dinner. The name is so unusual that I thought I
would look into the stories of these two Gorringes a little more to
see if they were related. The coincidence of the names reminded
me of the Sherlock Holmes story “The Three Garridebs,” a tale
that hinges on a very rare American family name. Much to my
surprise, I discovered that there were not two Gorringes, but
only one, as they were both Henry Honeychurch Gorringe.
The story of Gorringe and the obelisk he brought home is
an extraordinary one. Perhaps even more amazing is the story
of the obelisk itself or, to be more accurate, the pair of obelisks
known as Cleopatra’s Needles.
First a little should be said about obelisks. Most are
monolithic (made out of a single piece of stone); in fact, purists
insist upon it, reducing the Washington Monument and the
Bunker Hill Monument (which is right outside our house in
Charlestown) to wannabes. The most famous obelisks are, of
course, Egyptian. The first were raised in the Fifth Dynasty of
the Old Kingdom at about the same time as the great pyramids
of Giza, some 4500 years ago. The golden age of obelisk making
was much later—during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Dynasties of the New Kingdom about 3500 years ago. Perhaps
the greatest obelisk-erecting pharaoh was Thutmose III (14791425 B.C.E.), who had at least nine erected, including the tallest
ever at 105 feet, 6 inches, weighing in at about 455 tons. He
also commissioned the two Cleopatra’s Needles, but more about
that later. After this fantastic spasm of massive effort, the fad,
perhaps due to exhaustion, began to tail off.
Theoretically, obelisks were to honor Ra, the sun god, but
as they were covered with hieroglyphs espousing the exploits of
the pharaoh with little mention of the gods, there seems to have
been a vainer purpose. Furthermore, as they were often placed
before buildings constructed by earlier pharaohs, they were
really a sort of one-upmanship effort by the later pharaohs to
overshadow their predecessors’ monumental constructions.
Obelisks generally came in pairs and were placed in front
of entrances to temples and the like. They were impressive not
only because of their dramatic appearances but also because of
the obviously spectacular engineering feats they represented.
As they were crafted from one stone, they presented many
difficulties, and there was more or less a limit as to how big they
could be. Cutting them was a tremendous challenge. Not only
Henry Honeychurch Gorringe.
were they of extremely hard and heavy granite, but also because
of their size they were quite brittle and had to be handled with
great care. First an appropriate rock had to be found. Then
began the excavation process, achieved without the aid of metal
tools. Obelisks were laboriously pounded out using small round
hand-held rocks made from extremely hard dolerite that could
only be found in the Eastern Desert towards the Red Sea. A fellah
(an Egyptian peasant) might spend a whole lifetime working
on just a portion of an obelisk. Incidentally, it is now believed
that the great Egyptian pyramids, monuments, tombs, etc. were
built not by slave labor but by free fellaheen working for wages,
mostly during the time before the annual inundation when there
was little to do on their own land. From their rulers’ point of
view, this kept them out of trouble and provided some muchneeded redistribution of wealth during what was otherwise an
unproductive time. Once an obelisk blank had been hammered
out, it somehow had to be detached from the rock below. Perhaps
22
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
to do it. Then, with a final effort, they were hauled the final
few degrees to the vertical with ropes carefully pulled by men
watched closely by the engineers. Those engineers’ success is
even more amazing when you consider that there is no evidence
they ever miscalculated. There are no broken obelisks resulting
from construction accidents at any of the temple sites. Only one
was unsuccessful. At Aswan there is an unfinished obelisk that
appears to have been abandoned when the stone from which it
was being formed revealed a fault.
photo by Amanda Roosevelt
This was the process used for Cleopatra’s Needles. Thutmose
ordered these two obelisks quarried from pinkish granite to be
ready in time for his third jubilee in 1443 B.C.E. They were
excavated at Aswan and towed about 600 miles to the sacred city
of Heliopolis, near modern day Cairo, where they were rolled to
the Temple of the Sun. The very risky process of raising the
stone undoubtedly had an added element of tension because the
engineers and, most likely, Thutmose himself were in attendance.
Apparently everything went well, for they were destined to
remain in Heliopolis for more than a thousand years—but not,
however, without some adventures.
Standing at what we thought was the original home of
Cleopatra’s Needle.
this was achieved by digging a canal to the Nile, and then, when
the inundation came, placing enough wood under the blank to
keep it afloat while the remaining rock was chipped away. (Even
finding wood in Egypt is a major challenge, as there are almost
no trees. Virtually all wood had to be imported, from as far away
as Lebanon.) The final steps had to be taken carefully, so that
torque did not snap the block. Then a barge was built around
it, which was towed many miles downstream by dozens of small
boats to where a reverse process placed it ashore near where it
was to be erected.
Obelisks probably were rolled to their final destination
using large stone balls. Raising them was a job that also had to
be done very carefully, not only because of their immense weight
but also because of the danger of breaking them. Engineers
needed to be able to identify the exact center of gravity of each
stone with great accuracy. Although their tools were primitive,
their skills and their mathematics were enormously impressive.
They built huge sand hills and dragged the obelisks up them,
and at the top, with the utmost precision, they lined them up
and began to slowly excavate the sand from underneath them
until they slid into place. There are several theories as to
exactly how this was done, but the fact is that they managed
Around 1200 B.C.E., Rameses II of the Nineteenth
Dynasty—who was also known as Ozymandias, recognized as the
most accomplished and powerful of all the pharaohs, builder of
the tomb of Nefertari and Abu Simbel (which has been described
as “an ego built in stone”)—for some obscure reason decided he
needed more recognition, so he added inscriptions to Cleopatra’s
Needles, not surprisingly extolling his own achievements. What
started as a one-upmanship effort on the part of this pharoah
became the means of further one-upmanship by later pharoahs.
Around 920 B.C.E. the more or less unknown Osorkon I somehow
managed to find space to have his own praises added. Similar
actions followed, and eventually it got to the stage where additions
were taking on the appearance of graffiti. In 525 B.C.E. disaster
struck, just at the end of Egypt’s decline. Cambyses II, the son
of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, conquered
Egypt and burned Heliopolis. The two obelisks were toppled and
burned, and there they lay for about 500 years before the next
chapter of their extraordinary story started.
Most people who have gone to Egypt have come back with
souvenirs. Amanda and I were no exceptions, returning with
ankhs, scarabs and blue hippos. However, some people have had
a much more grandiose idea of what is an appropriate souvenir.
The result is that today there are many more obelisks outside
of Egypt (twenty-three) than still left standing in the country
(seven). Rome has the most, with thirteen, including the tallest.
The rest are scattered around Italy and as far away as Israel,
Istanbul, and Paris, as well as New York and London. Most of
these were moved in antiquity, generally by the Romans, a feat
rivaling the original transportation.
This stage of the odyssey of the two Cleopatra’s Needles was
initiated by, of all people, Augustus Caesar himself, the first and
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
most renowned Roman emperor. There is no question that these
obelisks had attracted the attention of the great—first Egyptians,
then Persians, and now Romans. However, interestingly, there
is no record of Cleopatra ever showing any interest in them.
The pair had lain on the ground pretty much ignored for
more than 500 years until Augustus decided that the Caesarium
in Alexandria needed further adornments. Alexandria, of
course, was named for another ruler, Alexander the Great. The
Caesarium had been constructed by Cleopatra to honor her son.
Many believe this was the site of Cleopatra’s date with the asp.
and perhaps because of its name, which might be considered
self-aggrandizement. However, to partially mask the enormous
building, in about 10 B.C.E. he ordered the two prone Thutmose
obelisks carted down to the Nile Delta and erected between the
building and the sea. Since the bottom corners had become
eroded, iron shimmies in the shape of crabs had to be installed
to keep the obelisks upright. They had now traveled about 700
miles from where they were originally quarried. Ironically,
through their modern name they preserve just what Augustus
was trying to eradicate, Cleopatra’s memory.
In the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., the Caesarium
became a Christian cathedral and the site of another interesting
violent death. The victim was Hypatia, the first known female
mathematician. Unfortunately for her, she outraged the
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
After Augustus conquered Cleopatra and her husband, Marc
Anthony, he destroyed much of what she had built but saved the
Caesarium, presumably because he saw no threat from her son,
23
Cleopatra’s Needle at its run-down and ignored site in Alexandria.
24
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
William Henry Vanderbilt.
Christian community both by her teachings and, perhaps more
fundamentally, by being a learned woman. According to Gibbon,
she was murdered in the cathedral by a Christian mob in 415,
and her quivering flesh was scraped from her bones with oyster
shells, a most grisly end, followed by what was left of her body
being dragged through the streets by a group of monks. And all
this in a church and by clergy; so much for sanctuary! Perhaps
in a somewhat delayed divine retribution, in 912 the cathedral
was destroyed. The obelisks, however, remained. Then, in 1301,
a major earthquake destroyed much of Alexandria, and once
again one of the obelisks wound up on the ground. That’s how
things remained for the next 500 years: one obelisk down and
one standing, and both pretty much ignored.
Now a whole new group of actors took the stage, and we
finally get to Gorringe. Americans, being who they are, felt that
if London had an obelisk then certainly they deserved one. In
1881 the New York Herald observed: “It would be absurd for the
people of any great city to hope to be happy without an Egyptian
Obelisk.” It may seem silly now, but at the time tremendous
interest was generated. True to the era, a major newspaper
and a millionaire financier became involved. William Henry
Hurlbert, editor of the New York World, generated the publicity
and recruited William Henry Vanderbilt to supply the cash.
A request for proposals (RFP) was published, and one of the
respondents was Gorringe.
Gorringe had been born in 1841 in Barbados to an Oxfordtrained missionary. At a young age he ran away to sea as a cabin
boy. Eventually he came to the United States and enlisted in the
navy in time to serve in the Civil War on the Union side. After the
war he stayed in the navy, eventually being made a lieutenant
commander and becoming captain of the USS Gettysburg. This
ship has an interesting history with an almost certain TR
connection. TR’s uncle on his mother’s side, James D. Bulloch,
was in charge of the Confederate purchasing and shipbuilding
image from the public domain
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
again, another great leader become involved—actually three
of them. The story starts with the legendary Mohammed Ali
Pasha, an Albanian who became khedive and is considered to
be the founder of the modern state of Egypt. In appreciation for
what the British had done to expel Napoleon’s occupation army
in 1820, he offered them one of Cleopatra’s Needles. However,
it was not until 1877 that they finally removed it with great
difficulty and danger, putting it in a kind of enclosed coffinshaped wooden barge, not much different from the one used to
float it down the Nile in Thutmose’s time, and began towing it to
England. After a hazardous journey, during which for a while
the barge was lost at sea, it arrived in Queen Victoria’s London
and was raised with great fanfare on the Embankment, where
you can see it today. This left its lonely sister standing neglected
on the banks of Alexandria’s harbor.
Henry Gorringe and the Relocation of Cleopatra’s
Needles
And then, in the 1800s, a new chapter in this strange
odyssey began. For the first time in about 3300 years these two
obelisks were to be separated. The fallen one went first. Yet
The USS Gettysburg, the ship on which Gorringe did his survey work
in the Mediterranean and from which he first saw Cleopatra’s Needle.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
25
under Gorringe, who was ordered to sail her to the Mediterranean
to update naval charts of the region. It was from her deck that
he first saw Cleopatra’s Needle. While in Egypt, as a kind of
pastime, he developed a plan for the removal of an obelisk. At
some point he learned of Hurlbert’s RFP, and he submitted
his plan, which included a fixed price. It was accepted over
several others. With characteristic American energy, Gorringe
immediately went to work. He obtained a leave of absence
from the navy, recruited a team, and designed and ordered the
required equipment—which, by the way, was manufactured by
John Roebling, who was at the time busy building the Brooklyn
Bridge. Then he started for Egypt. A whole book could be
written about what happened next—in fact, several have been,
including, not surprisingly, one by Gorringe himself—but I will
just provide you with a brief outline.
First there was a long and typically convoluted Oriental
negotiation between the khedive and an American diplomat to
obtain permission to remove the obelisk, even though it had been
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
effort in England and Europe. TR idolized his uncle, spending
considerable time with him in England after the war when his
parents took the family on a Grand Tour of Europe. Bulloch had
been extremely successful acquiring ships for the Confederate
cause. It was because of his efforts that the South built the
cruisers CSS Alabama and CSS Shenandoah that wreaked such
havoc upon Union shipping and whaling fleets. He was almost
certainly involved in the purchase of the eventual Gettysburg,
which had been built in Scotland as the Douglas for the Isle
of Man trade. She was renamed the Margaret and Jessie and
became a successful blockade runner operating out of Charleston,
South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, completing
nine voyages before she was captured by the Union Navy. She
was then converted to a gunboat, renamed the USS Gettysburg,
and sent to her old haunts to chase her former comrades. She
participated in the two battles that finally captured Fort Fisher,
at the entrance of the harbor at Wilmington, a fort that had
formerly protected her. After the war, she remained with the
navy but was now conducting navigational surveys—eventually
The “turning” apparatus.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
26
Removing the obelisk from the ship at Staten Island. Note the cannon balls.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
27
To “turn” the obelisk, Gorringe
had designed an extraordinary
contraption, a steel structure
that looked something like an oil
derrick. Remember, the obelisk
was sixty-nine feet long, was eight
feet in diameter, weighed around
200 tons, and was very brittle. I
despair of successfully describing
to you the turning technique
in a way that is even remotely
comprehensible, so I include (on
p. 25) a drawing that might help.
Anyway, the general idea was to
put a kind of steel girdle at the
center of gravity of the obelisk,
attach this to the derrick, turn it
to the horizontal, and rest each
end of the obelisk on two hydraulic
jacks set on towers of wooden
blocks. Then, using the jacks, the
obelisk was slowly seesawed down,
removing one layer of blocks at a
time, until it finally was firmly
placed on a sled. Well, if that is
not clear, just trust me, it worked.
The sled was dragged a short
distance to the seaside and then
onto a barge that was towed around the harbor to the waiting
ship, the Dessoug. A hole had been cut in the ship’s side, and the
obelisk was rolled on cannon balls into the hold. Needless to say,
there was always a large crowd watching. The Egyptian portion
of the story took a total of 241 days. Finally, the ship, with only
one item of cargo, set sail.
Forty days later, after an eventful (including a week of
drifting helplessly) but ultimately successful voyage, the ship
arrived in New York Harbor. The first stop was Staten Island,
where the obelisk was unloaded and placed on a barge. It was
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
promised to the United States
years before. The local community
of American and European expats
also got involved, rather curiously
on the side of preventing its
removal. One wonders why the
locals thought so much of it, as
it had long been neglected and
had been allowed to fall more or
less into ruin. Eventually an
agreement was reached, but it
was clear that no time should be
wasted getting it shipboard, as
the political climate might change
at any moment.
The creeping trestle.
towed to 96th Street in Manhattan, unloaded, and hauled across
the railroad tracks—a delicate process, as the frequent trains
could not be unduly delayed. It was then put on an enormous
railroad flat car, and it started its journey across town. This was
accomplished on a sort of railroad, but one perhaps unlike any
other ever constructed. It never extended more than a couple
of hundred feet. A small length was built, the flat car winched
forward for a few yards, and then the tracks behind were torn
up and laid in front and the process was repeated. In this way,
the rails were leapfrogged as the obelisk made its way east.
When a valley was reached, a trestle was built in the same
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
28
The New York Masons at the foundation laying ceremony.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
manner. It made quite a picture, truncated a few feet on either
end of the flat car, as it crept across the divide. Eventually
the exotic procession reached Broadway, and the whole parade
had to pivot south. This presented considerable challenges, but
after six frustrating days the effort was successful. Then it was
down to 86th Street and across Central Park to 5th Avenue and
down to 82nd and finally into the park. A caterpillar would
have moved more quickly. The trip across upper Manhattan
took 112 days.
everyone involved was a Mason, including Gorringe, Vanderbilt,
and Hurlbert. Also, Gorringe claimed to have found Masonic
writings carved into the stone base beneath the obelisk at its
site in Alexandria, thus purportedly proving the cult’s claimed
antiquity. Whatever the truth of the matter, about 9000 Masons
reportedly turned out for their own ritual at the site when the
base was installed. It must have been quite a scene, all those
Masons with their funny-looking aprons.
Now the process of erection began. This was essentially
the reverse of the lowering effort in Alexandria. The obelisk
was slowly seesawed up, and then the derrick was erected
and attached. The “turning” was set for January 22, 1881.
Excitement built. Everyone seemed to be thinking of nothing
else. Reams of newspaper articles covered the approaching
spectacle, and would-be Stephen Fosters wrote dozens of songs
sung far and wide. (Foster, by the way, wrote many famous
official state songs and regional favorites, including “My Old
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
The final site, which had been carefully chosen, was behind
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had been founded
by Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., along with other prominent New
Yorkers, and had been open only for a little more than a year.
The Masons had had much to do with the preparation of the
site, which at first might seem odd; but remember, the Masons’
origins were as stonemasons, and they have a heavy overlay
of Egyptian motifs in their ritual. Furthermore, pretty much
29
Turning the obelisk behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 22, 1881.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
from Martina D’Alton, The New York Obelisk (1993)
30
Cleopatra’s Needle standing behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
Kentucky Home,” “Old Black Joe,” “Down on the Swanee River,”
and “Oh! Susanna,” a favorite of the ‘49ers, although he had
never been to Kentucky, California, or the Swanee River.) The
day of the turning was extremely cold and snowy, but in spite
of the weather 30,000 New Yorkers showed up. Perhaps many
were hoping to witness some accident—Americans loving hubris
humbled. However, Gorringe, no dummy, had secretly tested
the apparatus the night before, and the obelisk had survived.
At noon, the frigid and no doubt breathless audience had to
endure the usual speeches, including one by the U.S. secretary
of state, a great orator of the time, William M. Evarts, who was
not known for his brevity. Finally, the great moment arrived. It
seemed impossible to the observers, but only a handful of men
pulled the ropes that turned the obelisk. Within minutes the
task was complete, much to Gorringe’s relief. New steel crabs
were installed to keep the obelisk from wobbling. Perhaps a few
of the spectators were disappointed, but there was nothing for
everyone to do but go home or maybe to a nearby watering hole
to try to warm up. The whole process had cost $102,576 and
taken fifteen months, during which time the obelisk had traveled
more than 5000 miles. The cost was some $25,000 more than
Gorringe had promised, but Vanderbilt did not stiff him and paid
the full amount. Gorringe, unfortunately, had only a short time
to live, dying at the age of forty-three in a freak accident stepping
off a moving train shortly after his momentous meeting with TR.
31
Before I reveal the fourth reason I must again digress.
During our trip to Egypt, Amanda, Andy, and I visited what we
thought was the very spot where Cleopatra’s Needle had stood
for 1400 years and took pictures. We then visited the site in
Alexandria where it had been for 1800 more years and took more
pictures.
Some time ago, just before Christmas, on a bitterly cold
day that I imagine was much like the day the obelisk was
raised, I went to New York City to visit Cleopatra’s Needle at
its lonely site behind the Metropolitan Museum. Its condition,
sadly, is deteriorating, both because of the northern weather
whose snow and ice work away at the rock and because of the
corrosive effect of New York’s air pollution. Today few people,
even New Yorkers, know of the obelisk’s existence, which seems
a shame. The reason, I believe, is that the site turned out to be
unfortunate. Perhaps it made sense at the time, as the Met was
a small building and the area undeveloped. However, over time
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
No Accident: Explaining Theodore Roosevelt’s Encounter
with Gorringe
Now I take you back to TR’s dinner with Gorringe. As I
have mentioned, most people have thought that the meeting
was accidental. I am not so sure. I suspect that TR was eager
to meet Gorringe, and that, even if Roosevelt had not exactly
engineered the occasion, he at least jumped at the opportunity. I
believe there were four reasons for this, and none had anything
to do with his political ambitions. First, Gorringe’s exploits had
garnered tremendous publicity; it would not be going too far to
say that, although he is now almost entirely forgotten, at the
time he was one of the most famous men in America. He had
a wonderful story to tell, and nearly everyone, including TR,
wanted to hear it. Second, he was a navy man, and, as Edmund
Morris has pointed out, “It was natural that this retired officer
should wish to meet the young author of The Naval War of
1812” (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 198); and, turning this
around, I would say it was natural that TR would want to talk
to him about the importance of building up the American Navy.
The other two reasons why I believe TR would have wanted to
meet Gorringe have never been mentioned in the literature.
The first of these was the USS Gettysburg, the history of which
I have already recounted. Most likely TR would have known
some of her history and would have been delighted to meet her
captain to get a firsthand report and to discuss his relative’s part
in acquiring her.
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
photo by Leslie Roosevelt
32
Cleopatra’s Needle behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City where I visited it on a cold day just before Christmas. Note
the crabs waving their claws at the corners of the base, no doubt complaining of being squashed.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
33
Full entry from TR’s diary (uncorrected)
written when he had just turned fourteen
Alexandria November 28th 1872 Thursday
At eight oclock we arrived in sight of Alexandria. How I gazed on it! It was Egypt, the land of my dreams;
Egypt the most ancient of all countries! A land that was old when Rome was bright, was old when Babylon
was in it glory, was old when Troy was taken! It was a sight to awaken a thousand thoughts, and it did.
As soon as our ship was in the harbour it was surrounded with arab felluccas with strong latteen sails and
still stranger arab boat men. The deck was soon covered with these last; in all stages of picturesque dress
and undress.
We got into one of these fellucas and rowed to shore, where, after getting through the Custom House (bribery
and corruption) we took a carriage to the Hotel Abbot (where we had nice rooms). I shall never forget that
drive. On all sides were screaming Arabs, shouting Dragomen, shrieking donkey boys and braying donkeys,
and in fact the only quiet creatures were the dogs (large, fox like creatures with erect ears and a yellow
colour), which seemed the laziest animals in creation and also the most cowardly, for I observed a dozen run
away from a scotch terrier. They were to lazy to run long however and soon lay down until they were “put up”
by the terrier again.
At the Hotel we had lunch (first witnessing a row between an Arab and a Negroe, in which the former was
badly wounded and the latter taken off to be bastinadoed). After lunch we drove out to Pompeys Pillar, once
one of the numerous columns of a great temple. Its top was in the Corinthian style of Architecture; and as it
is so beautiful a pillar now, when alone, what must the effect when it was one of the numerous supporters of
a grand Temple. The broken remains of numerous old Egyptian Gods were scattered all around. On seeing
this stately remain of former glory, I felt a great deal but I said nothing. You can not express yourself on such
an occasion.
We then went to Cleopatras Needle, but somehow it did not impress me so much as did Pompeys Pillar. It
was covered with hieroglyphics, but it was not very large. Both of these remains are not very old – for Egypt.
Only about two thousand years. We dined at the Table d’Hote.
the museum has grown enormously, filling the space of several
blocks and completely obscuring the obelisk behind buildings,
where almost no one goes. Imagine how much more of an icon the
obelisk would have become had it been placed in one of the other
two suggested locations: Columbus Circle or Union Square. It no
doubt would now be as famous as its sister on the Embankment
in London. The whole thing has a certain Ozymandias feel to it.
As I stood at its base, I thought that surely Theodore
Roosevelt had been at that very spot. If so it would not have been
the first time he had seen the obelisk. TR was thirteen when he
went with his family on a long trip that included many months
in Egypt. He kept a diary at the time that was later published
in The Boyhood Diary of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1928). On page 276 there is an entry headlined
“Alexandria November 28th 1872 Thursday,” which in part reads
as follows: “We then went to Cleopatra’s Needle, but somehow
it did not impress me so much as did Pompey’s Pillar. It was
covered with hieroglyphics, but it was not very large. Both of
these remains are not very old—for Egypt. Only about two
thousand years. We dined at the Table d’Hote.” So he had
already seen not only the New York obelisk, but along with it
34
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
the London one before they were separated. I like to think that
when TR went to London for his second wedding in 1886, he
visited Cleopatra’s other Needle on the Embankment. He could
well have been one of very few people who had seen both obelisks
in Egypt and then each in its new location. Of course, he would
want to meet Gorringe, if only to reminisce. And the rest, as they
say, is history!
There. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Abrams,
1993 (reprinted from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,
Spring 1993).
Dibner, Bern. Moving the Obelisks: A chapter in engineering
history in which the Vatican obelisk in Rome in 1586 was moved
by muscle power, and a study of more recent similar moves. New
York: Burndy Library, 1850.
Engelbach, R. (Chief Inspector of Antiquities, Upper Egypt). The
Problem of the Obelisks, from a Study of the Unfinished Obelisk
of Aswan. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923.
Tweed loves to hear from his readers. He can be reached at
[email protected].
Partial Bibliography
Alexander, Sir James Edward. Cleopatra’s Needle, The Obelisk of
Alexandria: Its Acquisition and Removal to England Described.
London: Chatto & Windus, 1879.
Curran, Brian A., Grafton, Anthony, Long, Pamela O., and Weiss,
Benjamin. Obelisk: A History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.
D’Alton, Martina. The New York Obelisk, or How Cleopatra’s
Needle Came to New York and What Happened When It Got
Gorringe, Henry Honeychurch. Egyptian Obelisks. New York
(published by the author), 1882.
Moldenke, Charles E. The New York Obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle,
with a Preliminary Sketch of the History, Erection, Uses, and
Signification of Obelisks. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph and
Co., 1891.
Noakes, Aubrey. Cleopatra’s Needles.
Witherby Ltd, 1962.
London: H. F. & G.
Weisse, John A. The Obelisk and Freemasonry, According to the
Discoveries of Belzoni and Commander Gorringe; Also, Egyptian
Symbols Compared with Those Discovered in American Mounds.
New York: J. W. Bouton, 1880.
Vision Statement
The purpose of the Theodore Roosevelt Association of Oyster Bay, New York, is to perpetuate
the memory and ideals of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, for the
benefit of the people of the United States of America and the world; to instill in all who may be
interested an appreciation for and understanding of the values, policies, cares, concerns, interests,
and ideals of Theodore Roosevelt; to preserve, protect, and defend the places, monuments, sites,
artifacts, papers, and other physical objects associated with Theodore Roosevelt’s life; to ensure
the historical accuracy of any account in which Theodore Roosevelt is portrayed or described; to
encourage scholarly work and research concerning any and all aspects of Theodore Roosevelt’s life,
work, presidency, and historical legacy and current interpretations of his varied beliefs and actions;
to highlight his selfless public service and accomplishments through educational and community
outreach initiatives; and, in general, to do all things appropriate and necessary to ensure that
detailed and accurate knowledge of Theodore Roosevelt’s great and historic contributions is made
available to any and all persons.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
35
Book Review
J. Lee Thompson. Theodore Roosevelt Abroad: Nature, Empire, and the Journey
of an American President. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 218 pp.
Reviewed by Robert Wexelblatt
Immediately after leaving office in 1909 Theodore
Roosevelt set out on his famous hunting trip through British
East Africa with his son Kermit and a train of naturalists,
skinners, guards, and bearers. His accounts of his adventures
along the way were published and were followed closely at
home—indeed, worldwide. He shot an extraordinary number
of large animals, collecting also specimens of birds, reptiles,
fish, and plants. He met and exchanged views with British
colonial governors, settlers, and military officers and covered
vast tracts of land, even venturing briefly into the Congo,
before proceeding up the Nile to the Sudan and Egypt, where he
bucked up dispirited imperialist officials. Anticipating a second
honeymoon in Europe, he instead found himself making a sort
of royal progress through its capitals, hailed by enthusiastic
crowds, hospitable royals, and respectful aristocrats in every
country—save Germany. All the while he was kept abreast of
domestic politics, the resurgence of the anti-progressive wing of
the Republican Party, and the decisions of his chosen successor
on appointments, tariffs, and conservation policy that led to his
break with William Howard Taft and TR’s unsuccessful run for
the presidency in 1912.
J. Lee Thompson is an established scholar of the period.
He has published four monographs on the British Empire
focused on the lives and times of Alfred Milner, who made his
name in South Africa, and the press baron Lord Northcliffe.
TR’s devotion to cultivating good relations between Britain
and the United States—“the English-speaking peoples,” as he
was fond of saying—was at the core of his geopolitical thinking,
and Thompson brings to this study a deep appreciation of the
issues of empire and Roosevelt’s sense of mission. He offers few
judgments, but those he propounds are thoroughly informed and
fair-minded.
The book is ordered chronologically, with political
commentary punctuating a detailed account of the great
expedition: where TR went, whom he met, what he did. The later
sections, covering his European sojourn, deal with the President’s
encounters with and judgments of the leading figures of several
Western European countries. Andrew Carnegie was a financial
backer of the trip, as well as an admirer of TR, and there is some
emphasis on Carnegie’s efforts to have the former President
win support for his plan to establish international peace
institutions, especially from the German Kaiser. Thompson
deftly summarizes the speeches and lectures TR delivered
across the continent and how they were received, which was
generally very well indeed. The author draws on primary source
material, especially the correspondence between TR and his
contacts at home and in Britain, and also intimate and candid
exchanges with old friends like the French ambassador Jean
Jules Jusserand. Theodore Roosevelt Abroad is clearly written,
impeccably researched, and certainly the most authoritative
book yet published on these fifteen months of Roosevelt’s life.
Though Thompson is clearly an admirer of TR and his
safari, he does not ignore some sour notes. For example, Dr.
William J. Long must have spoken for a number of people in his
letter to the New York Times saying that “the ‘worst feature in
the whole bloody business’ was not the ‘killing of a few hundred
wild animals in Africa,’ but the ‘brutalizing influence’ ” of TR’s
exciting reports “on thousands of American boys” (pp. 49-50).
On one occasion, Thompson himself suggests the dilemma,
if not the irony, of a conservationist going after a species even
then regarded as endangered, the white rhino. It was in quest
of this animal that TR crossed briefly into the Belgian Congo,
the beast having been hunted nearly to extinction elsewhere.
The President allowed that it might “be well” if hunting of the
species were forbidden “until careful inquiry” into its remaining
numbers could be made. To this Thompson adds dryly: “After, of
course, he took his specimens.” Generally, though, Thompson is a
powerful defender of the great adventure’s scientific significance,
always stressed by TR himself:
When the numbers were totted up at the end of the safari,
more than 11,000 specimens . . . had been captured and
preserved. Many of the almost 5,000 mammals, 4,000 birds,
500 fish, 2,000 reptiles, and many invertebrates, remain
in the Smithsonian and other museums and are still used
regularly today for research and study (p. 85).
The President retained only a negligible number of trophies for
himself. He was assiduous in leaving no wounded prey and felt
36
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
remorse over the necessity of shooting some overly aggressive
hippos.
More interesting than the book’s account of the hunting,
however, is its account of politics, both domestic and foreign.
Thompson provides many telling vignettes; his description of
TR’s antipathy for Winston Churchill is one example, Roosevelt’s
exchanges with the Kaiser a more significant one. The broad
political themes are imperialism, military power, race, and TR’s
views on the moral role of
government.
With regard to empire,
the opinions the President
expressed in Africa are
oddly
reminiscent
of
another admirer of the
British
Empire
who
famously
visited
the
continent. Joseph Conrad,
who, in Heart of Darkness,
wrote the greatest of all
indictments of European
imperialism, felt much as
TR did: that the British
were more efficient and
humane colonists than
the Belgians or Germans;
that, indeed, their rule was
on the whole beneficent,
paternalism redeeming an
extractive economy. Though
the President’s views on
matters of race and empire
are decidedly outdated, his
approbation of imperialism
always took account of
whether it was good for the
colonized, and the same
may be said of his views on
the inferiority of non-white
people. It is well to recall
that the idealistic and antiimperialistic
Woodrow
Wilson was actually by
far the worse bigot (and
the
more
aggressive
interventionist).
Though
Thompson is inclined to pardon TR’s least attractive attitudes on
race and empire, he does not overlook them, as in this passage:
A man of his times, Roosevelt had a patently Darwinistic,
paternalistic and racist view of the Africans on the safari.
He and Kermit became very fond of several of the men who
served them, but they never really thought of them as “men”
at all. They were children to be taken care of and guided
(p. 39).
The same ideas shaped TR’s view of the imperial project:
It was the responsibility of the British to protect and to raise
them up to [a] civilized level. . . . In turn the Africans should
be grateful for the benefits of British rule (p. 39).
This care for the
“raising” of indigenous
peoples, however, did not
extend to those of East
Africa, which, owing chiefly
to its temperate climate and
agricultural potential, TR
deemed “a real white man’s
country,” a sort of African
version of New Zealand.
The settlers in Nairobi, of
course, gobbled this up.
Perhaps they listened with
less attention to how he
conditioned his support
for their proprietorship by
warning them that:
Not only the laws of
righteousness but your
own real and ultimate
self-interest demand that
the black man be treated
with justice, that he be
safeguarded in his rights
and helped upward, not
pressed downward (p.
56).
As to self-government for
non-whites, Sudanese or
Egyptians as well as future
Kenyans, TR was more
than frank. He had no
patience for those at
home who “prate of selfgovernment” for people
who have “not governed
themselves and never could.” The white population must
“occupy a position of unquestioned mastery and leadership,”
but with a “deep sense of all the responsibility which it
entails” (p. 57).
In short, TR took to heart Rudyard Kipling’s counsel to the
world’s newest imperialists in “The White Man’s Burden.”
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
Theodore Roosevelt Abroad is full of rich details, such as
the titles in the little “pigskin” library Roosevelt took with him
on his journey and the fact that it was in Africa where he first
came to love Shakespeare. Another is TR’s view that European
politics was perverted by a petrified aristocracy on the one hand
and extreme socialism on the other. Thompson characterizes
Roosevelt’s level-headed and distinctly American middle position
well:
He was a “strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance
and conviction”; but it was only common sense to recognize
that “the State, the community, the citizens acting together,
can do a number of things better than if they were left to
individual action” (p. 127).
Along the way we learn of TR’s educational theory—that
intellectual attainment should always be secondary to characterbuilding—and that he thought the greatest of all national curses
to be sterility rather than war. It is amusing to read that TR was
the first commoner to be invited to hunt with Franz-Josef (weary
of shooting things, he refused) and the first permitted to review
German troops. The retired President’s genuine puzzlement
at the enthusiasm with which he was received in Europe is
touching, and he expressed it with uncharacteristic humility but
characteristic humor:
The royals vied with each other to entertain [TR and Edith]
and the popular displays were even more remarkable. In his
opinion this was largely because to them he represented the
American Republic, which stood to the average European as
a “queer, attractive dream, . . . a kind of mixture of Bacon’s
Utopia and Raleigh’s Spanish Main” (p. 133).
Though Thompson does not emphasize the point, another
reason for the warmth of the reception appears to have been
the almost universal opinion that Roosevelt would return to the
presidency. This view was widely held, not only by admirers
abroad but also by detractors at home. For example, the day
after TR left office, Mark Twain wrote:
We may expect to have Mr. Roosevelt sitting on us again,
with his twenty-eight times the weight of any other
Presidential burden that a hostile Providence could impose
upon us for our sins. Our people have adored this showy
charlatan as perhaps no impostor of his brood has been
adored since the Golden Calf, so it is to be expected that the
Nation will want him back again after he is done hunting
other wild animals heroically in Africa, with the safeguard
and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass
band (letter dated March 6, 1908, published in New York
Times, May 31, 1912).
So, not all of his countrymen admired President Roosevelt,
but even his enemies appreciated the rectitude and force of
his personality, and Europeans in general loved him for these
37
qualities, so much so that they were even willing to be lectured
to by him. Again, the exception was Germany. It is ironic that so
many people saw Wilhelm II and TR as similar types—although
they did have a lot in common, including the overcoming of
childhood debilities, a tendency to hyperactivity, the capacity
to dominate their surroundings, and a passion for naval power.
The President himself admitted that the Kaiser was “an able and
powerful man”; he even confessed that he admired Wilhelm, albeit
only as he would “a grizzly bear” (p. 139). Still, Germany was the
single and ominous exception to the Continental adulation:
In Germany Roosevelt noted a different attitude across
society than in any other European country. He was treated
with the proper civility, and the authorities showed him
every courtesy, but he encountered no boisterous popular
receptions, no decorated and over-crowded streets or
cascades of applause at theatres that had become the norm
elsewhere (p. 142).
In Berlin, needless to say, furthering Carnegie’s hopes for
disarmament and international courts of arbitration was not in
the cards.
The final chapters in the book include an account of the
funeral of Edward VII, where TR represented his country, and the
lectures he delivered to the British, which sounded his customary
theme of the moral mission of the “English-speaking peoples.”
Thompson briefly but movingly reviews the final decade of TR’s
life and details the fate of the major characters mentioned in the
course of the narrative, including all of the monarchs and some of
the animals. It is an informative though melancholy conclusion,
like the finale of one of the less cheerful Victorian novels. We learn
of Kermit’s depression and eventual suicide during World War II
and of the persistent debate over the ethics of TR’s safari. There
is even a bit of praise for the deposed Kaiser in whom TR had
glimpsed a dangerous if kindred spirit and in whom he detected
some good; for, “to his credit,” the old autocrat “refused to be used
for propaganda purposes by Hitler and the Nazi regime” (p. 178).
As to TR himself, Thompson calls his final years a “sad coda” to a
full and altogether remarkable life: the failure of his progressive
Bull Moose campaign, his illnesses, and his ineffectual fury at
Wilson. The book ends with the poignant reflection that until his
death Theodore Roosevelt had to bear “the political mark of Cain”
for dividing his party (p. 172).
Robert Wexelblatt, a previous contributor to the TRA Journal and
a member of the TRA Advisory Board, is professor of humanities at
Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published
essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, as well
as several books, including, most recently, the novel Zublinka
Among Women.
THE PULITZER P R I Z E – W I N N I N G A U T H O R O F
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex completes
his “MA S T E R P I E C E ” * biography.
EDM
U
N
D
M
O
R
R
I
S
“Fabulous quote to go here.
“
...
More fabulous quote to continue. More fabulous“MAGISTERIAL
quote to continue.
The magnum opus is complete.”
—FROM SOMEONE FABULOUS,
author of Something Even More Fabulous
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Reading Edmund Morris on Theodore Roosevelt
is like listening to Yo-Yo Ma play Bach:
You know from the first note you’re in
INSPIRED hands.”
—Washingtonian
“MASTERFUL,
and can rightfully take its place among
the truly outstanding biographies of
the American presidency.”
—Los Angeles Times
“It is the talent of the author, who has
shown an immaculate understanding of
his subject, to make Roosevelt of
CONTINUED
FASCINATION
to his readers.”
—Booklist, starred review
Col onel
Roosevelt
R AV E S F O R THE EARLIER VOLUMES:
“One of those
rare works that is both
“As a literary work on
Theodore Roosevelt, it is
DEFINITIVE
UNLIKELY
EVER TO BE
SURPASSED.
for the period it covers and
fascinating to read for
sheer entertainment.”
—The New York Times
Book Review, on
The Rise of Theodore
Roosevelt
A R A N D O M
It is one of the great histories of
the American presidency.”
H O U S E H A R D COV E R , e B O O K , A N D AU D I O B O O K
www.AtRandom.com
—The Times Literary Supplement,
on Theodore Rex
* The Washington Post, on Theodore Rex
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
39
An Outrage Pure and Simple
a feature review of James Bradley,
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), 387 pp.
by William N. Tilchin
Introduction: An Unhinged Ideological Polemic
In The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War,
author James Bradley sets out to expose Theodore Roosevelt
as an arrogantly self-centered, untalented, racist, enormously
destructive buffoon. Utilizing historical evidence selectively
and improperly as he peddles interpretations of history that are
sharply in conflict with the findings of generations of credible
popular and professional historians, Bradley is stunningly
incorrect on each of these counts. Nevertheless, arrogant, selfcentered buffoonery is indeed at the core of this book. This
buffoonery does not pertain at all to the consummate diplomatist
and the great and farseeing U.S. President who is the object
of Bradley’s ill-informed, ill-conceived, self-righteous scorn.
Rather, this buffoonery is exhibited by the would-be historian
who has composed this shameful travesty.
In a penetrating dual review of Bradley’s book and Evan
Thomas’s The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the
Rush to Empire, 18981—each published by Little, Brown and
Company—Jonathan S. Tobin, the executive editor of the journal
Commentary, opens with these words:
The cultural vilification of the politicians and officials
who launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq has
not satisfied those intellectuals and activists who view
American history as a continuum of racism, imperialism,
and aggression. The authors of two new books have now
extended the hunt for the spiritual antecedents of the
George W. Bush administration. Their prey is an unlikely
villain: Theodore Roosevelt.
After methodically eviscerating Thomas’s very bad book,
which misrepresents TR via “a caricature of psychological
motivations,” Tobin tellingly declares: “Despite the many
shortcomings of Thomas’s The War Lovers, it is a model of
scholarship when compared with the work of James Bradley.
. . . The Imperial Cruise provides an example of the perils of
navigating a complex historical subject armed with nothing but
a narrow ideological agenda.” Tobin then aptly goes on to label
Bradley’s book an “unhinged polemic” and a “diatribe against
Theodore Roosevelt and the America that produced him.”2
Such a book would not normally merit a feature review, or
any review at all for that matter, in a serious scholarly journal
(a one-sentence or one-phrase condemnation­ would usually
be sufficient3). But this particular journal is a publication of
the Theodore Roosevelt Association, and Bradley’s reckless
disparagement of TR has achieved considerable sales. An indepth analytical assault on his misbegotten creation is therefore
in order.
Start with the Facts
While this review must and will focus primarily on Bradley’s
stupendously faulty analysis, The Imperial Cruise is a profoundly
ignorant book even on the basic level of undisputed objective facts.
Pity the student who carefully reads this book in preparation for
an important multiple-choice exam. For here are some of the
claims such a student would encounter in this process: (1) The
United States’ existence as an independent nation began in 1783
(you might remember the grand bicentennial celebration you
participated in on July 4, 1983)—and this is not a typing error,
for the assertion occurs at least twice.4 (2) Theodore Roosevelt
deployed naval forces in 1903 “to wrest Panama away from
Venezuela.”5 (3) The United States fought in World War II for
“a period of fifty-six months” (the actual number is forty-four,
so maybe Bradley was counting backward from one hundred).6
(4) “Emperor Napoleon helped America in the war of separation
from England” (a war that actually ended several years before
the onset of the French Revolution, which preceded [and set the
stage for] the rise of Napoleon).7 (5) The Philippines gained its
independence from the United States in 1962 (actually 1946).8
(6) Benjamin Harrison was “a famous Indian slayer.”9 (Here
Bradley’s reproach is off by fourteen U.S. Presidents and two
generations of Harrisons.) (7) On Russia’s “Bloody Sunday” in
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
40
Photo taken aboard the Mayflower at the launching of the RussoJapanese peace conference on August 5, 1905. According to James
Bradley (demonstrating the levels of manners and knowledge
emblematic of his historical writing), these figures include “Rough
Rider Teddy” and, farthest to the right, “Takahira Kogoro.”
January 1905, “two hundred thousand protestors [sic] assailed
the Winter Palace demanding victory over Japan or an end to
the war” (a massive misrepresentation of the infamous slaughter
resulting from Father George Gapon’s humble attempt to
petition Tsar Nicholas II to aid Russia’s suffering masses).10 (8)
Japan subjugated Korea from 1905 to 1950. Here the author
is quite confused about when the “unnecessary” war to which
he so vehemently objects (World War II) ended (or, alternatively,
he believes that Japan retained control of Korea for five years
after surrendering to the United States).11 (9) Queen Victoria
controlled the British government and had the power to (and
did) launch wars.12 (She was a constitutional monarch with
only very limited authority.) (10) Speck von Sternburg was
TR’s ambassador to Russia.13 (Yes, he was an ambassador:
Germany’s to the United States.) (11) Japan’s ambassador to
the United States was “Takahira Kogoro” (as correct as calling
the first U.S. President “Washington George”).14 (12) Along with
the Western Hemisphere, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine applied “to North Asia (Korea and Manchuria) and to
enforcing the Open Door policy in China” (a novel, expanded,
and fallacious interpretation of the corollary).15 (13) The Pacific
Ocean is “eight times the size of the Atlantic” (actually about 2.2
times).16 (14) American Presidents generally choose and groom
their successors.17 (The completely different historical reality
is that for more than the past 170 years, Theodore Roosevelt
has been the only U.S. President to anoint his successor; the
numerous Vice Presidents who acceded to the presidency
upon the death of their predecessors should not, of course, be
counted as chosen successors.) (15) Contradictorily, but just as
incorrectly: In 1905, “William Howard Taft had the inside track
on the 1908 Republican presidential nomination, based mostly
upon his reputation as a nation builder.”18 (16) The oldest son
of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt was “Theodore Roosevelt III.”19
(17) TR married his second wife Edith “a year” after the passing
of his first wife Alice.20 (18) TR won his first election to the New
York State Assembly in 1883 (in reality two years earlier).21 And
in addition to all his factual errors—of which the foregoing list is
unfortunately but a sampling—Bradley finds many other ways
to display embarrassingly sloppy work.22
Although its author apparently perceives himself to be a
writer of literary talent, The Imperial Cruise is written in a style
that might be characterized as both self-absorbed and mediocre
(which means that Bradley’s writing, relatively speaking, is the
least incompetent aspect of the book). For instance, there are
structurally unsound sentences (as on page 58 and page 311),
and the author, unsatisfied with the options offered by the
English language, frequently makes up words or distorts their
meanings. He repeatedly misuses the verb “wester,” improperly
(and, again, repeatedly) uses “friction” as a verb, and makes up
the verb “unmoderate.”23
An Analytical Fiasco
Bradley’s historical analysis reflects an absence of
awareness (often downright cluelessness) of a magnitude rarely
found even in very bad books.24 Examples of this shortcoming
are so numerous that one literally could write a 300-page book
identifying and correcting them; thus, a reviewer must be content
succinctly to provide a representative selection.
The pomposity and the utter absurdity of The Imperial
Cruise are starkly previewed in a single sentence in the book’s
sixth paragraph: “This book reveals that behind [Roosevelt’s]
Asian whispers that critical summer of 1905 was a very big
stick—the bruises from which would catalyze World War II in
the Pacific, the Chinese Communist Revolution, the Korean
War, and an array of tensions that inform our lives today.”25
This grandiose, ridiculous assertion is made without even the
remotest understanding of Theodore Roosevelt’s diplomacy or
of either U.S. foreign policy or internal Japanese developments
between 1905 and 1941. The central notion that TR “gave” Korea
to Japan—when Japan actually had previously secured control
of Korea—is preposterous and, moreover, completely fails to
explore the President’s main alternative to endorsing Japanese
rule: TR could have gratuitously antagonized Japan over this
matter, thereby endangering the U.S. position in the Philippines
and, more generally, signaling the Japanese that they should
view the United States as a hostile rival.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
Think about this: A book attempting to explain U.S.-Japan
relations during Theodore Roosevelt’s second presidential term,
with the word “cruise” in its title, makes not a single reference
to by far the most important cruise of Roosevelt’s presidency
(of all of U.S. history for that matter)—even though that cruise
was in large part designed to influence U.S.-Japan relations!
No, the world cruise of the Great White Fleet from December
1907 to February 1909 does not make an appearance in James
Bradley’s book. (If he had been aware of it, he undoubtedly
would have tried to use it to slam TR snidely for “grandstanding”
or “bullying” or “militarism” or some such nonsense.) Likewise,
there is zero familiarity either with TR’s multidimensional
and impressively successful management of the U.S.-Japanese
immigration-racism crisis of 1906-1908 or with the Root-Takahira
Agreement of November 1908, the culmination of Roosevelt’s
extremely well-conceived and well-executed Japan policy. The
years 1906-1909—years during which TR wisely and deftly
forged a mutually respectful, friendly understanding between
the United States and Japan (an understanding which, had it
been continued by TR’s successors, might have averted Japan’s
eventual plunge into a campaign of unspeakably predatory and
brutal aggression)—simply constitute a black hole in Bradley’s
harangue. Not surprisingly, then, there also is absolutely no
familiarity with Charles Neu’s excellent book on the subject,
which concludes with these words:
Theodore Roosevelt can hardly be blamed for the ultimate
failure of his policy toward Japan. By the close of his
presidency it was a largely successful policy based upon
political realities at home and in the Far East and upon
a firm belief that friendship with Japan was essential to
preserve American interests in the Pacific. . . . Roosevelt’s
diplomacy during the Japanese-American crisis of 19061909 was shrewd, skillful, and responsible.26
Bradley’s attention is directed elsewhere—to a comparatively
minor episode in the history of Roosevelt’s foreign policy, to which
the author attaches apocalyptic significance. Bradley’s “imperial
cruise” refers to the goodwill mission to East Asia, especially to
Japan, led by Secretary of War William Howard Taft (constantly
mocked by Bradley as “Big Bill”) and the President’s twentyone-year-old daughter Alice during July-September 1905.
While not inconsequential, neither was this mission of great
consequence (oh, and its diplomatic consequences were, by the
way, beneficial). Bradley’s exaggeration of the importance of this
event is truly breathtaking in its scope. Meanwhile—completely
in the dark about TR and Japan from 1906 to 1909 and about
U.S., Japanese, and international relations history from 1909
to 1941—the author has to find a way to produce a thick pile
of pages in order to pass his book off as substantial. Bradley’s
solution to this challenge is to go on and on about white and
Christian and American racism and to tell little stories about his
cruise that mostly amount to a lot of fluff. So there is plenty of
gossip, largely unfavorable, about Alice. We learn at some length
of the perceptions of Mrs. Campbell Dauncey, an Englishwoman
41
residing in the Philippines whose observations mark her as antiAmerican.27 And the book’s final chapter is replete with postcruise filler about Taft, Alice, and others.28
Theodore Roosevelt was among American history’s most
astute and most effective statesmen. Indeed, as this reviewer
has written elsewhere, “it is difficult to escape the conclusion that
in the foreign policy arena Roosevelt was probably the greatest
of all U.S. Presidents.”29 Yet, here too, the self-appointed expert
who has authored The Imperial Cruise stands history on its head
by accusing TR of “bumbling diplomacy.”30 In actuality, Roosevelt
made a gallant, multifaceted, well-considered effort to promote
peaceful and cooperative Japanese behavior; Bradley’s contention
that TR wanted Japan to build a large Asian empire by brutally
seizing control of nearby and more distant territories is the exact
opposite of historical reality. And ascribing responsibility to TR
for Pearl Harbor is on the outer edge of the crackpot theories that
readers of history occasionally encounter.
Bradley depicts Theodore Roosevelt as a thoroughgoing
racist. This is another gross distortion. TR was a progressive
racial thinker for his era. Yes, he believed that some peoples—
particularly Americans and Britons—were ahead of others in
what he called the “progress of civilization,” and that the more
advanced peoples should help the less advanced move forward.
But he rejected skin color and ethnicity as determinants of a
people’s capacities. Bradley’s repeated emphasis of the idea
that TR believed in “Aryan” supremacy is especially insidious
(as is his constant employment of the phrase “American Aryan,”
obviously intended to suggest that historical American racism
was on a par with Nazism). Had TR lived into the 1930s, he
almost certainly would have been the American counterpart of
Winston Churchill in calling for active resistance to the Aryansupremacist aggression of the Nazis—and he would have
condemned unequivocally Japanese brutality in China and
elsewhere.
In truth, Theodore Roosevelt was more hopeful about
Japan’s prospects for responsible international behavior than
he was about “Aryan” Germany’s or Russia’s. The President’s
support for Japanese retention of Korea reflected the reality that
Roosevelt was evaluating Japan on its achievements and not on
its non-white racial make-up. Japan had become an admirable
great power, and TR was treating it as one (while always keeping
the navy ready just in case).31
At least a limited quantity of additional examples of The
Imperial Cruise’s superabundant analytical distortion probably
should be noted. The discussion of the Russo-Japanese peace
negotiations incredibly claims that an ineffectual TR duped
contemporaries and historians by “pos[ing] as a diplomat” (“the
warmonger masqueraded as a man of peace”), ignores most of
the dramatic diplomatic interactions of August 1905 (never even
mentioning Sakhalin Island), and fails utterly to grasp Japan’s
almost desperate need for a settlement, which required the
42
abandonment of its demand for a Russian indemnity.32 Bradley
not only believes that Roosevelt could and should have withheld
Korea from Japan but insists that November 28, 1905, the day
TR purportedly gave Korea to Japan, is as significant historically
in accounting for World War II as December 7, 1941. (Shame on
us historians for overlooking that monumental event for so long!)
And the importance of an Anglo-American special relationship
(cultivated so adroitly by TR33) to the world of 1901-1909 and
even more to the world over the century following TR’s presidency
evidently is far beyond the author’s capacity for comprehension.
(Bradley’s comments on Roosevelt’s policy of linking the United
States informally to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance—a central
purpose and a major accomplishment of the “imperial cruise”—
are entirely and harshly negative.34) Indeed, Bradley clearly is
not at all convinced that the good guys won the Second World
War (or the Cold War), in the process rescuing the people of the
world from an unimaginably horrific fate.
Unrestrained Loathing
of brutal ethnic cleansing by mass murderers advancing over
“unmarked graves.”35 The small minority of whites who opposed
the predation (that is, who approached James Bradley in their
degree of moral rectitude) were marginalized and ostracized; the
outcome of political contests was determined by “the American
Aryan electorate.”36 The unimpressive military success against
Spain by Admiral George Dewey, “the very picture of an Aryan,”
was celebrated widely, including in advertisements featuring
“Dewey scrubbing his White [sic] hands whiter.”37 After Dewey’s
triumph, Americans enthusiastically engaged in a race war in
the Philippines.38 Other white racist Western villains on the
receiving end of the author’s ire include Thomas Jefferson and
Winston Churchill.39 Christianity, Bradley declares, “was a
conquest religion in the service of state militaries.”40 The abuse
of China by Western powers in the nineteenth century was a
product of “the Jesus-opium trade” (a phrase employed three
times in less than one page).41
Particularly venomous loathing is directed toward the
leading villain of them all: Theodore Roosevelt. The Imperial
Cruise contains well over 150 derisive first-name-only references
to “Teddy” (often “Big Stick Teddy” or “Rough Rider Teddy”),42
because of whose malevolent incompetence Bradley’s father
had “to suffer through World War II in the Pacific.”43 Roosevelt
“needed eyeglasses to see his own hands.”44 “Ranchman Teddy”
in the Dakota Territory constituted “a spectacular fiction
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
The Imperial Cruise is infused with hatred (yes, hatred
is the accurate word) for Americans, Christians, and white
Westerners as a whole. The people who built the United States
were a bunch of racist predators; the country’s history is one
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
The return to the United States of the Great White Fleet in February 1909 from an extremely successful and significant world cruise not mentioned even
once in James Bradley’s The Imperial Cruise.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
An Illusory Universe
Here is the world as it should have been and should be
according to the logic of James Bradley’s self-righteous and
historically vacuous screed: The United States was a nation
of predatory, racist, murderous expansionists—a nation whose
very existence was of questionable legitimacy. But once in
existence, the United States should have remained a confined,
internationally inconsequential seaboard nation hurling moral
invectives against the acquisitive imperialist powers of Europe.
If not for American imperialism, such peoples as Hawaiians and
Filipinos would have had nothing to fear. The same would go
for Poles and Danes and Czechs and Slovaks and Hungarians
too (although Bradley views all white Europeans and North
Americans as part of a self-appointed Aryan master-race whose
well-being is of little concern to him), for German and Japanese
militarism and genocidal aggression would not have threatened
these or any other national groups. No, the world would have
been free of war and a much better place in the absence of the use
of power—and the diplomacy of power—by Theodore Roosevelt
and many of the U.S. Presidents who followed him. And, needless
to say, the American people themselves (including Native
Americans, the rightful rulers of the North American continent)
would have prospered in freedom in their cocoon in this world at
peace. Bradley sees as misguided and paranoid and self-serving
the notion that the globe would have been taken over by Nazism,
militant Japanese brutality, aggressive Soviet expansionism, or
Islamic extremism. Far from defending freedom and decency and
Western civilization against mortally dangerous adversaries,
American power in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early
twenty-first centuries has been an unmitigated scourge. Rather
than the development and, when necessary, the application of
U.S. military strength, the solution to the problem of aggressive
tyrannical regimes and evil ideologies is “to work on the human
links between cultures.”52 Now that is a coherent and discerning
and sophisticated and reassuring outlook on history and on the
contemporary world!
Conclusion: Speaking Freely
The customary, polite procedure in a decidedly unfavorable
review is to find something at least mildly complimentary to say
toward the end. But in this instance, such an approach would be
both undignified and intellectually dishonest. The author of The
Imperial Cruise attacks an iconic U.S. President (a deservedly
iconic President) in a mean, foul, self-important manner in order
to purvey a cascade of bizarre and unsustainable perspectives on
this exemplary leader and on U.S. history more generally. One
might grant that Bradley has every right to celebrate a successful
marketing campaign and the royalties generated thereby.53
There is, however, a rich irony here, for it was TR and those
later Presidents following in his footsteps (perhaps most notably
Harry Truman54) who made sure that the forces of barbarism
would fail in their efforts to impose a terrifying tyrannical
order on the world, and that Americans and others would retain
from Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1991)
concocted with an audience in mind.”45 Sagamore Hill was a
luxurious “sprawling mansion,” where TR spent his summers
on “vacation.”46 “Aristocratic Teddy” had no real regard for the
common citizens of his country; rather, he was an elitist who
“looked down on his American inferiors.”47 Roosevelt’s seven and
a half years as chief executive were an “accidental presidency,”
and in 1905 TR was “a lame-duck president.”48 In 1905 (as
he doggedly pursued an elusive Russo-Japanese peace), “the
Rough Rider” was “lost in his dress-up fantasies that summer
by the sea.”49 TR biographer Carleton Putnam’s opposition to
school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrates that
Roosevelt would have held the same view—a thinly veiled (and
almost certainly false) allegation so gratifying to Bradley that
he concludes his book with it.50 As a final example, Bradley—a
radical who one would suppose might find at least a small
measure of merit in TR’s progressive outlook and initiatives
on U.S. domestic questions—condemns without qualification
“Roosevelt’s decision to oppose Taft in 1912.”51
43
Winston Churchill, who apparently—­­in the view of the author of The
Imperial Cruise­—should be remembered not for heroically leading the
world-historical struggle to preserve freedom and Western civilization
and human decency by defeating the genocidal Nazis, but rather for
being yet another pernicious white Christian “westering” racist.
44
the right to express their views freely and to pursue material
prosperity. Speaking freely, then, this reviewer must conclude
in a manner appropriate to this essay: The Imperial Cruise has
not a single redeeming quality. It is an utter abomination—or, to
borrow Theodore Roosevelt’s concise assessment of the Canadian
claim in the Alaska boundary dispute, it is “an outrage pure and
simple.”55
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
of Empire and War (New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 2009), pp. 170, 282.
5
Ibid., p. 300.
6
Ibid., p. 127.
7
Ibid., p. 76.
8
Ibid., p. 91.
9
Ibid., p. 154.
10
Ibid., p. 228.
11
Ibid., p. 249.
12
Ibid., pp. 275-276.
13
Ibid., pp. 304, 368.
14
Ibid., p. 212.
15
Ibid., pp. 204, 213.
16
Ibid., p. 172.
17
Ibid., p. 326.
18
Ibid., p. 256.
19
Ibid., pp. 14, 16.
20
Ibid., p. 14.
21
Ibid., p. 50.
Endnotes
Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge,
Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (New York:
Little, Brown and Company, 2010).
1
Jonathan S. Tobin, “Smearing Theodore Roosevelt,”
Commentary, March 2010, pp. 26-29. Tobin’s review
essay is a masterpiece of insight and literary expression.
In his concluding section, after noting and criticizing
earlier negative portraits of TR by Henry Pringle
and Richard Hofstadter, Tobin remarks: “But the
defamatory efforts of Thomas and Bradley represent
a new, and especially low, chapter in ideological
American historiography.” Then, countering Bradley’s
and Thomas’s obvious personal dislike of Roosevelt,
Tobin offers an astute closing observation that can
be read as explaining the enduring success of the
politically diverse and nonpartisan Theodore Roosevelt
Association: “The legacy that has so endeared Theodore
Roosevelt to successive generations is not so much his
progressivism, enthusiasm for global American power,
or even his environmentalism. It is, instead, based on
an understanding that the spirit of adventure, service,
sacrifice, and yes, valor that Theodore Roosevelt
exemplified is one they find uniquely admirable
regardless of the politics of his day or our own. Far from
discrediting him, these virtues are precisely the ones
that have earned him his enduring popularity. One
suspects that as long as Americans admire courage,
this will remain the case” (p. 31).
2
See, for example, William N. Tilchin’s brief dismissals
of Sarah Watts, Rough Rider in the White House:
Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire (2003)
and of Jim Powell, Bully Boy: The Truth About
Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy (2006), Theodore Roosevelt
Association Journal, Vol. XXVIII, No. 3, Summer 2007,
p. 28.
3
4
James Bradley, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History
Some of Bradley’s citations—such as note 19 on p.
339, note 59 on p. 346, notes 78-79 on p. 350, note
47 on p. 361 (citing a letter of 1904 for a statement
identified as having been issued in 1905), and notes 1
and 25 on pp. 363-364—would reflect badly even on an
undergraduate. More flagrantly, in chapter 2, more
than twenty-five consecutive notes do not correspond
to the note numbers to which they are linked. In
one instance, Bradley declares that “one historian
advanced” a certain argument without identifying the
historian and without providing a citation (p. 250).
Misspellings are recurrent (for example, on pp. 153,
263, 341, 344). Quotations end without being marked
as ending (for example, on pp. 45, 305). Quotations
are presented incorrectly in ways that totally distort
their meanings (on p. 110, for example) or render
them incoherent (as on pp. 124, 266). Chronological
sequences are mangled (for example, on pp. 189-190).
22
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
In at least one instance, Bradley completely contradicts
himself, describing TR as “certain” and uncertain
about Japan’s future behavior (pp. 226, 228). As with
this review’s enumeration of factual errors, this listing
of other types and instances of sloppy work is but a
sampling.
For example, Bradley, Imperial Cruise, pp. 197, 231,
238.
45
37
Ibid., pp. 87-88.
38
Ibid., esp. ch. 4.
39
Ibid., pp. 28-29, 87.
40
Ibid., p. 172.
41
Ibid., pp. 275-276.
23
An enlightening (and entertaining) discussion of very
bad books can be found in Tweed Roosevelt, “Really,
Really Bad Books,” Theodore Roosevelt Association
Journal, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, Summer 2010, pp. 10-15.
24
25
Bradley, Imperial Cruise, pp. 4-5.
Charles E. Neu, An Uncertain Friendship: Theodore
Roosevelt and Japan, 1906-1909 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 319.
26
Fourteen such references (on pp. 40-41) can be viewed
all at once.
42
43
Bradley, Imperial Cruise, p. 331.
44
Ibid., p. 40.
45
Ibid., p. 52.
46
Ibid., pp. 240, 244.
27
Bradley, Imperial Cruise, ch. 9.
47
Ibid., p. 291.
28
Ibid., ch. 13.
48
Ibid., pp. 287, 238.
49
Ibid., p. 303.
William N. Tilchin, “Theodore Roosevelt,” in Frank W.
Thackeray and John E. Findling, eds., Statesmen Who
Changed the World: A Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary of
Diplomacy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), p.
487, and “Theodore Roosevelt and Foreign Policy: The
Greatest of All U.S. Presidents,” Theodore Roosevelt
Association Journal, Vol. XXX, Nos. 1 & 2, WinterSpring 2009, p. 37.
29
30
Bradley, Imperial Cruise, p. 322.
Ibid., pp. 332-333. It would even be unfair, although
far more plausible, to issue such an accusation against
Woodrow Wilson.
50
51
Ibid., p. 327.
52
Ibid., Acknowledgments, p. 336.
As for the publisher Little, Brown and Company, the
effective marketing of James Bradley’s The Imperial
Cruise (and of Evan Thomas’s The War Lovers, for
that matter) can be seen as analogous to the rampant,
effective marketing with impunity of useless or
harmful patent medicines and perilously unhealthful
foods before Theodore Roosevelt prevailed on Congress
to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
53
In January 2010, this reviewer drafted a memorandum
on The Imperial Cruise for electronic distribution
to members of the Theodore Roosevelt Association.
Small portions of this review essay, including much
of the two foregoing paragraphs, are drawn from that
memorandum.
31
32
Bradley, Imperial Cruise, pp. 299-305, 332.
See William N. Tilchin, “Theodore Roosevelt, Harry
Truman, and the Uneven Course of American Foreign
Policy in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,”
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. X, No. 4,
Winter 1984, pp. 2-10, and “TR and Foreign Policy: The
Greatest of All U.S. Presidents,” p. 36.
54
See William N. Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt and the
British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).
33
For example, Bradley, Imperial Cruise, pp. 232, 248250.
34
Theodore Roosevelt to John Hay, July 10, 1902, in
Elting E. Morison et al., eds., The Letters of Theodore
Roosevelt (8 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1951-1954), Vol. III, p. 287.
55
35
Ibid., p. 247.
36
Ibid., p. 235.
46
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
TR-ERA IMAGES
Image #7
Art Koch
Image #6
Three well-crafted and informative co-winning responses were provided
by Bill Moline, David R. Friedrichs, and Robert Bublitz. Following is a
composite description drawn from portions of all of their statements:
“This is an image of the transport Concho, docked in Port Tampa . . .
during the sweltering six-day wait” between boarding and departure, “which
carried most of the Rough Riders to Cuba in June of 1898. . . . Snapped by
noted photographer B. L. Lingley and formatted into a [stereoscope] card to
provide the three-dimensional record of life popular at the time, the photo
displays the pent-up enthusiasm of the Rough Riders as they ventured forth
on what were to become the defining battles of the Spanish-American War.
. . . The ship in the picture bears the numeral 14.” TR himself “embarked on
the Yucatan, which bore numeral 8.”
Image #7
Can you identify this stereoscope card?
Readers are invited to send their responses to Art Koch by e-mail at
[email protected] (or by mail at One West View Drive, Oyster Bay, NY 11771). Mr. Koch will identify the writer of the best
response on his TR-Era Images page in the next issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal.
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Fall 2010
47
PRESIDENTIAL SHAPSHOT (#14)
President Roosevelt Offers Advice, Opinions,
Compliments, and a Family Update to His
Twenty-Two-Year-Old Daughter
the complete text (plus opening and closing) of a letter
of June 24, 1906, to Alice Roosevelt Longworth
(in Morison et al., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,
Vol. V, pp. 312-313)
“Darling Alice,
“I have just cabled Nick that if he and you go to Austria
and stop at Vienna, I want you to stop, however briefly, at
Budapest. With this end in view, write to Count Apponyi or wire
him through our Ambassador, Francis. The Count has written
me urging that he be given the chance of seeing you both, and
that you stop in Budapest so that you shall not seem to ignore
Hungary and pay heed only to Austria. If you go to Austria and
Hungary I should avoid stopping either at Vienna or Budapest, or
else I should stop at both; and if you do go let you and Nick listen
smilingly to anything that anyone, from an Austrian archduke
to a Hungarian count, says about the politics of the dual empire,
but, as I need hardly add, make no comment thereon yourselves.
Of course you may not be going to Austria at all, in which case all
this is needless. I hope you will go to Paris; and indeed I take it
for granted that you will.
“Also, I feel that after you have been back a little while
it would be a good thing for you to go to Cincinnati for a short
time. Tell Nick I think his people will like to feel that you have a
genuine interest in the city and come out there to make yourself
one of Nick’s people. I have been watching very carefully to see
if there are any symptoms of this European trip having hurt
Nick at home. So far I have failed to find any; but of course his
opponents will do all they can to make it injure him, and though
so far you and he have carried yourselves so that no excuse has
been offered for criticism, still I think it would be just as well for
you to make a visit to Cincinnati while Nick’s canvass was on.
“Apparently you have both had a great time. I took sardonic
pleasure in the fearful heartburnings caused the American
colony in London, and especially among the American women
who had married people of title, by the inability of the Reids
to have everybody to everything. Nothing was more delightful
than the fact that some of the people who were not asked to the
dinner, but who were asked to the reception, hotly refused to
attend the latter. The Americans of either sex who live in London
and Paris, and those who marry titled people abroad, are, taking
them by and large, a mighty poor lot of shoats, and the less you
and Nick see of them the better I am pleased. Of course there are
exceptions, who are as nice as possible.
“I have been having a series of rough-and-tumble fights in
the closing days of Congress, but it looks as if we were coming
out pretty well. All the children are at Oyster Bay, where Ethel
is bossing the entire family, to their profit and her pleasure.
Mother and I have had lovely times here. We breakfast and
lunch on the portico and dine on the west terrace, unless the
weather is bad; and we have lovely rides together.
“Your loving father,”
T heodore R oosevelt
A ssociation J ournal
F all 2010