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IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 By Lawrence F. Abbot

CHAPTER TWO

POLITICS

   THEODORE ROOSEVELT was born into the Republican party as inevitably as Woodrow Wilson was born a Democrat, a fact which may well arouse some curious and interesting speculation about the influence of birth and heredity upon statesmanship and national history. If Roosevelt's father had been a Southerner, as his mother was, and Theodore had been born at "Roswell," the maternal family homestead in Georgia, it is quite possible, perhaps even probable, that he would have become a member of the Democratic party. But his ancestry and surroundings in New York being what they were, it was as natural for him to attach himself to the Republican Party as it was to go to Harvard College. In fact, in his autobiography he intimates as much himself in these words:
At that day, in 1880, a young man of my bringing up and convictions could join only the Republican party, and join it I accordingly did. It was no simple thing to join it then. That was long before the era of ballot reform and the control of primaries; long before the era when we realized that the Government must take official notice of the deeds and acts of party organizations. The party was still treated as a private corporation, and in each district the organization formed a kind of social and political club. A man had to be regularly proposed for and elected into this club, just as into any other club. As a friend of mine picturesquely phrased it, I "had to break into the organization with a jimmy."
Had Theodore Roosevelt become a scientific naturalist, as Father Zahm thinks he might have, or a historian and man of letters, as Brander Matthews almost wishes he had, he would doubtless have habitually voted the Republican ticket although his energies would never have been devoted to political administration. But since his career was that of a statesman it is interesting to know how it happened that, at twenty-two years of age, he became a Republican office-holder and thus entered upon an active political life.

Various people have claimed the honour of first suggesting his name as a Republican candidate for the New York Legislature. The matter, however, is easily settled on Theodore Roosevelt's own authority. He says that the man who launched him into practical politics was Joe Murray, a Republican leader—"lesser captain" Mr. Roosevelt calls him —in the twenty-first district Republican Association in the City of New York. In one of the moatentertaining and readable chapters of his autobiography Mr. Roosevelt tells the story and testifies to his respect and friendship for Joe Murray. Joe Murray's version of this important episode in the life of the future President of the United States has never yet, so far as I know, been publicly told, and I am fortunate in being able to reproduce it here. I came into possession of the story, which I shall proceed to relate in Mr. Murray's own words, in this way.

In 1910, when Theodore Roosevelt returned from his memorable trip through Africa and Europe, he was appealed to by a group of younger men in the Republican party to aid them in attempting to wrest the party control from the hands of the so-called "Old Guard." He somewhat reluctantly consented, as will appear hereafter, and went to the State Republican Convention at Saratoga as an ordinary delegate from Nassau County. I happened to be elected to the same convention as an alternate delegate from my own county, Orange. I went from New York to Saratoga in company with Mr. Roosevelt. On the train he introduced me to a strong, vigorous, ruddy-faced man of about sixty, saying: "I want you to know my friend, Joe Murray. He started me in politics. Take him into the smoking room and get him to tell you the story."
Whereupon Murray and I went into the smoking compartment of the parlour car and he told me in a most entertaining fashion how he happened in 1881 to pick Theodore Roosevelt as a candidate for the Legislature. The main points and the agreeable flavour of Joe Murray's story have remained with me ever since. But in order to be verbally accurate I got him to come to my office not long after Mr. Roosevelt's death and tell me the story again. I am sure that Mr. Murray will not object to my giving his colloquial and intimate language just as it fell from his lips, for it constitutes, I think, a human document of both charm and importance in the record of Theodore Roosevelt's political career. Incidentally, it reveals some of the methods of American politics at the time when Roosevelt was getting his first impressions of the need of social, industrial, and political reforms. This is the story, verbatim et literatim, taken down stenographically as Joe Murray told me how he first met young Roosevelt:
joe  murray's story
In 1881 Jake Hess was the leader in the Republican Twenty-first Assembly District organization of this city, the boundaries of which were the north side of Fortieth Street, the south side of Fifty-ninth Street, the east side of Seventh Avenue, and the west side of Lexington Avenue. Its head quarters were Morton Hall at Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, on the southeast corner. At that time a hotel had been started there by Tweed, but was never completed. The iron frame-work was partitioned off, and our organization occupied a portion of it, with stores underneath. The portion which we occupied was known as Morton Hall.

In those days I believed in the organization and I do now to a very large extent, but I did not think it was infallible. It makes mistakes. I believe to keep the party strong it is necessary to keep it pure.

In 1881, after the district was portioned off, we elected a man for the Legislature. The newspapers made a rather severe attack on him, and Major Bullard, who was one of the leaders in our organization, and myself had an idea that if he was renominated it would be necessary for us to have a defensive campaign, which is not a good thing for a Republican candidate. This Assemblyman had supported Platt and Conkling, the state bosses, in the previous Legislature, and they wanted him renominated, if he desired it, as a reward for his loyalty. Major Bullard and myself did not think he could be elected, and we considered that it would be a disaster to the Republican party to have the Twenty-first District go Democratic. Jake Hess wanted to follow the wishes of the State bosses, Platt and Conkling, and intended to nominate this man even if he couldn't be elected.

Hess was at that time one of the Commissioners of Charities and Corrections, and was of course a very influential man in the party, while I was more or less insignificant compared to him. He and Major Bullard and I got together to arrange a ticket for the coming primaries.

What Hess and Bullard and myself had to do was to pick out the delegates to be elected to the conventions, including the Assembly Convention which was going to nominate our candidate from the district. Hess wanted me as a delegate to the Congressional Convention and also to the Senatorial Convention because I was familiar with the routine; but I wanted, although I did not say so, to have a part in the Assembly Convention in order to prevent the renomination of this weak candidate that I have already spoken of. I assented to Hess's wishes and was a delegate, but I paid no attention to either the Senatorial or the Congressional Convention. Of course we knew beforehand that William Waldorf Astor was to be our Congressional candidate. What I wanted to give my special attention to was the Assembly Convention, although I was not a regular delegate. As a matter of fact, while I was not a delegate to the Assembly Convention, Major Bullard and I named fifteen out of the twenty-five delegates to this convention among our personal friends on whom we could depend.

Major Bullard, like myself, was a veteran of the Civil War. He and I went down to see Hess at the office of the Commissioner of Charities on Third Avenue, and there we met the candidate who represented the district the year previous and was seeking renomination. We took a walk over to the Sinclair House to get a drink. Bullard and Hess walked ahead, the Assemblyman and I were behind them. On the way over the Assemblyman says to me: "Joe, don't you think I ought to get a larger vote this year than I did a year ago?" I says: "For what?" He says: "For the Assembly, of course. You know I am better known now than I was then." I says: "Well, you're certainly better known. The fact of it is that anybody who knows you wouldn't vote for you." He says: "You'd vote for me, wouldn't you?" "Billy," I says, "I know a trick or two better than that. I wouldn't do anything of the kind."

So after we got to the bar-room he was particularly anxious to get away from me in order to talk to Hess. (Up to this time Hess knew nothing about this or about the position which Bullard and I were taking. But the delegates had been picked and he could not do anything.) After awhile, however, the prospective candidate got away. He went over to Hess, and after talking with him a very short time I saw Hess look over at me. We had our drink and went out. Hess then says to me: "Billy tells me that you are opposed to him." I says: "Yes." "Well," he says, "he will be nominated anyway. You don't amount to anything." I says: "No? Well, I don't amount to much, but if Billy goes up to the Legislature he certainly will not be indebted to Joe Murray!"

Of course Hess had a copy of the list of delegates selected— the primary ticket—and he sent a man named Jake Weller and his brother Charlie around to see the different delegates. Some of them told these men that they had not made up their minds; but the majority of them said: "Charlie, I should like to do you a favour very much, but I promised Joe Murray to vote for his candidate." When we had reached this point Major Bullard and I were sure of the convention. Now the thing to do was to get a candidate.

A night or two after this talk at the Sinclair House Mr. Roosevelt came around to a regular meeting at Morton Hall to enter his protest against the renomination of the candidate that the county organization desired to have renominated. So I spoke to young Roosevelt that night. I told him that I was also opposed to the renomination of the regular candidate and that I was looking around to try to get a suitable candidate. I had seen young Roosevelt at the meetings of the organization. My first interest in him was that of a vote-getter. It was later that I became interested in him as a man.

At that time Columbia College was in the district. His father figured more or less prominently in philanthropy, and the name was a good one. In addition to that, I thought I would interest the football team of Columbia, the baseball team, and the other different athletes connected with the College, together with the professors, among the most prominent of whom was Professor Van Amringe. Later, this professor got out and worked like a beaver.

When I asked young Roosevelt if he would take the nomination, he says: "No, I wouldn't dream of such a thing. It would look as though I had had selfish motives in coming around to oppose this man." "Well," I says, "get me a desirable candidate." "Oh," he says, "you won't have any trouble." "Well," I says, "it looks kind of easy, but so far I have not been able to get a candidate—the kind of a candidate that the Major and I think is a suitable one. We want to get the strongest one we can."

So finally he promised to look around. By that time I made up my mind that it was Theodore Roosevelt or no one. Of course I did not tell him so. We parted that night, and I met him by appointment the next night. I forget now whether he asked me if I had a candidate or whether I asked him if he had found any one. Neither one of us had one. I says: "The convention meets in a couple of nights and we have got this man beaten, but we have no candidate. What excuse can we give to the organization for not renominating this man when we have no candidate?"

"We won't have any trouble in getting a candidate," says Roosevelt.
I says: "I hope not, but Mr. Roosevelt, in case we can't get a suitable candidate, will you take the nomination?"

He hesitated a moment, and says: "Yes, but I don't want it. In the meantime, I want you to promise me that if you can find a suitable man, have no hesitancy about nominating him and do not take me into consideration."

I says: "All right, I'll do it." But I knew what I was going to do. So I met him the next night, and I reached out to shake hands with him, and instead of taking one hand he grabbed both hands.

He says: "Mr. Murray, I have done you a great injustice. I had an idea that you were guying me. I met our friend, Mr. Edward Mitchell [afterwards United States District Attorney and one of the Trustees of Columbia College at the time] this morning. I had a talk with him, and I told him about my conversation with Mr. Murray. He said: 'Mister Murray? Do you mean Joe Murray?' I said, 'Yes.' He said: 'Mr. Roosevelt, did he tell you he would nominate you?' I said 'Yes.' And Mitchell answered me and said: 'Well, Joe is not in the habit of making statements that he cannot make good. There is one thing I'll tell you. You have fallen into very good hands.'"

"Oh," I says, when Mr. Roosevelt finished his story about Mitchell, "that's all right." Afterward he made me say that I should have no hesitancy about pulling him out if I could get another candidate.

The Convention met a couple of nights after that. Hess started around to capture my delegates. I had an idea that two could play at that game. Therefore while he was trying to capture four or five of my delegates, I happened to capture one of his; so, instead of the vote being fifteen to ten, it was sixteen to nine.

After his nomination Theodore Roosevelt, Hess, Bullard, and I went out on a personal canvass. It was the custom in those days to visit the gin-mills, the stores, and places of business. The first place we happened to go into was the lager-beer saloon on Sixth Avenue, near Fifty-fifth Street kept by a German named Fischer. Hess introduced Mr. Roosevelt to the proprietor as the candidate for Assembly. Mr. Fischer says to him: "Well, Mr. Roosevelt, the liquor interest has not been getting a square deal. We are paying excessive taxes. I have no doubt that you will try to give us some relief when you get up to the Legislature." (One of the grievances of Mr. Fischer was that the license was too high.) Mr. Roosevelt asked him: "Mr. Fischer, what is the license now?" Mr. Fischer named the figure—what he had to pay—and Mr. Roosevelt says, "Well, that's not right. I don't think you pay enough, I thought it would be at least twice as much!"

After that we hustled him out and told him that he had better see to the college boys and his friends on Fifth Avenue, the society folks; that Hess, Bullard, and I would do the other end.
I took charge of his canvass. Mr. Roosevelt referred a great many of his friends to me to find out what they could do, among them being Professor Van Amringe—I recollect him because he was more active than the others. Quite a few of the football team, two-thirds of the baseball team, and the boxing club and the wrestlers came down to see what they could do. I told them to go around to see their friends. They wanted to know, however, what they could do on Election Day. I told them that they could stand at the booths and ask their friends, irrespective of politics, to vote for Roosevelt. But a very large majority wanted to know where the tough districts were. I wanted to send them to the dude districts where they belonged, as I thought, but they thought they would be of more service where there was more fighting to be done. So the districts that we considered difficult to carry were the ones that were particularly well manned. In fact, we had ten men where under ordinary circumstances we would only send one. There were no special difficulties in the election, for the simple reason that the Tammany men knew what was coming to them if they started any rough house.
Some of Mr. Roosevelt's friends who had "inside information," as they thought, came around and told him that I was an organization man, and that we wanted to elect Mr. Astor at all hazards; that he was simply put up for trading purposes in order to get votes for Astor from the Democrats, while in return we would vote for the Democratic candidate for Assembly. There were twenty-five election districts, and we only carried twenty-three out of the twenty-five for Roosevelt. It did not look, therefore, as though we had done much trading. The fact of the matter is there might have been some trading, but if there was we did not get the worst of it. As Mr. Roosevelt has said in his autobiography, it was a question between Jake Hess and Joe Murray. If Mr. Roosevelt was beaten Mr. Murray was beaten, and Joe could not afford to have himself beaten.
Is it not a matter of satisfaction, a source of a kind of affectionate pride to those who believe in American democracy, that Theodore Roosevelt had this kind of introduction, thus described by Joe Murray, into the career which was eventually to make him one of the great figures of world history? There is certainly a distinctively American flavour in the fact that the Irish immigrant of simple origin and the native American of aristocratic lineage thus formed a political and personal acquaintanceship which ripened into a friendship that lasted until the day of the ex-President's death. It reveals a certain endearing human quality in Theodore Roosevelt to know that he often expressed his sense of indebtedness to Murray as though the latter had been one of his earliest preceptors in the practice and philosophy of politics. Indeed, he says of Murray in his autobiography:
We never parted company excepting on the question of Civil Service Reform, where he sincerely felt that I showed doctrinaire affinities, that I sided with the Pharisees. We got back again into close relations as soon as I became Police Commissioner under Mayor Strong, for Joe was then made Excise Commissioner, and was, I believe, the best Excise Commissioner the city of New York ever had. He is now a farmer, his boys have been through Columbia College, and he and I look at the questions, political, social, and industrial, which confront us in 1913, from practically the same standpoint, just as we once looked at the questions that confronted us in 1881.
Theodore Roosevelt's political creed was indeed, from the very beginning, a distinctively human one. He liked men of all sorts and conditions of life so long as they were really men. He was not a "hail fellow well met" of the shoulder-slapping variety. No man knew better than he how to command respect and how to preserve his own dignity. But when he formed a friendship—and no man of our time has had wider, deeper, or more varied friendships—his personal relations with his friends were natural, simple, and confident. For him, a fundamentally good quality in a man covered, like charity, a multitude of sins, which would have repelled a more austere and exacting judge. At the same time his own standards were extraordinarily high and consistent. Yet he was often accused of associating and working with political publicans and sinners—by men whom it is perhaps not unfair to call political Pharisees. This apparent anomaly was clearly seen to be no anomaly at all by those who understood his own doctrine of political association. It was once expressed by him to his intimate friend, Jacob Riis, in a picturesque and illuminating fashion: "I suppose, "he said, speaking of his earliest experiences in the New York Legislature, "that my head was swelled. It would not be strange if it was. I stood out for my own opinion alone. I took the best 'mugwump' stand—my own conscience, my own judgment were to decide in all things. I would listen to no argument, no advice. I took the isolated peak on every issue, and my associates left me. When I looked around, before the session was well under way, I found myself alone. I was absolutely deserted. The people didn't understand. The men from Erie, from Suffolk, from anywhere, would not work with me. ' He won't listen to anybody,' they said, and I would not. My isolated peak had become a valley; every bit of influence I had had was gone. The things I wanted to do I was powerless to accomplish. I looked the ground over, and made up my mind that there were several other excellent people there, with honest opinions of the right, even though they differed from me. I turned in to help them, and they turned to and gave me a hand. And so we were able to get things done. We did not agree in all things, but we did in some, and those we pulled at together. That was my first lesson in real politics. It is just this: if you are cast on a desert island with only a screwdriver, a hatchet, and a chisel to make a boat with, why, go make the best one you can. It would be better if you had a saw, but you haven't. So with men. Here is my friend in Congress who is a good man, a strong man, but cannot be made to believe in some things in which I trust. It is too bad that he doesn't look at it as I do, but he does not, and we have to work together as we can. There is a point, of course, where a man must take the isolated peak and break with all his associates for clear principle: but until that time comes he must work, if he would be of use, with men as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, let him work with them for the best that can be obtained." One of the common virtues that most strongly appealed to him, socially as well as politically, was dependability. He was chary of making promises himself but when he did make them he kept them and he expected other men to do so, too. No Republican leader of the late eighties was more generally charged with being pastmaster in all the arts and finesse of reactionary and corrupt machine politics than Senator Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, popularly known as "Matt" Quay. Now Roosevelt had not the slightest toleration for corruption of any kind, but I have heard him more than once defend "Matt" Quay against attacks on the ground that when Quay made a promise to perform a certain act or to take a certain course that he could be depended upon to carry out that promise no matter what the political cost to his own interests might be. And I have also heard him in the same spirit criticize with almost extravagant severity a great leader of the Republican party, whom the people at large regarded as a shining exemplar of uprightness and high principles, because this leader would make a promise and then fail to carry it out loyally and energetically.

There naturally was never a warm friendship between this leader and Mr. Roosevelt, a lack of friendship which by Mr. Roosevelt's critics was sometimes ascribed to jealousy—a wholly mistaken diagnosis, in my judgment. There was not a tinge of jealousy in Theodore Roosevelt's disposition. He was, however, attracted by loyalty and dependability and repelled by what he thought to be austere or selfish aloofness.

As an illustration I may perhaps without impropriety refer to his relations with Senator Root who was Secretary of War and Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Roosevelt, and whom Mr. Roosevelt often named as one of the ablest, wisest, and most patriotic statesmen that the country has ever produced. In 1912, when Roosevelt left the Republican party after being defeated for the presidential nomination by methods which he thought were unjust and un-American, and by an unparalleled stroke of political skill formed the Progressive party and became its presidential nominee, his political and personal relations with Mr. Root were severed. But while in that hot and bitter campaign he denounced others among his political opponents in terms that sometimes had the flavour of primitive man, I never heard him once, either in private or in public, utter a personal criticism of Mr. Root. Indeed he defended Mr. Root against the criticisms of his (Roosevelt's), own friends who felt resentment that Mr. Root's rulings as chairman of the Republican National Convention had deprived Roosevelt of the nomination which the people at large really wished him to have. More than once I have heard him say when Mr. Root's "steam-roller" methods of seating and unseating delegates at the Convention were denounced as inexplicable disloyalty to his former Chief: "No, you are wrong. It was not disloyal. Elihu Root has the legal temperament developed to a high degree. His first duty he conscientiously believes is to his client. When he was a practising lawyer before going into the Government the corporations were his clients, and he was for the corporations. When he became a member of my Cabinet the United States was his client, and he was for the United States and against the corporations. As chairman of that convention the Republican party and its managers were Root's clients, and he was for them and against me."

The fact is that Roosevelt respected, I think it may be even said that he admired, this quality of loyalty in Mr. Root, although he believed it to be misdirected in the campaign of 1912 and felt that he was unjustly a sufferer from the misdirection.

Theodore Roosevelt's career both as a politician and a statesman—I say politician and statesman because I think there is a real distinction between the two which I shall try to make clear in a later chapter—was consistent, coherent, and coordinated. This statement may be challenged. For his public life was broken up, so to speak, into so many brilliant and dramatic episodes that these episodes, to the observer, sometimes seemed to be wholly unrelated and not infrequently antagonistic.

For example, in 1884 Roosevelt was a delegate to the National Republican Convention which nominated James G. Blaine for the Presidency. He opposed that nomination and fought vigorously in behalf of the candidacy of Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont. But Mr. Blaine was nominated. In spite of his ability and brilliance there were some financial incidents in his political career which were repellent to a large wing of the Republican party who were then, as Mr. Roosevelt was, working for the reenforcement of the principle of common honesty in practical politics. This group of Republicans bolted the nomination, forming what was then known as the "mugwump" group, and supported Mr. Cleveland, the Democratic candidate. Although Roosevelt was only twenty-five years old he had made himself a figure in the convention as well as in the party. It was thought by the leading "mugwumps" that he would sympathize with them and join them in their support of Cleveland. They were mistaken, however. He supported Blaine, and gave his reasons for so doing in the following public statement:
I intend to vote the Republican Presidential ticket. A man cannot act both without and within the party; he can do either, but he cannot possibly do both. Each course has its advantages, and each has its disadvantages, and one cannot take the advantages or the disadvantages separately. I went in with my eyes open to do what I could within the party; I did my best and got beaten, and I propose to stand by the result.
Was his action in the Blaine campaign consistent with his action in 1912 when he bolted the nomination of Mr. Taft, formed the Progressive party, and ran as a candidate for President himself? The consistency, it seems to me, is a very real one. It is found in the statement made to Jacob Riis which I have quoted earlier in this chapter: " There is a point where a man must take the isolated peak and break with all his associates for clear principle: but until that time comes he must work, if he would be of use, with men as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil let him work with them for the best that can be obtained."

In 1884 he believed that it was his duty to work with the Republican organization. In 1912 he believed the time had come to take to the "isolated peak" and to summon his supporters to join him. Both actions, seemingly so contradictory, were based upon, and were the logical result of, a fundamental political and moral philosophy. I propose in the next chapter to try to outline why Theodore Roosevelt was led to create the Progressive party and to oppose the candidacy of Mr. Taft—the most dramatic and outstanding event in his career as a political manager.