Theodore Roosevelt—His Problematic Character—He Offers Me an
Appointment—His _Bonhomie_ and Chivalry—Proud of His Rebel Kin
I
It is not an easy nor yet a wholly congenial task to write—truthfully,
intelligently and frankly to write—about Theodore Roosevelt. He
belonged to the category of problematical characters. A born
aristocrat, he at no time took the trouble to pose as a special friend
of the people; a born leader, he led with a rough unsparing hand. He
was the soul of controversy. To one who knew him from his childhood as
I did, always loving him and rarely agreeing with him, it was plain to
see how his most obvious faults commended him to the multitude and made
for a popularity that never quite deserted him.
As poorly as I rate the reign of majorities I prefer it to the one-man
power, either elective or dynastic. The scheme of a third term in the
presidency for General Grant seemed to me a conspiracy though with many
of its leaders I was on terms of affectionate intimacy. I fought and
helped to kill in 1896 the unborn scheme to give Mr. Cleveland a third
term. Inevitably as the movement for the retention of Theodore
Roosevelt beyond the time already fixed began to show itself in 1907,
my pen was primed against it and I wrote variously and voluminously.
There appeared in one of the periodicals for January, 1908, a sketch of
mine which but for a statement issued concurrently from the White House
would have attracted more attention than it did. In this I related how
at Washington just before the War of Sections I had a musical pal—the
niece of a Southern senator—who had studied in Paris, been a protégée
of the Empress Eugénie and become an out-and-out imperialist. Louis
Napoleon was her ideal statesman. She not only hated the North but
accepted as gospel truth all the misleading theories of the South: that
cotton was king; that slavery was a divine institution; that in any
enterprise one Southern man was a match for six Northern men.
On these points we had many contentions. When the break came she went
South with her family. The last I saw of her was crossing Long Bridge
in a lumbering family carriage waving a tiny Confederate flag.
Forty-five years intervened. I had heard of her from time to time
wandering aimlessly over Europe, but had not met her until the
preceding winter in a famous Southern homestead. There she led me into
a rose garden, and seated beneath its clustered greeneries she said
with an air of triumph, “Now you see, my dear old friend, that I was
right and you were wrong all the time.”
Startled, and altogether forgetful, I asked in what way.
“Why,” she answered, “at last the South is coming to its own.”
Still out of rapport with her thought I said something about the
obliteration of sectionalism and the arrival of political freedom and
general prosperity. She would none of this.
[Illustration: Henry Watterson (Photograph taken in Florida)]
“I mean,” she abruptly interposed, “that the son of Martha Bullock has
come to his own and he will rescue us from the mudsills of the North.”
She spoke as if our former discussions had been but yesterday. Then I
gave her the right of way, interjecting a query now and then to give
emphasis to her theme, while she unfolded the plan which seemed to her
so simple and easy; God’s own will; the national destiny, first a third
term, and then life tenure à la Louis Napoleone for Theodore Roosevelt,
the son of Martha Bullock, the nephew of our great admiral, who was to
redress all the wrongs of the South and bring the Yankees to their just
deserts at last.
“If,” I ended my sketch, “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, why
not out of the brain of this crazed old woman of the South?”
Early in the following April I came from my winter home in Florida to
the national capital, and the next day was called by the President to
the White House.
“The first thing I want to ask,” said he, “is whether that old woman
was a real person or a figment of your imagination?”
“She was a figment of my imagination,” I answered, “but you put her out
of business with a single punch. Why didn’t you hold back your
statement a bit? If you had done so there was room for lots of sport
ahead.”
He was in no mood for joking. “Henry Watterson,” he said, “I want to
talk to you seriously about this third-term business. I will not deny
that I have thought of the thing—thought of it a great deal.” Then he
proceeded to relate from his point of view the state of the country and
the immediate situation. He spoke without reserve of his relations to
the nearest associated public men, of what were and what were not his
personal and party obligations, his attitude toward the political
questions of the moment, and ended by saying, “What do you make of all
this?”
“Mr. President,” I replied, “you know that I am your friend, and as
your friend I tell you that if you go out of here the fourth of next
March placing your friend Taft in your place you will make a good third
to Washington and Lincoln; but if you allow these wild fellows
willy-nilly to induce you, in spite of your declaration, to accept the
nomination, substantially for a third term, all issues will be merged
in that issue, and in my judgment you will not carry a state in the
Union.”
As if much impressed and with a show of feeling he said: “It may be so.
At any rate I will not do it. If the convention nominates me I will
promptly send my declination. If it nominates me and adjourns I will
call it together again and it will have to name somebody else.”
As an illustration of the implacability which pursued him I may mention
that among many leading Republicans to whom I related the incident most
of them discredited his sincerity, one of them—a man of national
importance—expressing the opinion that all along he was artfully
playing for the nomination. This I do not believe. Perhaps he was never
quite fixed in his mind. The presidency is a wondrous lure. Once out of
the White House—what else and what——?