During the summer of 1901, the city of Buffalo, New York, held a
Pan-American Exposition. President McKinley visited this and,
while holding a public reception on September 6, he was twice
shot by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish anarchist. When the news reached
him, Roosevelt went straight to Buffalo, to attend to any matters
which the President might suggest; but as the surgeons pronounced
the wounds not fatal nor even dangerous, Roosevelt left with a
light heart, and joined his family at Mount Tahawrus in the
Adirondacks. For several days cheerful bulletins came. Then, on
Friday afternoon the 13th, when the Vice-President and his party
were coming down from a climb to the top of Mount Marcy, a
messenger brought a telegram which read:
The President's condition has changed for the worse.
Cortelyou.
The climbers on Mount Marcy were fifty miles from the end of the
railroad and ten miles from the nearest telephone at the lower
club-house. They hurried forward on foot, following the trail to
the nearest cottage; where a runner arrived with a message, "Come
at once." Further messages awaited them at the lower club-house.
President McKinley was dying, and Roosevelt must lose no time.
His secretary, William Loeb, telephoned from North Creek, the end
of the railroad, that he had had a locomotive there for hours
with full steam up. So Roosevelt and the driver of his buckboard
dashed on through the night, over the uncertain mountain road,
dangerous even by daylight, at breakneck speed. Dawn was breaking
when they came to North Creek. There, Loeb told him that
President McKinley was dead. Then they steamed back to
civilization as fast as possible, reached the main trunk line,
and sped on to Buffalo without a moment's delay. It was afternoon
when the special train came into the station, and Roosevelt,
having covered the distance of 440 miles from Mount Marcy, was
driven to the house of Ansley Wilcox. Most of the Cabinet had
preceded him to Buffalo, and Secretary Root, the ranking member
present Secretary Hay having remained in Washington asked the
Vice-President to be sworn in at once. Roosevelt replied:
'I shall take the oath of office in obedience to your request,
sir, and in doing so, it shall be my aim to continue absolutely
unbroken the policies of President McKinley for the peace,
prosperity, and honor of our beloved country.'
The oath having been administered, the new President said:
'In order to help me keep the promise I have taken, I would ask
the Cabinet to retain their positions at least for some months to
come. I shall rely upon you, gentlemen, upon your loyalty and
fidelity, to help me.'*
* Washburn, 40.
On September 19, John Hay wrote to his intimate friend, Henry
Adams:
'I have just received your letter from Stockholm and shuddered at
the awful clairvoyance of your last phrase about Teddy's luck.
Well, he is here in the saddle again. That is, he is in Canton to
attend President McKinley's funeral and will have his first
Cabinet meeting in the White House tomorrow. He came down from
Buffalo Monday night--and in the station, without waiting an
instant, told me I must stay with him that I could not decline
nor even consider. I saw, of course, it was best for him to start
off that way, and so I said I would stay, forever, of course, for
it would be worse to say I would stay a while than it would be to
go out at once. I can still go at any moment he gets tired of me
or when I collapse.'*
* W. R. Thayer: John Hay,II, 268.
Writing to Lady Jeune at this time Hay said:
I think you know Mr. Roosevelt, our new President. He is an old
and intimate friend of mine: a young fellow of infinite dash and
originality.
In this manner, "Teddy's luck" brought him into the White House,
as the twenty-sixth President of the United States. Early in the
summer, his old college friend and steadfast admirer, Charles
Washburn, remarked: "I would not like to be in McKinley's shoes.
He has a man of destiny behind him." Destiny is the one artificer
who can use all tools and who finds a short cut to his goal
through ways mysterious and most devious. As I have before
remarked, nothing commonplace could happen to Theodore Roosevelt.
He emerged triumphant from the receiving-vault of the
Vice-Presidency, where his enemies supposed they had laid him
away for good. In ancient days, his midnight dash from Mount
Marcy, and his flight by train across New York State to Buffalo,
would have become a myth symbolizing the response of a hero to an
Olympian summons. If we ponder it well, was it indeed less than
this?
In 1899, Mr. James Bryce, the most penetrating of foreign
observers of American life had said, in words that now seem
prophetic: "Theodore Roosevelt is the hope of American politics."