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----?