Though none of these men realized it at the time, the appearance of this ardent young man in the Legislature marked an epoch. The sun was beginning to set for the spoilsmen. The better elements of the state needed a force behind which they could rally. Roosevelt was that man.
An elevated railroad company had been exposed in a scandal that involved the Attorney General of the state and a judge of the Supreme Court. The public conscience was aroused. The people grew indignant when the legislators shelved their petitions. Roosevelt stood waiting for his elders to act. He could not believe that, when such charges had been preferred against one of the judiciary, his associates would seek to dodge the issue. Convinced at last that nothing would be done unless he acted, on April 6, 1882, he demanded from the floor that Judge Westbrook, of Newburgh, be impeached by the Assembly. He was a David going up against a Goliath of graft and obstruction, yet he attacked fearlessly.
It took splendid moral courage for Roosevelt to take this step. Young, idealistic and untrained in politics as he was, he could not have been blind to the fact that he was facing consequences that would probably be the ruin of his political career.
His speech was distinguished by its boldness and candor. Before he finished, men with millions had been branded as thieves and bribers. A judge and an attorney general were denounced in terms that startled the public—terms that nevertheless were potent with truth.
The Republican leader, with huge contempt for the raw young legislator, answered the charge patronizingly and with sneers. “I have seen,” he said, “many reputations in the state broken down by loose charges made in the Legislature.” He recommended to the Assembly that this reckless young man be given time to think, by voting to refuse to act on his loose charges. The legislators obeyed the whip. Mainly through his own party Roosevelt went down to defeat.
The Roosevelt teeth came into evidence then. Roosevelt’s associates actually heard him gritting them. In spite of the ridicule and sneers of the previous day Roosevelt returned the next day to the charge.
The press interviewed him. Moved half by admiration of the courage of this puny young chap, half by a desire to furnish amusement for their readers, they told the public of his fight. Then, all of a sudden the young David found himself vigorously supported. Public opinion came to his help in no uncertain way. The state was aroused. Roosevelt kept up the fight with renewed vigor. Assemblymen began to hear from the folks back home. The party leaders trembled before the man they could not “gum shoe.” The Legislature yielded. By a vote of 104 to 6 Roosevelt carried the day. The committee whitewashed the accused, but the testimony had more than vindicated Roosevelt’s position. Debauchery in politics had received a setback. What was worse for the corrupt politicians, they were now at war against an adversary who was not to stop fighting until the whole nation had been won to his ideals of clean politics.
Back to Albany Roosevelt was sent as an Assemblyman in 1882 and again in 1883. In the latter year he became minority leader of the Assembly, which had now become Democratic. With the coming into power of Grover Cleveland the Republicans had gone into retirement as a state force until they could put their house in order.
In Roosevelt’s last two terms in the Assembly he came into close touch with Grover Cleveland, then Governor. Representing opposite political faiths, there was nevertheless a bond of sympathy between the two men in their independence of thought. Cleveland grew to rely on his young opponent even more than he did on some of the leaders of his own party. The two fought shoulder to shoulder in behalf of civil service. Roosevelt, after recommendations for civil service improvements had appeared in the Governor’s message, pushed through the Legislature a state civil service act which was almost parallel to the Federal act which went into effect about that time.
Roosevelt’s next political fight came in 1884. Roosevelt was made chairman of the state delegation to the Republican convention at Chicago which nominated Blaine, “The Plumed Knight,” as opponent to Cleveland in the Presidential campaign. Roosevelt, with typical independence of thought, opposed the nomination of Blaine and placed in nomination United States Senator George F. Edmunds.