On the death of McKinley a Vice-President succeeded him toward whom, in one respect at least, the feeling was very different. If ever a man was born to become President that man was Theodore Roosevelt. Nevertheless, he had not been elected in expectation of becoming President, and at first the whole country felt once more that it was a case which had lain outside of all reasonable calculations. Roosevelt’s friends had asked him to make a sacrifice and to accept a thankless office because they knew that his name on the ballot of the Republican party—for his Rough Rider reputation during the war was still fresh—would be pretty sure to bring about the election of McKinley. The opponents also of this strong and energetic young man, against his stoutest protestations, upheld his candidacy with every means in their power. Firstly because they wanted to get rid of him as Governor of the State of New York, where he made life too hard for the regular politicians, and secondly because they relied on the tradition that holding the Vice-Presidency would invalidate him as a Presidential candidate in 1904. Neither friends nor enemies had thought of such a possibility as McKinley’s death. Roosevelt’s friends had rightly judged; the hero of San Juan did bring victory to his party. His enemies, on the other hand, had entirely missed their mark not only on the outcome, but from the very beginning. Odell became Governor of New York, and quite unexpectedly he stood out even more stoutly against the political corruptionists. And, on the other hand, Roosevelt’s impulsive nature quickly found ways to break the traditional silence of the Vice-President and to keep himself before the eyes of the world. There is no doubt that in spite of all traditions his incumbency would have been a preparation for the presidential candidacy. But when, through the crime committed at Buffalo, everything came out so differently from that which the politicians expected, it seemed to the admirers of Roosevelt almost like the tragic hand of fate; he had done his best to attain on his own account the Presidency, and now it came to him almost as the gift of chance. Only the next election may be expected to do him full justice.
The successive moments in his rapid rise are generally known. Roosevelt was born in New York in 1858, his father being a prosperous merchant and well-known philanthropist, and a descendant of an old Knickerbocker family. The son was prepared for college and went to Harvard, where he made a special study of history and political economy. After that he travelled in Europe, and when he was still only twenty-four years old, he plunged into politics. He soon obtained a Republican seat in the state legislature of New York, and there commenced his tireless fight for reform in municipal and state administration. In 1889 President Harrison appointed him Commissioner of the Civil Service, but he resigned this position in 1895 in order to become Chief of Police in New York. Only two years later he was once more called from municipal to national duties. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy. All this time his administrative duties did not interrupt his literary, historical, and scientific work. He had begun his career as an author with his studies in the history of the navy and his admirable biographies of American statesmen. When he was thirty years old he wrote the first part of his great work, “The Winning of the West,” and often between the publication of his scientific works he published lesser books, describing his adventures as huntsman in the primeval wilderness, and later on volumes in which his social and political essays were collected.
Then the Spanish War arose and the Assistant Secretary could not bear to sit at his desk while others were moving to the field of battle. He gathered about him a volunteer regiment of cavalry, in which the dare-devil cow-punchers of the prairie rode side by side with the adventurous scions of the most distinguished families in Boston and New York. Roosevelt’s friend, Wood, of the regular army, became Colonel in this soon-famous regiment, and Roosevelt himself Lieutenant-Colonel. A few days after they had successfully stormed the hill at San Juan, Wood became General and Roosevelt Colonel.
His native State of New York received him on his home-coming with general rejoicing, and he found himself a few months later Governor of the State. At Albany he showed tremendous energy, put through popular reforms, and fought against the encroachments of the industrial corporations. It had been his personal wish to be Governor for a second year, but this was denied him by the admirable doings of his Eastern enemies and Western admirers at the national convention of June, 1900, held in Pennsylvania, where he was forced to become candidate for the position of Vice-President. On the 14th of September, 1901, in Buffalo, he took the Presidential oath of office.
At that time a quiet anxiety for the future was mingled with the honest sorrow which the whole land felt for the death of McKinley. A nation which had been sunning itself in peace suddenly found itself under the leadership of an impulsive colonel of cavalry, who carried in his hand the banner of war. The nation was in the midst of an economic development which needed before everything else to have a mature and careful leader who was honoured and trusted by all classes, and who would be able to effect some work of reconciliation between them; when suddenly there stood in the place of a most conservative statesman an impetuous young man who was not intimately connected with industrial life, who had for a long time made himself unpopular with party politicians, and whom even his admirers in the land seemed hardly to trust on account of his hasty and determined impetuosity. Roosevelt had been envisaged by the masses, through the cinematograph of the press, in campaign hat and khaki uniform, just in the attitude of taking San Juan hill. Nearly everybody forgot that he had for a long time quietly carried on the exacting labours of Police Commissioner in the largest city of the country; and forgot how, from his first year of study at Harvard on, every day had been given to preparing himself for public service and for acquiring a thorough understanding of all the political, social, and economic problems which the country had to face; they forgot also that he had wielded the sword for only a few months, but the pen of the historian for about two decades. Roosevelt’s first public utterance was a pledge to continue unchanged the peaceful policy of his predecessor and always to consider the national prosperity and honour. Still, people felt that no successor would be able to command that experience, maturity, and party influence which McKinley had had.
There have been differences of opinion, and, as was to be expected, complaints and criticisms have come from the midst of his own party. Yet anyone who looks at his whole administration will see that in those first years Roosevelt won a more difficult and brilliant victory than he had won over the Spanish troops.
He had three virtues which especially overcame all small criticism. The people felt, in the first place, that a moral force was here at work which was more powerful than any mere political address or diplomatic subtlety. An immediate ethical force was here felt which owned to ideas above any party, and set inner ideals above merely outward success. Roosevelt’s second virtue was courage. A certain purely ethical ideal exalted above all petty expediencies was for him not only the nucleus of his own creed, but was also his spring of action; and he took no account of personal dangers. Here was the keynote of all his speeches—it is not enough to approve of what is right, it is equally necessary to act for it fearlessly and unequivocally. Then he went on to his work, and if, indeed, in complicated political situations the President has had at times to clinch some points by aid of compromise, nevertheless the nation has felt with growing confidence that at no serious moment has he wavered a hair’s breadth from the straight line of his convictions, and that he has had the courage to disregard everything but what he held to be right. And, thirdly, Roosevelt had the virtue of being sincere.
McKinley also had purposed to do right, but he had hardly an occasion for displaying great courage since so incomparably discreet a politician as he was could avoid every conflict with his associates, and he was ever the leader on highways which the popular humour had indicated. Thus the masses never felt that he was at bottom lacking in courage or that he always put off responsibility on others. The masses did, however, instinctively feel that McKinley’s astute and kindly words were not always sincere; his words were often there to conceal something which was locked up behind his Napoleonic forehead. And now there succeeded him an enthusiast who brimmed over with plain expressions of what he felt, and whose words were so convincingly candid and so without reservation that every one had the feeling of being in the personal confidence of the President.
There was a good deal more besides his moral earnestness, his courage, and his frank honesty which contributed to Roosevelt’s entire success. His lack of prejudice won the lower classes, and his aristocratic breeding and education won the upper, while the middle classes were enthusiastic over his sportsmanship. No President had been more unprejudiced or more truly democratic. He met the poor miner on the same footing as he met the mine owner; he invited the negro to the White House; he sat down and broke bread with the cow-boys; and when he travelled he first shook the sooty hand of the locomotive engineer before he greeted the gentlemen who had gathered about in their silk hats. And, nevertheless, he was in many years the first real aristocrat to become President. The changes in the White House itself were typical. This venerable Presidential dwelling had been, up to Roosevelt’s time, in its inner arrangements a dreary combination of bare offices, somewhat crudely decorated private dwelling, and cheerless reception-halls. To-day it is a very proper palace, containing many fine works of art, and office-seekers no longer have access to the inner rooms. His predecessors, the Clevelands and Harrisons and McKinleys, had been, in fact, very respectable philistines. They had come from the middle classes of the country, which are in thought and feeling very different from that upper class which, up to a short time ago, had bothered itself less about practical politics than about general culture, literature, art, criticism, and broadly conceived industrial operations, combined with social high-life. This class, however, had begun at length to feel that it ought not to disdain to notice political abuses, to walk around the sea of troubles; but had begun to take up arms and by opposing end them. Aristocracy had too long believed in political mercenaries.
Roosevelt was the first to lift himself from these circles and become a great leader. Not alone the nobility of his character but also of his culture and traditions was shown in his entire habit of mind. Never in his speeches or writings has he cited that socially equalizing Declaration of Independence, and while his speeches at banquets and small gatherings of scholarly men have been incomparably more fascinating than his strenuous utterances to the voters, which he has made on his public tours, it has been often less the originality of his thoughts and still less the peculiarly taking quality of his delivery, than the evidences of ripe culture, which seem to pervade his political thought. Thus the smaller the circle to which he speaks the greater is his advantage; and in speaking with him personally on serious problems one feels that distinction of thought, breadth of historical outlook, and confidence in self have united in him to create a personality after the grand manner.