Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
immediately. It was late in the afternoon, and darkness had fallen by
the time I reached the clubhouse where we were staying. It was some time
afterwards before I could get a wagon to drive me out to the nearest
railway station, North Creek, some forty or fifty miles distant. The
roads were the ordinary wilderness roads and the night was dark. But we
changed horses two or three times--when I say "we" I mean the driver
and I, as there was no one else with us--and reached the station just at
dawn, to learn from Mr. Loeb, who had a special train waiting, that the
President was dead. That evening I took the oath of office, in the house
of Ansley Wilcox, at Buffalo.
On three previous occasions the Vice-President had succeeded to the
Presidency on the death of the President. In each case there had been
a reversal of party policy, and a nearly immediate and nearly complete
change in the personnel of the higher offices, especially the Cabinet.
I had never felt that this was wise from any standpoint. If a man is fit
to be President, he will speedily so impress himself in the office that
the policies pursued will be his anyhow, and he will not have to bother
as to whether he is changing them or not; while as regards the offices
under him, the important thing for him is that his subordinates shall
make a success in handling their several departments. The subordinate is
sure to desire to make a success of his department for his own sake, and
if he is a fit man, whose views on public policy are sound, and whose
abilities entitle him to his position, he will do excellently under
almost any chief with the same purposes.
I at once announced that I would continue unchanged McKinley's policies
for the honor and prosperity of the country, and I asked all the members
of the Cabinet to stay. There were no changes made among them save as
changes were made among their successors whom I myself appointed. I
continued Mr. McKinley's policies, changing and developing them and
adding new policies only as the questions before the public changed and
as the needs of the public developed. Some of my friends shook their
heads over this, telling me that the men I retained would not be "loyal
to me," and that I would seem as if I were "a pale copy of McKinley."
I told them that I was not nervous on this score, and that if the men
I retained were loyal to their work they would be giving me the loyalty
for which I most cared; and that if they were not, I would change them
anyhow; and that as for being "a pale copy of McKinley," I was not
primarily concerned with either following or not following in his
footsteps, but in facing the new problems that arose; and that if I were
competent I would find ample opportunity to show my competence by my
deeds without worrying myself as to how to convince people of the fact.
For the reasons I have already given in my chapter on the Governorship
of New York, the Republican party, which in the days of Abraham Lincoln
was founded as the radical progressive party of the Nation, had been
obliged during the last decade of the nineteenth century to uphold
the interests of popular government against a foolish and illjudged
mock-radicalism. It remained the Nationalist as against the
particularist or State's rights party, and in so far it remained
absolutely sound; for little permanent good can be done by any party
which worships the State's rights fetish or which fails to regard the
State, like the county or the municipality, as merely a convenient unit
for local self-government, while in all National matters, of importance
to the whole people, the Nation is to be supreme over State, county, and
town alike. But the State's rights fetish, although still effectively
used at certain times by both courts and Congress to block needed
National legislation directed against the huge corporations or in the
interests of workingmen, was not a prime issue at the time of which I
speak. In 1896, 1898, and 1900 the campaigns were waged on two great
moral issues: (1) the imperative need of a sound and honest currency;
(2) the need, after 1898, of meeting in manful and straightforward
fashion the extraterritorial problems arising from the Spanish War. On
these great moral issues the Republican party was right, and the men who
were opposed to it, and who claimed to be the radicals, and their allies
among the sentimentalists, were utterly and hopelessly wrong. This had,
regrettably but perhaps inevitably, tended to throw the party into the
hands not merely of the conservatives but of the reactionaries; of men
who, sometimes for personal and improper reasons, but more often with
entire sincerity and uprightness of purpose, distrusted anything that
was progressive and dreaded radicalism. These men still from force of
habit applauded what Lincoln had done in the way of radical dealing
with the abuses of his day; but they did not apply the spirit in which
Lincoln worked to the abuses of their own day. Both houses of Congress
were controlled by these men. Their leaders in the Senate were Messrs.
Aldrich and Hale. The Speaker of the House when I became President
was Mr. Henderson, but in a little over a year he was succeeded by Mr.
Cannon, who, although widely differing from Senator Aldrich in matters
of detail, represented the same type of public sentiment. There were
many points on which I agreed with Mr. Cannon and Mr. Aldrich, and some
points on which I agreed with Mr. Hale. I made a resolute effort to get
on with all three and with their followers, and I have no question that
they made an equally resolute effort to get on with me. We succeeded in
working together, although with increasing friction, for some years, I
pushing forward and they hanging back. Gradually, however, I was forced
to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way, and then I
achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and
House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us. I
continued in this way to get results until almost the close of my term;
and the Republican party became once more the progressive and indeed the
fairly radical progressive party of the Nation. When my successor was
chosen, however, the leaders of the House and Senate, or most of them,
felt that it was safe to come to a break with me, and the last or short
session of Congress, held between the election of my successor and his
inauguration four months later, saw a series of contests
between the majorities in the two houses of Congress and the
President,--myself,--quite as bitter as if they and I had belonged to
opposite political parties. However, I held my own. I was not able to
push through the legislation I desired during these four months, but
I was able to prevent them doing anything I did not desire, or undoing
anything that I had already succeeded in getting done.
There were, of course, many Senators and members of the lower house with
whom up to the very last I continued to work in hearty accord, and with
a growing understanding. I have not the space to enumerate, as I would
like to, these men. For many years Senator Lodge had been my close
personal and political friend, with whom I discussed all public
questions that arose, usually with agreement; and our intimately close
relations were of course unchanged by my entry into the White House. He
was of all our public men the man who had made the closest and wisest
study of our foreign relations, and more clearly than almost any
other man he understood the vital fact that the efficiency of our
navy conditioned our national efficiency in foreign affairs. Anything
relating to our international relations, from Panama and the navy to the
Alaskan boundary question, the Algeciras negotiations, or the peace of
Portsmouth, I was certain to discuss with Senator Lodge and also with
certain other members of Congress, such as Senator Turner of Washington
and Representative Hitt of Illinois. Anything relating to labor
legislation and to measures for controlling big business or efficiently
regulating the giant railway systems, I was certain to discuss with
Senator Dolliver or Congressman Hepburn or Congressman Cooper. With
men like Senator Beveridge, Congressman (afterwards Senator) Dixon,
and Congressman Murdock, I was apt to discuss pretty nearly everything
relating to either our internal or our external affairs. There were
many, many others. The present president of the Senate, Senator Clark,
of Arkansas, was as fearless and high-minded a representative of the
people of the United States as I ever dealt with. He was one of the men
who combined loyalty to his own State with an equally keen loyalty to
the people of all the United States. He was politically opposed to me;
but when the interests of the country were at stake, he was incapable of
considering party differences; and this was especially his attitude
in international matters--including certain treaties which most of
his party colleagues, with narrow lack of patriotism, and complete
subordination of National to factional interest, opposed. I have never
anywhere met finer, more faithful, more disinterested, and more
loyal public servants than Senator O. H. Platt, a Republican, from
Connecticut, and Senator Cockrell, a Democrat, from Missouri. They were
already old men when I came to the Presidency; and doubtless there
were points on which I seemed to them to be extreme and radical; but
eventually they found that our motives and beliefs were the same,
and they did all in their power to help any movement that was for the
interest of our people as a whole. I had met them when I was Civil
Service Commissioner and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. All I ever had
to do with either was to convince him that a given measure I championed
was right, and he then at once did all he could to have it put into
effect. If I could not convince them, why! that was my fault, or my
misfortune; but if I could convince them, I never had to think again as
to whether they would or would not support me. There were many other men
of mark in both houses with whom I could work on some points, whereas
on others we had to differ. There was one powerful leader--a burly,
forceful man, of admirable traits--who had, however, been trained in
the post-bellum school of business and politics, so that his attitude
towards life, quite unconsciously, reminded me a little of Artemus
Ward's view of the Tower of London--"If I like it, I'll buy it." There
was a big governmental job in which this leader was much interested,
and in reference to which he always wished me to consult a man whom
he trusted, whom I will call Pitt Rodney. One day I answered him, "The
trouble with Rodney is that he misestimates his relations to cosmos";
to which he responded, "Cosmos--Cosmos? Never heard of him. You stick
to Rodney. He's your man!" Outside of the public servants there were
multitudes of men, in newspaper offices, in magazine offices, in
business or the professions or on farms or in shops, who actively
supported the policies for which I stood and did work of genuine
leadership which was quite as effective as any work done by men in
public office. Without the active support of these men I would have
been powerless. In particular, the leading newspaper correspondents
at Washington were as a whole a singularly able, trustworthy, and
public-spirited body of men, and the most useful of all agents in the
fight for efficient and decent government.
As for the men under me in executive office, I could not overstate the
debt of gratitude I owe them. From the heads of the departments, the
Cabinet officers, down, the most striking feature of the Administration
was the devoted, zealous, and efficient work that was done as soon as it
became understood that the one bond of interest among all of us was the