Saturday, March 14, 2015
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Addicted to War: Theodore Roosevelt's Campaign for a Third Term
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| Warmongering in America, 1915. The more things change… |
“There is but one man in
America—just one—who is immune to the lessons of the European War—That man is
Theodore Roosevelt.”
Elbert Hubbard, The
Fra: For Philistines and Roycrafters, April 1914.
Historians and biographers always
run the risk of becoming sympathetic towards their subjects, even if he or she
is evil, wicked, venal, or just plain mean, and lately I admit that I have felt
a twinge of sympathy toward Theodore Roosevelt. Toward the end of his life, the
man was barreling toward the ignominy of being labeled a clown and a crank with
such velocity that I was beginning to feel sorry for the battered old,
make-believe cowboy. Then I read an account of his warmongering, fear
inspiring, jingoistic rhetoric speech to students on October 31, 1914 at Princeton
University and I readjusted my attitude. I returned to my unsympathetic standpoint
of Roosevelt I had developed over years of research into the man and his
character … a petty, self-promoting, win-at-any-cost, ego maniacal mountebank.
The only thing authentic about the man was his anger and bitterness.
According to the 31 Oct. 1914 Rock Island Argus, Roosevelt warned the young
and impressionable listeners, most of whom were males of the age when they are
most vulnerable to militant enthusiasm, that the two unnamed Empires currently
engaged in the European conflict had plans for seizing New York and San
Francisco and hold the cities for ransom. He knew this to be true, he bellowed to the audience, because
he had seen the plans with his own eyes . . .
The U.S. would be easy pickings, he told the crowd, because “our
standing army is too weak to protect them. I have seen deliberate plans
prepared to take both San Francisco and New York and hold them for ransoms that
would cripple our country and give funds to the enemy for carrying on war.” His
plan to counter this insidious plot to invade a feeble United Stated by anonymous
European powers was for “everyman
may have to practice in marksmanship and have some military training” in the “earnest
hope that we shall finally achieve international status by which there shall be
a posse comitatus…to
coerce any recalcitrant power.”
He refused to give any further information.
He assumed, as he did during his Presidency, that just because he said a thing,
the press would amplify it and people would believe it. The press, however, did
not take him seriously and while the story got a few front-page mentions, it
quickly fizzled out. Rabble-rousing assertions like the ones he made at
Princeton were actually producing the opposite effect. Roosevelt was having a hard time
being taken seriously by the grown-ups, so maybe he felt he could reignite
interest in those most vulnerable to militant enthusiasm, college
kids. Yet, his remarks simply reinforced the popular belief, as the Arizona Williams News wrote on 5 November 1914, that
Roosevelt had “heaped blunder upon blunder, made one wrong move after another,
and his vision of returning to the White House has grown dimmer with each
passing day.”
It is always sad to see anyone
desperately attempting to hang on to the glory days of youth. Roosevelt,
however, stretches natural sympathy to a breaking point. His former glory, more
than most, was always stagecraft, supported by a myth created by him and
maintained by those who found his persona useful.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Teddy Unabridged: Things You Probably Won't Learn from the Ken Burns "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History"
Theodore Roosevelt pounds
his fist on a podium as he glares angrily at a female figure, the spirit of History,
holding a book labeled, "The Record of the Past." The figure calls
him a fool.(Library of Congress, circa 1916- circa 1917). As TR’s pro-war
rhetoric heated up before the U.S. involvement in the Great War, he viciously
denounced conscientious objectors to war as “pro-German,” “slackers,”
“conscientious polygamists" and—worst of all—“vegetarians,” and routinely called
for the suppression of the civil rights of citizens with anti-war views. (The Tomahawk. (White Earth, Becker
County, Minn.), 11 Oct. 1917).
There
is little doubt that the much-anticipated Ken Burns' PBS documentary, "The Roosevelt's: An Intimate History," will be a cinematic masterpiece. Telling
a compelling story—woven together by the narration of famous actors, with brilliant
musical scoring, punctuated with haunting images, and expertly assembled is—Ken
Burns forte. However, as far as an in-depth examination of the personality and
character of, Theodore Roosevelt the audience will learn nothing new. It is
unlikely, given the historians he has chosen as consultants, the very real, dark
side of America's most popular President will get more than cursory attention.
A author of "The Cowboy and the Canal: How Theodore Roosevelt Cheated Colombia,Stole Panama, and Bamboozled America, I know how much resistant
there is about looking at the unflattering aspects of a man that many people
consider the greatest American to ever live. Most Americans believe
Roosevelt was a heroic, incorruptible, man of the people but in fact, TR was human… terribly human. And his actions in the Panama
Canal purchase are a painful manifestation of that complex fact. His
intolerance for people of differing beliefs, different ethnicities, or any criticism
of him grew to hideous proportions as he aged, as the cartoon above
illustrates. Despite what most people think, Roosevelt was not the democratically minded man he seemed to be
when he invited Booker T. Washington to lunch at the White House
To
his credit, Burns does reflect that TR summary dishonorable discharge of an entire
African American cavalry unit stationed in Brownsville, Texas—Buffalo Soldier heroes of the Cuban theater in the Spanish American War where Teddy's Rough Rider legend was created—were wrongly accused
of murdering a white citizen represented a “low point” in his administration. However, Burns
never delves into the myriad other occasions when TR’s early 20th century
notions on race and ethnicity skewed his response to situations like in
Brownsville. How he regarded the Colombians as “monkeys” as he was helping to
orchestrate the Panama revolution is another such example of his intolerance at
work. Several historians over time have attempted to bring these important
issues of TR’s character into the national conversation, but they get very
little traction in the public arena. Instead, what is reinforced to the point of absurdity is the aspects
of his persona that American’s identify as heroic.
The
Cowboy and the Canal traces a trail
of greed, corruption, fraud, and hubris that leads in all directions back to
Theodore Roosevelt. The story with the evils of Balboa in 1513;
details the horrors of the Panama Railroad construction in 1849; explores the
aborted French effort in 1881; and finally explores the dubious behavior of
America’s favorite Cowboy-hero, Theodore Roosevelt, as he bullied his way into
the purchase of the bankrupt French Panama Canal Company by the United States
in 1904.Traveling full-circle, the story concludes with Roosevelt’s attempt to
revive his faltering Presidential fortunes as he begins his Progressive Party
campaign tour the day of the official Opening of the Panama Canal, August 15,
1914.
There
are many scoundrels and few heroes in this progressive era drama. Individuals
who facilitated the behind-the-scenes takeover of the bankrupt French Panama
Canal Company by an American syndicate and the hijacking of Panama from
Colombia range all the way from TR’s brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson—husband
of his youngest sister Corrine; the scheming would-be French aristocrat,
Philippe Bunau-Varilla; a slick New York corporate lawyer, William Cromwell;
the venerable John Hay, Roosevelt’s Secretary of State; and Theodore Roosevelt
himself.
Some
of the most prominent industrialists and capitalists of the day, including
financier J.P. Morgan; former president of the New York Stock Exchange, J.
Edward Simmons; railroad magnate C.P. Huntington; and Charles Taft,
multimillionaire older brother of soon to become United States President
William Howard Taft, played major roles in this political theater. All of these
men abetted the scheme, but the three men without whom the Panama purchase
would never have happened are Theodore Roosevelt, William Nelson Cromwell, and
Philippe Bunau-Varilla.
Among
the few heroes of this fascinating Progressive Era saga are Democratic Senator
John Tyler Morgan—a scrappy former Confederate general determined to bring
prosperity back to his beloved South, and the legendary newspaperman Joseph
Pulitzer whose quest to uncover the truth behind the Panama Canal purchase
ended in the United States Supreme Court in 1911.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
#TeddyRoosevelt: The Would be “War-President”
—Rock Island Argus, September 14, 1914, Reprint Chicago Daily Journal
Though
thoroughly shunted off the front page by the European war, Mr. Roosevelt continues
to see visions of dreams of 1916… Now, what would Mr. Roosevelt in his third
term, if he got it? By the law of his nature and that of his political
career—he must seek notoriety, but how? … He would become a “war president.”
The Argus was simply restating what many people had come to understand
about Roosevelt. He was a man who loved war… and actually reviled the idea of
peace. “In strict
confidence,” he wrote a friend before the Spanish American War, "
I would welcome almost any #war, for I think this country needs one.”
War produced #heroes he believed, and above all, he needed
to be a hero. “None of our men of peace,” he once reflected, can rank
with heroes of war.” The European war would give him the chance to become the
hero again, if only the bookish, peace mongering, effeminate Woodrow Wilson would allow him to raise a
volunteer regiment, like the “Rough Rider” company he assembled for the only
real military experience of his life; three months in Cuba, 1898.
The fact that he had
little actual experience on military service would not prevent him from
promoting himself as a man capable of leading hundreds of men into harms
way. Theodore Roosevelt joined the
New York National Guard on 1 August 1882. T.R. was commissioned a 2nd
Lieutenant, B Company, 8th Regiment. He was promoted to Captain, and resigned
his commission in 1886. Four years of part-time, once a month maneuvers did not
equip him for Cuba.
For
the three months TR was involved with the volunteer Calvary Company known as
the #RoughRiders, the unit suffered the highest causality of any in the Cuban theater. Upon return he wrote his friend Cecile Spring Rice, “I have played it in bull
luck this summer. First to get to go to war, then to get out of it…”
He had gotten what he
wanted. Massive publicity, a slight wound on his hand, and he had killed a
human being—he shot a retreating Spanish soldier in the back. He was not
awarded the Medal of Honor that he lobbied so desperately for after the war because the army
board did not find his service above of that of an ordinary soldier. It wouldn’t be
until 2001—when Roosevelt's reputation had morphed from what fellow offers in Cuba had described at best as a mediocre performance into the greatest military hero American had ever produced— President
Bill Clinton would award the highest military honor the U.S. could bestow.
It was commonly, although not popularly, broadcast by soldiers in the field the day Roosevelt "took" San Juan Hill (which was actually called Kettle Hill before Roosevelt's media campaign).
According to
historian and Roosevelt critic Richard Franklin Pettigrew,
over 100 soldiers testified in sworn affidavits, Roosevelt was not even present at the battle, but that it was the African American, “Buffalo Soldiers,” of the 10th
Cavalry, 3rd
Cavalry, and the Gatling gun and Hotchkiss machine
gun that supported
Roosevelt’s amateur 1st Volunteer Cavalry in securing the objective.
In 1914, Roosevelt would again
attempt to parley his reputation as a military genius and strategist, which—as
critic Edward Garstin Smith wrote,"had the tinsel of stage-setting" as he played "a sort of
serio-comic tragedian who has interested part of his audience, amazed another,
and disgusted the remainder"—in to a third term as the President of the
United States.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Courage and Compassion: America, the Middle East, and the "Vicissitudes of War and Massacre"
Starving People Are Forced to Eat Grass
New York, May 18. The Hartford Herald. (Hartford, Ky.), 24 May 1916.
"Suffering among Armenians in Turkey, Persia and Syria is still Intense and they are dying by hundreds for want of food, and are In urgent need of aid, says a cablegram from Constantinople made public by the American committee for Armenian and Syrian relief…"
"The request for aid, sent by representatives of the committee… Conditions in many quarters, says the message, are so distressing that the Armenians are forced to eat grass; and yet despite these conditions they continue to stick fast to their Christian faith, although a change to Mohammedanism would quickly relieve their plight…"
"The number of non-combatants affected is one million. In making an appeal for aid the committee says it now has reliable facilities for feeding the needy through American consuls and missionaries…"
They gave American citizens, business, and social organizations the opportunity to do something at which they excelled: give of their money and energy. The volunteers helped build orphanages, schools, food distribution centers.
Now, in 2014, the U.S. is being asked to help rescue thousands of displaced, terrorized, and starving Yazidi—trapped in the Sinjar mountains of Iraq—victims of another vicious occupation by the Islamic State (formally known as the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq or ISIS). Sustained humanitarian aid—after parachuting in some food and dropping a few bombs from drones on August 8—is probably not going to continue in the tradition of the the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, however. The U.S.announced on August 14 that it's done enough for the Yazidi and besides, government officials said, there weren't that many Yazidi hiding in the Mountains anyway.
On the 16th, IS slaughtered 700 people in Syria. Today they posted a video of a beheading of an American journalist. As more innocent people perish by the hand of an evil occupier, we could merely say, the more things change, the more they stay the same… and let the suffering continue or we could respond with the courage, compassion, and determination of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East all those years ago. What exactly to do is perplexing. Doing nothing is unforgivable.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
The Panama Canal at 100: Theodore Roosevelt, Corporate Greed, and Gunboat Diplomacy
Roosevelt's Crowning Achievement, Judge Magazine, 1904, LOC
Theodore Roosevelt called the
Panama Canal his greatest achievement yet the day of its official opening, the
Bull Moose Progressive Party politician never mentioned it. Instead (excerpts
from The Cowboy and the Canal: How Theodore Roosevelt Cheated Colombia, Stole Panama, and Bamboozled America):
"The day the Panama Canal opened for business, former President
Theodore Roosevelt was embarking on a four-and-a-half hour long, bone-rattling
automobile trip from Oyster Bay to Hartford, Connecticut to keynote the
Progressive state convention. At fifty-six, the bronco busting hero of San
Juan, the slayer of black bears and bull elephants, and the subjugator of
Bowery criminals and Wall Street tycoons, heaved his stiff and clumsy body into
his motorcar like an old man of ninety. For his entire life, Theodore Roosevelt
had applied the greatest force of his quite considerable energy to proving his
worth—first to his father, then to his country, and now in the early hours of
the dew-clad morning of August 15, 1914—to himself…"
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| Weary Roosevelt on his Eastern Progressive Party speaking tour, 1914, LOC |
"After warm-up speeches by the handsome and elegant exponent of the
eight-hour workday, industrialist Charles Sumner Bird, and the office boy who
became J.P. Morgan’s “right-hand man,” George Perkins, Roosevelt would bring
down the house. He always did. His only
concern was his voice. In a weakened condition,
his voice was the one presentation of self he could not easily
stage-manage. His high-pitched
voice once made him a laughing stock in his early career as a New York
legislator. It was a quality, his mockers claimed, of an effeminate male. The
young legislator was often described quite simply, as 'pathetic.'"
Roosevelt had become persona non-gratis with Republicans who
blamed him for breaking with the party and dividing the vote, thereby
installing Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the White House. Even his old mentor and
closest ally, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, had told him to stay out of politics.
Roosevelt later freely admitted to novelist Henry Rider Haggard that his
actions in 1912 caused, “The great bulk of my wealthy and educated friends [to]
regard me as a dangerous crank.”
His physical problems after
his return from his disastrous 1913-14 River of Doubt expedition continued to
dog the Colonel. People still saw that the physical effects of the jungle
ordeal clung heavily to him:
 | |
| Roosevelt at the beginning of his search for the River of Doubt, 1913, Wikimedia Commons |
"Once the most robust of men . . . he looks ten years older than he
did two years ago. His system is filled with malaria,” reported the Montgomery
Advisor on June
29. “The terrible siege of illness he experienced in the tropics lowered his
vitality.” And worse for Roosevelt, as the peerless media manipulator to whom
image was everything would instinctively recognize, “the Colonel sick,”
astutely noted the Advisor writer, “would be much less
interesting than if well and robust.”"
"Determined to deflect the gossip
that he was now a mere shadow of his former vigorous self, Roosevelt ignored his doctor’s
recommendation that he rest for four months after his South American ordeal. Meanwhile, as Roosevelt was winding his
way toward the Parson’s Theater to give his speech, in Panama…"
"The SS Ancon, an aging cargo ship owned
by the Navy and leased to the Panama Railroad Company, was to have the
distinction of being the first official ship to cross the gigantic 51-mile
trench. Its sister ship, the SS Cristobal, along with the seagoing
tugboat Gatun, successfully negotiated trial runs earlier, thereby removing any
real anxiety—but not the excitement—from the first official transit. The decks
were crowded with canal administrators, Panamanian officials—including the
mustachioed, President Belisario Porras of Panama—and their wives and families,
but no United States representative of any prominence was aboard that day. The
guests of George Goethals—chief engineer and undisputed overlord of the Canal
Zone—packed the promenade."
"The seventy-four officers and men
aboard the Ancon wore dazzling white uniforms and the ship itself glistened
with new paint. The men in white linen suits and broad-brim white hats
significantly outnumbered the women in light colored summer dresses and
decorative plumed hats. The few children aboard were as sparkling in their
Sunday best as the Ancon’s newly polished fittings. As the ship headed into a
waterway lined on both sides by tropical vegetation, except for the tops of
dying trees in the lake and the fresh earth and broken rock of the Culebra Cut
that could be seen in the distance, the “impression that it had existed from
the time of Balboa” was communicated by the scene to the passengers."
 | |||||||||
| Guests aboard the SS Ancon Opening Day, "Pan American Union Bulletin," 1914. | |
"As promised by Colonel Goethals,
the flag of the American Peace Society floated in the light breeze from the Ancon’s
masthead. Ironically, at the same time beneath the fluttering flag of peace and
undoubtedly unknown to the Society members, —deep within the Ancon’s cargo bay—two
gigantic pieces of artillery destined to enhance the Canal’s gun emplacements
were stowed. The fully loaded Ancon, polished to a high gloss for the local
dignitaries and cameramen, left dock number nine at the port of Cristobal at
7:10 am, about the time Roosevelt would have been getting underway for his trip
to Hartford. His speech at the Parsons theater was later that evening, but
first on Roosevelt’s agenda was lunch with his sister, nicknamed “Bye” at her
home in Farmington, just west of Hartford."
 | |
| The 16-inch gun sent to fortify the Canal Zone, http://www.oocities.org/fort_tilden/16ingun.html |
"The 10,000 ton vessel seemed to those aboard to be tiny, dwarfed
by the gargantuan Culebra, as one guest aboard the Ancon recalled. It bore straight
through the Cut to reach Pedro Miguel, where it entered a single lock and
descended 30 feet. A crowd of spectators, among them 100 female schoolteachers from
England, gathered at the lock to greet the Ancon. The school teachers, —as
unique as a assemblage of 100 women in the Zone was, —did not capture the
attention of the passengers aboard the Ancon as did the sight of
Goethals himself as he “stood at the entrance of the lock in shirt sleeves,
wearing a characteristic small straw hat and carrying in his hand his ever
present umbrella.”"
 | |||
| Rare photo from an article in "Spillway," University of Florida, http://ufdc.ufl.edu |
"A mighty cheer erupted from the passengers when
they saw Goethals, who ignored the adulation “with characteristic modesty” and
continued inspecting the operation of the lock. In thirty minutes,
the Ancon descended into the water of Miraflores Lake and onward to slide
down the two flights of the Miraflores Locks.… Now, the Ancon was only eight miles away
from the deep water of the Pacific Ocean and “the gateway to its mighty
commerce of uncounted millions of dollars and population.”"
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| Ancon reaching the Pacific Opening Day, “Bulletin of the Pan American Union,” 1914 |
"Presently, the Ancon passed Balboa with its repair shops, dry docks, and the old
Panama Railroad wharves. The shriek from whistles of the several ships
gathering, waiting their turn to cross from the Pacific to the Atlantic the
following day, and from shops and launches, pierced the air until to the
passengers of the Ancon it “seemed as if bedlam
was veritably let loose.” Increasing its speed, the Ancon headed past the
breakwater, beyond the fortified islands of Naos, Perico, and Flamenco, past
the last buoys marking the entrance to the canal and “majestically stuck her
nose into the deep water of the Pacific Ocean.” It then swung
around and headed back to Balboa. About 2,000 miles away, Roosevelt would have
also reached his destination, the Parsons Theater, about the same time the Ancon merrymakers were returning
to Cristobal aboard specially chartered Panama Railroad cars, after
disembarking at Balbo."
"… On his way to the theater
to deliver his speech, Roosevelt’s automobile passed through streets that were
deserted except for the usual Saturday night shoppers and people gathered to
read the bulletins about the European war. Few people recognized him as he rode
through the hushed streets of Hartford until he reached the stage door, where
he was quickly ushered inside. The expectant throng of 2,000 Progressives
greeted him enthusiastically when he took the stage. At one point, the crowd
erupted into wild applause when someone shouted from the audience, “Our next
President!”"
"In his lengthy speech that night, Roosevelt explained his unorthodox and unpopular endorsement of a Republican instead of a Progressive for governor of New York, extolled the virtue of the Monroe Doctrine, lambasted treaties as worthless, and abused the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, but never mentioned Panama. Curiously, “the long-coveted canal . . . the dream and idealism of centuries,” with its official opening had “at last become a tangible fact, a golden reality,” went unnoticed by the Colonel."
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| Roosevelt's campaign slogan for the 1916 race according to one artist, 1915, LOC |
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