DEWEY The Most Remarkable Announcement, Probably, of a THEN, one morning in early April, with the Democratic National Convention of 1900 only three months away, Bryan's leisurely march toward nomination by acclamation was interrupted by one of the most curious announcements of a presidential candidacy ever made, one of the most naïve declarations ever given out by any man who had even the briefest part in American politics. It came from a figure whose contact with important American history was brief, lasting in all barely three years, but who, while his importance endured, engaged the attention of the people in several different ways, all of them engrossing and some spectacular. At six o'clock in the evening of April 3, 1900, Admiral George Dewey, at his home in Washington, gave to a correspondent of the New York World1 an interview which, in the outcome that attended it, composed the closing phase of Dewey as a serious figure in contemporary American life. The interview read: Yes; I realize that the time has arrived when I must definitely define my position. When I arrived in this country last September, I said then that nothing would induce me to be a candidate for the Presidency. Since then, however, I have had the leisure and inclination to study the matter, and have reached a different 1 This episode was no less outstanding as a journalistic beat than unique as an announcement of presidential ambition. Mr. Samuel G. Blythe, who at the time was in charge of The World bureau at Washington, has told me the circumstances. From his account I paraphrase and condense the following: Many newspapers, wanting some one to contest against Bryan for the Democratic nomination, kept suggesting that Dewey should run. Shoals of newspaper correspondents called on Dewey. Most of them he would not see, and to those he did see he would not talk. From time to time, the thing flared up and died down, each flare-up of newspaper interest being accompanied by more newspaper visitations on Dewey, all increasingly fruitless. One night, the home office of The World in New York sent a telegram to Mr. Blythe, asking him to make another try at Dewey. Mr. Blythe says: "I stuck it on the spike. It seemed just one of those telegraphic things that in those days used to come in from editors of all grades, dozens of them a day, suggesting, ordering, and so on. However, after the boys who worked in the bureau with me had turned in their afternoon copy and were getting out for dinner, I called in my state, war, and navy man, Horace J. Mock, and said: ‘Mock, the office wants us to make another try for Dewey. I have no idea you can get anything, but you live up that way, so drop in and ask for the old man and see if he has decided anything yet.' Mock took the telegram to Dewey's house about 6.30, rang the bell, and was shown in. He handed Dewey the telegram, which read: "Please make another effort to find out whether Admiral Dewey is a candidate for President." "Yes," said the admiral, "I have decided to become a candidate." The two then discussed the form of the interview. Presently Mrs. Dewey came in. Among them they drafted the statement as it appeared. By the time it was in the form the Deweys wanted, it was nine o'clock in the evening. Mock made a fair copy, and, realizing the importance of it, asked Dewey to sign it, saying he would like to keep the notes for a souvenir. Dewey signed. Mock, being a good newspaper man of the day when exclusive stories were more sought than now, impressed on the admiral the necessity of not saying a word to any other person until the interview should be published the following morning. The admiral agreed. Mr. Blythe continues: "About half-past nine o'clock, when I was wondering what had become of Mock, he burst into my office waving a statement, and said he had the exclusive announcement that Dewey would run. I went to the wire, told The World what we had, and cautioned the greatest secrecy and care that not a word should leak out. Then I locked up The World bureau, and not a person went in or out of the place until we had word from New York that The World with the statement in was on the streets." DEWEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 311 conclusion, inasmuch as so many assurances have come to me from my countrymen that I would be acceptable as a candidate for this great office. If the American people want me for this high office, I shall be only too willing to serve them. It is the highest honor in the gift of this nation; what citizen would refuse it? Since studying this subject I am convinced that the office of the President is not such a very difficult one to fill, his duties being mainly to execute the laws of Congress. Should I be chosen for this exalted position I would execute the laws of Congress as faithfully as I have always executed the orders of my superiors. "Is there any political significance in your trips West?" The World correspondent asked. "No; I am simply filling the engagements made months ago-long before I ever thought seriously of the Presidency.' "On what platform will you stand?" "I think I have said enough at this time, and possibly too much." After the reader has taken in the various qual From a photograph by Clinedinst. Admiral George Dewey, commander of the ities of that announcement, including what inevitably seems its complacency, let us go back and follow the beginning, the rise, the decline, and the fall, which compose one of the most picturesque careers in late American history. As seen twenty-five years later, it is but an episode, an incident where the gods of history seem to step aside for a moment from the march of serious events to amuse themselves with a little ironic dance by the side of the road. But at the moment it seemed like history itself; and the historians of the day so treated it. II Admiral Dewey · - at the beginning of this episode it was Commodore Dewey — had served under Farragut in the Civil War, had remained in the navy, and by his fifties1 was one of those many naval officers who went along from day to day doing their duty well and looking to no future more exciting than the placid rounding out of their naval service in routine ways. To him, as to many others, there came the engaging hint of adventurous change in this quiet prospect, through the growing imminence of the Spanish War. In the fall of 1897 he learned from Theodore Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy, that choice of a commander for the Asiatic squadron rested between himself and Commodore John A. Howell, and that strong political influence had been brought to bear on the secretary of the navy to name the latter.2 Dewey, although he was one of those naval officers whose high traditions included distaste for political influence within the service, felt he was justified under the circumstances in soliciting the aid of Senator Proctor, of his native State, Vermont, who, delighted at the opportunity of serving Dewey, immediately called 1 Dewey was born December 26, 1837. 2 "Roosevelt was a stanch supporter of Dewey. He stood solidly for his retention when high naval officials and politicians were urging the selection of another leader for the Pacific fleet. San Francisco and a few other Western cities objected to the selection of Dewey. They had in mind a 'favorite son.' But Roosevelt stood to his guns. One day a delegation called upon him to protest against the Dewey appointment. Roosevelt heard them through and then answered them rather vehemently: 'Gentlemen, I can't agree with you. We have looked up his record. We have looked him straight in the eyes. He is a fighter. We'll not change now. Pleased to have met you. Good day, gentlemen.'"-From "The Life of Theodore Roosevelt," Wm. Draper Lewis. DEWEY SAILS FOR THE ORIENT 313 on President McKinley and received the promise of the appointment before he left the White House. On October 21, 1897, the order was issued directing Dewey to sail from San Francisco on December 7 to relieve acting RearAdmiral McNair as commander of the Asiatic squadron. On the eve of Dewey's departure for the Orient he was given a banquet by some friends at the Metropolitan Club in Washington. One of the features was a toast in verse recited by Archibald Hopkins. In the words of the toast was something illustrative of the certainty with which war with Spain had come to be regarded by army and navy men; something prophetic of a grandiose quality that was destined to attend Dewey's next few years; something prophetic of the extravagance of emotion on the part of the American people which was to attend our war against Spain. One stanza read: We know our honor'll be sustained Our rights respected and maintained, Another stanza included, among other things that make it worth reprinting, a closing line which, read after the passing of twenty-seven years, suggests a change in popular customs and taste: And when he takes the homeward tack, We'll hail that day that brings him back, Dewey, with these words ringing in his ears - one "Jag," Mr. Hopkins informs me, suggested itself to him more because it rhymed with "flag" than because of his anticipation of any definite degree or form of exaltation. In the difficult balance between propriety and the requirements of poetry, he experimented with another version, in which the second line was changed to "His admiral's flag on high"; but that, too, led no farther than a compromise in which the last line read: "We'll drink the cellar dry." |