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ROOSEVELT BECOMES PRESIDENT

DEWEY'S candidacy for the Democratic nomination having "blown up," Bryan's nomination was inevitable. He got it on July 4, 1900, at Kansas City. The platform made anti-imperialism the major issue, antimonopoly secondary, and free silver very minor. Bryan's address in response to the notification committee was devoted almost exclusively to anti-imperialism.

Bryan received little credit for his anti-imperialist position from the more thoughtful and important leaders of that policy. On the contrary, he was reviled for his line of thought, which had led him to advocate that we should, first, ratify the treaty with Spain in order to achieve a state of peace; and, second, immediately thereafter liberate the peoples we took over. Bryan may not have thought of this policy as compromise - he was not a man of compromise. But the policy, and Bryan's advocacy of it, had the muddying effect of compromise on popular thought, and a numbing effect on senatorial action. The real anti-imperialist leaders of the country believed they would have been able to defeat ratification of the treaty with Spain but for Bryan's persuasion of Democratic senators to adopt his confusing policy. The ablest of the anti-imperialist leaders, the outstanding man among them by far, was Senator George Frisbie Hoar, of Massachusetts, a Republican. Senator Hoar was markedly a man of serene scholarship and gentle urbanity. Probably he was more nearly angry, more nearly moved to irritated speech, than at any other time in his venerable life, when he said:

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The war with Spain was over; we had no title to anything in the Philippines but the city of Manila. At that point in came Mr. Bryan and got all that were needed of his followers to force through the Senate a treaty which made lawful our ownership of the whole of the Philippines, and pledged the faith of the country that we should pay for them, and, accord

ing to many high constitutional authorities, made it the duty of the President to reduce them to submission. That act was itself a declaration of war upon the people of the Philippines, and the strife which had been but an accidental outbreak became war. And for that war Mr. Bryan is more responsible than any other single person since the treaty left the hands of the President. Everything I tried to do was brought to naught by the action of Mr. Bryan.

In the 1900 campaign Bryan was less restrained than in 1896. He had the air of having become a little embittered. On bis visit to Salem, his birthplace, in the

campaign he told an audience: "They [the Republicans] will buy every vote that can be bought. They will coerce every vote that can be coerced. They will intimidate every laboring man who can be intimidated. They will bribe every election judge who can be bribed. They will corrupt every court that can be corrupted."

The Republican candidates were William McKinley running for re-election as President, and Theodore Roosevelt for Vice-President.1 Roosevelt did the active campaigning, McKinley repeating his front-porch campaign of four years before. Roosevelt visited 24 States, travelled 21,000 miles, and made nearly 700 speeches. He was no less violent than Bryan. In the stronghold of the freesilver country, at Victor, Col., not far from Cripple Creek, he told an audience of miners: "In my State the men who were put on the committee on platform to draw up an antitrust plank at the Democratic National Convention at Kansas City had their pockets stuffed with ice-trust stock." Whereupon some one in the audience, recalling a scandal of the Republican administration's management of the Spanish-American War, shouted: "What about the rotten beef?"

"I ate it," Roosevelt responded, “and you'll never get near enough to be hit by a bullet or within five miles of it." This passage was followed by a near-riot, in which Roosevelt, on his way to his train, was protected from physical violence by a group of his former Rough Riders.

Bryan lost, by a popular vote of 7,219,530 for McKinley and Roosevelt, to 6,358,061 for Bryan and Stevenson. For the moment the country seemed to follow the imperialist course, and actually elected the party of that policy. The country's action, however, was based not

2

1 How Roosevelt was made Vice-President chiefly by his enemies, and how this promotion against his will turned out to be his opportunity, is told in Chapter 4. 2 See Chapter 3.

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wholly on the issue of imperialism, but on others, and even more markedly, on the personalities involved. Bryan lost, not more to McKinley, who was the Republican presidential candidate against him, than to the vice-presidential candidate, Theodore Roosevelt.

President McKinley and Vice-President Hobart in front of the latter's home at Norwood Park, New Jersey, in the summer of 1899.

II

Roosevelt, elected Vice-President, ended his term as governor of New York on New Year's Day, 1901, with a conviction that his political career was over. He took a hunting trip to Colorado, returned to Washington in time to be sworn in as Vice-President on March 4, and presided over a brief executive session of the Senate. He did not enjoy the duty nor perform it particularly well. He, like the enemies who had manoeuvred him into the position, thought he had been shelved. Roosevelt shared their belief in the tradition, not wholly accurate except in

more recent years, that the vice-presidency is normally the grave1 of political ambition, and prepared to use the leisure attending that office for studying law. He wrote to John Proctor Clarke, then justice of the supreme court of New York:

Just a line in reference to my studying law. I have been one year in the law school, and at that time was also in my cousin John's office. Now, could I go into an office in New York say Evarts & Choate or study in New York or here in Oyster Bay, so as to get admitted to the bar before the end of my term as Vice-President?

With the same intention he asked advice from Alton B. Parker, then chief judge of the court of appeals of New York, and destined to be, three years later, Roosevelt's Democratic opponent for the presidency. Judge Parker advised him to enroll in the Columbia Law School. Roosevelt replied: "As soon as I get back to Washington I shall begin to attend the law school there, and when I have completed my two years' course and feel myself fit I shall apply for the examination."

Before actually entering, he consulted his friend Justice White, later chief justice of the Supreme Court, as to whether it would be any infringement of propriety for him, while Vice-President, to enroll himself as a student in one of the law schools at Washington. Justice White thought this might be dubious, but advised Roosevelt what law-books to read and offered to quiz him every Saturday evening. With the expectation of making this use of his enforced leisure, in preparation for a new career, Roosevelt spent the summer writing, travelling, and speech-making.

1 Since Martin Van Buren no Vice-President has been elevated later to the presidency, except through the accident of the death of the President. The tradition is to the effect that a Vice-President can only profit by the death of the President, and that all other chances run toward political desuetude. It is true of recent but not of the early years of our history. (See Chapter 4.)