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This was in 1908 when I was invited to make him a visit to hear his criticism of my vi and vii volumes. After luncheon at the White House he asked his cousin W. Emlen Roosevelt, Francis D. Millet, Clifford Richardson and myself to accompany him on the rear veranda of the White House. In your last work, he said, you have stepped down from your impartial judgment seat of the earlier volumes and become something of an advocate. During the Civil War you held the scales even, and while you have perhaps properly criticised the North for her Reconstruction policy you have not blamed the South for the course she took that made radical measures possible. Her conduct prevented any proper policy. I am inclined to think that the XIV amendment plan was the best proposed.

It was a fine day and stimulated by the air and the success of his Conservation Conference, which was just ending, he talked freely and well. I blame E. L. Godkin and Carl Schurz, he declared, because after having supported the negro suffrage policy, they condemned the results of it. It was all right if they had avowed their mistake but that they did not do. They still held to the negro suffrage policy as being the best. Even now the Evening Post condemns the President's action in the Brownsville, Texas matter from purely sentimental reasons. The negro has been hurt, therefore the President is wrong. But Carl Schurz and The Nation never stimulated the best young men to go into politics and they never had any influence with the crowd.

It was perhaps all right, he continued, for you to say that Carl Schurz was almost an ideal senator, but on that level you failed to do justice to Oliver P. Morton. Roose

velt then told with great spirit and enthusiasm Morton's course during the Civil War, speaking of the Copperheads as bitterly as if he had been their personal antagonist. It was the appreciation of one fighter by another. The men at the East, he said, have books written about them in good literary style; they receive the adulation of writers and so get a larger share of commendation than they are entitled to. When talking of Morton the President said to his cousin, Because Winslow, Lanier & Co. advanced money to Morton in his time of trouble I am disposed to forgive a member of their firm for saying that I am crazy, indulge immoderately in drink and furthermore that I am an opium fiend.

There is no foundation whatever for any of the financier's alleged charges; that of immoderate indulgence in drink has lasted the longest but has finally been set to rest. The truth is that he rarely drank at luncheon and that when he drank wine at dinner, he drank with the moderation of a gentleman and never to excess.1

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Next morning the President continued his talk: I have not gained the support of the cultivated class and there are points where I should have done so. But I have received the support of the plain people, of the suspender men." And yet I have done things that might have aroused a demagogic feeling. I have shut the people out from the White House grounds in the rear; I have stopped the public receptions and have done a great deal in the limitation of others.

The relations of some of the cultivated class with men of wealth were close and it may be regretted that so much

1 See Bishop, ii. 118.

acerbity developed in the conflict which Roosevelt had with high finance. He came at them, they thought, "with axe and crowbar." 1 But the fault was more with the financial interests than with the President. They should have coöperated with him to a certain extent and, when expediency would not permit them to go further they might have managed matters so that the fighting instinct would not have developed in Roosevelt. They opposed his re-nomination and re-election in a manner irritating and yet the results were abortive. For they accomplished naught but an increase of the bitterness, as Roosevelt was human and did not love his personal opponents. And, on the other hand, it did not contribute to the amenity of the discussion for the rich men to be told that they were corrupt and if they did not behave they would be sent to jail. Nor were they pleased with his invention of the Ananias Club in which he put all men who, according to him, did not tell the truth. It was abundantly easy in the way of retort to point out the inconsistencies of Roosevelt himself. No man could speak as often and as much as he did covering a series of years and be absolutely consistent; but he was always truthful and sincere and the discovery of his inconsistencies did not in any way affect his hold upon the mass.

Elihu Root was a good medium between the President and the financial interests. Devoted to Roosevelt he could at the same time see the point of view of high finance and when he said to a wealthy crowd in New York City that the President was "really the great conservator of property and rights,' he spoke with a wise fore

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1 Emerson, Representative Men, Lecture iv.
"I am aware that this is a quasi-repetition.

sight of the future. No stronger statement of the right of private property can be found than in Roosevelt's public and private utterances. He thoroughly believed that the protection of private property and the family were the bases of civilization. Thoroughly opposed to socialism, the difference between him and the financial men was that they believed in a more intense form of individualism than he did. He thought that the State had certain powers which they denied. He also believed that the President did not require a specific authorization of the Constitution to act in a manner that he conceived to be the welfare of the public. When he talked of bad corporations and good corporations, of good men of wealth and bad men, the question who should decide between the two arose. Roosevelt arrogated to himself the decision but at the same time he said, "Our judges, as a whole, are brave and upright men." He believed that the reason of the failure of the Grecian, Roman, and Italian republics was that when the rich got the power, they exploited the poor, and when the poor got the power they plundered the rich. He was to stand midway between the two and prevent excess. A favorite expression of his was he desired to give everybody a square deal. He quoted from Burke with the assurance that such was his policy: "If I cannot reform with equity, I will not reform at all. . . . There is a state to preserve as well as a state to reform." Roosevelt added, "The bulk of our business is honestly done; . . . the great mass of railroad securities rest upon safe and solid

1 Special Message to Congress, Jan. 31, 1908. Review of Reviews ed.,

foundations." 1 As high finance and Roosevelt agreed upon these general propositions they ought to have made a basis for a certain coöperation. Of course it is difficult to say how far men will coöperate when they apply general truths to concrete cases. The President was thoroughly satisfied with the Speaker, Joseph Cannon, for his work in the Congress that adjourned in 1906, writing, "With Mr. Cannon as Speaker the House has accomplished a literally phenomenal amount of good work”2; but two years later he was far from being content with the Speaker.

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So far as I know his liking for Andrew Jackson first became public during his trip down the Mississippi River in the autumn of 1907, but at the Hermitage where Jackson lived and died it became enthusiasm. "Andrew Jackson was an American," he said. "I draw a sharp distinction between Old Hickory and a great many other Presidents. The Hermitage was the home of one of the three or four greatest Presidents this Union has ever had. . Andrew Jackson was a mighty National figure." From this time on Roosevelt was possessed with this admiration that he many times set forth. Before 1907 he contrasted the Washington-Lincoln theory of the presidential powers with the Jefferson-Buchanan; but afterwards it became the Jackson-Lincoln example to justify his use of the office. He may have been attracted to Jackson on account of his war against the financial magnates of the country, and through his forceful personality,'

1 May 30, 1907, Review of Reviews ed., 1255, 1263.

Aug. 18, 1906, ibid., 801.

3 Review of Reviews ed., 1458.

See Life of Jackson, Bassett, chap. xxvii; Channing, History of the United States, v. 356, 379, 388, 401.

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