THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Out of the humiliating debates upon the war, on the capacity of Alger and Shafter, on the management of the commissary and the field hospitals, on the failure of Sampson and Shafter to coÖperate, on the tactics and the alleged weakness of Schley, and on the diplomatic sincerity of McKinley, only one name caught the public ear. The only career that placed a soldier in line for political promotion was that of Theodore Roosevelt, who was still under forty years of age, although he had lived a keen, aggressive, and public life for nearly twenty years. Just out of Harvard in 1880, Roosevelt entered the rough and tumble of New York politics. He was a reform legislator when Cleveland was governor, and an opponent of the nomination of Blaine in 1884. He did not fight the ticket or turn Mugwump, for he had already formed a political philosophy, that only those who stayed within the party could be efficient in reform; but he dropped out of the ranks and took up ranch life in the West. Harrison made him a Civil Service Commissioner and supported him in a stern administration of the merit system. Before he left this office in 1895, to become Police Commissioner of New York City, the breezy and vigorous assaults of Roosevelt upon political corruption had already marked him as a reformer of a new type, who remained an active politician and a party man without losing his interest in reform. As police commissioner he gained new fame and more admirers. In 1897 he took the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy and prepared for war. He had already found time to write many books on the West, reform, naval history, and outdoor life. He resigned his post in April, 1898, on the eve of war, raised a regiment of volunteers, which the public speedily named the "Rough Riders," kept his men in the center of the stage while there was fighting, risked and violated all theories of discipline to attack the sanitary policy of the Administration in the autumn, and in October received the nomination of his party for Governor of New York, over the ill-concealed opposition of Thomas Collier Platt.

During the campaign of 1898 Roosevelt carried his candidacy to the voter in every part of the State. He spoke from rear platforms day after day. Rough Riders, in uniform, accompanied his party and reinforced his appeal to mixed motives of good government and patriotic fervor. He was elected in November, and on the same day the Republican control of Congress was assured. It was made possible for the party to fulfill the last of the obligations laid upon it by the election of 1896.

A currency act, passed in March, 1900, was the result of Republican success. It established the gold dollar by law as the standard of value, legalized the gold reserve at $150,000,000, and made it the duty of the Treasury to keep at a parity with gold the $313,000,000 of Civil War greenbacks, the $550,000,000 of silver and silver certificates, the $75,000,000 of Sherman Act treasury notes, as well as the national bank notes, which aggregated $300,000,000 in 1900. The law left the currency far from satisfactory in that it made it dependent upon redemption, and hence liable to sudden changes in value, but it silenced the fear of free-silver coinage.

In the spring of 1900 Congress was forced to consider the basis of colonial government. Governments similar to those of the Territories were provided for Hawaii and Porto Rico, but a troublesome revolt prevented such treatment of the Philippine Islands. There had been a native insurrection in these islands before the Spanish War began, and the aid of the rebels had made it easier for the United States to overthrow the power of Spain. Instead of receiving a pledge of independence, as Cuba did, the islands became a territorial possession of the United States. In February, 1899, under the native leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, insurrection broke out against the United States and received the sympathy of large numbers of Americans. The spectacle of the United States subduing a spirit of independence in the Philippines aroused and stimulated the movement of anti-imperialism that had fought against the acquisition of the islands. The incompatibility of republican institutions and foreign colonies, the demoralizing influence of ruling on the ruling class, the lesson of the fall of Rome, were held up before the public. Carl Schurz was one of the leaders in the protest, and his followers included many whose names were already well known in the advocacy of tariff and civil service reform. In 1901 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of expansion and imperial control. The people had already decided in their favor in 1900.

There was no contest for either nomination in the campaign of 1900. Bryan had established his right to the leadership that had come to him by chance in 1896. Although conservative Democrats still distrusted him, their voices were drowned by the popular approval of his honesty and humanity. "Four years ago," said Altgeld, in the Democratic Convention at Kansas City, "we quit trimming, we quit using language that has a double meaning.... We went forth armed with that strength that comes from candor and sincerity and we fought the greatest campaign ever waged on the American continent.... [For] the first time in the history of this Republic the Democracy of America have risen up in favor of one man." On a platform that repeated the currency demands of 1896 and denounced imperialism, Bryan was unanimously renominated, with Adlai E. Stevenson for the Vice-Presidency.

The emphatic denunciation of imperialism brought to Bryan and Stevenson the support of a group of independents,—the "hold-your-nose-and-vote" group, as the Republican press called them,—who were strong for the gold standard, but believed that currency was less fundamental than imperialism. The Republican party had accepted and approved the war and the benevolent intentions of the United States, and had renominated McKinley at Philadelphia, without a dissenting voice. Vice-President Hobart had died in office, or the original ticket might have been continued. As a substitute, rumor had attacked the name of Governor Roosevelt, while Senator Platt, preferring not to have him reËlected Governor of New York, had encouraged his boom for the Vice-Presidency. Repeatedly, in the spring of 1900, Roosevelt declared that he would not seek or accept the Vice-Presidency. Hanna and McKinley did not desire him on the ticket, but at the convention the delegates broke down all resistance and forced him to accept the nomination.

The policy of dignity, which McKinley had assumed in 1896, was continued by him in 1900, but the vice-presidential candidate proved the equal of Bryan as a campaigner. In hundreds of speeches, reaching nearly every State, they carried their personality to the voters. The two issues, imperialism and free silver, divided the voters along different lines, but the Administration had an economic basis for support in the recovery of business on every hand. The Republicans took credit for the general and abundant prosperity, and their cartoonists emphasized the idea of the "full dinner pail" as a reason for continued support. A smaller percentage of citizens voted than in 1896, for the issue was less clear than it had been then. Many who were discontented with both candidates voted with the Prohibitionists or Socialists. The Republican ticket was elected, with 292 electoral votes, as against 155 received by Bryan and Stevenson. A continuance of the Republican control of Congress was assured at the same time.

William McKinley was the first President after Grant to receive a second consecutive term. He made few changes in his Cabinet in 1901. Elihu Root remained in the War Department, for the sake of which he had refused to consider the Vice-Presidency, and strove for order in the Philippines, in Cuba, and in the United States Army itself. John Hay, as Secretary of State, continued his correspondence with the Powers over the Chinese revolt, without a break.

Only Seward and John Quincy Adams can rival John Hay as successful American Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Born in the Middle West in 1838, Hay served in Lincoln's household as a private secretary throughout the Civil War. He held minor appointments after this and alternated diplomatic experience with literary production. The monumental Life of Abraham Lincoln was partly his work. His graceful verse gained for him a wide reading. His anonymous novel, The Breadwinners, was an important document in the early labor movement. McKinley sent him to London as Ambassador in 1897, following the tradition that only the best in the United States may go to the Court of St. James, and had recalled him to be Secretary of State in the fall of 1898. The Boxer outbreak in China in 1900 gave the first opening to the new diplomacy of the United States, broadened out of its insularity by the Spanish War and interested in the attainment of international ideas. Hay led in the adjustment which settled the Chinese claims, opened the door of China to the commerce of the world, and prevented her dismemberment. He was still engaged in this correspondence when President McKinley was murdered by an anarchist, and Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States, September 14, 1901.

In the hurried inaugural ceremony held in the Buffalo residence in which McKinley died, Roosevelt declared his intention to continue the term as his predecessor had begun it. He insisted that all the members of the Cabinet should remain with him, as they did for considerable periods. He took up the work where it had been dropped, and for some months it was not apparent that a change had been made from a party administration to a personal administration. The suave and cordial tolerance of McKinley was succeeded by the aggressive certainty of his successor. Through John Hay's skillful hand this new tone made a deeper impression on the politics of the world than had that of any President since Washington gave forth the doctrine of neutrality.

Cuba was a pending problem. The American army, under General Leonard Wood, had cleaned up the island. The medical service had learned to isolate the mosquito, and had expelled the scourge of yellow fever. The natives formed a constitution which became effective on May 20, 1902. On this day the United States withdrew from the new Republic, leaving it to manage its own affairs, subject only to a pledge that it would forever maintain its independence, that it would incur no debt without providing the means for settling it, and that the United States might lawfully intervene to protect its independence or maintain responsible government. In the winter of 1901-02 Roosevelt urged Congress to adopt a policy of commercial reciprocity with Cuba. He was supported in this by opinion in Cuba, and by officials of the American Sugar Trust, but was opposed in the Senate by a combination of beet-sugar Republicans and cane-sugar Democrats. The measure failed in 1902, creating bad feeling between President and Congress, but a treaty of modified reciprocity was ratified in 1903.

In 1902 the United States became the first suitor to test the efficacy of the new court of arbitration at The Hague. In 1898 the Czar of Russia had invited the countries represented at St. Petersburg to join in a conference upon disarmament. His motives were questioned and derided, but the conference met the next summer at Huis ten Bosch, the summer palace of the Queen of the Netherlands, at The Hague. Here the plan of disarmament proved futile, but a great treaty for the settlement of international disputes was accepted by the countries present. It seemed probable that the Hague Court, thus created, would die of neglect, but President Roosevelt, appealed to by an advocate of peace, produced a trifling case and submitted it to arbitration. The Pious Fund dispute, with Mexico and the United States as suitors, involved the control of church funds in California. The suit was won by the United States, but derived its chief importance from being the first Hague settlement.

The pledge of the United States for Cuban independence had hardly been fulfilled when another Latin Republic became involved in trouble. Venezuela, torn by war, had incurred obligations to European creditors, and had defaulted in the payments upon them. In December, 1902, Great Britain and Germany announced a blockade of the Venezuelan ports in retaliation, and they were soon joined by other Powers with similar claims. Disclaiming intent to protect Venezuela in defaulting, Roosevelt urged the European claimants to abandon force for arbitration. Under his leadership joint commissions were finally established, and in 1903 the legal technicalities involved were sent to The Hague. The episode involved a new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, making it clear that unless the United States wished to protect the South American Republics in the evasion of their debts it must assume some responsibility for the honest settlement of them.

The boundary of Alaska next became a subject for arbitration. Since the valley of the Yukon had attracted its first great migration in the summer of 1897 the mining-camps had steadily increased in importance. Many of these were on the Canadian side of the meridian of 141°, and all were reached either by the river steamers or the trails from the south. The most important ports of entry were Dyea and Skaguay, at the head of the Lynn Canal, a long fiord projecting some ninety miles into the continent. From these ports the prospector plunged inland, climbed the Chilkoot or the Chilkat Pass, and followed one of several overland trails to the Upper Yukon.

The importance given to Dyea and Skaguay revived the question of their ownership and with this the boundary of Alaska. When Seward bought Alaska for the United States in 1867 he received it with the boundaries agreed upon at St. Petersburg between England and Russia in 1825. These followed the meridian of 141° from Mount St. Elias to the Arctic Ocean, and followed the irregularities of the shore-line southeast from that mountain to the Pacific at 54° 40´, North Latitude. The narrow coast strip was described as following the windings (sinuositÉs) of the shore, bounded by the shore mountains if possible, but in no case to be more than thirty miles wide. The narrow Lynn Canal pierces the thirty-mile strip, and the dispute turned chiefly upon interpretation: whether the canal should be regarded as a sinuositÉ of the shore, around which the boundary must go, or as a stream which it might properly cross.

For thirty years after 1867 the British and Canadian government maps treated the Lynn Canal and other similar fiords as American, but it became convenient for Canada, after 1897, to urge that the boundary should cross the canal and leave Dyea and Skaguay on British soil. A Canadian and American Joint High Commission, meeting in 1898, had been unable to adjust the controversy. In 1903 it was submitted to a tribunal, three to a side, which sat in London. It was doubtful whether the three American adjudicators, Root, Lodge, and Turner, were all "jurists of repute," as the treaty provided, but the arguments of the American counsel convinced Lord Chief Justice Alverstone, one of the British adjudicators, and his vote, added to the American three, gave a verdict that sustained most of the claims of the United States.

In Cuba and Venezuela, at The Hague, and in the Alaskan matter, Roosevelt and Hay showed at once a firmness and a reasonableness that attracted European attention to American diplomacy as never before. The subject of American diplomacy became a common study in American universities. England and Germany appeared to be desirous of conciliating the United States. The German Emperor bought a steam yacht in the United States, sent his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, to attend the launching, and sent as Ambassador a German nobleman who had long been a personal friend of the President. The reputation for firmness was enhanced, but that for fairness was lessened by the next episode, which involved the Colombian State of Panama.

The dangerous voyage of the Oregon in 1898 completed the conviction of the United States that an isthmian canal must be constructed, and that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was no longer adequate. The activity of De Lesseps and his French company at Panama had raised the question about 1880, but nothing had been done to weaken the treaty that obstructed American construction and control until Hay undertook a negotiation under the direction of McKinley in the fall of 1899. Congress was in the midst of a debate over a Nicaragua canal scheme when it was announced that on February 5, 1900, Hay and Lord Pauncefote had signed a treaty opening the canal to American construction, but providing for its neutralization. The treaty forbade the fortification of the canal or its use as an instrument of war. It was killed by amendment in the Senate, but on November 18, 1901, Lord Pauncefote signed a second treaty, by which Great Britain waived all her old rights save that of equal treatment for all users of the canal, and left the future waterway to the discretion of the United States. With the way thus opened,—for the Senate promptly confirmed this treaty,—a new study of routes and methods was hurried to completion.

An Isthmian Commission, created by the United States in 1899, was ready to report upon a route when the second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty was concluded. The practicable routes had been reduced in number to two, at Panama, and through Nicaragua. The former was under the control of the French company, which placed so high a price upon its concession that the commission recommended the Nicaragua route as, on the whole, more available. In Congress there was a strong predisposition in favor of this same route, but during 1902 this was weakened. Senator Hanna preferred the Panama route and worked effectively for it. The French Panama Company, frightened by the popularity of the Nicaragua route, reduced its price. The earthquake and volcanic eruption on the Island of Martinique reminded the world that Nicaragua was nearer the zone of active volcanic life, and hence more exposed to danger, than Panama. In June Congress empowered the President to select the route and build a canal at once.

Negotiations with Colombia for the right to build at Panama dragged on through 1902 and 1903. Weakened by continuous revolution, that Republic realized that the isthmian right of way was its most valuable asset. Only after prolonged discussion did its Government authorize its Minister at Washington to sign a treaty reserving Colombian sovereignty over the strip, but giving to the United States the canal concession in return for $10,000,000 in cash and an annuity of $250,000. This treaty was signed in Washington in January, 1903, and was received as a triumph for the diplomacy of Hay and Roosevelt. It was ratified in March by the Senate, in spite of a last filibuster by the friends of Nicaragua, but the Colombian Congress rejected the treaty and adjourned.

By the autumn of 1903 Roosevelt had determined upon the route at Panama, the French company had become eager to sell, and the Colombians living on the Isthmus were anxious to have the negotiations ended and the digging begun. In October the President wrote to an intimate friend hoping that there might be a revolt of the Isthmus against Colombia, though disclaiming any intent to provoke one. The friend made the wish public over his own name, but before it appeared in print the revolt had taken place. It was known in advance to the State Department, which telegraphed on November 3, 1903, asking when it was to be precipitated. It took place later on this day, the independence of the Republic of Panama was proclaimed, the United States prevented Colombia from repressing it by force, recognized the new Republic by cable, and on November 18 signed at Washington a treaty with Panama granting the canal concession. "I took Panama," boasted President Roosevelt some years later, when critics denounced his policy as a robbery of a weak neighbor.

The construction of a canal proceeded rapidly, once the diplomatic entanglements had been brushed away. The incidental problems of sanitation, labor, supplies, and engineering were solved promptly and effectively. Congress poured money into the enterprise without restraint, the first boats were passed through the locks in 1914, and in 1915 the formal opening of the canal was celebrated by a naval procession at the Isthmus and an Exposition at San Francisco.

Vigor and certainty of purpose marked the conduct of domestic affairs as well as foreign, but the necessity for the concurrence in these by Congress made the former results less striking than the latter. The appointments of President Roosevelt were such as might be expected from one who had himself devoted six years to the Civil Service Commission. Few of them met with opposition from the reform element. In the South he became involved with local public opinion, especially in the cases of a negro postmistress at Indianola, Mississippi, and the negro collector of the port of Charleston, in which he maintained that although federal appointments ought generally to go to persons acceptable in their districts, the door of opportunity must not be shut against the negro. Within a few weeks of his inauguration he precipitated a severe discussion upon the status of the negro by entertaining Booker T. Washington at the White House. He disciplined Republican leaders in the South who endeavored to exclude negroes from the party organization and to build up a "lily-white" Republican machine.

The administrative duties of the United States expanded rapidly after the Spanish War. The extension of scientific functions beginning in the eighties continued until the volume of work forced the creation of new offices. Federal civil employees numbered 107,000 in 1880, 166,000 in 1890, 256,000 in 1900, and 384,000 in 1910. Among the newer scientific activities was included that of the reclamation of the arid or semi-arid lands of the Southwest.

The region between the Missouri River and the Sierra Nevada had been regarded as uninhabitable since the days of Pike. Known as the "American Desert," it figured in the atlases as a place of sand and aridity, and became the home chosen for the Indian tribes between 1825 and 1840. Under the influence of migration to Oregon and California the real character of the Far West became known, but not until the continental railways were finished did many inhabitants enter it. In 1889 and 1890 the "Omnibus" States were admitted, embracing all the northwest half of the old desert. Utah followed in 1896. Arizona and New Mexico and Oklahoma developed rapidly after 1890 and were all demanding statehood in 1902.

The advance of population into the Far West revealed the existence of large areas in which an abundant agriculture could be produced through irrigation. Private means were inadequate for this and the land laws discouraged it. A demand for federal reclamation appeared in the eighties. In 1889 a survey of available sites for reservoirs was made by government engineers, and in 1902 Roosevelt coÖperated with the Far-Western Congressmen in securing the passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act. By this bill the proceeds of land sales in the arid States became a fund to be used by the reclamation service for the construction of great public irrigation works. In the succeeding years dams, tunnels, and ditches were undertaken that were rivaled in magnitude only by the railroad tunnels at New York and the excavations at Panama.

The aggressive assurance with which the Roosevelt Administration handled the problems of diplomacy and administration created for the President a wide and unusual popularity, which was strongest in the West. Many critics, also, were created, who distrusted personal influence when injected into government, and who doubted the solidity of Roosevelt's judgment. Personal altercations, in which the President was often the aggressor, were numerous. Among professional politicians dislike was mingled with fear because the President had established personal relations immediately with their constituents. Under President McKinley the state delegations in Congress had controlled the appointive federal offices of their States, and had been secure in their personal standing; under Roosevelt their control of appointments was less secure. When matters of legislation were taken up, this dissatisfaction among members of Congress was a serious obstacle to the attainment of constructive laws.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE