John M. Hilpert - American Cyclone: Theodore Roosevelt and His 1900 Whistle-Stop Campaign

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AMERICAN CYCLONE

American Cyclone

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
AND HIS 1900 WHISTLE-STOP CAMPAIGN

JOHN M. HILPERT

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the
Association of American University Presses.

Copyright 2015 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2015
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hilpert, John M.
American cyclone : Theodore Roosevelt and his 1900
whistle-stop campaign / John M. Hilpert.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4968-0339-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4968-0340-5 (ebook) 1. PresidentsUnited States Election1900. 2. Roosevelt, Theodore, 18581919. 3. PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. 4. United StatesPolitics and government18971901. I. Title.
E738.H55 2015
324.9730911dc 2015009821

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

To Pat
who has made all of lifes whistle stops with me

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

When Theodore Roosevelt entered the nations political conversation as the Republicans nominee for the vice presidency in 1900, he was only forty-one years old. However, he had caught the publics attention with the popular version of his life story. Child of East Coast privilege. Sickly, bespectacled youth. Naturalist and author. Harvard graduate. New York assemblyman. Young widower. Badlands cowboy. Civil service reformer. Urban police commissioner. Assistant secretary of the navy. Rough Rider and war hero. Enemy of political bosses as governor of the nations most important state. Attentive husband to his second wife, Edith, and the father of six children.

Few candidates for the presidency or vice presidency have enjoyed the elevated level of recognition and admiration accorded Theodore Roosevelt in the waning days of the nineteenth century. To millions he seemed of a set with the likes of George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant, each of whom captured the nations attention with his wartime leadership. Even as Roosevelt exited the troop ship carrying him home from the war with Spain in September 1898, there was talk of election to New Yorks governorship and of the presidential opportunity likely to occur in 1904.

Revolutionary War hero Washington was ushered into the presidency by a unanimous decision of the electors. His military service had spanned several difficult campaigns over a period of years, and his victories meant independence for the new nation. When voters elected Grant to become commander in chief, it was in the shadow of his grueling years of battlefield failures and successes in a war that threatened the very sovereignty of the United States.

When Theodore Roosevelt joined the ranks of the nations military heroes, he had led an assault on a hill in Cuba, assumed combat leadership for a period of weeks, and defiantly stood up to the federal bureaucracy on behalf of the soldiers in his command. Although the colonel claimed victory in the skirmishes involving him and the Rough Riders, his celebrity was arguably outsized in contrast to Washington, Grant, and other military heroes who sought the presidency or vice presidency before him. Not only is this clear to us in hindsight, but it was also apparent to some of

Roosevelts life story, his frequently bold behavior, his quirky visual appeal, and the image of his dashing company of Rough Riderscombined with his energy and winning personalitygained for him a following among the newspapermen covering the battles with Spanish troops in Cuba. In turn, these representatives of dailies from New York and Chicago, as well as writers from the national newswire services, reported regularly to their readers on the colonels accomplishments and antics. His wartime achievements may have merited reasonable attention, but, to his good fortune, he became the chosen one, the adopted focus for the journalistic narrative of the war with Spain.

Roosevelt was the name citizens began to connect with national success. From his three years as a state assemblyman, his stint with the Civil Service Commission, and his time as New Yorks police commissioner, Roosevelt understood the value and potential of positive relationships with newspapermen. When the stirrings of journalistic attention came his way in Cuba, he was ready to seize the opportunity. Roosevelt proved himself strategic and wily in courting the right relationships with those reporting the news, and these skills stood him in good stead throughout the rest of his life.

After his triumphal return from Cuba, his election as governor, and his widely reported tiffs with machine politicians and big businessmen, Theodore Roosevelt was positioned for national office. Despite the misgivings of some Republican leaders, Roosevelt was a proven politician who could manipulate circumstances and voters to benefit himself and his party. When the vice presidential nomination came his way, he cultivated the image of the reluctant candidate wooed by demanding convention delegates to accept a role he would have preferred to avoid. Humbly, he accepted the nomination for the sake of strengthening the ticket.

roughly the spring of 1898 to the early summer of 1900 is available to the reader in much greater detail in the extensive biographical canon on Theodore Roosevelt. Only those developments in his life directly related to later events in the summer and fall of 1900 are presented herein.

comprise the primary focus of this book, presenting in detail materials from primary sources that tell the story and analyze the significance of his vice presidential campaign in the election of 1900. Nowhere else does the Roosevelt literature present as broadly the time from the Republican National Convention in June 1900 to the national election in November 1900.

This period proved highly significant in the life of the man who would quickly and unexpectedly become the twenty-sixth president of the United States. For four months Roosevelt campaigned tirelessly through many regions of the nation on behalf of William McKinleys reelection, and in the process he burnished his own shining image, gained political influence by expanding Republican support, demonstrated his steel by standing up to naysayers, and sharpened his sense of the publics response to him and his message.

covers the period from the beginning of September to Election Day on November 6, 1900, detailing Roosevelts message, his experiences, and critical elements that created variations in the political environment state by state, and even community by community.

Campaigning for William McKinleys reelection as president, his own election as vice president, and the election of regional candidates on the foundation of the Republican platform moved Theodore Roosevelt beyond the image of hero turned politician, and he evolved into his partys most forceful champion. Roosevelt scholars generally treat the election of 1900 in a cursory fashion, reciting gross statistics on the number of communities visited and speeches made, then moving abruptly to his restlessness as vice president and his unanticipated ascension to the presidency. This book explains why the events of 1900 between the months of June and November should not be overlooked by those interested in understanding Theodore Roosevelt.

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