Theodore Rex
by Edmund Morris
The most eagerly awaited presidential biography in years, Theodore
Rex is a sequel to Edmund Morris’s classic bestseller The Rise of
Theodore Roosevelt. It begins by following the new President (still the
youngest in American history) as he comes down from Mount Marcy, New York, to
take his emergency oath of office in Buffalo, one hundred years ago.
A detailed prologue describes TR’s assumption of power and journey to
Washington, with the assassinated President McKinley riding behind him like a
ghost of the nineteenth century. (Trains rumble throughout this irresistibly
moving narrative, as TR crosses and recrosses the nation.) Traveling south
through a succession of haunting landscapes, TR encounters harbingers of all
the major issues of the new century-Imperialism, Industrialism, Conservation,
Immigration, Labor, Race-plus the overall challenge that intimidated McKinley:
how to harness America’s new power as the world’s richest nation.
Theodore Rex (the title is taken from a quip by Henry James) tells the
story of the following seven and a half years-years in which TR entertains,
infuriates, amuses, strong-arms, and seduces the body politic into a state of
almost total subservience to his will. It is not always a pretty story: one of
the revelations here is that TR was hated and feared by a substantial minority
of his fellow citizens. Wall Street, the white South, Western lumber barons,
even his own Republican leadership in Congress strive to harness his steadily
increasing power.
Within weeks of arrival in Washington, TR causes a nationwide sensation by
becoming the first President to invite a black man to dinner in the White
House. Next, he launches his famous prosecution of the Northern Securities
Company, and follows up with landmark antitrust legislation. He liberates
Cuba, determines the route of the Panama Canal, mediates the great Anthracite
Strike, and resolves the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-1903 with such masterful
secrecy that the world at large is unaware how near the United States and
Germany have come to war.
During an epic national tour in the spring of 1903, TR’s conservation
philosophy (his single greatest gift to posterity) comes into full flower. He
also bestows on countless Americans the richness of a personality without
parallel-evangelical and passionate, yet lusty and funny; adroitly political,
winningly natural, intellectually overwhelming. The most famous father of his
time, he is adored by his six children (although beautiful, willful
“Princess” Alice rebelled against him) and accepted as an honorary member
of the White House Gang of seditious small boys.
Theodore Rex, full of cinematic detail, moves with the exhilarating
pace of a novel, yet it rides on a granite base of scholarship. TR’s own
voice is constantly heard, as the President was a gifted letter writer and
raconteur. Also heard are the many witticisms, sometimes mocking, yet always
affectionate, of such Roosevelt intimates as Henry Adams, John Hay, and Elihu
Root. (“Theodore is never sober,” said Adams, “only he is drunk with
himself and not with rum.”)
TR’s speed of thought and action, and his total command of all aspects of
presidential leadership, from bureaucratic subterfuge to manipulation of the
press, make him all but invincible in 1904, when he wins a second term by a
historic landslide. Surprisingly, this victory transforms him from a patrician
conservative to a progressive, responsible between 1905 and 1908 for a raft of
enlightened legislation, including the Pure Food and Employer Liability acts.
Even more surprising, to critics who have caricatured TR as a swinger of the
Big Stick, is his emergence as a diplomat. He wins the Nobel Peace Prize for
bringing about an end to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.
Interspersed with many stories of Rooseveltian triumphs are some bitter
episodes-notably a devastating lynching-that remind us of America’s deep
prejudices and fears. Theodore Rex does not attempt to justify TR’s
notorious action following the Brownsville Incident of 1906-his worst mistake
as President-but neither does this resolutely honest biography indulge in the
easy wisdom of hindsight. It is written throughout in real time, reflecting
the world as TR saw it. By the final chapter, as the great “Teddy”
prepares to quit the White House in 1909, it will be a hard-hearted reader who
does not share the sentiment of Henry Adams: “The old house will seem dull
and sad when my Theodore has gone.”
Hardcover First Edition: Theodore Rex
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