The final days of the forty-six-year-old Thee’s two-month bout with cancer produced excruciating pain. His groans reverberated through the house and his dark hair turned gray. Elliott stayed by his father’s side, ready to bring a handkerchief drenched in ether to his face. But when he screamed, neither the ether nor the sedatives could still the pain, and the fear in his father’s eyes was terrible for the sixteen-year-old boy to behold.
On Saturday, February 9, 1878, the family, who had shielded Teedie from the worsening situation, sent an urgent message for him to come home. He raced to catch the overnight train, but reached New York on Sunday morning to find his father had died late Saturday night. His grief was “doubly bitter,” he wrote. “I was away in Boston when the man I loved dearest on earth died.” Remembering how his father’s devoted strength had comforted him throughout the worst of his childhood attacks, he was filled with unbearable remorse: “I never was able to do anything for him during his last illness.”
“The death of Mr. Roosevelt was a public loss,” stated the New York Times. “Flags flew at half-mast all over the city,” reported Jacob Riis. “Rich and poor followed him to the grave, and the children whose friend he had been wept over him.” Newsboys from the lodging house, orphans for whom he had found homes, and Italian girls he had taught in Sunday school all grieved for their kind benefactor. “There was truly no end to a life that had been devoted to such philanthropy,” Reverend William Adams declared at his funeral, “for the work he had laid out would remain and grow in power long after his death.”
“He has just been buried,” Theodore wrote in his diary. “I felt as if I had been stunned, or as if part of my life had been taken away; and the two moments of sharp, bitter agony, when I kissed the dear, dead face and realized he would never again on this earth speak to me or greet me with his loving smile, and then when I heard the sound of the first clod dropping on the coffin. . . .” Ten days later, back at Harvard, his loss still struck him “like a hideous dream.” Semi-annual examinations offered some distraction to get through the days, but the restless nights were filled with misery. “It has been a most fortunate thing for me that I have had so much to do,” he wrote in his diary. “If I had very much time to think I believe I should almost go crazy.” He was grateful for the small margin of relief his insular college world offered, realizing that his mother and siblings had nothing to assuage their grief.
Returning home to Oyster Bay that summer was difficult, for “every nook and corner about the place, every piece of furniture about the house is in some manner connected with him.” Only frenzied activity managed to keep his sorrow at bay. In late June, however, Theodore confided to his diary a surprising recognition of his own character: “Am leading the most intensely happy & healthy, out of doors life & spending my time riding on horseback, making long tramps through woods and fields after specimens, or else on the bay rowing or sailing—generally in a half naked condition and with my gun along. I could not be happier, except at those bitter moments when I realize what I have lost. Father was himself so invariably cheerful that I feel it would be wrong for me to be gloomy, and besides, fortunately or unfortunately, I am of a very buoyant temper being a bit of an optimist.” Nevertheless, the young man remained painfully aware of the magnitude of his loss. His father had been “the only human being to whom I told everything,” he wrote. “Never failing to get loving advice and sweet sympathy in return; no one but my wife, if ever I marry, will ever be able to take his place.”
Perhaps this fundamental loneliness contributed to Theodore’s ardent pursuit of seventeen-year-old Alice Hathaway Lee during his junior year at Harvard. He later claimed that when they first met at the home of his college friend, Richard Saltonstall, “it was a real case of love at first sight—and my first love too.” Like the first flush of his father’s infatuation with Mittie, it seemed as if Theodore’s passion for Alice far exceeded his genuine knowledge of her. While his diary is rife with descriptions of her bewitching beauty, scant space is devoted to shared sympathies or interests that might lead to lasting companionship. Within four weeks of their introduction, he vowed “to win her.” Seven months later, when he was only twenty, he proposed and initially, she rejected him. He was undeterred.
The campaign he launched to gain Alice’s love necessitated a full-blown battle plan. Theodore later told a friend he “made everything subordinate to winning her.” Weekend after weekend, he rode his horse six miles to her country home in Chestnut Hill. He took her sledding and skating, read to her, accompanied her on long walks in the woods, and escorted her to dances. He worked to ingratiate himself with her parents and mesmerized her young brother with exciting tales of adventure. Meanwhile, he made every attempt to integrate her into his sphere, introducing her to his friends at the Porcellian and inviting her to join his family for a round of parties in New York. Still, she hesitated to make a commitment at such a young age. Only in the privacy of his diary did young Theodore acknowledge “the tortures” he was suffering. His wooing of Alice had the aspect of an epic quest in which he was the hero, a crusade in which he would succeed or die. “I have hardly had one good night to rest and night after night I have not even gone to bed. I have been pretty nearly crazy over my wayward, wilfull darling.”
Finally, in late January of his senior year, she agreed to become his wife, and they set a wedding date for the following autumn. “I am so happy that I dare not trust in my own happiness,” he wrote. “I do not believe any man ever loved a woman more than I love her.” Captivated by his first love, he believed there was “nothing on earth left to wish for.”
Despite the absorption in his engagement, Theodore continued to wrestle and box. He joined a hunting expedition in Maine and had a “royally good time” with his club mates. He completed a thesis on “Equalizing Men and Women Before the Law” that shared the same progressive attitude toward women as Will Taft’s senior essay. “As regards the laws relating to marriage there should be the most absolute equality preserved between the two sexes,” Theodore wrote. “I do not think the woman should assume the man’s name . . . I would have the word ‘obey’ used not more by the wife than by the husband.” Unlike young Taft, however, he was not ready to recommend women’s suffrage.
Nor did he neglect his regular class work, applying himself sufficiently to graduate magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, twenty-first in a class that opened with 230 students. Still dividing his classmates according to their family’s standing, he boasted that “only one gentleman stands ahead of me.” As he approached graduation, he reflected on his college years with self-satisfaction. “I have certainly lived like a prince,” he wrote in his diary. “I have had just as much money as I could spend; belonged to the Porcellian Club; have had some capital hunting trips; my life has been varied; I have kept a good horse and cart; I have had half a dozen good and true friends in college, and several very pleasant families outside; a lovely home . . . and to crown all infinitely above everything else put together—I have won the sweetest of girls for my wife. No man ever had so pleasant a college course.”
The prospect of marriage altered his long-cherished plan to become a naturalist, a career that would require years of study abroad and was unlikely to provide a substantial income. Instead, he decided to enter Columbia Law School, vowing to “do my best, and work hard for my own little wife.”
From that point on, as Carleton Putnam writes, “Natural history was to remain a genuine avocation, but it never loomed again as a feasible career.”
By the age of twenty-one, Theodore had known, in his own words, “great sorrow and great joy,” and while he believed “the joy has far overbalanced the sorrow,” his early suffering had deepened his self-knowledge, intensified his powers of concentration, and heightened his sensibilities.
BOTH WILL AND TEEDIE HAD the good fortune of growing up as favored children in close-knit, illustrious families where affection and respect abounded. Both inherited from their fathers legacies of honorable and
distinguished careers, as well as a commitment to public service and a dedication to the Republican Party. Where Will developed an accommodating disposition to please a living father who cajoled him to do more and do better, Teedie forever idolized a dead father who had paid for a substitute for himself during the Civil War to placate his wife, yet had fostered military and historical tales of heroism in his beloved son.
Will had the stronger physical endowment but the weaker self-control; Teedie the weaker body but the greater strength of will. The enormously powerful Will abused his physical gift; the smaller Teedie, a heroic compensator, toughened and transformed his body. Will tended to stay indoors; Teedie tested himself outdoors, against nature. Taft was easygoing and even-tempered; Roosevelt perpetually in motion, as if to keep self-inquiry at bay.
Will, by temperament warmer and more sociable than Teedie, found common ground with one and all; others instinctively responded to his smiling countenance and kindly demeanor. Teedie was less approachable at first blush, limiting his associations to those who shared his class and station in life.
Where Teedie was an intellectual adventurer with a passion for reading and a wide-ranging curiosity engendered by a broad set of experiences, Will worked methodically, within the defined frameworks outlined by his instructors. The one was self-assured, guided by his own ferocious determination; the other more subject to the entreaties of others, steering his course out of the desire to please. Will was more modest and straightforward; Teedie more boastful and complex. Common to both was a sober good sense and a willingness to work hard that led to high distinction in college and the promise of success as they looked forward to law school.
If there are splendid traits in abundance in the characters of both young men, the one major distinction at this stage is that Teedie had shown he could come through agonizing misfortune. Will had not yet been tested by adversity.
CHAPTER THREE
The Judge and the Politician
Will Taft, rising Cincinnati attorney, in the early 1880s.
FOR WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, LAW school fortified his life’s ambition to become a judge, fixing upon him “a judicial habit of thought and action” that marked the rest of his life as he moved from the bench to the far less congenial world of politics. For Theodore Roosevelt, the study of law merely facilitated his diverse ventures as historian, assemblyman, rancher, civil service commissioner, police commissioner, assistant secretary of the Navy, soldier, governor, and vice president. Each experience would eventually contribute vitally to a memorable presidency.
Cincinnati Law School, where Taft matriculated in 1878, was among the oldest in the country. Situated at that time in the Mercantile Library Building at the city center, it remained an “old style” institution untouched by the modern case method of instruction introduced at Harvard earlier in the decade. While Taft might easily have gained admission to Harvard or Yale, he chose to return to his hometown, to be enveloped by the warmth of his close-knit family. His brothers Charley and Peter were practicing law in his father’s firm; Harry was a student at Yale; Horace a senior at Woodward High; and Fanny was still a girl at thirteen. Furthermore, Will’s best friend and Yale classmate, Howard Hollister, entered Cincinnati Law in the same class.
For two hours every day, Taft and sixty-six fellow students listened to professors expound broad legal principles derived from standard texts. The curriculum, far less demanding than his courses at Yale, allowed students to work as well as study. Although most law students gained their first practical experience apprenticing in law offices, Taft decided he could learn “more about the workings of the law” as a court reporter for Murat Halstead’s local newspaper, the Cincinnati Commercial. Once his morning lectures were completed, he began his rounds to the police court, the probate court, the district court, and the superior court. At each venue, he took notes, listed the cases on the various dockets each day, and wrote up short accounts of the half-dozen most compelling cases.
Readers of “The Courts” column followed the cases of a husband suing for divorce after discovering his wife had two husbands; a buxom woman ensnared by a livery-stable keeper who failed to reveal that he suffered from a contagious private disease; a husband alleging that his wife had “struck and scratched him in a vicious manner” and had so ill-treated their children that their lives were endangered. He chronicled criminal trials for larceny, domestic abuse, and assault and battery and followed malpractice suits, contested wills, bastardy cases, contract disputes, and mortgage foreclosures. He wrote in a clear, straightforward style, emphasizing the facts of the cases without embellishment. Usually, he managed to complete these accounts before dinner, allowing him time to relax in the evenings.
In his early twenties, Will found himself the center of a lively set of young friends, enjoying to the fullest the wealth of social activities Cincinnati provided. With a population of 250,000, the “Queen City” had come of age in the 1870s, boasting an array of cultural events that included classical music, opera festivals, theatrical performances, literary societies, and art exhibits. “Washington will remain our political and New York our commercial capital,” Murat Halstead predicted in 1878, but cosmopolitan Cincinnati would become “the social center and musical metropolis of America.”
Will Taft cut quite a figure in this bustling society: “large, handsome and fair, with the build of a Hercules and the sunny disposition of an innocent child,” one local newspaper described him. Women were drawn by his open engaging manner and he, in turn, was completely at ease conversing with them. He listened sympathetically to their concerns, valued their intelligence, and displayed an unself-conscious candor. At dancing parties he sparkled, surprisingly light on his feet. He and his compatriots enjoyed picnics on the Ohio River, sledding parties, debutante balls, nights at the theatre, whist parties, tennis matches, baseball games, and songfests at the beer gardens in “Over-the-Rhine,” the German section.
With growing apprehension, Alphonso observed his son’s diversions, convinced that without the structured environment that had compelled diligence at Yale, Will was simply marking time. Tensions between father and son only grew when Will went to work in his father’s office in the summer of 1879 between his first two years in law school. In late June, Will departed for several days to visit one of his college friends in Cleveland. In his absence, a woman sought legal help in a small case involving the destruction of $300 worth of property. Seeing this as “a capital opportunity” for Will to handle a jury trial with several witnesses to be sworn, Alphonso sent him a letter requesting his immediate return. “I had the case laid over to next Saturday so that you might prepare & try it,” he told his son. “I shall be sorry to have you lose it.”
The next day, Alphonso wrote again, venting his irritation. Will should disregard the previous letter, for he had “agreed on a settlement of the case . . . a thing which you cd. have done if you had been here, & carried a nice little fee for yourself.” Alphonso’s exasperation and disappointment were clear. “This gratifying your fondness for society is fruitless,” he admonished. “I like to have you enjoy yourself, so far as it can be consistent with your success in life. But you will have to be on alert for business, and for influence among men, if you would hope to accomplish success.” Alphonso had not exhausted his censure, for yet a third letter followed the next day. “I do not think you shd make arrangements for a second visit at Cleveland, or for anything, but close application to study and business. There is no day in wk. you will not have as much as you are able to do. You must acquire a mastery of the German Language, as well as of the law and you should be forming valuable business acquaintance, if not political. I do not think that you have accomplished as much this past year as you ought, with your opportunities. You must not feel that you have time enough to while a way with every friend who comes.”
Alphonso worried too much. Will finished law school in good standing. Then, heeding his father’s advice, he shuttered himself in the law office for the month leadi
ng up to the bar examination, combing the shelves of standard legal tomes. Will informed his friends that “he would not be seen in public again until after the tests.” He easily passed and was admitted to the bar. His solid work as a court reporter for the Cincinnati Commercial had, meanwhile, earned Halstead’s esteem and a full-time job offer at a salary of $1,500 a year. Although his calling was to the law rather than journalism, he remained on the newspaper staff through the summer and fall of 1879. There, his coverage of a dramatic embezzlement trial against Cy Hoffman, a Democratic auditor for the city, led to an unexpected opportunity.
Counsel for the defendant in the Hoffman case was the criminal attorney Thomas C. Campbell, head of a political ring said to have dug “its talons deep in the judiciary.” Campbell reputedly owned court officers, regularly bribed witnesses and juries, and “was able to secure any verdict” he desired. The Hoffman case took “a sensational turn” when Miller Outcault, the assistant prosecuting attorney, charged that his chief prosecutor, Samuel Drew, had conspired with the unscrupulous Campbell to fix the jury and assure Hoffman’s acquittal.
For the idealistic young Taft, the picture of judicial corruption was deeply disturbing. He later acknowledged that he “fell in” with Miller Outcault, providing reports that aided his efforts to expose both the chief prosecutor and the disreputable attorney. The Cincinnati Commercial stories about the dramatic proceedings created widespread interest in the case. Large crowds packed the courthouse, spectators “standing upon the railing, desks and chairs” as day after day, Outcault leveled a “nasty torrent of abuse” against both Campbell and his boss. After two weeks of “the bitterest invective” from all parties in this singular “three-cornered fight,” the judge was compelled to dismiss prosecutor Drew from the case. Proceedings were suspended until the district court sustained the judge’s action. The jury finally received the case but could not reach an agreement; a mistrial was declared.