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Crossing the Rubicon: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the 1884 Republican National Convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Edward Kohn
Edward Kohn
Affiliation:
Bilkent University
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Extract

In 1884, a twenty-five-year-old Theodore Roosevelt attended the Republican National Convention in Chicago as a delegate-at-large from New York. There, he and his new friend, Massachusetts delegate Henry Cabot Lodge, backed George Edmunds of Vermont against their party's overwhelming choice, the “Plumed Knight,” James G. Blaine. Despite their energetic efforts, which received national attention, Blaine easily secured the nomination, and both Lodge and Roosevelt eventually backed the party's choice. For Lodge biographers, the Chicago convention represented Lodge's “personal Rubicon,” the “turning point” of his career, leading to “the greatest crisis of Lodge's political life.” Roosevelt historians also see the convention as “one of the crucial events of Theodore's life,” “the great and deciding moment of TR's life,” leading to “the most agonizing dilemma of his political career.” The usual story of the convention is that by backing Blaine against the wishes of other Independent Republicans, both Lodge and Roosevelt did great damage to their immediate careers by alienating their natural allies. This led to Lodge losing his race for Congress that same fall and to Roosevelt fleeing west to his Dakota ranch with his political future uncertain. Moreover, Roosevelt's decision is often depicted as the moment he became a professional politician. David McCullough writes that the convention “marked the point at which he chose—had to choose—whether to cross the line and become a party man, a professional politician,” while John Morton Blum asserts that by campaigning for Blaine, “Roosevelt declared not only for Blaine but also for professionalism.”

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 19 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2006

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References

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5 In his three pages on the convention, Miller uses neither the Lodge Papers nor the biographies. Chessman uses Garraty but neither the Lodge Papers nor Schriftgiesser. Edmund Morris cites the Lodge Papers in his bibliography but not in his notes as a source used for his chapter on the convention, “The Delegate-At-Large.” , Morris, The Rise of Theodore Rooserelt (New York, 1979)Google Scholar. McCullough uses the Lodge Papers and Garraty. Blum dedicates only two pages to 1884, apparently relying solely on the Roosevelt correspondence. As for Lodge himself, Blum cites him only three times in his book. David Burton dedicates only a page to the convention, citing none of the Lodge sources. , Burton, Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1972), 53–54Google Scholar. Kathleen Dalton uses the Lodge Papers well and asserts that Lodge acted as , Roosevelt's “father confessor.” , Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York, 2002), 92Google Scholar. For books written by acquaintances of Lodge upon his death in 1925 see Washburn, Charles G., Henry Cabot Lodge (Boston, 1925)Google Scholar; Groves, Charles S., Henry Cabot Lodge, The Statesman (Boston, 1925)Google Scholar; and Lawrence, William, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biographical Sketch (Boston, 1925)Google Scholar.

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21 The reputation of the incumbent Republican president, Chester A. Arthur, as a New York spoilsman and Conkling man hardly made him a possible choice for Independent Republicans. Moreover, in 1877 Arthur had featured prominently in an intra-party conflict involving Roosevelt's father. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., had become a pawn in a power struggle between President Rutherford Hayes and Conkling's New York machine when Hayes named the elder Roosevelt to replace Arthur as Collector of the Customshouse for the Port of New York. Conkling attacked the nomination and used his position as chair of the Senate's Commerce Committee to have the Senate reject Roosevelt. This was seen as a victory for Conkling's machine over the forces of reform, and the elder Roosevelt died only two months later at age 46. Reeves, Thomas C., Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur (Newtown, Conn., 1975), 125–31Google Scholar; Hoogenboom, Ari, Rutherford ft. Hayes: Warrior and President (Lawrence, Kan., 1995), 352–55Google Scholar.

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30 Roosevelt corresponded with Louis Theodore Michener, who was secretary of the Indiana Republican State Committee, as well a political manager for Benjamin Harrison, a possible dark horse for 1884. In his comments to Michener Roosevelt implied he was in contact with delegates from Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. He also told Lodge he had “written to the western Edmunds men.” TR to Michener, May 23, 1884, and TR to Lodge, May 25, 1884, , Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 69–70Google Scholar.

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32 See , Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 16–21Google Scholar. In 1876 Lodge had written to his mother, “I have decided to make my fight inside the party because I can do more there than by going outside.” Compare this with Roosevelt's statement of 1884, “A man cannot act both without and within the party; he can do either, but he cannot possibly do both.” Boston Herald, July 19, 1884Google Scholar , quoted in , McCullough, Mornings on Horseback, 314–15Google Scholar. In 1892 Lodge addressed Harvard students on “Party Allegiance,” saying, “By combination and organization with other men with whom, in a general way, you are in agreement, you can at least obtain some results, when by yourself you would be simply beating your head against the wall and not getting any results.” , Lodge, Historical and Political Essays (Boston, 1892), 207Google Scholar.

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38 Protesting Lodge's nominating of Lynch, a California delegate called the tradition of the National Committee naming the temporary , chairman “common law.” Proceedings of the Eighth Republican National Convention, 7Google Scholar.

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40 Lodge Diaries, March 20, 1885, Lodge Papers.

41 While one can speculate as to the significance of Roosevelt supporting a black man for this position, given his later invitation of Booker T. Washington t o the White House and his concern over securing die black Republican vote in the South, the backing of Lynch for temporary chair was probably a mere political expedient. See Dyer, Thomas, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), 96–97Google Scholar.

42 New York Times, June 4, 1884Google Scholar. For accounts of the speech see , Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 264Google Scholar, and , McCullough, Mornings on Horseback, 300Google Scholar. Fellow New York delegate and Cornell University president Andrew D. White later called the speech “very courageous” and remembered that the galleries attempted to “howl down” Roosevelt: “As he stood upon a bench and addressed the president, there came from the galleries on all sides a howl and yell, ‘Sit down! Sit down!’ with whisding and cat-calls.” , White, The Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. I (New York, 1905), 205Google Scholar.

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52 For Independents like Lodge and Roosevelt, backing Conkling's one-time lieutenant Arthur was hardly considered as a means of defeating Blaine. In May Roosevelt had written Lodge to make sure the Massachusetts men did not back Arthur out of fear of Blaine. “Arthur is the very weakest candidate we could nominate,” Roosevelt wrote, noting that Arthur could not carry New York, Ohio, or Indiana. “He would be beaten out of sight Now, in trying to avoid the Blaine devil, don't take a premature leap into the Arthur deep sea; I think we can keep clear of both; if we go to either we are lost.” TR to Lodge, 26 May 1884, , Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 70Google Scholar. The Arthur men sought a last-minute alliance to defeat Blaine, but the “stubbornly idealistic Independents” refused. As John Dobson notes, “The essential weakness of a moralistic group in politics is that it cannot compromise its principles even when doomed to defeat.” , Dobson, Politics in the Glided Age, 106Google Scholar.

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71 TR to [?] Scott, June 27, 1884, copy made by Anna Roosevelt, TRC. In his Autobiography, Roosevelt said, “Mr. Blaine was clearly the choice of the rank and file of the party; his nomination was won in a fair and aboveboard fashion, because the rank and file of the party stood back of him; and I supported him to the best of my ability in the ensuing campaign.” , Roosevelt, Autobiography, 88Google Scholar.

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75 While Roosevelt was never the object of scorn in New York as Lodge was in Massachusetts, he nevertheless broke with friends over his backing of Blaine. William Roscoe Thayer would later write that he was “dumbfounded” by Roosevelt's declaration for Blaine. , Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography (Boston, 1919), 52Google Scholar. See also TR to [?] Scott, June 27, 1884, TRC: “I was well aware that I would lose the confidence and friendship of many of those for whose confidence and friendship I cared.”

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