Sagamore Hill

There are more than a few movies about the life of Theodore Roosevelt. A good number of them either start or end on the same day in his life and, not surprisingly, at the same place. This place being his private home at Sagamore Hill. This is because, that particular day, was a major event in his life. Oddly enough, it seems to have been more important to everyone else than to Theodore who, took the news of the President’s death with a sort of pragmatism. Some have criticized the man for his almost lack of emotion about the matter while many of the movies have given him those emotions. The conspiracy people tend to point to this as evidence that he knew it was coming. The main reason for all of this confusion is from the most predictable of sources and, the simple fact is, the movies got it wrong.

The most popular narrative is that Thomas Platt, often portrayed as a humble servant and admirer of Roosevelt, rides up to the front door in a carriage and is greeted by many children. This happens just before Roosevelt and his wife Edith emerge and, upon being told the news, Theodore then gives a heart felt speech on the front steps of his home. About the only thing that this most common scene, of cinematic drama, got right was that Platt did indeed arrive in a horse drawn carriage. The man was terrified of automobiles.

Platt was not the first to arrive and there was complete confusion, at Sagamore Hill, when he finally got there. Once the news of the assasination, via the wire services, reached Platt he knew what had to be done. He was ever the calculating party boss and used the same courier, who had brought him the news, to send a request to the NYPD for help in protecting the man who was about to become President. Platt turned what was already an ordeal into a circus, although, in retrospect, his actions seem reasonable enough. I don’t think Platt anticipated the emotional outpouring, that was on the way, and you also have to remember that Platt was not gifted with hindsight in this matter. He had to consider that Root was not the only target that day.

You also have to address the fact that it was the NYPD who was showing up in force to protect the still Vice President. Sagamore Hill is on Long Island and well outside their jurisdiction but, Theodore was a former Commissioner of the NYPD and a popular one at that. They were not about to allow anyone else to guard him on a day like this. Platt’s request reached Captain Henry O’Leary first and, apparently, he took it upon himself to organize the effort. He did a poor job because the only people that did not seem to know about Platt’s request were O’Leary’s bosses. Every beat cop in Manhattan was aware of it within the hour and, even after O’Leary left with a five man detail, beat cops were abandoning their post and rushing out of the city. They would be sporadically showing up at Sagamore Hill, well into the next night.

O’Leary’s people would be the first to arrive since they were not only using a motorcar but, unlike so many of the other would be protectors, O’Leary actually knew where Sagamore Hill was. Many of the other policemen, using their own independent initiative, would never reach Roosevelt’s home and this included one man who was lost, on a horse, in a uniform that many a Long Island resident were unfamiliar with, and mistaken for the vanguard of a Confederate invasion force. Drunken patrons, of a Hempstead saloon, would chase this unfortunate officer all the way back to his home in Brooklyn where a street fight broke out over the matter.

What Captain O’Leary discovered when he got to Roosevelt‘s home, and as near as we can tell he was the first ‘official’ to arrive, was that the news of Root’s assasination had already reached the Vice President who, contrary to the movies, was still the Vice President. Several local Oyster Bay residents, that personally knew the Roosevelt family, had already heard about the assasination and went directly to Sagamore Hill to spread the news to the man who most obviously needed to know it. Many of them were already loitering on Theodore’s front lawn when the NYPD arrived. Even they were not the first to break the news because Roosevelt owned a piece of modern technology, a telephone. This little fact has somehow been completely overlooked by the film industry.

The man who did deliver the news was actually someone that is relatively famous and, at the time, a household name. This is ironic in that in every single narative of this day, he never comes up. He was a newspaper man by the name of Richard Harding Davis, personal friends with Roosevelt, had been with him in Mexico, and was at his paper and near their telegraphs when the news first came in. He promptly went to his phone and, as a result, Roosevelt knew that Root had been shot within twenty minutes of it actually happening. Root would not die for three more days but, it was already known that he was incapacitated by the shooting. When the police, the dignitaries, and the spectators began arriving at Roosevelt’s house, in force, he had already grieved but, fully understood that he had a job to do.

Roosevelt’s first action seems to have been to make another phone call. This has been partly verified by the logs at Fort Lincoln. Roosevelt was trying to reach General Shafter but, the man was currently not there. Roosevelt did speak with the ranking officer on duty who assured him that nothing unusual was going on at either front. This may or may not have satisfied Roosevelt that the assasinaiton was not some grand conspiracy by the allies. His following actions suggest this because, at that point, Roosevelt began the process of trying to get a grip on what was soon to be his government.

Here is where the US was very fortunate because, despite being left out of the loop by Root, Roosevelt understood the inner workings of his government, better than most men, before he ever took office. He knew who was really in control of what and, in a very Roosevelt fashion, he retreated to his private study, away from the circus that was building around his house, and picked up his pen. In the liklihood that Elihu Root would not survive, Roosevelt had obviously decided that he would be ready and was determined that the US Government would not suffer any loss of continuity. Theodore also told his wife Edith to begin packing. They would be boarding a train for Washington as soon as it could be arranged. It was at this point that Platt’s general characterization, in the movies, can be shown to be completely false.

It is understandable that Roosevelt wished to get to Washington as soon as possible. Again, you have to remember that no one at this point knew if this was a plot to decapitate the government in a time of war. There were certainly many important people who thought so. The sudden influx of requests on the Pinkerton’s, for body guards, is a good indication of this. In fact, it seems as if the only entity that did not believe this possibility was the Federal Government itself. There were no plans for such an event and, even less action taken. Roosevelt’s situation proves this beyond a doubt.

As Vice President, Roosevelt had the authority to requisition a military train for transportation. He never used it and some even ask if he knew that he could. He was used to traveling like anyone else and, most of the time, he paid for this out of his own pocket. He did submit vouchers to the White House for reinbursement but, that could often take months. Now he was the acting head of state in a time of extreme crisis and a possible target for an assassins bullet. One would think that the government would arrange his transportation to the seat of power. They not only did nothing but, actively tried to convince the Vice President to remain in New York.

In this particular instance I say it is a they but, the power of hindsight allows me to name names. The ‘they’ in this particular instance seems to be only two men and Thomas Platt was one of them. The other man, and I am guessing he was the one giving Platt orders, was Secretary of State John Hay. When Roosevelt spoke to Platt, at his home, about transportation to the capital, Platt assured Roosevelt that it was coming yet, we can find that he did nothing about it at all. What we do know is that one of the first people he talked with, via telephone, before leaving Manhattan, was Hay. The Secretary had good reason to wish to delay Roosevelt and this is why I believe he instructed Platt to do so.

It is also apparent that Roosevelt was aware of this or, at the least, suspected that Hay was deliberately trying to slow the process down. Roosevelt did not wait for government transport. He also decided to leave his family in Oyster Bay and proceed to Washington on his own. He used the circus like atmosphere that was building around his home and slipped out unnoticed. The only protection the man had was in his coat pocket. It was the Colt Naval revolver he had carried with him in New Mexico. He purchased a train ticket in Manhattan, later that night, and was in Washington three days later, the train having been delayed any number of times for military traffic.

Some have criticized Roosevelt for this. Root died before he reached the city and the United States went almost an entire day without a head of state. This was delayed even longer because, once in DC, Roosevelt did not go directly to the White House. Instead, he began visiting prominent Senators and power brokers, for private conversations, none of which were recorded. That is not to say that John Hay was unaware that the Vice President was in town. He had known that Roosvelt was missing since about an hour after the Vice President left Sagamore Hill. It was obvious where the man was going and once Roosevelt began visiting Washington insiders it did not take long for word of this to reach Hay. It is apparent that the Secretary of State was doing the same thing that Roosevelt was, only Hay had a three day head start.

This might have set up the board for a nasty power struggle if one of the players had been anyone but Theodore Roosevelt. Hay, like so many others before him, completely underestimated the man. Roosevelt was not interested in fighting for control of Washington, with his Secretary of State, and was well aware of Hay’s intentions. All the while, Hay was preparing for a head on train crash with the soon to be President, not realizing that, just like his trip to Washington, Roosevelt had switched tracks. Hay did not seem to understand the situation with the public at large, something that Roosevelt apparently did.

The sympathy, the anger, the indignation over the assasination gave Roosevelt an unusual amount of pull with the voting public and he had figured out how to use it. It would allow him to circumvent the normal power brokers and make appeals directly to the voters. In a working democracy, even powerful men that hold unelected positions of power, can ill afford to ignore the public for too long, particularly in a case like this. Those who have to stand for election are in an even more of a precarious position. Roosevelt only had to remind them of all this, the senators and industrialists alike, to make these power brokers back down, or, to even hitch themselves to his wagon. He apparently began using this strategy the moment he got off the train in Washington.

That was why, when Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in to office, on the front steps of the capital building, he would have the kind of honey moon period that most elected officials only dream of. He was the youngest man ever to rise to this office. He was bursting with energy and he had a sudden surge of public support that not only supported him but, had confidence that he would lead them to victory. Those who thought they could stand in his way would only come to so much grief. John Hay was not the only political opponent who found themselves in hot water once President Root died. There were others who found themselves the targets of public vengenace as well.

William Randolph Hearst was easily the most visible secondary casualty of the assasination. Despite being a fellow republican, Hearst had been a thorn in the side of the Root administration from the start. His man, Ambrose Bierce, had accompanied Roosevelt into Mexico, looking for a juicy story to embarrass Root. He very well might have kept this up and directly attacked Roosevelt now that Root was gone. Due to a strange turn of events, this would not happen. Beirce had gone overboard with his attacks, even to the point of writing a story about a fictional Presidential assasination in which the victim was a thinly veiled clone of Elihu Root.

The story was published only a month before the real assasination. Bierce found himself under attack because of this, even some claiming that he was responsible for Indianapolis. It was not lost on anyone that Bierce was a mouth peace for Hearst and the fall out hit where it hurt the newspaper magnate the most, in the sales of his papers. That was why Hearst wasted no time firing Bierce. The former army officer and prolific writer would eventually take to heavy drinking and working menial jobs before finally committing suicide some nine years later. Hearst would recover but, he would not do so in time to take on the bear in the White House.

This all amounted to one thing. Roosevelt had a blank check like no other sine George Washington. What is even more important was, Roosevelt understood how to use it. In his years in the White House, his vigor and energy would seem boundless. He would also bring others with those same traits, not to the inner halls of the captial but, in places where things really mattered more. Many of these men, later to be saddled with the collective term, Bull Moose, would make silent but important changes. Many would be forgotten while a few would not but, what is important here is, all of these changes were about to set the world on it’s ear. Nothing would ever be the same again.