Tag Archives: Theodore Roosevelt

Running for President — Here in Steuben

Leave a reply

For fifty years or so after the Civil War, railroad routes channeled the course of presidential campaigns. This very sensibly took candidates to major population centers, but also gave them a chance to “whistle stop” at in-between towns that never see major candidates nowadays. When Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign train stopped at Cameron Mills, he spotted the milk station manager with his nine children on the loading dock. “This is the most prosperous place I have been to yet,” TR quipped (he only had five himself).

Roosevelt (running for vice-president as a Republican) and William Jennings Bryan (Democratic presidential candidate) both stumped Corning in 1900. Bryan was one of the country’s greatest orators. Four years earlier, at 36 just barely eligible for the White House, he had come out of nowhere to seize the Democratic and Populist nominations, running on a reform ticket. In 1900 he was rematched against McKinley, who conducted a “front porch” campaign, meeting friendly groups in Ohio while sending the energetic, combative Roosevelt out on the hustings.

On arriving in Bath in October ‘00, Bryan led a parade from the station to the courthouse square. Many in attendance were enthusiastic supporters, though the crowd included opponents, one of whom carried a banner (now in Steuben County Historical Society’s collection) reading “Bryan is in the Enemy’s Country.” Some no doubt just wanted to experience the prairie wind with which Bryan was scouring the land. The Democratic and Republican newspapers disagreed widely as to what kind of welcome he got.

New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey (unsuccessful Republican presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948) made frequent appearances in Corning. Dewey and IBM founder Tom Watson (of Campbell) made sure that their 1952 choice (Dwight D. Eisenhower) got good face time too. But by then campaign trips were revolving around airports, not depots. Local partisans were on their own, as Pulteney Democrats had been in 1892 when they slung a large banner for Grover Cleveland and Adlai Stevenson (grandfather of Eisenhower’s opponent 60 years later).

With TV, radio, and Internet to reach voters, major candidates mostly leave small communities to the “third parties” with their quixotic campaigns. Ralph Nader in 2000 let his hair down enough to freely express his surprise at discovering he was giving a press conference in Corning… it was a very busy tour, and he’d thought it was Binghamton.

“The Roosevelts”

Leave a reply

Many folks locally and around the country have been dedicating evenings lately to “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” the new Ken Burns documentary series on PBS.
No question that Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor among them shook the world. But before they were President, Franklin and Theodore were each governors of the Empire State. Before she was first lady of the world (in Harry Truman’s phrase), Eleanor Roosevelt was first lady of New York.
So some of their effect on us locally was direct and personal. There are persistent stories about Franklin stopping at one of the resorts on Keuka Lake, though I’ve never been able to verify them. We were also on the campaign hustings, a route which ran along the railroads in Theodore’s day. In 1898 he spoke to a large crowd at the Erie Depot in Corning, where T.G. Hawkes employees attended on company time. Two years later he was back in Corning, running for the vice-presidency.
When Theodore’s campaign train stopped at Cameron Mills, he spotted the milk station manager with his nine children on the loading dock. “This is the most prosperous place I have been to yet,” TR quipped (he only had six himself). I believe he also spoke at least once in Bath.
By the time Franklin ran for governor in 1928, auto was the way to go. Since his calamitous bout with polio seven years earlier, worries about his strength and health were pervasive. So he barnstormed every county in the state by car, starting in Middletown and running across the Southern Tier, then up along the lakeshore and down the Hudson to New York City. In one day he woke up at Elmira and raced to Olean (largely over dirt roads), speaking at both places – not to mention at Corning, Bath, and Hornell along the way. Besides blasting Republican leaders as “stupid,” and promising continued Progressivism and reform, Roosevelt jauntily asked every crowd, “Do I look sick to you?” and beamed as they shouted back their answer.
He won, of course, the grueling three-week campaign proving that he could do what even a fully healthy man would quail at, and smile the whole way.
While finding plenty of support in a union town like Hornell, out here in the west he was hampered by the hereditary Republicanism of many voters. Hammondsporters gave him their ballots for President in 1932, when he promised to repeal Prohibition. That accomplished, they went back to Alf Landon four years later.
Through the thirties many communities, including Corning, held balls on Franklin’s birthday to raise money for the fight against polio. On August 23, 1933, empowered by the new National Industrial Recovery Act, Corning Glass Workers finally got a union. This was apparently an idea whose time had come, since they voted 1650 to 113 in favor, with 180 abstentions.
A student once asked me if New Deal construction projects had been necessary. I replied that if you thought a dirt road was fine, with a bridge that could carry a horse and wagon, then they hadn’t been needed. But if you though that our bridges and highways should carry tractor-trailer trucks, that was a different story.
For some mystifying reason tradition describes New Deal jobs as do-nothing projects, and the workers as lazy bums who got paid for leaning on shovels. Some of the useless boondoggles accomplished by these bums include Hoover Dam; the Golden Gate Bridge; and LaGuardia Airport.
Locally we can thank the New Deal for Stony Brook Park; Dansville High School (now Genesee Community College); Glenn Curtiss Memorial School; the Painted Post post office – most of them still in use.
In the early 1930s a supervisor of the poor in Steuben County, while admitting that hundreds, if not thousands of desperate people were being helped by state and federal programs, grumped that these programs were making people lazy and dependent. These are the same people, of course, who fought through the Depression, won the Second World War, and built the biggest economic boom our country has ever enjoyed.
And they couldn’t have built that boom without the highways, harbors, bridges, airports, schools, post offices, and power systems of the New Deal. They couldn’t have bought their homes, or gotten their college educations, without Franklin’s G.I. Bill of Rights.
In 1996 Bob Dole campaigned for president, with the awkward task of running against peace and prosperity. One of his most memorable proposals was less meat inspection – an idea that stunningly failed to enthuse the public, who preferred living in Theodore Roosevelt’s world. On another question, after stumbling briefly, Dole finally told his questioners, look, this is America – we’re not going to let children go hungry… showing that he himself was living in Franklin’s world.
Every person who picks up a prescription, or buys a cold remedy, with confidence that they’ll be safe, is living in Theodore’s world. Every patient with pre-existing conditions who can now buy health insurance is living in Theodore’s world, for he campaigned on universal health care 110 years ago.
Every American who deposits money in a bank without worrying, or who gets a Social Security payment, or belongs to a union – or who buys a bottle of wine — is living in Franklin’s world. Every woman who thinks she should be able to think for herself, and plan her life without others confining her, is living in Eleanor’s world. Every African American who thinks he should have the same chances every other American has, is living in the world of the Roosevelts. Without their dreams, their ideals, their convictions, and their accomplishments, or lives would be very different.

The Death of the President

Leave a reply

September 1901 turned into a month-long tragic drama as America’s President struggled unsuccessfully for his life. This world event had a western New York setting, and deeply affected the people of the region.
William McKinley was a gentle man and a gentleman, diligent rather than brilliant, soft-spoken, well-liked. He had entered the Civil War as a private at 18 and left it as a major at 22, after fighting gallantly at Antietam, Winchester, Kernstown, and a host of other actions under Rutherford B. Hayes. As a captain in one battle he had directly ordered a recalcitrant general to put his division into motion, and the general had obeyed.
After climbing the ranks of Republican politics, McKinley was elected President in 1896, defeating William Jennings Bryan, whose reform proposals, plus support for organized labor and small farmers, terrified the big-money men by then controlling the Party of Lincoln. McKinley conducted a “front-porch” campaign; while Bryan stumped the nation, the Republican candidate treated friendly delegations to set speeches at his home.
In 1898 America fought its “splendid little war” with Spain, taking over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, some smaller islands, and (temporarily) Cuba, besides picking up Hawaii on the side. Northern and Southern soldiers fought together, winning an empire in three months by spectacular victories and almost no loss of life. Orators enthused that the wounds of the Civil War had been healed, and McKinley beat Bryan in their 1900 rematch.
The national healing was, of course, a partial reconciliation of whites, made possible only at the expense of black Americans, including those who had fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill. Bryan, by the way, opposed imperialism, and ran the 1900 campaign on that basis. Even so, he had raised his own regiment of volunteers, which was assigned to guard Tampa for the duration of the war. McKinley may have been a gentleman, but he was no fool. Bryan would get no chance to do anything remotely heroic.
McKinley’s second inauguration was the last for a Civil War President. Roosevelt, his energetic young VP who had been given the second spot to keep him “on the shelf,” had been a small boy when he watched Lincoln’s funeral procession. Roosevelt had recently been governor of New York.
McKinley loved world’s fairs, and eagerly visited the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Besides highlighting our domination of the hemisphere, the Pan-Am emphasized electricity. Most of the country had none at all, and many that did had it only part-time. With an inexhaustible supply being generated at Niagara Falls, Buffalo staggered the world with its oceans of lights.
On September 5 the President made a speech to 50,000 visitors, proclaiming that America’s era of isolation was over. On the next day he visited Niagara Falls, attended a luncheon along with his semi-invalid wife, then returned to the fair over the objections of his secretary, George Cortelyou, who worried about his safety. “No one would want to hurt me,” scoffed McKinley, who was determined to shake hands with visitors. Cortelyou stationed police who overlooked a bland young man with his right hand wrapped in a bandage. As the ever-courteous McKinley stretched out his left hand, Leon Czolgosz shot him twice with a revolver concealed in the bandages. Stumbling back, the President whispered to Cortelyou, “My wife—be careful how you tell her.” His next words, as police and spectators piled on the assailant, were, “Don’t let them hurt him.”
One of the bullets had gone deep, and doctors, ignoring an x-ray machine displayed at the fair, couldn’t find it. But they had high hopes, so Roosevelt and the cabinet, who had raced to McKinley’s side, dispersed several days later. On September 13, doctors recognized gangrene. Word was flashed to Roosevelt, vacationing in the Adirondacks (blackflies and all) 12 miles from a telephone and up a steep slope. Three driver working in relays rushed TR to the train along a narrow mountain road in the dark. But McKinley died, faintly singing “Nearer, My God to Thee,” before Roosevelt arrived to be sworn in as the youngest President America has ever had. Judge Hazel, who administered the oath, would later rule against both Henry Ford and Glenn Curtiss in acrimonious patent disputes. The train carrying both Presidents to Washington stopped briefly at Arcade before passing out of New York through Olean.
One of Roosevelt’s first acts was to declare Thursday, Sept. 19, a day of mourning. Schools and businesses closed, although Hammondsport Post Office stayed open to 11:00 because the morning mail arrived so late. The Presbyterian Church there held a memorial service Sunday night, but St. James Episcopal waited until Thursday, with McKinley’s brother Masons attending in a body. Hammondsport’s G. A. R. Post passed a resolution honoring its fallen comrade. The loss was traumatic to Americans who had already endured the assassinations of Lincoln (1865) and Garfield (1881). The equivalent for us would be having had Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama killed. Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abraham, endured the agony of being on hand for all three assassinations.
Czolgosz, an anarchist, had shot McKinley simply because he headed the government. Emma Goldman and other outspoken anarchists were clapped into jail, then truculently released when it became clear that Czolgosz had acted alone. The law moved swiftly back then. Czolgosz’s trial opened September 24. He was electrocuted at Auburn within the month, and quickly forgotten.
Attention turned to the vibrant, not to say hyperactive, new President, who quickly thrilled or scandalized the nation by inviting Booker T. Washington to lunch at the Executive Mansion. United States Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman of Georgia screeched that the South would have to lynch a thousand Negroes to force them back into their place. McKinley’s friend and campaign manager, Mark Hanna, steamed, “Now that cowboy is in the White House!” Teddy Roosevelt would set the standard for 20th-century presidents; his activist example would not be lost on Teddy’s niece, Miss Eleanor Roosevelt, nor on their distant cousin Franklin, who was in 1901 a student at Harvard.
One structure remains from the Pan-Am… the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, which is worth both a visit and a separate blog entry (stay tuned). The Buffalo home where TR took the oath of office is now Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site.