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Authors: Edmund Morris
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Roosevelt, age seventeen. The East Room’s floor was polished until it seemed to hold its own inverted chandeliers. Four hundred and forty-four places were laid at tables extending rightdown the length of the upper apartments. The glassed-in eastern colonnade, never used before, was turned into a luminous, flower-hung gallery. Clusters of roses perfumed the Blue Room, where expressionless Ethel would stand in her white satin gown.
A few hours before the party began, Captain Butt escorted Alice Longworth through the mansion. It looked more beautiful than either of them could remember.Time was when Alice—almost twenty-five now, filling out sexily, more poised and contemplative than in her wild teens—had made a rebellious point of staying away from the White House, but since marrying she had developed a passionate attachment to it, coming in daily for tea and gossip. Today, she had little to say, and her demeanor struck Archie as “unutterably sad.”
“ MR. SPEAKER , a message from the President of the United States!”
The traditional call echoed through the House of Representatives on 4 January 1909, in the midst of a furor prompted by Roosevelt’s insinuation, one month before, that congressmen did not “wish to be investigated” by the Secret Service. That remark, coming soon after a sly reference to “the criminal classes,” had been too much for Senator Aldrich, who had demanded an inquiry into whether the President should be condemned for discourtesy toward Congress. The House had simultaneously challenged Roosevelt to substantiate his words.
So far, the second session of the Sixtieth Congress had been, in Alice’s words, “one long lovely crackling row between the White House and Capitol Hill.” Her father’s Eighth Annual Message had been, for Joseph Cannon, the last of a haystack of straws heaped on the camelback of the Constitution. The Conservation Conference and the Commission on Country Life had been bad enough, he felt; but if any of the significant centralizations of power Roosevelt called for—over the railroads, over telecommunications, over the environment—were made law, states could say good-bye to their individual rights. Progressivism would have finally replaced conservatism, with outright socialism sure to follow.
Cannon sat now, gavel in hand, as yet another Special Message was announced. It elicited such a bedlam of mocking laughter that the Speaker had to pound for order for several minutes. The Message, when read, amounted to a semi-apologetic withdrawal of Roosevelt’s perceived insult to Congress. But he persisted in objecting to a House move to confine the Secret Service’s activities strictly to presidential protection and the investigation of counterfeiting. Again, he said, such limitation would benefit “the criminal class.”
He might also have added, but wisely did not, that the House’s sudden prejudice against a venerable federal agency was due to rumors that he had been using the Secret Service for his own purposes over the years, harassingSenators Foraker and Tillman and other political opponents, gathering espionage for political campaigns, even getting his bodyguards to fetch and carry for him.
There was some substance to these rumors, although evidence of abuse of power was lacking. As
The Atlanta Constitution
pointed out, the Secret Service had been involved in most of Roosevelt’s major initiatives, from antitrust probes and peonage prosecutions to pure-food sleuthing and the grilling of Brownsville discharges.Its chief, John E. Wilkie, was a known favorite of the President. The force was tiny—only ten full-time agents—but Wilkie had funds to hire an unlimited number of private detectives for whatever purposes he deemed fit. It was these funds, and these purposes, that anti-Rooseveltians in Congress sought to restrict, conveniently focusing years of resentment against the President for his steady transfer of power away from Capitol Hill.
The Secret
A few hours before the party began, Captain Butt escorted Alice Longworth through the mansion. It looked more beautiful than either of them could remember.Time was when Alice—almost twenty-five now, filling out sexily, more poised and contemplative than in her wild teens—had made a rebellious point of staying away from the White House, but since marrying she had developed a passionate attachment to it, coming in daily for tea and gossip. Today, she had little to say, and her demeanor struck Archie as “unutterably sad.”
“ MR. SPEAKER , a message from the President of the United States!”
The traditional call echoed through the House of Representatives on 4 January 1909, in the midst of a furor prompted by Roosevelt’s insinuation, one month before, that congressmen did not “wish to be investigated” by the Secret Service. That remark, coming soon after a sly reference to “the criminal classes,” had been too much for Senator Aldrich, who had demanded an inquiry into whether the President should be condemned for discourtesy toward Congress. The House had simultaneously challenged Roosevelt to substantiate his words.
So far, the second session of the Sixtieth Congress had been, in Alice’s words, “one long lovely crackling row between the White House and Capitol Hill.” Her father’s Eighth Annual Message had been, for Joseph Cannon, the last of a haystack of straws heaped on the camelback of the Constitution. The Conservation Conference and the Commission on Country Life had been bad enough, he felt; but if any of the significant centralizations of power Roosevelt called for—over the railroads, over telecommunications, over the environment—were made law, states could say good-bye to their individual rights. Progressivism would have finally replaced conservatism, with outright socialism sure to follow.
Cannon sat now, gavel in hand, as yet another Special Message was announced. It elicited such a bedlam of mocking laughter that the Speaker had to pound for order for several minutes. The Message, when read, amounted to a semi-apologetic withdrawal of Roosevelt’s perceived insult to Congress. But he persisted in objecting to a House move to confine the Secret Service’s activities strictly to presidential protection and the investigation of counterfeiting. Again, he said, such limitation would benefit “the criminal class.”
He might also have added, but wisely did not, that the House’s sudden prejudice against a venerable federal agency was due to rumors that he had been using the Secret Service for his own purposes over the years, harassingSenators Foraker and Tillman and other political opponents, gathering espionage for political campaigns, even getting his bodyguards to fetch and carry for him.
There was some substance to these rumors, although evidence of abuse of power was lacking. As
The Atlanta Constitution
pointed out, the Secret Service had been involved in most of Roosevelt’s major initiatives, from antitrust probes and peonage prosecutions to pure-food sleuthing and the grilling of Brownsville discharges.Its chief, John E. Wilkie, was a known favorite of the President. The force was tiny—only ten full-time agents—but Wilkie had funds to hire an unlimited number of private detectives for whatever purposes he deemed fit. It was these funds, and these purposes, that anti-Rooseveltians in Congress sought to restrict, conveniently focusing years of resentment against the President for his steady transfer of power away from Capitol Hill.
The Secret
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