Theodore Roosevelt, 28th and 30th President of the United States - Source: Wiki Commons
Part 6: Hail, Columbia
Chapter XIX: Beacon for Progress: The New Roosevelt Presidency
William J. Bryan's The Commoner printed a series of articles from February 4th to March 6th centering on the contingent election in Congress and speculating who the presumptive winner would be. It began with a standardized summation of current events, leading squarely into a lengthy endorsement of the Marshall/McClellan Democratic ticket. As the weeks shuffled by and the deadlock rose to prominence, the tone of the newspaper hardened against President Hearst and his revenge-fueled tactic to rob Governor Thomas Marshall of the presidency.
The Commoner rallied vigorously for its favored candidate but was ultimately witness to the expiration of the 62nd Congress and the subsequent election of Roosevelt by the new class of representatives. Perhaps framing the conversation and foreshadowing an eventual Democratic talking point, the final piece in Bryan's series relented, "The forces of regularity, once against [Roosevelt] are now behind him. His attitude on the trust question seems no longer to alarm those who appreciate the menace of private monopoly. His devotion to the progressive cause and the propagation of popular government is questionable. It is no wonder he excelled."
The above reaction was indeed one shared by most progressive Democrats. Bryan's party saw in Roosevelt the potential for a resurgence of a normalized Republican Party. Democrats understood the stakes of the arrangement reached in the U.S. Senate, one that essentially tied the Progressives and the GOP far closer together than ever before. Once there had been room for doubt regarding Roosevelt's affiliations with the leaders of the Republican Party, but with the Six Kingmakers willingly granting power to the Progressives (an event named by some Bryan and Hearst followers as a "Corrupt Bargain"), scarce few Democrats trusted in the validity of the Columbian position. Governor Marshall himself did not motion to such a charge, and in his concession respectfully recognized the party's defeat as a "rational conclusion to months of divisiveness and unfaithfulness."
Former Speaker Thomas Butler met with Theodore Roosevelt just after the House vote confirmed the election result, however all we know for certain of this engagement is that it lasted about an hour and presumably finalized the senatorial deal. Just as confirmed by Senate leaders La Follette and Shelby Cullom, Roosevelt was bound to promote at least two Republicans to the presidential Cabinet upon its creation. The left wing of the Progressive Party feared that their leader was dipping back into the days of the Grand Bargain, thereby fretting over the plausibility that his message would be softened. After one of the mostly hotly contested elections in history, succumbing to the demands of a bygone political faction seemed unfathomable to a sizable chunk of the Progressives. Roosevelt truly had no such intention and looked to solidify his progressive credentials at the inaugural event.
The official inauguration for President-elect Roosevelt took place on March 7th - about 48 hours following the final congressional contingent ballot. The Roosevelt and Johnson families gathered in Washington beside honored guests, Supreme Court justices, and an enormous crowd of onlookers. Chief Justice Edward D. White administered the Oath of Office to the incoming leader, followed directly by Roosevelt's Second Inaugural Address. Upon thanking the new Congress for following the people's will and Vice President Johnson for serving in the brief interim, the Rough Rider conducted the speech. The energetic and spry 54-year old recounted his support for a completed Square Deal, the enactment of a New Nationalism, and economic security for all Americans.
The great fundamental issue now before our people can be stated briefly. It is, Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe that the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them.
I have scant patience with this talk of the tyranny of the majority. Wherever there is tyranny of the majority, I shall protest it with all my heart and soul. But we are today suffering from the tyranny of minorities. It is a small minority that is grabbing our coal-deposits, our water-powers, and our harbor fronts. A small minority is battening on the sale of adulterated foods and drugs. It is a small minority that lies behind monopolies and trusts. It is a small minority that stands behind the present law of master and servant, the sweatshops, and the whole calendar of social and industrial injustice.
Friends, every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the "Have nots" arraigned against the creed of the "Haves." When that day comes then such incidents as this to-night will be commonplace in our history. When you make poor men - when you permit the conditions to grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our country.
Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are endeavoring to do is forestall any such movement for justice now - a movement in which we ask all just men of generous hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their countrymen and countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery.
Theodore Roosevelt, Inaugural Address Excerpt, March 9th, 1913