Heir to the Empire City

BY SEPTEMBER 1898, it seemed likely that Theodore Roosevelt would receive the Republican nomination for governor of New York. Still, Governor Black and his supporters made clear that Roosevelt would not secure the nomination without a fight. Black planned to seek renomination at the coming Republican state convention due to be held at Saratoga. Among Black’s staunchest supporters was State Superintendent of Insurance Louis Payn. Payn freely gave interviews in which he claimed loyalty to Black. “Under no circumstances will Governor Black yield,” Payn told the Times. “He will enter the lists, and there is good reason to believe that he will meet with the success which he deserves.” Later, Payn said that he would “stake his head” on Black’s renomination. At the time, some in the Republican Party wondered why Payn, a friend and ally of Thomas Platt, would so adamantly back Black in the face of mounting support for Roosevelt. By September 23, the reason had become clear. For days, Payn and other top Republicans had been discussing the March 1898 affidavit that Roosevelt had sworn to while he was assistant secretary of the navy, affirming his residence in Washington, DC. This, Payn and other Black supporters claimed, made Roosevelt ineligible to be governor of New York.

With the Saratoga convention set for September 27, Roosevelt, Platt, and other Republican leaders had only days to deal with this bombshell. In public, Platt calmly replied to reporters’ questions, “There is nothing in it.” But Platt’s nonchalance masked a flurry of activity behind the scenes. After a meeting at Republican headquarters in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, Platt placed Elihu Root in charge of sorting out the affair. In the end, it was not difficult to establish Roosevelt’s New York residency. He had many documents showing residency in New York, from tax rolls to military records. Roosevelt enlisted in the army as a New York resident, and the War Department listed him as such. When he received his promotion to full colonel in July, Roosevelt wrote to the army adjutant-general, “I was born in New York on October 27th 1858 and have resided in New York ever since.” Roosevelt even had an August 24 affidavit claiming New York residency. He had sworn this affidavit for the same reason he had made trips back to New York from his ranch during every election season—he wanted to keep a hand in New York politics. As he explained to educator and future Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler, “I wished to continue my residence in New York, among other reasons, because I thought it possible we could, by some kind of union ticket, carry the city.” Such a ticket might have offered Roosevelt a chance to return to New York to take an important position. “I thought it best to keep my residence,” Roosevelt wrote Butler, “so that if the chance of work there did seem to be much bigger than in Washington, I might take it.”

At Saratoga on September 27, after top New York Republican Chauncey Depew, who was about to be elected US senator, nominated Roosevelt for governor, Elihu Root stood to refute the charges that Roosevelt had given up his residence in New York. Root provided documentation in the form of letters, affidavits, and Roosevelt’s army promotion. Roosevelt, Root concluded, “would not give up his State, and I take it, gentlemen, that the people of the State of New York would not willingly surrender the priceless possession of his citizenship.” Root’s forceful speech forced the Black supporters to abandon their ploy, as even they conceded Roosevelt’s New York residence. Within a few minutes of Root’s resuming his seat, the matter was finished: Roosevelt was nominated by 753 votes to Black’s 218.

The Democrats, guided by Tammany boss Richard Croker, chose as their candidate Judge Augustus Van Wyck, brother of the mayor of New York City. Roosevelt turned the election into one between himself and Croker rather than between himself and Van Wyck, spelling out the dangers of electing, in his words, “Mr. Croker’s Governor.” Roosevelt won on November 8 by a slim majority of 18,000 votes, losing some independent votes because of Platt’s support. Roosevelt’s presentation of himself as governor of the entire party was reflected in the congratulatory letter John Hay wrote to Roosevelt after the election. “While you are Governor,” Hay wrote, “I believe the party can be made solid as never before. You have already shown that a man may be absolutely honest and yet practical; a reformer by instinct and a wise politician; brave, bold, and uncompromising, and yet not a wild ass of the desert.” The description of Roosevelt as both reformer and practical politician was an apt one. Roosevelt himself surely agreed with Hay’s depiction of the lunatic fringe reformer as “a wild ass of the desert.”

To secure the nomination, Roosevelt had assured Platt lieutenant Lemuel Quigg that as governor he would not make war on Platt, and would confer with the machine. His short inaugural address on January 2, 1899, confirmed his intention to work through the Republican organization. Roosevelt told the New York State Assembly that nothing could be accomplished unless the work was done through practical methods. He confirmed his dedication to the party by asserting, “It is only through the party system that free governments are now successfully carried on.” Roosevelt’s Annual Message of the same day reflected his career-long effort to maintain balance between a reform agenda and practical politics. The new governor suggested an overhaul of the tax system, but warned against “driving property out of the State by unwise taxation.” He urged reform of the civil service system, but only in order to make it practical, not as an attack on patronage. Although he brought up the question of instituting biennial sessions for the legislature, he quietly let that topic drop. Finally, he opened the door to a scheme of Platt’s by targeting the New York City police. In all, his first annual address was a modest document. It may have covered a wide range of issues, but it did not put forward an extreme reform agenda. Moreover, Roosevelt singled out matters that helped the Republican Party, such as reform of New York’s police. Roosevelt was diligently carrying out the agenda of Platt and the party.

ON DECEMBER 30, the entire Roosevelt family left the Madison Avenue house for Grand Central Station and the train ride to Albany. The last time Roosevelt had lived in Albany, he had been a twenty-five-year-old assemblyman, married to Alice, and living in a boarding-house. At the very end of 1898, forty-year-old Roosevelt returned to Albany as New York State’s chief executive–elect, with his wife Edith and all six of their children, including fourteen-year-old Alice Lee; eleven-year-old Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (technically Theodore Roosevelt III), who was clutching a box of guinea pigs; and Quentin, who, at one year old, was the youngest. The large family moved into the Executive Mansion, a short walk from the new Capitol building, where Governor Roosevelt would draw a handsome salary of $10,000. Only four years before, Edith had asked her husband not to run for mayor of New York City as they could not afford the expense. Now, after years of debt and the expense of maintaining homes in two cities, Roosevelt had finally achieved financial stability and could live—free of charge—with his entire family in one place.

New York City and its politics came to dominate much of Governor Roosevelt’s time in office. Independents and the Republican machine still fought for the soul of the party in the city, which made a repeat of the 1897 disaster increasingly likely. Much of the conflict centered on urban reform Republicans much like Roosevelt, men on whom the governor counted for support in Albany. One of these was Robert Mazet, the assemblyman for the Nineteenth District and chairman of the Cities Committee, which continued to shape legislation for New York City. In an echo of Roosevelt’s actions in the Assembly, early in Roosevelt’s term Mazet chaired an investigating committee to look into New York’s governance under Tammany Hall. The Mazet Committee took particular aim at the Building Department and its close relationship with Tammany, a relationship that prevented tenement reform and enriched Democratic bosses. As Mazet called boss Richard Croker and his son Frank before the committee, Roosevelt and Platt rejoiced, satisfied at the anti-Tammany headlines that resulted from the investigation. Mazet, however, failed to call Platt before the committee, or to look into his many financial interests in the city. That omission immediately made Mazet a target of the Citizens’ Union in the upcoming 1899 elections.

Still, Platt and Roosevelt were more than pleased with Mazet and his committee’s final report, which labeled Croker a “dictator.” In September 1899, on the eve of the fall elections, Roosevelt wrote Lodge that he believed Tammany was currently in disfavor, thanks in part to the work done by the Mazet Committee. Yet, in the same letter, Roosevelt pointed out the trouble facing a divided Republican Party. “It is a dreadful task to try to keep the republican party united here,” he told Lodge after returning from his summer swing through the agricultural fairs in upstate New York. “Aside from the deep-seated causes of division between the two wings, which shade off into the irrational and unscrupulous machine men on the one hand and the quite as irrational and unscrupulous independents on the other, there are the bitter factional fights and splits,” Roosevelt said, echoing his comments to Lodge about the disastrous 1897 elections. As he had then, Roosevelt reserved special scorn for the independents, whose tactics again seemed likely to hand Tammany an electoral victory.

The governor had reason for concern. With 1899 an “off year”—with no national or statewide contests to bring out the upstate rural vote—the Republican Party already expected to see its twenty-four-seat Assembly majority erode. The elections of 1897 had illustrated the ability of the Citizens’ Union to split the Republicans and, in only a single election, swing representation from one party to the other. The 1896 elections, which included successful Republican presidential and New York gubernatorial bids, had given the Republicans an eighty-seat majority in the Assembly. One year later, that number was down to only six. By all accounts, the Citizens’ Union was gearing up for a repeat of 1897, running its own men against Republican candidates in city districts. Already five or six names were being considered for Citizens’ Union candidates, including one to run against Robert Mazet in the Nineteenth District. It was reported that Republican attempts to bring about an alliance with independents, including in Mazet’s district, had failed. In fact, the possibility existed that the Citizens’ Union would put up independent Democrats as candidates in order to secure the Democratic vote. When a reporter asked Richard Croker whether Tammany would endorse such a candidate, especially to target Mazet and the Nineteenth District, Croker replied, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we did.” When further asked whether Tammany would agree to consult with the Citizens’ Union over nominations, Croker replied, “Certainly.” “Croker Flirts with Citizens’ Union,” the Tribune declared. Croker got ready to do in 1899 what Platt had refused to do in 1897.

Of all the Republican leaders, none was in a better position to act as a bridge between the two factions in New York City than Governor Roosevelt. As governor, he of course had regular contact with Platt and the machine. Yet he also relied heavily upon independent Republicans in the legislature, such as Gherardi Davis, assemblyman of the Twenty-Seventh District, and State Senator Nathaniel A. Elsberg. Knowing this might make them targets for the machine in the 1899 elections, Roosevelt began working to protect them as early as June. In a meeting with Platt and Odell on June 6, Roosevelt secured a promise that the machine would not “take sides either way in the 27th Assembly district.” Roosevelt did not seek to secure machine support for Davis, but, he said, “I do emphatically ask that nothing shall be done against [him] and let the district settle for itself.” Davis and Elsberg he characterized as part of the “body of men upon whom I especially relied in the Legislature from New York City.” Roosevelt included Mazet in that body of men, too. With his contacts among advocates of good government and housing reform, and in charitable institutions and the Union League, Governor Roosevelt was in a unique position to mediate between the machine and independent Republicans—and to try to save Mazet and other urban reformers.

Meanwhile, the governor busied himself with celebrations to welcome home Admiral George Dewey, the hero of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. This included Roosevelt’s attending a White House dinner in Dewey’s honor on September 27. At the dinner, President McKinley asked Roosevelt to take the stump for Republicans in Ohio, where Mark Hanna was standing for US senator. Roosevelt agreed, but balked at requests for further campaign trips as far away as Iowa and Nebraska. His pessimism concerning the coming elections in New York was evident. To American diplomat Henry White, Roosevelt said, “I should not be surprised at a disaster,” using the same word he had often repeated after the 1897 elections. The machine’s efforts to form fusion tickets to save Republican seats in the Assembly had failed miserably. As a sign of Platt’s failure in this area, Quigg visited Roosevelt in Albany to solicit the governor’s aid in the city elections. Namely, the machine wanted the governor to speak and work for the combined machine-reform Republican tickets throughout the city. Quigg had been working to form such combination tickets since the summer. With no success, the machine now openly turned to the governor. Platt and Quigg saw Roosevelt as the only Republican leader who could draw in reformers. This was an extraordinary acknowledgment of Roosevelt’s strength among city Republicans.

On October 19, Roosevelt spoke in New York in favor of a united party to a large Republican rally of 10,000. Roosevelt’s popularity was on display as he entered: the entire crowd stood to clap, shout, and wave for a full minute. The governor spoke on behalf of Mazet and other reforming Republicans, such as Gherardi Davis and Edward H. Fallows. He lauded the work of the Mazet Committee, and he tore into Tammany Hall. “I denounce in Tammany Hall what I will not permit in my own party!” shouted Roosevelt to thunderous applause. Significantly, Roosevelt concluded with a warning to vote Republican rather than for an independent candidate, and thereby allow a Tammany legislature. “Men who are supporting Tammany Hall, or any of these little outside candidates, whose only effect is to help Tammany Hall,” Roosevelt chided, “are warring for the forces of evil, and showing that in this crisis of the city’s need they stand against her interests.” This was classic Roosevelt. He was not only belittling the shortsighted actions of the Citizens’ Union, but also labeling them “evil.” “I appeal to you all,” the governor concluded, “to vote with us from the top of the ticket to the bottom.”

Almost immediately, Roosevelt departed for his promised campaign tour through Ohio, all the while suffering a heavy cold. The day after the Republican rally in New York City, Roosevelt wrote to Lodge from Cincinnati: “I had a good meeting and hit straight at Tammany.” This was developing into Roosevelt’s strategy for 1899, and it was similar to his strategy of demonizing Tammany and boss Croker during his gubernatorial campaign the previous year. To prevent another Republican disaster at the hands of Tammany and the Citizens’ Union, Roosevelt attempted to strike at Tammany and convince reforming Republicans to stick with the party. A vote for the Citizens’ Union, according to Roosevelt, was really a vote for Tammany Hall.

In Ohio, Roosevelt followed hard on the heels of William Jennings Bryan as the former Democratic presidential candidate denounced the American annexation of the Philippines earlier that year. Roosevelt compared such anti-imperialists to the Copperheads of the Civil War, going so far as to label one American congressman a traitor. From Ohio, Roosevelt traveled to Maryland and West Virginia. Meanwhile, New York Democrats attempted to turn the governor’s vocal support of Mazet into a liability. At a massive Tammany Hall rally on October 26, Democrats took aim at the governor himself. “Let him clean his own skirts and those of the Republican administration in Albany,” the chairman of the meeting, Randolph Guggenheimer, declared, “before he and his henchmen come to this enlightened city and attempt to vilify . . . men whose characters are above and beyond reproach!” Another speaker questioned Roosevelt’s independence from boss Platt. “I challenge him to mention a single order . . . given him by Platt since the first of January that he has disobeyed,” proclaimed John W. Keller, the president of the Department of Public Charities. “The Rough Rider of the last campaign is a very little tin soldier, indeed, in this one.” The Tribune called the Tammany rally “lifeless,” while noting that Roosevelt was welcomed in Maryland with “utmost enthusiasm.”

Election Day brought mixed results. The Tammany–Citizens’ Union alliance behind Democrat Perez Stewart had made Mazet’s defeat almost inevitable, and he lost his seat in the Nineteenth District by about four hundred votes. The city almost witnessed a repeat of the 1897 elections, when both the Republicans and the Citizens’ Union each won two seats. In 1899, of New York City’s thirty-five Assembly seats, Republicans won only four, down from eight the year before. The Citizens’ Union won no seat outright, as Perez Stewart’s victory was seen as a plus for the Democrats. Statewide, the composition of the Assembly remained almost unchanged, as Republicans actually increased their majority by a single seat. However, while Mazet suffered defeat despite Roosevelt’s support, others whom the governor had supported kept their seats. Gherardi Davis won reelection in the Twenty-Seventh District, in one of those four Republican victories in the city that year. Without Roosevelt’s intervention, the Republican machine would have likely challenged Davis from the outset.

Still, Roosevelt could not claim complete victory in the city. The governor had supported the New York State Assembly candidacy of Homer Folks, the associate editor of Charities Review and a member of the Municipal Assembly of the City of New York. Folks had been nominated by the Citizens’ Union and nominally endorsed by the Republican Party in the Twenty-Ninth District. Platt and the machine, however, did not support Folks, and he lost by a mere 150 votes. The machine also turned on Samuel Slater of the Thirty-First District, whom Roosevelt referred to as “one of our best Republican members.” He lost his bid for reelection by fewer than 100 votes out of more than 11,000 cast. Across the board, Republicans and Citizens’ Union supporters had agreed on fusion behind a total of eight candidates. Four of them lost, including Folks and Slater, and four of them won, including Gherardi Davis. In the Fifth District, the fusion candidate Nelson Henry won reelection by the slimmest margin of all: 40 votes out of more than 6,000 cast. At the October 20 Republican rally, Roosevelt had singled out by name Mazet, Davis, and Edward Fallows of his old Twenty-First District for reelection. Fallows won reelection handily.

Roosevelt’s attitude toward the election results reflected their mixed nature. On the one hand, as he had in 1897, he expressed unhappiness with both the machine and independent Republicans. After all, there were good men, such as Mazet, who had not won reelection. On the other hand, he did not see the loss of these men as significantly weakening his position as governor. Quite the contrary, by preventing a repeat of the 1897 disaster and successfully intervening to save men such as Davis and Fallows, Roosevelt viewed his position in the city, state, and party as very strong. In a November 10 letter to a Maryland reformer, Roosevelt explained the absurdities of the New York election. “The Citizens’ Union actually turned in with Tammany to beat Mazet,” Roosevelt wrote with his typical tone of disbelief. “This was not only bad in itself, but it irritated the machine republicans to turning in and beating Homer Folks, the Citizens’ Union man whom the republicans endorsed,” he added, also noting Slater’s loss for the same reason. “As for me personally I have my hands full in keeping the machine up to the proper level,” Roosevelt wrote, lamenting that he had not had the full support of the independents, as he “would have the right to expect.” Roosevelt reserved special exasperation and scorn for independents such as E. L. Godkin of The Nation and Evening Post, who had backed the Citizens’ Union’s efforts to defeat reform Republicans such as Mazet. Godkin, Roosevelt declared, was just as bad “as Croker and his crowd.” Only a few days after the election, the governor seemed to have much about which to be unhappy.

Within a week, though, Roosevelt was back in old form, cultivating the press and politely asserting his independence from Quigg, Platt, and the machine. On November 13, he pressed Harper’s Weekly editor John Huston Finley to visit Albany in order to write an article on New York state government. Roosevelt was confident that Finley would like what he saw: “I can say with absolute conscientiousness,” Roosevelt asserted, “that during the eighteen years I have been in public life, there has been no such high average standard of legislative and executive fidelity to the public weal as we have succeeded in ensuring for the past year.” On November 27, he wrote separate letters to Quigg and Platt questioning the “jamming through” of a bill centralizing the police forces of the state’s six biggest cities under a single commissioner in Albany and bringing them under the state civil service law. Roosevelt prevailed, although the state constabulary bill would have enhanced Platt’s power as boss and removed the New York City Police Department from Tammany’s control. Already Roosevelt was flexing his new, postelections muscle.

The intervention by a New York governor in city elections was almost unprecedented. That the machine itself had asked Roosevelt to intervene was a sign of his strength among city Republicans. Roosevelt had become what he had promised: governor of the entire party, working with and drawing strength from both the machine and independents. Not every New York governor could have done this, not even one as popular as Grover Cleveland had been. It helped that Roosevelt had been born in New York City, something that, surprisingly, few New York governors could claim. Of the score of men who held the office following the Civil War, only Roosevelt had been born in the city. The powerful Republican Levi Morton, for whom New York City’s Republican headquarters, Morton Hall, was named, had been born in Vermont, and Roosevelt’s predecessor, Frank Black, had been born in Maine. After Roosevelt, it would not be until Al Smith became governor in 1919 that the city would send another native son to Albany. And Roosevelt could claim New York for more than just his place of birth. By the time he became governor, he had been a New York City Republican for nearly twenty years. Platt, born in the small village of Oswego, New York, occupied Republican headquarters at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, but much of his power lay upstate. Roosevelt was the rare Republican who could draw strength from both north and south of the Harlem River.

During the summer of 1899, while Vice President Hobart lay ill, Roosevelt attended the Rough Riders reunion in Las Vegas. There was a brief boom for Roosevelt to become McKinley’s new running mate for 1900, a fact he discussed in letters with Lodge all summer. The boom had died by the time of the early November 1899 elections that had left Roosevelt in such a strong position as governor. Hobart’s death on November 21 immediately revived speculation among the public and Roosevelt’s associates—including the Republican machine in New York—that Roosevelt might be placed on the ticket with McKinley.

By early 1900, Roosevelt had given another Annual Message as governor. He had also replaced Platt’s man Lou Payn as superintendent of insurance. The notorious Payn had defended corrupt business practices in the Empire State, lining his pockets with payoffs from insurance companies. He had also opposed nominating Roosevelt for governor. Historians have concluded that Platt was simply seeking to remove Roosevelt as governor by placing him in the vice presidency—and they have cited Payn’s dismissal and the Annual Message as being important to Platt’s decision. Yet, in late November 1899, only a week after Hobart’s death, Platt’s lieutenant Quigg was already sounding the governor out on the topic. This was some weeks before both Lou Payn’s dismissal and the Annual Message. To Quigg, Roosevelt demurred. And from his talks with Platt, the governor believed that the Easy Boss favored his renomination for governor in 1900. But by now, Roosevelt should have known better. As he wrote to his sister Anna in mid-December, “too much faith must not be put in princes, even of the democratic type.” Platt’s lack of forthrightness baffled Roosevelt. Although he knew by late December that Platt was openly discussing him for the vice presidency, the senator, as Roosevelt said, “gave me no hint of this, taking exactly the opposite view.” “I do not understand what was up, or for the matter of that what is up now,” he told Lodge. Platt would remain coy with the governor until the Republican National Convention that would give Roosevelt the vice presidential nomination in June 1900.

HISTORIANS ARE ALMOST unanimous in accepting that “independence” and “reform” played key roles in Roosevelt’s departure from the Empire State. Roosevelt himself is partly responsible for this emphasis on reform. In his Autobiography, he discussed this period at length, particularly his relationship with Platt and the machine and Platt’s concern that Roosevelt was becoming too “altruistic.” Roosevelt cited an exchange of letters in which Platt noted that Roosevelt’s actions had “caused the business community of New York to wonder how far the notions of Populism . . . have taken hold upon the Republican party of the State of New York.” Roosevelt concluded that Platt wanted him out of New York because of opposition by big business. Students of Roosevelt’s career have simply taken Roosevelt at his word and echoed this version of events.

That Roosevelt had become something of a radical and even a dangerous reformer by late 1899 is a notion that exists more in the minds of recent biographers, such as Edmund Morris and Nathan Miller—and of Roosevelt—than it did among contemporary observers. Certainly Platt himself did not agree with Roosevelt’s characterization, stating instead in his own 1910 Autobiography that Roosevelt had been kicked upstairs in order to strengthen the national ticket. At the time, the press did not see Roosevelt’s agenda for New York State as radical at all, or as significantly threatening business interests. The day after the governor’s 1900 Annual Message, the Times observed that Roosevelt was essentially advocating “Letting Well Enough Alone.” The message, the paper observed, was “almost barren of positive recommendations” and actually warned the legislature against passing “needless legislation.” Concerning the burning issue of municipal ownership of public utilities—to better regulate the industry, as some argued, and keep rates low—Roosevelt declared it “undesirable that the Government should do anything that private individuals could do with better results to the community.” “Everything that tends to deaden individual initiative is to be avoided,” Roosevelt said, sounding as conservative as Platt himself.

Such conservatism on the eve of seeking renomination made sense. De Alva S. Alexander, a Republican congressman from New York at the time, commented that Roosevelt’s many “deferential acts” to Platt indicated that he wanted the nomination again. Alexander also noted that replacing Lou Payn with Francis Hendricks, a close friend of Platt’s, was at the time actually seen as a machine victory. Moreover, Alexander echoed the Times in seeing the Annual Message as devoid of “decisive opinion,” and as lacking mention of many of the causes for which Roosevelt had fought, such as biennial sessions of the legislature and an employees’ liability law. Indeed, Roosevelt now accepted making state transfer-tax appraiserships political appointments. The state transfer-tax appraisers were responsible for collecting the state tax on real-estate transfers. Roosevelt’s acceptance of something that was viewed as part of the political patronage system was criticized by his fellow civil service reformers. By early 1900, it seems, Roosevelt was seeking to secure renomination by cozying up to Platt and the machine.

So why did Platt want Roosevelt out of New York? Platt worried that the locus of power in state politics was shifting from his headquarters in the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to the governor’s mansion in Albany. This was not because Roosevelt was acting independently, as the previous Republican governor, Frank Black, had. By the end of 1899, Roosevelt had actually displayed his ability to challenge Platt for the leadership of the state party. He had reached this position not by building a machine of his own and becoming a faction leader, but by bridging the gulf between the independent and machine Republicans of New York. He had served as mediator despite his great distaste for both groups. In September 1898, he had even declined the independent nomination for governor. As he asserted at the time, he did not want to represent a single faction of the Republican Party, either reform or machine. Instead, he desired to be “Governor of the entire party.”

If any Republican was canny enough to note Roosevelt’s strength in the state, it was Thomas Platt. By backing Roosevelt for the vice presidency, Platt arguably accomplished two important goals that strengthened his own hand in New York. First, he removed the threat to his leadership that Roosevelt posed. Second, by placing a favorite-son candidate and war hero on the national ticket, he ensured a Republican victory in the fall and a high Republican turnout in New York. Platt himself noted this reasoning in his Autobiography. “The wisdom of my insistence that Roosevelt should be McKinley’s running mate was vindicated at the polls,” he concluded. “The McKinley-Roosevelt team simply ran away from Bryan and his mate, and New York State was kept in the Republican column.” Keeping New York State “in the Republican column” meant more power for Platt, as evidenced as recently as the 1896 Republican landslide. Platt understood as well as anyone the relationship between New York politics and national politics. New York had consistently given the margin of victory to presidential candidates, and because of the state’s electoral importance, New Yorkers often appeared on the national tickets of both parties. The success of the national ticket translated into local success. In other words, Platt knew that a McKinley victory in 1900 would mean greater power for the state Republican machine, and for Platt personally, both at the national and state levels.

Indeed, the 1900 election results for New York State represented a boon for the boss. Platt successfully replaced Roosevelt as governor with his own lieutenant, Benjamin Odell, who secured a 110,000-vote plurality, much larger than Roosevelt’s plurality only two years earlier. In Congress, New York Republicans gained four seats. In the New York State Legislature, Republicans secured massive majorities: 35 seats in the Senate (out of 50 seats) and 105 in the Assembly (out of 150 seats). All in all, the McKinley-Roosevelt victory of 1900 was one shared by Thomas Platt.

THE THEODORE ROOSEVELT governorship was marked by a number of progressive reforms. Roosevelt backed housing reform in New York City to make working-class tenements safer, healthier places to live. He supported a tax on public utilities. He improved labor laws and advanced forestry programs. He strengthened laws governing banking and insurance companies. Roosevelt did all this in only two years as governor while at the same time engaging in a political balancing act more difficult than a circus tightrope performance. He continuously had to maneuver between independent and machine Republicans; between the dual loci of state power in Albany and in New York City; and between men like Godkin and men like Platt. Herein lay his greatest success on the eve of becoming vice president of the United States. Roosevelt did not have a radical reform agenda; nor did he work independently of Platt and the machine. In fact, among the governor’s contemporaries, this was his legacy: that, in the end, Roosevelt disappointed reformers in his conservatism and in his subordination to Platt. Reformers and Mugwumps such as Godkin labeled him a “coward.” At the time, Roosevelt displayed great sensitivity to such criticism, and he would spend the opening months of his vice presidency addressing it.