On Sunday, April 18, 1915, several hundred men and women gathered in a light rain to await the arrival of the Southwestern Limited, due in at 10:05 p.m. in Syracuse, New York. They were joined at the New York Central Railroad station by reporters and photographers from as many as fifty newspapers from across the country. The train steamed slowly through the center of the city, stopping traffic at every north-side intersection. As it pulled into the massive redbrick structure, a muffled commotion slowly transformed into booming hurrahs as the numerous flashlight beams landed on the familiar black slouch hat stepping down onto the platform.
Teddy Roosevelt had come to town.
This was a Theodore Roosevelt the nation already knew well. One of the most recognizable and celebrated Americans alive, the former 26th president of the United States, the hero of San Juan Hill and the daring leader of the legendary Rough Riders. The Republican progressive who as president broke the industrial trusts, regulated the railroads, set aside 230-million acres for national parks and forests and preserves, and who had fought to give the workingman “a Square Deal” through his eight years in the White House. This was T.R., the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who brokered the end of the Russo-Japanese War and who championed the seemingly impossible dream of cutting a canal through Panama to connect the mighty oceans. The historian, writer and naturalist whose death-defying adventures in the jungles of Africa and South America had captivated the country. The courageous man who had survived an assassination attempt and insisted on delivering his full speech with the bullet still lodged in his chest as his shirt bloodied. Despite being of just average height, his presence and personality were vastly oversize. As the New York Sun wrote, he “completely absorbs and occupies the senses of whenever and wherever he is present.”
The progressive policies of the Square Deal, which emphasized conservation of resources, controlling monopolistic corporations and attacking economic corruption, had aroused the passions of Americans. In 1908, for example, a riot took place in the small Texas town of Brownfield when residents decided to erect a life-sized statue of the then-president in hunting costume in the town square. “The erection was vigorously opposed by democrats and some republicans,” reported the New York Herald. The statue had been stolen and buried for a week but finally was recovered. “When the ceremony took place a band of cowboys made a rush and met a determined crowd. Revolvers, clubs and fists were freely used, but the statue was not disturbed.” In the melee one man was killed and nine others wounded. When he learned about it, Roosevelt wondered, “Who with a sense of humor and a real zest for life would not be glad to be prominent in American politics at the outset of the 20th century?”
“I have never known such a man as he,” wrote the great journalist William Allen White. “He overcame me…he poured into my heart such visions, such ideals, such hopes, such a new attitude towards life…and patriotism and the meaning of things, as I never had dreamed.”
“The Colonel,” as he was known affectionately, had visited Syracuse many times previously, beginning in 1898 during his term as governor of New York and always with exuberance and often in celebration. He had even come to “the Salt City” as president and throughout his visit, spectators remembered, “the president’s face wore the broadest smile, the president’s teeth lashed continuously and the president indulged in the heartiest laughter of any member of his party.” But this time was different. This time he had come to Syracuse to defend his honor, and perhaps complete one last seemingly quixotic quest to reclaim his political prestige.
This visit to Syracuse was for a trial, in which Teddy Roosevelt was the accused.This visit to Syracuse was for a trial, in which Teddy Roosevelt was the accused. Sued by the former head of the state Republican Party, Mr. William Barnes, for libel. The supposed offense that brought him here: while endorsing a nonpartisan candidate for governor more than a year earlier, Roosevelt had railed against two-party political boss rule, claiming Republican and Democratic political bosses had worked together to “secure the appointment to office of evil men whose activities so deeply taint and discredit our whole governmental system.” The result, he said, is a government “that is rotten throughout in almost all of its departments” and that this “invisible government…is responsible for the maladministration and corruption in the public offices” and the good citizens of the state would never “secure the economic, social and industrial reforms…until this invisible government of the party bosses working through the alliance between crooked business and crooked politics is rooted out of the government system.”
Coming from a lesser man, this attack might easily have been overlooked, but T.R. remained one of the most influential men in the entire world. This was nothing less than an assault on the American political structure, and for party boss William Barnes, who harbored dreams of running for governor himself, it was potentially devastating to his aspirations. To save his reputation from these “false and malicious attacks designed to damage (his) reputation and career,” Barnes sued Roosevelt for libel, demanding the princely sum of $50,000.
This attack on Barnes from Teddy Roosevelt was hardly surprising. He had spent much of his political career publicly fighting political corruption. As a twenty-three-year-old Republican freshman New York State assemblyman in 1882, he had written, “A number of Republicans, including most of their leaders, are bad enough, but over half the Democrats, including almost all the City Irish, are vicious, stupid-looking scoundrels with apparently not a redeeming trait…a stupid, sodden vicious lot, most of them being equally deficient in brains and virtue.”
During that early phase of his career, he reported seeing bags of cash handed over to politicians to kill legislation that might have adversely affected business. He described powerful Republican leader John Rains as a man who had “the same idea of public life and civil service that a vulture has of dead sheep.”
This attack on Barnes from Teddy Roosevelt was hardly surprising. He had spent much of his political career publicly fighting political corruption.Ironically, this fight against corruption had indirectly led him to the White House. He had won election as New York State’s Progressive governor in 1898, and only two years later practically had been forced to run for vice president with President McKinley by New York state political leaders who desperately wanted to replace him in that office with a more compliant man.
He continued his crusade even after ascending to the presidency following the assassination of McKinley. In a 1906 speech, for example, he popularized the word muckraker, which he appropriated from John Bunyan’s 1678 allegory Pilgrim’s Progress to critique journalists who used their “rake” to dig in the mud and muck. But until William Barnes took legal action in 1914, no one had dared challenge him like this.
As fate would have it, Roosevelt and Barnes actually arrived in the city on that same Sunday-night train, although in contrast to the raucous crowd that greeted the former president, few people even recognized the Albany boss, who hung back toward the rear of the train shed. While photographers were busy snapping pictures of the Colonel, Barnes exited the station unnoticed. Although the two men ignored each other on the platform, there had been an incident along the way that might easily have served as the plot of a nickelodeon flicker. The former president had boarded the train in New York City, settling into a stateroom in car 51—the same car in which Barnes had booked space. No one knew if this was simply a coincidence or an intentional insult, and Roosevelt did not comment about it. Barnes learned of this slight when the train arrived in Albany and discovered his place was taken. He had it out with the conductor directly below what was now the Colonel’s compartment, arguing loudly with him on the platform as Roosevelt quietly watched the skirmish from the disputed room. Barnes eventually settled for seats in the adjoining car.
Years earlier, Roosevelt’s insults might have been resolved on a plain with pistols or swords, but now civilized gentlemen dueled in the courtroom. The stakes were enormous for both men, and a case of this magnitude, receiving prolific and ubiquitous media attention, would test the public’s faith in the American legal system, as well. What had started two centuries earlier as a ragged combination of British laws adapted to local necessities, had developed into the United States’ unique system of federal, state and local rules and regulations necessary to govern everyday life in this amazingly diverse country. The circuit riding judges and lawyers who decades earlier had brought the skeleton of law to the frontier by carriage and on horseback, when necessary setting up court in barrooms and bedrooms, had been replaced by an organized and efficient structure. National standards for legal training and the conduct of a trial had been established. A great body of precedent, settled law, now existed to guide jurists through the maze of human conflicts that had to be settled in a courtroom.
Respect for the law was central to the concept of democracy, and there was good reason that the most imposing structure in virtually every city and town was the courthouse. Perhaps symbolically, these classical buildings were centrally located on the main street or green, and from the birth certificates to death certificates filed there, the life of the city took place around it.
At issue in this case was far more than just the specific allegations in the lawsuit. For William M. Ivins, the head of Barnes’s legal team and a prestigious New York City attorney: “the very existence of law depends upon the determination of each individual to maintain his rights and property when willfully, wantonly, and ruthlessly attacked…” Failing to do so, he continued, “If generally adopted by all men, would mean the destruction of society itself.”
Barnes v. Roosevelt would demonstrate that US law had reached its maturity. The former president of the United States, only years earlier the most powerful man in the country, had been called to answer charges no differently than a lowly pushcart vendor. Both sides would be ably represented by several of the most experienced, respected and knowledgeable attorneys in the country, and after all the arguments were heard, judgment would rest in the hands of twelve common men.
William Barnes was fully aware what he was risking by attacking the enormously popular Roosevelt. In fact, he had been repeatedly cautioned against bringing the lawsuit. State Republican leader Cornelius Collins observed, “I warned Barnes that he was dragging Roosevelt out of the political graveyard when he brought this suit. He replied that his honor had been assailed and he must defend it.”
While Barnes had never held elective office, as the grandson of legendary political kingmaker and Republican Party pioneer Thurlow Weed, and owner and publisher of the powerful Albany Evening Journal, he had become a mighty political leader, serving as chairman of both the Republican National Committee and the Republican Committee of New York State. Always ambitious, there was considerable speculation he intended to follow Roosevelt’s model and run for governor and then the White House. A loss in this trial, however, would likely scotch those dreams, while a victory over the revered Roosevelt might well serve as a springboard to a far more celebrated future. But beyond the political ramifications was his personal disdain for the former president. He wanted to make Roosevelt eat those bitter words.
The stakes were equally high for Roosevelt; a loss in the courtroom could forever taint the reputation he had spent his lifetime building, as well as ending any hopes he had of reviving his dormant political career—in addition to the potential financial impact. But if he could win this court battle, the renewed national attention could help him regain his political footing. As Indiana’s Democratic Anaconda Standard suggested, “The Colonel has reached a stage in his career where he experiences difficulty in keeping himself prominently before all of the country all of the time. But Mr. Barnes helps…” Roosevelt’s objective, he wrote to a good friend, was to expose “the most thorough-going and authoritative exposure of political crookedness that we have yet seen.” Publicly he claimed absolute confidence, promising his testimony would “satisfy every fairly intelligent and decent man that I am right.” But privately Roosevelt was well aware that this was a trial that had the potential to get ugly, and personal.
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