Statehood and the Federal Presence
President Theodore Roosevelt
President William McKinley’s stop in Buffalo, New York, in early September 1901
proved fateful in ways hard to imagine. An assassin shot him on September 6, and eight
days later he died, the third president felled in office since 1865. On 14 September 1901,
Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley and became the twenty-six president. He
immediately pledged to continue the late president’s policies and, to emphasize the
continuity, retained his entire cabinet. One of the policies Roosevelt inherited dealt with
statehood for New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. For their part, New Mexicans
immediately pledged their fealty and reaffirmed their deep personal affection for their
former Rough Rider commander.
President McKinley’s position on statehood had been restated when he passed
through El Paso and into southern New Mexico in early May 1901. His train stopped
briefly at Deming on Monday 6 May 1901, where he spoke for about ten minutes telling
those assembled, in the words of a journalist covering the trip, “they would have to wait
for statehood—that what we needed here are more water and people.” The previous
afternoon McKinley had met privately for about an hour with some New Mexicans
promoting statehood. He listened respectfully, but “he had no promise to make.” He did
pledge to endorse statehood “when the matter came before congress again.”
Did McKinley have two different views on statehood? Was his counsel to be patient
and “wait,” or was he advising New Mexicans to urge congress to move forward? Most
likely, McKinley held both views simultaneously, and it is quite clear President Theodore
Roosevelt continued in this approach. This dual message provided each president
considerable room for maneuvering.
Examining Roosevelt’s statements and actions—both public and private—is essential
to understanding the president’s role in the statehood controversy. In his overall behavior,
the phrase that best captures Roosevelt’s temperament is famously epitomized by “bully
pulpit”—the use of presidential power and persuasion to advocate a policy. In the fight
for statehood, though, President Roosevelt’s role is a case study of how parrying, rather
than exhorting, became the preferred course. Events demanded that he tailor his
leadership and rhetoric to the conditions faced. As one scholar said, “He made his points
most convincingly when he dealt with situations instead of theories.” In New Mexico
and the other Territories, the cry went forth for self-rule, but on Capitol Hill their pleas
were rebuffed. Roosevelt found himself in a difficult situation as regarded statehood in
his first administration (1901-4). Pitted against the Senate leadership of his party, he
responded cautiously.
Roosevelt’s ascension to the presidency left him without his own national
political organization or strong allegiances in all states. He had to build support while he
also served as president, and during 1902 and 1903 Roosevelt consolidated his power
while also incrementally advancing the cause of statehood. In doing so, he had to work
with forceful congressional leaders and their particular agendas, and these—coupled with
his instinct to modulate executive intervention in ‘managing’ Congress—greatly
circumscribed his freedom to act. But statehood as a crucible of Roosevelt’s presidential
power had a definite trajectory, with December 1902 being pivotal; however, the
previous several years had provided a backdrop crucial for understanding how Roosevelt
applied himself on behalf of New Mexico.
All accounts of Theodore Roosevelt’s attentiveness to New Mexico cite his
commitment in terms of the Rough Riders who had volunteered in the spring of 1898 to
join him in Cuba to fight against Spain. He forever repeated a boast he first uttered early
in 1899: “New Mexico raised half the Rough Riders.” What New Mexico meant to
Roosevelt hinged on an emotion—loyalty—and a memory—the courage shown under
fire of more than 400 volunteer Rough Riders from the Territory. In all, New Mexico
volunteers had provided officers and men for three of the eight companies for the First
United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the Rough Riders. Their commander, U.S.
Army Colonel Leonard Wood, and his second-in-command, Lt. Colonel Theodore
Roosevelt, brought more than 400 New Mexicans to Cuba in June 1898, where all
acquitted themselves in combat.
Roosevelt and many New Mexicans permanently sealed their mutual admiration
at the first reunion of the Rough Riders, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in late June 1899 on
the one-year anniversary of their first battle on Cuban soil. In Las Vegas, Roosevelt, the
governor of New York, pledged to several hundred of his former soldiers, “If New
Mexico wants to be a state, you can count me in, and I will go to Washington to speak for
you or do anything you wish.”
Just before boarding a train to depart after his first-ever visit to the Territory,
Roosevelt remarked to a companion: “Say, isn’t this a hell of a country? It beats anything
I have ever imagined; it’s the country of the future.” Both his and New Mexico’s future
would be inextricably linked after mid-September 1901 when he ascended to the
presidency. As if to foreshadow the contradictory nature of Roosevelt’s relationship with
New Mexico, two of his personal guests at the reunion epitomized the opposing
tendencies of past and future. On the one hand, his commanding officer Leonard Wood
personified the glory of their recent military service. But also accompanying him was his
long-time, close friend Henry Cabot Lodge, senator from Massachusetts, and an
implacable foe of statehood. Soon Roosevelt would have to choose whether memories of
shared duty or mounting political reality would guide him on the issue of statehood.
Just a month after his swearing in, Roosevelt cabled a statehood convention in
Albuquerque to acknowledge their invitation and, while he expressed his regrets at being
unable to attend, he assured those assembled that he held “the greatest interest and the
strongest friendship for the cause.” The delegates noted approvingly “That in the
successor to President McKinley, we recognize one who will with all his great ability and
experience carry out the policies so wisely begun by him.”
The resolutions adopted at the two-day Albuquerque convention put pressure on
congress and the president to approve an enabling act for statehood. Doing so aligned
them with one aspect of McKinley’s advice: to give Washington a sign of the Territory’s
resolve by petitioning for statehood. Now it would fall to President Roosevelt to pursue
their initiative with congress in 1902. But in doing so, he put behind him his friendship
with the Rough Riders, and he attended no more of their reunions during his presidency.
He remained fond of them and helped them secure government jobs, but he did not join
in their rowdiness and camaraderie.
During his first administration, Roosevelt began to assert a new political principle
of augmented presidential authority in matters of policy. He sought to exercise oversight
and control through managing, regulating, and administering as he deemed necessary.
The emergence of the conservation movement has long been studied as a prototype of
this expanded authority emanating from the White House and conducted through the
Executive Branch. This expanding arc of presidential power pitted the White House
against Congress, particularly the Senate. There he sparred almost continuously with key
members of his own party.
One of the “contested terrains” in Roosevelt’s exercise of enlarged authority
involved statehood for the Territories. Roosevelt understood well that the road to
statehood narrowed and got quite steep on Capitol Hill. He chafed under that political
reality because it made abundantly clear that there were limits to his power as president.
The Territories had an unabashed friend in Theodore Roosevelt, but it was one thing to
promise, as he did in June 1899 in Las Vegas, to “go to Washington to speak for you,”
and quite another to be heeded on matters of legislative priorities once he occupied the
White House.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, no “imperial presidency” could be
imagined as that term has come to be understood today. Indeed, so circumscribed was the
president’s influence that no one objected when aged Senator George F. Hoar, the
powerful senior Republican senator from Massachusetts, rebuked Roosevelt for
“unofficial interference” and “meddling with legislation” in January 1903 during the
debate over the Omnibus Statehood Bill. Hoar reminded the president that unless he
provided the entire Senate a formal communication stating his legislative
recommendation, no White House lobbying would be tolerated: “The time for the
president to make up his mind about statutes is after we have passed them and not
before.”
The greatest curbs to Theodore Roosevelt’s plan to secure statehood for the
territories lay in the nature of the “weak” presidency and the tradition of congressional
prerogatives in matters of legislation. It is against this background of contested power
that the quest for statehood must be placed. Roosevelt dared not push aside Senate
prerogatives, and, especially, he feared to mount frontal attacks on such powerful, longterm members as senators Hoar and Nelson Aldrich. Roosevelt had to abide by
congressional protocols, which were easily manipulated to obstruct and stall action on
statehood.
But on matters involving the Territory of New Mexico that fell outside the
purview of the Senate, President Roosevelt acted with a degree of freedom that struck
some contemporaries as temperamental. Sharp rebukes and even removal from office
occurred when the president deemed an official’s conduct to have violated a civic duty to
be honest and competent. One such instance of his wrath coincided with the final debates
over the Omnibus Statehood Bill, and the incident marked a decisive shift in Roosevelt’s
attitude toward New Mexico’s prospects for statehood.
The president’s views on statehood were linked inextricably to his understanding
of the life and people of New Mexico, which makes it all the more challenging to square
his considerable intellectual curiosity and voracious appetite for information with his
superficial and ultimately contradictory understanding of the Territory. Roosevelt spoke
four languages, yet he objected when translators were needed by nuevomexianos to
understand him. He could talk in great detail and for hours on contemporary matters in
science, literature, politics, and world affairs, yet what he knew about New Mexico was
based largely on two fragmentary experiences—his friendship and fondness for the
Rough Riders and President’s McKinley’s cautious policy of calling for more migration
and irrigation to prepare New Mexico for statehood.
Roosevelt’s shallow understanding of New Mexico proved consequential. When
the president talked about his beloved Rough Riders, he invariably praised their courage,
and he reciprocated the admiration of a few hundred—overwhelmingly Anglo— men. He
failed to grasp the Territory’s complex political mix and the ferment born of race and
poverty. Similarly, when he lectured New Mexicans on the need for more people and
water to prepare the way for statehood, he merely echoed well-known arguments. When
confronted with disquieting revelations about New Mexico, he seemed unprepared to
address these in any systematic manner. At such times, his temper took over. Just such an
incident colored his view of New Mexico at a decisive moment in 1902-3.
A critic once said of Roosevelt that he “keeps a pulpit concealed on his person.”
He very much viewed the word in moral terms, and he unflinching held to a high
standard of conduct for public officials. Roosevelt opined that “Honesty is not so much a
credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public.” In the same essay
from 1901, he staked out an uncompromising position: “We need absolute honesty in
public life.” Territorial governor Miguel Otero witnessed the president’s rage over moral
lapses in public administration in New Mexico, and he instantly realized that the
president had leapt to a conclusion would have grave consequences for the pursuit of
statehood.
The specific issue involved charges of immoral conduct against New Mexico
Supreme Court Judge Daniel H. McMillan for an alleged tryst. Accusations of his
impropriety surfaced in the fall of 1902 and led to a long investigation by the Department
of Justice. The larger problem, as Roosevelt saw it, was how to deal with misconduct by
judges, should New Mexico become a state. As he angrily told Governor Otero at a
White House meeting in late 1902, “With statehood you will be burdened with dishonest
judges and be forced to keep them, while as a territory they can be removed and their
places filled by the President.” Governor Otero vigorously rejected Roosevelt’s
suggestion that New Mexico needed to remain a Territory as a check against judicial
impropriety. Roosevelt eventually removed the fifty-four-year-old McMillan, a
prominent and widely respected attorney from New York, but not before telling Otero
what he really thought ought to happen to McMillan: “A corrupt judge ought to be taken
out to the corral, tied to a cow’s tail, and sh— to death.”
The McMillan “affair” could not have come at a worse time. It was not just that
Roosevelt believed McMillan’s conduct betrayed the president’s well-known high
standards of morality. The incident called into question statehood itself by creating
questions in the president’s mind about the Territory’s worthiness to be released from his
paternalistic control of its public officials. As Roosevelt told Otero, only if New Mexico
remained under his purview would he be certain that a drift toward license did not occur.
Roosevelt’s meeting at the White House over McMillan’s misconduct came precisely as a
debate between pro and anti-statehood advocates brought much of the business of the
United States Senate to a standstill from early December 1902 to early March 1903.
Against this supercharged background and the political stalemate over statehood, the
alleged tryst and its investigations added one more element of doubt to the president’s
mind about New Mexico’s fitness to enter the Union.
Other more ominous questions about the merits of granting statehood had arisen
in November and December 1902, following a visit by four U.S. Senators to five New
Mexico towns to assess the accuracy of the recent census, the activities of the courts and
schools, and the daily routines and customs of the citizens. Known as the “Beveridge
Report,” the several hundred page document raised serious doubts in Roosevelt’s mind
about the appropriateness of statehood for New Mexico. The findings from Beveridge’s
tour, together with the on-going investigation of Judge McMillan, focused the president
on two untoward incidents. This occurred at precisely the most decisive moment in
decision-making about the Territory’s political future in the last twenty-five years. The
president began to understand New Mexico in a wholly different light from what he had
previously learned in his garrulous encounters with his beloved Rough Riders. Another
New Mexico began to emerge, one beset by problems he could not ignore. The
dissonance in his own mind contributed to a stalemate over New Mexico’s future status
that persisted until November 1906.
© 2008 by David V. Holtby. All rights reserved