Monthly Archives: February 2018

Monday morning coffee

26 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Incorporating New York (book project), Writing

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Editing the manuscript yesterday

It rained all day yesterday and I took advantage of the inclement weather to stay in and edit my manuscript. It is amazing how the more you revise the more you find. I sent the draft to a friend last night for him to read. I probably have another 1500 words to reach the finish line. After that, it will be mainly be the clerical work of further editing and the data entry of adding the citations into Zotero. After this week as I wrap up the draft, blogging will pick up again as well.

Enjoy your day and your week.

Presidents Day 2018

19 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father), Union League Club

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I have spent the weekend wrapping up the penultimate chapter in my Civil War book, which ends with the death of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. in February 1878. As it happened I was writing yesterday of President Rutherford B. Hayes’s May 1877 trip to New York City. Hayes, wife Lucy, and much of the cabinet came to New York for a very public series of events spread over a few days. In today’s parlance, we would say that Hayes was consolidating his base. He actually had lost Manhattan to Samuel J. Tilden quite handily in the 1876 presidential election, on his way to losing the overall popular vote. Much of Hayes’s support came from individuals like Theodore Roosevelt Sr., John Jay, Joseph H. Choate and their allies in organizations such as the Union League Club. Roosevelt was at just about every one of the public and private gatherings held in Hayes’s honor.

Contemporary photograph of Fitz-Greene Halleck statue in Central Park

The dedication depicted here took place on 15 May 1877. A short list of those on hand to see President Hayes dedicate the statue to poet Fitz-Greene Halleck includes William Cullen Bryant, William M. Evarts and Carl Schurz, Generals Winfield Scott Hancock and William Tecumseh Sherman, and former New York governor Edwin D. Morgan. The Seventh Regiment Band played. After this event Hayes toured the American Museum of Natural History in its temporary quarters within the Central Park Arsenal escorted by Theodore Roosevelt Sr. It is strange how in popular memory we tend to jump from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt, dismissing the administrations that came between. Abe and Teddy are the subjects of considerably more biographies than all the others between. I believe we serve ourselves poorly and that it is our loss for not doing so.

Enjoy your Presidents Day, everyone.

(images/top, NYPL; bottom, unknown photographer via Wikimedia Commons)

Sunday evening coffee

11 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Incorporating New York (book project), Writing

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I hope everyone’s weekend has been good. It has been a rainy one here in Brooklyn. I seized the opportunity the inclement weather has provided to write. I crossed the 70,000 word barrier today on the draft of my book about Civil War Era New York. The word count for the draft itself will land somewhere in the 72,500 range. The editing, honing, and fact checking over the rest of the winter might add another 2000 or so after that. I am off tomorrow for Lincoln’s Birthday. I’ll also be waiting for a repairman to come and fix something in the house. I wrote 1000 words yesterday and gain today. If I can do that a third day in a row, I’ll be in great shape. I even told a friend I would send him the draft to read one week from today. They say that one should write the book one wants to read, and I have done that.

Someone asked me today if I feel myself winding down. I did not until today. For the past several weeks I was worrying as I neared the finish line. The tendency for intellectual drift and self-sabotage only became more marked as I neared the end of this stage. I’m past that now. The trick has been to force myself from becoming impatient and to let the process take care of itself. Of course the book is a long way from release, if it ever is indeed published. I don’t want to give away too much just yet, but I have been developing what I think might be some good public history opportunities related to the Incorporating New York for this spring and summer. First things first, though: finishing the draft over the next seven days.

(image/NYPL)

“Serious but not critical”

06 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Theodore Roosevelt as he was in 1918. After years of living the strenuous life his health declined precipitously that year and led to his death in January 1919.

While of course no one could have know it at the time Theodore Roosevelt had just eleven months to live as of February 6, 1918. For those watching Roosevelt’s activities however, it was clear that his health was failing. One hundred years ago today he was at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City for surgery to remove accesses on a thigh and in his ears. He had acquired these maladies first in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and later, more seriously, in Brazil in 1913-14 during trip down the River of Doubt. This was Roosevelt’s second procedure in less than a week; surgeons had operated on him in Oyster Bay a few days previously before bringing him into the city for more extensive tests and, ultimately, the additional surgery. There to keep him company in the coming days while he recuperated were daughters Alice and Ethel, wife Ethel, and his sister Corinne. Not present were his four sons, who by now were all in uniform and on active duty. Telegrams of support poured in from Woodrow Wilson, French President Raymond Poincaré, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and scores of others.

It was still an active time for Colonel Roosevelt. Remember, he was still just fifty-nine years old. In this period he was writing his columns for the Kansas City Star and speaking his mind on what he saw as the failures of the Wilson Administration in getting the United States up to speed and involved in the Great War. He had had to cancel a number of public talks that very week for the surgery itself. He was in Roosevelt Hospital for nearly a week and suffered a few set back. This is what led his physicians to inform the public that Roosevelt’s condition was “serious but not critical.” He was on the mend, at least temporarily, by mid-February. Some were still optimistic. and there was even public chatter at this time of Roosevelt running for the White House again in 1920.

(image/NYPL)