3/31/23
Newsletter #292
The Crack of Dawn
Here are two silly, wonderful American facts: First, the only place where the U.S. is north of Canada is Detroit. Ontario juts down through the Great Lakes next to Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, is south of Detroit. Second, what are the eastern-most and western-most points of the U.S.? The answer to both questions is Alaska. The Aleutian Islands stick out so far that they are west of Hawaii, then cross the hemisphere line into the Eastern Hemisphere making them the eastern-most point.
On April 26, 1865, the funeral cortege of assassinated president, Abraham Lincoln, solemnly made its way through New York City in front of 120,000 spectators. As it passed a building owned by Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, his two grandsons can be seen in the second story window: five-year-old, Elliot Roosevelt, and his brother, seven-year-old, Theodore Roosevelt.
Elliot Roosevelt was a ne’er do well alcoholic who managed to drink himself to death by the age of thirty-four. The only thing he did of any historical note – other than being Teddy’s brother –was father a daughter named Eleanor, who would later go on and marry her cousin, Franklin, and she would become First Lady.
Teddy Roosevelt still remains the youngest president in U.S. history at 42 years old, although he wasn’t elected. Teddy was Vice-President when President William McKinley was assassinated. Teddy also remains the most prolific president, having written 28 books. He published his first book, The Naval War of 1812, in 1882 when he was 24, and it remains one of the foremost texts on that subject.
On the same day in the same house, Feb. 12, 1884, Teddy’s wife and mother both died. His wife died in childbirth. Teddy wrote in his diary, “The light has gone out in my life,” handed his newborn baby to his sister and went west to hide from life and become a cowboy.
I wrote a script about 25 years ago called Teddy Roosevelt in the Bad Lands about this couple of year period in Teddy’s life as a cowboy and a cattle rancher in Medora, North Dakota (which was just the Dakota Territories then). What drew me to this story was that it was obviously leading to a conclusion that didn’t happen. So, though I mainly stuck to the facts, I had my version conclude in what I considered was the proper fashion.
When Teddy arrived on horseback in Medora, the Dakota Territories, in 1884, the town was run by an tall, handsome, imperious figure named Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Morès et de Montemaggiore, commonly known as the Marquis de Morès. He was a French nobleman, notorious duelist, former military officer, a renowned (and published on the subject) Antisemite, whom I thought looked surprisingly like Bruce Campbell.
But here was what was really interesting, and no accounts that I read went into at all (including the late, great David McCullough’s), was that the town of Medora was named after the Marquis’s wife, Medora von Hoffman, daughter of Louis von Hoffman, a very wealthy NY banker. Medora was the same age as Teddy. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that Teddy’s father knew Medora’s father – NY high society wasn’t that big – and Teddy could well have met or knew Medora before meeting her again in Dakota.
Teddy started a ranch called the Elkhorn and had a small herd of cattle (and wrote a book about it, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail). Teddy immediately butted heads with the Marquis de Morès, who claimed ownership of all of the land everywhere. He was already embroiled in a murder case where a rancher who was putting up a fence was killed.
In my story, because the Marquis is so blatantly Antisemitic, and he and Teddy don’t like each other right away, I have the Marquis call him Teddy Rosenfeld, as Franklin Roosevelt was often called by Antisemites.
The Marquis built his bride the biggest house in the town he named after her, and accrued the largest herd of cattle and biggest ranch. He then came up with a very forward-looking idea – don’t send live cattle to Chicago to be fattened and slaughtered; slaughter them there in the west while they were still lean, then ship them east to wholesalers and skip Chicago entirely. He then put all of his (and Medora’s father’s) money into insulated train cars that could be kept cold with ice. Teddy did not go in with him.
Alas, people didn’t want lean meat in 1885, which the Marquis couldn’t understand. It’s better for you. But they didn’t buy it.
In my version, and there’s nothing to contradict it, I make the Marquis an asshole wife abuser and have Teddy help Medora, his old friend from NY, escape the mad Marquis’ abuse and go back to NY. The Marquis knows that Teddy helped. Teddy Rosenfeld, that godman Jew.
I will give you the exciting true conclusion tomorrow, including my complete fabrication of a scene that ought to have happened, but didn’t.
And now, another day . . .