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Listen my children, and you shall hear ...
The Midnight Rough Rider: Theodore Roosevelt’s Ascendance down Mount Marcy
September 14, 1901, 2:15 in the morning. As the gravely wounded President William McKinley succumbed to gangrene, the presidential succession was on hold. Constitutionally, the United States did have a new President, ready, as the youngest ever to assume office, to further usher the country into a new and climactic century. And yet, at the advent of his life-defining role, the new President was recklessly barreling down hazardous backcountry roads at breakneck speeds, through darkness and driving rain, in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. He knew neither of his predecessor’s fate nor of his own destiny, but knew he had to reach the train station in North Creek, New York. Only a few hours ago, he had been missing, hundreds of miles away from the dying President on the slopes of New York’s highest peak, Mount Marcy. It was here that the Rough Rider began his life-defining role of President of the United States as the Midnight Rider.
Vice President Theodore Roosevelt’s wild midnight ride to the Oval Office was set in motion with an assassin’s bullet, an eerily trending catalyst of change in the preceding and succeeding decades. On September 6, 1901, while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President McKinley was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, a self-proclaimed anarchist.
Upon learning of the tragic developments, Roosevelt hastily scampered 400 miles from a speaking engagement at Isle La Motte in the middle of Lake Champlain to Buffalo, to be by the President. This journey alone, especially given the melancholic impetus and 1901 standards of travel, might have exhausted any other Vice President beyond functional capability. For Roosevelt, however, these were the strenuous circumstances he longed for and thrived in. This was just the beginning of a precarious trek that culminated in his formal accession to the presidency, and arguably, crafted an early romantic mandate for his progressive and virile presidency.
[...]
September 14, 1901, 2:15 in the morning. As the gravely wounded President William McKinley succumbed to gangrene, the presidential succession was on hold. Constitutionally, the United States did have a new President, ready, as the youngest ever to assume office, to further usher the country into a new and climactic century. And yet, at the advent of his life-defining role, the new President was recklessly barreling down hazardous backcountry roads at breakneck speeds, through darkness and driving rain, in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. He knew neither of his predecessor’s fate nor of his own destiny, but knew he had to reach the train station in North Creek, New York. Only a few hours ago, he had been missing, hundreds of miles away from the dying President on the slopes of New York’s highest peak, Mount Marcy. It was here that the Rough Rider began his life-defining role of President of the United States as the Midnight Rider.
Vice President Theodore Roosevelt’s wild midnight ride to the Oval Office was set in motion with an assassin’s bullet, an eerily trending catalyst of change in the preceding and succeeding decades. On September 6, 1901, while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President McKinley was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, a self-proclaimed anarchist.
Upon learning of the tragic developments, Roosevelt hastily scampered 400 miles from a speaking engagement at Isle La Motte in the middle of Lake Champlain to Buffalo, to be by the President. This journey alone, especially given the melancholic impetus and 1901 standards of travel, might have exhausted any other Vice President beyond functional capability. For Roosevelt, however, these were the strenuous circumstances he longed for and thrived in. This was just the beginning of a precarious trek that culminated in his formal accession to the presidency, and arguably, crafted an early romantic mandate for his progressive and virile presidency.
[...]
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