President Theodore Roosevelt calls on Western hero Bat Masterson to act as a go between, to, in a Wester turn of phrase, “steer down” a supporter
He Is Wary of Corrupt Political Machines Pretending to Be For Him, While in Reality Supporting a Reactionary Agenda.
Alfred Henry Lewis was an investigative journalist, novelist, editor, short story writer, and Roosevelt ally. Like Roosevelt, he traveled in the west during the frontier days, and he collected lore from the colorful characters there. The cowboys and miners Lewis met in his western travels became the dominant figures in his books....
Alfred Henry Lewis was an investigative journalist, novelist, editor, short story writer, and Roosevelt ally. Like Roosevelt, he traveled in the west during the frontier days, and he collected lore from the colorful characters there. The cowboys and miners Lewis met in his western travels became the dominant figures in his books. In 1896 Lewis became the Washington correspondent for the Hearst newspapers, doing fiction and political writing for them. He established a reputation as one of the foremost political writers of the country and a foremost advocate for the Progressive philosophy. His books included westerns and “The Boss”, a story about the corruption of politics in New York City, among many others. He was precisely the sort of man who Theodore Roosevelt would choose as a colleague and indeed friend. In 1905, he selected Lewis to edit “A Compilation of the Messages and Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt 1901 – 1905.” Lewis was also a friend and confidant of Bat Masterson. Lewis' two brothers, Irving and William, controlled the publication of the New York Morning Telegraph and were like minded.
Bat Masterson was a famed and colorful figure of the Old West, renowned as a gunfighter, buffalo hunter, Army scout, gambler, and frontier lawman. On January 24, 1876, Masterson was wounded in a melee in which Melvin King and Mollie Brennan were killed. After his recovery, he served as a sheriff's deputy alongside Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, Kansas. In October 1877 Masterson was elected sheriff of Ford County, and early in 1878 he tracked down and apprehended nearly all of the Rourke-Rudabaugh gang, who had attempted to rob trains and raid the depot at Kinsley, Kansas. Afterward, he was commissioned a deputy United States marshal. The next month he brought in seven Cheyenne prisoners to stand trial for depredations committed during Dull Knife's flight from Indian Territory. In February 1881 Masterson accompanied Wyatt Earp and Luke Short to Tombstone, Arizona, where he assisted Earp at the gaming tables of the Oriental Saloon. He served for a time as a deputy sheriff in Las Animas, Colorado, and in 1883 was instrumental in persuading the governor of Colorado to prevent the extradition of Doc Holliday to Arizona. He helped promote prizefighters John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett and attended the controversial boxing match between Bob Fitzsimmons and Peter Maher staged by Judge Roy Bean near Langtry, Texas, in 1896. In 1902 he moved to New York. Alfred Henry Lewis introduced Masterson to his friend President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt became friendly with Masterson, and had him at the White House on several occasions. TR wanted to appoint Masterson to a federal office, as he had western lawman Pat Garrett, but Garrett’s had not been well received. So he waited until his 1904 election victory, and after his second inauguration in 1905 one of his first acts was to name Masterson Deputy to U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of New York. In 1907, Masterson also took a position as sports columnist for the Lewis brothers' New York Morning Telegraph, and split his time between his writing and keeping the peace in the grand jury room whenever the U. S. Attorney in New York held session. He performed this service from early 1908 until 1912 when President William Howard Taft removed Masterson from the position during Taft's purge of Roosevelt supporters from government positions. He then became sports editor for the Morning Telegraph.
Autograph Letter Signed, on White House letterhead, Oyster Bay, September 2, 1907, to Lewis. "Any letter from you is sure to have an answer from me. I greatly liked that editorial and when I am back in Washington on 15 October I shall get Bat to steer your brother down. Which shall I write to, the brother or Bat! I think there is a good deal of danger of just what your Colorado friend feared, that is, of the machine here and there processing to be for me, with the intention of really turning up for somebody else of a reactionary stamp when the opportunity comes."
1907 was the summer of the Nature Fakers controversy, and from the precise timing, the parties involved, and their joint interest in nature and the outdoors, we believe this letter to relate to that then-explosive situation. It arose from a new literary movement that followed a growth of interest in the natural world, in which the natural world was depicted in a compassionate rather than realistic light. Works by authors such as Ernest Thompson Seton and William J. Long popularized this new genre and emphasized sympathetic and individualistic animal characters. Naturalist and writer John Burroughs published an article entitled "Real and Sham Natural History" lambasting such writers for their seemingly fantastical representations of wildlife, and also denounced the booming genre of animal fiction as "yellow journalism" of the woods". Burroughs' targets responded in defense of their work in various publications, as did their supporters, and the resulting controversy raged in the public press for years. It escalated when President Roosevelt publicly sided with Burroughs, publishing his article "Nature Fakers" in the September 1907 issue of Everybody's Magazine, which would have hit the newsstands in mid to late August. The President came in for a raft of criticism for taking a position on such a controversy while in the White House, from those who maintained that presidents should avoid taking sides in spats outside their responsibilities. TR stated that he would use the Bully Pulpit as he saw fit, and friends rallied to his support. Among those apparently one of the Lewis brothers, who wrote a supportive editorial. Here Roosevelt wants to convey his gratitude, and asks whether to write Lewis directly or reach him through another man at the Telegraph – Bat Masterson. The term TR chooses to use – "steer down" – is a Western and rodeo term meaning to wrestle to the ground. Despite his association with the West, this is a most uncommon use by TR of Western terminology.
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