Sold – President Roosevelt Demonstrates Incorruptibility, Leadership of the Rough Riders, Romance With the West, and a Personal Relationship With Western Legend Bat Masterson

Alfred Henry Lewis was an investigative journalist, lawyer, novelist, editor, and short story writer. Starting about 1882 he traveled in the southwest collecting frontier lore from the colorful characters of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The cowboys and miners Lewis met in his western travels became the dominant figures in his books. It is said that he caught the spirit and vernacular of the latter-day Old West more accurately than any writer of his era. He was even editor of the Mora County Pioneer in New Mexico. He next turned his hand to writing political articles. In the newspaper field Lewis was best known as Washington correspondent of the Chicago Times and New York Journal. He was a regular contributor to Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan and other magazines. 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. He was not afraid to attack a company like International Harvester, whose Trust he asserted was killing competition and stifling invention.

In June, 1908, Lewis began a series of articles on the nation’s leading businessmen called the “Owners of America”, in which he explained how these men controlled the political process. His books included westerns like “Woolfville: Episodes of Cowboy Life”, “The Sunset Trail”, “The Throwback”, and “The Boss”, a story about the corruption of politics in New York City, among many others. A number of his stories were later turned into films. 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.”

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 badly 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 in 1905 one of his first acts was to name Masterson Deputy to U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of New York. Masterson 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 was afterwards sports editor and columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph.

"You can find out all about him from Bat Masterson, as he was one of Bat’s deputies in the old days at Dodge City. Curry is the chief of police in Manila and governor of the province of Samar, and has made an excellent record. He was a captain in my regiment – as game a man as ever drew a gun, and, I firmly believe, and absolutely straight.”

Typed Letter Signed, on White House letterhead, Washington, July 27, 1907, to Lewis. “It was very good of you to send me that letter and I am much interested. I have been inclined to think that Hagerman was merely a fool; but I grow less and less confident, for he begins to look to me as if he and those behind him were probably knaves. I had been very much discontented with the way things were running in New Mexico, and was informed that young Hagerman (who is a Cornell man and had been Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburg, but whose father had a big ranch in New Mexico) was just the type of man for the position of governor. I put him in. After a little while he got into an awful quarrel with the people down there. Some of those he quarreled with were, I think, bad man. Others I am inclined to think were decent men. In any event, in the course of his quarrel, and apparently to solidify himself with certain big interests, he consummated a swindling land transaction with a man named Hopewell, doing the very kind of thing which made me determined that I could no longer continue his predecessor in office. I accordingly asked for his resignation. I thought him an honest but foolish man, although I had always heard that his father had a shady side to his character. The extraordinary interest taken in his retention, however, has made me believe that probably there are a lot of men with big financial interests who expected to profit by what he did and have been nonplussed by his fate. At the elder Hagerman did crooked things in the old days, I have no doubt. When I turned Hagerman out I made up my mind I would appoint a man who was absolutely straight and yet a real Westerner. I accordingly appointed George Curry. You can find out all about him from Bat Masterson, as he was one of Bat’s deputies in the old days at Dodge City. Curry is the chief of police in Manila and governor of the province of Samar, and has made an excellent record. He was a captain in my regiment – as game a man as ever drew a gun, and, I firmly believe, and absolutely straight.” James John Hagerman (the senior Hagerman) was a railroad man with extensive land interests (and in whom TR had no trust). His son Herbert was governor from 1906-7, when TR kicked him out as related in this letter. George Curry had a long and successful career, serving as governor from 1907-1911. Upon the admission of New Mexico as a state into the Union on January 12, 1912, he was elected its first U.S. Congressman.

This letter showcases three of the things for which TR was most famous: his fight against corruption and for honesty, his association with the West, and his leadership of the Rough Riders. It also shows his little known relationship with the legendary Bat Masterson, and his knowledge of the old days in Dodge City where Masterson teamed with Wyatt Earp in the most famous one-two punch in the Old West. It was de-accessioned by an institution.