Your TR Source
President Roosevelt can now get around on crutches. Mrs. Roosevelt will be going home tomorrow so President Roosevelt is to take care of Ethel, but he fears Ethel will be rapidly taking care of him. Roosevelt asks Ted to extend his thanks to Mr. Billings for the letter to Mrs. Roosevelt.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-10-12
“Don Marcus Hanna” sits at the top of a hill as he watches President Roosevelt walk down a hill with a bandaged leg—”trouble with Hanna”—using Pennsylvania Senator Matthew Stanley Quay as a crutch.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-01-20
An old man labeled “T.C.P.” (Thomas Collier Platt) wears ragged clothing and holds a crutch labeled “Republican Machine.” A small jug labeled “Express Co.” is next to him where he sits, on the steps to a municipal building showing the base of columns in the background. Everyone nearby is fleeing from him as though he is a leper.
Thomas Collier Platt might not have been the “Grand Old Man” of American politics, that appellation variously applied to figures through the years; and perhaps not even the grand old man of Republican politics, but he was old enough to have campaigned for the very first Republican presidential candidate, John Fremont, four years before Abraham Lincoln was elected. In 1907, the date of this cartoon, he was a veteran senator from New York, his third time serving in that role, a few years from retirement and death, but holding on to his office. His power and glory — or at least influence — was spent, and due to his faded luster and various scandals, was a virtual leper in the senate and in his party.