Appointing a former "Rough Rider" as territorial governor of New Mexico - photo 1
Appointing a former "Rough Rider" as territorial governor of New Mexico - photo 2

Appointing a former "Rough Rider" as territorial governor of New Mexico

Lot 211
02.02.2024 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 3 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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ID 1129831
Lot 211 | Appointing a former "Rough Rider" as territorial governor of New Mexico
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 5 000
ROOSEVELT, Theodore (1858-1919). Typed letter signed ("Theodore Roosevelt") as President with autograph corrections to friend and investigative journalist Alfred Henry Lewis, Oyster Bay, NY, 27 July 1907.

Two pages, bifolium, 82 x 225mm on White House letterhead (a few creases, light finger-soiling on the verso).

Roosevelt ousts the "knave" son of a railroad executive as territorial governor of New Mexico, replaces him with a former captain of the "Rough Riders." In 1906, at the advice of his Secretary of the Interior, Theodore Roosevelt appointed Herbert James Hagerman to curb political corruption in New Mexico, due to anti-corruption reputation Hagerman had earned while Secretary to the U.S. Embassy in Russia. Herbert Hagerman, however, was the son of renowned industrialist J.J. Hagerman: mine owner, railroad-man, and one of the most influential men in the territory, with whom Roosevelt surely had little trust. Rising tensions between the younger Hagerman and the political bosses of New Mexico led Roosevelt to oust him shortly before this letter was written.

Roosevelt writes: “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 ... After a little while he got into an awful quarrel with the people down there ... 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 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 ... 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. That the elder Hagerman did crooked things in the old days, I have no doubt."

As to his replacement, Roosevelt writes: "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...He was a captain in my regiment – as game a man as ever drew a gun, and, I firmly believe, and absolutely straight." Bat Masterson, a close friend of Roosevelt, earned fame as a gunfighter and frontier lawman alongside Wyatt Earp. George Curry was the Captain of Troop H of the "Rough Riders" where he served in the Philippines. Curry was also the governor of the New Mexico Territory from 1907 to 1910, and later represented it in Congress after its statehood from 1912 to 1913.
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