The only thing I can hear averse is the fear that you will want to fight somebody at once.

From The Boys of '98 by Dale L. Walker. President McKinley was eager to avoid engaging in war with Spain but there were many in the country who were eager, for reasons humanitarian, idealistic, opportunistic and other.

The previous April, the president had resolved a minor problem, the selection of someone to serve as assistant to Navy Secretary John D. Long. McKinley had been courted on this minor appointment by no less an eminence in Congress than Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. "Cabot," as his wide circle of friends and admirers called him, was the eminent former editor of the North American Review, author of biographies of Washington, Daniel Webster, and Alexander Hamilton, a Harvard professor, and a stellar figure in Republican politics. Lodge suggested his good friend, the capable and energetic New York police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, would be a good choice as assistant secretary of the navy. Among other qualifications, Lodge mentioned, Roosevelt had served several years with the New York National Guard and was author of a fine book on the navy's role in the War of 1812.

The combative commissioner had been suggested to him by others as well and McKinley, who had some reservations, agreed on the appointment.

"Absolutely the only thing I can hear averse," Lodge wrote Roosevelt, "is the fear that you will want to fight somebody at once."