Taking on Theodore Roosevelt

by Harry Lembeck

  Secretary Taft's “personal sense of justice had been aroused,” and this motivated him as much as anything else to help Mary Church Terrell.13 So might have been his political sense of justice. Roosevelt's order inflamed people, yet it was Taft's run for the White House that would be burned by it. “I do not think [Roosevelt] realizes quite the great feeling that has been aroused on the subject,” Taft wrote to his wife.14 On his just-completed trip out west, Taft got an earful from fearful Republican politicians worried about Brownsville's shadow. He was “deluged with protests” that what Roosevelt did was anything but a “square deal.” Kansans told Taft the state might be lost in 1908, Oklahomans were almost as pessimistic, and even Texans in San Antonio were scared (though about what is unclear; the state had not voted Republican since the Civil War and would remain safely Democratic for another seventy-six years). Particularly crushing was the drift in his home state of Ohio. “He was assured that the negro vote in Ohio carries the balance of power, and every bit of it would be alienated from the Republicans.”15 Roosevelt's sleight of hand with the timing of the discharges may have avoided any problem in 1906, but 1908 was looming.

  Roosevelt was setting foot that Saturday morning on Panamanian soil. Ignoring a downpour that soaked the bunting, decorations, and cheering people awaiting him, he was enjoying the moment and what he had brought about in the jungles of Central America.16 Back home, Taft knew he was facing a storm of his own and not one he created. Arriving at his office at the War Department, Taft perused the newspapers that told of more trouble.

  AFTER WAITING THREE HOURS at the War Department, Mrs. Terrell sat across a desk from the secretary of war. Getting to the point, she asked Taft to suspend Roosevelt's order. “Is that ALL you want me to do? ALL you want me to do is to suspend an order issued by the President of the United States during his absence from the country?” Sensing sympathy from Taft's smile and what she recognized as “good natured sarcasm,” Mrs. Terrell pressed her case, emphasizing the pride “colored people…take in our soldiers” and how bravely they had fought in previous wars. The dismissals were “more than we can bear” until a thorough investigation has been made. She recalled, “The smile left Mr. Taft's face. He became serious and remained silent for several seconds. Then he said with an intensity and a sympathy I can never forget: I do not wonder that you are proud of the record of your soldiers. They have served their country well.”17

  Milholland's plan worked.18 Within the hour, Secretary of War Taft decided on his own to suspend the discharges without President Roosevelt's consent or knowledge. He told his secretary to send a cable to Roosevelt in Panama advising him what he was doing.

  But Taft's insubordination was short-lived. On November 20 he got back to Washington after a visit to Yale University and found Assistant Secretary Oliver and Military Secretary Ainsworth waiting for him. Roosevelt's private secretary William Loeb soon joined them, and by 6:00 p.m., they persuaded Taft to back down. Or maybe they made it clear that when Roosevelt found out what Taft did, the explosion might be heard in Washington without wireless transmission. However they did it, they convinced Taft he had made a mistake, and that night, just under the wire, he ordered the discharges to start again.19 By cable that night to Porto Rico, he told President Roosevelt.

  Taft never heard from Roosevelt because of the unreliable communications of the early twentieth century. Roosevelt got Taft's first wire on Saturday evening, just as he was leaving Colón for home. Enraged at what he read, Roosevelt sent his answer that night from the Louisiana via wireless, but because of atmospheric conditions, it never arrived in Washington.20 When he landed in Porto Rico on Wednesday and there was no confirmation that Taft's actions had been reversed, he got angry all over again. Taking no chances Taft would not get the message this time, Roosevelt sent his order in three separate cables: “Discharge is not to be suspended unless there are new facts of such importance as to warrant your cabling me. I care nothing whatever for the yelling of either the politicians or the sentimentalists. The offense was most heinous and the punishment I inflicted was imposed after due deliberation…. Nothing has been brought before me to warrant the suspension, and I direct that it be executed.”21 However, by then the pressure from Loeb and the others had accomplished what the atmospheric pressure over the Caribbean kept Taft from finding out.

  In a public statement the next day, Taft said he had been unaware how fully and exhaustively President Roosevelt considered the arguments against the discharges.22 He wrote his wife the same day and, not mentioning his meeting with Oliver, Ainsworth, and Loeb, said he changed his mind because too much time had passed since he notified Roosevelt of the suspension, and not hearing anything, he was uncomfortable continuing it.23 He also told her his action had been misinterpreted by some as “an act of disobedience,” but he did not think Roosevelt would think it was.24 A few days later he wrote to Richard Harding Davis, the reporter and war correspondent who made Roosevelt a national figure with the stories he filed from Cuba in the Spanish-American War, disingenuously pleading his own ignorance. He was away from Washington when Roosevelt ordered the army's investigations and again when he ordered the discharges and had no knowledge of why these decisions had been made. He also was not told that President Roosevelt already turned down the “same gentleman” (meaning Washington) who asked him to suspend the discharges to afford time for a rehearing.25

  TAFT'S DICEY DISREGARD FOR what President Roosevelt wanted did not help the soldiers. Milholland unkindly referred to this as Taft's “flip flop.”26 Mary Church Terrell saw it differently. She always believed what Taft did for her and the soldiers was commendable and courageous and later wrote, “I shall never cease to thank him for trying to save those three companies of colored soldiers from dishonor and disgrace.”27 Meanwhile, Booker T. Washington's attempt to piggyback on the Constitution League's approach to Taft—and then take the credit—had failed. Taft's eventual response ignored completely everything Washington had said and implied, except to confirm the plan to rebuild the Twenty-Fifth Infantry with blacks.28

  On November 26, five days after Roosevelt's three angry wires to Taft, Major Charles Penrose reported by telegram from Fort Reno, “Discharge of all men…completed at 9:30 AM this morning.29 That evening Roosevelt disembarked from the presidential yacht Mayflower at the Washington Navy Yard. His victory cruise to Panama and his indifference to the bubbling indignation over Brownsville were over.

  THE TRIP BACK FROM Panama gave Roosevelt time to think about Brownsville. A man could spend just so much time reading books and writing letters to people like the secretary of the navy about how to improve coal delivery on the Louisiana or his son Kermit about the beauty of Porto Rico.30 Sitting on the ship's deck in the warm sun, he would put aside the small library of books he brought along to read and allow Brownsville to advance to the front of his mind. He had received two pieces of news he did not like. There was the demand from Gilchrist Stewart and the New York County Republican Club to reverse the discharges. He knew Stewart was acting on behalf of John Milholland's Constitution League. His relationship with Milholland went back to New York City and Roosevelt's time as police commissioner in 1894, and Roosevelt knew Milholland had no political skill or muscle. He could be annoying and arouse others like him to make a lot of noise, but he could not do a thing.

  Then there was this Taft suspension business. Taft might not be as hardheaded as he should be, but he knew right from wrong and he knew the law.

  What is it he would want me to do? Trials? Even Texas knew this wouldn't work.31 I kept Taft's skirts clean by keeping him out of Washington and away from this mess. I sent him out to meet people who could help him in 1908. Maybe I should have asked him what he thought I should do. Maybe I should have told him what I wanted to do and asked him how to do it. Some opposition from Negroes was to be expected. The same with white wobblies like Milholland. And of course the Progressive press, like the New York Sun. But where was the rest coming from? Why was nothing said betwe
en the shooting in August and my discharge order in November? That three-month delay shows I did not act impulsively. I waited for the results of at least five investigations, and while the one by the citizens’ committee may have been sloppy, the others by the army were trustworthy. No one doubted the soldiers did it. In fact, the discharge idea was not originally mine; it came from the army itself. This conspiracy of silence made sense; not one alternative theory did. Every adviser I spoke to, except Booker T. Washington, counseled me to discharge the soldiers, and Washington didn't like it because of its political consequences, for him especially. I know how he thinks. And for God's sake, what is the complaint? No soldier was hanged, no soldier went to jail, no soldier was punished—they all went home to their families and a new life. Not just those who kept their mouths shut, even the shooters and murderers.32

  How could I be expected to keep murderers and those who shielded them in the army? What community would accept them at a nearby post? What community wouldn't be afraid they would do it again? I could not try them in court; they'd be acquitted and right back in the army, and I'd be right back where I started. Then there's this rubbish I did it because these soldiers were Negro. They say it's a part of my new Southern strategy? It's not. What's so bad anyway about my plan to build the Republican Party of the Great Emancipator Lincoln in the South? What could be better for the South, the country, and the Negro? What have the Democrats done for the Negro in the South or anywhere else? Who would ever expect any progress from a political party with creatures in it like “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman of South Carolina—why, I don't allow this foul man, even if he is a US senator, to set foot in the White House.33

  That people would think he behaved unjustly, that he did not do justice with the Brownsville soldiers, was particularly unsettling to Roosevelt. “To love justice, to be merciful…. That is my religion, my faith,” said the teenaged Roosevelt.34 And he believed as a grown man that he did justice. Years later, in a trial unrelated to Brownsville, he was asked, “How did you know that substantial justice was done?”

  Roosevelt: Because I did it, because I was doing my best.

  Question: You mean to say that when you do a thing thereby substantial justice is done?

  Roosevelt: I do. When I do a thing I do it so as to do substantial justice. I mean just that.35

  Unfortunately, in the Brownsville Incident, Roosevelt forgot he must not only do justice, but he must also be able to show that he was doing justice. The opposition had very little to do with the soldiers’ guilt. It was the perception that, for most of the men, the discharges were unjust because there had been no proper finding of guilt. The investigations simply were not sufficient. Without open hearings, the right to counsel, the right to cross-examine witnesses against the soldiers, and the opportunity to present witnesses and other evidence of their own, there was no justice.

  Then there was the soldiers’ race and the feeling that, were they not Negro, they might have been treated differently. But Roosevelt would never admit their race had anything to do with his decision because he didn't think it did. When he made federal appointments, “I certainly cannot treat mere color as a permanent bar to holding office any more than I could treat it as conferring a right to hold office,” he told the owner and editor of the Atlanta Constitution.36 Around the same time, he acknowledged to the editor of Century Magazine, Richard Watson Gilder, that his way of making appointments policy “decreased the quantity [of black appointments],” but defended it because it “raised the quality.” Five years later, he was still saying this as a way of defending the shrinking pool of blacks when he wrote Gilder that he raised the bar higher so that only “those few from the very best colored men…to be found” could hurdle it.37 By itself, this fine-tuning does not indict Roosevelt. For a practical politician also seeking to help the black race advance (as he would put it), working with anything less than the very best was self-defeating. But working with the best did not always ensure success.

  Minnie Cox was the best of the best, and she was run out of town. She and her husband, Wayne, were prosperous and respected Negroes in Sunflower County, Mississippi, and Republican to the core. President Benjamin Harrison appointed her as postmistress in its county seat, Indianola, and when President McKinley reclaimed the White House for the Republicans in 1896, she reclaimed the post and held it when Roosevelt took office in September 1901. Both Mississippi senators voted to confirm her in 1897, and three prominent whites in Indianola served as her bondsmen.38 She took her job seriously and handled it well. Desiring cordial relations with the town's whites, Mrs. Cox went out of her way to avoid friction. With her own money, she installed a telephone in the post office for her patrons’ use and covered past-due post-office-box rentals from her own pocket. The white (and Democratic) postal inspector for the area vouched for her. Everything was fine until she ran into Roosevelt's plan of action to rebuild the Republican Party in the South. When Roosevelt, with Booker T. Washington's advice and cover, appointed a white Democrat as US marshal for Mississippi's Southern District, the few white Republicans there feared a purge of white Republicans. They wanted Mrs. Cox's job and its $1,000 salary for themselves.

  The fight to get rid of her soon became an all-out assault on blacks. A Negro porter in a general store owned by a Jew had to be fired. A Negro physician in Indianola was given three months to pack up and leave. Fearing the worst, on December 4, 1902, Mrs. Cox tendered her resignation. Roosevelt, with the assent of the white postal inspector, refused to accept it. Detouring around the legal requirement that there be a post office there, Roosevelt suspended postal service in Indianola. It still had a post office and Mrs. Cox still was the postmistress (and drew her salary), but mail had to be picked up in Greenville, inconveniently thirty miles down the road. When Mrs. Cox's term ended in 1904, she chose not to ask for another. This time Roosevelt accepted it but refused to appoint as her replacement any Republican involved in the clique against her. He picked a local Democrat who had been one of her bondsmen and “her staunch friend” during the trouble. More important to history and to an understanding of Roosevelt, he was, as historian Willard Gatewood said, “never plagued by misgivings about his support of Mrs. Cox.”39 In the context of Roosevelt's efforts to build the GOP in the South, standing by Mrs. Cox was not smart. Maybe he thought amends to her were required for the clumsy implementation of his plans that helped bring on the confrontation. Maybe it was principle.

  Roosevelt's support for Minnie Cox did not mean he was not sensitive to the political consequences of black appointments. Planning strategy for the 1904 Republican presidential nomination he still worried about, he wrote the chairman of the National Republican Executive Committee, “The most damaging thing the Times can do is to give the impression that in what I have done for the Negro I have been actuated by political motives.” It is just that he did not see race in Brownsville. Wrapping the mantle of the Great Emancipator around him, hoping it would inoculate him from such criticism in the North, he added, “I have acted…on the Negro question…[as] the heir of Abraham Lincoln.”40

  IN HIS FOREWORD TO Joshua Hawley's Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David M. Kennedy suggests Roosevelt's racial views were tainted in his youth and reinforced as a young man. “[Roosevelt] had read and mastered [Darwin's On the Origin of Species] by the age of fourteen…. Darwinian notions of evolutionary progress through struggle continued to color his thinking about issues ranging from politics to warfare to racial categorization.”41 On the other hand, Progressive Era historian Sidney Milkis credits Roosevelt with freeing “himself from the most noxious views of an Aryan race,” and at least by 1910, he “no longer subscribed to a perverse understanding of evolution, common in the United States at that time, that championed white supremacy.”42

  Roosevelt's mind and what he thought specifically of the black race are glimpsed in a letter, written on his first day back from Panama, to the man he appointed chairman of the Isthmian Cana
l Commission. Pleased overall with what he saw in Panama, he was unhappy with conditions tolerated among “West India Negroes” working there. Roosevelt wanted to “teach them some of the principles of personal hygiene, notably having one suit to work in and another to sleep in.”43 There is Roosevelt's racial theory: some races are more advanced than others; acting in loco parentis, those more advanced have the responsibility to teach the lower races to improve themselves; in the meantime, those being taught have equal civil rights, but not necessarily equal privileges.

  Historian and forceful Roosevelt admirer John Gable has written, “Roosevelt generally subscribed to the views of Booker T. Washington. That is, he believed that many years of educational, vocational, and self-help training for blacks would be needed before the problem facing the Negro could be solved…. Thus, he found American blacks as a group ‘inferior’ to American whites as a group, because he did not think that the long oppressed blacks had yet reached as high a degree of education, economic success, and social and cultural achievement as the majority of whites had.”44 As with the “West India Negroes,” Roosevelt's impulse to “teach them” illustrates his belief that blacks as a race had to be treated as a father treats a child, with care and an awareness they possess some rights now and, with growth and maturity, full privileges in the future. (He felt the same way about the American Indian.45)

  Not that Roosevelt applied this consistently. His “relations with Negroes” were whimsical and impulsive, “unhampered by the tedium of logical coherences or consistency of procedure.”46 Sometimes he did the right thing. While Civil Service Commissioner, when the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was charged with “discrimination…upon the basis of color,” Roosevelt said the law did not authorize him to do anything about it47 and asked President Harrison to correct this by promulgating a rule. A year later, Roosevelt added, “The spirit of the law undoubtedly meant there should be this equal treatment…. When the blacks were discriminated against we intended to make public the fact, so that we might at least excite the indignation of honest men about them.”48