33. “Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground” was a Roosevelt aphorism.
34. “Roosevelt Sees Payn and Wins Approval,” New York Times, July 1, 1906.
35. “Noted Men Demand We Arm for War,” New York Times, December 2, 1914. Theodore Roosevelt was another. See Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 182–87.
36. “Soldiers Have Chance. President Tempers His Order against Negro Troops,” Washington Post, December 12, 1906.
37. Gen. Ernest A. Garlington, letter to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, December 14, 1906, SD-1, pp. 242–43; Maj. Augustus Blocksom, letter to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, December 12, 1906, SD-1, pp. 236–37.
38. Maj. Augustus Blocksom, letter to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, December 12, 1906, SD-1, p. 236.
39. SD-1, p. 204.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CORDIAL COOPERATION
1. “Roosevelt to Explain,” New York Times, December 7, 1906.
2. This was in accordance with Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote…is denied…or in any way abridged,…the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.”
3. 22 Cong. Rec. 730 (1890) (address of Sen. Spooner). The purpose was as much to protect the Negro as a sure Republican voter as to protect the Negro's rights as an American. Republican votes and Negro equality both were marginalized when Lodge's bill was traded away to gain passage of the McKinley Tariff Act and its increased tariffs on imported materials and goods. The fatigue from the continuing fight for black rights could no longer be questioned.
4. James R. Parker, “Paternalism and Racism: Sen. John C. Spooner and American Minorities, 1897–1907,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 57, no. 3 (1974).
5. John C. Spooner, letter to T. L. Rosser, March 1, 1904, John C. Spooner Papers, Library of Congress.
6. Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, John Coit Spooner: Defender of Presidents (New York: University Publishers, 1961), p. 361. This is not confirmed by the chronology in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 6, The Big Stick: 1907–1909 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 1604.
7. Fowler cites as authority letters from the Spooner Papers: William Loeb, letter to John C. Spooner, December 6, 1906; William Howard Taft, letters to John C. Spooner, December 22, 1906, January 4, 1907, and January 5, 1907.
8. In his message's first paragraph, Roosevelt seems to taunt the Senate by calling it simply “several documents.” This report makes up what is referred to in this book as SD-1. Volume 11 of S. Doc. No. 59-155 contains another 201 pages of testimony taken and other evidence, photos, and maps prepared after December 19, plus President Roosevelt's second Special Message on January 14, 1907, all of which is designated as SD-2.
9. Taft's memo answered three resolutions: Penrose's, Foraker's and a third asking for the history of riots, raids, or other disturbances between the Twenty-Fifth Infantry and civilians at posts before Brownsville. All three are “inclosures” to Roosevelt's Special Message.
10. Summary Discharge or Mustering Out of Regiments or Companies: Message from the President of the United States…, S. Doc. No. 59-155, vol. 11, pt. 1 (2d sess. 1907) (hereafter cited as SD-1), p. 15.
11. Its full text is at SD-1, pp. 1–9.
12. Would the timidity fostered by the political correctness of the twenty-first century permit anyone to use “black” as often as Roosevelt did to color a crime said to be committed by black men?
13. SD-1, p. 5.
14. SD-1, pp. 5, 2.
15. “Public interest” could take in and act as a defense of just about anything.
16. SD-1, p. 203.
17. SD-1, p. 6.
18. SD-1, pp. 8–9.
19. Roosevelt's message referred to the letter from General A. B. Nettleton. On November 18 its full text was published on page 1 of the Brownsville Daily Herald in an article that referred to the shooting as “the infamous outrage upon Brownsville.” A yellowing copy is at the National Archives in file 1135832, box 4499, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s–1917.
20. “Foraker Leads Fight,” Washington Post, December 20, 1906; “The Brownsville Affair,” Washington Post, December 20, 1906.
21. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd, 1917), 2:236. Roosevelt biographer Henry Pringle wonders if Foraker received any joy in seeing how irritated Roosevelt was. Henry Fowler Pringle, Research Notes for Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, 7th year, p. 5, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
22. 41 Cong. Rec. 551 (1906).
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. 41 Cong. Rec. 552.
29. 41 Cong. Rec. 552–53.
30. “The Brownsville Affair.”
31. Milholland Diary, December 20 and 21, 1906, John E. Milholland Papers (1887–1924), Ticonderoga (NY) Historical Society.
32. “Foraker's Attack,” Washington Post, December 21, 1906. The prominence given to Foraker's address, reflecting in great part how much was expected from it, can be seen in the placement of news stories about it in the Washington Post and in the New York Times. The former put it on page 1 and the latter on page 2. Both newspapers put Roosevelt's special message on p. 5.
33. Roosevelt had thundered, “I refer to Major Blocksom's report for proof of the fact that certainly some, and probably all, of the non-commissioned officers in charge of the quarters who were responsible for the gun racks and had keys thereto in their personal possession knew what men were engaged in the attack,” SD-1, p. 4. What Blocksom's report actually said was, “Many of its old soldiers who had nothing to do with the raid must have known something tangible as to the identity of the criminals,” SD-1, p. 428. In later testimony, to a man every noncommissioned officer would deny it.
34. 41 Cong. Rec. 568.
35. U.S. Constitution, art. 1, sec. 8.
36. 41 Cong. Rec. 571.
37. 41 Cong. Rec. 568.
38. 41 Cong. Rec. 569.
39. 41 Cong. Rec. 571. Lodge came to the Senate that day angry at Foraker. The day before, Senator Warren wrote his daughter that he noticed “Foraker and Lodge are a bit belligerent.” Francis Warren, letter to Frances “Frankie” Warren Pershing, December 19, 1906, Francis E. Warren Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
40. The counting of witnesses and the elimination of those not eyewitnesses are at 41 Cong. Rec. 571–73.
41. 41 Cong. Rec. 573.
42. 41 Cong. Rec. 576.
43. Ibid.
44. SD-1, p. 4.
45. 41 Cong. Rec. 577.
46. Ibid.
47. 41 Cong. Rec. 577–78. At its next reunion, the “surviving members of the 60th O. V. I.” thanked Foraker “for defending, on the floor of the United States Senate, our record as soldiers in the war of rebellion.” Resolution, September 18, 1907, box 69, folder 1907-M (cont.), Foraker Papers.
48. 41 Cong. Rec. 578–79.
49. 41 Cong. Rec. 579.
50. 41 Cong. Rec. 592.
51. “Foraker's Attack.”
52. Everett Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker: An Uncompromising Republican (Columbus: Ohio History Press, 1948), p. 237, citing “The Brownsville Affray,” Literary Digest, December 29, 1906, p. 967.
53. Milholland's reaction to this: “Roosevelt broke loose again on Col. Soldiers matter, telling press he would defy Congress and even hazard impeachment before he would surrender and—[Milholland editorializes] do right.” Milholland Diary, December 23, 1906, Milholland Papers.
54. “Mr. Roosevelt Defies Negro Troops’ Friends,”
New York Times, December 23, 1906.
55. John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992), p. 118. Weaver has no citation of authority.
56. William Howard Taft, letter to Milton D. Purdy, December 22, 1906, SD-2, p. viii.
57. SD-2, pp. vii–viii.
58. Roosevelt's orders are contained in the report Taft sent him on January 12, 1907, SD-2, p. vii. The reason for the investigation is in “Purdy Goes to Texas,” Washington Post, December 23, 1906.
59. “Mr. Roosevelt Defies Negro Troops’ Friends.”
60. Joseph B. Foraker, letter to Sen. W. A. Clark, December 29, 1906, box 47, Foraker Papers.
61. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1984), p. 325.
62. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Booker T. Washington, November 5, 1906, in The Booker T. Washington Papers, eds. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, vol. 9, 1906–8 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1980), p. 118. See Hae-sung Hwang, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois: A Study in Race Leadership, 1895–1915 (Seoul: American Studies Institute, Seoul National University, 1992), p. 139.
63. Booker T. Washington, letter to James A. Cobb, November 13, 1906, in Harlan and Smock, Booker T. Washington Papers, 9:124–25.
64. Booker T. Washington, letter to Ralph Tyler, December 5, 1906, in ibid., 9:153–54.
65. Emmett Scott, letter to William Howard Taft, December 12, 1906, in ibid., 9:163–64.
66. Hwang, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, p. 141.
67. Milholland Diary, December 23, 1906 (“Senator Foraker arrived from Washington and decided to confer at 10 a.m. Monday.”), and December 24, 1906, Milholland Papers.
68. Joseph Foraker, letter to Creighton Foraker, November 24, 1906, box 49, Foraker Papers. All letters dealing with James Foraker's illness are in box 49.
69. Milholland Diary, December 24, 1906, Milholland Papers.
70. See “Secret Service Aiding,” Washington Post, December 27, 1906; and “To Improve President's Case against Negroes,” New York Times, December 27, 1906. The newspapers may have gotten the story from a leak by Foraker; the Post article claims its sources were “Senators insisting upon an investigation by the Senate.”
71. Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, telegram to William Loeb, August 25, 1906, SD-1, p. 94; and William Loeb, telegram to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, SD-1, p. 100.
72. Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, letter to John E. Wilkie, September 12, 1906, SD-1, pp. 98–99.
73. Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), p. 341.
74. Theodore Roosevelt, Eighth Annual Message (address, Washington, DC, December 9, 1908), available online from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3780 (accessed September 30, 2014); Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 6:1424n3. See also Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Eugene Hale, February 19, 1909, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 6:1527.
75. Emma L. Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 264.
76. T. Thomas Fortune, letter to Booker T. Washington, December 8, 1906, in Harlan and Smock, Booker T. Washington Papers, 9:156–58.
77. Washington was worried about Fortune's drinking. Booker T. Washington, letter to Frederick Randolph Moore, August 20, 1906, in ibid., 9:61. Fortune went to Atlanta anyway.
78. Charles Anderson, letter to Booker T. Washington, January 21, 1907, in ibid., 9:197.
79. According to what Stewart told Anderson, it was $375 Milholland gave Stokes for his expenses, not the $175 in Milholland's diary.
80. Booker T. Washington, letter to George Cortelyou, January 28, 1907, Booker T. Washington Papers, Library of Congress, cited in The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction, by Ann J. Lane (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1971), p. 97. Cortelyou coldly answered Washington, “The gentleman you mention is not an employee of this Department” and “is not actively connected” with the pneumatic-tube companies that had a contract with it. George Cortelyou, letter to Booker T. Washington, February 16, 1907, in Harlan and Smock, Booker T. Washington Papers, 9:219.
81. Joseph B. Foraker, letter to William Howard Taft, December 26, 1906, box 24, Foraker Papers. Taft quickly and courteously responded with the requested material.
82. Milholland Diary, December 31, 1906, Milholland Papers.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MOST IMPLICIT FAITH
1. “Must Vote on Legality of President's Action,” New York Times, January 4, 1907.
2. “Shielding the President,” New York Times, January 5, 1907.
3. “Urge Lodge to Give Way,” New York Times, January 7, 1907. See “Roosevelt Is Defeated on Brownsville Issue,” New York Times, January 8, 1907, for a discussion of Sen. Winthrop Crane's objections. Crane's family owned Crane & Co., which manufactured quality paper for correspondence and other uses. When he was involved in its business, he landed the government contract to supply paper for US currency. It still does.
4. The dread saturating the Republicans’ Senate cloakroom was strong enough to register in the Washington Post newsroom. A week earlier it noted, “nowhere can be found a Republican member of [the Senate], recognized as a lawyer of ability, who is willing to come to the front as the defender of the President.” “No Champion Appears,” Washington Post, December 12, 1906.
5. “Roosevelt Is Defeated in Brownsville Issue,” New York Times, January 8, 1907. That evening a sobered President Roosevelt held a meeting at the White House with senators to discuss Brownsville. Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 6, The Big Stick: 1905–1907 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 1605.
6. Robert La Follette, letter to Belle Case La Follette, January 7, 1907, box A6, La Follette Family Papers, Library of Congress.
7. “Angry Negro Debate, Tillman Rouses Senate,” New York Times, January 13, 1907.
8. “Fire from Tillman,” Washington Post, January 13, 1907.
9. Francis Butler Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolinian (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1944), p. 45.
10. The missing eye kept him out of the Confederate Army.
11. See Philip J. McFarland, Mark Twain and the Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), p. 161.
12. See Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, p. 441.
13. Just a few months earlier, Tillman allied himself with his archenemy Roosevelt on the Hepburn Bill. When Roosevelt turned on Republicans in the Senate, Tillman became his floor leader to get the bill passed.
14. Stephen David Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829–1889 (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), p. 67.
15. It never recovered, and today Hamburg exists only as a street name in North Augusta, Georgia.
16. David L. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), p. 255.
17. See Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, pp. 62–64.
18. None of the perpetrators of the Hamburg murders was ever tried.
19. It was during that campaign that he acquired his nickname when he said he was going to take his pitchfork to Washington and use it to prod fellow Democrat President Grover Cleveland, “the old bag of beef,” in his “old fat ribs.” See McFarland, Mark Twain and the Colonel, p. 161.
20. Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom, p. 259.
21. The Atlanta Constitution was upset that he did. “Senator Tillman throws little light on or the reasons for his attitude [of helping the soldiers]…. It appears from his argument that [he] rather sought to turn the facts of the Brownsville case to his own ends.” “Tillman and the President,” Atlanta Constitution, January 14, 1907.
22. Quoted items in 41 Cong. Rec. 1030–32 (1907) (statements of Sen. Tillman).
23. Ibid.
24. Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Til
lman, p. 443.
25. 41 Cong. Rec. 1033.
26. The transcript of his comments in the Congressional Record does not match all that was attributed to him in the Washington Post. The Post seems to have used prepared remarks it had a copy of but that in some places were disregarded or forgotten in the heat of the debate. The reference to President Roosevelt's responsibility was one example. It might have been better that he omitted some comments; there was enough anger that day.
27. 41 Cong. Rec. 1042.
28. 41 Cong. Rec. 1040.
29. 41 Cong. Rec. 1047 (statement of Sen. Tillman).
30. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, January 1, 1909, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 6:1472.
31. Summary Discharge or Mustering Out of Regiments or Companies: Message from the President of the United States…, S. Doc. No. 59-155, vol. 11, pt. 2 (2d sess. 1907) (hereafter cited as SD-2), p. vii.
32. The message and its attachments make up SD-2. They are: Roosevelt's message, pp. i–vi; Taft's letter transmitting the Purdy-Blocksom evidence, pp. vii–xviii; a second Taft letter commenting specifically on the testimony of one witness, Paulino Preciado, p. xix; Taft's preliminary statement on the evidence, pp. 5–6; Major Blocksom's report and Mr. Purdy's concurrence, p. 7; the witnesses’ affidavits, pp. 11–200 (except for other documentary evidence scattered within the affidavits and shown in the table of contents, pp. 3–4).
33. Theodore Roosevelt, Special Message, January 12, 1907, SD-2, p. ii.
34. A rifle's barrel has grooves on its inside that cause the bullet to rotate as it passes through. This gives it spin to make it more accurate and gives it greater range. In between the grooves are “lands” that leave marks on the bullet. The barrel of the Springfield rifle had four lands; the Winchester's had six. A “cartridge” is the combined bullet and shell that contains the powder that explodes and propels the bullet down and out of the barrel. When the rifle is fired, the empty shell separates from the bullet, is ejected, and falls to the ground.
Taking on Theodore Roosevelt Page 53
