Taking on Theodore Roosevelt
Page 54
35. Roosevelt, Special Message, SD-2, pp. iii–iv.
36. Ibid., pp. ii, v.
37. Ibid., p. v.
38. Ibid., p. vi.
39. “Roosevelt Modifies Negro Dismissal Order,” New York Times, January 15, 1907.
40. 41 Cong. Rec. 1131–32 (statement of Sen. Spooner). See also Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, John Coit Spooner: Defender of Presidents (New York: University Publishers, 1961), pp. 361–62.
41. 41 Cong. Rec. 1137.
42. Ibid.
43. 41 Cong. Rec. 1142.
44. Cited in John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992), p. 137.
45. 41 Cong. Rec. 1435 (statement of Sen. Blackburn). See also “A Break on Brownsville,” Boston Evening Transcript, January 18, 1907.
46. “A Break on Brownsville.” See also “Roosevelt Beats down Enemies in the Senate,” New York Times, January 21, 1907.
47. For Blackburn's reaction to Republicans, see “Senate Democrats Trap the Republican Leaders,” New York Times, January 18, 1907.
48. “Senate Hesitates at Amendments,” San Francisco Call, January 18, 1907.
49. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, January 19, 1907, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 5, The Big Stick: 1905–1907 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 557–58.
50. “Roosevelt Beats Down Enemies in the Senate.” The newsworthiness of Roosevelt's counterattack against fellow Republicans is shown by the placement of this story on page 1, when three days earlier Brownsville was on page 8.
51. “Surrender to Roosevelt,” New York Times, January 21, 1907.
52. 41 Cong. Rec. 1501. The debate touched upon Mormon religious practices and beliefs, Mormon Church history, and Smoot's “heresies” (a lawyer in Provo said one was being a member of the Republican party), but it kept coming back, as everyone knew it would, to the problem of polygamy.
53. 41 Cong. Rec. 1511.
54. “Brownsville Inquiry Voted by Senate,” New York Times, January 23, 1907.
55. 41 Cong. Rec. 1512.
56. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd, 1917), 2:248–49.
57. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to George Spinney, January 22, 1907, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:559–60. In this letter, Roosevelt refers to having had a “comic time” with the Senate, which surely was not so, especially when Republicans threatened to support Senator Blackburn's amendment in the debate's final days.
58. Henry Cabot Lodge, letter to W. Sturgis Bigelow, January 23, 1907, P-525, reel 24, Henry Cabot Lodge Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Sturgis was close enough to Roosevelt to have him as his houseguest in December 1912, when Roosevelt was in Boston to give his address “History as Literature” to the American Historical Association meeting there. See Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 262.
59. H.R. 22591, 59th Cong. (1906); 41 Cong. Rec. 436.
60. File 1135832, box 4499, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s–1917, National Archives.
61. Michael Lee Lanning, The African-American Soldier: From Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell (Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1997), p. 115.
62. “May Fire Soldiers,” Columbus Citizen, January 22, 1907, microfilm roll 8950, Ohio History Connection.
63. Clipping dated March 18, 1907, from an unidentified newspaper in box 70, Joseph Foraker Papers, Cincinnati History Library and Archives. From other articles on the yellowing page, it appears to have been a black paper.
64. David McCullough, The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), p. 568.
65. Ibid.
66. Booker T. Washington, letter to Francis E. Leupp, January 18, 1907, in The Booker T. Washington Papers, eds. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, vol. 9, 1906–8 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), pp. 190–91.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: “WHAT DID HAPPEN AT THAT GRIDIRON DINNER…?”
1. Julia Foraker, I Would Live It Again (New York: Arno, 1975), p. 3.
2. Cleveland disliked reporters, but after leaving the White House he attended at least one Gridiron dinner. Brayman, Harold. From Grover Cleveland to Gerald Ford…The President Speaks Off-the-Record. Historic Evenings with America's Leaders, the Press, and Other Men of Power, at Washington's Exclusive Gridiron Club (Princeton: Dow Jones Books, 1976), p. 33.
3. “Wits Hold Revels,” Washington Post, December 9, 1906.
4. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Lyman Abbott, January 3, 1907, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 5, The Big Stick: 1905–1907 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 536.
5. Paul B. Beers, Pennsylvania Politics Today and Yesterday: The Tolerable Accommodation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980), p. 51.
6. W. Sturgis Bigelow, letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, n.d., P-525, p. 24, Henry Cabot Lodge Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
7. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, June 9, 1906, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:296.
8. Washington dispatch filed by a Pittsburg (as it was then spelled) correspondent, reprinted in “Cheers for Foraker,” Washington Post, January 29, 1907.
9. Brownsville had a passing mention at the dinner a month earlier. In one skit, an officer from the Twenty-Fifth Infantry explained that Taft had to rescind his suspension of Roosevelt's order “because he found that Fairbanks had bagged the coons.” “Gridiron in Round of Mirth,” Washington Times, December 9, 1906.
10. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 91–92.
11. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, February 16, 1907, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:589–90.
12. Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, eds. Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith, vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), pp. 552, 259.
13. These lyrics can be found at http://clio.lib.olemiss.edu/cdm/ref/collection/sharris/id/1122 (accessed October 1, 2014).
14. The discussion of coon songs and “All Coons Look Alike to Me” was distilled from Arnold Shaw, Black Popular Music in America: From the Spirituals, Minstrels, and Ragtime to Soul, Disco, and Hip-Hop (New York: Schirmer Books, 1986), pp. 30–39; and Dave Wondrich, “The First Rock ’n’ Roll Record,” Lowest Common Denominator 25, https://wfmu.org/LCD/25/firstrock1.html (accessed May 27, 2014).
15. “Ernest Hogan, ‘All Coons Look Alike to Me,’” Yah's People, http://www.yahspeople.com/bloglounge/ernest-hogan-all-coons-look-a-like-to-me (accessed December 30, 2012).
16. Foraker, I Would Live It Again, pp. 280–81.
17. Everett Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker: An Uncompromising Republican (Columbus: Ohio History Press, 1948), p. 239.
18. Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 478.
19. “Gridiron Fires Nation's Great on Hot Griddle,” Washington Post, December 9, 1934.
20. Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 479.
21. “Roosevelt in Tilt,” Washington Post, January 29, 1907.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.; Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:571n1.
24. Arthur W. Dunn, Gridiron Nights: Humorous and Satirical Views of Politics and Statesmen as Presented by the Famous Dining Club (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1915), p. 167.
25. Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 479; Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 239.
26. Champ Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920), p. 445; “Loosed the Dogs of Wrath to Tear the Vitals of His Bitterest Foes,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January 29, 1907.
27. “Roosevelt in Tilt.” Roosevelt had been darn serious. Perhaps the Washington Post was trying to say Foraker was less angry.
28. Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 479.
29. Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 239.
30. Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics, p. 447.
31. “Cheers for Foraker,” Washington Post, January 29, 1907.
32. Henry Fowler Pringle, Research Notes for Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, 7th year, p. 12, Houghton Library, Harvard University. As excited as Pringle's notes were, for some reason his finished biography never mentioned the Gridiron Club dinner. Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 725n480; Clark, My Quarter Century in American Politics, p. 447.
33. “Roosevelt in Tilt.” Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris quotes Foraker as expressing this love in the past tense, having at that moment only an “affectionate regard for him.” Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 480.
34. Clark, My Quarter Century in American Politics, p. 446; “Cheers for Foraker”; Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 725n480; H. W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 592.
35. Clark, My Quarter Century in American Politics, p. 446.
36. “Loosed the Dogs of Wrath to Tear the Vitals of His Bitterest Foes.”
37. Clark, My Quarter Century in American Politics, p. 443.
38. John Galvin, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, box 64, Joseph Foraker Papers, Cincinnati History Library and Archives.
39. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd, 1917), 2:252.
40. Oscar S. Straus Diary, box 22, Oscar S. Straus Papers, Library of Congress.
41. Albert Beveridge, note to Theodore Roosevelt, January 27, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress.
42. James R. Garfield Diary, January 28, 1906, James Rudolph Garfield Papers, Library of Congress.
43. Theodore Roosevelt, note to Albert Beveridge, January 27, 1906, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:571.
44. Clark, My Quarter Century in American Politics, p. 442.
45. Joseph B. Foraker, letter to Joseph Benson Foraker Jr., January 29, 1907, in Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2:249–54.
46. Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964), 2:838–39.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: FIRST-CLASS COLORED MEN
1. See Booker T. Washington, letter to Whitefield McKinlay, October 25, 1906, in The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, vol. 9, 1906–8 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 103.
2. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Booker T. Washington, December 25, 1906, microfilm reel 70, p. 72, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress.
3. See Percy E. Murray, “Harry C. Smith-Joseph B. Foraker Alliance: Coalition Politics in Ohio,” Journal of Negro History 68, no. 2 (1983): 177.
4. See “The Tyler Legacy—A Good Name,” Columbus Sunday Dispatch Magazine, March 20, 1949.
5. See Tyler's letter to Foraker around this time. “It is only my great admiration for you…and my desire to see you victorious in everything that prompted my writing…. You know, Senator, I am a REAL Foraker man, and am always with you and for you, whether in defeat or in victory.” September 27, 1906, Joseph Foraker Papers, Cincinnati History Library and Archives.
6. The White House visitor log does not show Tyler that day. But it shows Booker T. Washington, his champion.
7. Ralph Tyler, letter to George Myers, January 12, 1907, box 69, folder 1907 M (cont.), Foraker Papers.
8. There is something else that suggests Roosevelt's offer was not serious. There is great confusion about what job he was offering. In its January 30 article the Cincinnati Enquirer said he was being considered for “Surveyor of Customs” for the port. In his earlier letter to George Myers, Tyler said it was “Collector of Customs.” There was a difference. The collector was in charge of the office; the surveyor was number two. It may be Roosevelt dangled the top job in front of Tyler, because he was not going to get it anyway.
9. Emma Lou Thornbrough, “The Brownsville Episode and the Negro Vote,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44, no. 3 (December 1947): 479.
10. “One Spot,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January 30, 1907. This newspaper clipping was attached to a letter dated January 30, 1907, from George H. Jackson, former member of the Ohio legislature, asking for the job. Container 1, Nicholas Longworth Papers, Library of Congress.
11. It seems first son-in-law Nicholas Longworth's aspiration to remain in Congress and daughter Alice's craving not to live in Cincinnati overcame his concern for the black vote. “Roosevelt Names Foraker's Choice,” New York Times, March 1, 1907. “[Longworth was] pleading with his father-in-law to send Ralph Tyler to Cleveland or some place as far as possible from Cincinnati.”
12. Washington biographer Harlan calls Roosevelt's slight of Washington here “ominous.” Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 29–30.
13. See Ralph Tyler, letter to Booker T. Washington, in Harlan and Smock, Booker T. Washington Papers, 9:504–5.
14. Elbert Hubbard, the American writer and artist, called it “the best barber shop in America,” and it probably was. Nothing was overlooked; even individual telephones were installed at each barber chair.
15. Biographical information from Thomas J. Reider, ed., introduction to George A. Myers Papers, Ohio History Connection, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ohshtml/myers/overview.html (accessed October 1, 2014).
16. The quoted portion of the letter is reproduced as Myers wrote it. Either he was in a hurry or was very irritated with Roosevelt and Tyler. George Myers, letter to Ralph Tyler, April 11, 1907, Myers Papers.
17. George Myers, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, January 30, 1907, Myers Papers.
18. The New York Age reported on March 12, 1907, at least with “Washington Negroes…[Tyler's] appointment appeared to establish friendly feelings toward Roosevelt.” Cited in John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992), p. 241.
19. Ralph Tyler, letter to George Myers, June 1, 1907, Myers Papers.
20. Fred C. Ainsworth, List of Colored Officers in the Military Service of the United States, January 21, 1907, William Howard Taft Papers, Library of Congress. The different ink and handwriting for Green show he was not on the list when it was prepared on January 21, the day before the Senate voted to investigate Brownsville.
21. See “Roosevelt Wants to Talk,” New York Times, January 29, 1907.
22. Mary Church Terrell knew Sanders was in Washington that day and sent him the letter asking to meet her. See chapter eleven.
23. “Discharge Stigma Burns,” Washington Post, December 8, 1906. Sanders's name is mistakenly shown as “Saunders.”
24. “Negro Case to Roosevelt,” New York Times, December 9, 1906.
25. “Negro Soldiers Apply to Taft,” Atlanta Constitution, December 13, 1906.
26. “Mingo Sanders Scents a Plot in Washington,” New York Times, January 25, 1907.
27. “Attempt to Murder Captain Macklin,” Brownsville Daily Herald, December 24, 1906.
28. Four years later Macklin had not fully recovered from the shooting, and the army medically discharged him. “Capt. Macklin Retired,” New York Times, August 19, 1910.
29. “Negro Shot Capt. Macklin,” New York Times, December 22, 1906.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: GREATEST SHEPHERD
1. See Agnes W. Spring, William Chapin Deming of Wyoming: Pioneer Publisher, and State and Federal Official: A Biography (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1944), p. 316. But not the richest in the Senate. In 1908, sixteen other senators were worth more than his $2 million. Also with $2 million, Foraker tied. Lodge had $1.5 million, and “Boss” Boies Penrose just barely made it into the millionaire's club with $1 million. “Millionaires in Hall of Congress,” Philadelphia Press, March 8, 1908, clipping found in Francis E. Warren Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
2. See G. B. Dobson, “Cheyenne Continued,” Wyoming Tales and Trails, http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/cheyenne4a.html (accessed May 29, 2014).
3. T. A. Larson, History of Wyoming
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 197.
4. “Splendid Work of Senator Warren of Wyoming Wins For His State,” Denver Post, November 9, 1906. Newspaper clipping in Warren scrapbook at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
5. Lewis L. Gould, Wyoming: A Political History, 1868–1896 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 15, 49.
6. 44 Cong. Rec. 2943 (1909).
7. “Warren, Francis Emroy, 1844–1929,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=w000164 (accessed May 29, 2014).
8. “Senator Warren Accused,” New York Times, February 9, 1905; and “Senator Rests under Charges,” San Francisco Call, February 9, 1905.
9. His losses were such that for the rest of his life he had to earn a living.
10. After Dakota, Roosevelt developed a “passionate interest…in reclamation of arid western lands by irrigation.” Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1984), p. 302.
11. Cited in Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 191.
12. Benjamin H. Hibbard, A History of the Public Land Policies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p. 476.
13. Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 180.
14. Labor News, January 25, 1902.
15. 38 Cong. Rec. 1182 (1904), cited in Robert F. Jones, “The Political Career of Senator Francis E. Warren, 1902–1912 (master's thesis, University of Wyoming, 1949), p. 75.
16. Hibbard, History of the Public Land Policies, p. 432.
17. 41 Cong. Rec. 3191 (1907). Senator Warren's complaint was much like that of the Brownsville soldiers and Senator Foraker, who wondered why they were presumed guilty and had to prove their innocence.
18. Hitchcock was the great-grandson of Ethan Allen, whose Green Mountain Boys seized Fort Ticonderoga from the British in the Revolutionary War.
19. Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 318. Roosevelt finished the ride, but Warren could not. “We shed three [riders] including Warren.” Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 2 vols. (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), 1:23.
20. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, letter to Mark Hanna, July 18, 1901, Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, National Archives, College Park, MD.