The Soul of America
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(IT WAS THE FIRST OF) Smith, Grant, 544.
“IF THAT IS” Foner, Reconstruction, 454.
GRANT INTERVENED ON CAPITOL HILL Smith, Grant, 546.
WRITING IN HIS OWN HAND Ibid.
“A CONDITION OF AFFAIRS” Ibid. The resulting legislation was known as the Ku Klux Klan bill. Ibid.
THOSE WHO “CONSPIRE” Trelease, White Terror, 388.
THE LAW WAS “UNCONSTITUTIONAL” Ibid., 390.
“AN OUTRAGE UPON” Ibid.
THE GRANT-ERA MANEUVERS Ibid., 418; Smith, Grant, 547; Chernow, Grant, 709–711.
“THOUGH REJOICED AT” Foner, Reconstruction, 458.
AN ECONOMIC DEPRESSION C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York, 1974), 70–72; Foner, Forever Free, 190–91.
THE WITHDRAWAL OF FEDERAL FORCES Foner, Forever Free, 190.
THE DISPUTED 1876 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION White, Republic for Which It Stands, 325–37. See also C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (Boston, 1951), and Michael F. Holt, By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (Lawrence, Kan., 2008).
“I DON’T CARE” Woodward, Reunion and Reaction, 23–24.
67–68 “AS TO SOUTHERN AFFAIRS” Ibid., 24.
“NOTHING BUT GOOD WILL” Ibid.
“THE WHOLE SOUTH” Foner, Forever Free, 198–99.
“THE PURPOSE OF” Stephen Budiansky, The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War (New York, 2008), 236. For the entire Hamburg episode, see ibid., 234–247.
“IF,” W.E.B. DU BOIS WROTE Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 708.
JIM CROW LAWS WERE Woodward, Strange Career of Jim Crow, 67–109.
IN 1894, MISSISSIPPI VOTED Coski, Confederate Battle Flag, 80–81.
“THE WHITE RACE” John Marshall Harlan, “Judge Harlan’s Dissent,” http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/nclc375/harlan.html. See also Foner, Forever Free, 207–8.
“WE FOUGHT,” A CONFEDERATE VETERAN McPherson, “Southern Comfort.”
THREE · With Soul of Flame and Temper of Steel
THERE MUST BE Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 243–44.
A GREAT PARTY Jane Addams, “Why I Seconded Roosevelt’s Nomination,” Woman’s Journal 43 (August 17, 1912): 257.
WASHINGTON’S COLUMBIA THEATER The Washington Post, October 10, 1908.
A LOVELY EARLY AUTUMN DAY The Washington Times, October 5, 1908. The weather in Washington was described as “fair” with a high of 69 and a low of 47. At 8 P.M. the temperature was about 56 degrees. (See also The Washington Post, October 6, 1908.)
WITH HIS WIFE, EDITH NYT, October 10, 1908.
THE PRESIDENT’S PARTY INCLUDED Ibid.
ISRAEL ZANGWILL’S THE MELTING-POT Israel Zangwill, From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot: Israel Zangwill’s Jewish Plays, ed. Edna Nahshon (Detroit, 2006), 211–363; Dorsey, We Are All Americans, 16–17, 53–54; Joe Kraus, “How the Melting Pot Stirred America: The Reception of Zangwill’s Play and Theater’s Role in the American Assimilation Experience,” MELUS 24, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 3–19; Philip Gleason, “The Melting Pot: Symbol of Fusion or Confusion?” American Quarterly 16, no. 1 (Spring 1964): 20–46. For an interesting viewpoint on the subtleties of the play, see Neil Larry Shumsky, “Zangwill’s ‘The Melting Pot’: Ethnic Tensions on Stage,” American Quarterly 27, no. 1 (March 1975), 29–41.
A “NON-JEWISH BOROUGH” Zangwill, From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot, 271.
AFFIXED A MEZUZAH Ibid.
AN AMERICAN FLAG WAS PINNED Ibid.
THERE WERE BOOKCASES Ibid.
PICTURES OF WAGNER, COLUMBUS Ibid.
WAS “GOD’S CRUCIBLE” Shumsky, “Zangwill’s ‘The Melting Pot,’ ” 29.
SEATED NEXT TO Ibid.
“CERTAIN STRONG LINES” NYT, October 10, 1908.
PROMPTED THE PRESIDENT Ibid.
“THERE SHE LIES” Dorsey, We Are All Americans, 16–17.
“IT’S GREAT” The Washington Post, October 18, 1908. See also Shumsky, “Zangwill’s ‘The Melting Pot,’ ” 29–30. TR did object to a line about divorce in the U.S. and wanted Zangwill to change it. Zangwill protested but obliged the president. Washington Post, October 18, 1908.
WOULD SEE “THAT” Shumsky, “Zangwill’s ‘The Melting Pot,’ ” 30.
ZANGWILL LATER DEDICATED Zangwill, From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot, 243.
THE PLAY WENT ON Ibid., 243–52.
IN 1915 THE ACTOR Ibid., 254.
“IT IS,” TR SAID Hans P. Vought, The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot: American Presidents and the Immigrant, 1897–1933 (Macon, Ga., 2004), 31.
“THE RUDE, FIERCE SETTLER” Thomas, War Lovers, 42.
HE WAS LARGELY UNINTERESTED Ibid. As Thomas wrote, Roosevelt “brushed aside sympathy for the conquered.” Ibid.
“DURING THE PAST CENTURY” Ibid.
BORN IN A FOUR-STORY BROWNSTONE Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 256; Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1979), 4–29; Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York, 2013), 34–49; and Deborah Davis, Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation (New York, 2012), 11–19. See also Willard B. Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge, La., 1970); and David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1981).
A SICKLY CHILD Goodwin, Bully Pulpit, 34–37. “I was a sickly, delicate boy,” TR recalled, “suffered much from asthma, and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe.” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 266.
“NOBODY SEEMED TO” Goodwin, Bully Pulpit, 34.
FINDING SOLACE IN Ibid., 37–38. “There was very little effort made to compel me to read books, my father and mother having the good sense not to try to get me to read anything I did not like, unless it was in the way of study,” TR said, recalling some of his favorite literary pursuits. “I was given the chance to read books that they thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given some other good book that I did like.” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 267–70.
“THE GREATEST OF” Goodwin, Bully Pulpit, 43.
ALL THE NOVELS OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, xxxiii.
NICKNAMED “TEEDIE” Goodwin, Bully Pulpit, 34.
“THERE WERE ALL” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 306–7.
(“MOST MEN”) Ibid., 307.
THE REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS Ibid., 280.
HIS MOTHER…HAD GROWN UP Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 37.
“MY EARLIEST TRAINING” Ibid.
WAS “ENTIRELY ‘UNRECONSTRUCTED’ ” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 263.
TR HAD HEARD Ibid., 254.
A VISIT IN NEW YORK Ibid., 264–65.
TRAVELING UNDER ASSUMED Ibid., 264.
ONE, AN ADMIRAL Ibid., 265.
“HEARING OF THE” Ibid.
“I FELT A GREAT” Ibid., 280.
AS HE REMEMBERED IT Ibid.
A MISERABLE STAGECOACH RIDE Ibid., 280–81.
LEARN TO BOX Ibid. TR could always recall every detail of the gym where he took boxing lessons from John Long. Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 281.
UNDER THE TUTELAGE Ibid.
LIFTING WEIGHTS AT Davis, Guest of Honor, 18.
HE WRESTLED Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 280–86.
“YOU NEVER SAW” James Br
adley, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (New York, 2009), 35.
“POWERFUL, VIGOROUS MEN” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 295.
“DO YOU KNOW” Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, xxiv.
“THE BRIDE AT EVERY WEDDING” Ibid., xxi.
ROOSEVELT WAS “A DAZZLING” Ibid.
WATCHING HIM AT Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 17.
IN REMARKS AT GROTON Peter Collier with David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga (New York, 1994), 109.
HIS MOST FABLED SPEECH Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic,” Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910, http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html.
THE “MALEFACTORS OF” Collier with Horowitz, Roosevelts, 119.
“THE RIGHTS OF THE WORKER” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 728–29. See also Collier with Horowitz, Roosevelts, 114.
TO HIM, “PROGRESS” Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 32.
A RICH NEW YORK WOMAN Collier with Horowitz, Roosevelts, 113.
“THE BEST MAN” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 258.
“I NEVER KNEW” Ibid., 260.
A BOLD DRIVER OF HORSES Ibid., 262.
“INTERESTED IN EVERY” Ibid., 260.
“HE WAS A BIG” Ibid., 260.
“LIKE ALL AMERICANS” H. Paul Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt and the New York City Police, 1895–1897 (New York, 1994), 26.
HIS EMERGING CONVICTIONS Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 423–24.
A PIONEERING URBAN JOURNALIST Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt, 13–14; 27–28.
“BY THIS TIME” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 423.
“AN ENLIGHTENMENT AND” Ibid.
DESCRIBING GARMENT SWEATSHOPS Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt, 31–32.
TR WENT TO SEE Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 424.
RIIS WAS OUT Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt, 32–33.
RIIS, TR RECALLED Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 423.
“I HAVE ALWAYS” Ibid., 424.
TR ANTICIPATED THE WORK Milkis and Nelson, American Presidency, 218.
“THE NATION AND GOVERNMENT” Ibid.
ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS “Alien and Sedition Acts (1798),” Our Documents, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=16. For this section, I drew on my “Our Historical Ambivalence About Immigration Is a Great Historical Paradox,” Time, February 2, 2017.
“THE ALIEN BILL” James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 20, 1798, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-17-02-0090.
“THE BOSOM OF” George Washington to Joshua Holmes, December 2, 1783, Founders Early Access, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-print-01-02-02-6127.
“THE INFLUX OF FOREIGNERS” Alexander Hamilton, “The Examination Number VIII,” January 12, 1802, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-25-02-0282.
THE KNOW-NOTHINGS HAD SPRUNG Jon Gjerde, ed., Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History (New York, 1998), 152–60.
THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT “Chinese Exclusion Act (1882),” Our Documents, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=47.
“WHATEVER BUSINESS OR TRADE” Gjerde, Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History, 274–75.
“THE NEGRO SLAVE” Ibid., 276.
THE MOVEMENT FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE Foner, Forever Free, 192–93; Woodward, Strange Career of Jim Crow, 93–96. See also Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton, N.J., 2016).
(SPENCER COINED THE PHRASE) Thomas, War Lovers, 55.
SENSE OF DESTINY White, Republic for Which It Stands, 570–73. See also Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (LaVergne, Tenn., 2016); T. Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (New York, 1920); Christopher Hitchens, Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies (New York, 1990), 63–151; Thomas, War Lovers, especially 42–61.
CAPTURED IN LECTURES White, Republic for Which It Stands, 447.
RUDYARD KIPLING’S 1899 POEM David Gilmour, The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (New York, 2002), is an illuminating treatment of Kipling and empire.
“THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES” Winston S. Churchill, The History of the English-Speaking Peoples (New York, 1956–58).
KIPLING SENT TR Hitchens, Blood, Class, and Nostalgia, 66.
“I SEND YOU” Ibid.
“THE LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE” John Fiske, American Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History; Three Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in May, 1880 (New York, 1885), 67.
At a dinner party of Americans in Paris at the time of the American Civil War, Fiske said, there were a series of toasts to “the expected glories of the American nation” once it was clear that the Union would be saved, and with it the “bigness” of the country. “Here’s to the United States of America,” said the first guest, “bounded on the north by British America, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.”
Then a second guest spoke up. “But this is far too limited a view of the subject: in assigning boundaries we must look to the great and glorious future which is prescribed for us by the Manifest Destiny of the Anglo-Saxon Race. Here’s to the United States—bounded on the north by the North Pole, on the south by the South Pole, on the east by the rising and on the west by the setting sun.”
A third voice—an American from the West—was then heard. “If we are going to leave the historic past and present, and take our manifest destiny into the account,” he said, “why restrict ourselves within the narrow limits assigned by our fellow countryman who has just sat down? I give you the United States—bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by the primeval chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment!” Ibid., 45.
“WHO CAN DOUBT” Ibid., 66.
“DURING THE PAST” Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 474–75. See also Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 45–68.
THE RISE OF “THE SLOVAK” Gjerde, Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History, 282.
“NOW WE CONFRONT” Ibid., 283.
“EITHER THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE” Ibid., 277.
LONGFELLOW’S NORDIC Saga of King Olaf Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 2.
“WE FREELY EXTEND” Theodore Roosevelt, American Ideals and Other Essays, Social and Political (New York, 1897), 28.
AMERICANISM IS A QUESTION Ibid., 30.
DINNER WAS CALLED Davis, Guest of Honor, 187. See also Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 32–61, and Dewey W. Grantham, Jr., “Dinner at the White House: Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington and the South,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 17, no. 2 (June 1958): 112–30.
DISPATCHED THAT VERY DAY Ibid.
BORN A SLAVE Davis, Guest of Honor, 8–10.
HAD NOT GIVEN “VERY MUCH” Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time Shown in His Own Letters (New York, 1920), 1:166.
“THERE IS A FEELING” “Both Politically and Socially President Roosevelt Proposes to Coddle Descendants of Ham,” Atlanta Constitution, October 18, 1901; http://www.c3teachers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TPS_Booker_T_Washington_11-16.pdf. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85034438/1901-10-20/ed-1/seq-1.pdf.
“POOR ROOSEVELT!” Davis, Guest of Honor, 208. There were some voices of support. “Mr. Washington is a colored man who enjoys the universal respect of all people in this country, black and white, on account of attainments, character, and deeds,” the Philadelphia Public Ledger wrote. “As the President invited him to be his private guest, and did not attempt to force the companionship of a colored man upon anyone to whom the association could possibly be distasteful, any criticism of the President’s act savors of very great impertinence.” David Hicks, “Booker T. Washington in the White House,” 9–12 Grade Teaching with Primary Sources, http://www.c3teachers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TPS_Booker_T_Washington_11-16.pdf.
“AS THINGS HAVE” Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, 166.
“I HAVE NOT” Ibid.
I SAY THAT Ibid.
ROOSEVELT HAD SUPPORTED Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 96–97. In a separate incident, TR, after an investigation, endorsed the dismissal of black soldiers accused of “ ‘shooting up’ ” Brownsville, Texas. He was excoriated by the black press, but stood by his decision, saying he would have done the same with white troops under the same circumstances. See ibid., 114–16, and Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Port Washington, N.Y., 1971).
A “FITTING THING” Ibid.
BACKED MINNIE M. COX Ibid., 102–3.
HE ALSO REFUSED Ibid., 103–8.
“I KNOW OF” Ibid., 107.
“IT SEEMS TO ME” Ibid., 108.
PEOPLE OF COLOR ABROAD Ibid., 89–122.
MIGHT LEAD TO “RACE SUICIDE” Ibid., 143–167.
“I AM AN OPTIMIST” Ibid., 149.
ROOSEVELT LAMENTED A Ibid., 158.
“IN SPITE OF” Ibid.
“HERE AGAIN, I” Ibid., 100.
ROOSEVELT WAS WRONG Ibid., 101. See also Thomas, War Lovers, 337.