37. Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, letter to William Howard Taft, August 28, 1906, SD-1, p. 59.
38. Gen. Augustus Blocksom, telegram to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, September 2, 1906, SD-1, p. 93; A. C. Hamilton, telegram to Attorney General William H. Moody, September 2, 1906, SD-1, p. 94.
39. Stanley Welch, telegram to Lt. Archer, September 27, 1906, SD-1, pp. 107–108.
40. William Loeb, letter to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, August 31, 1906, SD-1, p. 91; Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), p. 258.
41. Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, letter to William Loeb, August 27, 1906, SD-1, p. 57; William Loeb, telegram to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, August 28, 1906, SD-1, p. 58. Loeb told Ainsworth, “[The President] thinks the action taken was excellent.”
42. Gen. W. S. McCaskey, endorsement to Blocksom's report to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, September 4, 1906, SD-1, p. 65.
43. Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, letter to William Loeb, September 12, 1906, SD-1, p. 97.
44. William Loeb, telegram to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, August 27, 1906, SD-1, p. 58.
45. Military secretary, Southwestern Division, written orders to Lovering, September 24, 1906, SD-1, p. 110.
46. Lovering Report, SD-1, p. 111.
47. Gen. Augustus Blocksom, statement to LTC Leonard A. Lovering, SD-1, p. 177.
48. Then again, this was not why Lovering was sent to Fort Reno. Before the Court of Inquiry a few years later, there was testimony that “In September, 1906, Lieut. Col. Lovering, inspector general, was sent to Fort Reno to investigate certain collateral matters…. [His] investigation was not calculated to determine the names of the participants in the raiding party.” Report of the Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry Relative to the Shooting Affray at Brownsville, Tex…., Senate Document No. 60-402 (1911), vols. 4–6 (hereafter cited as CI-2), pp. 1603–1604 (testimony of Capt. Charles R. Howland).
49. Gen. W. S. McCaskey, telegram to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, September 21, 1906, SD-1, p. 106.
50. Gen. W. S. McCaskey, first indorsement to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, September 24, 1906, SD-1, p. 106.
51. Secretary Taft was in Cuba and not available to deal with Brownsville. After more than two years as secretary of war, Taft had learned “the administration of the War Department was…an insignificant part of his work.” Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964), 1:258.
52. Acting Secretary of War Robert Shaw Oliver, written order to Gen. Ernest A. Garlington, October 4, 1906, SD-1, p. 178.
53. “Roosevelt, Rain-Soaked and Exposed to Storm Gets Splendid Ovation at Capitol's Dedication,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 5, 1906, p. 1.
54. Gen. Ernest A. Garlington Report, SD-1, p. 528.
55. Ibid. Garlington displayed some investigative skills one might expect from the top man. Realizing the gulf between a white, general-grade officer and black enlisted men, he started his interrogations with general conversation, inquiries into their backgrounds, what sort of jobs they had in civilian life, what hometowns they came from. Remarkably, he found out one of the men had lived in the same home he once lived in.
56. Ibid., p. 530.
57. Ibid., p. 531.
58. Ibid., pp. 528–29.
59. Arthur W. Dunn, From Harrison to Harding: A Personal Narrative, Covering a Third of a Century, 1888–1921 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1922), p. 24.
60. Nettleton, letter to William Howard Taft, November 27, 1906, SD-1, p. 195.
61. Garlington Report, SD-1, p. 531.
62. Assistant Secretary of War Robert Shaw Oliver, cited in Weaver, Brownsville Raid, p. 102.
63. SMAC-3, p. 3192 (testimony of Gen. Andrew S. Burt).
64. Historians and later commentators agree. Referring to Taft's later defense of Roosevelt, Pringle writes there was “nothing whatever in proof that a conspiracy of silence existed.” Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1:325.
65. Quoted in Weaver, Brownsville Raid, p. 105.
66. SMAC-3, p. 3192 (testimony of Burt).
67. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Silas McBee, November 27, 1906, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 5, The Big Stick: 1905–1907 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 509.
68. In fact, this is just what General Garlington would later tell the Senate Military Affairs Committee.
[Senator Foraker] Q: Do you think colored people, generally, are truthful?
[General Garlington] A: No, Sir; I do not.
Q: You think a colored man might testify truthfully about the weather?
A: He might have some difficulty.
[Earlier, Garlington traced his disbelief about black truthfulness to its logical if absurd conclusion.]
Q: You stood ready then to believe any man who would come forward and say, “I did not do it, but someone else did it?”
A: I stood ready to follow up on any clew that any of those men gave me, and then to pass my opinion upon what I found.
Q: But you would not have believed them without corroboration?
A: No, Sir.
Had a black soldier done what Garlington asked him to do and identified a shooter, Garlington would not have believed him.
69. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Ray Stannard Baker, March 30, 1907, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:634.
70. Theodore Roosevelt, “Sixth Annual Message,” December 3, 1906, available online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29547 (accessed September 23, 2014).
71. Bill Maxwell, “Code of Silence Corrodes Black Community,” found in the Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, July 29, 2010.
72. See James A. Tinsley, “Roosevelt, Foraker, and the Brownsville Affray,” Journal of Negro History 41, no. 1 (1956): 44.
73. Roosevelt had gotten to know Garlington, then a lieutenant colonel and the division's inspector general, in Cuba and mentions him a few times in The Rough Riders. He includes Garlington in a grouping of “excellent officers.” Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders: An Autobiography (New York: Library of America, 2004), p. 148. Though not close by Roosevelt during the charge up San Juan Heights, Garlington had some part in it. See ibid., appendix D, pp. 230–31.
74. William Loeb, letter to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, September 13, 1906, SD-1, p. 99.
75. “Roosevelt and Taft Said to Have Clashed,” New York Times, November 21, 1906.
76. “Inquiry in Congress,” New York Times, November 23, 1906.
77. These matters are in the chronology compiled by Elting Morison and his colleagues. The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 6, The Big Stick: 1907–1909 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 1603.
78. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to John St. Loe Strachey, October 25, 1906, in ibid., 6:468. Churchill came up twice in letters to Henry Cabot Lodge in September, “I dislike the father [Lord Randolph Churchill] and the son,” September 12, 1906; “knowing the son I felt no inclination [to read his biography of Lord Randolph],” September 16; and again on November 14, while the president steamed to Panama. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 2 vols. (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1925), 2:231, 232, 260. Churchill's American mother, the former Jennie Jerome, and Roosevelt grew up in the same New York society.
79. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Winston Churchill, August 18, 1906, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:378.
80. Barbara W. Tuchman, Practicing History: Selected Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), p. 114.
81. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, October 16, 1906, Correspondence Photostats, box 27, October–December 1906, Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
82. The New York Times said flat out that had his father-in-law not waited until
after the election to make public the dismissal of the soldiers, and the Negro vote turned against him because of it, he would have lost. “Inquiry in Congress,” New York Times, November 23, 1906. Maybe in his congratulatory letter, Roosevelt should have included himself.
83. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, November 7, 1906, Harvard Roosevelt Collection, MS Am 1541.9 (73), http://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record.aspx?libID=o283325 (accessed September 23, 2014).
84. “Plea of Roosevelt, Jr., Denied by Prosecutor,” New York Times, October 4, 1906.
85. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., letter to Theodore Roosevelt, n.d., Henry Cabot Lodge Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. His father asked Lodge to intercede on behalf of Ted Jr., and he did. Ted Jr. was hauled before the grand jury to testify, and after he identified his friend (we don't know if this was at his father's urging or the insistence of the lawyer Lodge arranged for, was not charged with any offense. While all this was going on, the president defended his son's innocence in a letter to the Boston police commissioner, in which he recalled his days as New York police commissioner. Roosevelt turned the story into one of a bad cop (Roosevelt called him a brute, a fool, and a creature), and asked the Bostonian to consider charging the officer. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Stephen O'Meara, October 2, 1906, Lodge Papers. The case against the friend ultimately was dismissed. “Shaun Kelley Exonerated,” New York Times, October 17, 1906.
86. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, December 5, 1906, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:520n1.
87. Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (New York: Viking, 2007).
88. A few weeks after the election, the New York Herald suggested the results in the House of Representatives would have been a very greatly reduced Republican majority—from 59 to 14. Cited in Tinsley, “Roosevelt, Foraker, and the Brownsville Affray,” p. 47.
89. The Memoirs of Joseph Gurney “Uncle Joe” Cannon, ed. Helen L. Abdill (Danville, IL: Vermilion County Museum Society, 1996), p. 56.
90. “On the whole, it is a little unfortunate for the Spartan purity of the order that it was ‘held up’ until election eve, but on the whole we ought to be thankful, for it was better late than never.” Francis J. S. Darr (West Point graduate), letter to the editor, New York Times, November 26, 1906.
CHAPTER SIX: THE EDUCATIONS OF THE ROUGH RIDER AND THE WIZARD
1. Roosevelt had this fantasy he also was a man of the South through his mother from Roswell, Georgia. He expressed this mostly in a joking fashion, as when he and his military aide, Archie Butt, from Augusta, Georgia, played doubles tennis with two other army officers, and Roosevelt reported to his daughter Alice, “The two old Southern gentlemen whipped the two Yankees.” Archie Butt, letter to his mother, October 2, 1908, in The Letters of Archie Butt, Personal Aide to President Roosevelt, ed. Lawrence F. Abbott (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1924), pp. 108–109. But Roosevelt said it often enough to suggest there was more to it than humor.
2. Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986), pp. 24–25.
3. For supporters and admirers, it was a title of respect.
4. Louis R. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington in Biographical Perspective,” in Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis R. Harlan, ed. Raymond W. Smock (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), p. 7.
5. Rockefeller Jr., letter to Booker T. Washington, June 24, 1903, in The Booker T. Washington Papers, eds. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, vol. 7, 1903–4 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), p. 183.
6. Louis Harlan, introduction to Washington, Up from Slavery, p. xxxix. Harlan cites a letter from Carnegie to Washington's admirer William H. Baldwin Jr., April 17, 1903, in Booker T. Washington Papers, 7:120–22. Carnegie made similar remarks in an address before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, October 16, 1907, a copy of which is in box 39-37, Archibald Grimké Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.
7. See Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 135.
8. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003), p. 35. Of course, one of Du Bois's gripes is that while Washington did ill for his race, he did well for himself.
9. Washington, Up from Slavery, pp. 26–27, 30–31.
10. Ibid., p. 34. “Washington” was his stepfather's last name.
11. Ibid., p. 44.
12. Ibid.
13. With today's more-direct highways, it is about 375 miles.
14. Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 50.
15. Samuel C. Armstrong, “Lessons from the Hawaiian Islands,” Journal of Christian Philosophy (January 1884): 200–29, cited in Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois: A Study in Race Leadership, 1895–1915, by Hae-sung Hwang (Seoul: American Studies Institute, Seoul National University, 1992), p. 11.
16. Harlan, Booker T. Washington, pp. 63–64, 65.
17. Before General Armstrong died, the by-then completely paralyzed man was invited to Tuskegee for his final days. Washington and his students honored him to the end.
18. Harlan, Booker T. Washington, p. 92; Harlan, introduction to Washington, Up from Slavery, p. xi.
19. Du Bois may not have liked Washington, but he was sincere when he said he started with so little before he achieved so much.
20. An old lady, a former slave, came to him one day. Walking with the use of a cane, she delivered six eggs. “Mr. Washington, God knows I spent de bes’ days of my life in slavery. God knows I's ignorant an’ poor; but I knows what you an’ Miss Davidson is tryin’ to do. I knows you is tryin’ to make better men an’ better women for de coloured race. I ain't got no money, but I want you to take dese six eggs, what I's been savin’ up, an’ I wants you to put dese six eggs into de eddication of dese boys an’ girls.” No gift, Washington wrote, ever “touched me so deeply as this one.” Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 132.
21. Andrew Carnegie, who donated money for a library, realized it was student labor that enabled Tuskegee to get a lot of building for little money. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington in Biographical Perspective,” p. 5.
22. These abolished slavery, granted US citizenship to former slaves and promised them equal protection of the laws, and guaranteed the vote regardless of race, color, or condition of previous servitude.
23. See Hodding Carter, The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), p. 22.
24. “What Was Jim Crow?,” Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm (accessed May 14, 2014).
25. Henry E. Tremain, Sectionalism Unmasked (New York: Bonnell, Silver, 1907), p. 208.
26. According to the 1890 census, of the 7,488,788 Negroes in the continental United States, 6,143,876 lived in the eleven states of the Confederacy. In the border states and territories there were another 548,836. Altogether, in these areas lived almost 90 percent of Negro Americans.
27. Booker T. Washington, “The Educational Outlook in the South” (speech, National Educational Association, Madison, WI, July 16, 1894), in The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan, vol. 2, 1860–89 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 259–60.
28. Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 153.
29. Washington's words and manner were calculated to calm and reassure both blacks and whites in his audience. A white teacher at the Alabama Female College in Tuskegee was surprised, and she wrote in the Tuskegee Macon Mail, “He spoke well…. He represented things as they are in the South, and said some nice things of the Tuskegee citizens.” M.A.O., letter to the editor, Tuskegee (AL) Macon Mail, July 23, 1884, in Booker T. Washington Papers, 2:262.
30. Mitchell showed how disliked Bullock was by having Rhett invite the former governor to his and Scarlett's wedding. When
news got out, “the Old Guard signified their disapproval by a sheaf of cards, regretting their inability to accept Scarlett's kind invitation…the party was utterly ruined for her.” Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (New York: Scribner, 2006), p. 871.
31. Washington, “Chapter XIV: The Atlanta Exposition Address,” Up from Slavery, available online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/washington/ch14.html (accessed September 29, 2014).
32. Ibid.
33. Harlan, Booker T. Washington, p. 223.
34. The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (New York: International Publishers, 1968), pp. 234–35. Later on Du Bois would reflect on how even more deeply destructive the emotional degradation of Jim Crow could be. To explain it as a consequence of Reconstruction, white historians had to distort Negro behavior during Reconstruction. All blacks had to be seen as ignorant, lazy, dishonest, and extravagant, and all were responsible for bad government during Reconstruction. Whites believed it was true. So did blacks. See W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Atheneum, 1992), pp. 711–13.
35. See Paul Grondahl, I Rose Like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 2004), p. 102.
36. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 65.
37. Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands (Medora, ND: Theodore Roosevelt History and Nature Association, 1949), p. 411.
38. H. Paul Jeffers, Commissioner Roosevelt: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt and the New York City Police, 1895–1897 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), p. 57.
39. Actually, it was written as the unofficial 1904 campaign biography.
40. These back-and-forth letters are in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918 (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1925), 1:241, 243, 244, 253, 263.
41. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979), p. 552.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ROOSEVELT DOES JUSTICE
1. Maj. Charles Penrose, telegram to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, September 20, 1906, in 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. 105.
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