Taking on Theodore Roosevelt

by Harry Lembeck

  39. Willard B. Gatewood, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Indianola Affair,” Journal of Negro History 53, no. 1 (1968): 68–69, 67. The author credits Gatewood and his commentary for the author's treatment of the Cox matter.

  40. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to James S. Clarkson, March 13, 1903, Pringle Research Notes. Clarkson was Roosevelt's link with Southern Republicans. Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), p. 115.

  41. Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness, pp. xii, xiii.

  42. Sidney M. Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), p. 35.

  43. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Theodore Shonts, November 27, 1906, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:504.

  44. John A. Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978), p. 61.

  45. See Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 200–201.

  46. Kelly Miller, “A Brief for the Higher Education of the Negro,” in Race Adjustment: Essays on the Negro in America (New York: Neale, 1910), pp. 279–80.

  47. Roosevelt Report to Civil Service Commission, January 24, 1894, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 1:352.

  48. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Hugh McKittrick, February 21, 1895, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 1:497.

  49. Theodore Roosevelt, letter marked “Personal” to Elihu Root, August 18, 1906, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:368.

  50. See Lewis L. Gould, The Progressive Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1974), p. 193.

  51. J. M. Holland, letter to Booker T. Washington, December 20, 1898, in The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan, vol. 4, 1895–98 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), pp. 542–43.

  52. Fortune, letter to Booker T. Washington, October 1, 1898, in ibid., 4:478–79.

  53. See Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, pp. 161, 175. According to Pringle, the Washington acceptance is with the Roosevelt correspondence in the Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress.

  54. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Albion W. Tourgée, November 8, 1901, in Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia, eds. Albert B. Hart and Herbert R. Ferleger (New York: Roosevelt Memorial Association, 1941), p. 637.

  55. Henry Cabot Lodge, letter to Theodore Roosevelt, October 19, 1901, in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 2 vols. (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1925) (hereafter cited as Roosevelt-Lodge Correspondence), 1:508. He was also consoled by Senator Joseph Foraker from Ohio, who, at a speech at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, may have been the first man publicly to defend Roosevelt, helping both Roosevelt and himself for his 1902 Senate campaign. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd, 1917), 2:105.

  56. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 28, 1901, in Roosevelt-Lodge Correspondence, 1:510.

  57. Cited in Mark Twain and the Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New Century, by Philip J. McFarland (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), p. 153.

  58. Henry E. Tremain, Sectionalism Unmasked (New York: Bonnell, Silver, 1907), p. 131. Milholland confused upper-class Bourbons with working-class whites who were really running the show.

  59. Oscar S. Straus, Under Four Administrations: From Cleveland to Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), p. 184.

  CHAPTER NINE: THESE ARE MY JEWELS

  1. The others were William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison (born in Ohio but elected from Indiana), and William McKinley. Two more (for a total of eight) would be elected in the future.

  2. Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, August 16, 1869, roll 36166, Newspaper Archives, Ohio History Connection, Columbus.

  3. The number of lawyers in Cincinnati appears in “Ohio's New Senator,” Munsey's Magazine, April 1896, p. 61, in Joseph Benson Foraker Papers, Cincinnati History Library and Archives.

  4. “Foraker himself was a bit staggered to learn” how many there were. Julia Foraker, I Would Live It Again (New York: Arno, 1975), p. 65.

  5. “William Howard Taft: Life before the Presidency,” Miller Center, http://millercenter.org/president/taft/essays/biography/2 (accessed May 16, 2014).

  6. Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography, 2 vols. (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964), 1:12, 14.

  7. Ibid., 1:21.

  8. “Abolitionist Orator Wendell Phillips Booed in Cincinnati,” This Day in History, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wendall-phillips-booed-in-cincinnati (accessed May 16, 2014).

  9. Sidney Redner, “Population History of Cincinnati from 1810–1990,” Distribution of City Populations, http://physics.bu.edu/~redner/projects/population/cities/cincinnati.html (accessed May 16, 2014); US Census Office, Census Reports: Ninth Census of the United States (1870), vol. 1, Population of Civil Divisions Less Than Counties, p. 231.

  10. 5 Laws of Ohio 53 (passed January 25, 1807).

  11. Population statistics found in Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802–1868, by Nikki M. Taylor (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), p. 81.

  12. Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), pp. 71–72.

  13. Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 118.

  14. James W. Gordon, “Did the First Justice Harlan Have a Black Brother?,” in Critical White Studies: Looking behind the Mirror, eds. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), p. 449.

  15. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).

  16. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd, 1917), 1:5, 8.

  17. Shakespeare, Henry V, act 3, sc. 1, lines 1–6, cited in ibid., 1:9.

  18. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 1:20.

  19. Ibid., 1:35.

  20. Ibid., 1:26. Foraker was referring to Lincoln's preliminary proclamation that he would order the freeing of all slaves in states that did not end their rebellion by January 1, 1863. None did, and on that date the Emancipation Proclamation was proclaimed.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid., 1:78, 80.

  23. Ibid., 1:79–80.

  24. Foraker, I Would Live It Again, p. 55.

  25. The Lyceum Circuit promoted learning through meetings at which notable speakers addressed the day's issues.

  26. Everett Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker: An Uncompromising Republican (Columbus: Ohio History Press, 1948), p. 18.

  27. Ibid., p. 20.

  28. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 1:85. Foraker does not say what was wrong with him. His biographer Everett Walters refers to it as a “breakdown.” Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 250.

  29. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 1:105.

  30. Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 25.

  31. See Earl R. Beck, “The Political Career of Joseph Benson Foraker” (PhD thesis, Ohio State University, 1942), p. 40.

  32. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1:33.

  33. Ibid., 1:56–57.

  34. Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, pp. 25–26; Foraker, I Would Live It Again, p. 271.

  35. Foraker, I Would Live It Again, p. 272.

  36. From brother Charley Taft, “[The appointment] was a high honor and I hasten to add I appreciated it to the fullest extent. I trust you will have no cause to regret making this appointment.” Foraker, I Would Live It Again, p. 305.

  37. Charles P. Taft, letter to Joseph Benson Foraker, January 29, 1887, Foraker Papers.

  38. Discussed in Middleton, Black Laws, p. 4.

  39. Cited in Ibid., p. 324.

  40. See Percy E. Murray, “Harry C. Smith-Joseph B. Foraker Alliance: Coalition Politics in Oh
io,” Journal of Negro History 68, no. 2 (1983): 174.

  41. Cited in Beck, “Political Career of Joseph Benson Foraker,” p. 99.

  42. Mrs. James G. Blaine, letter to Walker Blaine, July 10, 1888, cited in Andrew Carnegie, by David Nasaw (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 328.

  43. See chapter one.

  44. Had he won, he would have been another of Cornelia's Ohio jewels.

  45. Foraker, I Would Live It Again, p. 107.

  46. Ibid., pp. 108–109.

  47. William Howard Taft, letter to Alphonso Taft, July 20, 1889, cited in Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1:106.

  48. Ibid., 1:109.

  49. Foraker, I Would Live It Again, pp. 307–308.

  50. “William Howard Taft: Life before the Presidency.”

  51. Helen H. Taft, letter to William Howard Taft, June 9, 1890, cited in Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1:82.

  52. See ibid., 1:161.

  53. As Brownsville unfolded, Schurman would be a source of strength and encouragement to Foraker.

  54. “William Howard Taft: Life before the Presidency.”

  55. William Howard Taft, letter to Theodore Roosevelt, October 27, 1902, cited in Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1:241.

  56. James B. Morrow, “Foraker and His Early Struggles,” Washington Post, June 18, 1905, reprinted in an unidentified magazine found in the Foraker Papers.

  57. Champ Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920), p. 446; Henry Cabot Lodge, letter to Theodore Roosevelt, September 21, 1908, in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 2 vols. (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1925), 2:316–17; Paul F. Boller, Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 174; Margaret Leech, In the Days of McKinley (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), pp. 493–94.

  58. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2:92.

  59. Joseph B. Foraker, letter to Robert McMurdy, August 27, 1888, cited in Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 80.

  60. Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 181.

  61. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2:205.

  62. Ibid., 2:211–14; Joseph B. Foraker, Correspondence and Interviews concerning Railroad Rate Regulation, p. 48, cited in Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 214; Henry Cabot Lodge, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, September 22, 1905, cited in Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, p. 214.

  63. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2:227.

  64. Justice Holmes, letter to Frederick Pollock, February 9, 1921, in Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874–1932, ed. Mark DeWolfe Howe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 2:63–64, cited in The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, Lewis L. Gould (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), p. 134.

  65. Joshua D. Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 173.

  66. “William Howard Taft: Life before the Presidency.”

  67. William Howard Taft, letter to H. C. Hollister, September 21, 1903, cited in Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1:236.

  68. Ibid., 1:162.

  69. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to George Otto Trevelyan, June 19, 1908, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 6, The Big Stick: 1907–1909 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 1085. Once committed to the race, Taft certainly spoke as if he would do just that: “I agree heartily and earnestly in the policies which have come to be known as the Roosevelt policies.” William Howard Taft, letter to C. M. Heald, December 25, 1907, cited in Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 272.

  70. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to William Howard Taft, confidential, March 15, 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. 183.

  71. Ibid.

  72. Herman H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1923), pp. 161–62.

  73. William Howard Taft, letter to William R. Nelson, June 21, 1906, folder 1, box 1, William Howard Taft Papers, Ohio History Connection, Columbus.

  74. William Howard Taft, letter to William R. Nelson, July 10, 1906, folder 1, box 1, Taft Papers.

  75. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to William Allen White, August 11, 1906, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:354. Also in series C, box 1, William Allen White Papers, Library of Congress.

  76. Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2:318.

  77. Ibid., 2:311.

  CHAPTER TEN: TWO SETS OF AFFIDAVITS

  1. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 27, 1906, in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 2 vols. (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1925) (hereafter cited as Roosevelt-Lodge Correspondence), 2:234–35. The day before, Roosevelt sent an “extremely polite but firm” reply to Foraker explaining, “for your private information only,” he did not intend to act against the Cuban government. On September 27, Foraker answered, “Many thanks for your telegram. It is gratefully reassuring and dispels embarrassing apprehensions.” A few days later, in a second letter to Lodge, Roosevelt characterized Foraker's reply as “much more friendly.” Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 1, 1906, in Roosevelt-Lodge Correspondence, 2:238. It would be many years before any exchange of correspondence between them could again be called “polite” or “friendly.”

  2. This constitutional argument continues today.

  3. R. Taylor, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, September 1906, Joseph Foraker Papers, Cincinnati History Library and Archives, cited in Joseph Benson Foraker: An Uncompromising Republican, by Everett Walters (Columbus: Ohio History Press, 1948), pp. 256–57.

  4. Roosevelt knew of the Burton insurgency before Burton's Cleveland address and understood the threat it posed to Foraker. “The Republicans of Ohio, for instance, want to down both Dick and Foraker.” Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, August 6, 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. 347.

  5. David F. Pugh, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, September 3, 1906, box 67, Foraker Papers.

  6. “Foraker and Dick Capture Convention,” New York Times, September 12, 1906.

  7. Charles Fairbanks, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, September 15, 1906, box 49, Foraker Papers.

  8. Milholland Diary, September 9 and 11, 1906, John E. Milholland Papers (1887–1924), Ticonderoga (NY) Historical Society.

  9. “Pneumatic Tube System,” New York Times, April 6, 1897.

  10. Milholland Diary, undated 1906 entries, Milholland Papers.

  11. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, “The Rise of Segregation in the Federal Bureaucracy, 1900–1930,” Phylon 28, no. 2 (1967): 181; Emma Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 270.

  12. “Full of Virtue Just Now,” New York Times, April 30, 1892.

  13. See Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune, pp. 59–62.

  14. John E. Milholland, letter to Booker T. Washington, January 17, 1905, cited in Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune, p. 270.

  15. “Negroes Have an Inning at the Cooper Union,” New York Times, February 2, 1906. Mary Terrell Church spoke that night with such bitterness, efforts by Milholland to tone her down got nowhere. The South was petty and mean. “But the silence of the North…is criminal…. It suffers from fatty generation of the brain…. Northern neutrality on the subject of negro disfranchisement in the South is criminal.”

  16. Meier and Rudwick, “Rise of Segregation in the Federal Bureaucracy,” p. 181.

  17. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, January 2, 1896, in Roosevelt-Lodge Correspondence, 2:206.

  18. Milholland Diary
, October 10, 1906, Milholland Papers. Also see Crisis, April 20, 1912, reproducing an article from New York World, October 16, 1906, E185.5.G82, Guardian of Boston/Trotter Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Mugar Library, Boston University.

  19. “Blackman's Progress,” Washington Post, October 18, 1906.

  20. Everett Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker: An Uncompromising Republican (Columbus: Ohio History Press, 1948), p. 236.

  21. Elting Morison, who compiled The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, is one of them. He believed Foraker's motivation was honest indignation over an “unjust order based on insufficient and spurious information.” His enthusiasm sprang from a “chance to discredit Roosevelt and Taft” and improve his chances for the presidential nomination in 1908. Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 5:524n2.

  22. Julia Foraker, I Would Live It Again (New York: Arno, 1975), p. 3.

  23. Lewis Gould (professor emeritus, University of Texas), in discussion with the author, April 2010.

  24. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd, 1917), 2:234.

  25. Foraker, I Would Live It Again, p. 277.

  26. Quoted statements by Foraker are in Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, 2:234.

  27. “Negro Troops Answer Inquiry under Path,” New York Times, November 25, 1906.

  28. “Negro Troops Answer Inquiry under Oath”; Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 471; Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Herbert Parsons, April 10, 1908, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 6, The Big Stick: 1907–1909 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 999.

  29. Charles W. Anderson, letter to Booker T. Washington, November 10, 1906, in Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan, vol. 9, 1906–8 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), pp. 123–24.

  30. “President Will Reconsider,” New York Times, November 21, 1906.

  31. Gilchrist Stewart, telegram to Theodore Roosevelt, November 29, 1906, 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), p. 196.