Taking on Theodore Roosevelt

by Harry Lembeck

  36. Aaron S. Daggett, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, November 16, 1909, Foraker Papers, cited in The Brownsville Raid, by John D. Weaver (College Station: Texas A&M University, 1992), p. 225.

  37. See “Its Conclusions,” CI-2, p. 1635; Weaver, Brownsville Raid, p. 247; “Brownsville Case Settled,” New York Times, April 7, 1910.

  38. Sanders was the only soldier mentioned by name in messages he sent to Congress. As late as February 1909 Roosevelt wrote to Secretary of War Luke Wright (in the letter telling him not to send the Browne-Baldwin report to Congress) that Sanders was “as thoroughly dangerous, unprincipled and unworthy a soldier as ever wore the United States uniform.” Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Luke Wright, February 7, 1909, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 6:1507.

  39. See 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. 486 (statement of John Smith to Lt. Col. Lovering).

  40. Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1971), p. 168.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: “NOT ONE PARTICLE OF REGRET”

  1. “Negroes Present Loving Cup to Foraker,” Washington Herald, March 7, 1909.

  2. Foraker's remarks were reprinted in full in a pamphlet, Presentation of Loving Cup to Hon. Joseph Benson Foraker, United States Senator, in Appreciation of His Service on Behalf of the Members of Companies A, B, and C, Twenty-Fifth Infantry, by a Committee of Colored Citizens: The Ceremony and Addresses, March 6th, 1909, at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, Washington, D.C. (Washington, DC: Murray Brothers, 1909).

  3. In referring to crime and conviction, Foraker was splitting hairs, but Roosevelt had done the same in crafting a plan against the soldiers. If Roosevelt could sharpen the distinction between disobedience and murder to throw the soldiers out, Foraker could dull it to argue they should have been kept in.

  4. His son Thomas Beer would write a well-received biography of that other Ohioan Mark Hanna.

  5. William C. Beer, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, March 7, 1909, Joseph Foraker Papers, Cincinnati History Library and Archives.

  6. “Roosevelt with Ax in Wood,” New York Times, March 7, 1909.

  7. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, January 14, 1909, in The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. H. W. Brands (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 509.

  8. Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).

  EPILOGUE: WHAT HAPPENED LATER

  1. “The President supposes [Fort Brown] will eventually be abandoned.” William Loeb, letter to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, August 20, 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) (hereafter cited as SD-1, p. 34. See also Fred C. Ainsworth, letter to William Loeb, August 20, 1906, SD-1, p. 35; William Loeb, letter to Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth, August 21, 1906, SD-1, pp. 38–39; Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth to William Loeb, August 21, 1906, SD-1, p. 39.

  2. “Fort Brown Condo Shares,” RedWeek.com, http://www.redweek.com/resort/P700-fort-brown-condo-shares (accessed June 1, 2014).

  3. See John H. Nankivell and Quintard Taylor, Buffalo Soldier Regiment: History of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry, 1869–1926 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), pp. 120–44.

  4. Surprisingly, some were entitled to some veterans’ benefits from service in the Spanish-American War (or because they were the eleven who reenlisted), and so long as they lived, the government could locate them. John D. Weaver, The Senator and the Sharecropper's Son: Exoneration of the Brownsville Soldiers (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), p. 204.

  5. Exec. Order No. 9981, 13 Fed. Reg. 4313 (July 26, 1948).

  6. Box 4499, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s–1917, National Archives.

  7. Weaver, Senator and the Sharecropper's Son, p. xx. Andrew H. Malcolm, “Army Returns Honor to Discharged Black,” New York Times, February 12, 1973.

  8. Andrew H. Malcolm, “67 Years after Discharge, Black Soldier Is Honored,” New York Times, January 11, 1974.

  9. Frank N. Schubert, On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier: Biographies of African Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866–1917 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1995), pp. 476–77. Nan Robertson, “Family of Black Veteran in 1906 Texas Raid Recalls Stigma,” New York Times, February 8, 1977.

  10. Report of the Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry Relative to the Shooting Affray at Brownsville, Tex…., S. Doc. No. 61-701, vols. 4–6 (1911) (hereafter cited as CI-2), pp. 1111–12. The court reporter transcribing First Sergeant Sanders's testimony that morning was Mr. H. B. Weaver. His son, John Weaver, is the Brownsville historian most responsible for the correction of Special Orders No. 266 to an honorable discharge. By then, Sanders had been in his grave forty-four years.

  11. “Post for Mingo Sanders,” New York Times, August 4, 1912; “Roosevelt on Way; Sounds a Warning,” New York Times, August 5, 1912.

  12. Schubert, On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier, pp. 367–68.

  13. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Booker T. Washington, December 25, 1908, with pencil notation dated December 29, 1908, box 36, Correspondence Photostats, Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  14. Booker T. Washington, letter to William Howard Taft, July 18, 1908; Booker T. Washington, letter to William Howard Taft, July 20, 1908; William Howard Taft, letter to Booker T. Washington, July 22, 1908; all found in The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, vol. 9, 1906–8 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), pp. 600–601. In the July 18 letter the greeting to Taft was “Dear Secretary Taft.” In the July 20 letter it was “My Dear Judge.” Washington had moved Taft out of the shadow of Theodore Roosevelt. See Ralph Tyler, letter to Emmett Scott, July 21, 1908, in Harlan and Smock, Booker T. Washington Papers, 9:601–602.

  15. Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 393.

  16. Program for Memorial Service held March 14, 1926, at St. James Presbyterian Church, New York, found in John E. Milholland Papers (1887–1924), Ticonderoga (NY) Historical Society.

  17. “Du Bois and Washington, in speaking for two dissimilar socioeconomic orders, were really speaking past each other rather than to the same set of racial problems and solutions; but Du Bois…had the advantage of speaking to the future, while Washington…spoke…for the early industrial past.” David L. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), p. 502.

  18. Cited in David L. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), p. 569.

  19. Cited in Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1984), p. 393.

  20. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to George Spinney, January 22, 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. 359–60.

  21. Pretty close. Roosevelt received 4,120,609 votes to Taft's 3,487,937.

  22. William Howard Taft, letter to Aunt Delia, cited in The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography, 2 vols., by Henry F. Pringle (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964), 2:787; “Roosevelt Grips Hand of Taft; Diners in Chicago Hotel Cheer as the Ex-Presidents End Six-Year Quarrel,” New York Times, May 27, 1918; Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 558.

  23. He sometimes got gifts. One of the most unusual and more expensive was a watch fob of solid Alaskan gold from eleven black miners in Fairbanks. “Present from Far-Away Alaska,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 24, 1909. Two years earlier Roosevelt received his own expensive gift from the residents of Brownsville. It was a walking stick, “silver mounted, set with forty-five precious stones for the States,” and hand-carved from Mexican co
ffee wood, “treasured” by the family of Sam Houston, with “nearly 400 figures and emblems…. The engraver spent nearly six months in the work.” “Big Stick for Roosevelt,” New York Times, April 14, 1907.

  24. Maj. Charles Penrose, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, marked “Confidential,” November 1, 1908, Joseph Foraker Papers, Cincinnati History Library and Archives. Foraker wrote back, “I shall never regret that I championed the cause of poor, helpless soldiers, who were, in my opinion, unjustly discharged without honor.” Joseph B. Foraker, letter to Maj. Charles Penrose, December 1, 1908, Foraker Papers.

  25. Cited in John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992), p. 264.

  26. If this is an apology, Foraker may be the only public man Roosevelt ever apologized to. Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Longmans, Green, 1958), p. 144.

  27. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Joseph B. Foraker, January 19, 1912, Foraker Papers.

  28. Joseph B. Foraker, letter to Theodore Roosevelt, January 24, 1912, Foraker Papers. When these letters were exchanged, Roosevelt was beginning his campaign to unseat Taft. It is impossible to believe Joseph Foraker, who knew Roosevelt's wrath and what he was capable of, did not see what he would do to President Taft. It is impossible to believe his comment about “Colonel” being a temporary title suggested anything but a polite witticism to show no hard feelings. Politeness and forgiveness were qualities Foraker possessed.

  29. Percy E. Murray, “Harry C. Smith-Joseph B. Foraker Alliance: Coalition Politics in Ohio,” Journal of Negro History 68, no. 2 (1983): 181.

  30. “Joseph B. Foraker, Ex-Senator, Dead,” New York Times, May 11, 1917.

  31. Memorial to Joseph Benson Foraker: Meeting of the Bench and Bar Held in the Court Room of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals…, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

  32. Champ Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920), 1:419.

  33. Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (New York: HarperCollins Books, 1997), pp. 144–45.

  34. Cited in Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2:888.

  35. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 239; H. W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1997), pp. 811–12. Pringle thought it doubtful; Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, p. 424.

  36. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, p. 422.

  37. Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), pp. 523–24, citing W. E. B. Du Bois, “Theodore Roosevelt,” Crisis 17, no. 4 (February 1919): 163.

  38. Oswald Garrison Villard, obituary, Nation, January 18, 1919, folder 3312, Oswald Garrison Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  39. David Fromkin, The King and the Cowboy (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), p. 151. Another way of expressing this is to say he distrusted the law, and lawyers and courts, particularly when they got in his path. Pringle, Life and Times of William Howard Taft, pp. 256, 387. Joshua Hawley called these “warrior values.” Joshua D. Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 114. Having earned his right to assert them and protect them, how could Roosevelt permit the soldiers to sully them?

  40. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, p. 55.

  41. Ibid., p. 49.

  42. Quoted in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 20, 1907, and cited in James A. Tinsley, “Roosevelt, Foraker, and the Brownsville Affray,” Journal of Negro History 41, no. 1 (1956): 63.

  43. Kelly Miller, “Roosevelt and the Negro,” in Race Adjustment: Essays on the Negro in America (New York: Neale, 1910), p. 276.

  44. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 396.

  45. Henry Fowler Pringle, 7th year, Research Notes for Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  46. “Senator Foraker and His Fight on the President,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 19, 1907, p. 4.

  47. Cited in Arthur Stanley Link, “Theodore Roosevelt in His Letters,” Yale Review 43, no. 4 (1954): 594.

  48. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, p. 502.

  49. In his “biography” of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry, Nankivell repays Roosevelt for his omission; he ignores him and his Rough Riders when writing about Cuba and El Caney.

  AFTERWORD: WHAT IF…?

  1. James E. Amos, Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet (New York: John Day, 1927), p. 5.

  2. Ibid., p. 63.

  3. Ibid., p. 59.

  4. Ibid., p. 62.

  5. Ibid., p. 64.

  6. Might the same first name—Robert—have been chosen to avoid confusion when she referred to one when meaning the other?

  7. Uncle Rob's lifestyle was decidedly “bohemian.” See David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), p. 22. He was an endlessly fascinating man and counted among his friends and correspondents General George Custer; the writer Bret Harte; both Gilbert (the librettist) and Sullivan (the composer) of HMS Pinafore and other comic operas; and Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, who signed letters to him “Affectionately.” M. Fortescue Pickard, The Roosevelts and America (London: H. Joseph, 1941), pp. 249–50, 245–46, 257–59, 261–62. In his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt recognized his uncle for writing the B'rer Rabbit stories long before Joel Chandler Harris. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, in The Rough Riders / An Autobiography, ed. Louis Auchincloss (New York: Library of America, 2004), p. 264.

  8. The Twenty-Sixth Volunteer Infantry is not to be confused with the Twenty-Sixth Infantry, the regiment the Twenty-Fifth Infantry replaced at Fort Brown.

  9. Fortescue Efficiency Record; Acting Secretary to the President to Assistant Secretary of War, July 30, 1902, file 258313, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s–1917, National Archives. “By direction of the President…make a report to him of this case. At the bottom, in Roosevelt's handwriting, “Please look into this personally,” (signed) Theodore Roosevelt.

  10. “Capt. Taggart Wins His Divorce Case,” New York Times, October 15, 1905. The divorce action had been filed a year earlier. Evidently Mrs. Taggart may have initiated her dalliance with Fortescue and possibly two other officers, one a general. A year later, Captain Taggart died of fever in the Philippines. “Major Taggart Dying in Far Off Philippines,” Newark (Ohio) Daily Advocate, October 25, 1906.

  11. “Teddy's Nephew a Scrapper,” San Francisco Call, October 26, 1904. Fortescue was drunk, punched a hack driver, and was arrested. He told the arresting officer he was Roosevelt's nephew. Newspaper clipping, file 429833, Records of the Adjutant General's Office.

  12. “Both Edith and I are very fond of Roly,” Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Robert Roosevelt, April 20, 1905. Pickard, Roosevelts and America, p. 232. See also Letters to Kermit from Theodore Roosevelt, 1902–1908, ed. Will Irwin (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1946), p. 267.

  13. “Roly Fortescue is here as an Aide. I have had him riding and walking with me.” Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, December 5, 1903, in Irwin, Letters to Kermit from Theodore Roosevelt, p. 52. “By the way, Roly Fortescue insisted upon boxing with me the other day. I did not exactly want to box; I was afraid I would hurt him, and I did, giving him a most gorgeous pair of black eyes.” Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, February 5, 1905, in Irwin, Letters to Kermit from Theodore Roosevelt, p. 93.

  14. “Lieut. Fortescue Resigns,” Washington Evening Star, November 17, 1905.

  15. White House visitor log, January 30, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress.

  16. See “Washington News,” Washington National Tribune, November 14, 1907. See also Allan R. Millett, “The Rise and Fall of the Cuban Rural Guard,” Americas 29, no. 2 (October 1972): 191–213, for a discus
sion of the organization Fortescue escaped to.

  17. White House visitor log, December 9, 1906, Roosevelt Papers.

  BOOKS & ARTICLES

  Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

  Aldrich, Nelson W. Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America. New York: Allworth Press, 1996.

  Alexander, Roberta Sue. A Place of Recourse: A History of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, 1803–2003. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.

  Amos, James E. Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet. New York: John Day, 1927.

  Arthur, Anthony, and John J. Broesamle. Twelve Great Clashes That Shaped Modern America: From Geronimo to George W. Bush. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006.

  Ascoli, Peter M. Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

  Azoy, A. C. M. Charge! The Story of the Battle of San Juan Hill. New York: Longmans, Green, 1961.

  Bailey, Thomas A. Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American Crises: An Account of the International Complications Arising from the Race Problem on the Pacific Coast. Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1964.

  Baker, Leonard. Brandeis and Frankfurter: A Dual Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.

  Baker, Ray Stannard. Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citizenship in the American Democracy. Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1973.

  Barry, David S. Forty Years in Washington. Boston: Little, Brown, 1924.

  Beck, Earl R. “Joseph B. Foraker and the Standard Oil Charges.” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 56 (1947): 154–78.

  ———. “The Political Career of Joseph Benson Foraker.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1942.

  Beer, Thomas. The Mauve Decade. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1997.

  Beers, Paul B. Pennsylvania Politics Today and Yesterday: The Tolerable Accommodation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.

  Bishop, Joseph Bucklin. Theodore Roosevelt and His Time: Shown in His Own Letters. 2 vols. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1920.