Roosevelt, in a brilliant public-relations maneuver, decided to rescue his reputation as a civilized man by substituting pictures of American atrocities with imagery of Pacific Negroes being benevolently assimilated by Americans. Understanding that humanitarian U.S. voters still dimly perceived the distant islands, Roosevelt would recreate a mini Philippines in the middle of America.
The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair was the biggest international fair ever, double the size of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. (The fair’s official name was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, celebrating President Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana territory one hundred years earlier.) Almost ninety million people would view exhibits from forty-five countries. The fair was so huge that the 1904 Olympics, the first held in the United States, was staged in just one small part of the grounds. With government funds, Roosevelt commandeered the largest part of the fairgrounds to create a make-believe Philippines, where fairgoers would see benevolent assimilation come to life.
“Kill Everyone Over Ten.” A U.S. Army firing squad executing blindfolded, barefoot Filipino boys. “Criminals because they were born ten years before we took the Philippines.” ( New York Evening Journal, May 5, 1902)
Teddy cleverly distanced himself, declaring that he didn’t want to exploit the event for political purposes in an election year. Instead, he managed his race fair through Taft, by now his assistant president. Roosevelt called his zoo-like freak show the Philippines reservation. In case anyone didn’t grasp the significance of the name, it was located next to the Indian reservation.
The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair was the largest international fair to date, double the size of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The official name was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. President Roosevelt portrayed President Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana territory one hundred years earlier as similar to the recent acquisition of the Philippines. Roosevelt commandeered the largest part of the fairgrounds for his Philippines reservation, an election-year Potemkin Philippines, where fairgoers could see benevolent assimilation come to life. (Library of Congress)
Roosevelt had his minions search the wilds of the Philippines and ship twelve hundred Filipinos to St. Louis, where he presented them as creatures closer to monkeys than human beings. The Filipinos had no input into how their country was represented.
The fair’s chief of the Department of Anthropology was William McGee, who was also president of both the National Geographic Society and the American Anthropological Association. The esteemed anthropologist proclaimed that “white and strong are synonymous terms…. It is the duty of the strong man to subjugate lower nature, to extirpate the bad and cultivate the good among living things… and in all ways to enslave the world for the support of humanity and the increase of human intelligence.”82 To reinforce the idea that the uncivilized Filipinos were headed toward extinction, Smithsonian scientists named one of them “Missing Link.” Yet there was hope for some of Teddy’s Others; as the fair program noted, “scientists have declared that with the proper training they are susceptible of a high stage of development, and, unlike the American Indian, will accept rather than defy the advance of American civilization.”83
“Missing Link.” President Roosevelt presented Filipinos as monkey-men in need of American benevolence. (Library of Congress)
Smithsonian Institution scientists exhibited the Filipinos on a scale from barbaric to civilized. Loinclothed dog eaters in fenced-in enclosures squatted over a roasted canine. American observers quickly understood why such savages needed to be held in barbwired concentration camps. One fairgoer wrote his wife, “I went up to the Philippine village today and I saw the wild, barbaric Igorots, who eat dogs, and are so vicious that they are fenced in and guarded by a special constabulary…. They are the lowest type of civilization I ever saw and thirst for blood.”84 Farther on, visitors came upon the more reassuring scene of fresh-scrubbed Filipino children dressed in Western clothes reciting their lessons in a model American school. After that, fairgoers admired the most civilized of all: natty Filipino military men in shiny boots, smartly twirling their rifles, obeying the commands of a White American officer.
The official brochure of the Philippines reservation made the benevolent assimilation process clear. The cover featured a scary-looking savage in a bird-feather headdress. The back cover featured the end result of American uplift: a close-shaven Filipino standing ramrod-straight, dressed in his U.S. Army–supplied uniform.
As a keepsake souvenir to take home to the kids, fairgoers could purchase an “Album of Philippine Types.” Each Filipino type was represented by two photographs that looked like mug shots, which they were—Roosevelt’s scientists had searched Bilibid Prison in Manila to find “typical” Pacific Negroes. Fairgoers viewed more than one thousand photographs depicting a Philippines populated by robbers, murderers, and rapists.
Front and back covers of the official Philippines reservation pamphlet. The front features an uncivilized Filipino. The back features the end result of President Roosevelt’s benevolent assimilation. (National Archives)
The Philippines reservation was by far the most visited part of the St. Louis World’s Fair, with approximately 18.5 million visitors.85 (The population of the entire United States at that time was approximately 83 million.) Those who witnessed the display were some of America’s leading citizens, teachers, politicians, and businessmen, who then spread Teddy’s race message throughout the country’s institutions and across its kitchen tables: like Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, the Philippines would become Americanized and civilized. Two Christian missionaries wrote: “[The Philippines reservation] has strengthened our confidence in the wisdom of our government’s general policy respecting the Philippines and their people, and in the hopeful outlook for the Filipinos under American jurisdiction.”86 When Princess Alice visited the Philippines reservation on May 27, the press had a field day contrasting her civilized White Christian bearing with the uncivilized dog eaters.
When a delegation of leading Filipinos had met with Secretary of State Root to discuss the possibility that the Philippines might become an American state, Root had responded, “Statehood for Filipinos would add another serious problem to the one we have already. The Negroes are a cancer in our body politic, a source of constant difficulty, and we wish to avoid developing another such problem.”87 In 1904, as Teddy’s race fair reframed the debate about Pacific Negroes, candidate Roosevelt bragged to voters that the number of Negroes employed by the U.S. federal government, “which was insignificant even under McKinley, has been still further reduced.”88
Roosevelt celebrated his victory by taking his family on a luxury train trip to St. Louis two weeks after the election. The Roosevelts strolled through the Philippines reservation to see the Filipino monkey-men in need of U.S. help and came upon the model American school. Teddy watched with fascination as a classroom of smiling Filipino children welcomed him by singing, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” Teddy flashed his famous smile and exclaimed, “It is wonderful. Such advancement and in so short a time!”89
“Crack archers of the Negrito village,” Philippines reservation pamphlet. President Roosevelt helped Americans imagine Filipinos as wild African-looking peoples in need of benevolent assimilation. (National Archives)
Chapter 5
HAOLES
“Nineteenth-century democracy needs no more complete vindication for its existence than the fact that it has kept for the white race the best portions of the new world’s surface.”1
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 1897
Helen “Nellie” Taft did not accompany her husband on his 1905 Pacific cruise. Rather than sweat through another South Pacific summer, she took the children to England. At an English train station, Helen tried to get the stationmaster to hold a train long enough to load her luggage. “I am Mrs. William Howard Taft of Washington,” she told the stationmaster. “My husband is the Secretary of War of the United States.” The man looked at her blankly. Helen tr
ied again: “You must have heard of him. He’s traveling now with Miss Alice Roosevelt.” The stationmaster sprang to attention, held the train, and accompanied Helen, her children, and her luggage aboard.2
On the second night out at sea the Americans threw a party. To create a dance-floor setting, they partitioned off a section of the ship with hanging flags and, for traction, sprinkled cornmeal on the deck. The ship’s captain had a Victor Talking Machine (a primitive phonograph) that provided the music. A correspondent on board reported, “Secretary Taft was nearly always on the floor and the surprise was not that he danced beautifully but that he could dance at all. But he can, fat as he is.”3 Alice later wrote, “I do not think that I have ever known any one with the equanimity, amiability, and kindliness of Mr. Taft. During all that summer, I never once saw him really cross or upset. He was always beaming, genial, and friendly, through all his official duties, and the task of keeping harmony among his varied and somewhat temperamental army of trippers.”4 Added a St. Louis newspaperman aboard the Manchuria, “Secretary Taft either designedly, or from natural good nature, has put the entire party at ease. He is an early riser and is not in a hurry to retire at night. He is at home on the promenade deck, in the smoking room, at the dinner table, or anywhere else. His good nature seems to become him.”5
Aboard the Manchuria, summer of 1905. Secretary of War William Howard Taft (center), Alice Roosevelt (below Taft), and Congressman Nick Longworth (to Alice’s left). (Collection of the New-York Historical Society)
Such was invariably the take on Taft: a reliable Mr. Nice Guy with a beaming smile and hearty chuckle. As the author Stephen Hess notes:
If one were to plot Taft’s career on a graph, the line would rise sharply and steeply, without a single dip, until it marked the summit of American political life. He became assistant prosecutor of Hamilton County, Ohio, at the age of twenty-three. Collector of Internal Revenue in Cincinnati two years later, judge of the state superior court at twenty-nine. Solicitor General of the United States at thirty-two, a federal circuit-court judge at thirty-four, first U.S. Civil Governor of the Philippines at forty-two, Secretary of War in the Cabinet of Theodore Roosevelt at forty-six…. Each job seemed to be a logical outgrowth of the one before; each new opportunity seemed only to await the successful conclusion of the preceding episode.6
As secretary of war, Taft oversaw the testosterone heart of the Roosevelt presidency. He controlled an enormous budget and commanded a fast-growing military machine. Millions of people were subjects of the War Department, from Cuba through the Isthmus of Panama and out to Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines.
Yet Taft’s War Department was a dysfunctional place, with the boss frequently absent and subordinates constantly competing for power. Serving as Teddy’s troubleshooter, dispatched to negotiate and smooth over political rough patches, Taft was absent from Washington more than any other cabinet member during his four-year tenure. At one point the War Department auditor received this written complaint: “As a taxpayer and citizen I beg to ask the following question: How many days, or if not days, hours, has Secretary of War William Taft spent at his desk in Washington?”7
Roosevelt managed the military himself, so Taft was not severely tested. In fact, the former judge knew little about military matters and admitted, “I have had so much outside work to do that I was entirely willing to turn the control all over to the chief of staff.”8
As Judith Anderson writes in William Howard Taft: an Intimate History, “Roosevelt initiated and Taft assisted…. Taft, eager for affection and approval, agreed with Roosevelt even when it meant revising his own earlier views.”9 The Taft biographer Henry Pringle observed, “One searches in vain for a major issue on which Taft took a stand, even in private, against Roosevelt.”10 Not surprisingly, Roosevelt was fond of his likeable yes-man: “You know, I think Taft has the most lovable personality I have ever come in contact with. I almost envy a man possessing a personality like Taft’s. One loves him at first sight.”11
WHEN THE NEWLY APPOINTED secretary of war, Taft, was asked by an interviewer to explain his rapid ascent, he replied: “I got my political pull, first, through father’s prominence.”12
Alphonso Taft was born in Vermont in 1810. He cofounded Yale’s secretive Skull and Bones society, and he graduated from Yale College at the age of twenty-three in 1833. In 1839, at the age of twenty-nine, Alphonso decided that he would make his mark in the frontier town of Cincinnati. Tafts have dominated Ohio politics since.
Alphonso was “Judge Taft” to the locals as he served on the superior court of Cincinnati and became the first president of the Cincinnati Bar Association. He was later appointed secretary of war by President Grant in March 1876, and three months later attorney general of the United States. He was made ambassador to Austria-Hungary in 1882 and ambassador to Imperial Russia from 1884 to 1885.
William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati in 1857 in a house that is now part of the William Howard Taft National Historic Site. While Alphonso was the guiding patriarch, the Taft boys were products of a proud, strict, domineering mother. Louisa Taft’s first child, Sammie, died in that house of whooping cough soon after his first birthday. Bill was Louisa’s second child and she showered more attention on him than her other children. She also pressured him more to succeed. Instead of gentle hugs, Louisa issued sharp orders. A recent Taft biographer writes, “Taft never developed much confidence in himself or his abilities. He had been taught in early childhood that no matter how hard he strove, he would not succeed fully, that he had never done enough to merit full acceptance and approval.”13
He was not the only one to suffer: Louisa Taft’s pressure on Bill’s half brother Peter was particularly intense. At first, he responded: Peter delivered the valedictory address to his high school class, and at Yale he scored the highest grades recorded up to that time. But after graduation he suffered a nervous collapse and died in a sanatorium.
From childhood through Yale to various appointive offices and then on to the presidency, Big Bill’s weight increased in proportion to his stressors. Diet and exercise could never overcome his inner disharmony, and he ate compulsively from frustration and to better fill the roles into which he was pushed.
Taft’s parents, hoping to model his career on his father’s, declared that Bill would become a Cincinnati lawyer. Yet even after establishing his own Cincinnati practice, Taft still received written rebukes from his father: “I do not think you have accomplished as much this past year as you ought with your opportunities. Our anxiety for your success is very great and I know that there is but one way to attain it, & that is by self-denial and enthusiastic hard work.”14 And his taskmaster mother never loosened the reins. Up until her death, on the eve of his nomination as a candidate for president, Louisa followed each step of his career and often gave her son highly critical advice.
Taft set his sights early on a girl named Helen. Helen “Nellie” Herron’s father, John, had been law partners with President Rutherford Hayes. In 1877, when she was seventeen years old, she spent several exhilarating weeks in Washington, living in the Executive Mansion with the president’s family. Nellie wrote of “brilliant parties and meeting all manner of charming people,” and she later admitted “that she fantasized becoming First Lady herself,” vowing to marry a man “destined to be president of the United States.”15
For his part, Big Bill saw Nellie as “his ‘senior partner’ for life [and] got what he felt he most needed in his life—a whip that would drive him to achieve.”16 Bill once wrote her, “I need you to scold me.”17
Mrs. William Howard Taft (Helen “Nellie” Herron Taft). From childhood she yearned to be the wife of a president. She willed her husband into the presidency but soon suffered a stroke. (Library of Congress)
Bill got the whip, but not much love. Nellie never did show as much interest in him as he did in her. For her, it was a union of ambition, not affection.
TAFT HAD BEEN ENJOYING his life in Cincinnati as a fede
ral judge when, in 1890, President Benjamin Harrison nominated him to become solicitor general, the attorney who represents the federal government before the Supreme Court. Bill found the prospect “rather overwhelming,” but Nellie saw her husband’s contented Cincinnati life as “an awful groove” and the opportunity to live in Washington as a welcome “interruption… in our peaceful existence.” Big Bill hesitated, Nellie pushed, and Nellie won, proclaiming herself “very glad because it gave Mr. Taft an opportunity for exactly the kind of work I wished him to do.”18
In 1891, Harrison nominated Taft to become a judge of the Sixth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. This meant a return to his beloved Cincinnati. Nellie feared the appointment would divert her from her goal of being a president’s wife and warned her husband about accepting the offer. But because of the prestige of this presidential appointment, Taft—for once—got his way.
Campaigning in Ohio in 1899, President McKinley remarked to a local judge, “I am in need of a man who is strong, tactful, and honest, for an executive in the Philippines.”19 Days later Taft opened a telegram from the president that read, “I would like to see you in Washington on important business within the next few days.”20
McKinley now offered Taft an appointment as commissioner to the Philippines, but Taft demurred. “Why I am not the man you want,” he told the president. “To begin with, I have never approved of keeping the Philippines.” McKinley was not put off by his answer, explaining, “We have got them and in dealing with them I think I can trust the man who didn’t want them better than I can the man who did.” McKinley added that if he accepted posting to the Philippines, the president would appoint Taft to the Supreme Court if any opportunity arose.21
The Imperial Cruise Page 11