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Andrew Dickson White tells Vahan Cardashian that he is deeply sympathetic to the issue of Armenians mistreated by Turkey, but at his age of eighty he fears he cannot be too actively involved in Cardashian’s cause. However, he says Cardashian has permission to list White’s name as a member of his committee, if he thinks it will be useful.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-14
Vahan Cardashian writes to Andrew D. White expressing his concerns about the persecution Armenians are facing under the Turkish government and his fears the violence will escalate. He hopes White will be one of several other prominent men to form a committee that will weild their power to advocate for Armenian rights.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-12
President Roosevelt chides Governor Guild for being involved with a petition that recently came to Roosevelt’s desk on behalf of Africans in the Congo Free State. Roosevelt receives hundreds of such petitions on a variety of topics based on whatever the current social cause is. If he had absolute power, and the United States were “prepared to embark on a long career of disinterested violence on behalf of all sufferers outside its limits,” then Roosevelt would gladly intervene, but as it stands he does not have any authority to intervene in any of the cases presented to him. Moreover, as the United States would not actually go to war in any of the cases, Roosevelt feels that the government should not “put itself into the ridiculous position of making a fuss which it does not intend to back up.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-04-02
President Roosevelt writes to Oscar S. Straus about the international situation, and while Russia has promised to take steps to prevent trouble being done to its Jewish population, Roosevelt also comments on the impossibility of interfering in other countries, such as the Congo Free State or Turkey. Issuing petitions can sometimes be harmful unless the United States is able to back up the petitions with military force, which it is unlikely to do. Roosevelt knows he does not have to convince Straus of this, but some of Straus’s friends “need to have these considerations ever clearly before their eyes.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-04-10
President Roosevelt and a bear labeled “Russia” look at one another. Roosevelt holds a “protest agains the Kishineff massacres” while the bear holds up a “protest against lynching in the United States.”
As President Theodore Roosevelt and his Administration sought means effectively to protest the pogrom in Kishinev, Moldova — where Tsarist forces killed almost fifty Jews and injured hundreds — he was acutely aware of a wave of lynchings in the United States, and his obligation to respond… and, perhaps, address the similarities.
Of course, the national Administration did not sanction nor encourage lynching, but state governments did, and so did some prominent politicians, like Senator Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman of South Carolina.
President Roosevelt trails a number of weapons behind him and stands holding only a roll of paper labeled “protest” as he faces a large bear labeled “Russia” mauling a woman—”Kishineff.”
The massacre of Jewish protestors in Kishinev was but a part of Tsar Nicholas’s oppression of peasants and middle-class Russians who sought more democratic rights in the Duma; and, as a continuing practice, anti-Jewish prejudice. Many world capitals were outraged, and — until major riots in St. Petersburg caused the Tsar to initiate limited reforms — the Russian Imperial Court generally ignored the diplomatic please.
Despite the Imperial Court’s citation of specific events that sparked the pogrom in Kishinev, it was part of a wave of repression across Russia. The brutality and numbers — a reported forty-nine deaths and six hundred injuries — resulted in international attention, and American Jews, especially, agitated for formal reprisals against the Tsar.
Secretary of State John Hay and President Roosevelt argue with one another over a scroll of paper labeled “Kishinev Massacre protest.” A bear labeled “Russia” stands in the doorway. Caption: The bear—”Why not refer your little difficulty, gentlemen, to my court of arbitration at The Hague?”
The general revulsion against the Kishinev Massacre in Moldova, at the hands of Tsar Nicholas’s Cossacks — a reported forty-nine deaths and six hundred in juries — was shared by President Theodore Roosevelt. That it was part of a series of repressive acts against ethnic minorities in Russian provinces, and democratic activities, did not mitigate the demands for reprisals against the Russian Court.
American Jews were understandably outraged by the pogrom, and pressured the government to, at least, register a diplomatic protest. Roosevelt was informed by the American ambassador at St. Petersburg that Russia would, formally, not “receive” such a protest — an act of diplomatic impertinence that offended the president.