Newfoundland and Labrador

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid

President Roosevelt thanks Ambassador Reid for the interesting letter, especially for the insight on Newfoundland. He is interested in what Secretary of State of India John Morley says about India, and discusses the intricacies surrounding “the control of thickly peopled tropical regions by self-governing northern democracies.” Roosevelt hopes to speak with Morley after presenting the Romanes lecture at Oxford. He asks Reid to inquire of the British statesman, Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes, about conditional hunting on the reserves. The Vermont elections went well.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-09-03

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid

President Roosevelt thanks Ambassador Reid for keeping him updated on personal matters in the midst of his other work. He specifically mentions learning about George Macaulay Trevelyan from Algernon Charles Swinburne’s work, Songs Before Sunrise. Roosevelt is concerned about Secretary of State Elihu Root and believes turning smaller matters over to Assistant Secretary Robert Bacon has helped. Roosevelt is interested in Root’s and Reid’s opinions on British administration of Newfoundland.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-09-06

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reed

President Roosevelt approves of the response sent to the Smart Set magazine in response to a request for his endorsement. He says reports of Ambassador Reid’s “ostentation” and other unflattering news reports about official embassy conduct are harmless; he appreciates all the speeches Reid has made in an effort to unite the “right classes” of Americans and English people. Roosevelt agrees with Reid regarding pursuing arbitration in a treaty dispute with Great Britain over fisheries in Newfoundland. He also comments briefly on the result of the trial of Big Bill Hayward, calling it a “gross miscarriage of justice.” Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt appreciates the silver bowl Elisabeth Mills Reid sent as a gift.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-07-29

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid

President Roosevelt compliments Ambassador Reid’s handling of the international arbitration proposal regarding American fishing rights in Newfoundland. Roosevelt says his chief concern in foreign affairs is the potential hostility between the United States and Japan, either due to “mob leaders” and “yellow journals” in California, or to the lack of foresight in men like Maine Senator Eugene Hale with regard to funding the Navy. Roosevelt is surprised that anyone pays attention to recent negative comments in the news about him made by George Brinton McClellan Harvey. 

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-07-26

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Arthur Hamilton Lee

President Roosevelt thanks Arthur Hamilton Lee for sending Robert Louis Stevenson’s essays. He thinks Lee’s visit accomplished a good deal, and that Viscount James Bryce will do well. The British government has the same issue with Newfoundland that the United States has with California, in that the central government must work with smaller governments to manage foreign policy.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-05

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Edward Grey

President Roosevelt tells British Ambassador to the United States Grey that Rennel Rodd was offered a position interacting with the US government, but turned it down. Roosevelt contrasts the attitudes and relations of a number of different countries with America and England, and takes a specific focus on Japan. Roosevelt notes that Japan has continued preparing for war over the last decade, and writes that there will be industrial competition between Japan and European countries. He also wonders if they are planning on invading America, Germany, or the Philippines. Roosevelt wants the United States and Japan to sign a treaty stating they will keep their citizens out of each other’s labor markets. Roosevelt closes by remarking on the similarities in governmental thinking and military approach between the United States and England.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-12-19

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Bryant Bigelow

President Roosevelt thanks Professor Henry Bryant Bigelow for his letter, and remarks on the extraordinary disappearance of Newfoundland wolves as “one of our numerous zoological puzzles.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-12-11

Letter from William Wood to Theodore Roosevelt

William Wood thanks Theodore Roosevelt for his letter about “Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador”. Although he isn’t a member of the Conservation Commission, he knows it will be grateful for Roosevelt’s words.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-09-18

Letter from Whitelaw Reid to Theodore Roosevelt

Ambassador to Great Britain Reid updates President Roosevelt on various matters, including poet Algernon Charles Swinburne and his “suppressed” poem, the Newfoundland modus vivendi, and happenings in Parliament. Reid also details how he “warded off…the offer of some brand-new territory and responsibilities” in Nicaragua.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-08-28

Telegram from John Hay to Theodore Roosevelt

Secretary of State Hay reports about ongoing treaty negotiations. Concessions have been offered which favor the United States. Hay requests Roosevelt’s reaction. Note: There is a slight error in this text. Sir Robert Bond and Sir Michael Henry Herbert were involved in the treaty negotiations (not Sir Herbert Bond).

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-26

Letter from Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt

Senator Lodge explains that he did not object to President Roosevelt having his own letter published in the press but that he was concerned about Roosevelt publishing Representative Gardner’s letter. Lodge answers questions posed by Roosevelt in a previous letter. Lodge does not know why a plan to have a second squadron of battleships, to be commanded by a friend of his, has been eliminated by the Navy. He asks to have a meeting to discuss a treaty as it is too complicated for a letter.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-15

Draft convention between Great Britain and the United States of America for the improvement of commercial relations between the United States and His Britannic Majesty’s Colony of Newfoundland

Unsigned draft of a commercial agreement between the United States and Great Britain with the goal of improving commercial relations between the United States and Newfoundland.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-09-30

Reciprocity office

After reviewing the annexed papers regarding a reciprocity treaty with Newfoundland, J. B. Osborne has determined that the Blaine-Bond Project of 1890 is a poor basis for a current reciprocity treaty.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-09-13

Letter from Alvey A. Adee to Theodore Roosevelt

Assistant Secretary of State Adee offers to set up a meeting between President Roosevelt and Robert Bond, Prime Minister of Newfoundland.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-09-12

Letter from H. Mortimer Durand to Elihu Root

British Ambassador Durand shares the response of the Newfoundland government regarding the fishing off the treaty coast.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-10-14

Telegram from Whitelaw Reid to Elihu Root

Ambassador Reid received a dispatch from the Newfoundland government reporting that there has been no attempt to prevent American fisherman from catching fish.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-10-16

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Hay

President Roosevelt asks Secretary of State Hay not to speak with Illinois Senator Shelby M. Cullom until Roosevelt has had a chance to discuss the proposed amendments to the Newfoundland Treaty with some senators. The president also encloses a copy of his letter to Andrew Dickson White, “which explains itself.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-12-13

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard

Theodore Roosevelt thanks H. Hesketh-Prichard for the interesting letters and photograph. Roosevelt is interested in Prichard’s statement that the “tame barrenground Norwegian deer interbred freely with the woodland wild deer of Newfoundland at St. Anthony.” Roosevelt writes this bears out his belief that “caribou is a genus which is in process of differentiation inter-species.” Roosevelt is interested in the number of deer in Quebec versus Labrador and the new sub-series of West Coast eland, a pygmy form, found off the West Coast of Africa.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-07-29

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid

President Roosevelt sends photographs of him jumping a horse to United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom Reid. He directs Reid to present the photographs to King Edward VII if he would like them. Roosevelt comments on the newspaper clippings that Reid sent, noting he was surprised at how Englishmen responded to Robert Bond’s criticism of New Newfoundland’s status in the British Empire, given their response to the proposed discriminatory legislation against Japanese students in California. Lately, Roosevelt has been most interested by his “encounter with the ultra labor men and socialists over the Moyer-Haywood-Debs matter.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-05-15

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Arthur Hamilton Lee

President Roosevelt believes Arthur Hamilton Lee handled the “Swettenham matter” efficiently, calling the matter itself a “cosmic incident” and citing others like Swettenham in American Government, most notably General James Harrison Wilson. He was amused by the opinions of John William Burgess, who was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt professorship in at the University of Berlin. While Roosevelt admires some of Burgess’s scholarly accomplishments, he considers Burgess “hopefully wrong-headed” and criticizes his first lecture denouncing the Monroe Doctrine.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-04-08