Presidents--Public opinion

General Carter congratulates President Roosevelt on his election victory and believes it will have a good effect in the Philippines. Carter informs Roosevelt that independence has become a common topic, especially due to Secretary of War William H. Taft’s policy of “The Philippines for the Filipinos.” Carter concludes by discussing industrial depression and fear of robbers in the islands.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-10

Mrs. Chartier congratulates President Roosevelt on his victory and explains it took her twenty years of research to find him again. She discusses memories of their acquaintance, which began after Roosevelt became a widower in 1885, and explains her current situation as a widow and grandmother. Chartier says she has never forgotten Roosevelt’s kind words. An English translation of the letter written in French is included.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-10

Senator Beveridge congratulates President Roosevelt on his victory in the presidential election. He mentions he is visiting his mother, Francis Ellen Parkinson Beveridge, and that her county—and the county where he was raised—has always gone Democratic since Illinois became a state. However, in the 1904 election, it went to Roosevelt. Beveridge believes this is indicative of the entire nation, which wants Roosevelt and not necessarily the Republican Party. He knows that Roosevelt’s administration will accomplish great things and sends his regards to Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-10

Charles Wagner tells President Roosevelt about his recent stay at a women’s college, and the enthusiasm he saw among the students for Roosevelt’s presidency. He looks forward to an upcoming trip to Washington, D.C.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-09

T. Augustine Dwyer congratulates President Roosevelt on his recent reelection, and comments on Roosevelt’s popularity, particularly among Catholics. Dwyer recalls a personal matter he mentioned to Roosevelt, and assures him that if Roosevelt cannot do what Dwyer wishes that he will bear him any ill will. Dwyer will be in Washington D.C. for several days, and hopes to be able to meet with President Roosevelt while in town.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-09

Nicholas Murray Butler congratulates President Roosevelt on winning “one of the most astounding triumphs in modern politics.” Butler believes that Roosevelt owes his victory both to his own character and to the dirty campaign his opponents ran. Roosevelt’s statement regarding his decision to run for a third term was a wise decision, and removes an area which Roosevelt could have been criticized for. Butler reminds Roosevelt of a suggestion that he and William Emlen Roosevelt made last summer to establish the gold standard even more firmly, and wishes for him to take action on this, believing that the Democratic party would follow suit on the issue.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-09

Senator Beveridge congratulates President Roosevelt on the further evidence of his electoral victory. Beveridge writes that the election was a referendum on Roosevelt himself, and comments that Roosevelt’s victory is a clear sign of the “American peoples tribute to your personality.” 

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-09

Joseph Bucklin Bishop tells President Roosevelt that he has “been literally drunk with joy,” since the previous day, in which Roosevelt won his election to the presidency. Bishop approves of Roosevelt’s statement about not running for a third term. Nicholas Murray Butler wished for Bishop to excoriate Democratic candidate Alton B. Parker in a newspaper article, but Bishop believes that after the decisive loss Parker suffered, “anything that an individual could say was feeble.” He looks forward to coming to Washington, D.C., soon for a banquet.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-09

Democratic presidential candidate Alton B. Parker congratulates President Roosevelt on his electoral victory.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-08

George B. Cortelyou, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, congratulates President Roosevelt on the “overwhelming vote of confidence” that Roosevelt received in the recent election.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-08

Frank Irving Cobb and Charles G. Bush congratulate President Roosevelt on his recent political victory. The two write, “it is unnecessary to wish you a brilliant administration. it cannot be otherwise.” Accompanying the text of their letter is a small cartoon of themselves with bodies shaped like giant hearts, and the caption “They were always with you.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-08

Cornelius Newton Bliss congratulates President Roosevelt on his electoral victory, and says that, “the people show that they love the man who always [gives] them a square deal.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-08

John Lewis Griffiths praises President Roosevelt’s character and the achievements of his administration.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-03

George B. Cortelyou, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, tells President Roosevelt that following a discussion of the matter with Elihu Root, he believes it would be fine for Roosevelt to issue the statement he outlined in his recent letter after making the suggested changes. Senator Philander C. Knox, on the other hand, advises against making the statement, so Cortelyou will discuss the matter further with Root. Root will give a speech attacking Democratic presidential candidate Alton B. Parker regarding his recent speeches. Reports from across the United States seem to be in Roosevelt’s favor.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-03

In his recent reading, J. H. Woodard found a book describing who the first charter for a steamboat navigation company was awarded to, which included Nicholas J. Roosevelt. Woodard suspects that this is President Roosevelt’s grandfather, and offers to send him the book if it is of interest to Roosevelt. He recently spent time at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and asked a number of people about their opinion of Roosevelt, and reports that almost universally the response was positive.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-31

Anthony Matré, National Secretary of the American Federation of Catholic Societies, sends President Roosevelt a newspaper clipping related to the “Filipino Educational Question,” with the request for a few words of clarification on the matter.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-31

President Roosevelt peeks out of the “President’s Office / Army Affairs” at an old woman labeled the “meddlesome Senate.” She holds a bag: “Brownsville.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon by J. H. “Hal” Donahey carried a direct observation about the current political situation, but also spoke to a larger subtext that contemporary readers would understand, but posterity would not, immediately.

In the first cartoon, President Roosevelt holds his “big stick” and a paper that reads, “Election Day 1904: Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.” In the second cartoon, Roosevelt holds his “big stick” and a paper that reads, “December 12, 1907: I have not changed, and shall not change the decision thus announced.” In the third cartoon, the people holds the “big stick,” and Roosevelt defers to it in Chicago on June 16, 1908. In the fourth cartoon, a larger group of people hold the “big stick” and Roosevelt defers on November 3, 1908.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Joseph Harry Cunningham of the Washington Herald apparently wanted to be a prophet as well as a cartoonist in this four-panel treatment of the 1908 political season. Aided by veloxes or photostats to enable him to depict identical figures, even in evolving sizes, Cunningham depicted the phases of President Roosevelt’s declination of another term in the White House.

A tall President Roosevelt holds a big stick as a variety of groups hurl objects at him, including “so-called innocent stockholders,” “wrongdoing lawyers,” “railroad debaters,” “nature fakirs,” “undesirable citizens,” “purchased politicians,” and the “liars brigade.” John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Edward Henry Harriman are prominent figures in the center.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Theodore Roosevelt, as president or at any time in his career, famously was a master of what a historian has called “The Art of Controversy.” At the least he did not shy from debates and even vivid disagreements. When he thought newspapers engaged in fake news, he threatened to sue (The New York World and its publisher Joseph Pulitzer in one example). He was not chary of calling opponents liars, and he rhetorically consigned political enemies to what he called the “Ananias Club,” after the New Testament figure who was struck dead by the Holy Spirit for lying about his offerings.

Secretary of the Treasury George B. Cortelyou, depicted as a chick, has just popped out of an egg while Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, Secretary of War William H. Taft, and Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker–all depicted as large chickens–look on. In the corner is a feed bowl labeled “presidential popularity.” Caption: Chorus (in unison): “Wonder if that spring chicken really takes himself seriously.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The presidential ambitions of George B. Cortelyou were always modest, as he himself was; and if he was not a chick (as in J. H. Donahey’s cartoon), he certainly was an odd duck among the politicians who hoped to be the Republican nominee in 1908. One thing that set him apart is that he was a personal secretary and a technocrat and organizer: a bureaucrat.