Your TR Source
President Roosevelt was pleased by B. Lawton Wiggins’s letter. He feels that his response to the Brownsville incident is “one of those vital matters” where he can not consider his own political or personal needs.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-12-26
United States District Judge Jones expresses his interest in who will be appointed judge. He relays his knowledge and opinion of eleven aspirants. He details Hundley’s efforts to legislate discrimination against African Americans through a proposed amendment to bar African American schools from receiving equal funding to white schools. He explains the Democratic Party’s and Republican Party’s mistrust of Hundley due to his change in political parties.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-03-10
President Roosevelt directs Secretary of State Root to meet him soon about the potential legislation in California discriminating against Japanese students. Roosevelt wants to write an open letter or telegram to the Governor of California James Norris Gillett to oppose the measure. Refusing to restrain the Japanese immigration will make the situation worse. They can speak to Californians Victor Howard Metcalf and Frank P. Flint if needed.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-03-10
Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California, tells President Roosevelt that he will lecture at the University of Berlin on various topics of American life. He asks Roosevelt if he can come to California in August. Wheeler has been out to visit farmers with six other university professors on their “agricultural train,” where the farmers’ dislike of Japanese people was a common subject. Wheeler feels that the California Legislature should do nothing about it, with the matter better left in Roosevelt’s hands.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1909-02-09
Secretary of War Taft returns to President Roosevelt the letters from White and William H. Fleming. Taft does not think there is anything to do about the charges against General Leonard Wood, which he considers largely untrue and slanderous. Taft read Fleming’s letter, and is surprised Thomas W. Hardwick could have been elected to Congress. There is no need to dignify Hardwick’s statements about repealing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, which granted citizenship and voting rights to African Americans, as he “writes himself down an ass.” Taft tells Roosevelt that he is welcome to discuss the plan with Congressman Joseph Gurney Cannon. In a postscript, Taft clarifies that he read Fleming’s letter again and acknowledges that the situation is perhaps more serious than he suspected, and Congress ought to take notice.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-08-23
Thomas Goode Jones requests that President Roosevelt reads Jones’s paper to the Alabama Bar Association regarding the power of the United States to punish mobs who take prisoners from officers of justice and murder them to prevent trial at court.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-07-08