Scandals

President Roosevelt found Senator Lodge’s letter to Richard Olney to convey a true mastery of language. Enclosed are letters that will allow for a full understanding of the scandal concerning Laura A. Hull Morris, and Roosevelt will also have information for Lodge about the Brownsville incident. Roosevelt has just given William Sturgis Bigelow the first of the five dollar gold pieces.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-10-01

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

President Roosevelt agrees with Leslie’s Weekly Editor John A. Sleicher about William Jennings Bryan, and believes that he put Bryan on the defensive with a recent letter. Roosevelt is aware of the case involving Philo S. Bennett and thinks Sleicher addressed it well, although Roosevelt says he can not use the information personally.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-09-24

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

President Roosevelt thanks Francis J. A. Darr for the letter, which he will publish if need be. Accounts of the incident involving Laura A. Hull Morris at the White House were deceptive, and the generous explanation of her behavior is that she was insane.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-09-22

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

President Roosevelt has sent a letter to Attorney General Bonaparte from a man named Spence who expresses his objection to the appointment of Benjamin M. Ausherman as United States District Attorney for Wyoming. Roosevelt says to pay no attention to Spence who is a drunkard, had spent time in a penitentiary, and was implicated of an assault on Senator Clarence D. Clark.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-21

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

President Roosevelt thinks that it would be better for James Creelman to quote the letter he sent to Maria Longworth Storer, rather than to write a new quote about the situation.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-06

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

Idaho Governor Gooding laments to President Roosevelt that most people associated with the prosecution of the alleged murderers of Governor of Idaho Frank Steuenberg have been indicted and accused of connection with the alleged timber land frauds in the state.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-04-15

Creator(s)

Gooding, Frank Robert, 1859-1928

Idaho Governor Gooding informs President Roosevelt that he knows United States Attorney N. M. Ruick has begun his return to Washington, D.C. and that it is important for President Roosevelt to keep secret Gooding’s letter from everyone except Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-04-15

Creator(s)

Gooding, Frank Robert, 1859-1928

Thomas MacDonald Patterson encloses an article he has written regarding the “Harriman matter,” likely referring to Edward Henry Harriman, who has claimed President Roosevelt pressured him to contribute funds to his 1904 presidential campaign.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-04-05

Creator(s)

Patterson, Thomas MacDonald, 1839-1916

Harvard University President Eliot defends himself against newspaper claims that the portion on athletics in his Annual Report was in response to what President Roosevelt had said at the Harvard Union on February 23, 1907. Eliot references the Brownsville Affair and “the difference between College pranks and ‘shooting up’ a town.” He explains that he felt the old college administrative practice of “punishing the innocent with the guilty when the innocent would not bear witness against the guilty” unjust.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-03-09

Creator(s)

Eliot, Charles William, 1834-1926

Secretary of War Taft explains why it would not be beneficial to send John F. Steven’s letter to Theodore P. Shonts. He will send the letter if President Roosevelt wishes it.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-03-09

Creator(s)

Taft, William H. (William Howard), 1857-1930

Kermit Roosevelt tells President Roosevelt what he is reading and how the weather has been recently. He asks whether the Ute braves finally came to Roosevelt and if Roosevelt has sent the “Tartar tribe” back to Utah. Roosevelt mentions that he requested papers regarding the “Brownsville discharge affair” from William Loeb, as Barclay is debating on it and he has been working hard with him, although he belongs to the opposite camp. He asks if President Roosevelt thinks he will get “those two big battleships of the dreadnought class” that he has asked for.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-20

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Kermit, 1889-1943

Maurice Francis Egan tells President Roosevelt that he likes James Jeffrey Roche’s letter, especially what he said about the Storer affair. As a side note, Egan says he communicated with Archbishop John Ireland. He wonders how Roosevelt feels about Catholic politicians.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-15

Creator(s)

Egan, Maurice Francis, 1852-1924

Frances M. Wolcott asks Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt if she could have a copy of the Storer pamphlet, as she thinks she could “say a word that counts on the right side.” Her son, District Attorney Lyman Metcalfe Bass, is trying his first case and complimented President Theodore Roosevelt to her.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-11

Creator(s)

Wolcott, Frances M. (Frances Metcalfe), 1851-1933

Consul General Miller addresses several concerns he has regarding inspections of American Consulates by Herbert H. D. Peirce and the inappropriate behavior of two Consuls-General while in Europe. He fears the impending public scandal which would inevitably come of these matters.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-10

Creator(s)

Miller, J. Martin (James Martin), 1859-1939

Secret Service Agent Connell recounts his experience of the “Mrs. Minor Morris incident,” when Laura A. Hull Morris entered the White House and demanded to speak with President Roosevelt before being escorted from the premises.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906

Creator(s)

Connell, Stephen A., 1873-1928

This transcript presents a governmental interview of William Worthington Russell regarding the Mercado affair, wherein government officials were accused of profiting off of economic transactions and the sale of Venezuelan salt bonds. Russell is interviewed by Secretary of War William H. Taft, Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Loomis, and Herbert Wolcott Bowen regarding his position as Secretary of Legation in Venezuela, and regarding Loomis’s conduct when he was the Minister to Venezuela. Russell testifies that in the Mercado claim he acted in a friendly, unofficial capacity, and did not personally profit off of anything.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-06-09

Creator(s)

United States. War Department

Mae C. Wood angrily answers a letter from Postmaster General Wynne explaining her absence from the Post Office department for several days in 1903, referring Wynne “to yourself, J. Martin Miller, Mess. Platt, Loeb, et al,” and alludes to “the nasty details of the outrage and scandal.” Wood states that she has “no intention to longer endure the filthy lies and persecutions as engineered and carried out by your coterie, without retaliation.”

(Wood had alleged to be married to Senator Thomas Collier Platt, and claimed to have hundreds of love letters from Platt to her. She had traveled to New York in order to protest Platt’s 1903 marriage to Lillian T. Janeway.)

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-01

An article in the Lakewood Times and Journal discusses the political aspects of the removal of Laura A. Hull Morris from the White House. The writer argues that politicians are drawing attention to the incident unnecessarily and Morris was rightfully removed because she caused a disturbance after being asked to leave.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-26

Creator(s)

Unknown

The Laurel Ledger prints an article discussing Senator Tillman’s criticism of the removal of Laura A. Hull Morris from the White House. The article speaks highly of President Roosevelt and also describes where a “woman’s place” should be, claiming that if Morris had been in her place “attending to her duties at home” rather than “trying to influence the government in her hen-pecked husband’s behalf,” there would not have been an incident.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-20

Creator(s)

Unknown

Two newspaper articles, one regarding the sentiment and reactions of Republicans to Senator Benjamin R. Tillman’s speech in Congress. The other article discusses the removal of Mrs. Minor Morris from the White House.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-21

Creator(s)

Unknown; Fitze, Charles G., Mrs.