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Nicholas Murray Butler informs Theodore Roosevelt of the general good feeling towards Roosevelt at a luncheon attended by Butler and southern politicians. Butler stresses that Roosevelt’s standing in the South has greatly improved upon his reelection and suggests some steps Roosevelt can take to cement that relationship.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-16
President Roosevelt responds to Representative Williams’s claim that he does not understand the South. Although Roosevelt is “greatly puzzled” by some difficulties he has encountered in the South, he has tried to treat the Southern States fairly. Roosevelt believes there are no issues with what he has done in the South but how he has been misrepresented in the South. The president is fine if people disagree with his policies, but he does not like when the facts are misrepresented. He mentions statements made by Alabama Senator John Tyler Morgan and Williams himself that were incorrect. Roosevelt does not appreciate the application of base motives to the president of the United States, and believes if the people of the South have been misled, it is because Southern leaders have misled them. Roosevelt also does not appreciate white men in the South trying to get their vote to count more than those in the North, and believes African American men should be judged by the same tests as “ignorant, vicious and shiftless whites.” Roosevelt closes by saying that what the South “really needs” is for her leaders to tell the truth.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-05
President Roosevelt asks Robert Underwood Johnson to explain a sentence in his letter about “dangerous sectionalism.” Roosevelt believes he has been “more than magnanimous towards the South,” yet the dangerous sectionalism has continued. For this reason, Roosevelt believes Johnson’s comment is absurd. A handwritten addition says: “File. Do not send.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-11-12
President Roosevelt tells Luke E. Wright that he would be happy to lose any northern state, including his home state of New York, if he could break the solidarity of the South and win some of those states. He is pleased that he and William McKinley have carried some of them.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-04-20
President Roosevelt writes to Lyman Abbott encouraging him to publish a speech by LeRoy Percy, a Southern Democratic lawyer who operated sharecropping plantations in Mississippi. Roosevelt believes that Percy’s speech demonstrates the path that the nation must take to promote racial harmony in the South.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-05-23
President Roosevelt had recently finished Owen Wister’s book Lady Baltimore, and sends Wister his thoughts and criticisms of the work. While he enjoyed the story, Roosevelt believes the book is unfairly critical of northerners and uncritical of southerners. Similarly, Roosevelt points out that while the book lauds the past at the expense of the present, there are many examples of violence, brutality, greed, and other vices in the past. Roosevelt also remarks on the status of African-Americans, and while he agrees with Wister in certain regards, believes the work has gone too far in the racist stereotypes. He hopes that Wister will be able to visit him soon. In a postscript, Roosevelt mentions a number of other books he has read or is reading that similarly make readers “feel that there is no use of trying to reform anything because everything is so rotten that the whole social structure should either be let alone or destroyed.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-04-27
President Roosevelt is trying to determine how he can explain he has the interest of the Southern white man in mind just as much as the Northern white man without giving up his principles. He does not want to do injustice to black men and believes in equality of opportunity, but not in social equality or miscegenation.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-11-14
President Roosevelt thanks Silas McBee for the excellent editorial. He has decided to write to Governor Durbin in order to “prevent the slightest suggestion of sectionalism.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-08-12
John W. Mathis has previously corresponded with Theodore Roosevelt, and hopes that Roosevelt has a good visit to his state of Mississippi. Mathis feels that the Mississippi Governor Edmond Favor Noel is a better governor than his predecessor, James Kimble Vardaman. He hopes that Roosevelt’s visit to Mississippi will have a positive effect on the state. While Mathis does not feel that he had any sectional hatred towards the north, Vardaman’s “whole aim is to prey upon the prejudices of the ignorant classes of the voters,” and he worries about their impact.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-03-09
Lenox S. Stanton sends Theodore Roosevelt a copy of his article “The peonage of the South,” which deals with the relationship between the Northern and Southern states. Stanton’s article is not meant to offend, but rather to open Roosevelt’s eyes to the possible impacts this could have on the political situation in 1912.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-02-03
A “National Anthem and March Dedicated to Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, as Embodying his Principles and Those of Every Loyal American.” The lyrics speak to putting aside the rancor of the Civil War and sectionalism, defending the American flag across the world, and advancing the cause of religion.
Dr. Danny O. Crew Theodore Roosevelt Sheet Music Collection
1916
Joseph Culbertson Clayton invokes the names of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Union General George H. Thomas, both Virginians who met in battle during the American Civil War. In spite of their differences, Clayton suggests that, with over fifty years passing since the end of the Civil war, both men would today both speak in favor of national unity and keeping the nation strong.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-02-22
Senator Edward Ward Carmack expresses his disappointment at the reelection of President Roosevelt, and gives several reasons for why he believes Roosevelt and the Republicans won.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-11-07
Secretary of War Taft addresses the Republican Convention of North Carolina on a number of topics, highlighting the differences between the Republican and Democratic parties and arguing that the Republican party has better helped the southern states than the Democratic party has. Taft believes the South’s loyalty to the Democratic party comes largely from its historical affiliation, and encourages Republicans in the south to show that they are not merely a party of office-seekers, but that they are working to improve the state of the South as a whole.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-07-10
An elderly woman labeled “Republican Party” sits in a rocking chair, knitting. John Sherman sits on a low stool on the left, reading a book labeled “Sound Finance,” with a toy “pop-gun” on the floor next to him. A cake labeled “Presidential Nomination 1896” sets on a table on the right. Caption: He has put away his naughty “sectionalism” pop-gun, and is real good now. Puck hopes it isn’t on account of the cake.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1895-02-27
Newspaper article defending President Roosevelt’s decision to host Booker T. Washington at the White House.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1901-10-26
A ship has lost its course and wrecked at the sight of the “Flying Dutchman” labeled “Speeches” with the face of James G. Blaine as the ship’s figurehead and using the “Bloody Shirt” as sails. Men cling to the wreck of the ship. Some are in the sea, and many are on the rocks. Some are identified as “Cornell, Wadsworth, Daggett, Catlin, Carr, O’Brien [who is clinging to “Davenport’s Bar’l”], Evarts, “Jake Hess,” Miller, T. Platt, Davenport, Sherman, Edmunds, [and] Jonah B. Foraker.” Among those unidentified are Whitelaw Reid holding a bottle labeled “Tribune Editorial Solace,” Joseph Pulitzer as a bird labeled “N.Y. World,” and John Logan.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1885-11-11
Whitelaw Reid, John Sherman, George F. Hoar, and John Logan lift Uncle Sam above a swamp filled with several faces of corruption labeled “Blainism, Robesonism, Mahone Repudiation, Land Grab, Whiskey Ring, Rotten Ships, Pension Swindle, Fraud 1876, Star Routers, Salary Grab, Army Ring, [and] Sectional Issue.” Reid gestures toward a statue in the upper left that shows General Robert E. Lee surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral David G. Farragut at the base of a statue showing Abraham Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and a slave freed from bondage. Caption: Uncle Sam – “It’s no use lifting me up to look at your monumental record, gentlemen; what can you give me to stand on now!”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1885-10-28
Uncle Sam is seated at a table in front of “Uncle Sam’s Inter-State Market,” with a businessman labeled “Northern Capital” on the right and an agricultural producer labeled “Southern Goods – Cotton, Sugar, Tobacco, Whiskey” on the left. Standing before the table are James G. Blaine labeled “Bloody Shirt,” and John Sherman, Whitelaw Reid, and Joseph B. Foraker, who all have long flowing hair and beards like Rip Van Winkle. Blaine is leaning on a rifle labeled “Shot Gun.” Two young African American men are sitting on a bale of cotton and a keg of “Tobacco” in the lower right corner, and in the middle ground African Americans are harvesting cotton. In the background, along the shores of a harbor, is a prosperous city. Caption: Uncle Sam “My fossil friends, the War ended twenty years ago. Have you been sleeping ever since?”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1885-09-16
John Sherman pastes a portion of his Mt. Gilead speech that states “The Solid South held together in political fellowship by crimes, violence and fraud” onto a Ulysses S. Grant monument that contains text from “Grant’s Last Letter.” Sherman is being admonished by his brother, William Tecumseh Sherman, who is standing behind him. Caption: General Sherman “Brother, brother! This is bad business for a man who loves his country!”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1885-09-09