Your TR Source
President Roosevelt expresses concern about his son Kermit Roosevelt’s health. He mentions the Brownsville matter, the opposition from the Senate over the battleships and offers his view on Native Americans. Roosevelt is pleased that Kermit has been reading and studying, and updates Kermit on recent family activities.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-01-26
Charles William Anderson appeals to William Loeb on behalf of his good friend Dr. John W. Prather, who has been working as an immigration inspector in Montreal. Prather has recently been transferred to a post in Santa Maria, Texas, near Brownsville. Anderson fears Prather would be unsafe there as a colored man, and so he asks Loeb to bring this matter to President Roosevelt’s attention so that he might revoke the transfer. He apologizes for the intrusion, but feels strongly in this matter.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-09-20
Senator Lodge informs President Roosevelt that fifty soldiers at Fort Riley tried to rescue a comrade from jail and were fired on by the sheriff. It reminds Lodge of the Brownsville case, and he encourages Roosevelt to treat the Fort Riley case with care so that no one can suggest that more severity was shown to African American troops than to white troops. Lodge also notes his interest in the riots occurring in Vancouver, British Columbia against the Japanese.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-09-10
The Macon Telegraph describes Senator Benjamin R. Tillman’s inconsistent reactions to President Theodore Roosevelt’s views on race relations.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-01-14
This article describes an outbreak of violence at Fort Leavenworth between African-American soldiers and a crowd of people on a trolley car. The author blames the violence on Senator Foraker of Ohio, who the article says is in the pocket of large corporations, as well as the Constitution League of New York. While the author says that Senator Foraker’s opinion is to be expected, the article opines that the Constitution League is different, and is made up of misguided people who should know better.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-12-31
President Roosevelt peeks out of the “President’s Office / Army Affairs” at an old woman labeled the “meddlesome Senate.” She holds a bag: “Brownsville.”
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.
Senator Joseph Benson Foraker holds a paint palette labeled “tariff tint” as he looks on a painting of President Roosevelt playing the violin and Secretary of War William H. Taft dancing. The painting received “1st prize – Salon 08.” On the ground are tubes of paint: “railroad rate red” and “Brownsville black.”
Joseph Harry Cunningham’s cartoon about the early rivalries for the 1908 Republican presidential nomination delicately portrays the tension between two Ohioans, Secretary of War William H. Taft and Senator Joseph Benson Foraker. It was rare that two formidable candidates arose from the same state in any election cycle, yet the confrontations were many, and the state’s leading Republicans generally split along southern (Taft was from Cincinnati) and northern lines, each man with longtime associations and commitments.
President Roosevelt uses his big stick to cast various reptiles into the water: “land grabber,” “spoils,” “mollycoddle,” “Brownsville,” “graft,” “rebate,” “swollen fortune,” and “Bellamy.” In the background stands an elephant about to hit a toad with a cane, “Watch me.”
Some cartoonists are grateful for “crutches” like regular holidays as hooks on which to hang their cartoon concepts — convenient inspirations on which to affix common themes or current events.
Uncle Sam holds a paper to which he has just signed “OK” that reads, “Discharge of Negro Soldiers at Brownsville.” Meanwhile, President Roosevelt has two dogs depicting Senators Joseph Benson Foraker and Benjamin R. Tillman barking at him. He says to Uncle Sam, “Oh! Don’t mind them, Uncle–That’s the only way they can attract any attention–these days!” Caption: And then they can go home and brag that they barked at a real president!
The Denver Post, for about thirty years following the purchase by legendary owners Frederick Gilmer Bonfils and Harry Heye Tammen in the 1890s, was (and remains) one of the most interesting cases in American journalism; and was one of the most successful and influential papers in the active city of Denver and the growing mountain states at the time.
President Roosevelt fires a gun with smoke coming out labeled “Cincinnati Federal Appointment” at Joseph Benson Foraker, who holds a knife labeled “Brownsville.”
The “Brownsville Incident” — a bartender shot dead and a policeman wounded in a nighttime melee near an Army barracks housing black soldiers in Texas — had occurred in August of 1906. It lingered as a scandal because President Roosevelt, asking any of the one hundred sixty-seven soldiers to provide any information about the evening’s activities, studied the available facts and dishonorably discharged the entire regiment.
President Roosevelt looks off into the distance as he ponders what is written on a piece of paper: “Discharge of Negro soldiers without honor.” Just above the cartoon are verses from the book of Daniel and the directive to “hold this page up to the light and look through the blank space.” Caption: The warning.
A Virginia newspaper reprinted this cartoon by Eugene Zimmerman (“Zim”) in Judge Magazine about President Roosevelt’s dilemma following his dismissal of black troops in the “Brownsville Affair.” Judge was a Republican weekly political-cartoon journal, the counterpart of Puck, and was established by former Puck cartoonists.
President Roosevelt holds the “Congressional Record” in his hands with the headline, “Senate–Speech–Brownsville Incident” with an illustration of the U.S. Capitol building on the right side. A teddy bear looks over Roosevelt’s shoulder.
The infamous Brownsville Incident — the murder of a bartender and wounding of a policemen near United States Army barracks housing a battalion of black soldiers — occurred in August of 1906, yet in January of 1907, the date of this cartoon, it remained a controversial topic. President Roosevelt, after none of the one hundred sixty-seven soldiers came forward with any form of witness or rumor account, summarily cashiered all the soldiers.
President Roosevelt starts to open a box labeled, “The Facts of Brownsville Affair,” touching “The Lid.” In the foreground is a shadow of Uncle Sam and in the background is a teddy bear with the biblical phrase from the Sermon On the Mount (Matthew 7:7), “Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
Clifford Kennedy Berryman’s awkward cartoon in the Washington Post (he would switch to the rival Star in months, and remain there until his death in 1949) is a comment on the Brownsville Affair. President Roosevelt had cashiered one hundred sixty-seven soldiers of an all-black regiment after a bartender was killed and a policeman wounded at a bar near the troops’ barracks. A controversy ensued — and continues today — because proof was sketchy, witnesses did not exist, and no soldier came forward, as the president demanded. Perhaps, of course, none had anything to relate, yet the president acted peremptorily, and therein was the controversy.
Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, depicted as Marc Antony, gestures to a group of African American men looking down at one man on a pole stretcher covered with a blanket labeled “Brownsville Battalion” with the number 23 on the side. Caption: Antony: “If you have votes, prepare to shed them now.”
The New Orleans Times-Democrat was one of the South’s newspapers that beat the editorial drum loudest against the cashiered soldiers in the Brownsville Affair. While the shooting death and wounding of two men outside a saloon near Black Army barracks was — and still is — an unsolved matter, cartoonists like Trist Wood were judges and juries all by themselves.
In this cartoon the blacks are portrayed stereotypically, even to a straight razor supposedly favored in internal squabbles, and the Republican (and longtime, preternatural anti-Roosevelt partisan) Senator Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio haranguing them. Oddly — since black votes carried little weight at the time — his motives are cast as electoral pandering.
President Roosevelt drives a steamroller labeled “Message to Congress on the Brownsville Outrage,” flattening a man labeled, “Foraker Negrophile Agitator.”
The New Orleans Times-Democrat, a Southern and therefore reliably Democratic paper with traditional Southern attitudes of the day, had lambasted President Roosevelt when Booker T. Washington was invited to dine at the White House in 1901. In 1906, however, when the Brownsville “incident” erupted — a bartender killed and a policeman wounded in a neighborhood near an Army base with an all-black regiment — the newspaper and its cartoonist Trist Wood pictured President Roosevelt more favorably.
President Roosevelt is worried about his son Kermit’s boils. He also writes about how Congress will vote on his big battleships. Roosevelt also mentions the poor “Tartar” tribe, saying that all they want is to live on a Sioux reservation and have the government supply them. Roosevelt closes the letter with updates on the family.
1907-01-26
One of Theodore Roosevelt’s children thanks William J. Yerby for the letter he sent. The author also writes that African Americans have supported Roosevelt, even in Cincinnati where President Taft had one of the dismissed Brownsville officers appear.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-06-19
Theodore Roosevelt appreciates Warrington Dawson for his letter for Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt and updates him on her recovery and condition. Roosevelt comments that his stance remains the same on the Brownsville affair, its investigation, and his position towards African American soldiers.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-20
President Roosevelt instructs Senator Aldrich that the language of the bill must be clear that it is permissible but not mandatory that the board members may reinstate the members of the 25th Infantry Companies B, C, and D of the United States Army that are innocent of assault and have no criminal knowledge of the Brownsville Affair of 1906. Roosevelt would like Aldrich to show this letter to Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, Francis E. Warren, William Warner, and Joseph Benson Foraker.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1909-01-27
President Roosevelt sends Lyman Abbott letters he wrote to various Senators about the Brownsville incident and a matter concerning Colonel William F. Stewart. Roosevelt asserts his executive authority as President to make determinations about the dismissal and stationing of soldiers, citing past precedents. He also provides his rationale for dismissing the Brownsville soldiers and for refusing to grant Stewart a court of inquiry.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-05-10