The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt by H. W. Brands

Author:H. W. Brands
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442226722
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

October 29, 1903. Washington

To Lyman Abbott

Personal

My dear Dr. Abbott:

After reading the enclosed paper on the rapid evolution of the Jamaica negro, will you send it to your son if he has already gone South?

I had a most interesting talk with the Archbishop of the West Indies the other day. Not long ago I spoke to the English traveler Colquhoun. Our task is more difficult than that of the English in Jamaica, just as our task with the Indians in the West has been more difficult than that of the English in Canada; yet in each case, on the whole, after making every allowance, we have performed the task worse. On the one hand I know how inadvisable it is merely to scold the South. During the time I have been President I do not recall having uttered a public word of bitterness about the South. On the other hand I think it would be worse to let them think that they were blameless, or to let them cast the blame on anyone else.

Yesterday the Episcopal bishops and clergymen called to see me. The Bishops of Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, etc., etc., were all there. Among them was an archdeacon from North Carolina and a clergyman from Maryland, both of them negroes. They came into the White House in line among the rest of the bishops, deacons, and doctors of divinity. Nobody shrank from them; nobody seemed to think it unnatural that I should receive them in the White House. These high prelates of the Episcopal Church brought their wives and daughters along in their company. They did not sit down at table, but they all were received by Mrs. Roosevelt and myself on the same terms. If any of them took any refreshments the colored men doubtless did so too. I wonder whether these same southern bishops and clergymen were shocked when, two years ago, Booker Washington sat down at my table with me. In South Carolina, at Florence, I have just reappointed a negro postmaster with the approval of the entire community. Why South Carolina should go crazy over the appointment of an equally good negro as Collector of the Port of Charleston, I do not know. Why the southerners should be glad to visit the White House in company with a colored archdeacon, and yet feel furious because I received in only slightly more intimate fashion a great colored educator, I am again at a loss to understand.

Senator Gorman, in Maryland, has been doing something very curious. He is conducting his campaign for the moment largely on the race issue. He gave to a certain banker here in Washington, a friend of mine, the enclosed campaign button showing Booker Washington and myself at dinner, asking the banker at the same time for a subscription. I am told by our republicans that he has been very successful by the use of this button and by his addresses, etc., in stirring up the race feeling in Maryland,

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