July 29, 1912

Hon. E.D. Black, President
           Genesee County Agricultural Society,
                      403, The Dryden,
                           Flint, Michigan.

My dear Sir:
       In the absence of Senator Dixon, I beg to acknowledge
the receipt of the invitation to Colonel Roosevelt, to address the
citizens of Genesee County, and your county fair, during the week
of August 26th to 30th.  I have taken the liberty of forwarding
the invitation to Colonel Roosevelt, in New York.
             With best wishes,
                                Very truly yours,

MMcC/RRTHE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY
25,000 OFFICES IN AMERICA.  CABLE SERVICE TO ALL THE WORLD
THEO. N. VAIL, PRESIDENT                         BELVIDERE BROOKS, GENERAL MANAGER

RECEIVER'S No.                    TIME FILED                         CHECK

SEND the following message subject to the terms }
on back hereof, which are hereby agreed to }

                                                                            [July 29, 1912]

JUDGE OSCAR R. HUNDLEY, BIRMINGHAM, ALA.

PROPER TIME FOR YOU TO SHOW FACT IS THIS VERY DAY.  WIRE ME OR
WRITE ME IMMEDIATELY CONCISE UNEQUIVOCAL STATEMENT SHOWING THAT
HILLES STATEMENTS ARE DELIBERATE FALSEHOODS!  THIS IS IMPORTANT.
                                                 THEODORE ROOSEVELT

21282
Form No. 1511.  NIGHT MESSAGE
     THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY.
                             INCORPORATED
24,000 OFFICES IN AMERICA.  CABLE SERVICE TO ALL THE WORLD
            ROBERT C. CLOWRY, President and General Manager
        Receiver's No.          Time Filed                  Check

SEND the following night message subject to the    }
terms on back hereof, which are hereby agreed to.}

                                                      [July 29, 1912]

ISAAC L. HUNT
                 ADAMS, N.Y.

Greatly pleased with your speech and should like to see you.
Could you lunch with me Outlook office New York Tuesday next
one o'clock,

                                 THEODORE ROOSEVELT


21283         READ THE NOTICE AND AGREEMENT ON BACKJuly 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr. Allen:
Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness [and?]
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately.   You
are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the
right solution.
Faithfully yours,



Mr. Frank G. Allen,
Malina, Ill.




[484]back of me, and I [??]
recall me whenever they ceased to be back of me.
With hearty thanks,
                               Faithfully yours,

Judge Charles F. Amidon



                                                      July 30th, 1912.

Dear Judge:

           Naturally your letter pleased me very much. Personally I
would like to have it open for a man to be elected as President
often as the people wanted him. But I would not permit this un[less?]
we had Presidential preferential primaries, strict corrupt prac[tices?]
acts, and acts forbidding office holders doing any more than v[oting?]
In addition, my dear Judge, I have more and more come to the be[lief?]
that it would be a good thing to apply the principle of the re[?]
to the Presidency. I knew that if I were President again I sho[uld?]
understand that I could do nothing useful unless I had the peop[le?]
back of me, and I should be perfectly willing that they should
recall me whenever they ceased to be back of me.
             With hearty thanks,
                           Faithfully yours,



Judge Charles F. Amidon
July 20th, 1912.

My dear Mr. Bentley:
Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness [and]
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately. You
are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the
right solution.
Faithfully yours,


Mr E. B. Bentley,
Clinton, Ill.July 30th, 1913.

My dear Mr Brewer:
Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness and
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately. You
are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the 
right solution.
Faithfully yours,


Mr E. A. Brewer,
Carterville, Ill.July 30th, 1912.

Dear Mr Child:
       I remember rather dimly writing such a letter as that
of which Connally speaks, but it seems to me that the best letter
of mine to quote is the one I wrote in October, 1908, of which I
enclose a copy. You can give it to Connelly and also tell him to
communicate with C.P. Connolly, the magazine writer, who has a
letter that I wrote him many years ago which might be of interest.
     Bird and Fesdick are fine men, but curioisly [sic] enough in
view of the Catholic feeling against me, the man whom I personally,
if I were consulted, would rather see as our candidate for Governor
would be John Sullivan.  Of course whatever you Massachusetts
people do will be satisfactory to me, but it seems to me that if
you run a man like Sullivan for Governor, and then announced for
Senator a man like Bird or Fesdick, or someone of that kind, you
would reach a solution.
           Sincerely yours,

Richard Washburn Child Esq.,
     Boston, Mass,


7089July 20th, 1912.

My dear Mr. Chisholm:

Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has  
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness and
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately.   You
are on of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the 
right solution.

Faithfully yours,



Mr. J. T. Chisholm,
Bloomington, Ill.


[*6462*]July 30th, 1912.
My dear Mr Cole:
That is an awfully nice letter of yours and I appreciate
it. I do not think it would be well for you to resign and [???]
for me. At any rate, not unless things assume a different [???]
I am glad you like Mr Harris. I have been in close touch with
My one aim is to prevent the new movement getting into the [???]
of disgruntled office seekers and political adventurers, and
although you are a Republican, I hope you will understand what
mean when I say that in the ex-Confederate States, outside of
Tennessee and North Carolina, our hope for the new party must
come from having its leadership include more ex-Democrats then
ex-Republicans.
Faithfully yours,

Mr D Clinton Cole.

7548July 30th 1912.

My dear Mr. Cooper:
Mrs. Roosevelt and I remember you well, and we
appreciate your letter and thank you for it.
Faithfully yours,



Mr. A. M. Cooper,
925 Eighteen Street,
Washington, D.C.


7608July 30th, 1912

My dear Mr. Cowles:
I am really very much obliged for that letter.
Apparently Poindexter's letter is the same as yours [i]as 
to what shall be done.  I have taken the liberty to hand
your letter to Dixon.
With hearty thanks,
Faithfully yours,


W. H. Cowles, Esq., 
Spokesman Review,
Spokane, Wash.
7658July 30th, 1912.
Dear Croly:
I am both pleased and surprised at your letter. I had [not]
supposed you would pay any attention to the half-jesting remark
I made, but if ever there should be a biography of me there is [no]
one whom I should so like to have write it as you, because I [think]
you understand, as no other literary man does, the kind of thing
I am striving for in politics.
It was a great pleasure to see you the other day.
When this campaign is over I hope to have the chance really to
visit you.
Faithfully yours,

Herbert Croly Esq.

7408July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr. Dowell:

Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness
and wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately.
You are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach
the right solution.

Faithfully yours,



Mr. George W. Dowell,
Du Quoin, Ill.


[*21284*]July 30th, 1912.

My dear Fish:

I look forward to seeing you as soon as you return.
Your son has been a trump.   Most of the provisions you mention
I have included in my platform, but I do not believe it would
be possible as advocate increase of pay for one body of public
servants without advocating increase of pay for the others.
In great haste,

Faithfully yours,




Hon. Hamilton Fish.


[*21285*]July 30th, 1912.

Dear Governor: 

That is fine!   I am very glad that Mitchell and the
colored lawyer of whom you spoke so highly is going as a deleg[?].
Of course I will speak in Rhode Island.   I am extremely pleased 
that you are to be in Chicago, and hope you will second my nom[?]

Faithfully yours,



Hon. Lucius F. C. Garvin,
[Lonsdale?], R. I.


[*21286*]July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr. Hamilton:

Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately.   You
are on of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the
right solution.

Faithfully yours,


Mr. J. L. Hamilton,
Hoopeston, Ill.


[*21287*]B. F. Harris Esq.,
Champaign, Ill.

July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Harris:

Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness a[ ]
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately. You
are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the
right solution.
I earnestly hope I may see you to thank you in
person in Chicago. I have brought the Country Life Commissi[ ]
into my speech.

Faithfully yours,



B. F. Harris Esq.,
Champaign, Ill.



[*21288*]July 30th 1912.

My dear Sir:
The story in the "Sun" is of course a willful and
deliberate falsehood. I never had any conversation of
the kind mentioned with Dr. Abbott, or with any other
human being, and I never held with anyone any conversation
even remotely resembling it. Moreover, Mr Abbott
never presented any contract with me of any kind, and I
never signed any contract or considered any contract, and
I never have had and have not now any contract with The 
Outlook. I now have what I always have had with Dr.
Abbott and The Outlook people an understanding that as
long as they wish to have me, and as long as I wish to
remain, I will continue as associate editor, but that
they can get rid of me at any time, and I can leave at
any time. It is worth while to consider these facts in
connection with the story given in The Sun which you
quoted. The Sun story is that Dr. Abbott in January 1909
presented me a contract to associate myself with The
Outlook for five years, but that I  insisted upon having
it changed to four years. The facts are:

212892

1. That neither Dr. Abbott nor anyone else connected
with The Outlook ever called upon me in January11909
or at any other time with any such proposal.

2. That I never said to Dr Abbott or to anyone else
anything even remotely resembling what, according to the
Sun, I am alleged to have said.

3. That I never was asked to agree and never did 
agree to stay with The Outlook for four years or five
years or one year or thirty days of for any other period of
time whatever.

4. That no contract was ever presented to me to sign,
and that therefore I never either signed such a contract or
refused to sign it or suggested any alteration to one.

5. That there is not and has not been at any time any
contract between The Outlook and myself, or any understanding
or request for an understanding or agreement of any kind, sort
or description, or request for an agreement of any kind, sort
or description that I should continue for any specified time
whatever in connection with The Outlook.

Now of course when a story such as that you quote is so
minute and circumstantial a falsehood it is quite impossible

212903
that it can be circulated by accident. I do not know whether
the letter in the Sun was written in the Sun's office, or at
Philadelphia, as it purports to be, but I call your attention
to what it says at the end about the story and about myself.
It says: "This story may or may not be new, but following the
events it does not seem unreasonable to believe it. Anything
is in order that will help to put this man (Roosevelt)" in a 
false position before the people of the United States. In
other words, the Sun deliberately circulates a story as to the
truth of which it admits itself to be ignorant, on the ground
that anything, including the circulation of malicious
falsehoods, is in order if it can prejudice the people against
me. Such conduct needs no comment, and it is absolutely
typical of the average New York or Philadelphia trust-controlled
paper, and of the financial and political leaders who are
opposing the progressive movement.

Very truly yours,

Mr C. S. Hawkins,
Union League Club,
Philadelphia, Pa.

21291July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Iglehart:

Will you communicate with Senator Beveridge on
that matter?  His address is Indianapolis, Ind.

Faithfully yours,

Dr F. C. Iglehart,
110 East 125th Street,
New York City.

21292July 30th, 1912.

Private and Confidential.

My dear Mr Jennings:
You are very kind and I appreciate your thoughtful
courtesy.  I am sorry that Booker Washington is for Taft, but
cannot be helped. The effort to build up a Republican Party in
the South composed mainly of negroes had from the beginning the
support of many good and sincere men. It was tried for forty-five years, it did not do one particle of good, and on the 
contrary it did real and lasting mischief to the negroes themselves
and the Southern whites, and to the Republican Party of 
the North, being the chief cause why the latter came to smash
at Chicago last June.
With great regard,
Sincerely yours,


Mr. Ryerson W. Jennings.

21293July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Kespohl:
Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how sober courage, steadfastness and
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately. You
are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the 
right solution.
Faithfully yours,


Mr Julius  Kespohl,
Quincy, Ill.


21294July 30th, 1912.

Dear Lee:
That is a mighty nice letter of yours.  I am really
very much pleased with it and so is Mrs Roosevelt.  Now I
did not know that James had written you.  You must be sure
not to take any active part in the campaign, or do anything
that would be in any way likely to cause you trouble.  We
always greatly liked you.

Sincerely yours,

Mr C. B. Lee,
942 S Street N. W.,
Washington, D. C.

21295July 30th 1912.

PRIVATE: NOT FOR PUBLICATION

My dear Mr Maxwell:
Most certainly I will take up the question of
equality of opportunity and justice for the negro, and in
this progressive convention I [?] this moment endeavoring 
to get a representation of the colored men of the
North such as never has been before in any convention.
But, my dear Mr Maxwell, you must not forget that there
is another side upon which we must also insist.  The
Republican Party has been ruined, it has been kept from
becoming a progressive party because of the votes of the 
"rotten borough" Republican delegates from the Southern
States where for forty-five years we have striven to get
a Republican Party composed almost exclusively of negroes
with the result that the negro has not been benefitted,
the white men of the South have been kept solid, and
finally, that the Republican Party has been destroyed.
If the negro delegates last month had been willing to
stand by the progressive cause, and follow the lead of
the great Republican States, the Republican Party would
now be the genuine progressive party of the country; but

212962

seven-eighths of the negro delegates, and about the same
proportion of the white men representing negro districts
in the South, went for Mr Taft.  It is a very hard and
difficult question.  I do not blame the colored men in 
question.  I know that they simply have not had the
chance that the colored men of the North have had.  I
want to get them that chance; and at the same time I do 
not wish to try to get it for them in ways that hurt
them, that hurt the white men of the South, and that ruin
any National Party with which they are connected.
         
Pray treat this letter as private.
                                 
Faithfully yours,

Mr Wm. H. Maxwell,                  
453 North Fifth Street,                                  
Newark, N. J.

21297July 30th, 1912.

Dear Medill:
Many thanks for your letters. I have written to
all these gentlemen a line of hearty regards and appreciation.
Now, you old trump, remember that I only wrote about
that third ticket to you and to Bert, and to one or two other
men, each of whom had written me in a way that made it
absolutely necessary for me to answer. I do not want to thrust
my advice forward, but when I was written to I had to state my
position, the position I have taken everywhere that unless men
came out definitely for us I did not see how we could avoid
nominating a complete third party ticket. Of course there are
exceptional States where this may not have to be done. Wisconsin,
California, Kansas, for instance, and South Dakota. But from
you I understood clearly that Illinois was not such an exception,
and yet even in Illinois I only answered questions put to me.
Do you mean that you want another message from me, or was the
one I already wrote you all right? Let me know by wire if it
was not.
Sincerely yours,


Hon. Medill McCormick.

21298July 30th, 1912.

Dear Mr Nelson:
I am with you in principle on both the points you raise.
I am with you on the question of the State paying the election
expenses right away now. I have always stood for that course as
the only one to give the poor man a fair chance in politics.

Your other idea is new, but I have long been feeling my way
to the same conclusion. A lawyer is not like a doctor. No real good
for the community comes from the development of legalism, from the
development of that kind of ability shown by great corporation
lawyers who lead our bar, whereas good does come from medical
development. The high-priced lawyer means when reduced to its
simplest expression, that justice tends to go to the man with the
longest purse. But the proposal is such a radical one that I do
not know how it would be greeted, and it is something we shall 
have to fight for later.

Good luck to you always, my dear Colonel. I greatly
regret that Hadley was so foolish as not to come with us.

Sincerely yours,


Colonel W. R. Nelson.

21299July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Reichenbach:

I appreciate your letter so much that I must
send you just a line of personal acknowledgment.

Faithfully yours,

Mr Harry Reichenbach,
1451 Broadway,
New York City.

21300July 30th, 1912.

Dear George:
              
This will introduce to you Mr Barrett Philip,
who has just called in and offered his services in any
way he can be useful during the present campaign.  I
wish you would see him and talk over the matter fully
with him.
                                   
Always yours,

George E. Roosevelt Esq.

21301July 30th 1912.

Dear George:
           
This is to introduce Mr Paul V. Bunn, a very old
and valued friend of mine.  He is a North Carolina
ex-Democrat.  He is a mighty efficient man, and four-square 
in every way.  From sheer disinterestedness he
wants to help the party.  Use him.
                               
Ever yours,

Mr. George Roosevelt,             
Manhattan Hotel, New York.

21302July 30th, 1912.

My dear Judge:
                  
Many thanks for your letter.  I will speak to
you at Chicago about the matter.  Of course I know nothing 
of the feud between Messrs Wallace and Pierce.
               
Good luck always!
                                             
Faithfully yours,

Judge J. L. Stevens,            
Boone, Iowa.

21303July 30th, 1912.

My dear Doctor:
                    
It is a very real pleasure to get your letter and
the clipping.  Good luck to you and hearty thanks.
                                      
Faithfully yours,

Dr Charles Talmage,              
Des Moines, Iowa.

21304July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Thompson:
                   
That is such a nice letter of yours that I must
thank you personally.  I have at once sent your note to the 
Committee on Platforms.
                                        
Faithfully yours,

Mr S. A. Thompson,        
Washington, D. C.

21305July 30th 1912.

My dear Mr Ambassador:

I will make the engagements leave me at home on the
28th! Accordingly I shall hope to see both the Baroness
and you at lunch on that day. If you choose to come by
train, you can take one leaving Pennsylvania Station, New 
York, at 11 o'clock for Oyster Bay, but let me very
strongly urge that you get a motor and come out in that
way, for our train service is not good. I very greatly 
wish to see you both, and especially to see you both in
my own house.

Very sincerely yours,

Baron von Hengelmuller,
Barharbor, Maine.

21306July 30th, 1912.

My dear Sir:          
Mr Roosevelt desires me to thank you for your letter 
and the enclosure. He is a Contributing Editor to The Outlook 
and has nothing whatever to do with the acceptance of articles 
for publication in that magazine. Such matters are in the hands
of the Managing Editor, and if you so desire you can get into 
communication with him at The Outlook office.                      
Faithfully yours,
                                                                        
Secretary


Mr S. H. Whaley,                     
St Augustine, Fla.

21307July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Wilbur:
Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness and
wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately. You
are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the
right solution.                                  
Faithfully yours,


Mr F. S. Wilbur,  
322 Broadway,       
East St Louis, Ill.

21308July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Williams:
Believe me, I appreciate how hard the situation has
been in Illinois, and how much sober courage, steadfastness
and wisdom has been needed, in order to meet it adequately. You
are one of the men who has rendered it possible to reach the
right solution.
Faithfully yours,


Mr J. T. Williams,
Sterling, Ill.

21309July 30th, 1912.

My dear Mr Winslow:
                  
Certainly you can read that letter as you suggest,
only do not publish it.
                                   
Faithfully yours,

Mr Wentworth Byron Winslow,   
331 Madison Avenue,                
New York City.

21310[*S*]
July 31st, 1912.

Dear Mr Barnard:
I hated not to send the telegram you requested, but
such a multitude of requests have come to me to write and
wire progressive papers that it has become possible no longer
to yield to them, simply because I cannot yield to any and re[?]
others, and if I wrote all it would be a little absurd. So
pray treat this as purepy private and not for publication. I
congratulate you and wish you all possible success in starting
your new progressive paper.
Faithfully yours,


Mr. E. B. Barnard,
Progressive Party Club,
St. Louis, Mo.[*Mich*]

July 31st, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for the very courteous
invitation which you sent to him through Senator Dixon, on behalf
of the citizens of Genesee County, Michigan, to speak at the [annual?]
fair during the week of August 26 to 30th. He will hand the [letter?]
over to the gentlemen who are arranging his speaking dates, as of
course he is entirely in the hands of his managers, and anything
which is done in the way of entering into speaking engagements
has to be done through them as otherwise there would be complic[ation?]
and crossing of dates.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Mr E. D. Black,
Flint, Mich.July 31st, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your very
courteous letter and to say that the best plan will be to send
you a copy of the speech to which you refer, which he delivered 
in Peoria in October 1910.  In this speech you will see just 
what attitude Mr Roosevelt took and I feel sure that you and 
your friend will thoroughly agree with the position.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Mr Ernest Bystrum,
362 State Street,
Brooklyn, N. Y.
July 31st, 1912.

My dear Sir:
I wish it were possible for me to accept the very kind
vitation you extend to me to deliver an address to the Grand [?]
of the Republic at Exposition Park, Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania
August 20th next. There are few things that I should like to [do?]
more than attend this Twenty-Ninth Annual Reunion of the North
Western Association of the G. A. R., and I have sent your letter
to the men who are arranging my speaking dates. Of course it
would not do for me personally to make such dates as they might
conflict with those already made. All I can do is to place your
letter in the hands of the gentlemen I have mentioned, and this
I will do straightaway, although I fear it will be impossible [to?]
arrange the date.
Faithfully yours,


Mr E. D. Comstock.

7610July 31st, 1912.

My dear Mr Dewey:
                
There are few things I should enjoy more than
spending a few days in just the way you mention, but at
the present time it is utterly out of the question for me 
even to think of interrupting the work I have on hand.
              
With many thanks,
                                             
Faithfully yours,

Melvil Dewey Esq.,               
Lake Placid Club,                     
Essex Co., New York.

21311July 31st, 1912.

Dear Green:
That is a very nice letter of yours and I appreciate it.
Whether I will be able to stay with you when I come to Providence
this time I cannot say, but in any event it will only be a [pleasure?]
deferred. When I see you I must tell you how amused the children
were over Ted's correspondence with you.                              
Sincerely yours,


W. Francis Green Esq.,              
14 John Street,                    
Providence, R. I.

21312July 31st, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your letter and
also for your courtesy in submitting him that cartoon. He only
wishes he knew some paper that would be willing to publish it,
but unfortunately he does not. I am therefore taking the liberty
of returning it to you, in case you may desire to have it back.                                     
Faithfully yours,
                                                              
Secretary


Mr Harry C. Hubbard,                
Indianapolis, Ind.

21313July 31st, 1912.

Dear Ike:
              
You can hardly imagine how glad I am to have you with
me in this fight.  Some time soon you must come down and see
me at Oyster Bay.  I want to show you among other things the
framed photograph of Billy O'Neil, Walter Howe, George Spinney
and you and me.
                                         
Faithfully yours,

Isaac L. Hunt Esq.,   
Adams, New York.

21314July 31st, 1912.

My dear Mr Keeley:    
Some few weeks ago you were good enough to send me
a file of the Tribune, and I now write to ask you if you would
be so kind as to send me the copies from June 17th up to the
present date. I am making a file of Mr Roosevelt's statements,
and would be much obliged by your sending these copies.    

Thanking you, I am,

Sincerely yours,


James Keeley Esq.

21315July 31st, 1912.

Dear Dean Kirchway:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to say that he would be glad
if you would let Mr Peter Clark Macfarlane, Yardley, Penna.
have a copy of the draft of the platform as soon as it has
been completed.
Faithfully yours,
                             
Secretary


Dean G. W. Kirchway,             
908 St Nicholas Avenue,                        
New York City.

21316July 31st, 1912.

My dear Dean Kirchway:
                
The enclosed explains itself.  Will you not get 
Mr Harvier to see you as soon as possible.  It would be
a pity to have a break at this time.
                                    
Faithfully yours,

Dean G. W. Kirchway,               
908 St Nicholas Avenue,                        
New York City.

21317July 31st, 1912.
My dear Sir:
There is nothing that can be done at present about
that matter. It is something that will have to be settled
by long consultation between the managers of Mr Roosevelt's
campaign.
With thanks for your letter.
Faithfully yours,

Mr Frank Leake, 
Philadelphia, Pa.

[*21318*]July 31st, 1912.

My dear Joe:                
I thank you for your note and appreciate it.             
Faithfully yours,


Mr Joseph Lee,            
Knoxville, Md.

21319July 31st, 1912.

My dear Mr. Macfarlane:
                
That is a mighty nice letter of yours.  I thank you
for your personal words and kindness.  I have asked that you 
be sent at once my speech in which I put down my platform, so 
to speak, and also the rough draft of the platform which is
being prepared under Dean Kirchway.
                                 
Faithfully yours,

Peter Clark Macfarlane,                
Yardley, Penna.

21320July 31st, 1912.

Dear Medill:
                  
Herewith is a letter from Paul Kellogg, who 
is editor of the Survey.  Mr Roosevelt deems it very important
Mr Kellogg should obtain a good seat among the newspaper men in
the Convention and he will be glad if you will see that Mr
Kellogg's request is granted.
                                           
Faithfully yours,

Hon. Medill McCormick,              
Congress Hotel,                           
Chicago, Ill.

[*[no enc.]*]

21322July 31st, 1912.

Dear Mr Metcalf:
                 
That is fine!  I am delighted to hear the news about
the Convention.  Good luck and many thanks!  I have sent
your telegram immediately to Senator Dixon.
                                        
Faithfully yours,

Mr James A. Metcalf,          
Glendive, Mont.

21323July 31, 1912.

Dear Cal:
Many thanks for your letter. I shall be amused if
Hadley comes on.
That clause in the currency platform has been
changed as you suggest, making it "Government" instead of
"people".                             
Sincerely yours,


Mr J. C. O'Laughlin,            
1403 F Street,                     
Washington, D. C.

21324July 31st, 1912.

My dear Palmer:      
That is a mighty nice letter of yours and I sincerely
thank you for it. But, my dear fellow, I could not help 
laughing at your speaking of my possibly forgetting you. Why,
Heavens and Earth! I know intimately every side of your many
sided activities. Believe me, I very heartily appreciate your
letter.                        
Sincerely yours,


Frederick Palmer Esq.,              
Heaton Hall,                     
Stockbridge, Mass.

21325July 31st, 1912.

Dear Mr Perkins:
                
Here is a drawing of the head of a Moose which
might be very effective if made into a button.  I send it
to you in case you think it might help in the campaign.
                                    
Faithfully yours,

George W. Perkins Esq.

21326July 31st, 1912.

My dear Mr Shonts:                  
That is a nice photograph of yours and I thank you
for it.  Well!  we both have had our hands in the Panama Canal
work, didn't we?  And it is mighty satisfactory to think of it                      
Faithfully yours,


Theodore Perry Shonts, Esq.,                    
115 Broadway,                         
New York City.

21327July 31st, 1912.

Dear Smith:
Of course I will appear in Connecticut, and I will try 
come on Labor Day. But I do not think that you ought to ask
for half-a-dozen other short speeches that day, or that I oug
deliver them. Could you not get the wage-workers together so
where, or could I not make one long speech to bth the farmer
and laborers on Labor Day? I am willing to make two speeches
but if I am to begin to make car-tail canvas on September 1st
I am simply done for, for I shall have to continue it to the 

Always yours,


Emerson Walker Smith Esq.,
620 Connecticut Mutual Building,
Hartford, Conn.

21328July 31st, 1912.

My dear Mr. Smitherman:
                 
I must send you just a line of personal thanks and 
acknowledgement for your letter.  I appreciate your courtesy
in writing.
                                           
Sincerely yours,

Mr. A. J. Smitherman,               
The Muskogee Star,                       
Muskogee, Okla.

21329July 31st, 1912.

Dear Father Vattmann:
                 
Of course I understand exactly your position.  Do
let me see you when I am in Chicago.
                                     
Faithfully yours,

Father E. J. Vattmann,           
Wilmette, Ill.

21330July 31st, 1912.

My dear Governor:
That is simply fine! I am really obliged to you
for your letter and for the enclosure. I wish I could see
you in person.
Good luck!
Faithfully yours,


Hon. Albert J. Wallace,            
Los Angeles, Cal.

21331July 31st, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to acknowledge receipt of your
letter and to say that the matter to which you refer was thras[hed?]
out in every detail in repeated Presidential reports and before
Congress during the time that Mr Taft was Governor of the
Philippines and Secretary of War, and when he visited Rome in
connection with the matter referred to. The whole of the info[rmation?]
will be found in Mr Roosevelt's various messages and reports.                  
Faithfully yours,
                                                                      
Secretary


Mr A. L. Woodford,            
Burlington, Kan.

21332[*[1912 July ?]*]

WALTER CLYDE JONES, CONGRESS HOTEL, CHICAGO, ILL.
SATURDAY
VERY GLAD TO SEE YOU TOMORROW BETWEEN FIVE AND SIX.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

21334[*[1912 July ?]*]

Form 260
THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY
INCORPORATED
25,000 OFFICES IN AMERICA. CABLE SERVICE TO ALL THE WORLD
THEO. N. VAIL, PRESIDENT         BELVIDERE BROOKS, GENERAL MANAGER

RECEIVER'S No.    TIME FILED    CHECK
SEND the following message subject to the terms}
on back hereof, which are agreed to}

I. B. READ, ASHTABULA, OHIO.
YOU COULD OBTAIN SUCH INFORMATION FROM CHAIRMAN COMMITTEE ON
ARRANGEMENTS NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE CONVENTION CHICAGO ILLINOIS.
PLEASE WIRE HIM.
FRANK HARPER SECERETARY TO MR ROOSEVELT

21335[*[1912 July ?]*]

JUDGE JOHN L. STEVENS, SAVOY HOTEL, DES MOINES, IOWA.

SENT YOU LONG NIGHT MESSAGE LAST NIGHT ADDRESSED TO BOONE.
HOPE YOU GET IT ALL RIGHT.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

21336[*[1912 July?]   ]*]

FREDERICK BOYD STEVENSON, BROOKLYN EAGLE, BROOKLYN, N. Y.

COULD SEE YOU THIS AFTERNOON BETWEEN THREE AND FOUR.                                                                                     
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

21337[*[1912   July?]*]

GEORGE E. VINCENT, CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK

VERY SORRY UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCEPT FURTHER ENGAGEMENTS OF   ANY    
KIND OR SORT. GREATLY APPRECIATE YOUR ASKING ME.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT


21338August 1st, 1912.
Dear O. K.:
Herewith is a copy of the letter to Mr Harris, which
has been altered by Mr Roosevelt. He wishes me to say that he
has carefully considered your suggestion and he thinks that it
might be wise to carry it out, but he does not feel that it is
well to adopt it. He says that the attack of the kind you fear
will be made on us anyhow and it is very important that in
this letter he should cover the whole case and should state the
real facts. The real facts are exactly as he has put them.
To suppress them would not, he believes, prevent exactly the
same attack being made and it would deprive him of a strong
illustrative argument. He is by no means sure that the letter
will do the cause good, but he is perfectly clear that it must
be written, and that he must take the stand honestly and bravely.
Mr Wardrop is bringing this copy up and I wish you would
let him have, or arrange it so that he can get, a hundred copies
of it. We want those as soon as we can have them.
Sincerely yours,

O. K. Davis Esq.

21339[*Released for Morning papers of
Saturday, Aug. 3, 12*]
1
Sagamore Hill,
August 1st, 1912.
[*Speech in Chicago Coliseum*]
Mr. Julian Harris,
Uncle Remus Magazine,
Atlanta, Georgia.
My dear Mr. Harris:
In pursuance of our conservation I write you this letter. There
is a peculiar fitness in writing it to the son of the man whose work made all
Americans his debtors. Your father possessed genius; and moreover he possessed that gentleness of soul, that broad and tender sympathy with this follow, for the lack of which genius cannot atone. His life and his work tended to bring his fellow-countrymen, North and South, into ever closer relations of good-will and understanding; and surely it should be needless to [???] that the author of "Uncle Remus" and of "Free Joe and the Rest of the World" felt a deep and most kindly interest in the welfare of the negro.
Many letters dealing with the subject of which you spoke to me
have been sent to me within the last few days. These letters, from equally
worthy citizens, take diametrically opposite positions. Those written by
men living in the North usually ask me to insist that we get from the South
colored Delegates to the National Progressive Convention. Those written by
citizens of the South ask that I declare that the new party shall be a white
man's party. I am not able to agree to either proposal.
In this country we cannot permanently succeed except upon the
basis of treating each man on his worth as a man. We can fulfil our high
mission among the nations of the earth, we can do lasting good to ourselves
and to all mankind, only if we so act that the humblest among us, so long as
he behaves in straight and decent fashion, has guaranteed to him under the law his right to life, to liberty, to protection from injustice, his right to enjoy the  fruits of his own honest labor, and his right to the pursuit of happiness
in his own way, so long as he does not trespass on the rights of others.
Our only safe motto is "All men up" and not "Some men down". For us to oppress
213402
any class of our fellow citizens is not only wrong to others but hurtful to ourselves; for in the long run such action is not more detrimental to the oppressed than to those who think that they temporarily benefit by the oppression. Surely no man can quarrel with those principles. Exactly as they should be applied among white men without regard to their difference of creed, or birth-place,
or social station, without regard to whether they are rich men or poor men, men who work with their hands or men who work with their brains; so they should be applied among all men without regard to the color of their skin.
These are the principles to which I think our countrymen should adhere, the objects which I think they should have steadily in mind. There is need
not merely of all our high purpose, but of all our wisdom and patience in
striving to realize them. Above all, it is essential that we should not in su
such a way as to make believe that we are achieving these objects, and yet by
our actions indefinitely postpone the time when it will become even measurably possible to achieve them. For this reason I cannot adopt either of the two diametrically opposite suggestions made to me in the letters of which I have spoken.
I believe that the Progressive Movement should be made from the
beginning one in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding colored man, just as it is in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding
white man. I further believe that the surest way to render the movement impotent to help either the white man or the colored man in those regions of the South where the colored man is most numerous, would be to try to repeat the course that has been followed by the Republican Party in those districts for so many years, or to endeavor in the States in question to build up a Progressive Party by the same methods which in those States have resulted in making the Republican Party worse than impotent.
Henry Ward Beecher once said that the worst enemy of the colored man
was the man who stirred up enmity between the white and colored men who have to
21341
3
live as neighbors. In the South the Democratic machine has sought to keep 
itself paramount by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black; the Republican machine has sought to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man against the white; and surely the time has come when we should understand the mischief in both courses, and should abandon both.
We have made the Progressive issue a moral, not a racial issue. I believe that wherever the racial issue is permitted to become dominant in our pol
politics, it always works harm to both races, but immeasurably most harm to the weaker race. I believe that in this movement only damage will come if we either abandon our ideals on the one hand, or, on the other, fail resolutely to look facts in the face, however unpleasant these facts may be. Therefore I feel that we have to adapt our actions to the actual conditions and actual needs and feelings of each community; not abandoning our principles, but not in one community endeavoring to realize them in ways which will simply cause disaster in that community, although they may work well in another community. Our object must be the same everywhere, but the methods by which we strive to attain it must be adapted to the needs of the several states, or it will never be attained at all.
In many of the States of the Union where there is a considerable
colored population we are able in very fact and at the present moment to bring the best colored men into the movement on the same terms as the white man. In Rhode Island and Maryland, in New York and Indiana, in Ohio and Illinois, in 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to speak only of States of which I have personal knowledge, this is now being done, and from some or all of these states colored delegates will be sent to the National Progressive Convention in Chicago. Let me
point out that the Progressive Party is already, at its very birth, endeavoring
in these States, in its own home, to act with fuller recognition of the
rights of the colored man than ever the Republican party did. Until I was President the white Republicans of the North, although they had loudly insisted
213424
that the colored man should have office with even greater firmness insisted that he should have office only in the South, or at any rate, not in the North. When, for instance, I tried to appoint a colored man to office in Ohio I was wholly unable to get the necessary assent from the white Republican leaders of Ohio, and had to appoint the man in Washington; and in appointing a colored man to a high position in New York I was obliged to do it by main force and against the wish of the entire party organization.  In the Republican
National Conventions the colored members have been almost exclusively from the South, a and the great majority of them have been men of such character that their political activities were merely a source of harm, and of very grave harm, to their own race. We, on the contrary, are hoping to see in the National Progressive 
Convention colored delegates from the very places where we expect to develop our greatest strength, and we hope see these men of such character that their activities shall be of benefit not only to the people at large but especially to their own race. So much for the course we are able to follow in these States; and the citizens of these States can best help the negro race by
doing justice to those negroes who are their own neighbors. In many Northern States there have been lynchings and race riots with sad and revolting accompaniments; 
in many of these States there has been failure to punish such outrageous
conduct and what is even more important, failure to deal in advance
wisely and firmly with the evil conditions, among both black men and the white, which has caused outrages.
There are other States, including the majority of the Southern States
where the conditions are wholly different. Such is to be said for the men who
forty-five years ago, with motives which were for the most part and among most of their number of a lofty and disinterested type, attempted a course of action in those States which in actual practice has lamentably failed to justify itself and I make no attempt at this time to strive to apportion the blame for the failure. It is unwise to revive bitterness by dwelling on the errors and short-comings
21343shortcomings of the past. Let us profit by them, but reproach no man because of them. We are now starting a new movement for the betterment of our people, a movement 
for social and industrial justice which shall be nation-wide, a movement which is to strive to accomplish actual results and not to accept high-sounding phrases as a substitute for deeds. Therefore we are not to be pardoned if at the outset, with the knowledge gained by forty-five years' experience of failure, we repeat the course that has led to such failure, and abandon the effort to make the movement for social and industrial justice really 
nation-wide.
For forty-five years the Republican Party has striven to build up in the Southern States in question a party based on the theory that the pyramid will unsupported stand permanently on its apex instead of on its base. For 
forty-five years the Republican Party has endeavored in these States to build
up a party in which the negro should be dominant, a party consisting almost exclusively of negroes. Those who took the lead in this experiment were actuated by high motives, and no one should now blame them because of what, with the
knowledge they then had and under the then existing circumstances, they strove to do. But in actual practice the result has been lamentable from every standpoint. It has been productive of evil to the colored men themselves; it has been productive only of evil to the white men of the South; and it has worked the gravest injury to, and finally the disruption and destruction of, the great Republican Party itself. In the States in question where the negro predominates in numbers, and in the sections of other States in which he predominates in numbers, 
the Republican Party has in actual fact become practically non-existent
in so far as votes at the polls are concerned. The number of votes cast in
these States and districts for the Republican ticket on Election Day has become negligible. It has long been recognized that these States will never give a Republican electoral vote; that these States or districts will never send a
Republican or a colored man to Congress. The number of colored men in them who hold any elective office of the slightest importance is negligible. In these States and districts the Republican [??????????????????????????????]
213446
States and districts the Republican Party, in actual practice, and disregarding individual exceptions, exists only to serve the purpose of a small group of politicians, for the most part white, but including some colored men, who have not the slightest interest in elections, and whose political activities are confined to securing offices by sending to National Conventions delegations which are controlled by the promise of office or by means even more questionable. Once in four years they send to the National Conventions delegates who represent absolutely nothing in the way of voting strength, and
in consideration of the votes of the delegates thus delivered they endeavor to secure their local offices from any National Republican Administration.
The progress that has been made among the negroes of the South during
these forty-five years has not been made as a result of political effort of the
kind I have mentioned. I has been made as the result of effort along industrial and educational lines. Again allowing for the inevitable exception, it remains true, as one of the wisest leaders of the colored race has himself said,
that the only white man who in the long run, can effectively help the colored 
man is that colored man's neighbor. There are innumerable white men in the
South sincerely desirous of doing justice to the colored man, of helping him
upward on his difficult path, of securing him just treatment before the law;
white men who set their faces sternly against lynch law and mob violence, who attack all such abuses as peonage, who fight to keep the school funds equitably divided between white and colored schools, who endeavor to help colored men to become self-supporting and useful member of the community. The
white men who live elsewhere can best help the colored men in the South by
upholding the hands those white men of the South who are thus endeavoring
to benefit and to act honestly by the colored men with whom they dwell in 
community neighborhood and with whose children their children will continue to dwell in community neighborhood. Actual experience for nearly half a century has
213457
has shown that it is futile to endeavor to substitute for such action by the
white man to his colored neighbor, action by outside white men, action which
painful experience has shown to be impotent to help the colored man, but which 
does irritate the white man whom nevertheless it cannot control. We are not facing theories, we are facing actual facts, and it is well for us to remember
Emerson's statement that in the long run the most unpleasant truth is a safer travelling companion than the pleasantest falsehood.
The action of the Republican machine in the South, then, in endeavoring to keep alive a party based only on negro votes, where, with few exceptions, the white leaders are in it only to gain reward for themselves by
trafficking in negro votes, has been bad for the white men of the South, whom it has kept solidified in an unhealthy and unnatural political bond, to their great detriment and to the detriment of the whole Union; and it has been bad for the colored men of the South. The effect on the Republican Party has long been disastrous, and has finally proved fatal. There has in the past been much venality in Republican National Conventions in which there was an active contest for the nomination for President, and this venality has been almost exclusively among the rotten-borough delegates, and for the most part among the 
negro delegates from these Southern States in which there was no real Republican Party. Finally, in the Convention at Chicago last June, the break-up of the Republican Party was forced by those rotten-borough delegates from the South. In the Primary States of the North the colored men in most places voted substantially 
as their white neighbors voted. But in the Southern States, where there 
was no real Republican Party, and where the colored men, or whites selected purely by colored men, were sent to the Convention, representing nothing but their own greed for money or office the majority was overwhelmingly 
anti-progressive. Seven-eighths of the colored men from these 
rotten-borough districts upheld by 
their votes the fraudulent actions of the men who in that convention defied
and betrayed the will of the mass of the plain people of the party. In spite of the hand-picked delegates chosen by the bosses in certain Northern States, in spite
213468
of the scores of delegates deliberately stolen from the rank and file of the party by the corrupt political machine which dominated the National Committee 
and the Convention itself, there would yet have been no hope of reversing in the National Convention the action demanded by the overwhelming majority of the Republicans who had a chance to speak for themselves in their primaries, had it 
not been for the two hundred and fifty votes or thereabouts sent from the state in which there is no Republican Party. For forty-five years everything
has been sacrificed to the effort to build up in these states a Republican
Party which 
should be predominately and overwhelmingly negro, and now those for whom the effort has been made turned and betrayed that party itself. It would be not 
merely foolish but criminal to disregard the teachings of such a lesson. The disruption and destruction of the Republican Party, and the fact that it has been rendered absolutely imponent as an instrument for anything but mischief in the country at large has been brought about in large part by the effort to 
pretend that in the Southern States a sham is a fact, by the insistence upon treating the ghost party in the Southern States as a real party, by refusing to
face the truth, which is that under existing conditions there is not and 
cannot be in the Southern States a party based primarily upon the negro vote and under negro leadership or the leadership of white men who derive their power solely from negroes. With these forty-five years of failure of this 
policy in the South before our eyes, and with catastrophe thereby caused to a great National Party not yet six weeks distant from us, it would be criminal for the Progressives to repeat the course of action responsible for such 
disaster, such failure, such catastrophe. The loss of instant representation by southern colored delegates is due to the fact that the sentiment of the Southern negro collectively has prostituted by dishonest professional
politicians both white and black, and the machinery does not exist (and can
never be created as long as present political conditions are continued) which
can secure what a future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the
right of political expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the
213479
intelligence integrity and self-respect which justify such right of political expression in his white neighbor.
We face certain actual facts, sad and unpleasant facts, but facts
which must be faced if we are to dwell in the world of realities and not 
of shame, and if we are to try to make things better by deeds and not merely
to delude ourselves by empty words. It would be much worse than useless to try to build up the Progressive Party in these Southern States where there is no real Republican Party, by appealing to the negroes or to the men who in the past have derived their sole standing from leading and manipulating the negroes. As a 
matter of fact and not of theory all that could possibly result from such action would be to create another impotent little corrupt faction of would-be 
office holders, of delegates whose expenses to conventions had to be paid, and whose votes sometimes had to be bought. No real good could come from such action to any man, black or white; the negro would be hurt and not helped throughout the Union; the white man would be hurt in the South, the Progressive 
Party would be damaged irreparably at the beginning. I earnestly believe that by appealing to the best white men in the South, the men of justice and of vision as well as of strength and leadership, and by frankly putting the movement
in their hands from the outset we shall create a situation by which the 
colored men of the South will ultimately get justice as it is not possible for them to get justice if we are to continue and perpetuate the present conditions. The men to whom we appeal are the men who have stood for securing the colored man
in his rights before the law, and they can do for him what neither the Northern white man nor the colored men themselves can do. Our only wise course from 
the stand-point of the colored man himself is to follow the course that we 
are following toward him in the North and to follow the course we are following toward him in the South.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT

21348Released for MORNING PAPERS of Saturday, August 3, 1912.
O. K. Davis,
National Progressive Headquarters,
Manhattan Hotel, New York City.
Sagamore Hill,
August 1st, 1912.
Mr. Julian Harris,
Uncle Remus Magazine,
Atlanta, Georgia.
My dear Mr. Harris:
In pursuance of our conservation I write you this letter. 
There is a peculiar fitness in writing it to the son of the man
whose work made all Americans his debtors. Your father possessed 
genius; and moreover he possessed that gentleness of soul, that 
broad and tender sympathy with this follow, for the lack of which 
genius cannot atone. His life and [his] work tended to bring his 
fellow-countrymen, North and South, into ever closer relations of good-will and understanding; and surely it should be needless to say 
that the author of "Uncle Remus" and of "Free Joe and the Rest of 
the World" felt a deep and most kindly interest in the welfare of 
the negro.
Many letters dealing with the subject of which you spoke 
to me have been sent to me within the last few days. These letters, from equally worthy citizens, take diametrically opposite positions.
Those written by men living in the North usually ask me to insist 
that we get from the South colored Delegates to the National Progressive Convention. Those written by citizens of the South ask that I 
declare that the new party shall be a white man's party. I am not 
able to agree to either proposal.
In this country we cannot permanently succeed except upon the
basis of treating each man on his worth as a man. We can fulfil 
our high mission among the nations of the earth, we can do lasting 
213492
good to ourselves and to all mankind, only if we so act that the humblest among us, so long as he behaves in straight and decent fashion, has guaranteed to him under the law his right to life, to liberty, to protection 
from injustice, his right to enjoy the  fruits of his own honest 
labor, and his right to the pursuit of happiness in his own way, so
long as he does not trespass on the rights of others. Our only safe 
motto is "All men up" and not "Some men down". For us to oppress any
class of our fellow citizens is not only wrong to others but hurtful 
to ourselves; for in the long run such action is not more detrimental 
to the oppressed than to those who think that they temporarily benefit 
by the oppression. Surely no man can quarrel with those principles. 
Exactly as they should be applied among white men without regard to
their difference of creed, or birth-place, or social station, without 
regard to whether they are rich men or poor men, men who work with 
their hands or men who work with their brains; so they should be 
applied among all men without regard to the color of their skins.
These are the principles to which I think our countrymen should 
adhere, the objects which I think they should have steadily in mind. 
There is need not merely of all our high purpose, but of all our wisdom 
and patience in striving to realize them. Above all, it is essential 
that we should not in such a way as to make believe that we are achieving these objects, and yet by our actions indefinitely postpone the
time when it will become even measurably possible to achieve them. For
this reason I cannot adopt either of the two diametrically opposite suggestions made to me in the letters of which I have spoken.
I believe that the Progressive Movement should be made from 
the beginning one in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding colored man, just as it is in the interest of every honest, 
industrious, law-abiding white man. I further believe that the surest 
way to render the movement impotent to help either the white man 
213503
or the colored man in those regions of the South where the colored man is most numerous, would be to try to repeat the course that has been followed by the Republican Party in those districts for so many years, or to endeavor in the States in question to build up a Progressive Party by the same methods which in those States have resulted in making the Republican Party worse than impotent.
Henry Ward Beecher once said that the worst enemy of the 
colored man was the man who stirred up enmity between the white and colored men who have to live as neighbors. In the South the Democratic machine has sought to keep itself paramount by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black; the Republican machine has sought to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man against the white; and 
surely the time has come when we should understand the mischief in both courses, and should abandon both.
We have made the Progressive issue a moral, not a racial issue.
I believe that wherever the racial issue is permitted to become dominant in our politics, it always works harm to both races, but immeasurably 
most harm to the weaker race. I believe that in this movement only
damage will come if we either abandon our ideals on the one hand, or, 
on the other, fail resolutely to look facts in the face, however unpleasant 
these facts may be. Therefore I feel that we have to adapt our
actions to the actual conditions and actual needs and feelings of each community; not abandoning our principles, but not in one community endeavoring to realize them in ways which will simply cause disaster in 
that community, although they may work well in another community. Our object must be the same everywhere, but the methods by which we strive to attain it must be adapted to the needs of the several states, or it 
will never be attained at all.
In many of the States of the Union where there is a considerable
213514
colored population we are able in very fact and at the present 
moment to bring the best colored men into the movement on the same 
terms as the white man. In Rhode Island and Maryland, in New York and Indiana, in Ohio and Illinois, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 
to speak only of States [oF] which I have personal knowledge, this is now being done, and from some or all of these states colored delegates 
will be sent to the National Progressive Convention in Chicago. Let me
point out that the Progressive Party is already, at its very birth, 
endeavoring in these States, in its own home, to act with fuller recognition of the rights of the colored man than ever the Republican 
party did. Until I was President the white Republicans of the North, 
although they had loudly insisted that the colored man should have office
with even greater firmness insisted that he should have office only
in the South, or at any rate, not in the North. When, for instance,
I tried to appoint a colored man to office in Ohio I was wholly unable
to get the necessary assent from the white Republican leaders of Ohio,
and had to appoint the man in Washington; and in appointing a colored 
man to a high position in New York I was obliged to do it by main force
and against the wish of the entire party organization.  In the Republican
National Conventions the colored members have been almost exclusively
from the South, and the great majority of them have been man of
such character that their political activities were merely a source of
harm, and of very grave harm, to their own race. We, on the contrary,
are hoping to see in the National Progressive Convention colored
delegates from the very places where we expect to develop our greatest
strength, and we hope see these men of such character that their
activities shall be of benefit not only to the people at large but especially 
to their own race. So much for the course we are able to follow
in these States; and the citizens of these States can best help
213525
the negro race by doing justice to those negroes who are their own 
neighbors. In many Northern States there have been lynching and race
riots with sad and revolting accompaniments; in many of these States 
there has been failure to punish such outrageous conduct and what is
even more important, failure to deal in advance wisely and firmly with 
the evil conditions, among both black man and the white, which has 
caused the outrages.
There are other States, including the majority of the Southern 
States, where the conditions are wholly different. Such is to be said 
for the men of forty-five years ago, with motives which were for the 
most part and among most of their number of a lofty and disinterested 
type, who attempted a course of action in those States which in actual 
practice has lamentably failed to justify itself--and I make no attempt 
at this time to strive to apportion the blame for the failure. It is unwise to revive bitterness by dwelling on the errors and short-comings 
of the past. Let us profit by them, but reproach no man because of them.
We are now starting a new movement for the betterment of our people, a
movement for social and industrial justice which shall be nation-wide,
a movement which is to strive to accomplish actual results and not to
accept high-sounding phrases as a substitute for deeds. Therefore we are
not to be pardoned if at the outset, with the knowledge gained by forty
five years' experience of failure, we repeat the course that has led to
such failure, and abandon the effort to make the movement for social
and industrial justice really nation-wide.
For forty-five years the Republican Party has striven to build
up in the Southern States in question a party based on the theory that
the pyramid will unsupported stand [permanently] on its apex instead of on its base. For forty-five years the Republican Party has endeavored in these States
213536
to build up a party in which the Negro should be dominant, a party consisting almost exclusively of Negroes. Those who took the lead in this experiment were actuated by high motives, and no one should now blame 
them because of what, with the knowledge they then had and under the then existing circumstances, they strove to do. But in actual practice the result has been lamentable from every stand-point. It has been productive 
of evil to the colored men themselves; it has been productive only of 
evil to the white men of the South; and it has worked the gravest injury 
to, and finally the disruption and destruction of, the great Republican 
Party itself. In the States in question where the Negro predominates in numbers, and in the sections of other States in which he predominates in numbers, the Republican Party has in actual fact become practically
non-existent in so far as votes at the polls are concerned. The number of votes cast in these States and districts for the Republican ticket on 
Election Day has become negligible. It has long been recognized that these States will never give a Republican electoral vote; that these States or 
districts will never send a Republican or a colored man to Congress. The number of colored men in them who hold any elective office of the slightest importance is negligible. In these States and districts the Republican 
Party, in actual practice, and disregarding individual exceptions, exists
only to serve the purpose of a small group of politicians, for the
most part white, but including some colored men, who have not the slightest
interest in elections, and whose political activities are confined
securing offices by sending to National Conventions delegations which a
controlled by the promise of office or by means even more questionable.
Once in four years they send to the National Conventions delegates who
represent absolutely nothing in the way of voting strength, and
21354-7-
and in consideration of the votes of the delegates thus delivered they endeavor to secure their local offices from any National Republican Administration.
The progress that has been made among the negroes of the South 
during these forty-five years has not been made as a result of political 
effort of the kind I have mentioned. I has been made as the result of 
effort along industrial and educational lines. Again allowing for the inevitable exception, it remains true, as one of the wisest leaders of the 
colored race has himself said, that the only white man who in the long 
run, can effectively help the colored  man is that colored man's neighbor. There are innumerable white men in the South sincerely desirous of doing justice to the colored man, of helping him upward on his difficult path, of securing him just treatment before the law; white men who set their 
faces sternly against lynch law and mob violence, who attack all such abuses as peonage, who fight to keep the school funds equitably divided between white and colored schools, who endeavor to help colored men to 
become self-supporting and useful member of the community. The white 
men who live elsewhere can best help the colored men in the South by
upholding the hands those white men of the South who are thus endeavoring
to benefit and to act honestly by the colored men with whom they 
dwell in community neighborhood and with whose children their children will continue to dwell in community neighborhood. Actual experience for 
nearly half a century has shown that it is futile to endeavor to substitute 
for such action by the white man to his colored neighbor, action by
outside white men, action which painful experience has shown to be impotent to help the colored man, but which does irritate the white man who 
nevertheless it cannot control. We are not facing theories, we are facing
actual facts, and it is well for us to remember Emerson's statement that
in the long
21355-8-
Mr. Julian Harris
run the most unpleasant truth is a safer travelling companion than 
the pleasantest falsehood.
The action of the Republican machine in the South, then, in
endeavoring to keep alive a party based only on negro votes, where,
with few exceptions, the white leaders are in it only to gain reward
for themselves by trafficking in negro votes, has been bad for the
white men of the South, whom it has kept solidified in an unhealthy
and unnatural political bond, to their great detriment and to the detriment 
of the whole Union; and it has also been bad for the colored
men of the South. The effect on the Republican Party has long been
disastrous, and has finally proved fatal. There has in the past been
much venality in Republican National Conventions in which there was
an active contest for the nomination for President, and this venality
has been almost exclusively among the rotten-borough delegates, and
for the most part among the negro delegates from these Southern
States in which there was no real Republican Party. Finally, in the
Convention at Chicago last June, the break-up of the Republican Party
was forced by those rotten-borough delegates from the South. In the
Primary States of the North the colored men in most places voted
substantially as their white neighbors voted. But in the Southern
States, where there was no real Republican Party, and where the colored
men, or whites selected purely by colored men, were sent to the convention,
representing nothing but their own greed for money or office
the majority was overwhelmingly anti-progressive. Seven-eighths of
the colored men from these rotten-borough districts upheld by their
votes the fraudulent actions of the men who in that convention defied
and betrayed the will of the mass of the plain people of the party.
213569

In spite of the hand-picked delegates chosen by the bosses in certain
northern states, in spite of the scores of delegates deliberately stolen
from the rank and file of the party by the corrupt political machine
which dominated the National Committee and the Convention itself, there
would yet have been no hope of reversing in the National Convention
the action demanded by the overwhelming majority of the Republicans who 
had a chance to speak for themselves in their primaries, had it not been
for the two hundred and fifty votes or thereabouts sent from the states
in which there is no Republican Party. For forty-five years everything
has been sacrificed to the effort to build up in these states a Republican
Party which should be predominately and overwhelmingly negro, and
now those for whom the effort has been made turned and betrayed that
party itself. It would be not merely foolish but criminal to disregard
the teachings of such a lesson. The disruption and destruction of the
Republican Party, and the fact that it has been rendered absolutely impotent
as an instrument for anything but mischief in the country at large
has been broughtnabout in large part by the effort to pretend that in
the Southern States a sham is a fact, by the insistence upon treating
the ghost party in the Southern States as a real party, by refusing to
face the truth, which is that under existing conditions there is not 
and cannot be in the Southern States a party based primarily upon the
negro vote and under negro leadership or the leadership of white men
who derive their power solely from negroes. With these forty-five years
of failuremof this policy in the South before our eyes, and with catatrophe
thereby caused to a great National Party not yet six weeks distant
fromus, it would be criminal for the Progressives to repeat the course
of action responsible for such disaster, such failure, such catastrophe.
[*[*]The loss of instant representation by southern colored delegates is due 
to the fact that the sentiment of the Southern negro collectively has

2135710

been prostituted by dishonest professional politicians both white and
black, and the machinery does not exist (and can never be created as long 
as present political conditions are continued) which can secure what a
future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the right of political
expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the intelligence
integrity and self-respect which justify such right of political expression 
in his white neighbo]r.
We face certain actual facts, sad and unpleasant facts, but facts
which must be faced if we are to dwell in the world of realities and not 
of shams, and if we are to try to make things better by deeds and not merely
to delude ourselves by empty words. [It would be much worse than useless
to try to build up the Progressive Party in these Southern States
where there is nomreal Republican Party, by appealing to the negroes or
to the men who in the past have derived their sole standing from leading
and manipulating the negroes. As a matter of fact and nottof theory
all that could possibly result from such action would be to create another
impotent little corrupt faction of would-be office holders, of delegates
whose expenses to conventions had to be paid, and whose votes sometimes
had to be bought.] No real good could come from such action to any man,
black or white; the negro would be hurt and not helped throughout the Union,
the white man would be hurt in the South, the Progressive Party would be
damaged irreparably at the beginning. [I earnestly believe that by appealing
to the best white men in the South, the men of justice and of vision
as well as of strength and leadership, and by frankly putting the movement
in their hands from the outset we shall create a situation by which
the colored men of the South will ultimately get justice as it is not
possible for them to get justice if we are to continue and perpetuate the
present conditions. The men to whom we appeal are the men who have stood
for securing the colored man in his rights before thevlaw, and they can

2135811
do for him what neither the Northern white man nor the colored men
themselves can do. Our only wise course from the stand-point of
the colored man himself is to follow the course that we are following
toward him in the North and to follow the course we are following toward
him in the South.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT

21359[Released for MORNING PAPERS of Saturday, August 5, 1912.]

[O. K. Davis,]
[National Progressive Headquarters,]
[Manhattan Hotel, New York City.]

see
Speech in [Atlanta, Ga.]
Chicago                                              Sagamore Hill,
Coliseum                                            August 1st, 1912.

Mr. Julian Harris,
Uncle Remus Magazine,
Atlanta, Georgia.

My dear Mr. Harris:
                   In pursuance of our conversation I write you this letter. There is a peculiar fitness in writing it to the son of the man whose work made all Americans his debtors. Your father possessed genius; and moreover he possessed that gentleness of soul, that broad and tender sympathy with his fellows, for the lack of which genius cannot atone. His life and his work tended to bring his fellow-countrymen, North and South, into ever closer relations of goodwill and understanding; and surely it should be needless to say that the author of "Uncle Remus" and of "Free Joe and the Rest of the World" felt a deep and most kindly interest in the welfare of the negro.
                                  Many letters dealing with the subject of which you spoke to me have been sent to me within the last few days. These letters, from equally worthy citizens, take diametrically opposite positions. Those written by men living in the North usually ask me to insist that we get from the South colored Delegates to the National Progressive Convention. Those written by citizens of the South ask that I declare that the new party shall be a white man's party. I am not able to agree to either proposal.
                  In this country we cannot permanently succeed except upon
the basis of treating each man on his worth as a man. We can fulfil 
our high mission among the nations of the earth, we can do lasting

213602

good to ourselves and to all mankind, only if we so act that the humblest   
among us, so long as he behaves in straight and decent fashion, has   
guaranteed to him under the law his right to life, to liberty, to protection    
from injustice, his right to enjoy the fruits of his own honest   
labor, and his right to the pursuit of happiness in his own way, so    
long as he does not trespass on the rights of others. Our only safe    
motto is "All men up" and not "Some men down". For us to oppress any    
class of our fellow citizens is not only wrong to others but hurtful     
to ourselves; for in the long run such action is no more detrimental     
to the oppressed than to those who think that they temporarily benefit  
by the oppression. Surely no man can quarrel with these principles.    
Exactly as they should be applied among white men without regard to    
their difference of creed, or birth-place, or social station, without   
regard to whether they are rich men or poor men, men who work with    
their hands or men who work with their brains; so they should be   
applied among all men without regard to the color of their skins.    
These are the principles to which I think our countrymen should    
adhere, the objects which I think they should have steadily in mind.      
There is need not merely of all our high purpose, but of all our wisdom    
and patience in striving to realize them. Above all, it is essential     
that we should not in such a way as to make believe that we are achieving    
these objects, and yet by our actions indefinitely postpone the     
time when it will become even measureably possible to achieve them. For     
this reason I cannot adopt either of the two diametrically opposite    
suggestions made to me in the letters of which I have spoken.     
I believe that the Progressive Movement should be made from    
the beginning one in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding    
colored man, just as it is in the interest of every honest,    
industrious, law-abiding white man. I further believe that the surest     
way to render the movement impotent to help either the white man    
 
213613

or the colored man in those regions of the South where the colored 
man is most numerous , would be to try to repeat the course that has
been followed by the Republican Party in those districts for so many 
years, or to endeavor in the States in question to build up a Progressive 
Party by the same methods which in those States have resulted 
in making the Republican Party worse than impotent.

Henry Ward Beecher once said that the worst enemy of the 
colored man was the man who stirred up enmity between the white and 
colored men who have to live as neighbors. In the South the Democratic 
machine has sought to keep itself paramount by encouraging the hatred 
of the white man for the black; the Republican machine has sought to 
perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man against the white; and 
surely the time has come when we should understand the mischief in both
courses, and should abandon both.

We have made the Progressive issue a moral, not a racial issue. 
I believe that wherever the racial issue is permitted to become dominant 
in our politics, it always works harm to both races, but immeasurably 
most harm to the weaker race. I believe that in this movement only 
damage will come if we either abandon our ideals on the one hand, or, 
on the other, fail resolutely to look facts in the face, however unpleasant 
these facts may be. Therefore I feel that we have to adapt our 
actions to the actual conditions and actual needs and feelings of each 
community; not abandoning our principles, but not in one community endeavoring 
to realize them in ways which will simply cause disaster in 
that community, although they may work well in another community. Our 
object must be the same everywhere, but the methods by which we strive 
to attain it must be adapted to the needs of the several states, or it 
will never be attained at all.

In many of the States of the Union where there is a considerable

213624

colored population we are able in very fact and at the present 
moment to bring the best colored men into the movement on the same 
terms as the white man. In Rhode Island and Maryland, in New York 
and Indiana, in Ohio and Illinois, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
to speak only of States of which I have personal knowledge, this is
now being done, and from some or all of these states colored delegates
will be sent to the National Progressive Convention in Chicago. Let
me point out that the Progressive Party is already, at its very birth,
endeavoring in these States, in its own home, to act with fuller recognition 
of the rights of the colored man than ever the Republican
party did. Until I was President the white Republicans of the North, 
although they had loudly insisted that the colored man should have office
with even greater firmness insisted that he should have office only 
in the South, or at any rate, not in the North. When, for instance, 
I tried to appoint a colored man to office in Ohio I was wholly unable 
to get the necessary assent from the white Republican leaders of Ohio, 
and had to appoint the man in Washington; and in appointing a colored 
man to a high position in New York I was obliged todo it by main force 
and against the wish of the entire party organization. In the Republican 
National Convention the colored members have been almost exclusively 
from the South, and the great majority of them have been man of 
such character that their political activities were merely a source of 
harm, and of very grave harm, to their own race. We, on the contrary,
are hoping to see in the National Progressive Convention colored 
delegates from the very places where we expect to develop our greatest 
strength, and we hope to see these men of such character that their 
activities shall be of benefit not only to the people at large but especially 
to their own race. So much for the course we are able to follow
in these States; and the citizens of these States can best help 

213635

the negro race by doing justice to those negroes who are their own 
neighbors. In many Northern States there have been lynchings and race 
riots with sad and revolting accompaniments; in many of these States 
there has been failure to punish such outrageous conduct and what is 
even more important, failure to deal in advance wisely and firmly with 
the evil conditions, amongboth black man and the white, which had
caused the outrages.
There are other States, including the majority of the Southern 
States, where the conditions are wholly different. Much is to be said 
for the men who forty-five years ago, with motives which were for the 
most part and among most of their number of a lofty and disinterested 
type,  attempted a course of action in those States which in actual 
practice has lamentably failed to justify itself--and I make no attempt 
at this time to strive to apportion the blame for the failure. It is unwise 
to revive bitterness by dwelling on the errors and short-comings 
of the past. Let us profit by them, but reproach no man because of them. 
We are now starting a new movement for the betterment of our people, a 
movement for social and industrial justice which shall be nation-wide, 
a movement which is to strive to accomplish actual results and not to 
accept high-sounding phrases as a substitute for deeds. Therfore we are 
not to be pardoned if at the outset, with the knowledge gained by forty-five 
years' experience of failure, we repeat the course that has led to 
such failure, and abandon the effort to make the movement for social 
and industrial justice really nation-wide.
For forty-five years the Republican Party has striven to build
up in the Southern States in question a party based on the theory that
the pyramid will unsupported stand permanently on its apex instead of on its base.
For forty-five years the Republican Party has endeavored in these States

213646

to build up a party in which the Negro should be dominant, a party consisting almost exclusively of Negroes. Those who took the lead in this 
experiment were actuated by high motives, and no one should now blame 
them because of what, with the knowledge they then had and under the then 
existing circumstances, they strove to do. Butnin actual practice the result 
has been lamentable from every stand-point. It has been productive
of evil to the colored men themselves; it has been productive only of	. 
evil to the white men of the South; and it has worked the gravest injury 
to, and finally the disruption and destruction of, the great Republican 
Party itself. In the States in question where the Negro predominates in 
numbers, and in the sections of other States in which he predominates in 
numbers, the Republican Party has in actual fact become practically 
non-existent 
in so far as votes at the polls are concerned. The number of 
votes cast in these states and districts for the Republican ticket on 
Election Day has become negligible. It has long been recognized that these 
states will never give a Republican electoral vote; that these states or 
districts will never send a Republican or a colored man to Congress. The 
number of colored men in them who hold any elective office of the slightest importance is negligible. In these states and districts the Republican 
Party, in actual practice, and disregarding individual exceptions, exists 
only to serve the purposes of a small group of politicians, for the 
most part white, but including some colored men, who have not the slightest interest in elections, and whose political activities are confined to 
securing offices by sending to National Conventions delegations which are 
controlled by the promise of office or by means even more questionable. 
Once in four years they send to the National Conventionsdelegates who
represent absolutely nothing in the way of voting strength, and

21365-7-

and in consideration of the votes of the delegates thus delivered they 
endeavor to secure their local offices from any National Republican 
Administration.

The progress that has been made among the negroes of the South 
during these forty-five years has not been made as a result of political 
effort of the kind I have mentioned. It has been made as the result of 
effort along industrial and educational lines. Again allowing for the inevitable 
exception, it remains true, as one of the wisest leaders of the 
colored race has himself said, that the only white man who in the long 
run, can effectively help the colored man is that colored man's neighbor. 
There are innumerable white men in the South sincerely desirous of doing 
justice to the colored man, of helping him upward on his difficult path, 
of securing him just treatment before the law; white men who set their 
faces sternly against lynch law and mob violence, who attack all such abuses 
as peonage, who fight to keep the school funds equitably divided between 
white and colored schools, who endeavor to help the colored man to 
become a self-supporting and useful member of the community. The white 
men who live elsewhere can best help the colored man in the South by upholding 
the hands of those white men of the South who are thus endeavoring 
to benefit and to act honestly by the colored men with whom they 
dwell in community neighborhood and with whose children their children 
will continue to dwell in community neighborhood. Actual experience for 
nearly half a century has shown that it is futile to endeavor to substitute 
for such action by the white man to his colored neighbor, action by 
outside white men, action which painful experience has shown to be impotent 
to help the colored man, but which does irritate the white man whom 
nevertheless it cannot control. We are not facing theories, we are facing 
actual facts, and it is well for us to remember Emerson's statement that 
in the long

21366-8-

Mr. Julian Harris

run the most unpleasant truth is a safer travelling companion than 
the pleasantest falsehood.

The action of the Republican machine in the South, then, in 
endeavoring to keep alive a party based only on negro votes, where, 
with few exceptions, the white leaders are in it only to gain reward 
for themselves by trafficking in negro votes, has been bad for the 
white men of the South, whom it has kept solidified in an unhealthy 
and unnatural political bond, to their great detriment and to the detriment 
of the whole Union; and it has also been bad for the colored 
men of the South. The effect on the Republican Party has long been 
disastrous, and has finally proved fatal. There has in the past been 
much venality in Republican National Conventions in which there was 
an active contest for the nomination for President, and this venality 
has been almost exclusively among the rotten-borough delegates, and 
for the most part among the negro delegates from these Southern 
States in which there was no real Republican Party. Finally, in the 
Convention at Chicago last June, the break-up of the Republican Party 
was forced by those rotten-borough delegates from the South. In the 
Primary states of the North the colored men in most places voted 
substantially as their white-neighbors voted. But in the Southern 
States, where there was no real Republican Party, and where colored 
men, or whites selected purely by colored men, were sent to the convention, 
representing nothing but their own greed for money or office 
the majority was overwhelmingly anti-progressive. Seven-eighths of 
the colored men from these rotten-borough districts upheld by their 
votes the fraudulent actions of the men who in that convention defied 
and betrayed the will of the mass of the plain people of the party. 

213679

In spite of the hand-picked delegates chosen by the bosses in certain 
northern states, in spite of the scores of delegates deliberately stolen 
from the rank and file of the party by the corrupt political machine 
which dominated the National Committee and the Convention itself, there 
would yet have been no hope of reversing in the National Convention 
the action demanded by the overwhelming majority of the Republicans who 
had a chance to speak for themselves in their primaries, had it not been 
for the two hundred and fifty votes or thereabouts sent from the states 
in which there is no Republican Party. For forty-five years everything 
has been sacrificed to the effort to build up in these states a Republican 
Party which should be predominately and overwhelmingly negro, and 
now those for whom the effort has been made turned and betrayed that 
party itself. It would be not merely foolish but criminal to disregard 
the teachings of such a lesson. The disruption and destruction of the 
Republican Party, and the fact that it has been rendered absolutely impotent 
as an instrument for anything but mischief in the country at large 
has been broughtnabout in large part by the effort to pretend that in 
the Southern States a sham is a fact, by the insistence upon treating 
the ghost party in the Southern States as a real party, by refusing to 
face the truth, which is that under existing conditions there is not 
and cannot be in the Southern States a party based primarily upon the 
negro vote and under negro leadership or the leadership of white men 
who derive their power solely from negroes. With these forty-five years
of failure of this policy in the South before our eyes, and with catatrophe 
thereby caused to a great National Party not yet six weeks distant 
from us, it would be criminal for the Progressives tomrepeat the course 
of action responsible for such disaster, such failure, such catastrophe. 
The loss of instant representation by southern colored delegates is due
to the fact that the sentiment of the Southern negro collectively has 

2136810

been prostituted by dishonest professional politicians both white and 
black, and the machinery does not exist (and can never be created as long 
as present political conditions are continued) which can secure what a 
future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the right of political 
expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the intelligence 
integrity and self-respect which justify such right of political expression 
in his white neighbor.

We face certain actual facts, sad and unpleasant facts, but facts 
which must be faced if we are to dwell in the world of realities and not 
of shams, and if we are to try to make things better by deeds and not merely 
to delude ourselves by empty words. It would be much worse than useless 
to try to build up the Progressive Party in these Southern State 
where there is nomreal Republican Party, by appealing to the negroes or 
to the men who in the past have derived their sole standing from leading 
and manipulating the negroes. As a matter of fact and nottof theory 
all that could possibly result from such action would be to create another 
impotent little corrupt faction of would-be office holders, of delegates 
whose expenses to conventions had to be paid, and whose votes sometimes 
had to be bought. No real good could come from such action to any man, 
black or white; the negro would be hurt and not helped throughout the Union; 
the white man would be hurt in the South, the Progressive Party would be 
damaged irreparably at the beginning. I earnestly believe that by appealing 
to the best white men in the South, the men of justice and of vision 
as well as of strength and leadership, and by frankly putting the movement 
in their hands from the outset we shall create a situation by which 
thw colored men of the South will ultimately get justice as it is not 
possible for them to get justice if we are to continue and perpetuate the 
present conditions. The men to whom we appeal are the men who have stood
for securing the colored man in his rights before thevlaw, and they can

2136911
do for him what neither the Northern white man nor the colored men themselves can do. Our only wise course from the stand-point of 
the colored man himself is follow the course we are following 
toward him in the North and to follow the course we are following toward
him in the South.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT
213701

Sagamore Hill,
August 1st, 1912.              

Mr. Julian Harris,                     
Uncle Remus Magazine,        
Atlanta, Georgia.       
                                          
My dear Mr. Harris:
In pursuance of our conservation I write you this letter. There
is a peculiar fitness in writing it to the son of the man whose work made all   
Americans his debtors. Your father possessed genius; and moreover he   possessed     
that gentleness of soul, that broad and tender sympathy with his fellows, for    
the lack of which genius cannot atone. His life and his work tended to bring    
his fellow-countrymen, North and South, into ever closer relations of goodwill     
and understanding; and surely it should be needless to say that the author of    
"Uncle Remus" and of "Free Joe and the Rest of the World" felt a deep and most   
kindly interest in the welfare of the negro. 

Many letters dealing with the subject of which you spoke to me 
have been sent to me within the last few days. These letters, from equally    
worthy citizens, take diametrically opposite positions. Those written by   
men living in the North usually ask me to insist that we get from the South    
colored Delegates to the National Progressive Convention. Those written by   
citizens of the South ask that I declare that the new party shall be a white    
man's party. I am not able to agree to either proposal.

In this country we cannot permanently succeed except upon the    
basis of treating each man on his worth as a man. We can fulfil our high    
mission among the nations of the earth, we can do lasting good to ourselves    
and tomall mankind, only if we so act that the humblest among us, so long as    
he behaves in straight and decent fashion, has guaranteed to him under the law    
his right to life, to liberty, to protection from injustice, his right to enjoy    
the fruits of his own honest labor, and his right to the pursuit of happiness
in his own way, so long as he does not trespass on the rights of others.     
Our only safe motto is "All men up" and not "Some men down". For us to [?]

213712

any class of our fellow citizens is not only wrong to others but hurtful to ourselves;
for in the long run such action is no more detrimental to the oppressed
than to those who think that they temporarily benefit by the oppression.  Surely
no man can quarrel with those principles.  Exactly as they should be applied
among white men without regard to their difference of creed, or birth-place,
or social station, without regard to whether they are rich men or poor men, men
who work with their hands or men who work with their brains; so they should be 
applied among all men without regard to the color of their skins. 

These are the principles to which I think our countrymen should adhere
the objects which I think they should have steadily in mind. There is
need not merely of all our high purpose, but of all our wisdom and patience in striving to realize them.  Above all, it is essential that we should not in su
such a way as to make believe that we are achieving these objects, and yet by
our actions indefinitely postpone the time when it will become even measurably
possible to achieve them.  For this reason I cannot adopt either of the two diametrically opposite suggestions made to me in the letters of which I have spoken. 
 
I believe that the Progressive Movement should be made from the
beginning one in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding colored
man, just as it is in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding white man. I further believe that the surest way to render the movement impotent
to help either the white man or the colored man in those regions of the
South where the colored man is most numerous, would be to try to repeat the
course that has been followed by the Republican Party in those districts for
so many years, or to endeavor in the States in question to build up a Progressive
Party by the same methods which in those States have resulted in making the
Republican Party worse than impotent. 
                     Henry Ward Beecher once said that the worst enemy of the colored man
was the man who stirred up [,] enmity between the white and colored men who have to          
213723

live as neighbors. In the South the Democratic machine has sought to keep 
itself paramount by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black; the 
Republican machine has sought to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man 
against the white; and surely the time has come when we should understand the 
mischief in both courses, and should abandon both.
We have made the Progressive issue a moral, not a racial issue. I believe 
that wherever the racila issue is permitted to become dominant in our pol
politics, it always works harm to both races, but immeasurably most harm to the 
weaker race. I believe that in this movement only damage will come if we either 
abandon our ideals on the one hand, or, on the other, fail resolutely to look 
facts in the face, however unpleasant these facts may be. Therefore I feel that 
we have to adapt our actions to the actual conditions and actual needs and 
feelings of each community; not abandoning our principles, but not in one 
community endeavoring to realize them in ways which will simply cause disaster 
in that community, although they may work well in another community. Our object 
must be the same everywhere, but the methods by which we strive to attain 
it must be adapted to the needs of the several states, or it will never be 
attained at all.
In many of the States of the Union where there is a considerable
colored population we are able in very fact and at the present moment to bring 
the best colored men into the movement on the same terms as the white man. In 
Rhode Island and Maryland, in New York  and Indiana, in Ohio and Illinois, in 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to speak only of States of which I have personal 
knowledge, this is now being done, and from some or all of these states colored 
delegates will be sent to the National Progressive Convention in Chicago. Let m
me point out that the Progressive Party is already, at its very birth, endeavoring 
in these States, in its own home, to act with fuller recognition of the 
rights of the colored man than ever the Republican party did. Until I was President 
the white Republicans of the North, although they had loudly insi-

213734

that the colored man should have office with even greater firmness insisted 
that he should have office only in the South, or at any rate, not in the North. 
When, for instance, I tried to appoint a colored man to office in Ohio I was 
wholly unable to get the necessary assent from the white Republican leaders of 
Ohio, and had to appoint the man in Washington; and in appointing a colored 
man to a high position in New York I was obliged to do it by main force and 
against the wish of the entire party organization. In the Republican National 
Conventions the colored members have been almost exclusively from the South, a
and the great majority of them have been men of such character that their political 
activities were merely a source of harm, and of very grave harm, to 
their own race. We, on the contrary, are hoping to see in the National Progressive 
Convention colored delegates from the very places where we expect to 
develop our greatest strength, and we hope to see these men of such character 
that their activities shall be of benefit not only to the people at large but 
especially to their own race. So much for the course we are able to follow in 
these States; and the citizens of these States can best help the negro race by 
doing justice to those negroes who are their own neighbors. In many Northern 
States there have been lynchings and race riots with sad and revolting accompaniments; 
in many of these States there has been failure to punish such outrageous 
conduct and what is even more important, failure to deal in advance 
wisely and firmly with the evil conditions, among both black man and the white, 
which had caused the outrages.
There are other States, including the majority of the Southern States,
where the conditions are wholly different. Much is to be said for the men who 
forty-five years ago, with motives which were for the most part and among most 
of their number of a lofty and disinterested type, attempted a course of action 
in those States which in actual practice has lamentably failed to justify itself 
and I make no attempt at this time to strive to apportion the blame for the 
failure. It is unwise to revive bitterness by dwelling on the errors and short-

213745

comings of the past. Let us profit by them, but reproach no man because of them.  
We are now starting a new movement for the betterment of our people, a movement 
for social and industrial justice which shall be nation-wide, a movement which
is to strive to accomplish actual results and not to accept high-sounding phras
phrases as a substitute for deeds. Therefore we are not to be pardoned if at 
the outset, with the knowledge gained by forty-five years' experience of failure, 
we repeat the course that has led to such failure, and abandon the effort 
to make the movement for social and industrial justice really nation-wide.
For forty-five years the Republican Party has striven to build up in 
the Southern States in question a party based on the theory that the pyramid wi
will unsupported stand permanently on its apex instead of on its base. For
forty-five years the Republican Party has endeavored in these States to build
up a party in which the negro should be dominant, a party consisting almost exclusively 
of negroes. Those who took the lead in this experiment were actuated 
by high motives, and no one should now blame them because of what, with the 
knowledge they then had and under the then existing circumstances, they strove
to do. But in actual practice the result has been lamentable from every standpoint. 
It has been productive of evil to the colored men themselves; it has 
been productive only of evil to the white men of the South; and it has worked 
the gravest injury to, and finally the disruption and destruction of, the great 
Republican Party itself. In the States in question where the negro predominates 
in numbers, and in the sections of other States in which he predominates in 
numbers, the Republican Party has in actual fact become practically non-existent 
in so far as votes at the polls are concerned. The number of votes cast in 
these States and districts for the Republican ticket on Election Day has become 
negligible. It has long been recognized that these States will never give a 
Republican electoral vote; that these States or districts will never send a 
Republican or a colored man to Congress. The number of colored men in them who 
hold any elective office of the slightest importance is negligible. In these 
states and districts the Republican Party, [?]
21375

213756

States and districts the Republican Party, in actual practice, and disregarding 
individual exceptions, exists only to serve the purposes of a small group
of politicians, for the most part white, but including some colored men, who 
have not the slightest interest in elections, and whose political activities 
are confined to securing offices by sending to National Conventions delegations 
which are controlled by the promise of office or by means even more questionable. 
Once in four years they send to the National Convention delegates who
represent absolutely nothing in the way of voting strength, and in consideration
of the votes of the delegates thus delivered they endeavor to secure their
local offices from any National Republican Administration.
The progress that has been made among the negroes of the South during 
these forty-five years has not been made as a result of political effort of the 
kind I have mentioned. It has been made as the result of effort along industrial 
and educational lines. Again allowing for the inevitable exception, it remains 
true, as one of the wisest leaders of the colored race has himself said, 
that the only white man who in the long run, can effectively help the colored 
man is that colored man's neighbor. There are innumerable white men in the 
South sincerely desirous of doing justice to the colored man, of helping him 
upward on his difficult path, of securing him just treatment before the law; 
white men who set their faces sternly against lynch law and mob violence, who 
attack all such abuses as peonage, who fight to keep the school funds equitably 
divided between white and colored schools, who endeavor to help the colored 
man to become a self-supporting and useful member of the community. The
white men who live elsewhere can best help the colored man in the South by 
upholding the hands of those white men of the South who are thus endeavoring 
to benefit and to act honestly by the colored men with whom they dwell in 
community neighborhood and with whose children their children will continue to 
dwell in community neighborhood. Actual experience for nearly half a century has 

213767

has shown that it is futile to endeavor to substitute for such action by the 
white man to his colored neighbor, action by outside white men, action which 
painful experience has shown to be impotent to help the colored man, but which 
does irritate the white man whom nevertheless it cannot control. We are not facing 
theories, we are facing actucal facts, and it is well for us to remember Emerson's statement that in the long the most unpleasant truth is a safer 
travelling companion than the pleasantest falsehood.
The action of the Republican machine in the South, then, in endeavoring to keep alive a party based only on negro votes, where, with few exceptions, 
the white leaders are in it only to gain reward for themselves by 
trafficking in negro votes, has been bad for the white men of the South, whom it 
has kept solidified in an unhealthy and unnatural political bond, to their great detriment and to the detriment of the whole Union; and it has been bad 
for the colored men of the South. The effect on the Republican Party has long 
been disastrous, and has finally proved fatal. There has in the past been 
much 
venality in Republican National Conventions in which there was an active contest 
for the nomination for President, and this venality has been almost exclusively 
among the rotten-borough delegates, and for the most part among the 
negro delegates from these Southern States in which there was no real Republican 
Party. Finally, in the Convention at Chicago last June, the break-up of the Republican Party was forced by those rotten-borough delegates from the South. I
In the Primary states of the North the colored men in most places voted substantially 
as their white-neighbors voted. But in the Southern States, where there 
was no real Republican Party, and where colored men, or whites selected purely 
by colored men, were sent to the Convention, representing nothing but their own 
greed for money or office the majority was overwhelmingly anti-progressive. 
Seven-eighths of the colored men from these rotten-borough districts upheld by
their votes the fraudulent actions of the men who in that Convention defied and 
betrayed the will of the mass of the plain people of the party. In spite of the 
hand-picked delegates chosen by the bosses in certain Northern States, in spite

213778

of the scores of delegates deliberately stolen from the rank and file of the 
aprty by the corrupt political machine which dominated the National Committee 
and the Convention itself, there would yet have been no hope of reversing in 
the National Convention the action demanded by the overwhelming majority of the 
Republicans who had a chance to speak for themselves in their primaries, had it 
not been for the two hundred and fifty votes or thereabouts sent from the state
in which there is no Republican Party. For forty-five years everything has been 
sacrificed to the effort to build up in these states a Republican Party which 
should be predominately and overwhelmingly negro, and now those for whom the 
effort has been made turned and betrayed that party itself. It would be not 
merely foolish but criminal to disregard the teachings of such a lesson. The 
disruption and destruction of the Republican Party, and the fact that it has 
been rendered absolutely impotent as an instrument for anything but mischief 
in the country at large has been brought about in large part by the effort to 
pretend that in the Southern States a sham is a fact, by the insistence upon 
treating the ghost party in the Southern States as a real party, by refusing 
to face the truth, which is that under existing conditions there is not and ca
cannot be in the Southern States a party based primarily upon the negro vote 
and under negro leadership or the leadership of white men who derive their 
power solely from negroes. With these forty-five years of failure of this 
policy in the South before our eyes, and with catastrophe thereby caused to 
a great National Party not yet six weeks distant from us, it would be criminal 
for the Progressives to repeat the course of action responsible for such 
disaster, such failure, such catastrophe. The loss of instant representation 
by southern colored delegates is due to the fact that the sentiment of the 
Southern negro collectively has been prostituted by dishonest professional 
politicians both white and black, and the machinery does not exist (and can
never be created as long as present political conditions are continued) which
can secure what a future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the
right of political expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the

213789

intelligence integrity and self-respect which justify such right of political 
expression in his white neighbor.

We face certain actual facts, sad and unpleasant facts, but facts 
which must be faced if we are to dwell in the world of realities and not of 
shams, and if we are to try to make things better by deeds and not merely to delude 
ourselves by empty words. It would be much worse than useless to try to 
build up the Progressive Party in these Southern States where there is no real 
Republican Party, by appealing to the negroes or to the men who in the past have 
derived their sole standing from leading and manipulating the negroes. As a 
matter of fact and not of theory all that could possibly result from such action 
would be to create another impotent little corrupt faction of would-be 
office holder[s] of delegates whose expenses to conventions had to be paid, and 
whose votes sometimes had to be bought. No real good could come from such 
action to any man, black or white; the negro would be hurt and not helped 
throughout the Union; the white man would be hurt in the South, the Progressive 
Party would be damaged irreparably at the beginning. I earnestly believe that 
by appealing to the best white men in the South, the men of justice and of 
vision as well as of strength and leadership, and by frankly putting the movement 
in their hands from the outset we shall create a situation by which the 
colored men of the South will ultimately get justice as it is not possible for 
them to get justice if we are to continue and perpetuate the present conditions. 
The men to whom we appeal are the men who have stood for securing the colored m
man in his rights before the law, and they can do for him what neither the
Northern white man nor the colored men themselves can do. Our only wise course 
from the stand-point of the colored man himself is to follow the course that we 
are following toward him in the North and to follow the course we are following 
toward him in the South.

Very truly yours,

(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT

213791

Sagamore Hill,
August 1st, 1912.

Mr. Julian Harris,
Uncle Remus Magazine,
Atlanta, Georgia.

My dear Mr. Harris:
In pursuance of our conservation I write you this letter. There
is a peculiar fitness in writing it to the son of the man whose work made all 
Americans his debtors. Your father possessed genius; and moreover he possessed 
that gentleness of soul, that broad and tender sympathy with his fellows, for 
the lack of which genius cannot atone. His life and his work tended to bring 
his fellow-countrymen, North and South, into ever closer relations of good-will 
and understanding; and surely it should be needless to say that the author of 
"Uncle Remus" and of "Free Joe and the Rest of the World" felt a deep and most 
kindly interest in the welfare of the negro.
Many letters dealing with the subject of which you spoke to me 
have been sent to me within the last few days. These letters, from equally 
worthy citizens, take diametrically opposite positions. Those written by 
men living in the North usually ask me to insist that we get from the South 
colored Delegates to the National Progressive Convention. Those written by 
citizens of the South ask that I declare that the new party shall be a white man's party. I am not able to agree to either proposal.
In this country we cannot permanently succeed except upon the 
basis of treating each man on his worth as a man. We can fulfil our high mission among the nations of the earth, we can do lasting good to ourselves 
and to all mankind, only if we so act that the humblest among us, so long as 
he behaves in straight and decent fashion, has guaranteed to him under the law 
his right to life, to liberty, to protection from injustice, his right to enjoy
the fruits of his own honest labor, and his right to the pursuit of happiness
in his own way, so long as he does not trespass on the rights of others.
Our only safe motto is "All men up" and not "Some men down". For us to oppress

213802

any class of our fellow citizens is not only wrong to others but hurtful to ourselves; 
for in the long run such action is no more detrimental to the oppressed than to those who think that they temporarily benefit by the oppression. Surely 
no man can quarrel with these principles. Exactly as they should be applied 
among white men without regard to their differences of creed, or birth-place, 
or social station, without regard to whether they are rich men or poor men, men 
who work with their hands or men who work with their brains; so they should be 
applied among all men without regard to the color of their skins.
These are the principles to which I think our countrymen should adhere, 
the objects which I think they should have steadily in mind. There is 
need not merely of all our high purpose, but of all our wisdom and patience in 
striving to realize them. Above all, it is essential that we should not act in 
su
such a way as to make believe that we are achieving these objects, and yet by 
our actions indefinitely postpone the time when it will become even measurably 
possible to achieve them. For this reason I cannot adopt either of the two 
diametrically opposite suggestions made to me in the letters of which I have 
spoken.
I believe that the Progressive Movement should be made from the 
beginning one in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding colored 
man, just as it is in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding white man. I further believe that the surest way to render the movement impotent 
to help either the white man or the colored man in those regions of the 
South where the colored man is most numerous, would be to try to repeat the 
course that has been followed by the Republican Party in those districts for so many years, or to endeavor in the States in question to build up a Progressive 
Party by the same methods which in those States have resulted in making the 
Republican Party worse than impotent.
Henry Ward Beecher once said that the worst enemy of the colored man
was the man who stirred up enmity between the white and colored men who have to

213813

live as neighbors. In the South the Democratic machine has sought to keep 
itself paramount by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black; the 
Republican machine has sought to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man 
against the white; and surely the time has come when we should understand the 
mischief in both courses, and should abandon both.

We have made the Progressive issue a moral, not a racial issue. I believe 
that wherever the racila issue is permitted to become dominant in our pol
politics, it always works harm to both races, but immeasurably most harm to the 
weaker race. I believe that in this movement only damage will come if we either 
abandon our ideals on the one hand, or, on the other, fail resolutely to look 
facts in the face, however unpleasant these facts may be. Therefore I feel that 
we have to adapt our actions to the actual conditions and actual needs and 
feelings of each community; not abandoning our principles, but not in one 
community endeavoring to realize them in ways which will simply cause disaster 
in that community, although they may work well in another community. Our object 
must be the same everywhere, but the methods by which we strive to attain 
it must be adapted to the needs of the several states, or it will never be 
attained at all.

In many of the States of the Union where there is a considerable
colored population we are able in very fact and at the present moment to bring 
the best colored men into the movement on the same terms as the white men. In 
Rhodd Island and Maryland, in New York  and Indiana, in Ohio and Illinois, in 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to speak only of States of which I have personal 
knowledge, this is now being done, and from some or all of these states colored 
delegates will be sent to the National Progressive Convention in Chicago. Let m
me point out that the Progressive Party is already, at its very birth, endeavoring 
in these States, in its own home, to act with fuller recognition of the 
rights of the colored man than ever the Republican party did. Until I was President 
the white Republicans of the North, although they had loudly insisted 

213824

that the colored man should have office with even greater fiemness insisted 
that he should have office only in the South, or at any rate, not in the North. 
When, for instance, I tried to appoint a coloreddman to office in Ohio I was 
wholly unable to get the necessary assent from the white Republicansleaders of 
Ohio, and had to appoint the man in Washington; and in appointing a colored 
man to a high position in New York I was obliged to do it by main force and 
against the wish of the entire party organization. In the Republican National 
Conventions the colored members have been almost exclusively from the South, a
and the great majority of them have been men of such character that their political 
activities were merely a source of harm, and of very grave harm, to 
their own race. We, on the contrary, are hoping to see in the National Progressive 
Convention colored delegates from the very places where we expect to 
develop our greatest strength, and we hope to see these men of such character 
that their activities shall be of benefit not only to the people at large but 
especially to their own race. So much for the course we are able to follow in 
these States; and the citizens of these States can best help the negro race by 
doing justice to those negroes who are their own neighbors. In many Northern 
States there have been lynchings and race riots with sad and revolting accompaniments; 
in many of these States there has been failure to punish such outrageous 
conduct and what is even more important, failure to deal in advance 
wisely and firmly with the evil conditions, among both black man and the white, 
which had caused the outrages.

There are other States, including the majority of the Southern States
where the conditions are wholly different. Much is to be said for the men who 
forty-five years ago, with motives which were for themost part and among most 
of their number of a lofty and disinterested type, attempted a course of action 
in those States which in actual practice has lamentably failed to justify itself 
and I make no attempt at this time to strive to apportion the blame for the 
failure. It is unwise to revive bitterness by dwelling on the errors and short-

213835

comings of the past. Let us profit by them, but reproach no man because of them.  
We are now starting a new movement for the betterment of our people, a movement 
for social and industrial justice whichhshall be nation-wide, a movement which
is to strive to accomplish actual results and not to accept high-sounding phras
phrases as a substitute for deeds. Therefore we are not to be pardoned if at 
the outset, with the knowledge gained by forty-five years' experience of failure, 
we repeat the course that has led to such failure, and abandon the effort 
to make the movement for social and industrial justice really nation-wide.
For forty-five years the Republican Party has striven to build up in 
the Southern States in question a party based on the theory that the pyramid wi 
will unsupported stand permanently on its apex instead of on its base. For
forty-five years the Republican Party has endeavored in these States to build
up a party in which the negro should be dominant, a party consisting almost exclusively 
of negroes. Those who took the lead in this experiment were actuated 
by high motives, and no one should now blame them because of what, with the
knowledge they then had and under the theneexisting circumstances, they strove 
to do. But in actual practice the result has been lamentable from every standpoint. 
It has been productive of evil to the colored men themselves; it has 
been productive only of evil to the white men of the South; and it has worked 
the gravest injury to, and finally the disruption and destruction of, the great 
Republican Party itself. In the States in question where the negro predominates 
in numbers, and in the sections of other States in which he predominates in 
numbers, the Republican Party has in actual fact become practically non-existent 
in so far as votes at the polls are concerned. The number of votes cast in 
these States and districts for the Republican ticket on Election Day has become 
negligible. It has long been recognized that these States will never give a 
Republican electoral vote; that these States or districts will never send a 
Republican or a colored man to Congress. The number of colored men in them who 
hold any elective office of the slightest importance is negligible. In these

213846

States and districts the Republican Party, in actual practice, and disregarding 
individual exceptions, exists only to serve the purposes of a small group 
of politicians, for the most part white, but including some colored men, who 
have not the slightest interest in elections, and whose political activities 
are confined to securing offices by sending to National Conventions delegations 
which are controlled by the promise of office or by means even more questionable. 
Once in four years they send to the National Conventions delegates who
represent absolutely nothing in the way of voting strength, and in consideration
of the votes of the delegates thus delivered they endeavor to secure their
local offices from any National Republican Administration.

The progress that has been made among the negroes of the South during 
these forty-five years has not been made as a result of political effort of the 
kind I have mentioned. It has been made as the result of effort along industrial 
and educational lines. Again allowing for the inevitable exception, it remains 
true, as one of the wisest leaders of the colored race has himself said, 
that the only white man who in the long run, can effectively help the colored 
man is that colored man's neighbor. There are innumerable white men in the 
South sincerely desirous of doing justice to the colored man, of helping him 
upward on his difficult path, of securing him just treatment before the law; 
white men who set their faces sternly against lynch law and mob violence, who 
attack all such abuses as peonage, who fight to keep the school funds equitably 
divided between white and colored schools, who endeavor to help the colored 
man to become a self-supporting and useful member of the community. The
white men who live elsewhere can best help the colored man in the South by 
upholding the hands of those white men of the South who are thus endeavoring 
to benefit and to act honestly by the colored men with whom they dwell in 
community neighborhood and with whose children their children will continue to 
dwell in community neighborhood. Actual experience for nearly half a century ha 

213857

has shown that it is futile to endeavor to substitute for such action by the 
white man to his colored neighbor, action by outside white men, action which 
painful experience has shown to be impotent to help the colored man, but which 
does irritate thwwhite man whom nevertheless it cannot control. We are not facing 
theories, we are facing actucal facts, and it is well for us to remember 
Emerson's statement that in the long run the most unpleasant truth is a safer 
travelling companion than the pleasantest falsehood.
The action of the Republican machine in the South, then, in endeavoring 
to keep alive a party based only on negro votes, where, with few exceptions, 
the white leaders are in it only to gain reward for themselves by 
trafficking in negro votes, has been bad for the white men of the South, whom it 
has kept solidified in an unhealthy and unnatural political bond, to their 
great detriment and to the detriment of the whole Union; and it has been bad 
for the colored men of the South. The effect on the Republican Party has long 
been disastrous, and has finally proved fatal. There has in the past been much 
venality in Republican National Conventions in which there was an active contest 
for the nomination for President, and this venality has been almost exclusively 
among the rotten-borough delegates, and for the most part among the 
negro delegates from these Southern States in which there was no real Republican 
Party. Finally, in the Convention at Chicago last June, the break-up of the 
Republican Party was forced by these rotten-borough delegates from the South. I 
In the Primary States of the North the colored men in most places voted substantially 
as their white neighbors voted. But in the Southern States, where there 
was no real Republican Party, and where colored men, or whites selected purely
by colored men, were sent to the Convention, representing nothing but their own 
greed for money or office the majority was overwhelmingly anti-progressive. 
Seven-eighths of the colored men from these rotten-borough districts upheld by
their votes the fraudulent actions of the men who in that Convention defied and 
betrayed the will of the mass of the plain people of the party. In spite of the 
hand-picked delegates chosen by the bosses in certain Northern States, in spite

213868

of the scores of delegates deliberately stolen from the rank and file of the 
aprty by the corrupt political machine which dominated the National Committee 
and the Convention itself, there would yet have been no hope of reversing in 
the National Convention the action demanded by the overwhelming majority of the 
Republicans who had a chance to speak for themselves in their primaries, had it 
not been for the two hundred and fifty votes or thereabouts sent from the states
in which there is no Republican Party. For forty-five years everything has been 
sacrificed to the effort to build up in these states a Republican Party which 
should be predominately and overwhelmingly negro, and now those for whom the 
effort has been made turned and betrayed that party itself. It would be not 
merely foolish but criminal to disregard the teachings of such a lesson. The 
disruption and destruction of the Republican Party, and the fact that it has 
been rendered absolutely impotent as an instrument for anything but mischief 
in the country at large has been brought about in large part by the effort to 
pretend that in the Southern States a sham is a fact, by the insistence upon 
treating the ghost party in the Southern States as a real party, by refusing 
to face the truth, which is that under existing conditions there is not and 
ca
cannot be in the Southern States a party based primarily upon the negro vote 
and under negro leadership or the leadership of white men who derive their 
power solely from negroes. With these forty-five years of failure of this 
policy in the South before our eyes, and with catastrophe thereby caused to 
a great National Party not yet six weeks distant from us, it would be criminal 
for the Progressives to repeat the course of action responsible for such 
disaster, such failure, such catastrophe. The loss of instant representation 
by southern colored delegates is due to the fact that the sentiment of the 
Southern negro collectively has been prostituted by dishonest professional 
politicians both white and black, and the machinery does not exist (and can
never be created as long as present political conditions are continued) which
can secure what a future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the
right of political expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the

213879

intelligence integrity and self-respect which justify such right of political 
expression in his white neighbor.
We face certain actual facts sad and unpleasant facts, but facts 
which must be faced if we are to dwell in the world of realities and not of 
shams, and if we are to try to make things better by deeds and not merely to delude 
ourselves by empty words. It would be much worse than useless to try to 
build up the Progressive Party in these Southern States where there is no real 
Republican Party, by appealing to the negroes or to the men who in the past have 
derived their sole standing from leading and manipulating the negroes. As a 
matter of fact and not of theory all that could possibly result from such action 
would be to create another impotent little corrupt faction of would-be 
office holders, of delegates whose expenses to conventions had to be paid, and 
whose votes sometimes had to be bought. No real good could come from such 
action to any man, black or white; the negro would be hurt and not helped 
throughout the Union; the white man would be hurt in the South, the Progressive 
Party would be damaged irreparably at the beginning. I earnestly believe that 
by appealing to the best white men in the South, the men of justice and of 
vision as well as of strength and leadership, and by frankly putting the movement 
in their hands from the outset we shall create a situation by which the 
colored men of the South will ultimately get justice as it is not possible for 
them to get justice if we are to continue and perpetuate the present conditions. 
The men to whom we appeal are the men who have stood for securing the colored m
man in his rights before the law, and they can do for him what neither the
Northern white man nor the colored men themselves can do. Our only wise course 
from the stand-point of the colored man himself is to follow the course that we 
are following toward him in the North and to follow the course we are following 
toward him in the South.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT

213881

Sagamore Hill,
August 1st, 1912.

Mr. Julian Harris,
Uncle Remus Magazine,
Atlanta, Georgia.

My dear Mr. Harris:
In pursuance of our conservation I write you this letter. There
is a peculiar fitness in writing it to the son of the man whose work made all 
Americans his debtors. Your father possessed genius; and moreover he possessed 
that gentleness of soul, that broad and tender sympathy with his fellows, for 
the lack of which genius cannot atone. His life and his work tended to bring 
his fellow-countrymen, North and South, into ever closer relations of good-will 
and understanding; and surely it should be needless to say that the author of 
"Uncle Remus" and of "Free Joe and the Rest of the World" felt a deep and most 
kindly interest in the welfare of the negro.

Many letters dealing with the subject of which you spoke to me 
have been sent to me within the last few days. These letters, from equally 
worthy citizens, take diametrically opposite positions. Those written by 
men living in the North usually ask me to insist that we got from the South 
colored Delegates to the National Progressive Convention. Those written by 
citizens of the South ask that I declare that the new party shall be a white 
man's party. I am not able to agree to either proposal.

In this country we cannot permanently succeed except upon the 
basis of treating each man on his worth as a man. We can fulfil our high 
mission among the nations of the earth, we can do lasting good to ourselves 
and tomall mankind, only if we so act that the humblest among us, so long as 
he behaves in straight and decent fashion, has guaranteed to him under the law 
his right to life, to liberty, to protection from injustice, his right to enjoy
the fruits of his own honest labor, and his right to the pursuit of happiness
in his own way, so long as he does not trespass on the rights of others.
Our only safe motto is "All men up" and not "Some men down". For us to oppress

213892

any class of our fellow citizens is not only wrong to others but hurtful to ourselves;
for in the long run such action is no more detrimental to the oppressed 
than to those who think that they temporarily benefit by the oppression. 
Surely 
no man can quarrel with these principles. Exactly as they should be applied 
among white men without regard to their difference of creed, or birth-place, 
or social station, without regard to whether they are rich men or poor men, men 
who work with their hands or men who work with their brains; so they should be 
applied among all men without regard to the color of their skins.
These are the principles to which I think our countrymen should adhere, 
the objects which I think they should have steadily in mind. There is 
need not merely of all our high purpose, but of all our wisdom and patience in 
striving to realize them. Above all, it is essential that we should not in
such a way as to make believe that we are achieving these objects, and yet by 
our actions indefinitely postpone the time when it will become even measurably 
possible to achieve them. For this reason I cannot adopt either of the two 
diametrically opposite suggestions made to me in the letters of which I have 
spoken.
I believe that the Progressive Movement should be made from the 
beginning one in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding colored 
man, just as it is in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding 
white man. I further believe that the surest way to render the movement impotent 
to help either the white  man or the colored man in those regions of the 
South where the colored man is most numerous, would be to try to repeat the 
course that has been followed by the Republican Party in those districts for 
so many years, or to endeavor in the States in question to build up a Progressive 
Party by the same methods which in those States have resulted in making the 
Republican Party worse than impotent.
Henry Ward Beecher once said that the worst enemy of the colored man
was the man who stirred up enmity between the white and colored men who have to

[*21390*]3

live as neighbors. In the South the Democratic machine has sought to keep 
itself paramount by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black; the 
Republican machine has sought to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man 
against the white; and surely the time has come when we should understand the 
mischief in both courses, and should abandon both.

We have made the Progressive issue a moral, not a racial issue. I believe 
that wherever the racila issue is permitted to become dominant in our pol 
politics, it always works harm to both races, but immeasurably most harm to the 
weaker race. I believe that in this movement only damage will come if we either 
abandon our ideals on the one hand, or, on the other, fail resolutely to look 
facts in the face, however unpleasant these facts may be. Therefore I feel that 
we have to adapt our actions to the actual conditions and actual needs and 
feelings of each community; not abandoning our principles, but not in one 
community endeavoring to realize them in ways which will simply cause disaster 
in that community, although they may work well in another community. Our object 
must be the same everywhere, but the methods by which we strive to attain 
it must be adapted to the needs of the several states, or it will never be 
attained at all.

In many of the States of the Union where there is a considerable 
colored population we are able in very fact and at the present moment to bring 
the best colored men into the movement on the same terms as the white man. In 
Rhode Island and Maryland, in New York and Indiana, in Ohio and Illinois, in 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to speak only ofmStates of which I have personal 
knowledge, this is now being done, and from some or all of these states colored 
delegates will be sent to the National Progressive Convention in Chicago. Let m
me point out that the Progressive Party is already, at its very birth, endeavoring 
in these States, in its own home, to act with fuller recognition of the 
rights of the colored man than ever the Republican Party did. Until I was President 
the white Republicans of the North, although they had loudly insisted

213914

that the colored man should have office with even greater firmness insisted 
that he should have office only in the South, or at any rate, not in the North. 
When, for instance, I tried to appoint a coloreddman to office in Ohio I was 
wholly unable to get the necessary assent from the white Republicansleaders of 
Ohio, and had to appoint the man in Washington; and in appointing a colored 
man to a high position in New York I was obliged to do it by main force and 
against the wish of the entire party organization.	In the Republican National 
Conventions the colored members have been almost exclusively from the  South, 
and the great majority of them have been men of such character that their political 
activities were merely a source of harm, and of very grave harm, to 
their own race. We, on the contrary, are hoping to see in the National Progressive 
Convention colored delegates from the very places where we expect to 
develop our greatest strength, and we hope to see these men of such character 
that their activities shall be of benefit not only to the people at large but 
especially to their own race. So much for the course we are able to follow in 
these States; and the citizens of these States can best help the negro race by 
doing justice to those negroes who are their own neighbors. In many Northern 
States there have been lynchings and race riots with sad and revolting accompaniments;
in many of these States there has been failure to punish such outrageous 
conduct and what is even more important, failure to deal in advance 
wisely and firmly with the evil conditions, among both black man and the white, 
which had caused the outrages.

There are other States, including the majority of the Southern States
where the conditions are wholly different. Much is to be said for the men who 
forty-five years ago, with motives which were for themost part and among most 
of their number of a lofty and disinterested type, attempted a course of action 
in those States which in actual practice has lamentably failed to justify itself  
and I make no attempt at this time to strive to apportion the blame for the 
failure. It is unwise to revive bitterness by dwelling on the errors and short-

213925

comings of the past. Let us profit by them, but reproach no man because of them. 
We are now starting a new movement for the betterment of our people, a movement 
for social and industrial justice whichhshall be nation-wide, a movement which 
is to strive to accomplish actual results and not to accept high-sounding phras
phrases as a substitute for deeds. Therefore we are not to be pardoned if at 
the outset, with the knowledge gained by forty-five years' experience of failure, 
we repeat the course that has led to such failure, and abandon the effort 
to make the movement for social and industrial justice really nation-wide.

For forty-five years the Republican Party has striven to build up in 
the Southern States in question a party based on the theory that the pyramid 
will unsupported stand permanently on its apex instead of on its base.	For 
forty-five years the Republican Party has endeavored in these States to build 
up a party in which the negro should be dominant, a party consisting almost exclusively 
of negroes. Those who took the lead in this experiment were actuated 
by high motives, and no one should now blame them because of what, with the 
knowledge they then had and under the theneexisting circumstances, they strove 
to do. But in actual practice the result has been lamentable from every stand-point. 
It has been productive of evil to the colored men themselves: it has 
been productive only of evil to the white men of the South; and it has worked 
the gravest injury to, and finally the disruption and destruction of, the great 
Republican Party itself. In the States in question where the negro predominates 
in numbers, and in the sections of other States in which he predominates in 
numbers, the Republican Party has in actual fact become practically non-existent
in so far as votes at t he polls are concerned. The number of votes cast in 
these States and districts for the Republican ticket on Election Day has become 
negligible. It has long been recognized that these States will never give a
Republican electoral vote; that these States or districts will never send a 
Republican or a colored man to Congress. The number of colored men in them who 
hold any elective office of the slightest importance is negligible. In these 

213936

States and districts the Republican Party, in actual practice, and disregarding
individual exceptions, exists only to serve the purposes of a small group
of politicians, for the most part white, but including some colored men, who
have not the slightest interest in elections, and whose political activities 
are confined to securing offices by sending to National Conventions delegations 
which are controlled by the promise of office or by means even more questionable. 
Once in four years they send to the National Conventions delegates who 
represent absolutely nothing in the way of voting strength, and in consideration 
of the votes of the delegates thus delivered they endeavor to secure their 
local offices from any National Republican Administration.

The progress that has been made among the negroes of the South during 
these forty-five years has not been made as a result of political effort of the
kind I have mentioned. It has been made as the result of effort along industrial 
and educational lines. Again allowing for the inevitable exception, it remains 
true, as one of the wisest leaders of the colored race has himself said, 
that the only white man who in the long run, can effectively help the colored 
man is that colored man's neighbor. There are innumerable white men in the 
South sincerely desirous of doing justice to the colored man, of helping him 
upward on his difficult path, of securing him just treatment before the law; 
white men who set their faces sternly against lynch law and mob violence, who 
attack all such abuses as peonage, who fight to keep the school funds equitably
divided between white and colored schools, who endeavor to help the colored 
man to become a self-supporting and useful member of the community. The 
white men who live elsewhere can best help the colored man in the South by 
upholding the hands of those white men of the South who are thus endeavoring 
to benefit and to act honestly by the colored man with whom they dwell in 
community neighborhood and with whose children their children will continue to
dwell in community neighborhood. Actual experience for nearly half a century ha

213947

has shown that it is futile to endeavor to substitute for such action by the 
white man to his colored neighbor, action by outside white men, action which 
painful experience has shown to be impotent to help the colored man, but which 
does irritate thewwhite man whom nevertheless it cannot control. We are not facing 
theories, we are facing actual facts, and it is well for us to remember 
Emerson's statement that in the long run the most unpleasant truth is a safer 
travelling companion than the pleasantest falsehood.

The action of the Republican machine in the South, then, in endeavoring 
to keep alive a party based only on negro votes, where, with few exceptions, 
the white leaders are in it only to gain reward for themselves by 
trafficking in negro votes, has been bad for the white men of the South, whom it 
has kept solidified in an unhealthy and unnatural political bond, to their 
great detriment and to the detriment of the whole Union; and it has been bad 
for the colored men of the South. The effect on the Republican Party has long 
been disastrous, and has finally proved fatal. There has in the past been much 
venality in Republican National Conventions in which there was an active contest 
for the nomination for President, and this venality has been almost exclusively 
among the rotten-borough delegates, and for the most part among the 
negro delegates from these Southern States in which there was no real Republican 
Party. Finally, in the Convention at Chicago last June, the break-up of the 
Republican Party was forced by these rotten-borough delegates from the South. I 
In the Primary States of the North the colored man in most places voted substantially 
as their white-neighbors voted. But in the Southern States, where there 
was no real Republican Party, and where colored men, or whites selected purely
by colored men, were sent to the Convention, representing nothing but their own 
greed for money or office the majority was overwhelmingly anti-progressive. 
Seven-eighths of the colored men from these rotten-borough districts upheld by
their votes the fraudulent actions of the men who in that Convention defied and 
betrayed the will of the mass of the plain people of the party. In spite of the 
hand-picked delegates chosen by the bosses in certain Northern States, in spite

213958

of the scores of delegates stolen from the rank and file of the
aprty by the corrupt political machine which dominated the National Committee
and the Convention itself, there would yet have been no hope of reversing in
the National Convention the action demanded by the overwhelming majority of the 
Republicans who had a chance to speak for themselves in their primaries, had it 
not been for the two hundred and fifty votes or thereabouts sent from the states 
in which there is no Republican Party. For forty-five years everything has been 
sacrificed to the effort to build up in these states a Republican Party which 
should be predominately and overwhelmingly negro, and now those for whom the 
effort has been made turned and betrayed that party itself. It would be not
merely foolish but criminal to disregard the teachings of such a lesson.	The 
disruption and destruction of the Republican Party, and the fact that it has 
been rendered absolutely impotent as an instrument for anything but mischief 
in the country at large has been brought about in large part by the effort to 
pretend that in the Southern States a sham is a fact, by the insistence upon 
treating the ghost party in the Southern States as a real party, by refusing 
to face the truth, which is that under existing conditions there is not and ca
cannot be in the Southern States a party based primarily upon the negro vote 
and under negro leadership or the leadership of white men who derive their 
power solely from negroes. With these forty-five years of failure of this 
policy in the South before our eyes, and with catastrophe thereby caused to 
a great National Party not yet six weeks distant from us, it would be criminal 
for the Progressives to repeat the course of action responsible for such
disaster, such failure, such catastrophe.	The loss of instant representation 
by Southern colored delegates is due to the fact that the sentiment of the 
Southern negro collectively has been prostituted by dishonest professional 
politicians, both white and black, and the machinery does not exist (and can 
never be created as long as present political conditions are continued) which 
can secure what a future of real justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the 
right of political expression by the negro who shows that he possesses the 

213969

intelligence integrity and self-respect which justify such right of political 
expression in his white neighbor.

We face certain actual facts, sad and unpleasant facts, but facts 
which must be faced if we are to dwell in the world of realities and not of 
shams, and if we are to try to make things better by deeds and not merely to delude 
ourselves by empty words. It would be much worse than useless to try to 
build up the Progressive Party in these Southern States where there is no real 
Republican Party, by appealing to thenegroes or to the men who in the past have 
derived their sole standing from leading and manipulating the negroes. As a 
matter of fact and not of theory all that could possibly result from such action 
would be to create another impotent little corrupt faction of would-be 
office holders, of delegates whose expenses to conventions had to be paid, and 
whose votes sometimes had to be bought. No real good could come from such 
action to any man, black or white; the negro would be hurt and not helped 
throughout the Union; the white man would be hurt in the South, the Progressive 
Party would be damaged irreparably at the beginning. I earnestly believe that 
by appealing to the best white men in the South, the men of justice and of 
vision as well as of strength and leadership, and by frankly putting the movement 
in their hands from the outset we shall create a situation by which the 
colored men of the South will ultimately get justice as it is not possible for 
them to get justice if we are to continue and perpetuate the present conditions. 
The men to whom we appeal are the men who have stood for securing the colored m
man in his rights before the law, and theybcan do for him what neither the
Northern white man nor the colored men themselves can do. Our only wise course 
from the stand-point of the colored man himself is to follow the course that we 
are following toward him in the North and to follow the course we are following 
toward him in the South.

Very truly yours,
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT

21397Released for MORNING PAPERS of Saturday, August 3, 1912.

O. K. Davis.
National Progressive Headquarters,
Manhattan Hotel, New York City.

Sagamore Hill,
August 1st, 1912.

Mr. Julian Harris,
Uncle Remus Magazine,
Atlanta, Georgia.

My dear Mr. Harris:-
In pursuance of our conversation I write you this letter. There is a 
peculiar fitness in writing it to the son of the man whose work made all Americans 
his debtors. Your father possessed genius; and moreover he possessed that gentleness 
of soul, that bread and tender sympathy with his fellows, for the lack of 
which genius cannot atone. His life and his work tended to bring his fellow-countrymen,
North and South, into ever closer relations of good-will and understanding; 
and surely it should be needless to say that the author of "Uncle Remus" and of 
"Free Joe and the Rest of the World" felt a deep and most kindly interest in the welfare 
of the negro.
Many letters dealing with the subject of which you spoke to me have 
been sent to me within the last few days. These letters, from equally worthy citizens, 
take diametrically opposite positions. Those written by men living in the 
North usually ask me to insist that we get from the South colored delegates to the 
National Progressive Convention. Those written by citizens of the South ask that I 
declare that the new party shall be a white man's party. I am not able to agree to 
either proposal.
In this country we cannot permanently succeed except upon the basis of 
treating each man on his worth as a man. We can fulfil our high mission among the 
nations of the earth, we can do lasting good to ourselves and to all mankind, only if 
we so act that the humblest among us, so long as he behaves in straight and decent 
fashion, has guaranteed to him under the law his right to life, to liberty, to protection

21398Mr. Julian Harris. 

-2-

from injustice, his right to enjoy the fruits of his own honest labor, and 
his right to the pursuit of happiness in his own way, so long as he does not trespass 
on the rights of others. Our only safe motto is "All men up" and not "Some men down." 
For us to oppress any class of our fellow-citizens is not only wrong to others but 
hurtful to ourselves; for in the long run such action is no more detrimental to the 
oppressed than to those who think that they temporarily benefit by the oppression. 
Surely no man can quarrel with these principles. Exactly as they should be applied 
among white men without regard to their differences of creed, or birth-place, or social 
station, without regard to whether they are rich men or poor men, men who work with 
their hands or men who work with their brains; so they should be applied among all men 
without regard to the color of their skins.
These are the principles to which I think our countrymen should adhere, 
the objects which I think they should have steadily in mind. There is need not 
merely of all our high purpose, but of all our wisdom and patience in striving to 
realize them. Above all, it is essential that we should not act in such a way as 
to make believe that we are achieving these objects, and yet by our actions indefinitely 
postpone the time when it will become even measurably possible to achieve
them. For this reason I cannot adopt either of the two diametrically opposite
suggestions made to me in the letters of which I have spoken.
I believe that the Progressive Movement should be made from the beginning
one in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding colored man, just as
it is in the interest of every honest, industrious, law-abiding white man.	I further
believe that the surest way to render the movement impotent to help either the white 
man or the colored man in those regions of the South where the colored man is most 
numerous, would be to try to repeat the course that has been followed by the Republican 
Party in these districts for so many years, or to endeavor in the States in 
question to build up a Progressive Party by the same methods which in those States have
resulted in making the Republican Party worse than impotent.

21399Mr. Julian Harris	

-3-

Henry Ward Beecher once said that the worst enemy of the colored man was 
the man who stirred up enmity between the white and colored men who have to live as 
neighbors. In the South the Democratic machine has sought to keep itself paramount 
by encouraging the hatred of the white man for the black; the Republican machine has 
sought to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man against the white; and surely 
the time has come when we should understand the mischief in both courses, and should 
abandon both.
We have made the Progressive issue a moral, not a racial issue. I believe that wherever the racial issue is permitted to become dominant in our politics, 
it always works harm to both races, but immeasurably most harm to the weaker race. I
believe that in this movement only damage will come if we either abandon our ideals on 
the one hand, or, on the other, fail resolutely to look facts in the face, however 
unpleasant these facts may be. Therefore I feel that we have to adapt our actions to 
the actual conditions and actual needs and feelings of each community; not abandoning 
our principles, but not in one community endeavoring to realize them in ways which 
will simply cause disaster in that community, although they may work well in another 
community. Our object must be the same everywhere, but the methods by which we 
strive to attain it must be adapted to the needs of the several States, or it will 
never be attained at all.
In many of the States of the Union where there is a considerable colored 
population we are able in very fact and at the present moment to bring the best colored 
men into the movement on the same terms as the white man. In Rhode Island and Maryland, 
in New York and Indiana, in Ohio and Illinois, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to 
speak only of states of which I have personal knowledge, this is now being done, and 
from some or all of these states colored delegates will be sent to the National Progressive 
Convention at Chicago. Let me point out that the Progressive Party is already,
at its very birth, endeavoring in these States, in its own home, to act with fuller recognition 
of the rights of the colored man than ever the Republican Party did. Until I
was President the white Republicans of the North, although they had loudly insisted that

21400Mr. Julian Harris.

-4-

the colored man should have office, with even greater firmness insisted that he should 
have office only in the South, or at any rate, not in the North. When, for instance, 
I tried to appoint a colored man to office in Ohio I was wholly unable to get the 
necessary assent from the white Republican leaders of Ohio, and had to appoint the 
man in Washington; and in appointing a colored man to a high position in New York 
I was obliged to do it by main force and against the wish of the entire party organization.	
In the Republican National Convention the colored members have been almost 
exclusively from the South, and the great majority of them have been men of such character 
that their political activities were merely a source of harm, and of very grave 
harm, to their own race. We, on the contrary, are hoping to see in the National Progressive 
Convention colored delegates from the very places where we expect to develop 
our greatest strength, and we hope to see these men of such character that their activities 
shall be of benefit not only to the people at large but especially to their
own race. So much for the course we are able to follow in these States; and the 
citizens of these States can best help the negro race by doing justice to these Negroes
who are their own neighbors. In many Northern States there have been lynchings and
race riots with sad and revolting accompaniments; in many of these States there has 
been failure to punish such outrageous conduct and what is even more important, failure 
to deal in advance wisely and firmly with the evil conditions, among both black men 
and white, which had caused the outrages.

There are other States, including the majority of the Southern States, 
where the conditions are wholly different. Much is to be said for the men who forty-five 
years ago, with motives which were for the most part and among most of their 
number of a lofty and disinterested type, attempted a course of action in those States 
which in actual practice has lamentably failed to justify itself - and I make no attempt 
at this time to strive to apportion the blame for the failure. It is unwise
to revive bitterness by dwelling on the errors and short-comings of the past. Let
us profit by them, but reproach no man because of them. We are now starting a new
movement for the betterment of our people, a movement for social and industrial justice

21401Mr. Julian Harris.

-5-

which shall be nation-wide, a movement which is to strive to accomplish actual results 
and not to accept high-sounding phrases as a substitute for deeds. Therefore we are 
not to be pardoned if at the outset, with the knowledge gained by forty-five years' 
experience of failure, we repeat the course that has led to such failure, and abandon 
the effort to make the movement for social and industrial justice really nation-wide.

For forty-five years the Republican Party has striven to build up in the 
Southern States in question a party based on the theory that the pyramid will unsupported 
stand permanently on its apex instead of on its base.	For forty-five years 
the Republican Party has endeavored in these states to build up a party in which the 
Negro should be dominant, a party consisting almost exclusively of Negroes. Those 
who took the lead in this experiment were actuated by high motives, and no one should 
now blame them because of what, with the knowledge they then had and under the then
existing circumstances, they strove to do. But in actual practice the result has
been lamentable from every stand-point. It has been productive of evil to the 
colored men themselves; it has been productive only of evil to the white men of the 
South; and it has worked the gravest injury to, and finally the disruption and destruction 
of, the great Republican Party itself. In the States in question where
the Negro predominates in numbers, and in the sections of other states in which he 
predominates in numbers, the Republican Party has in actual fact become practically
non-existent in so far as votes at the polls are concerned.	The number of votes 
cast in these states and districts for the Republican ticket on election day has become 
negligible. It has long been recognized that these states will never give a
Republican electoral vote; that these states or districts will never send a Republican 
or a colored man to Congress. The number of colored men in them who hold any
elective office of the slightest importance is negligible. In these states and districts 
the Republican Party, in actual practice, and disregarding individual exceptions, 
exists only to serve the purposes of a small group of politicians, for the most
part white, but including some colored men, who have not the slightest interest in

21402Mr. Julian Harris	

-6-

elections, and whose political activities are confined to securing offices by sending 
to National Conventions delegations which are controlled by the promise of office or 
by means even more questionable. Once in four years they send to the National 
Convention delegates who represent absolutely nothing in the way of voting strength, 
and in consideration of the votes of the delegates thus delivered they endeavor to 
secure their local offices from any National Republican Administration.

The progress that has been made among the negroes of the South during 
these forty-five years has not been made as a result of political effort of the
kind I have mentioned. It has been made as the result of effort along industrial 
and educational lines. Again allowing for the inevitable exception, it remains 
true, as one of the wisest leaders of the colored race has himself said, that the 
only white man who, in the long run, can effectively help the colored man is that
colored man's neighbor. There are innumerable white men in the South sincerely 
desirous of doing justice to the colored man, of helping him upward on his difficult 
path, of securing him just treatment before the law; white men who set their faces 
sternly against lynch law and mob violence, who attack all such abuses as peonage,
who fight to keep the school funds equitable divided between white and colored schools,
who endeavor to help the colored man to become a self-respecting and useful member
of the community. The white men who live elsewhere can best help the colored man
in the South by upholding the hands of these white men of the South who are thus
endeavoring to benefit and to act honestly by the colored man with whom they dwell
in community neighborhood, and with whose children their children will continue to
dwell in community neighborhood. Actual experience for nearly half a century has 
shown that it is futile to endeavor to substitute for such action by the white man 
to his colored neighbor, action by outside white men, action which painful experience 
has shown to be impotent to help the colored man, but which does irritate the white 
man whom nevertheless it cannot control. We are not facing theories, we are facing

21403Mr. Julian Harris.

-7-

actual facts, and it is well for us to remember Emerson's statement that in the long
run the most unpleasant truth is a safer travelling companion than the pleasantest 
falsehood.

The action of the Republican machine in the South, then, in endeavoring
to keep alive a party based only on negro votes, where, with few exceptions, the 
white leaders are in it only to gain reward for themselves by trafficking in negro 
votes, has been bad for the white men of the South, whom it has kept solidified in 
an unhealthy and unnatural political bond, to their great detriment and to the detriment 
of the whole Union; and it has also been bad for the colored men of the 
South. The effect on the Republican Party has long been disastrous, and has finally 
proved fatal. There has in the past been much venality in Republican National Conventions 
in which there was an active contest for the nomination for President, and 
this venality has been almost exclusively among the rotten-borough delegates, and for 
the most part among the negro delegates, from these Southern States in which there was 
no real Republican Party. Finally, in the Convention at Chicago last June, the 
break-up of the Republican Party was forced by these rotten-borough delegates from
the South. In the primary states of the North the colored men in most places voted 
substantially as their white neighbors voted.	But in the Southern States, where there
was no real Republican Party, and where colored men, or whites selected purely by 
colored men, were sent to the convention, representing nothing but their own greed
for money or office, the majority was overwhelmingly anti-progressive.	Seven-eighths
of the colored men from these rotten-borough districts upheld by their votes the 
fraudulent actions of the men who in that convention defied and betrayed the will of
the mass of the plain people of the party. In spite of the hand-picked delegates 
chosen by the bosses in certain northern states, in spite of the scores of delegates 
deliberately stolen from the rank and file of the party by the corrupt political 
machine which dominated the National Committee and the Convention itself, there would

21404Mr. Julian Harris.

-8-

yet have been no hope of reversing in the National Convention the action demanded by 
the overwhelming majority of the Republicans who had a chance to speak for themselves 
in their primaries, had it not been for the two hundred and fifty votes or thereabouts
sent from the states in which there is no Republican Party. For forty-five years 
everything has been sacrificed to the effort to build up in these states a Republican 
Party which should be predominately and overwhelmingly negro, and now those for whom 
the effort has been made turned and betrayed that party itself. It would be not
merely foolish but criminal to disregard the teachings of such a lesson.	The disruption 
and destruction of the Republican Party, and the fact that it has been rendered 
absolutely impotent as an instrument for anything but mischief in the country
at large, has been brought about in large part by the effort to pretend that in the 
Southern States a sham is a fact; by the insistence upon treating the ghost party in 
the Southern States as a real party, by refusing to face the truth, which is that 
under existing conditions there is not and cannot be in the Southern States a party 
based primarily upon the negro vote and under negro leadership or the leadership of 
white men who derive their power solely from negroes. With these forty-five years 
of failure of this policy in the South before our eyes, and with the catastrophe 
thereby caused to a great National Party not yet six weeks distant from us, it would 
be criminal for the Progressives to repeat the course of action responsible for such
disaster, such failure, such catastrophe.	The loss of instant representation by
Southern colored delegates is due to the fact that the sentiment of the Southern negro 
collectively has been prostituted by dishonest professional politicians, both white 
and black; and the machinery does not yet exist (and can never be created as long as 
present political conditions are continued) which can secure what a future of real 
justice will undoubtedly develop, namely, the right of political expression by the 
negro who shows that he possesses the intelligence, integrity and self-respect which 
justify such right of political expression in his white neighbor.


21405Mr. Julian Harris. 

-9-

We face certain actual facts, sad and unpleasant facts, but facts which 
must be faced if we are to dwell in a world of realities and not of shame, and if 
we are to try to make things better by deeds and not merely to delude ourselves by 
empty words. It would be much worse than useless to try to build up the Progressive 
Party in these Southern States where there is no real Republican Party, by appealing 
to the negroes or to the men who in the past have derived their sole standing from 
leading and manipulating the negroes. As a matter of fact and not of theory all 
that could possibly result from such action would be to create another impotent little 
corrupt faction of would-be office holders, of delegates whose expenses to conventions 
had to be paid, and whose votes sometimes had to be bought. No real good could come 
from such action to any man, black or white; the negro would be hurt and not helped 
throughout the Union; the white man would be hurt in the South, the Progressive Party 
would be damaged irreparably at the beginning. I earnestly believe that by appealing 
to the best white men in the South, the men of justice and of vision as well as of 
strength and leadership, and by frankly putting the movement in their hands from the 
outset we shall create a situation by which the colored men of the South will ultimately 
get justice as it is not possible for them to get justice if we are to continue and 
perpetuate the present conditions. The men to whom we appeal are the men who have 
stood for securing the colored man in his rights before the law, and they can do for 
him what neither the Northern white men nor the colored men themselves can do. Our 
only wise course from the stand-point of the colored man himself is to follow the 
course that we are following toward him in the North and to follow the course we are 
following toward him in the South.

Very truly yours,
(Signed) Theodore Roosevelt.

21406August 1st 1912.

My dear Mr Wakefield: 
I am concerned about your letter. There has
been a strong feeling in favor of having my nomination
seconded by an ex-Democratic Governor, and Mr
Garvin has accordingly been chosen for that purpose.
He told me himself that he would attempt not only no
dictation but no leadership of the progressive
movement in Rhode Island.  Am I at liberty to ask 
him about your letter?
Faithfully yours,


Mr A. J. Wakefield,        
766 Westminster Street,                      
Providence, R. I.

21407August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Sir:      
Mr Roosevelt is so overwhelmed with work that it is
a physical impossibility for him to reply to his corresponden[ce]
personally. He has asked me however to thank you for your le[tter]
and to say that he has taken the liberty of sending it to his 
managers for their information.                             
Faithfully yours,
                                                                   
Secretary


Mr F. M. Allen,         
Greenwood, S. C.August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mr Andrews:    
              
Pray treat this as confidential. I am perfectly clea [clear]
as to what must be done in Pennsylvania and I shall make my
decision public, unless the Pennsylvanians come to my view, as
soon as the Chicago Convention is over. We have to meet simil [similar]
situations in many States and I have wished to wait until I w [was]
actually nominated and could speak as the man for whom the 
Progressives were to vote.     
         
Faithfully yours,


Mr H. G. Andrews,          
Johnstown, Penna.August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mr Blakeley:              
Your letter pleased me greatly.  I appreciate it so 
much that I must send you this line of personal acknowledgment.                                        
Faithfully yours,


Mr L. M. Blakeley,              
3 Catharine Street,                       
Lyons, N. Y.

6296July August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Congressman Cooper:
                    
I have been informed that big masses of land in the 
Philippines have been disposed of to certain combination of 
capitalists for sugar purposes, and that this ought not to have
been done.  Can you give me any information in the matter?
                                        
Sincerely yours,

7609August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Senator:
                  
Many thanks for your note of July 30th.  I hope 
you will be able to come to see me before you go West.  It
will be a real pleasure.
              
With regards,
                                           
Faithfully yours,

Hon. Albert B. Cummins,                 
United States Senate.

7170August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Governor Curry:
I have been informed that big masses of land in the 
Philippines have been disposed of to a certain combination of
capitalists for sugar purposes, and that this ought not to have been
done. Can you give me any information in the matter?

Last year you spoke to me saying in effect that you thought
the Philippines should soon be made independent. Personally I have
always felt that ultimately they would have to be independent, but
I have also felt that they were not fit for independence at present.
Would you mind telling me just what you think should be done in the
matter, whether you think that we are now far enough in advance to
set a time for independence, and whether more should be done in 
giving them an increase in power over their own government at
present, and also whether in the event of independence they would
be capable of controlling the Moros? I have immense trust in
your judgment, and I want to know your views so that I can carefully
study them and see whether mine must be modified.

Faithfully yours,


Hon. George Curry,
House of Representatives.

7908August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mr du Quesnay:
                   
There is not a better man in the country than Parker.
I swear by him in every way, and have asked him to second my 
nomination.  I wish I could see you in person and go over the
whole matter with you.  I am very reluctant to try to dictate
my running mate.
                                     
Faithfully yours,

Mr J. G. du Quesnay,       
1532 N. Dorgenois Street,                      
New Orleans, La.

21408August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you very cordially for
your letter and to say that he has taken the liberty of sendi[ng]
it on to Mr Borden D. Whiting, Scheuer Building, Newark, N. J. 
who is at the head of the Roosevelt organization in your Stat[e]
He hopes that you will get into communication with Mr Whiting.                                   
Faithfully yours,
                                                                
Secretary


Robert S. Hartgrove, Esq.,                  
Jersey City, N. J. 

21409August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mr Holden:
                   
That is fine!  I appreciate your letter so much that
I must send you this line of personal acknowledgment.
                                           
Faithfully yours,

Mr William A. Holden,             
60 Wall Street,                        
New York City.

21410August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Miss Jorgemen:
I am pleased with your letter and appreciate it.
Good luck to the little boys!
Faithfully yours,


Miss M. Jorgemen,            
36 Pine Street,                      
New York City.

21411August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Congressman Kent:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your courtesy
in sending him that telegram regarding Mr Judson King.  At the 
present time, however, he cannot take advantage of the opport[unity]
to see Mr King and discuss those matters on account of the gre[at]
pressure upon him, and impossibility of his getting throug[h]
the work he has on hand   unless he has more time to himself.
At sometime in the future he may have an opportunity of seei[ng]
Mr King and discussing such matters fully with him.                                          
Faithfully yours,
                                                                    
Secretary


Hon. William Kent,             
House of Representatives.

21412August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mrs Lynch:
I must send you just one line of hearty congratulation[s]
and to wish well to you and to all your children.                
Your friend,


Mrs Lynch,          
6609 Bower Street,                  
Pittsburg, Pa.

21413August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mr McBrier:
                   
I thank you for your kind letter.  Pray treat this 
as confidential.  I have definitely come to the conclusion that
we must have a third party movement straightout in Pennsylvania,
just as you suggest.
                                  
Faithfully yours,

Mr L. A. McBrier,           
Erie, Pa.

21414August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mr McColloch:
                  
There is not a better man in the country than Parker
I swear by him in every way, and have asked him to second my
nomination.  I wish I could see you in person and go over the
whole matter with you.  I am very reluctant to try to dictate 
my running mate.
                                   
Faithfully yours,

Mr E. H. McColloch,              
Morris Park, L. I.

21415August 2nd 1912.

My dear Mr Munsey:
Just a line of goodwill and regards from Mrs
Roosevelt and myself, and indeed the whole Roosevelt
family. Perkins has been working with wonderful
efficiency, and Dixon has been doing admirable work also,
visiting different States and keeping in touch with the
situation in these States. Perkins is good enough to be
much pleased with the speech I am to make at Chicago, and
I hope you will be too.

I trust you are having a thoroughly enjoyable and
pleasant time, and I look forward to seeing you as soon
as you return. Abouttthe middle of August I get into
harness, and I cannot say that I look forward with
pleasure to the three following months until after
election.

Faithfully yours,

Frank A. Munsey Esq.,
Savoy West End Hotel,
Carlsbad, Germany.

21416August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Dr Newton:
                   
I am very deeply touched by your letters, the one to Post
and the one to me personally.  My dear Doctor, nothing could please
me more than your support.  You must know how I have always believed
in you and therefore how proud I am that you should be with me.  I 
am absolutely in sympathy with you on your proposition about the
mineral lands and I shall forward your letter to Dean Kirchway and
ask if he cannot put in the plank substantially as you recommend it.
I would have embodied it in my speech if it had come a little sooner,
but my speech is now printed and out.
               
Again most heartily thanking you, I am,
                                              
Sincerely yours,

Rev. R. Hever Newton,
East Hampton, New York.

21417August 2nd, 1912.

Dear Mr Robinson:
                 Herewith I am sending you a check for $120 received
from the Astor Trust Company, which I wish you would pay into 
Mr Roosevelt's account.
                                         
Faithfully yours,

                                                                     
Secretary

Douglas Robinson Esq.,                  
128 Broadway,                              
New York City.

21418August 2nd 1912.

My dear Mr Robinson:
I greatly appreciate your kind letter and I want now to [?]
you for your support. Mr Betts had always been a personal supp[orter]
of mine. But I really do not think it worth while going into [?]
In his paper, the Lyons Republican, in either February or Mar[ch]
1910, Mr Betts nominated me for Governor of the State. He [mentioned?]
this fact in a letter to me on August 9th of that year, but I [would?]
prefer not to have it brought out unless you happen to have a [?]
of the Lyons Republican and can find it in the file. I do not
care to go into any personal controversy as to his former supp[ort]
of me.
Again heartily thanking you, I am,
Sincerely yours,


Mr Leslie Robinson,

21419August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Seligman:
                  
Your letter gives me very real pleasure.  I most
cordially thank you for it.
                                     
Faithfully yours,

Edwin R. A. Seligman Esq.,             
Lake Placid, N. Y.

21420August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Sir:
                  
I am sorry to tell you that Mr Roosevelt does not
know William Hale Thompson's address in Chicago, although you
could probably be able to find him if you addressed him at
the Congress Hotel in that city.
                                            
Faithfully yours,

                                                                       
Secretary

Mr David Banks Sickels,                  
Hamilton Club,                          
Paterson, N. J.

21421August 2nd, 1912.

My dear General:
                   
Hearty thanks for your note and the enclosure.  I
look forward to seeing you at any time.
                                          
Faithfully yours,

General D. E. Sickles,                  
23 Fifth Avenue,                          
New York City.

21422August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Captain Sims:
                   
I am extremely pleased that you liked what I said,
and I thank you for your kind note.  The notes about the Navy
will be of use to me.  I only hope I can wake our people up 
on it.
                                 
Always yours,

Captain W. S. Sims,           
U. S. Naval War College,                     
Newport, R. I.

21423August 2nd, 1912.

Dear Thompson:
                   
As you know, Mr Roosevelt has now fixed up an
arrangement by which he is to speak in Massachusetts on
August 17th and in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on August
22nd.  He would like to know if you could arrange for 
him to make one speech in Rhode Island, either the day before
or the day after he speaks in Massachusetts, that is, on the
16th or the 18th.
                                 
Faithfully yours,

                                                             
Secretary

Charles H. Thompson Esq.

21424August 2nd, 1912.

My dear Mr Townsend: 
I thank you for your letter and for the clipping.
From what I have learned I think that Mr Batchelder is not
quite right mentally.  For eleven men to try to dictate to [fo?]
was of course an absurdity, and if his proposal had been adop[ted]
the whole Progressive Movement might just as well have been
abandoned at once.                                      
Faithfully yours,


Mr A. H. Townsend,           
Burlington, Vermont.

21425August 2nd, 1912.

Dear Leonard:                    
I shall enjoy "The Rasp" just as I get a chance
to look at it. You can imagine that I am fairly busy now.
Give my love to Mrs Wood.            
Always yours,


Major General Leonard Wood,                         
War Department,                                   
Washington, D. C.

21426August 3rd, 1912.

Dear Mr Allen:
I wrote Mr Myer as you suggested at once. The trut[h]
about Dr Wiley is that while he was a very useful man at one
crisis, he was so eaten up by his conceit that it was agony [?]
him to admit that anyone shared any credit with him, and his
[?] often wrongheaded that it was sometimes a
[?]August 3rd, 1912.

Dear Governor:             
That is fine, but I am concerned about your health.
You may have noticed we put your brother-in-law on as Chairman
of the New York County Committee.                
Give my warm regards to Mrs. Bass, and if you and she
are ever passing through New York be sure and come out and spe[nd]
a night here at Oyster Bay.                            
Sincerely yours,


Hon. Robert P. Bass,           
Concord, N. H.August 3rd 1912.

Dear Batos:
That seems to me very doubtful.  In exceptional cases it may be that
progressive candidates can go before Republican or Democratic primaries,
but of course they must announce openly that they intend to support the
progressive electoral ticket. Is this what you contemplate?  Such being
the case, I myself do not see why they should go into the Democratic or
Republican primaries, save in exceptional cases. I think that much
misunderstanding of a very damaging kind would be caused by the issuing
of any such statement as that you suggest. If the progressives nominated
by those primaries were to be worth anything, they would have to be as
members of the progressive party, and not as progressive members of the 
Democratic or Republican parties.

Faithfully  yours,


Lindon Batos Jr. Esq.                                       August 3rd 1912

Dear Mr Carman:
           That is an awfully nice letter of yours.  I wish
you were going out with us.  Mrs Roosevelt will miss
you, and so will I, and so will George.  Good luck to 
you always.
                            Sincerely yours,

Mr Travers D. Carman.

6272

                                                                     August 3rd, 1912.

Dear Mr Doherty:
                   Naturally Hagenis's nomination would be entirely
satisfactory to me, but don't you think it would be a mistake
for me to try to interfere further and give the impression that
I was dictating whom the Massachusetts men should nominate?  I
believe that there would be much resentment felt if any such
idea got abroad, and I think you gentlemen ought to work out a
situation among yourselves.  Of course if all of you join in
asking my advice, I will give it gladly.
                                       Faithfully yours,

Thomas F. Doherty Esq.,
                   526 Tremont Building,
                            Boston, Mass.

21427

                                                              August 3rd, 1912.

Dear Mr Earl:
                  I think I understand you.  You believe in entire 
freedom of theraputic methods while of course you believe in
sanitary regulation.  This is the position taken by a Christian
Scientist who has been writing to me, and I have practically 
incorporated it in my speech.
                                             Faithfully yours,

Edwin T. Earl Esq.
                Los Angeles, Cal.

21428

                                                               August 3rd, 1912.

My dear M. Finet:
                 I have just received your two books.  I appreciate
them and thank you for them, and thank you also for the kind
words inscribed on the title page.  I genuinely look forward to
reading both.
                 With high regard,
                                         Sincerely yours,

M. Jean Finet,
           Paris, France.

21429

                                                 August 3rd 1912.

Dear Mr Foster:
          I am much interested in your letter.  I shall take 
it up at once with Garfield and Dixon.
                            Sincerely yours,

Amos P. Foster, Esq.,
         1002 First National Bank Building,
                   Cincinnati, Ohio.

21430

August 3rd, 1912.

Dear Gilson:
That is a most interesting letter and personally I
agree with every word of it. I want a clean new party from [?]
If your friend does not think my speech, which by this time [he?]
must have in his possession, radical enough, then I do not [know?]
what radicalism is.
Faithfully yours,


Gilson Gardner Esq.

21431                                                        August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Sir:
                Mr Roosevelt has asked me to tender to you his
thanks for your courtesy in sending him those apples.
Both he and Mrs Roosevelt appreciated your thoughtfulness
very much.
                                  Faithfully yours,

                                                            Secretary

Mr J. T. Giles,
         Johnson City, Tenn.

21432

[September 3rd, 1912.]
August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Just before leaving for his campaign tour Mr Roosevelt
asked me to thank you for your letter and to say that he was
really touched by what you wrote. If he only had the time he
would certainly send you a personal note of thanks and 
appreciation, but he begs that you will accept this note of
aknowledgment instead.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary


J. H. Hoffman,
Kensington, Ga.

[*21433*]Form 260
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[*Ans, Aug 3, 1912*]

HON. WILLIAM H. HOTCHKISS, NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE CONVENTION, BUFFALO, N. Y.

NOW HAVE THAT LETTER TO STATE AND COUNTY CHAIRMEN ABOUT WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
WHAT SHALL I DO WITH IT. PLEASE WIRE IMMEDIATELY.
FRANK HARPER

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2. In any event the Company shall not be liable for damages for any mistakes or 
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August 3rd, 1912.
My dear Mr Jackson:
I thank you for your letter and for that interesting
photograph. The signs amused me very much.
Faithfully yours,


Mr Horace H. Jackson,
Bridgeport, Conn.

[*21435*]August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Mr Jennings:  
Many thanks for your kind letter. I thoroughly    
appreciate your courtesy in trying to get Mr Washington in tou
with me. You will see what I have said on the colored questio
in the papers this morning. You are welcome to use the motto    
from me as you suggest - "The world can never be a good place    
for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for al
of us to live in."
Sincerely yours,


Mr Ryerson W. Jennings,
City Club of Philadelphia.


[*21436*]August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Mr Kirk:
I thank you for your letter, and I can assure you that I 
going to do all I can along that line.
Faithfully yours,


Mr James W. Kirk,
East St Louis, Ill.


[*21437*]August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Mr Ladd:   
I am greatly interested in your letter. I have tak
the liberty of sending it to Mr Thompson of Vermont, asking     
him to get into touch with you and perhaps visit you.
With regards,
Sincerely yours,


Walter J. Ladd Esq.,
17 Custom House Street,
Providence, R. I.


[*21438*]August 3rd 1912.

Dear Nick:
I have only time for a line. I shall take up that    
matter with Garfield and Dixon. It may well be that you     
are right about Cincinnati, although I am sure that in      
most places what is needed is a straight third party     
ticket. I fully realize the fact, however, that in this   
movement circumstances alter in the different localities.

Faithfully yours,


21439August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Mr Mac Elroy:
That is a mighty nice letter of yours. I am very   
much pleased.  

Faithfully yours,


Mr A. J. Mac Elroy,
Rockville Centre, N. Y.

       
 21440August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Mr Myer:
Mr Allen has just sent me your letter to him of July 20
The Pure Food and Drug Bill became a law purely because of th
active stand I took in trying to get it through Congress. 
long been urged by gentlemen such as Dr Wiley, and these gent
had wholly failed to get even the smallest support for it in 
partly because some of them, although honest men, were so
fantastically impractical that they played right into the ha
their foes. When I finally made up my mind to put it throug
used men like Mr Garfield, the then Secretary of the Interio
a number of other men to aid me in the fight. We got it thr
we enforced it well. Starting the law I do not think it wou
have been possible to have enforced it in better shape.

With regards,

Sincerely yours,


Mr Walter E. Myer.

21441August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Congressman Norris:
I hear very highly of Mr Metcalf. Of course I am    
anxious not to interfere in Vice Presidential matters.

Faithfully yours,


Hon. G. W. Norris,
House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C.   


21442August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Judge Nortoni:
I wish to send you this line of acknowledgement of     
all that you have done in Missouri. I feel that I owe more     
to you than to any one else, next to Colonel Nelson himself,   
for what has been accomplished. You took the lead when   
most men of your standing were hesitating.

Again heartily thanking you, I am,

Sincerely yours,


Judge Albert D. Nortoni,
St Louis, Mo.

21443August 3rd 1912.

My dear Plunkett:
It is good to hear from you. I send you under separate cover three
pieces I wrote in The Outlook, Mr Taft's Majority, Thou Shalt not Steal,
and The Steamroller and after. The third piece contains an allusion to
the Democratic platform and the reasons why it would be utterly impossible
for me to support a man standing on such a platform. I am also
sending you a copy of my speech before the National Progressive Convention. 
Let me add a word to you in your capacity of Devil's Advocate!
I do not quite understand those among our friends the enemy who, as you
say, were shocked at the general conduct of the convention, and seemed to
hold me a little responsible for it. Personally I was very much more
than shocked at the general conduct of the Convention, but I can say
quite sincerely that no members of any convention in any country have
ever behaved with higher and more patriotic purpose and more real 
dignity in facing a genuine crisis than was the case of the Roosevelt
men at that convention. There was of course much guying of Root and
the machine leaders, but it did not go to anything like the extreme
that is common in Great Britain in the course of heckling would-be
Members of Parliament.

214442

Now as to the second point, -the supposition that Wilson and his
platform and his independence of the party machine so nearly resemble
me that they do not see how I can expect the people of the United
States to prefer me to him. As a matter of fact, and of course not for
publication, I do not expect the people of the United States to prefer
me to him. As you say, I would have had a good sporting chance if the
Democrats had put up a reactionary candidate. As it is, I think there
are enough Americans who think just as you say the English in question 
think, to elect him. But from my standpoint they are all wrong in this, 
and my answer would be practically the same as the answer you have 
already made, that only a third party will relieve the honest and farsighted 
man of the necessity of voting either for the puppet of the 
machine Republicans, or for the highly undesirable Democratic Party. So 
far from the Baltimore platform nearly resembling mine, it is the exact 
reverse. It is, to my mind, one of the worst platforms that any party 
has put out for over forty years, and certainly worse than any, with the 
possible exception of the Democratic platform of '96. It is not 
progressive at all. It represents partly an unintelligent rural 
toryism, and partly an utterly insincere willingness to promise the 
impossible, with cynical indifference to perform anything whatever. I

214453

am also sending you my article in The Outlook on Platform Insincerity.
How any human being who believes in any shape or way in the principles 
for which I stand can expect me to support any candidate on such a 
platform, I cannot understand. Wilson is a good man who has in no way 
shown that he possesses any special fitness for the Presidency. Until 
he was fifty years old, as college professor and college president he 
advocated with skill, intelligence and good breeding the outworn 
doctrines which were responsible for four-fifths of the political
troubles of the United States. He posed as, and believed himself to be,
a strong conservative, and was being groomed by a section of Wall Street 
as the special conservative champion against me and my ideas. Then he
ran as Governor of New Jersey, and during the last eighteen months
discovered that he could get nowhere advocating the doctrines he had 
advocated, and instantly turned an absolute somersault so far as at 
least half of these doctrines was concerned. He still clings, tothe 
other half, and he has shown not the slightest understanding of the 
really great problems of our present industrial situation, the very 
problems, for instance, with which you have been particularly
concerned - in other words, all  of the problems of our industrial and 
agricultural life. He is an able man, and I have no doubt could

214464
    
speedily acquaint himself with these problems, and would not show Taft's
muddle-headed inability to try to understand them when left by himself.  
But he is not a Nationalist, he has no real and deep-seated convictions     
on the things that I regard as most vital, and he is in the position    
where he can only win by standing on a platform which he must afterwards
repudiate under penalty of himself becoming a grotesque disaster to the     
community, and furthermore, he can only win by the help of the worst     
bosses in this country, and by perpetuating their control of their    
several States in return for their aid.     

You say that you hope that our platform will avoid the impression of     
merely going one better than the extremely able and clear thinking    
Democratic candidate. I hardly understand this because the said candidate   
has not yet spoken. Is it possible that you refer to the Democratic    
platform? I do not think that that platform shows either clearheadedness     
or ability; I think it shows a combination of complete muddleheadedness,
with great insincerity, and so far from wishing to go it one better, I     
shall endeavor on every vital point, from the Navy and the Philippines,  
to the trusts, the tariff, the welfare of the farmer, and the welfare of
the workingman, either to take exactly the opposite position from, or     
else to take a position upon which it has not even touched, probably    

214475

because the makers of the platform were either afraid, or are dismally   
ignorant of the things that are most vital in American political life    
of today. If you do however, mean the utterances of Wilson himself, I   
at once agree with you about his ability. Moreover, I think that he is    
generally clearheaded, but I think that he is very wrongheaded on many    
issues, and that on other issues he has not thought at all. As for    
going him one better, that I certainly shall not try to do, for on the    
various points where I think he is right, he has merely taken the same    
position I have taken sometime after I had taken it.     

For your private information I will say again that I think it     
probable at present that Wilson will win. There are plenty of well-meaning 
progressives who do not think deeply or fundamentally who will go    
to him. He will take the majority of the progressive Democrats, and he    
will not only keep all the reactionary Democrats, but he will take some    
reactionary Republicans when they find, as I believe they will find, that     
Taft cannot be elected. Among the Republicans I shall only get the   
progressive Republicans, of course, and while I think these make up the     
great majority of the party, yet I shall not get any but those of strong     
convictions, for the weaker and more timid men, and those with least     
imagination, will tend to vote the straight party ticket. Among the    

214486
   
independents I shall get a considerable number of the students of social   
science, of such men and women as those who attended the recent    
Charities Conference, for instance, including the active workers for    
social betterment in our big cities. I shall also get a considerable    
number of Democratic working-men and farmers. It is possible that as the     
campaign develops my strength will grow, and I shall be able to show that     
Taft means reaction in its extreme form, that there is no real hope of     
coherent progress in Wilson, and that we should have a new party for
practically the same reasons that in '56 it became necessary to break up    
the old Whig Party and ultimately beat the Democratic Party with the    
Republican organization. But I do not think this probable. However, win     
or lose, the fight had to be made, and it happened that no human being     
could make it except myself. I shall make it on clean-cut issues, and     
will make a standard in my speeches and in our platform such as never    
before has been made, and which will, I think, have a considerable     
influence for good in our future political history.  

If you see Arthur Lee, give him my warm regards.   

Always yours,

    
Sir Horace Plankett.

21449August 3rd 1912.
My dear Mr Ransom:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you very cordially for
your letters.  He is taking them to Chicago so that he will
have them by him when he is conferring about the matters you
touch upon.
Faithfully yours,

William L. Ransom Esq.,
154 Nassau Street, New York.

21450
August 3rd 1912.
Dear Shaw:
That is a capital letter of yours, and I think I have already
written you how pleased I was with what you wrote in the Review of
Reviews.
I also agree with you that this is largely a movement for the
regeneration of the Republican Party. But it is a regeneration which
is to be chemical rather than merely mechanical, so to speak. When the
Republican Party was formed, it consisted, roughly speaking, of about
ninety per cent of the Northern Whigs and twenty per cent of the
Northern Democrats, that is, the membership was overwhelmingly ex-Whig.
Nevertheless it became something entirely different from the old
moribund Whig party. A couple of years were needed for the transformation,
but the transformation had to occur. So now, I do not believe
we can do anything of any permanent or even temporary value if we get
into the position of being merely a bolting faction of the Republican
Party. But of course there are certain States where it will not pay to
try to run a third ticket this year, excepting for Electors, and other
States in which we can take the whole Republican Party in probably. Of
course if in Iowa Kenyon would say that he is for the progressive
214512
Electors, all our difficulties would vanish.  I should be for him
unequivocally.  What we want in the Senate is more progressives of the
type of the progressive Republican Senators.
[I also think you are absolutely right about the Vice-Presidency.]
Ever yours,

Dr. Albert Shaw,
Review of Reviews,
New York.

21452
August 3rd, 1912.
My dear Mr Stout:
I at once wrote to Judge Nortoni as you suggested.
Faithfully yours,

Mr R.E. Stout,
Kansas City, Mo.

21453August 3rd, 1912.

My dear Mr Taylor:
I sent the telegram to Cliver and Lindsay at once. Of
course I am absolutely against our endorsing Hooper, or failing
to nominate a Progressive candidate against him.  With a straight
ticket, I think there is a chance of our carrying Tennessee.
Faithfully yours,


Hon. G. T. Taylor,
Office of the Treasurer,
Nashville, Tenn.

[*21454*]August 3rd, 1912.
Dear Thompson:
I hope you have now recovered from your accident.
Will you look at the enclosed letter from Mr Ladd.  I wish
you could visit Rhode Island.
Faithfully yours,

Charles S. Thompson, Esq.

21455
August 3rd, 1912.
My dear Dr van Dyke:
It would give me real pleasure to write such a paper were
it not for the fact that, as President of the American Historical
Association, I have to deliver the annual address before that body
about a week later than the date you mention.  Now I find it difficult
to prepare one such paper in a satisfactory manner, and two, I fear,
would be an impossibility.  You see I cannot touch the work until
after election day, and there will doubtless be some odds and ends
left after the campaign which will prevent my getting to work
until after December 1st, and so it would be an impossibility for me
to attempt two papers.  I am really sorry.
With hearty thanks and good wishes,
Very sincerely yours,

Dr Henry van Dyke,
Firwood,
Seal Harbor, Maine.

21456

August 3rd, 1912.
My dear Mr Warner:
Naturally I am peculiarly pleased at having you with
us and taking the part that you have been doing in this
fight.  I must just send you this line of personal
acknowledgment.
Faithfully yours,

Mr Vespasian Warner,
Clinton, Ill.

21457


August 3rd, 1912.
My dear Mr Weimert:
I am much pleased to hear what you write to me.  Do
let me see you when I get back.
Faithfully yours,

Orson J. Weimert, Esq.,
909 D.S. Morgan Building,
Buffalo, N.Y.

21458


August 3rd, 1912.
My dear Mr Commissioner:
I thank you very much for your kindness in sending me
a copy of my record on labor matters.
With all good wishes,
Faithfully yours,

Hon. John Williams,
Department of Labor,
Albany, N.Y.

21459

August 4th, 1912.
My dear Sir:
Your letter did not arrive until after Mr Roosevelt had
left on his Western trip and as he will not be back for about a
month I am acknowledging its receipt. The matter about which you
write has had the very careful attention of Mr Roosevelt's 
managers and they have had in mind all the points you make in
your letter. I am taking the liberty of sending your letter to
Senator Dixon straight away, as I am sure we will be glad to 
what you have written. At the same time I am sure you will
realize that it would not do for Mr Roosevelt to try to dictate
what should be done in each state. This is a movement of the
people themselves and not a movement directed by a number of
bosses. the different conditions in different states must be 
met in various ways and the managers are doing their best to
straighten matters out in satisfactory fashion.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary

Mr Lincoln McKinlay,
Wichita, Kansas.

21460August 3rd, 1912.
My dear Sir:
In reply to your letter to Mr Roosevelt I beg to
say that you could obtain such a photograph as the one you
desire from Messrs Harris & Ewing, Washington, D.C.
Faithfully yours,
Assistant Secretary

Mr. T.W. Campbell,
American Vulcanized Fibre, Co.,
Wilmington, Delaware.

7534
Secretary
Judge Thomas C. Jones,
Montgomery, Ala.
August 5th, 1912.
My dear Sir:
Both your letter and the letter from Governor Comer
have come to hand, but I have had to write to the Governor that
as his letter has been received in Mr Roosevelt's absence on
a long speaking trip which will take him to the Pacific Coast
and as he will not be back again for at least a month during
the whole of which time he will have just about as much as he
can manage, it will be impossible for him to spare the time
to reply to the long letter which the Governor has written 
to him.
Faithfully yours,
Secretary

Judge Thomas C. Jones,
Montgomery, Ala.

21461                                                              August 5th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
              Mr Roosevelt has asked me to send on the enclosed
check to you and to say that he would be glad if you would
pay it into his account.
                                  Faithfully yours,

                                                Assistant Secretary

Douglas Robinson Esq.
               128 Broadway,
                      New York City.

21462

                                                           August 5th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
               Your letter to Mr Roosevelt has come to hand during 
his absence in Chicago.  When he returns I will have much
pleasure in seeing that he is made cognizant of its contents.
                                  Faithfully yours,

                                                 Assistant Secretary

Mr W. S. Davis,
         Scobey, Miss.

21463

                                                          August 6th, 1912.

Dear Mr Hooker:
                   Herewith is a check from Mr Salmar Hess for $50
received by Mr Roosevelt as a contribution to the campaign fund.
Mr Roosevelt acknowledged it personally.
                                         Faithfully yours,

                                                  Assistant Secretary

Elon H. Hooker Esq.

21464

EXTRACT FROM MR. ROOSEVELT'S SPEECH AT THE Chicago SOLISEUM, AUGUST 6,1912
ON THE NEGRO QUESTION.
Nobody can ask me a question I am afraid of. I heard over there, 
did I not, some query about the negro question. ( Applause: cries 
of "Don't answer him") Now wait a minute, any respectful requests 
for information I will always have an answer for, and during my 
administration I never did anything I was afraid to be questioned 
about and I shall not begin in the Progressive Party by fearing 
questions.
There has been distributed here a letter which I wrote 
to Mr. Harris, three or four days ago. In that letter I set 
forth my views and the reasons back of my views in detail, and I 
think with a clearness that will prevent any misapprehension, but 
I can give you by example just what I mean by the policy I am advocating.
I think the American people is a mighty good people to 
lead and a might poor people to drive. I think we can get the 
best results from our fellow Americans in other sections of the 
country by treating them as we expect them to treat us, and by 
ourselves living up in our own homes to the principles that we
profess
In Republican national conventions hitherto there has 
been a large representation of colored men--but all from non-Republican States . ( Cheering and laughter) Now, just wait; I 
want you to follow what I say. The Virtue of the Republican of 
the Republican states took only the form of trying to make the
Democratic states be good. Do you see what I mean?

21465
-2-
The colored delegates all came from the states that never
cast a Republican electoral vote, that never elected a colored ma 
man to office, where, largely, owing to the action followed for 
forty-five years by the Republican party, the colored man has, as 
a matter of fact, gradually lost all his political rights-- so t 
that the old policy of attempting to impose on the southern 
states from without a certain rule of conduct toward the negro
has, in fact broken down.
And, friends, I regret to say that every man who has ever
been to a national convention knows that the character of the
great majority of the colored delegates from the south, from 
those old rotten borough states, was such as to reflect discredit
upon the Republican party and upon the race itself. ( Loud
cheers and calls of "That's so".)
Now, wait a minute. I am giving you the explanation as
minutely as I know how. As soon as the Progressive party was 
formed I at once set about, as many other men in different states
did, securing from the northern states themselves an ample recognition 
of the colored men in these states, so that as a matter 
of fact there is in this convention a representation from the
Republican states of colored men such as there never has been 
anything like before in any convention in the country. (Loud
cheering)
Now, just wait a moment; and more than that, a representation 
of colored men who in point of character, intelligence 
and good citizenship, stand on an exact equality with any of the
whites among whom they stand. (Renewed cheering)
Now, wait a minute. Give me a show. Just before I [????]
began my speech ( you remember that there was a good deal doing)
21466-3-
two colored delegates from West Virginia came up to shake hands 
with me. I do not know their names. One is the state librarian 
of West Virginia; one is a colored business man from West Virginia 
who has never taken any great interest in politics before- Never 
before has x West Virginia sent two colored delegates to a national convention, and the colored delegates it sent are in character 
and standing the peers of the white delegates from that state.
Now, we sent colored delegates from New York. they sent 
colored delegates from Rode Island. Do you think Rhode Island 
or West Virginia or New York would have sent them if they had been 
told they had to? They wouldn't have. They wouldn't have. You 
had to let the movement, come from within. (Cheering)
Now, wait a minute. Just wait a minute. This is a pretty
important matter. From Maryland (Cries of "Pennsylvania too") and 
"New Jersey, too ") Pennsylvania and New Jersey also. And Pennsylvania, you have delegates ; yes , and New Jersey. I know that. 
(Cheers and laughter) Now wait; don' t you tell me what I know.
(Cheers and laughter)
From Maryland and West Virginia there have come to this 
convention colored delegates sent because they represent an element of colored men who have won the esteem and respect of their 
white neighbors, so that all the honest and decent men can join 
in sending the delegates of both colors; and they send them here 
honestly and send them here of their own free will.
This is what we Progressives have finally succeeded in 
doing in the north. We have done it by simply encouraging the 
best men in the north to act as squarely by the colored man as
they would by the white man.
We have not done it by trying to dragoon the white man
21467-4-

into such action.
The other system of trying to force in the far southern 
states conditions that we cannot make exist there has failed. I 
propose to take toward the southern states the exact attitude that 
we took toward West Virginia and Maryland and I believe in adopting 
that action we shall naturally and spontaneously see from 
those southern states the repetition of the conditions in West 
Virginia and Maryland so that in future Progressive National conventions 
you will see colored delegates come from the south Atlantic 
and gulf states, [precisll] precisely as they now come from West 
Virginia and from Maryland. ( Loud applause)
Now, just wait a moment. I ask you to look carefully 
at the letter I wrote-- you have had copies of it-- the letter I 
wrote to Mr. Julian Harris. I have just received from him an 
answer. Mr. Harris is a Georgian, the son of Uncle Remus Harris, 
a delegate to this convention, and in this letter in speaking of 
my action Mr. Harris shows that his mind and my mind have met in 
the matter; that he and those for whom he speaks look at it just 
as I would have hoped they would look at it. He writes as follows 
after speaking of the new conditions it has produced:

"Under these conditions it will become for the first 
time possible that the negro who shows the quality which entitles 
him to respect and confidence will, with the cordial good-will of 
his white neighbors, do his part in healthy political work for the 
common good."

Now, friends, I believe the white man and the colored 
man who endeavors to make the colored man discontented with what 
we are doing are the worst foe of the colored race.
We are standing against the brutality of the Democracy

21468-5-

the hypocrisy of the Republicans. We are in the first place beginning 
where, all charity must begin-- at home. We are beginning by 
taking the steps to do justice to the colored man in our own states

We are setting the standard in semi-southern states like 
West Virginia and Maryland here in this convention at this moment; 
setting the standard in West Virginia and in Maryland, and setting
a standard to which we can have a reasonable hope that our brethern 
of the south, when we no longer attempt to drive them, when it 
is a matter of honorable obligation with them as with us, to which 
we have a reasonable right to hope that they themselves will come 
up to and to which my correspondent, a delegate in this convention 
from Georgia, himself says he believes they will come up.

Now, friends the easy thing for me to have done in this matter, 
if I had been interested only in my own political advancement 
was to have repeated the dreadful blunders made for so many years 
by the Republican party; to have the colored men out of the northern 
delegations and brought him in from the south as a cheap method of 
paying any obligation to him.

That might have helped me; it would have helped me with 
those people who accept fine phrase as a substitute for honest 
action. It might have helped me with other people. But it would 
have driven still further down the black man of the south. It 
would have kept the white man of the south solidified in an angry 
vindictive, defensive alliance against any party that did justice 
to the negro; and it would have sown in this Progressive party at
the outset the seeds of dissolution which we saw blossom into perfect 
flower in the Republican convention in this city six weeks ago.

21469

[*the nhypocracy*]

[*-5-*]-6-
Now, I have advocated the action which, as far as I am
able to judge my own soul, I believe with all my heart is the only
action that offers any chance of hope to the black man in the
south, to the white man in the south; which has already given to
the black man in the north a better chance than he has ever had
before; and if I had followed or if I had advocated the following
of any other action I should have been in the position of insincerely advocating for the purposes of temporary political advantage a
course of action which has been followed for forty-five years in
the Republican party, and which during, that period has hurt the
negro of the south, hurt the white man in the south and finally
has brought to crushing disaster and death the great Republican
party itself.
Now, friends, I think I can say that I have at any
rate met fearlessly and conscientiously the question you have put
to me.
21470EXTRACT FROM MR. ROOSEVELT'S SPEECH AT THE COLISEUM, AUGUST 6, [L(L"] 1912.

ON THE NEGRO QUESTION.

Nobody can ask me a question I am afraid of. I heard over there,
did I not, some query about the negro question. (Applause; cries of
"Don't answer him.") Now, wait a minute Any respectful requests for information I will
always have an answer for, and during my administration I never did 
anything I was afraid to be questioned about and I shall not begin
in the Progressive Party by fearing questions.

There has been distributed here a letter which I wrote to Mr. 
Harris, three or four days ago. In that letter I set forth my views 
and the reasons back of my views in detail, and I think with a clearness 
that will prevent any misapprehension, but I can give you by 
example just what I mean by the policy I am advocating.

I think the American people is a mighty good people to lead 
and a mighty poor people to drive. I think we can get the best results 
from our fellow Americans in other sections of the country by 
treating them as we expect them to treat us, and by ourselves living 
up in our own homes to the principles that we profess.

In Republican national conventions hitherto there has been 
a large representation of colored men--but all from non-Republican 
States! (Cheering and laughter) Now, just wait; I want you to 
follow what I say. The Virtue of the Republicans of the Republican
states took only the form of trying to make the Democratic states be
good. Do you see what I mean?

The colored delegates all came from the states that never 
cast a Republican electoral vote, that never elected a colored man to 
office, where, largely, owing to the action followed for forty-five 
years by the Republican party, the colored man has, as a matter of 
fact, gradually lost all his political rights—so that the old policy 
of attempting to impose on the southern states from without a certain

21471(2) 

rule of conduct toward the negro has, in fact broken down.

And, friends, I regret to say that every man who has ever 
been to a national convention knows that the character of the great 
majority of the colored delegates from the south, from those old 
rotten borough states, was such as to reflect discredit upon the Republican 
party and upon the race itself. (Loud cheers and calls of 
"That's so.")

Now, wait just a minute. I am giving you the explanation as minutely 
as I know how. As soon as the Progressive party was formed 
I at once set about, as many other men in different states did, securing 
from the northern states themselves an ample recognition of 
the colored men in these states, so that as a matter of fact there 
is in this convention a representation from the Republican states of 
colored men such as there never has been anything like before in any 
convention in the country. (Loud cheering.)

Now, just wait a moment; and more than that, a representation 
of colored men who in point of character, intelligence and good citizenship, 
stand on an exact equality with any of the whites among 
whom they stand. (Renewed cheering)

Now, wait a minute. Give me a show. Just before I began my 
speech (you remember that there was a good deal doing) two colored 
delegates from West Virginia came up to shake hands with me. I do 
not know their names. One is the state librarian of West Virginia; 
one is a colored business man from West Virginia who had never taken 
any great interest in politics before. Never before has West Virginia 
sent two colored delegates to a national convention, and the 
colored delegates it sent are in character and standing the peers of

21472(3)

of the white delegates from that state.

Now, we sent colored delegates from New York; they sent
colored [colored] delegates from Rhode Island. Do you think Rhode
Island or West Virginia or New York would have sent them if they had
been told they had to? They wouldn't have. They wouldn't have.
You had to let the movement come from within. (Cheering.)

Now, wait a minute. just wait a minute. This is a pretty important 
matter. From Maryland (Cries of "Pennsylvania too" and
"New Jersey , too") Pennsylvania and New Jersey also. And Pennsylvania, 
you have delegates; yes, and New Jersey. I know that. (Cheers
and laughter). Now wait; don't you tell me what I know. (Cheers
and laughter) 

From Maryland and West Virginia there have come to this convention 
colored delegates sent because they represent an element of 
colored men who have won the esteem and respect of their white 
neighbors, so that all the honest and decent men can join in sending 
the delegates of both colors; and they send them here honestly
and send them here of their own free will.

This is what we Progressives have finally succeeded in doing
in the north. We have done it by simply encouraging the best men in
the north to act as squarely by the colored man as they would by the
white man.

We have not done it by trying to dragoon the white man into such
action.

The other system of trying to force in the far southern states,
conditions that we cannot make exist there has failed. I propose
to take toward the southern states the exact attitude that we took
toward West Virginia and Maryland and I believe in adopting that

21473(4)

action we shall naturally and spontaneously see from those southern 
states the repetition of the conditions in West Virginia and Maryland 
so that in future Progressive National conventions you will see 
colored delegates come from the south Atlantic and gulf states 
precisely as they now come from West Virginia and from Maryland. 
(Loud applause.)

Now, just wait a moment. I ask you to look carefully at the 
letter I wrote--you have had copies of it--the letter I wrote to
Mr. Julian Harris. I have just received from him an answer. Mr.
Harris is a Georgian, the son of Uncle Remus Harris, a delegate to 
this convention, and in this letter in speaking of my action Mr. 
Harris shows that his mind and my mind have met in the matter; that 
he and those for whom he speaks look at it just as I would have hoped 
they would look at it. He writes as follows, after speaking of the
new conditions it has produced:

"Under these conditions it will become for the first time possible 
that the negro who shows the quality which entitles him to 
respect and confidence will, with the cordial good-will of his white 
white neighbors, do his part in healthy political work for the
common good."

Now, friends, I believe the white man and the colored man who
endeavor[s] to make the colored man discontented with what we are doing
[is] are the worst foe of the colored race.

We are standing against the brutality of the Democracy, the hypocrisy 
of the Repub licans. We are in the first place beginning 
where, all charity must begin--at home. We are beginning by taking
the steps to do justice to the colored man in our own states.

We are setting the standard in semi-southern states like West

21474(5)

Virginia and Maryland here in this convention at this moment; setting 
the standard in West Virginia and in Maryland, and setting a 
standard to which we can have a reasonable hope that our brethren 
of the south, when we no longer attempt to drive them, when it is a 
matter of honorable obligation with them as with us, to which we 
have a reasonable right to hope that they themselves will come up 
and to which my correspondent, a delegate in this convention from 
Georgia, himself says he believes they will come up.

Now, friends the easy thing for me to have done in this matter, 
if I had been interested only in my own political advancement, was 
to have repeated the dreadful blunders made for so many years by 
the Republican party; to have the colored men out of the northern 
delegations and brought him in from the south as a cheap method of 
paying any obligation to him.

That might have helped me; it would have helped me with those 
people who accept fine phrases as a substitute for honest action. 
It might have helped me with other people. But it would have driven 
still further down the black man of the south. It would have kept 
the white man of the south solidified in an angry, vindictive, 
defensive alliance against any party that did justice to the negro; 
and it would have sown in this Progressive party at the outset the 
seeds of dissolution which we saw blossom into perfect flower in the 
Republican convention in this city six weeks ago.

Now, I have advocated the action which, as far as I am able to 
judge my own soul, I believe with all my heart is the only action 
that offers any chance of hope to the black man in the south, to the

21475(6)

white man in the south; which has already given to the black man
in the north a better chance than he has ever had before; and if I
had followed or if I had advocated the following of any other action
I should have been in the position of insincerely advocating for the
purposes of temporary political advantage a course of action which 
has been followed for forty-five years in the Republican party, and 
which during that period has hurt the negro of the south, hurt
the white man in the south and finally has brought to crushing
disaster and death the great Republican party itself.

Now, friends, I think I can say that I have at any rate met
fearlessly and conscientiously the question you have put to me.

21476August 7th, 1912.

My dear Sir: 
Your letter to Mr Roosevelt, together with the check   
enclosed, has been received during Mr Roosevelt's absence in     
Chicago. As soon as he returns to New York I will have    
pleasure in seeing that both are placed before him.
Faithfully yours,

Assistant Secretary


William H. Fuller Esq.,
Douglas Building,
Los Angeles, Cal.


21477



                                                                                        August 7th, 1912.



My dear Mr Greene:
               I appreciate your letter so much that I must
send you just a line of personal acknowledgement and thanks.
                                                  Faithfully yours,




Dr F. A. Greene,
              Geneva, N. Y. 




21478



                                                                                       August 7th, 1912.



My dear Sir:
              Your letter to Mr Roosevelt has come to hand during
his absence in Chicago. As soon as he returns to New York
I will have pleasure in calling your letter and also the 
enclosure to his attention.
                                                  Faithfully yours,

                                                   Assistant Secretary




Mr H. L. Harris,
              100 William Street,
               New York City.



21479




                                                                                          August 7th, 1912.



My dear Sir:
              In Mr Roosevelt's absence I beg to acknowledge
receipt of your letter of August 6th. As soon as Mr Roosevelt
returns to New York, I will have pleasure in seeing that it
is placed before him.
                                                 Faithfully yours,
 
                                                  Assistant Secretary



Hon. C. A. Lindbergh,
               House of Representatives,
               Washington, D.C. 



21480August 7th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter to Mr
Roosevelt and to say that as soon as he returns from Chicago
I will have pleasure in placing it before him.
Faithfully yours,

Assistant Secretary


Mr John Mac Vicar,
1106 Fleming Building,
Des Moines, Iowa.


21481August 7th, 1912.

My dear Mr Pinet:
I wish it were possible for my friends to realize my
position, not for my own sake, but because then they would
understand just why it is that I cannot accept all the invitations 
which come to me. From now on I wish to avoid making 
any speech that I possibly can avoid, and greatly though I 
appreciate an invitation from such a body as the one you 
represent, it really is not possible for me to accept. I 
cannot undertake anything further of any kind or sort now.
I am very sorry.
Sincerely yours,


Mr F. L. Pinet,
Southeastern Kansas Teachers' Association
Parsons, Kansas.

21482



                                                                                         August 7th, 1912.



My dear Sir:
              In Mr Roosevelt's absence I beg to acknowledge receipt
of your letter of August 5th and to say that I will have 
pleasure in calling it to his attention when he returns to
New York.
                                                  Faithfully yours,

                                                  Assistant Secretary



Mr J. E. Sistrunk,
             88 Younge Street, 
              Atlanta, Ga. 



21483



                                                                                       August 7th, 1912.



My dear Sir:
              Your letter to Mr Roosevelt has come to hand during
his absence in Chicago. When he returns I will have pleasure
in seeing that both your letter and the check which you
enclosed are placed before him.
                                                  Faithfully yours,

                                                   Assistant Secretary



Mr Clarence W. Tibbals,
               5 Grafton Street, 
               New Haven, Conn.



21484



                                                                                       August 7, 1912.



Fritz Bronsart Von Schellendorff,
             Munchen, Pension Lautirer,
             Fursten Strasse 2. I.



My dear Sir:-
             Colonel Roosevelt is at present so overwhelmed
with mail that he has requested me to reply to your very
kind letter.
              He is at present in Chicago, but I shall see that
your letter and the book, which you so kindly sent to him,
receive his attention as soon as he returns.
                                                  Yours very truly,



PR/BR




21485



                                                                                       August 7th, 1912.



My dear Sir:
             Your letter to Mr Roosevelt has come to hand
during his absence in Chicago. As soon as he returns,
I will have pleasure in seeing that it is placed before
him. 
                                                   Faithfully yours,

                                                    Assistant Secretary



Mr George U. Young,
              Phoenix, Ariz.




21486August 9th, 1912.

My dear Madam:
Your letter to Mr Roosevelt has come to hand and in
reply I beg to say that unfortunately it is quite impossible for
him to help you in the way you desire. He is by no means a rich
man and he is already doing all that it is possible for him to
do in keeping up with the demands made upon him which he is
already practically committed to and which he cannot well refuse.
He is really sorry not to be able to do as you ask and trusts
you will understand and appreciate why he is unable to help
you.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Mrs F. H. Barcele, 
Ste Scholastique,
2 Mountains,
Quebec, Canada.August 9th 1912.

My dear Mr Bird:
This is to introduce to you an old friend of mine, Judge [C?]
Murray. The Judge knows political conditions all through New [York?]
and especially on the East Side, and his suggestions are well [?]
of your most careful consideration.
Commending him to your courtesy, I am,
Faithfully yours,


Francis W. Bird Esq.





                                                                                         August 9th, 1912.



My dear Senator:
              That is a mighty nice letter of yours and I 
appreciate it. Good luck!
                                                 Faithfully yours,




Hon. Moses E. Clapp,
             United States Senate,
            Washington, D. C. 



6226August 9th, 1912.

Dear Mr Cozens-Hardy:
Many thanks for your letter. I will see that your    
suggestion is passed on to the proper quarters. I am sure    
that the adoption of it would be most effective throughout the    
whole country.
Faithfully yours,


H. Cozens-Hardy Esq.,
120 West 64th Street,
New York City.


7657August 9th, 1912.

My dear Madam:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your very
courteous letter and also for the sample badges. It is
certainly an admirable little button and ought to go well
although he is unable to suggest wnyone who might buy a
supply. Your best plan would be to get into communication
with the Headquarters, Manhattan Hotel, New York City, or
at the Congress Hotel, Chicago, Ill.

Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Mrs J. E. Curtis,
212 Texas Avenue,
St Joseph, Mo.

7173August 9th, 1912.

Dear O. K.:
Mr Roosevelt has asked me to forward the enclosed    
copy of Mr Roosevelt's official labor record, prepared by    
Commissioner of Labor John Williams at Albany.
Faithfully yours,


O. K. Davis Esq.


21487August 9th, 1912.
My dear Mr Draper:
First, let me heartily thank you for your letter and say
how much I appreciate it and how glad I am that you are doing such
good work.
Now, will you extend to the Central Federation of Labor
of Troy my sincere regret that their letter was unanswered. I have
never received it. Of course if I had I should have answered it at
once. My mail has been something enormous. As yet the office force
is not organized and of course I cannot look at one letter in fifty
myself. I am to speak on Labor Day either in Connecticut or
Minnesota. We are doing our best to try to reconcile the two requests.
It therefore is not possible for me to do any more. Will you
tell the Federation that I most sincerely regret my inability to
accept their very kind invitation.
Faithfully yours,

Mr F. E. Draper Jr.,
12 Third Street,
Troy, N. Y.

21488August 9th, 1912.

My dear Mr Duras:
I thank you for your kind letter. I at once    
sent it to Mr Hotchkiss, calling attention to your    
request.
With regard,
Sincerely yours,


Victor Hugo Duras Esq.,
149 Broadway,
New York City.

21489August 9th,  1912.

My dear Mr Fuller:
That is a very nice letter of yours and I thank you for
it and also for the check for twenty-five dollars, which you    
have sent towards the campaign fund. I have at once transmitted     
it to the Treasurer.
With hearty regards,
Faithfully yours,


William H. Fuller Esq.,
401 Douglas Building,
Los Angeles, Cal.


21490August 9th, 1912.

My dear Mrs Gathercole:
I wish to thank you for your very kind letter and    
the gift of the Bible from Dr Hayes Expedition of 1860. I     
really appreciate it and thank you for your courtesy.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely yours,


Mrs R. R. Gathercole,
West Stewartstown, N. H.

21491August 9th, 1912.
My dear Mr Hammond:
I was really greatly struck by that letter of Sullivan.
It has a really astonishing bearing on many of the problems which
we are trying to work out today. One trouble at present is that
most of the leaders of what now calls itself Republicanism in
New England, are really the heirs of the Tories; the Progressive
and only the Progressives are the spiritual heirs of the men who
uphold the hands of Lincoln and of the men who founded this
movement.
With hearty thanks,
Sincerely yours,

21492August 9th, 1912.

My dear Mr Harris:
I thank you for your letter and the enclosure, and     
will read it at once.
With regard,
Sincerely yours,


Mr H. L. Harris,
100 William Street,
New York City.

21493August 9th, 1912.

My dear Mrs Lewes:
I must send you just one line of hearty thanks   
for your letter and also for the check for Twenty-five    
dollars. I have turned it over immediately to the     
Treasurer.
Faithfully yours,


Mrs Mary B. Lewes,
609 West 127th Street,
New York City.

21494August 9th, 1912.

My dear Congressman Lindbergh:
I thank you for your letter and appreciate it. It    
will be a real pleasure to see you at any time.
Sincerely yours,


Hon. C. A. Lindbergh,
House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C.   

21495August 9th, 1912.

PRIVATE. 

My dear Sir:
Your letter came to hand while we were in Chicago, but    
it was a physical impossibility to attend to all the hundreds of     
letters which arrived at that time. For your private information     
I may say that a sufficient number of the Southern delegates to     
secure a majority sent representatives to Mr Roosevelt stating     
that they would be willing to vote for his nomination on the     
Republican ticket if he would allow his name to go before the    
Convention. Mr Roosevelt stated emphatically that he would not     
allow his name to be presented until the roll of the Convention     
had been purged of the fraudulently seated delegates, and that   
if they would agree to purge the roll he would then be willing     
to abide by the ruling of the Convention, and if they chose him    
as their standard bearer, to accept the Republican nomination    
or to support any man who was selected by the Convention after    
the roll had been purged. His only exception was that he    
reserged judgment as to his supporting Mr Taft in case he was    
named as the candidate.

Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Mr Charles McCormick.

21496August 9th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you very cordially for     
your letter and to say that he really appreciates what you have    
written to him and also your courtesy in sending him copies    
of the Philippine Monthly. He will look them over most    
carefully so that he may know just what your views are in that    
matter.
With all good wishes,
Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Mr Daniel O' Connell,
The Philippine Monthly,
Manila, P. I.


21497August 9th, 1912.

My dear Mr Oliver:
I have read through your two letters carefully. I    
hope I need not say to you how much I appreciate all you did    
for me in the preliminary campaign, but I do not see how it is     
possible for me to take any position that will directly or indirectly    endorse Governor Hooper, or fail to support any 
Progressive candidate against him, just so long as he does not    
himself come out for the Progressives and against Taft. He    
must be either for us or against us, so far as I am concerned.
Sincerely yours,


William J. Oliver Esq.,
Knoxville, Tenn.

21498August 9th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your letter   
and to say that unfortunately it will be a physical impossibility    
for him to get to the Adirondacks this year. He cordially    
appreciates your very kind invitation, and wishes it were     
possible to come.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Mr E. Alexander Powell,
Lake Placid Club,
Essex County, N. Y.


21499August 9th, 1912.

My dear Prendergast:
I hoped to see you in person, to thank you for your    
fine and noble speech. Accept this few lines of  appreciation    
now, my dear fellow.
With love to Mrs Prendergast
Very faithfully your friend,  


Hon. William A. Prendergast.

21500August 9th, 1912.
Dear George:
This will introduce to you my barber, Mr. Zanetti.
I wish you would see that he gets in touch with Mr Bird,
the Chairman of the New York County Committee.  He want to 
do all he can in the present campaign, and I have the utmost
confidence in his ability and integrity.
Faithfully yours,

George E. Roosevelt Esq.

21501

August 9th, 1912.

My dear Sir:

Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your letter
and to say that the matter you bring to his notice is one of
very great importance to the farmers of this country, and naturally
if he were returned to power it would be to the solution of
such difficulties as this that he would devote his attention.
He regards the welfare of the small farmer and the wageworker as
of prize importance to this country and he would do all in his
power to help them in every way possible, and if taking such action
as you suggest were feasible, it would have his earnest consideration.
The working out of the methods, however is a 
matter which ought to be left to unprejudiced experts when the 
time for action comes.

Faithfully yours,

Secretary

Mr Bertrand P. Howe
Wilkinsburg, Penna.

21502August 9th, 1912.
Dear Mr Rowe:
That is an awfully nice letter of yours.  I heartily
thank you for it.
Faithfully yours,

L.S. Rowe Esq.,
c/o Joaquin D. Casasum,
Apartade 73b,
Mexico City, Mexico.

21503


August 9th, 1912.
My dear Sir:
I have just received the check for twenty dollars to
the campaign fund transmitted by you from a certain gentleman
whose name you do not give.  May I, through you, thank him
most warmly for his kindness and say I have at once sent it
on to the treasurer.
Faithfully yours,

Mr Clarence W. Tibbals,
5 Grafton Street,
New Haven, Conn.

21504
August 9th, 1912.
My dear Mr Townsend:
Your letter is so very kind and thoughtful that
I must send you this line of acknowledgment. Believe me, I
appreciate it.
Faithfully yours,

Mr A. H. Townsend,
Burlington, Vermont.

21505August 9th, 1912.
My dear Sir:
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter to Mr
Roosevelt. I think the best reply that can be made is to
enclose a copy of the speech he delivered before the Progressive
Convention last Tuesday and a copy of the platform which was
adopted by the Convention. You will see his proposals in
those documents.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary

Charles Watney Esq.,
St Stephen's Intelligence Bureau,
London, England.

21506August 10th, 1912.

My dear Mr Bonheur:
Mr Roosevelt has read Mr Seamen's letter with much interest
and he wishes me to say how heartily he appreciates the invitation
to become a life member of the American Poultry Association. [It?]
would certainly give him much pleasure to do so if it were not
for the fact that if he joined this association, he would be
immediately approached by hundreds of other associations to [?]
with them and of course it would be quite out of the question [?]
him to respond in each case. He has therefore had to make it [?]
rule not to join any association whatever unless he is able
to take an active part in the work they are doing. He is really
sorry for naturally the work of the American Poultry Association
appeals to him.
Faithfully yours,


Lucien L. Bonheur Esq.
August 10th, 1912.

Dear Mr Cochems:
Is there any man you can fix up for such an engagement [as?]
the one mentioned in the enclosed telegram from George E.
Vincent? You will see that Mr Bryan has accepted on behalf [of?]
the Wilson people, while Attorney General Wickersham has accepted
on behalf of Mr Taft. It would seem that the Roosevelt people
ought to send some speaker up to Chautauqua to present the
Roosevelt side. Would not Bainbridge Colby be a very good [?]
to do this? Or perhaps you could suggest someone else.
Faithfully yours,


Henry F. Cochems Esq.
Manhattan Hotel,
New York City.

7357August 10th, 1912.
My dear Father Curran:
All right, go ahead and engage the drawing room in
the parlor car on the train leaving Jersey City at 4 o'clock
on August 21st, and arriving the same evening at Wilkes-Barre
at 9.25. Also reserve a drawing room for him on the train
leaving Wilkes-Barre Friday August 23rd at 1.50 a.m. and arriving
New York at 7.30 a.m.
The Chicago Convention was a miracle. Old timers
everywhere were saying that they had never seen a Convention
like it. Everybody was pleased and all came away full of
enthusiasm.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely yours,

Father J. J. Curran.

7174August 10th, 1912.
My dear Dr Edelman:
I do not think you read the whole of what Mr
Roosevelt said regarding the race question. I am therefore
enclosing it herewith. For your information I may say that
every colored man connected with the Progressive Movement
in Chicago fully endorsed Mr Roosevelt's position, and I
think that if you will but read all that Mr Roosevelt has
said and written upon the subject you also will be in
accord with the stand Mr Roosevelt has taken on this
great problem.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary

Dr Louis Edelman,
714 First National Bank Bldg.
Birmingham, Ala.

21507                                                             August 10th, 1912.

My dear Mr Freeman:
               I must send you just one line of hearty thanks for
your letter and to say how much I appreciate what you are
doing.  I hope you will get into communication with Mr
Medill McCormick at the Congress Hotel.  I am sure you could
do good work in Illinois in the way you suggest.
                                           Faithfully yours,

Mr W. B. Freeman,
          305 S. La Salle Street,
                   Chicago, Ill.

21508

                                                               August 10th, 1912.

My dear Mr Gardener:
              Through you, I want to thank the National Progressive
Club of the Thirteenth Assembly District of Kings County for
the action they took in ratifying my nomination.  As you say
I expect yours was the first club to take such action, and
I deeply appreciate it.
                                   Faithfully yours,

Ernest Gilmore Gardener
    National Progressive Club,
              Brooklyn, N. Y.

21509

                                                         August 10th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
               Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your letter and
to say that he placed it before the men who were preparing the
platform at Chicago so that they might have the benefit of
your advice in the matter.  Of course, as you know, there were
hundreds of planks which might have found a place in the 
platform if only it had not been necessary to keep down the
number of words and to centre upon the chief issues of the
campaign.
                                        Faithfully yours,

                                                                   Secretary

Harvey C. Hargrove Esq.,
                      Indianapolis, Ind.

21510

                                                                August 10th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
               Mr Roosevelt was particularly pleased to see the
interview which the Chicago Daily News printed from Mr
Revell.  It was just fine.  Mr Revell has been and is doing 
admirable work and no one appreciates it more than Mr
Roosevelt does.
                           Faithfully yours,

                                                       Secretary

Mr L. M. Johnson,
           Chicago, Ill.

21511

                                                          August 10th, 1912.

Gentlemen:
          Mr Roosevelt was greatly touched by the telegram which 
you sent to him while he was in Chicago, and he immediately
read it aloud to a number of people who were present.
                                         Faithfully yours,

                                                                   Secretary

Bishop Francis Hodur,
Dr John Kulczyck,
Dr John Szlupas,
                      Scranton, Pa.

21513

                                                           August 10th, 1912.

Dear Mr Hooker:
             Herewith are a number of checks received by Mr Roosevelt
as contributions to the campaign fund.
                                Faithfully yours,

                                                           Assistant Secretary

Elon H. Hooker Esq.

21514

                                                          August 10th, 1912.

Dear Mr Hooker:
               Herewith is a letter from S. Meadow together with a
copy of the reply which Mr Roosevelt sent to him.  I wish you
would have the matter looked up and get into communication 
with Mr Meadow direct.  I am also enclosing a telegram from
Mr P. A. Hendry of Cincinnati.  I do not know of Mr Henry, but 
you might have someone make local inquiry, and I wish you 
would also attend to the telegram.
                                     Sincerely yours,

Elon H. Hooker Esq.

21515

August 10th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt has handed to me your telegram and he
thinks you must be under some misunderstanding in the matter
about which you wire. He also thinks the best plan will be to
send you copies of what he said and wrote upon the negro
question, and I am doing so herewith. In every case that has
come to Mr Roosevelt's attention of the opposition of negroes [to?]
his plan he has found it due simply to misunderstanding of [just?]
what his aims were, and those who have been former objectors
to the plan have after careful study of his position become very fervent supporters of it. This
is why he wishes me to send you the enclosed papers and
to ask you to read them.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary


Rev. J. Gordon McPherson.

21516                                                    August 10th, 1912.

My dear Dr Morris:
               I appreciate your letter and thank you for it and also 
for the check for ten dollars, which you send towards the
campaign fund.  I have forwarded it immediately to the 
Treasurer.
                Faithfully yours,

Dr E. V. D. Morris,
         Galesburg, Ill.

21517

                                                               August 10th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
             Mr Roosevelt has asked me to drop you just one line
of hearty thanks for your letter and the enclosure.  He read
through the letter with much interest.
                                          Faithfully yours,

                                                                     Secretary

Mr O. Thomas Phillips,
            Freeport, L. I.

21518

                                                            August 10th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
              Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for both of your
letters and particularly for the one in which you make the
suggestions.  He placed all your suggestions before the
committee which made up the platform, as they of course had
the final say whether or not any proposal should be included
in the platform.
                             Faithfully yours,

                                                         Secretary

Mr Frank C. Oierce,
                Brownsville, Texas.

21519

                                                                August 10th, 1912.

My dear Madam:
               Mr Roosevelt wishes me to thank you for your courtesy
in sending him a copy of that magazine containing Count Okuma 
article.  He was very glad to have an opportunity of reading
it.
                           Faithfully yours,

                                                       Secretary

Miss Puffer,
    180 Bellevue Avenue,
            Upper Montclair, N. J.

21520

                                                           August 10th, 1912.

My dear Sir:
               Mr Roosevelt was particularly pleased to get your
telegram regarding the announcement which you made from the
stage of the Winter Garden a few days ago.  He particularly
appreciates the interest you have taken and he thanks you
for your courtesy.
                              Faithfully yours,

                                                         Secretary

Mr Charles J. Ross,
              Winter Garden,
                      New York City.

21521

August 10th, 1912.
My dear Sir:
I do not know anything about that complaint of Mr
Berg's in which he says that Governor Woodruff "steam rollered
him" in Kings County. Of course it is impossible for Mr
Roosevelt to enter into all the local troubles in this
campaign and Governor Woodruff having been selected as the
leader in Kings County of course it is necessary that he should
have control. If the rank and file of the Progressives in
Kings County do not wish Governor Woodruff as their leader
they can vote him down and if they wish Mr Berg they can
put him in the Governor's place. As a matter of fact I
personally believe that Governor Woodruff is the choice
of the overwhelming majority of the Progressives in Kings
County and I think it would be far better for Mr Berg to
21522get into the movement and work along with the Governor.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary

Mr Willis W. Russell,
The Autopress Co.,
299 Broadway, 
New York City.

21523                                                           August 10th, 1912.

My dear Shaw:
                I am so much pleased with your telegram that I must
thank you for it.  It is fine!  I was sure you would like the
position I took on the race question.
                                       Faithfully yours,

Dr Albert Shaw,
         Review of Reviews.

21524

August 10th, 1912.
My dear Sir:
Mr Roosevelt receives several requests almost every day
for his autograph, sometimes they ask him simply for his
signature, sometimes they ask him to sign a picture of himself
while at other times they ask him to put his signature to all
kinds of things such as menu cards, posters, masonic cards,
and the like. Other people often write him a letter hoping
that he will send them a reply personally autographed. When
Mr Roosevelt has the time he is always glad to respond to such
requests providing of course that the people asking such favor
enclose a stamped addressed envelope for replies.
Faithfully yours,

Secretary

Mr Howard Chapin Shaw,
Springfield, Mass.

21525August 10th, 1912.
My dear Madam:
So many hundreds of letters arrived while Mr Roosevelt
was in Chicago, and so great was the pressure upon him, that it
was a physical impossibility for him to attend to his correspondence
personally. Your letter has only just been reached
and I am sending you this acknowledgment of it. In any case it
would have been impossible for Mr Roosevelt to come and take part
in that baseball game, for, as you know, he did not have a
moment to spare during the whole time of his stay in Chicago.
With regret,

Faithfully yours,

Secretary

Mrs Ida Wright,
5316 Southport Avenue,
Chicago, Ill.

21526