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I have a high opinion of the gentleman you mention,
and if the opportunity occurs I shall be glad to do anything
I can for him.

Now as to what you say concerning Federal appointments
in the South, Frankly, it seems to me that my
appointments speak for themselves and that my policy is
self-explanatory. So far from feeling that they need the
slightest apology or justification, my position is that on
the strength of what I have done I have the right to
claim the support of all good citizens who wish not only
a high standard of Federal service, but fair and equitable
dealing to the South as well as to the North, and a policy
of consistent justice and good-will toward all men. In
making appointments I have sought to consider the feelings
of the people of each locality so far as I could consistently
do so without sacrificing principle. The prime
tests I have applied have been those of character, fitness,
and ability, and when I have been dissatisfied with what
has been offered within my own party lines I have without
hesitation gone to the opposite party—and you are
of course aware that I have repeatedly done this in your
own State of Georgia. I certainly cannot treat mere
color as a permanent bar to holding office, any more than
I could so treat creed or birthplace—always provided that
in other respects the applicant or incumbent is a worthy
and well-behaved American citizen. Just as little will I
treat it as conferring a right to hold office. I have scant
sympathy with the mere doctrinaire, with the man of
mere theory who refuses to face facts; but do you not
think that in the long run it is safer for everybody if we
act on the motto "all men up," rather than that of
"some men down"?

I ask you to judge not by what I say, but by what
during the last seventeen months I have actually done.
In your own State of Georgia you are competent to judge
from your own experience. In the great bulk of the cases
I have reappointed President McKinley's appointees.
The changes I have made, such as that in the postmastership
at Athens and in the surveyorship at Atlanta, were,

as I think you will agree, changes for the better and not
for the worse. It happens that in each of these offices I
have appointed a white man to succeed a colored man.
In South Carolina I have similarly appointed a white
postmaster to succeed a colored postmaster. Again, in
South Carolina I have nominated a colored man to fill
a vacancy in the position of collector of the port of
Charleston, just as in Georgia I have reappointed the
colored man who is now serving as collector of the port
of Savannah. Both are fit men. Why the appointment
of one should cause any more excitement than the appointment
of the other, I am wholly at a loss to imagine.
As I am writing to a man of keen and trained intelligence
I need hardly say that to connect either of these appointments,
or any or all my other appointments, or my actions
in upholding the law at Indianola with such questions as
"social equality" and "negro domination" is as absurd
as to connect them with the nebular hypothesis or the
theory of atoms.

I have consulted freely with your own senators and
congressmen as to the character and capacity of any appointee
in Georgia concerning whom there was question.
My party advisers in the State have been Major Hanson
of Macon, Mr. Walter Johnson of Atlanta—both of them
ex-Confederate soldiers—and Mr. Harry Stillwell Edwards,
also of Macon. I believe you will agree with me
that in no State would it be possible to find gentlemen
abler and more upright or better qualified to fill the positions
they have filled with reference to me. In every
instance where these gentlemen have united in making a
recommendation I have been able to follow their advice.
Am I not right in saying that the Federal office-holders
whom I have appointed throughout your State are, as a
body, men and women of a high order of efficiency and
integrity? If you know of any Federal office-holder in
Georgia of whom this is not true pray let me know at

once. I will welcome testimony from you or from any
other reputable citizen which will tend to show that a
given public officer is unworthy; and, most emphatically,
short will be the shrift of any one whose lack of worth is
proven. Incidentally I may mention that a large percentage
of the incumbents of Federal offices in Georgia
under me are, as I understand it, of your own political
faith. But they are supported by me in every way as
long as they continue to render good and faithful service
to the public.

This is true of your own State; and by applying to
Mr. Thomas Nelson Page of Virginia, to General Basil
Duke of Kentucky, to Mr. George Crawford of Tennessee,
to Mr. John McIlhenny of Louisiana, to Judge Jones
of Alabama, and to Mr. Edgar L. Wilson of Mississippi,
all of them Democrats and all of them men of the highest
standing in their respective communities, you will find
that what I have done in Georgia stands not as the exception
but as the rule for what I have done throughout the
South. I have good reason to believe that my appointees
in the different States mentioned—and as the sum of the
parts is the whole, necessarily in the South at large—represent
not merely an improvement upon those whose
places they took, but, upon the whole, a higher standard
of Federal service than has hitherto been attained in the
communities in question. I may add that the proportion
of colored men among these new appointees is only
about one in a hundred.

In view of all these facts I have been surprised, and
somewhat pained, at what seems to me the incomprehensible
outcry in the South about my actions—an outcry
apparently started in New York for reasons wholly unconnected
with the question nominally at issue. I am
concerned at the attitude thus taken by so many of the
Southern people; but I am not in the least angry; and
still less will this attitude have the effect of making me

swerve one hair's breadth, to one side or the other, from
the course I have marked out,—the course I have consistently
followed in the past and shall consistently follow
in the future.

With regard,