University of Virginia Library

LETTERS

I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated
your article, The Woman who Toils. But to me
there is a most melancholy side to it, when you touch
upon what is fundamentally infinitely more important
than any other question in this country—that is, the
question of race suicide, complete or partial.

An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be
"independent,"—that is, to live one's life purely according
to one's own desires,—are in no sense substitutes for
the fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong
racial qualities without which there can be no strong
races—the qualities of courage and resolution in both
men and women, of scorn of what is mean, base, and
selfish, of eager desire to work or fight or suffer as the
case may be, provided the end to be gained is great
enough, and the contemptuous putting aside of mere
ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and
worry. I do not know whether I most pity or despise
the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand
that the only things really worth having in life are
those the acquirement of which normally means cost and
effort. If a man or woman, through no fault of his or
hers, goes throughout life denied those highest of all joys
which spring only from home life, from the having and
bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep
and respectful sympathy,—the sympathy one extends
to the gallant fellow killed at the beginning of a campaign,
or to the man who toils hard and is brought to ruin by the
fault of others. But the man or woman who deliberately

avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no
passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike
having children, is in effect a criminal against the race
and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by
all healthy people.

Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no
one quality will save a nation. But there are certain great
qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual
brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life
can atone, and the lack of which shows decadence and
corruption in the nation, just as much if they are produced
by selfishness and coldness and ease-loving laziness
among comparatively poor people as if they are
produced by vicious or frivolous luxury in the rich. If
the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many
different ways, with all their might and strength, and
ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be
fathers of families, and if the women do not recognize
that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good
wife and mother, why, that nation has cause to be alarmed
about its future.

There is no physical trouble among us Americans.
The trouble with the situation you set forth is one of
character, and therefore we can conquer it if we only will.

I am in receipt of your letter of November 10th and of
one from Mr.—under date of November 11th, in
reference to the appointment of Dr. Crum as Collector
of the Port of Charleston.

In your letter you make certain specific charges against
Dr. Crum, tending to show his unfitness in several respects
for the office sought. These charges are entitled
to the utmost consideration from me, and I shall go over
them carefully before taking any action. After making
these charges you add, as a further reason for opposition
to him, that he is a colored man, and after reciting the
misdeeds that followed carpet-bag rule and negro domination
in South Carolina, you say that "we have sworn
never again to submit to the rule of the African, and such
an appointment as that of Dr. Crum to any such office
forces us to protest unanimously against this insult to the
white blood"; and you add that you understood me to
say that I would never force a negro on such a community
as yours. Mr.—puts the objection of color first,
saying: "First, he is a colored man, and that of itself
ought to bar him from the office." In view of these last
statements, I think I ought to make clear to you why I
am concerned and pained by your making them and what
my attitude is as regards all such appointments. How
any one could have gained the idea that I had said I
would not appoint reputable and upright colored men to
office, when objection was made to them solely on account
of their color, I confess I am wholly unable to
understand. At the time of my visit to Charleston last
spring I had made, and since that time I have made, a
number of such appointments from several States in
which there is a considerable colored population. For
example, I made one such appointment in Mississippi,
and another in Alabama, shortly before my visit to
Charleston. I had at that time appointed two colored
men as judicial magistrates in the District of Columbia.
I have recently announced another such appointment for
New Orleans, and have just made one from Pennsylvania.
The great majority of my appointments in every State
have been of white men. North and South alike it has

been my sedulous endeavor to appoint only men of high
character and good capacity, whether white or black.
But it has been my consistent policy in every State
where their numbers warranted it to recognize colored
men of good repute and standing in making appointments
to office. These appointments of colored men have in
no State made more than a small proportion of the total
number of appointments. I am unable to see how I can
legitimately be asked to make an exception for South
Carolina. In South Carolina, to the four most important
positions in the State I have appointed three men and
continued in office a fourth, all of them white men—
three of them originally gold Democrats—two of them,
as I am informed, the sons of Confederate soldiers. I
have been informed by the citizens of Charleston whom I
have met that these four men represent a high grade of
public service.

I do not intend to appoint any unfit men to office. So
far as I legitimately can I shall always endeavor to pay
regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each
locality; but I cannot consent to take the position that
the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut
upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the
grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according
to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong. If,
as you hold, the great bulk of the colored people are not
yet fit in point of character and influence to hold such
positions, it seems to me that it is worth while putting a
premium upon the effort among them to achieve the
character and standing which will fit them.

The question of "negro domination" does not enter
into the matter at all. It might as well be asserted that
when I was Governor of New York I sought to bring
about negro domination in that State because I appointed
two colored men of good character and standing to responsible
positions—one of them to a position paying a

salary twice as large as that paid in the office now under
consideration—one of them as a director of the Buffalo
Exposition. The question raised by you and Mr.—
in the statements to which I refer, is simply whether it is
to be declared that under no circumstances shall any man
of color, no matter how upright and honest, no matter
how good a citizen, no matter how fair in his dealings
with his fellows, be permitted to hold any office under
our government. I certainly cannot assume such an attitude,
and you must permit me to say that in my view it
is an attitude no man should assume, whether he looks
at it from the standpoint of the true interest of the white
men of the South or of the colored men of the South, not
to speak of any other section of the Union. It seems to
me that it is a good thing from every standpoint to let
the colored man know that if he shows in marked degree
the qualities of good citizenship—the qualities which in
a white man we feel are entitled to reward—then he will
not be cut off from all hope of similar reward.

Without any regard to what my decision may be on
the merits of this particular applicant for this particular
place, I feel that I ought to let you know clearly my attitude
on the far broader question raised by you and
Mr.—; an attitude from which I have not varied
during my term of office.

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,

LABOR UNIONS AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE

On May 18, 1903, William A. Miller was removed by
the Public Printer from his position of Assistant Foreman
at the Government Printing Office. Mr. Miller
filed a complaint with the Civil Service Commission
alleging that his removal had been made in violation of
the civil-service law and rules. After an investigation
of the complaint, and upon July 6th, the Civil Service
Commission advised the Public Printer of its decision as
follows:

Mr. Miller's complaint had also been filed with the

President, under whose direction it was being investigated
by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor simultaneously
with the investigation by the Civil Service Commission.
As a result of such investigations, the following letters,
under dates of July 13 and 14, 1903, were written by the
President:

September 29, 1903.

Pursuant to the request of Samuel Gompers, President
of the American Federation of Labor, the President
granted an interview this evening to the following members
of the Executive Council of that body: Mr. Samuel
Gompers, Mr. James Duncan, Mr. John Mitchell, Mr.
James O'Connell, and Mr. Frank Morrison, at which
various subjects of legislation in the interest of labor, as
well as executive action, were discussed. Concerning
the case of William A. Miller the President made the
following statement:

Permit me to thank you as an American citizen for the
admirable way in which you have vindicated the majesty
of the law by your recent action in reference to lynching.
I feel, my dear sir, that you have made all men your
debtors who believe, as all far-seeing men must, that the
well-being, indeed the very existence, of the Republic
depends upon that spirit of orderly liberty under the law
which is as incompatible with mob violence as with any
form of despotism. Of course mob violence is simply
one form of anarchy; and anarchy is now, as it always
has been, the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny.

I feel that you have not only reflected honor upon the
State which for its good fortune has you as its Chief
Executive, but upon the whole nation. It is incumbent
upon every man throughout this country not only to hold
up your hands in the course you have been following, but
to show his realization that the matter is one which is of
vital concern to us all.

All thoughtful men must feel the gravest alarm over
the growth of lynching in this country, and especially
over the peculiarly hideous forms so often taken by mob
violence when colored men are the victims—on which
occasions the mob seems to lay most weight, not on the
crime, but on the color of the criminal. In a certain
proportion of these cases the man lynched has been guilty
of a crime horrible beyond description; a crime so horrible
that as far as he himself is concerned he has forfeited the
right to any kind of sympathy whatsoever. The feeling
of all good citizens that such a hideous crime shall not be
hideously punished by mob violence is due not in the
least to sympathy for the criminal, but to a very lively
sense of the train of dreadful consequences which follows
the course taken by the mob in exacting inhuman

vengeance for an in human wrong. In such cases, moreover,
it is well to remember that the criminal not merely sins
against humanity in inexpiable and unpardonable fashion,
but sins particularly against his own race, and does them
a wrong far greater than any white man can possibly do
them. Therefore, in such cases the colored people
throughout the land should in every possible way show
their belief that they, more than all others in the community,
are horrified at the commission of such a crime
and are peculiarly concerned in taking every possible
measure to prevent its recurrence and to bring the criminal
to immediate justice. The slightest lack of vigor
either in denunciation of the crime or in bringing the
criminal to justice is itself unpardonable.
Moreover, every effort should be made under the law
to expedite the proceedings of justice in the case of such
an awful crime. But it cannot be necessary in order to
accomplish this to deprive any citizen of those fundamental
rights to be heard in his own defence which are so
dear to us all and which lie at the root of our liberty. It
certainly ought to be possible by the proper administration
of the laws to secure swift vengeance upon the
criminal; and the best and immediate efforts of all legislators,
judges, and citizens should be addressed to securing
such reforms in our legal procedure as to leave no
vestige of excuse for those misguided men who undertake
to reap vengeance through violent methods.

Men who have been guilty of a crime like rape or
murder should be visited with swift and certain punishment
and the just effort made by the courts to protect
them in their rights should under no circumstances be
perverted into permitting any mere technicality to avert
or delay their punishment. The substantial rights of the
prisoner to a fair trial must of course be guaranteed, as
you have so justly insisted that they should be; but,
subject to this guarantee, the law must work swiftly and

surely and all the agents of the law should realize the
wrong they do when they permit justice to be delayed or
thwarted for technical or insufficient reasons. We must
show that the law is adequate to deal with crime by freeing
it from every vestige of technicality and delay.

But the fullest recognition of the horror of the crime
and the most complete lack of sympathy with the criminal
cannot in the least diminish our horror at the way in
which it has become customary to avenge these crimes
and at the consequences that are already proceeding
therefrom. It is of course inevitable that where vengeance
is taken by a mob it should frequently light on
innocent people; and the wrong done in such a case to
the individual is one for which there is no remedy. But
even where the real criminal is reached, the wrong done
by the mob to the community itself is well-nigh as great.
Especially is this true where the lynching is accompanied
with torture. There are certain hideous sights which
when once seen can never be wholly erased from the
mental retina. The mere fact of having seen them implies
degradation. This is a thousandfold stronger when,
instead of merely seeing the deed, the man has participated
in it. Whoever in any part of our country has ever
taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by the
dreadful torture of fire must forever after have the awful
spectacle of his own handiwork seared into his brain and
soul. He can never again be the same man.

This matter of lynching would be a terrible thing even
if it stopped with the lynching of men guilty of the inhuman
and hideous crime of rape; but, as a matter of fact,
lawlessness of this type never does stop and never can stop
in such fashion. Every violent man in the community is
encouraged by every case of lynching in which the lynchers
go unpunished to himself take the law into his own hands
whenever it suits his own convenience. In the same way
the use of torture by the mob in certain cases is sure to

spread until it is applied more or less indiscriminately in
other cases. The spirit of lawlessness grows with what it
feeds on, and when mobs with impunity lynch criminals
for one cause, they are certain to begin to lynch real or
alleged criminals for other causes. In the recent cases of
lynching, over three fourths were not for rape at all, but
for murder, attempted murder, and even less heinous offences.
Moreover, the history of these recent cases shows
the awful fact that when the minds of men are habituated
to the use of torture by lawless bodies to avenge crimes
of a peculiarly revolting description, other lawless bodies
will use torture in order to punish crimes of an ordinary
type. Surely no patriot can fail to see the fearful brutalization
and debasement which the indulgence of such a
spirit and such practices inevitably portends. Surely all
public men, all writers for the daily press, all clergymen,
all teachers, all who in any way have a right to address
the public, should with every energy unite to denounce
such crimes and to support those engaged in putting them
down. As a people we claim the right to speak with
peculiar emphasis for freedom and for fair treatment of
all men without regard to differences of race, fortune,
creed, or color. We forfeit the right so to speak when
we commit or condone such crimes as those of which I
speak.

The nation, like the individual, cannot commit a crime
with impunity. If we are guilty of lawlessness and brutal
violence, whether our guilt consists in active participation
therein or in mere connivance and encouragement, we
shall assuredly suffer later on because of what we have
done. The cornerstone of this Republic, as of all free
government, is respect for and obedience to the law.
Where we permit the law to be defied or evaded, whether
by rich man or poor man, by black man or white, we are
by just so much weakening the bonds of our civilization
and increasing the chances of its overthrow, and of the

substitution therefor of a system in which there shall be
violent alternations of anarchy and tyranny.