When the battle was over the President stood clearly before the people as a man who would champion them against the so-called captains of industry when it was necessary to do so.
The President let it be known early in his administration that in the South he would appoint good Democrats to office rather than bad Republicans.
It was while the President was making appointments of Democrats to office in the South, winning praise from those who had never before praised anything Republican, that the famous Booker T. Washington incident took place.
It had been through the help of the South that Washington had been able to accomplish his great work as a negro educator, but this section of the country, with the negro as a social problem very close to it, bitterly resented Roosevelt’s dining with the colored man.
The South took it as an affront, though evidently the President had not thought one way or the other as to the possible consequences. The criticisms heaped upon him he ignored.
Roosevelt did not long remain in the bad graces of the Southern people. He did not permit the South to forget that his mother was a Georgian woman, and that her brothers had fought in the Confederacy. The following incident illustrates the fine diplomacy with which he won back the regard of the Southern people:
On one of his Southern trips his train stopped at Charlotte. N. C. A committee of women led by Mrs. Thomas J. Jackson, widow of General Stonewall Jackson, was at the depot to meet Colonel Roosevelt. When he was introduced he referred to himself as by right a Southerner, and then being introduced to Mrs. Jackson, he added a remark which flashed through the South:
“What! The widow of the great Stonewall Jackson? Why, it is worth the whole trip down here to have a chance to shake your hand,” and he reminded her that he had appointed her grandson to a cadetship at West Point.
The South loved a fighter, and Roosevelt put his knowledge of this fact to good use when he went on a campaigning tour of that territory. If there had been anything timorous about him he would have attacked the Democracy in Minnesota, where it would be safe to do so. Instead, he picked out Atlanta, where his audience was composed almost entirely of Democrats.
The audience tried to roar him down. For five minutes the tumult went on. It seemed as if the meeting could not go on. Roosevelt then made a characteristically audacious move. There was a table near him, and he leaped upon it. The mob was startled into stillness. Before it could recover from its surprise, he had poured forth a half-dozen striking sentences, and by that time his opponents were interested enough to give him a hearing.