A few years after this incident Dallas was making great preparations to receive and entertain President Roosevelt, on an invitation extended him by Colonel John N. Simpson of the National Exchange Bank.
Colonel Simpson and Roosevelt were neighbors, on adjoining ranches in the great Northwest and were great friends. When Colonel Roosevelt raised his regiment of Rough Riders at San Antonio, Colonel Simpson’s son, Sloan Simpson, quit Harvard College and joined the regiment at San Antonio and was with his regiment in their engagement at San Juan Hill, which furthermore increased their friendship.
In April of that year I received a Congressional pamphlet containing a speech of Congressman Kitchin of North Carolina, scoring President Roosevelt on many of his expressions and acts while in office. This was just preceding his second nomination for the Presidency. We had had some bitter denunciations of the President by Senator Vardaman of Mississippi and Tillman of South Carolina, and after reading the speech of Kitchin, in which he referred to Roosevelt’s book on the life of Benton, which had the largest circulation of any he ever published and in which occurs the expression, “Through the Southern character runs a streak of coarse brutality,” and another passage, “As long as the word treason is in the English dictionary, so long will Jefferson Davis stand the Archtraitor of this country,” and again Kitchin said, “Would I startle this House to call attention to a speech delivered by this man, the President of this great country, in the Capital City of the Nation, denouncing the Confederate soldier as an anarchist!”
In connection with this I would state that President Roosevelt’s mother was a Southern woman, born and raised in Georgia, sister of ex-Governor Bullock. How could he reconcile such an expression as his first; certainly it was a strange expression under the circumstances.
Pondering over the situation frequently, I came to the conclusion that this speech of Kitchin’s had been sent broadcast over the State and if so, we had a thousand Vardamans in Texas that would be sure to make his visit to Texas unpleasant and might result in his being insulted, which of course, would place Texas in a very unenviable position with the people of the North and East. I finally concluded to write Mr. Roosevelt a letter, calling attention to Kitchin’s speech and quoting the above remarks from this speech and suggesting his correction of his position on these matters, before he made his visit to Texas. In my letter I especially referred to the Indiana flag incident, enclosing copies of the affair, which I requested returned.
Dallas, Texas, March 8, 1905.
To the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt,
President of the United States,
Washington, D. C.
My Dear Sir: I have read with deep interest your recent expressions in response to invitations from Southern communities indicating an earnest desire to bring about a better understanding, and forever obliterate the last vestige of sectional feeling resulting from the unfortunate conflict of forty years ago; particularly, your letter accepting an invitation from the Confederate Camp at Paris, Texas, which induces me to offer a few suggestions, and more fully inform you of the position of the Confederate soldier today, who I know is as solicitous of this country’s future as you possibly can be, and on which I feel assured, you require no further evidence than he has furnished both in private and public life particularly, in his country’s hour of peril incident on foreign war.