Whatever these two men thought concerning the color question was no doubt discoverable; but it was not announced as a new gospel; for while great in spirit they were not noisily so. They were both great men. Cleveland, the Democrat, was greater in his public character and official achievements, the Republican, McKinley, in the personal integrity and absolute self abnegation which adorned his life and crowned his end. Cleveland opposed to malfeasance a rugged force, which did much to build up public integrity, lamentably lowered in Grant’s two terms. McKinley’s respect for law and order was so sincere, that in his dying moments he interposed to protect his assassin from the natural fury of the mob, thereby defending an anarchist from the outburst of anarchy which the vile deed occasioned, and giving, in his own suffering person, so interposing, the noblest appeal that could possibly be made against lynching.
The executive who succeeded McKinley was essentially different. No president of the United States has done as much as Mr. Roosevelt to wipe out distinctions between white and black. That he should have estranged Southern whites is not unnatural; that he should have aroused the enmity of Northern and Southern colored men discloses to what an extent the Negro is amenable to impulse rather than reason. Mr. Alfred Holt Stone has discussed three incidents which occurred in Mr. Roosevelt’s first term. Benjamin Brawley, a colored man, discusses the even more important incident which occurred in Mr. Roosevelt’s second term. In the first three Mr. Roosevelt held the centre of the stage, in the fourth, the Negroes were the actors, Mr. Roosevelt only responding. Mr. Stone treats the first three, in part, as follows:
“Three incidents marked the progress of the controversy which broke upon the country shortly after Roosevelt’s succession to the presidency. These were the Booker Washington dinner, the appointment of Crum, and the closing of the Indianola post office. There were four parties in interest—Mr. Roosevelt, the Southern press and people, the Northern press and people and the American Negro.... The President acted clearly within his ‘rights’ in each case. This point must be conceded without argument. The dinner episode was in itself no more than a matter of White House routine.... Within forty-eight hours, the President was being denounced for having crossed the social equality dead line through breaking bread with a negro.”[287]
According to Mr. Stone, the attitude of the South was one of general disapproval, the attitude of the Northern press a defence of the President. After a searching consideration of some fifty or more pages, in which Mr. McKinley’s attitude in distributing patronage is compared to that of Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Stone discusses the attitude of the Negroes. After taking up in turn various expressions by Professor Kelly Miller, Dr. W. E. Burghardt DuBois and Mr. William Pickens, Mr. Stone asks—“What then is the real meaning of their words?” Mr. Pickens says:
“—one side advises ‘quietly accept the imposition of inferiority. It is a lie but just treat it as the truth for the sake of peace. Diligently apply to the white man the title of gentleman, and care not if he persists in addressing you as he calls his horse and his dog. Be patient. This general disrespect and discrimination will develop into the proper respect and impartiality at some time in the long lapse of geological ages, just as the eohippus has developed into the race horse, and the ancestor of the baboon into a respectable Anglo-Saxon.’ The other side says, ‘I ask for nothing more or less than the liberty to associate with any free man who wishes to associate with me. Your colour discriminations, legal or not, are all damnable, inasmuch as they draw an artificial and heartless line, give encouraging suggestions to the vicious and allow the stronger in brute power to force bastardy upon the weaker without remedy. Colour has absolutely no virtue for me and however much I am outnumbered I will not retreat one inch from that principle. However little my position might affect savage opposition, by the God of your fathers and mine, I will never by voluntary act or word acknowledge as the truth what I know to be the grossest of lies. And you might ask all the truly valiant hearts of the world and the ages how they beat toward these contrary tenets.’”[288]
It is true this utterance was some five years later; but Mr. Stone thinks that—
“without the background of that Wednesday dinner at the White House, the canvass which subsequently absorbed and reflected such lurid colours would have given us an almost lifeless picture, as tame and dull as the usual afterglow of Southern appointments by Mr. Roosevelt’s predecessor.”[289]
To his discussion Mr. Stone appends the following interesting little note:
“The substance of this paper was embodied in an article submitted to several magazines while the Crum and Indianola incidents were being generally discussed throughout the country. The article was not found available.”[290]
In the same year that Mr. Pickens was declaring with fine oratorical fervor: