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 of 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 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,
Sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
Hon. Clark Howell
Editor, “The Constitution,”
Atlanta, Ga.
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:
“Section 2 of Civil Service Rule XII, governing removals, provides that no person shall be removed from a competitive position except for such cause as will promote the efficiency of the public service. The Commission does not consider expulsion from a labor union, being the action of a body is no way connected with the public service nor having authority over public employees, to be such a cause as will promote the efficiency of the public service.
“As the only reason given by you for your removal of Mr. Miller is that he was expelled from Local Union No. 4, International Brotherhood of Bookbinders, you are advised that the Commission can not recognize his removal and must request that he be reassigned to duty in his position.”
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 13th and 14th, 1903, were written by the President: