Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [149]
Some of the Negro’s bonds burned loose, and he managed to writhe off the pyre, screaming “O God forgive me!” He was tossed back, head foremost, and the fire, fierce now, engulfed him. Incredibly, White writhed off again. Before he could be picked up, an exasperated bystander hoisted a long-handled hammer, arched it through the air, and shattered his skull. “That settles it!”
There was a chorus of disappointment from the incendiarists, led by the old farmer with the lantern. They returned the corpse to the pyre, which burned all night. By dawn, a few pale bones were all that remained of the black man, White. Vendors hawked them in the streets of Wilmington as souvenirs.
CHAPTER 17
No Color of Right
I’ll tell ye …’tis a gr-reat mistake to think that
annywan ra-aly wants to rayform.
THE DELAWARE LYNCHING was not, as some shocked headlines claimed, the first to occur north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But it was the first there with a motive that was explicitly racial, and its sadism revolted even Southerners. Roosevelt, child of a Georgian mother, was torn in his heart between “the horror that such savagery aroused” and concern that if he spoke out against it now, as passions still surged (fresh mobs were roaming the streets of Wilmington, protesting Sheriff Black’s arrest of the man in the red shirt), he might touch off worse and wider demonstrations. His one public reference to lynching, in front of the Custis-Lee Mansion, had badly damaged him politically. There was no question he must say something soon—but when, and how best for moral effect?
He poured out his distress to Jules Jusserand, who was fast becoming a confidant. What really worried him, he said, was “the demoralizing effect of mob executions” on young minds. He had heard of boys of twelve taking part. “They will be brutalized for life.”
The Delaware affair came as a particular shock to Roosevelt, because the national lynch rate had been dropping since he had taken office. If, now, four thousand hitherto peaceful whites living on Union soil were capable of such barbarity, what price Judge Jones’s manumission of a few peons in the South?
AS SUMMER SETTLED DOWN over Washington, the President, deserted by his wife and children, waited impatiently for some positive news from Bogotá. On 24 June, he gave a bachelor dinner for Hay and Jusserand. He said he was studying the War Reports of Prince Eugene of Savoy, that most self-confident and impetuous of monarchs, and was not fazed by James J. Hill’s angry determination to take the Northern Securities case to the Supreme Court. “He detests me, but I admire him,” Roosevelt said. “He will detest me much more before I have done with him.”
Hay, much of whose wealth derived from railroad stocks, disapproved of the Administration’s antitrust policy. “Where will it begin, and where will it stop?” he complained to Jusserand afterward. “Where is the limit, the line of demarcation?”
The next morning, a cable arrived from Arthur Beaupré, saying that the Colombian Congress had at last convened to debate the treaty, but did not appear to be intimidated by Hay’s ultimatum. A good sign, perhaps, was that President Marroquín had not specifically recommended against ratification. That guaranteed many weeks—if not months—of leisurely debate.
Hay and Roosevelt agreed to await further developments in their respective watering places. With that, they separately left town. Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Loomis remained behind to stay in wire contact with Beaupré.
“Out of consideration for my feelings,” the President advised Hay, “pray go as little to Washington this summer as possible—otherwise I shall feel too poignantly that I am neglecting my own duty.”
CANNONS CRASHED AND a school choir sang “God Save the President” when Roosevelt stepped down under the white gull-wings of Oyster Bay station on 27