Theodore Roosevelt [94]
of the senseless folly and wickedness of the Southerners in the early sixties. Roosevelt felt that those persons who most heartily agreed that as it was the presence of the negro which made the problem, and that slavery was merely the worst possible method of solving it, we must therefore hold up to reprobation, as guilty of doing one of the worst deeds which history records, those men who tried to break up this Union because they were not allowed to bring slavery and the negro into our new territory. Every step which followed, from freeing the slave to enfranchising him, was due only to the North being slowly and reluctantly forced to act by the South's persistence in its folly and wickedness.
* Leupp,231.
The President could not say these things in public because they tended, when coming from a man in public place, to embitter people. But Rhodes was writing what Roosevelt hoped would prove the great permanent history of the period, and he said that it would be a misfortune for the country, and especially a misfortune for the South, if they were allowed to confuse right and wrong in perspective. He added that his difficulties with the Southern people had come not from the North, but from the South. He had never done anything that was not for their interest. At present, he added, they were, as a whole, speaking well of him. When they would begin again to speak ill, he did not know, but in either case his duty was equally clear. *
* February 20, 1905.
Inviting Booker Washington to the White House was a counsel of perfection which we must consider one of Roosevelt's misses. Quite different was the voyage of the Great Fleet, planned by him and carried out without hitch or delay.
We have seen that from his interest in American naval history, which began before he left Harvard, he came to take a very deep interest in the Navy itself, and when he was Assistant Secretary, he worked night and day to complete its preparation for entering the Spanish War. From the time he became President, he urged upon Congress and the country the need of maintaining a fleet adequate to ward off any dangers to which we might be exposed. In season and out of season he preached, with the ardor of a propagandist, his gospel that the Navy is the surest guarantor of peace which this country possesses. By dint of urging he persuaded Congress to consent to lay down one battleship of the newest type a year. Congress was not so much reluctant as indifferent. Even the lesson of the Spanish War failed to teach the Nation's law-makers, or the Nation itself, that we must have a Navy to protect us if we intended to play the role of a World Power. The American people instinctively dreaded militarism, and so they resisted consenting to naval or military preparations which might expand into a great evil such as they saw controlling the nations of Europe.
Nevertheless Roosevelt, as usual, could not be deterred by opposition; and when the Hague Conference in 1907, through the veto of Germany, refused to limit armaments by sea and land, he warned Congress that one new battleship a year would not do, that they must build four. Meanwhile, he had pushed to completion a really formidable American Fleet, which assembled in Hampton Roads on December 1, 1907, and ten days later weighed anchor for parts unknown. There were sixteen battleships, commanded by Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans. Every ship was new, having been built since the Spanish War. The President and Mrs. Roosevelt and many notables reviewed the Fleet from the President's yacht Mayflower, as it passed out to sea. Later, the country learned that the Fleet was to sail round Cape Horn, to New Zealand and Australia, up the Pacific to San Francisco, then across to Japan, and so steer homeward through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean to Gibraltar, across the Atlantic, and back to Hampton Roads.
The American public did not quite know what to make of this dramatic gesture. Roosevelt's critics said, of course, that it was the first overt display of his combativeness, and that
* Leupp,231.
The President could not say these things in public because they tended, when coming from a man in public place, to embitter people. But Rhodes was writing what Roosevelt hoped would prove the great permanent history of the period, and he said that it would be a misfortune for the country, and especially a misfortune for the South, if they were allowed to confuse right and wrong in perspective. He added that his difficulties with the Southern people had come not from the North, but from the South. He had never done anything that was not for their interest. At present, he added, they were, as a whole, speaking well of him. When they would begin again to speak ill, he did not know, but in either case his duty was equally clear. *
* February 20, 1905.
Inviting Booker Washington to the White House was a counsel of perfection which we must consider one of Roosevelt's misses. Quite different was the voyage of the Great Fleet, planned by him and carried out without hitch or delay.
We have seen that from his interest in American naval history, which began before he left Harvard, he came to take a very deep interest in the Navy itself, and when he was Assistant Secretary, he worked night and day to complete its preparation for entering the Spanish War. From the time he became President, he urged upon Congress and the country the need of maintaining a fleet adequate to ward off any dangers to which we might be exposed. In season and out of season he preached, with the ardor of a propagandist, his gospel that the Navy is the surest guarantor of peace which this country possesses. By dint of urging he persuaded Congress to consent to lay down one battleship of the newest type a year. Congress was not so much reluctant as indifferent. Even the lesson of the Spanish War failed to teach the Nation's law-makers, or the Nation itself, that we must have a Navy to protect us if we intended to play the role of a World Power. The American people instinctively dreaded militarism, and so they resisted consenting to naval or military preparations which might expand into a great evil such as they saw controlling the nations of Europe.
Nevertheless Roosevelt, as usual, could not be deterred by opposition; and when the Hague Conference in 1907, through the veto of Germany, refused to limit armaments by sea and land, he warned Congress that one new battleship a year would not do, that they must build four. Meanwhile, he had pushed to completion a really formidable American Fleet, which assembled in Hampton Roads on December 1, 1907, and ten days later weighed anchor for parts unknown. There were sixteen battleships, commanded by Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans. Every ship was new, having been built since the Spanish War. The President and Mrs. Roosevelt and many notables reviewed the Fleet from the President's yacht Mayflower, as it passed out to sea. Later, the country learned that the Fleet was to sail round Cape Horn, to New Zealand and Australia, up the Pacific to San Francisco, then across to Japan, and so steer homeward through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean to Gibraltar, across the Atlantic, and back to Hampton Roads.
The American public did not quite know what to make of this dramatic gesture. Roosevelt's critics said, of course, that it was the first overt display of his combativeness, and that