Dixiecrats Triumphant The menacing Mr. Wilson

Reason ^ | Charles Paul Freund

[nicollo]

Great thread!

[nicollo]

I know that NYT editorial well. We can't say it won the election for Wilson, but it sure helped him take NY, where the Time's wish for a Wilson-Taft-Roosevelt outcome came true.

You cannot associate this editorial with Wilsonian racial politics. Aside from specific examples we might point to in retrospect, there was little in racist policy that could be nailed on Wilson as Governor of NJ. Perhaps he didn't have time. The NY Times was ecstactic for Wilson for two reasons: the tariff and Roosevelt. The Times hated both. In the tariff, the Times saw only betrayal by Taft and salvation in Wilson. In Roosevelt, the Times would take whatever it could get besides Roosevelt, and the paper correctly layed its bet on Wilson.

The Times was very positive towards Taft by 1911, but Wilson and the Democrats represented a lower tariff, which was the paper's overwhelming attitude. The other problem with Taft was his anti-trust position, which Wilson ended up endorsing (excepting unions and farmers; now there's some old time Democratic politics for ya!). During the election of 1912, Wilson played both sides of this question, thus avoiding the Time's condemnation for any anti-trust talk as being anti-business.

The Times was enthusiastic for Taft's racial politics, particularly his abandonment of the Roosevelt race card, and Taft's general color-blindness. I don't recall seeing anything in the Times during 1912 or 1913 that encouraged or supported Wilsons' racism and racial politics.

[general_re]

I don't think the Times was explicitly endorsing racism, either. However, if one is going to endorse a candidate, it seems that it is incumbent upon you to ensure that his policies are representative of what you think the proper course of action is. Much as Trent Lott has recently discovered. ;)

I don't think that Wilson turned out the way the Times intended, to be sure. But they did help make him, and thus bear some responsibility for him. Keep in mind, however, that while Wilson was indeed stunningly racist, I'm not really in the camp that tends to assign him blame for everything that's gone wrong since 1917 or so.

[nicollo]

Yes, and no.

The Time's endorsement of Wilson was incredible short-sightendness. It was not a moral failure. That belongs to Wilson.

[general_re]

The Time's endorsement of Wilson was incredible short-sightendness. It was not a moral failure. That belongs to Wilson.

Which is sort of what I was driving at, only not quite as succinctly ;)

[nicollo]

Btw, from where-in-the-hell did you drag up that editorial?

I'm so glad to see it!

[general_re]

I was looking for that one, and the earlier Miller editorial, in the Chadwyck-Healey index of the Times - I found them easily enough, but I was sort of resigned to having to go hit the microfilm for the actual text. So, on a lark, I searched the Times site for them, and found it here - basically, I got lucky ;)

[nicollo]

I guess that when they put it up on their website, they didn't what they were saying...!

They never do, especially these days. Thanks!

[x]

I don't think we disagree about New Deal historiography. By "a simple story of good and evil," I meant a simple, "black and white" "story of good versus evil." Anything else, anything that took in more complexity or ambiguity wouldn't be so simple. That was the point I was trying to make.

But about TR: his invitation of Booker T. Washington to the White House certainly was a high point in recognition of African Americans in his admittedly prejudiced era. TR also spoke out strongly against lynching. His treatment of Black soldiers in Texas was wrong and counterproductive, as were his racial views in general, but was he truly worse on race than were his predecessors?

You may remember a thread in the past few years criticizing current Presidential advisor Karl Rove's hero McKinley for abandoning the civil rights cause. I didn't buy that either, but I do think that the turn away from African American rights was continuous. I don't think there was less concern for civil rights under TR than under McKinley, because there was so little interest in Blacks in general. Nor was there more interest in African-Americans under Harrison's Presidency, though some Congressmen kept up the fight. You'd have to produce evidence to convince me that McKinley or Harrison was better for Blacks than Roosevelt.

Roosevelt's expressed racial views may lead to his being taken as more racist than preceding or following Presidents. He did believe in race, and he left a paper trail, though what race meant to him is open to question. It definitely did include color, but wasn't restricted to it. Roosevelt, though, came out of the ethnically more complex politics of New York and this did provide a place for African-Americans.

As to his using Negroes as a means, I'm not sure this differs from earlier or later practice. Roosevelt was certainly aware of the problems African-Americans faced in the political world. If his New York background helped TR to understand the politics of the melting pot, his Georgia ancestry meant that he had a long way to go to come to terms with Black aspirations. He certainly went further in that direction than Wilson. I'm not convinced that McKinley, a former Union officer, went further.

[aspiring.hillbilly]

...how very astute....!!

[Sabertooth]

Wilson appears to have perceived his presidency as an opportunity to correct history, and to restore white Americans to unambiguous supremacy. That is apparently the reason he embraced the poisonous message of D.W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation; it offered a congenial narrative.

Griffith's notorious film portrays the overthrow of debasing black rule in the Reconstructionist South by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The film's black characters (most of them white actors in blackface) are either servile or savages; Klan members are represented as both heroic and romantic. The movie was based primarily on The Clansman, a novel written by Thomas Dixon in 1905. Not only was Dixon a personal friend of Wilson's, he had been pushing for a Wilson presidency for years, and Wilson regarded himself as being in Dixon's debt.

Wilson discharged that debt by helping Dixon and Griffith publicize their movie. He arranged for preview screenings for his cabinet, for Congress, and for the Supreme Court, and he gave Dixon and Griffith an endorsement they could exploit. "It is like writing history with lightning," Wilson said of this KKK celebration, "and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The first half of Wilson's endorsement is still affixed to prints of the film that are screened for film students studying Griffith's advances in editing.

[rdf]

You may remember a thread in the past few years criticizing current Presidential advisor Karl Rove's hero McKinley for abandoning the civil rights cause. I didn't buy that either, but I do think that the turn away from African American rights was continuous. I don't think there was less concern for civil rights under TR than under McKinley, because there was so little interest in Blacks in general. Nor was there more interest in African-Americans under Harrison's Presidency, though some Congressmen kept up the fight. You'd have to produce evidence to convince me that McKinley or Harrison was better for Blacks than Roosevelt.

Thanks for remembering my thread on McKinley.

I've been doing more research on this lately, and it might be enlightening to restart the question.

Cheers,

Richard F.

[nicollo]

Oh, hell. A friend pinged me over to an immigration thread, and I got caught up in a brawl. Gallons of whiskey last night didn't help either. I ended up saying I'm Mexican. Maybe I really was at that point... I hate to lie here at FR, and I think this was the first time. Not a lie, exactly, as I was just being an ass, but a lie nonetheless. The results were fun, however.

I owe you a good response to this post. I think I was reading too much into some of your comments. Still, on TR, I am concerned. Perhaps I've defined my definition of him by his last two years in office, but he did, too. Do you know about the Crum affair? Crum was a black TR appointed to Customs Collector in SC. I think he first did it in 1905, but I'm not sure, could have been earlier.

Did you read me correctly? A black customs collector at Charleston!

TR's motivation was not to elevate Crum. He was sticking Crum in Pitchfork Ben's eye (SC Senator, folks). TR carried it out all the way to his last week in office, even though he said before that he wouldn't play those games after the 1908 election. That was not constructive racial politics. It was race baiting of the lowest order, and it smacked of the worst of Reconstruction.

Taft got Crum to resign, and moved him to someplace more appropriate. The difference between eleveting the black and using him was slight in those days. Taft was definitely more honest about it than TR.

I don't know about McKinley. I haven't gotten into his papers, and his biographies don't get much into it. McKinley started the end of Republican racial politics, however, with his rapprochement to Southern whites. This was not anti-black. It was an amazing gesture. I think TR thought he was doing the same. I know Taft did. I'd be interested to know more about McKinley and blacks.

I know an historian (historiette?) who can answer this question. I'll send her a note.

I haven't gotten to your links. Will do next. Thanks.

[Valin]

as I was just being an ass

An ASS?
I have just looked over the membership rolls for the American Society of Steves and do not see your name.
Therefore I can only assume you are not an A.S.S.,damfool, doodle, idiot, imbecile, jackass, jerk, mooncalf, nincompoop, ninny, ninnyhammer, poop, schmo,schmuck possibly. But not an A.S.S!

[nicollo]

Oh, I'm just a lower case ass.