Mr. Taft and the Brownsville Order

Black voters have trouble supporting the Republican Party and Taft’s presidential campaign due to President Roosevelt’s “contemptuous disregard of the rights and privileges of the Negro.”

The disaffection among the colored voters of this country with reference to their relationship to the Republican Party is widespread and ominous. Never in the history of the nation has there been so many colored voters, who are outspoken in their disapproval of the attitude and policies of those leaders, who are now in control of the national organization. It will take the ablest colored men in the country to even in a measure counteract this feeling. It is so deep and felt by a class of colored voters that money will not have any effect upon them. It will take argument. It must be shown that the course now being pursued by those opposing the Party and its leadership will result in dire disaster to one of the kindliest races of people on the face of the globe. President Roosevelt has shown a contemptuous disregard of the rights and privileges of the Negro and he “has gone over with boots and baggage to the enemy.” Colored men will find more sympathy with the liberal elements in the Democratic Party than it will with him. We say this after a careful review of the situation. He is turning the Republican Party of the South over to the Democrats just as absolutely as President Hayes ever did and he seems to be careless as the the consequences of his own actions. He has placed every colored soldier in the country under that race discriminating Southerner Gen. Luke E. Wright, whose blunders in the Philippines with reference to the race question made him hated from one end of the Islands to the other. That the Republican managers are beginning to scent trouble seems evident and that this apprehension has reached President Theodore Roosevelt at Oyster Bay, New York seems to be equally evident. What else can the following authorized publication mean? Here it is: “Washington, Aug. 7 - Gen. Henry C. Corbin, retired, today made public a copy of a cable message sent by President Roosevelt to Secretary of War Taft form Ponce, Puerto Rico, at the time of the President’s tour there, directing the former Secretary not to suspend the order discharging the battalion of Negro soldiers for alleged participation in the Brownsville riots. “The cable message was sent from Ponce, bearing date of November 21, and is as follows; Cablegram received. Discharge is not to be suspended unless there are new facts of such importance as to warrant your cabling me. I care nothing whatever for the yelling either of the politicians or the sentimentalists. The offense was heinous and the punishment I inflicted I imposed after deliberation. All I shall pay heed to is the presentation of facts showing the official report to be in whole or in part untrue, exculpating some individual man. If any such facts shall later appear I can act as may be deemed desirable, but nothing has been brought before me to warrant the suspension of the order. I direct that it be executed. - Theodore Roosevelt...

“Mr. Taft and the Brownsville Order,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 15, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/705.