RE-ELECTED

CHAPTER XXXV.

1901-1904

SENATOR-ENDORSEMENT OF ROOSEVELT

FOR PRESIDENCY-RE-ELECTION AND DEATH

THE

OF SENATOR HANNA.

HE opening of the Ohio campaign of 1901 was delayed on account of the assassination and death of President McKinley until October 20th, when a tremendous meeting was held in the campus of the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio. This meeting was addressed by Governor Nash, Senator Hanna and myself. The newspaper accounts estimated that the audience assembled in front of the speakers' stand numbered from ten to fifteeen thousand.

Two or three days before this meeting was held President Roosevelt had brought upon himself a perfect storm of Democratic criticism, especially from the Southern States, by entertaining Booker T. Washington at luncheon with him in the White House. This criticism was at its height at the time of our meeting.

I was, perhaps, the first man to make public answer to it; at least the newspaper accounts of the Delaware meeting make this statement.

Preceding the formal opening the Columbus Glee Club serenaded the speakers of the day at the hotel where they were stopping. In response to a call for me I took occasion in the course of my remarks to say that our Democratic friends now had a new issue, one not set forth in their platform, because it had grown out of an occurrence subsequent to their convention. I went on to say the Democrats now wanted the Republican administration at Washington turned out of power not because of Imperial

ism, the Spanish-American war, or anything done in Cuba, Porto Rico or the Philippines, or because of our opposition to the free and unlimited coinage of silver, or for any other of the many reasons they had been for many years urging against us, but because the new incumbent of the White House had courage enough and patriotism enough and a strong enough sense of equity and justice to know that the White House was the White House of the whole American people, of the American Negro as well as of the American white man; that in short Democratic sensibilities had been shocked by President Roosevelt inviting Booker T. Washington to lunch with him; that the offense was aggravated because Washington, at one time a slave, had, under the freedom and opportunity given to his race by the Republican Party, been able to acquire an education, establish a great industrial school and there successfully carry on a work of education and general qualification for citizenship that had excited the attention and the admiration of the whole body of loyal American citizens. I predicted that, although not in their platform, this complaint would be heard throughout the campaign, but that the more that was heard of it the more certainly it would be condemned at the polls; for the American people, instead of rebuking a man who had courage enough to recognize the equal rights of American citizens, would uphold and sustain and encourage him with a verdict at the polls that would be memorable in the history of American politics.

Speaking for myself I said, in view of his intellectual endowment, general culture and invaluable service to his race and his country, I would rather lunch with Booker T. Washington than with some Democrats I had known.

My Democratic opponent for the Senatorship was the Honorable Charles W. Baker of Cincinnati, a very brilliant and successful lawyer. In a speech made by him at Lancaster shortly afterward he referred to this statement and made, I thought, a very witty and "catchy" response by remarking that, so far as the Democrats were concerned, they, too, would rather have me lunch with Booker T. Washington than with them.

I mention these incidents not only because they belong in this narrative of recollections, but also because I was almost the only campaign speaker who thus publicly defended the President; and because such defenses as appeared in the newspapers and magazines seemed only to aggravate and intensify the fierce criticisms that were literally showered upon him, until by lapse of time and the occurrence of new incidents that commanded attention the event was, so to speak, relegated to the rear.

While on this account the incident largely passed out of the minds of the people generally, yet it is safe to assume that it had not yet been forgotten by President Roosevelt when in 1906 the Brownsville affray occurred.

He had relatives and friends in the South and had a great admiration for the chivalric character of the Southern people, and no doubt felt keenly their almost universal criticism and the apparent loss of their friendship and goodwill.

No one can say this had anything to do with his action in discharging the colored soldiers, but it was doubtless quite agreeable to him to see his fierce enemies suddenly become warm friends.

RE-ELECTED SENATOR.

Nineteen hundred and one was a Republican year, especially in Ohio. We had a majority of thirty-five in the Legislature on joint ballot, and without opposition I was chosen by the entire Republican vote to be my own successor; and this notwithstanding the fact that I was openly charged, both in the campaign and in the Legislature, with the heinous crime of acting as attorney for the great moneyed interests and trusts, on which account six years later, I was politically eliminated.

Mr. Baker, my opponent, was nominated by the Democratic floor leader, Mr. Clem. L. Brumbaugh, who said in the course of his speech: "Mr. Baker represents the principles of true Democracy. He is an attorney of great ability, but not the attorney of trusts. If sent to the