Much has been made about the fanatical rush to erase and eliminate figures of American history, who do not comport with the standards of the ignorant anarchists sowing discord and destruction all over the country.
Among the targets is Theodore Roosevelt. A statue that has stood in front of the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in his hometown of New York City since 1940--depicting him on horseback, flanked by a Native American man and African man--will be removed from its current location.
The statue, claim the aggrieved, symbolizes Roosevelt’s racism and colonialism--the white man’s subjugation of inferior peoples. This despite the statue designer’s stated desire to portray Roosevelt’s “friendliness to all races.”
Mt. Rushmore (which depicts Roosevelt alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln) has also been targeted by anarchists as a symbol of white supremacy and American racism.
Roosevelt--and seemingly most any figure of American history who does not fit the narrative of Antifa or the Black Lives Matter organization--has been summarily tried and judged as a racist, bigoted, and whatever -ist or –phobe anyone wishes to apply at will.
Of course, the truth is a bit more nuanced. If Theodore Roosevelt were a racist, would he have acted as he did during the 1884 Republican National Convention in Chicago?
Roosevelt arrived in Chicago that June a heartbroken man of 25. The New York State assemblyman and delegate-at-large had lost his wife and mother on the same day in the same house in February. He and fellow delegate Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts were part of an independent contingent within the party hoping to deny its presidential nomination to James G. Blaine, the favorite of the Old Guard of the still-young Republican Party.
As part of their strategy, Roosevelt and Lodge worked to elect someone other than Powell Clayton (a Blaine supporter) to temporarily chair the convention. Clayton’s wielding of the gavel would have given Blaine a significant advantage during the proceedings. Roosevelt and Lodge wanted to install in the chair Mississippi congressman John R. Lynch, a black American.
The political details and intrigue surrounding the chairmanship fight are best described in the books The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris and Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. Those who unthinkingly dismiss Roosevelt as a racist would do well to read and consider those descriptions and the speech Roosevelt made on Lynch’s behalf.
Climbing atop a chair and for the first time addressing a national forum of any kind Roosevelt said, in part:
“It is now, Mr. Chairman, less than a quarter of a century since, in this city, the great Republican party organized for victory and nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, who broke the fetters of the slave and rent them asunder forever. It is a fitting thing for us to choose to preside over this convention one of that race whose right to sit within these walls is due to the blood and the treasure so lavishly spent by the founders of the Republican party.”
As Morris and McCullough describe, the speech was met with praise–interrupted by applause six times. Lynch was elected chairman in dramatic fashion. Though Roosevelt and Lodge were unable to prevent Blaine’s nomination, is it not instructive that the first address before the national Republican Party made by Theodore Roosevelt was in praise and support of a black American?
Of course, political consideration and calculation were a part of Lynch’s nomination. And there is no doubt that Roosevelt (like almost every historical figure) falls short of the ever-evolving standards set by the self-appointed arbiters of righteousness.
But no true racist would have used his first opportunity to spend national political capital in such a way. Yet still he is to be forever labeled a racist and tributes to him erased or moved out of the broader public eye?
This and every other aspect of Theodore Roosevelt’s public life–including his bold invitation to Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House, his contributions to American literature, conservation, and natural science–will certainly be lost on the ignorant.
As Thomas Jefferson once said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never has been and what never will be.”
But it is good and beneficial to remind ourselves that there are facts that cannot be changed. Those of us who know and cherish the history and ideals of the United States must push back against the mob in whatever form it takes, anywhere and everywhere that we can.
Similarly, a vital component of the Convention of States movement is persuading our legislative representatives to reconnect with our history and heritage in order to restore our founding principles to form a more perfect union.
Join me in encouraging state legislators to exercise our sovereignty via Article V of the Constitution and return to a republican government as intended.
