Roosevelt Ban On Negroes A Blunder.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 5, 1912:
Southern Democrats Amused at It and Administration Northerners Pleased to Hear It.
BOTH LAUGHING AT STRADDLE
Think It Will Lose Negro Votes in Ohio River Border States, Where Poll Is Large.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, Aug. 4.- The Bull Moose ban upon Southern negroes who may have desired to ally themselves with the third-party movement in the South and Col. Roosevelt's appeal to tho voter of African descent living north of Mason and Dixon's line have caused amusement rather than serious consideration among Southern members of Congress.
    Regular Republicans are also pleased with the Roosevelt negro pronunciamento, as they believe it will cost the third-party candidate votes in the border States of the North—Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana — where the negro voter has become an increasingly important factor on account of the influx of the black man into those States from the South.
    While the Republican declaration on the negro question has been generally discussed by the politicians of both parties for the last two days, few of them want to discuss it for publication. Generally they consider it wiser to refrain from comment which may have an effect upon the negro vote in these border States, so far as the South is concerned, the Democrats do not believe the Bull Moose Party will gain any headway by appealing to the "lily whites." They would take the pronunciamento more seriously if the doctrine which he outlines for the Southern negro were to be universally applied throughout the country.
    Senator Shively of Indiana, Vice Chairman of the Democratic caucus in the upper branch of Congress, epitomized his views to-night in one sentence. He said: "Roosevelt boxes the compass on this as well as on several other questions."
    The view generally among Southern Senators seems to be that Col. Roosevelt expects in this campaign to appeal to every element of discontent in the country. One prominent Senator, who did not care to entangle himself in any controversy with the Colonel, said:
    "Before delivering his utterance in favor of white supremacy in the South, the Colonel carefully balanced the question as to whether this particular sentiment would lose him more votes in certain sections of the country than it would gain him in other sections. He thinks he will gain white votes in the Southern States, but every man of political sense knows he will fall far short of gaining enough votes there to swing a single Southern State into his electoral column.
    "The Colonel knows that himself. He knows he will not gain votes in the Southern States where white men are in control and lose no votes in Northern States where there is a large body of negroes. He simply takes a chance of losing votes in some of those Northern States where there are few negroes. This is only one of many kinds of sentiment which he will promulgate from time to time, as the campaign progresses, to avoid the third-term issue. Within the next forty-eight hours you may expect equally wild doctrines from him on many other questions.
    "Like the cuttlefish, he wants to emit dark, inky ideas to becloud the real issues. The fact is that this recent utterance by him only demonstrates his absolute insincerity."
    Representative Heflin of Alabama said: "I take no stock in what Col. Roosevelt says on anything these days. I intend to pay no attention to his negro sentiments. The Southern people are not concerned about Mr. Roosevelt, nor about Mr. Taft, except to see that both of them are overwhelmingly defeated. Evils that have grown up under their Administrations constitute the greatest burden the people of the United States have ever had to bear."
    Representative Ben Johnson of Kentucky smiled blandly and exclaimed: "The Colonel makes me think of the old darky down in the Blue Grass region, who, when asked what he thought of a certain utterance, said, 'Dat jes' makes me laff."
    Senator Newell Sanders of Tennessee, a Republican with Southern ideals, and close to the management of the Taft campaign, said: "It is not true that in the Souths the Republican Party has sought to perpetuate itself by stirring up the black man against the white. The negro delegates from the South are of as high character as from any other part of the country. Previous to the Chicago convention a desperate effort was made to get negro delegates for Roosevelt. One reason for the failure was that they voted substantially as their white neighbors did. If this was a virtue in the primary States, as asserted by the Colonel, it was also a virtue in the South.
    "There was little venality in the negro delegates from the South at Chicago. This was evidenced by the attempt and failure of the Roosevelt managers to buy them. The assertion of superiority in this respect of the Roosevelt Convention over the Republican Convention is, therefore, not well taken. Further than this, if the Colonel thinks he can fool the Southern Democrats by talking about a lily white party in the South, and trying to use the negroes in the North, where
they are sometimes a balance of power, to take States away from Mr. Wilson, I think he will find himself mistaken."