The Uncle Remus Letter.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 11, 1912:
Has Alienated Half a Million Colored Devotees of Roosevelt.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
    The pen of Oyster Bay, is it mightier than the sword of Armageddon? Of the sword, tomorrow must relate, but of the pen I, and all, may now say a word. Col. Roosevelt may not have written one letter too many, but his latest missive, addressed to a son of Uncle Remus and his rabbits, has opened the eyes of a half million voters scattered over the free States; voters who had been led captive into the Colonel's camp. Yesterday men of color thought they discerned in Theodore Roosevelt the personification of the very proper leader in the great cause of "social justice." To-day they behold him stripped of his robes — the patron of the art of demagogy; the vindictive genius in the great cause of personal aggrandizement.
    Along with many thoughtful men of color I had enlisted under the banner of him who protested that he battled for men because he battled for the Lord. I had forgiven, if not forgotten, the wicked crime committed against a regiment of men who wore the Nation's colors, and were eager to defend the Nation's honor. I enlisted in the war despite the Colonel's yet unexplained conduct with respect to the dearest friend I have made through the bitter years of struggle, great Foraker, the remaining mighty Captain of a once mighty Republican host. I was not pleased with Mr. Taft. His heart, I held, was not strong enough in the cause of human rights. I judged him not sufficiently militant against the grand march of the Lily Whites. Roosevelt, I contended in private speech and public declamation, would stand up and say to all the world: Nor color nor race nor conditions that were will I heed, but this, that a man's a man for a' that!
    Behold! the loud leader of "social justice," chagrined and vengeance-bent, remembering that against cajolery, against argument, against the power of promises, and against the dazzling sight of ready money, Southern colored men in the main, refused at Chicago to violate their instructions, but supported President Taft, as I felt then they should not have done, but as I now confess they were wise in doing, turns upon the race with subtle speech and peremptory reasoning, reads them out of his party, and makes them, without sign or sigh, the trace-chains on his chariot of fire.
    When the Colonel announces that he is for justice in the North, where justice is, but for a continuance of injustice where that evil-eyed goddess has reigned since the adoption of our Constitution, colored men bid farewell to every fear, wipe their weeping eyes, and leave the battler to number without them his hosts, even from Dan to Beersheba. Again we turn to the banner upon which is printed the battle-cry of Frederick Douglass the Great: "The Republican Party is the ship, all else the sea."
            ROSCOE CONKLING SIMMONS.
    New York, Aug. 3, 1912.