Theodore Roosevelt and the Brownsville Raid

Quarterly Journal of Speech Vol. 92, No. 3, August 2006, pp. 287 309

Establishing the Rhetorical Presidency through Presidential Rhetoric: Theodore Roosevelt and the Brownsville Raid Mary Stuckey

Theodore Roosevelt was an important figure in the development of the presidency as a primary and authoritative source for definitions of national identity. Through an analysis of three specific rhetorical moves Roosevelt made in arguments over the ‘‘proper’’ interpretation of the Brownsville Raid, this essay examines how Roosevelt both justified his dismissal of the soldiers and increased the definitional power of his institution. Brownsville highlights the importance of the presidency’s constitutive and rhetorical power, especially as that power pertains to ideologically based definitions of national identity and the role of minorities within that identity, and illuminates the argumentative forms that undergird that constitutive power. Keywords: Rhetorical Presidency; Presidential Roosevelt; Association; Dissociation; Definition

Rhetoric;

Brownsville;

Theodore

Shortly after midnight on a hot August night in 1906, several men dressed in military uniforms entered the small town of Brownsville, Texas, and fired random shots at businesses, into homes, and along streets. One man was killed, another seriously wounded. On hearing the news, many assumed the African American troops stationed nearby at Fort Brown were guilty of the shooting; the idea was that the soldiers had retaliated against discriminatory treatment at the hands of Brownsville’s white citizens. When no one confessed and all refused to testify against their fellow soldiers, and after several investigations and on the recommendation of the Secretary of War, President Theodore Roosevelt summarily dismissed an entire battalion of

Mary Stuckey is Professor of Communication and Political Science at Georgia State University. Correspondence to: Department of Communication, Georgia State University, PO Box 4000, Atlanta, GA 30302-4000, USA. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0033-5630 (print)/ISSN 1479-5779 (online) # 2006 National Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/00335630600938716

288 M. Stuckey

soldiers without honor. This remains the only instance of mass punishment without trial in the history of the U.S. military.1 The uproar that ensued was immense; as Julia Foraker, wife of prominent Roosevelt antagonist Senator Joseph Benson Foraker (R-OH), put it in her memoirs, ‘‘Everybody alive and awake a quarter of a century ago remembers the Brownsville scandal.’’2 The discharge, she said, ‘‘was to excite the country as nothing had excited it since Civil War rancors.’’3 The rancors caused by Roosevelt’s decision festered through several governmental and one private investigation, a congressional hearing, and two major speeches by the president. The issue died after both Roosevelt and Foraker left politics. It was revived briefly in the wake of the civil rights movement, a revival that led to congressional hearings, a revocation of the original discharges without honor, and payment to the sole surviving member of the Brownsville battalion. Little known and barely remembered, Brownsville nonetheless constitutes a significant blot on Roosevelt’s presidency. Brownsville also reveals some of the complexity of our national civil rights history, for it contains many of the elements of that history. Brownsville reflects the oppression under which African Americans labored. It reveals some of the systematic ways in which African Americans and their supporters were treated at the time. And the arguments that ensued were part of the process that instantiated the presidency as the dominant interpretive force in American national politics.4 Brownsville thus highlights the importance of the presidency’s constitutive and rhetorical power, especially as that power pertains to ideologically based definitions of national identity and the role of minorities within that identity. It consequently illuminates the argumentative forms that undergird that constitutive power. Brownsville thus provides an exemplar of important political and rhetorical processes.5 As David Zarefsky has argued, ‘‘the power to persuade is, in large measure, the power to define.’’6 That power is at issue in Brownsville. Specifically, through Brownsville we see the ideological positioning both of African Americans as subordinate members of the national polity and of the American president as an authoritative source of definitions of national identity. Roosevelt’s administration marked one of the great watershed moments in American politics, rendering an office that has always been rhetorical into one that had as one of its foundations interpretive power.7 That is, while presidential rhetoric had always mattered, under Roosevelt it began to assume an institutionalized primacy that it had lacked previously. That assumption of power was not inevitable; it did not occur overnight; nor was it without controversy. I am certainly not arguing that Roosevelt alone created presidential interpretive dominance. Nor am I arguing that this dominance was specifically tied to arguments over Brownsville. I am arguing that in the years prior to Roosevelt’s administration, the presidency began to exercise its rhetorical power in a more routine way; that in many ways that exercise of power came at the expense of other political institutions, especially the Senate; that arguments between presidents and senators on specific policies also became arguments over the relative rhetorical and political power of their

Presidential Rhetoric

289

institutions; and that the best way to understand these processes is through close examination of specific cases. Brownsville is one such case. The argument underpinning this essay is that one way presidents began to develop interpretive power was through the exercise of presidential rhetoric on issues of inclusion and exclusion, issues that were increasingly important near the turn of the century.8 That rhetoric was exercised in such as way as to reinforce cultural expectations on matters of national identity when doing so also buttressed the political and rhetorical primacy of the chief executive. That is, the presidency gained power while both reinforcing the political hierarchies of the early twentieth century and discussing those hierarchies in democratic language. Thus, the presidency owes at least some of its political power to its ability to legitimate significant inequalities while simultaneously refusing to align the presidency with those inequalities. In her recent essay on definitional authority, Lynn Clarke insightfully analyzes the ways in which definitions of a group can be the subject of contestation and negotiation.9 But it is also true that the president does not share definitional authority in the same way other culturally powerful actors do. While his definitions are, of course, still subject to contestation, no voice speaks as definitively as the president’s. Moreover, when the president speaks in ways that reinforce existing cultural beliefs and legitimate existing hierarchies, those beliefs and hierarchies can become powerful assets, working to buttress the president’s institutional position. Thus, while contests over definitional authority can create, as Clarke notes, productive contradictions that enable negotiation over both specific definitions and the power to define, it is equally possible that such contests can work in ways that do not render such a productive end, but instead function to enable the suppressive power of institutions and the cultural norms that they protect. Such was the case in Brownsville. In arguing that Brownsville was not about race, Roosevelt engaged in arguments from expediency masquerading as arguments from definition.10 This sort of argument reinforced the president’s ideological position as definer of issues important to a shared understanding of national identity while also supporting his instrumental ends of legitimating his decision to discharge the soldiers. In arguing his decision was based on principle, not political expediency, Roosevelt relied upon both dissociation (of the army and the black troops) and association (of Roosevelt himself and the office of the presidency), allowing the institutions to do much of his rhetorical and political work. In using this tactic, the power relations among and between the individuals and the institutions were displaced from specific actors and were naturalized, rendered beyond legitimate questioning.11 Finally, in arguing that the soldiers’ silence had a specific meaning, Roosevelt reflected and naturalized the prevailing ideology surrounding American racial relations. In speaking for* and from*that ideology, Roosevelt supported both the contemporaneous ideological structures and the president’s institutional position as the spokesperson of those structures. The president’s argumentation functioned to support the prevailing ideological parameters of national identity and the place of African Americans within that identity, while simultaneously marking the presidency as the

290 M. Stuckey

appropriate locus for the interpretation of national identity. The arguments surrounding Brownsville are thus examples of how the union of existing ideological discourses with the constitutionally enabled bully pulpit worked to support both ideology and institutional power. The essay proceeds in three parts. First, I offer details about the Brownsville Raid and subsequent events. That is followed by an analysis of Roosevelt’s argumentation regarding Brownsville. That argumentation reveals a great deal about the functioning and ideological power of presidential address, which is the subject of the essay’s conclusion. The Brownsville Raid The first battalion of the 25th infantry had a history of distinguished service, having seen action in Cuba and the Philippines.12 Of the 167 battalion members, six held the Medal of Honor, and 13 had been cited for bravery in the Spanish American War. They were largely career soldiers: more than half had been in the army for more than five years, and 25 had served for more than 10 years. Prior to the Raid, there was no record of insubordinate behavior connected with the battalion. In May, 1906, the battalion was transferred from Nebraska to Fort Brown, near Brownsville, Texas, to protect residents against Mexican revolutionaries.13 Like the rest of the nation, Texas as a whole was hostile to the fact of black troops in general and to their local presence in particular.14 Despite previously untroubled postings of black troops at Fort Brown,15 Brownsville’s citizens wrote to William Howard Taft, then Secretary of War, objecting to the transfer and requesting the return of white troops. The War Department refused. Relations between the town and the soldiers were further strained by an alleged attack by a black soldier on a white woman on the night of August 12, 1906. The battalion’s white officers were so worried by this that they ordered a curfew for the troops under their command.16 Shortly after midnight on the next night, a group of men dressed in army uniforms began to fire random shots into buildings and in the street in an attack that lasted for some minutes and resulted in an injury to a local policeman and the death of a bartender. Rifle cartridges and clips belonging to the 25th infantry were found at the scene. This damning evidence was supported by the eyewitness testimony of several citizens, who claimed to have seen black troops ‘‘shooting up the town.’’ This testimony first appeared in a Citizens’ Committee investigation, in which [N]o women were called, no oath was administered, and no effort was made to achieve impartiality. As Captain Kelly explained, ‘‘We just called the people up one after another and asked them, ‘State what you know about the attack of the Negroes upon the town.’’’17

From the beginning, the presumption was that the black troops were collectively guilty of the attack. Not a single soldier was allowed to speak publicly during the investigation or at the subsequent hearing.


291

The battalion’s white commanding officer, Major Penrose, immediately came to the defense of his troops, stating that they had all been present at the 10:00 pm curfew, and that all of the battalion’s rifles were similarly accounted for*none had been recently fired. The cartridges found at the scene bore double indentations*a sign that they had been fired twice*implying that spent shells had not been taken new from the post’s armory. Further, Penrose noted the easy availability of military uniforms, as the battalion previously stationed in Brownsville had sold several such uniforms to the citizens of Brownsville. The exculpatory evidence fell on deaf ears. After hearing this testimony, the citizens of Brownsville sent a telegram to President Roosevelt requesting that the troops be immediately removed.18 In response, the president authorized two investigations, both of which were conducted by the army. The first was headed by Major August Blockson, and the second by the notoriously racist South Carolinian, General Ernest Garlington. Both investigators accepted as true the eyewitness testimony of the white citizens, both agreed that the spent cartridges proved the soldiers’ guilt, and both viewed the soldiers’ inability to testify to the guilt of their fellow soldiers as evidence of conspiracy designed to conceal that guilt. They disregarded the evidence of a civilian employee of the Fort, who said that he had seen four Brownsville citizens dressed as soldiers and carrying rifles, and dismissed the testimony of Major Penrose. After privately interviewing the soldiers, who unanimously claimed innocence and ignorance, both officers concluded that the soldiers were perpetuating a ‘‘conspiracy of silence,’’ and argued that since no soldier would confess, the entire battalion should be discharged ‘‘as an example to the whole army.’’19 In General Garlington’s words, ‘‘The secretive nature of the race, where crimes charged to members of their color are made, is well known.’’20 When asked later if he thought ‘‘‘colored people, generally, are truthful?’ he replied, ‘No, Sir, I do not.’’’21 Upon receiving the results of the investigations, Roosevelt waited to act until the day after the 1906 election. On November 5, in accordance with the recommendations of both Blockson and Garlington, he ordered all 167 soldiers discharged without honor, and denied them all back pay and pension benefits.22 The soldiers were never granted a hearing and had no access to legal counsel. This remains the only case of mass punishment without trial in U.S. military history. Because employment opportunities for African Americans were so limited during these years, the discharges amounted to a life sentence of economic deprivation. The white press, and especially white Southern journalists, reacted favorably to the news.23 Some whites used the Brownsville episode to urge the military to send other black troops to the various military fronts or to remove blacks from the service altogether, and as evidence for the continued importance of strict segregation.24 The black press, on the other hand, reacted with dismay, and the decision endangered Roosevelt’s previous standing among African Americans.25 The timing of the decision further enraged black citizens.26 Anger and disappointment were prevalent, and were expressed by black ministers throughout the nation, who ‘‘protested against the arbitrary nature of the order and declared that the President never would have dared to give like treatment to white soldiers.’’27 Indeed, despite the earnest efforts of

292 M. Stuckey

Roosevelt loyalist Booker T. Washington, as well as the administration itself, black communities were unanimous in their condemnation of Roosevelt.28 With the support of the black press behind him, Senator Joseph Foraker confronted the president.29 Less concerned with establishing their innocence than with providing them a fair hearing,30 the senator also had*although he publicly denied*political motives for challenging Roosevelt, as he had presidential ambitions of his own. An investigatory committee under the auspices of the Military Affairs Committee was formed in the Senate.31 Hearings began on February 4, 1907, and ended March 10, 1908. In response to this challenge to his authority, Roosevelt broke with Foraker.32 The committee eventually upheld Roosevelt’s decision, although a minority of four Republicans found the evidence inconclusive, while another two (including Foraker) asserted the soldiers’ innocence.33 The conflict between Roosevelt and Foraker transcended the simple difference of opinion over policy and became a highly personal and personalized debate that had implications for both the upcoming presidential election34 and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. From the beginning of the dispute with Foraker, it was clear Roosevelt was defending his prerogatives and position as much as his interpretation of the facts of the case, and was concerned with vindicating both his right to make decisions regarding soldiers and the decision itself.35 He tied his personal status as Commander-in-Chief to his decision on Brownsville.36 Seeing them as synonymous, he reacted to an attack on the latter as if it was also an attack on the former. It became a matter of political principle and personal as well as institutional power. Given the public debate and the resulting need to buttress his case, Roosevelt sent Major Blockson back to Brownsville, and hired private investigators to secure evidence against the soldiers.37 The administration also established a review board of retired army officers to decide on applications from the soldiers for re-enlistment. They eventually approved re-enlistment for 14 soldiers, but offered no explanation for why these were approved and others were not.38 This action, combined with Roosevelt’s retirement and Foraker’s electoral defeat, ended the matter, and the case faded from public view. Brownsville was revived by author John Weaver in the early 1970s. Augustus Hawkins (D-CA), an African American member of the California congressional delegation, introduced legislation to amend Roosevelt’s discharge of the soldiers ‘‘without honor’’ to ‘‘honorable discharge,’’ and on December 6, 1971, President Nixon signed legislation authorizing a pension payment of $25,000 to the sole surviving member of the first battalion, then aged 86. In 1972, the army reversed the 1906 order concerning the soldiers’ discharge, and the matter was finally at rest. Arguing Over Brownsville Three important public arguments took place following Roosevelt’s decision to discharge the troops: Roosevelt argued that race was not an important subtext in his decision while Senator Benjamin R. Tillman (D-SC) argued that it was the only


293

important subtext; in response to challenges by Foraker, Roosevelt argued that his actions were based purely in principle although he was accused of acting expediently; and finally, there were differing opinions on how the soldiers’ silence was to be interpreted. By arguing that race was not the ‘‘real’’ issue, Roosevelt reinforced his position as definer of national identity while also supporting his instrumental end of legitimating his decision to discharge the soldiers. By arguing that he was principled in his actions, Roosevelt profited from and added to the institutional power of his office. Both of these arguments involved public contests over interpretive power between the president and prominent senators; in disposing of his opposition, Roosevelt also bolstered the rhetorical power of the presidency. Finally, by interpreting the soldiers’ silence, Roosevelt reflected and sustained the prevailing ideology on racial matters. Together, the three arguments illuminate some of the ways presidential rhetorical and institutional power were united in precluding the sort of productive challenge to interpretive power analyzed by Clarke and helped to establish the executive as the dominant voice in interpretations of national identity. Race as a Subtext Roosevelt, more liberal on race than many of his contemporaries, is perhaps best described as a racial moderate.39 He accepted prevailing stereotypes of black people, argued that blacks were members of an ‘‘inferior race,’’ and advocated the need to protect ‘‘racial purity.’’40 But he also extended both sympathy and help to some African Americans, especially those who showed an ability or willingness to assimilate into the dominant culture.41 He awarded them some patronage, even when those appointments caused consternation among and generated criticism from supporters.42 Roosevelt was above all an advocate for law and order, and thus tended toward conservatism when challenges to the social order threatened to disrupt that order. While he argued in a message before Congress, ‘‘The greatest existing cause of lynching . . . is the perpetuation, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape,’’43 in that same address he said, ‘‘Let justice be both sure and swift; but let it be justice under the law, and not the wild and crooked savagery of the mob.’’44 His understanding was that the mobs in question were the result of justified outrage at Negro criminality, but he could not support lynching*nor would he support legislation outlawing it. Consistent with both his beliefs and his political context, Roosevelt tended to put the blame for black subjugation on black shoulders rather than white institutional structures and attitudes,45 but he also consistently argued that those institutions and structures were the remedy. He did not countenance vigilante justice in any form. He respected American political institutions, including the military, and could be quite bellicose in their defense. Because of Brownsville’s symbolic significance as a barometer of American racial relations, because those relations were so contested, and because African Americans were beginning to recognize and wield their political power, Roosevelt was

294 M. Stuckey

particularly sensitive to the charge that his behavior was racially motivated.46 He used both rhetorical and institutional power to support his claim of disinterested motives. He said, for example, ‘‘Any assertion that these men were dealt with harshly because they were colored men is utterly without foundation.’’47 He argued instead that it was a question of military discipline. He stated that, ‘‘Precisely the same action would have been taken had the troops been white*indeed the discharge would have been made in a more summary fashion.’’48 Thus, Roosevelt argued both that race did matter*the soldiers received more consideration because they were black*and that it did not matter*the result would have been the same regardless of race. This is an example of an argument based on expediency masquerading as definition* Roosevelt used naming to lend his argument the credibility that belongs to an argument from definition.49 By making the issue a matter of military discipline rather than race, Roosevelt relied on his institutional power to define issues*and to define them in ways that were congruent with the prevailing ideology and the preferences of his political coalition. As Richard Weaver tells us, arguments from definition center on articulating a specific sense of ‘‘the nature of the thing.’’50 An important part of such arguments, of course, involves the determination of which among competing elements is ‘‘the thing’’ in question, what deserves attention, and what, by implication, does not. In this case, the first ‘‘thing’’ meriting attention was the presidential role. Roosevelt defined his role as arbiter of military justice. In so doing, he also argued that the military was a specific kind of institution*one that demanded a specific kind of discipline. His definition of the military worked also to define and establish his own role as titular head of the military. In defining the army, he also defined himself. Roosevelt argued that his decision was based on his belief in the importance of military discipline, his clear province as Commander-in-Chief. That is, Roosevelt argued that Brownsville was not about race; it was about the proper conduct of American military personnel and should be understood in that context. As David Zarefsky points out, ‘‘language is not a neutral instrument; to name an object or an idea is to influence attitudes about it.’’51 To label Roosevelt’s decision on Brownsville as ‘‘racially motivated’’ was also to label the president as the kind of decision-maker who failed to act on the basis of national principles. Such a label could undermine the institution as well as the individual who occupied it. By arguing that his decision was based on the requirements of military discipline, Roosevelt was arguing from a specific definition of the institution*that it sustained individual principled action*to his own behavior.52 Thus, his actions became less controversial because he could claim he was acting as Commander-in-Chief*he acted as a president, not as a person. Roosevelt’s ability to function as a national voice depended in part upon his ability to be understood as an impartial voice, an understanding he could reinforce through apparently definitional arguments. Because he based his definitions on widely shared cultural values, the specific definitions were rendered less controversial, and his institutional power was strengthened. His institutional power was grounded in claims that he acted to protect


295

existing cultural norms; those who disagreed with him were thus cast in opposition to both Roosevelt and those norms. Given the prevailing political context, and the potential importance of African Americans to the Republican Party, Roosevelt could not be seen as displaying the worst excesses of racism. Rather, he had to be seen as fair and impartial.53 Such a posture would strengthen both the definitional power of his office and the power of his specific definitions. That impartiality however, could be*indeed ought to be* tempered with compassion. Here, the second part of Roosevelt’s argument came into play. Roosevelt’s primary argument was that his decision regarding the soldiers was about military discipline, not race, an argument rooted in his definition of the conduct of the presidency. He further argued that to the extent that it was about race, however, it was about protecting African American soldiers*he went further to promote justice for them than he would have for whites. Roosevelt said, It is of the utmost importance to all our people that we should deal with each man on his merits as a man and not deal with him merely as a member of a given race; that we shall judge each man by his conduct and not his color. This is important for the white man, and it is far more important for the black man.54

Roosevelt’s understanding of national justice, and his position as arbiter of that justice, made it important that he be both fair and compassionate. In this way, he could lay claim to represent the national values and the nation as a whole. This stance, of course, undergirds the rhetorical power of the presidency. Whether the office became more institutionally invested in rhetoric at the turn of the twentieth century as Jeffrey Tulis contends,55 or has always been highly rhetorical,56 considerable institutional power rests in the president’s position as articulator and definer of national identity.57 One way that the office acquired this position as a matter of uncontested routine practice was by instantiating important elements of national identity in ways that increased both the cultural power of those definitions and the institutional power of the office. Defending the prevailing racial hierarchy through language that purported to defend national ideals was one way of accomplishing both of these ends. Wielding institutional power was another, for it enabled Roosevelt’s specific argument in this instance as he found his evidence in a plethora of facts arrayed across numerous investigations.58 Characterizing that evidence, he said, ‘‘The additional evidence thus taken renders it in my opinion impossible to question the conclusions upon which my order was based. I have gone most carefully over every issue of law and fact that has been raised.’’59 He claimed to have based his decision upon matters of ‘‘law and fact’’ alone and therefore his actions were fundamentally democratic, not autocratic; he both represented and protected the nation. Roosevelt argued from a specific definition of the institution*the executive’s job, according to this formulation, is the careful weighing of law and fact*it is, indeed, a judicial function. His role as Commander-in-Chief entailed judicial as well as executive functions; in exercising those powers thus defined, he indirectly contributed to the expansion of executive power in general, but did so in a way that appeared natural,

296 M. Stuckey

even inevitable. Importantly, it also appeared benign, for the power was instantiated to protect the nation and its laws. In accepting the argument, the institutional definition that accompanied that argument also became more acceptable. The number of investigations and reports did much of the political work for Roosevelt, for the sheer weight of such ‘‘evidence’’ had an authority of its own, demonstrating that the case had been adequately*if not exhaustively*investigated. The fact of the investigations became as important as their content in substantiating Roosevelt’s claim to proper action.60 Roosevelt could use the fact of investigation to underline his institutional authority and power of definition, for these definitions seemed to arise not from his personal preferences but from ‘‘neutral’’ institutional processes. Roosevelt’s institutional and rhetorical position was buttressed as the agency for the definitions was placed on the executive institution rather than on the chief executive, as in individual. Despite his claim to investigatory impartiality, the nature of his agenda in this matter was questioned*and, significantly, it was questioned in the Senate, which had important institutional interpretive power to defend. During the congressional hearings on the Raid, Tillman gave a speech to the Senate titled, ‘‘The Race Problem: The Brownsville Raid.’’ This speech put race firmly on the table: ‘‘If the race question looms up here as prominently as the Washington Monument looms across the western horizon, what is the use for us to shun and dread its discussion?’’61 For Tillman, the only important question surrounding the events in Brownsville had to do with race: ‘‘Broadly stated, the white people of the United States are face to face with the vital issue as to whether the Caucasian race shall share its inheritance with the other races of the earth.’’62 For Tillman, the issue was clearly ideological, and went to the heart of American racial relations and American national identity. As a senator, Tillman had a national stage; as a Southerner, he had a clear position on race*and it was a position that was becoming a national problem as African Americans such as Booker T. Washington developed increasingly prominent and politically important positions in national politics. Tillman brought both the overt issue*race*and the subtext*a struggle of institutional power between the Senate and the presidency*to bear in contesting Roosevelt’s framing of Brownsville. He was hampered, however, by both his argument and his sectionalism, which contributed to undermining, rather than supporting, his institutional claims to power. Roosevelt and Tillman shared racist views (although Tillman’s were considerably more extreme than Roosevelt’s), and agreed upon the importance of maintaining racial hierarchies. But Roosevelt’s institutional and definitional power resided in the widespread agreement throughout the nation on both racial ideology and the fairness of national political institutions. He thus could rely upon the latter in basing his case on the former. But for this sleight-of-hand to work, Roosevelt could not explicitly call for or depend upon the sorts of overtly exclusionist argumentation upon which Tillman relied. Roosevelt had to call upon democratic norms to buttress his exclusionist ends. He thus depended upon commonly accepted values. Tillman, who represented what was becoming nationally (if not in the South) a problematic position on matters of race, hoped to marshal public opinion behind his position;


297

Roosevelt, more moderate than Tillman, could wield that opinion more deftly because he used racism more subtly. This dynamic is evident in their debate. Tillman continued his speech with protestations of the rightness of racial hierarchy, and concluded with a resounding call for continued segregation, saying, The deep interest shown in the Brownsville tragedy is ample evidence that the people of the country are beginning to feel a deep concern in the various phases of this question, and it is absolutely useless for doctrinaires and politicians to undertake to pooh pooh the question and dismiss it with a wave of the hand, and for one I am ready to go to battle under the slogan, ‘‘America for the Americans, and this is a white man’s country and white men must govern it.’’63

By making race the issue, Tillman challenged the president to make what had been implicit*African American political inequality *explicit, and to defend that inequality as consistent with American core values, and thus national identity. This Roosevelt steadfastly refused to do. He allowed the implicit inequality to remain implicit, thus refusing to place it within the realm of national values, but refused also to ally core values explicitly with that inequality. Strictly racial understandings of American nationalism were contending with more civic understandings, and as president, Roosevelt was finding ways to combine the two in order to promote his own institutional position and protect the interests of his political coalition.64 There are important ethical implications here, for Roosevelt was not only more moderate on race than Tillman, he was also unwilling to place the burgeoning power of the presidency on the side of explicit exclusion. While he did not see the contemporaneous racial hierarchies as inconsistent with core American values and practices, he also resisted Tillman’s argument that they were identical with those values and practices. Roosevelt may have displayed allegiance to racial hierarchies in this instance, but by relying on core ideals to justify his actions he also allowed for the possibility of an eventual shift in those hierarchies without such a shift also necessarily implying a contradiction in those values. Because the presidency was a key locus for defining what those values would mean in any given instance, a future president could define them differently without necessitating a reexamination of the application of those values in this case. Roosevelt thus implicitly argued for both stability*constant reference to core values*and fluidity*those values were applicable on a case-by-case basis*with the chief executive charged with managing the tension between the two. He thus laid the groundwork for both supporting the institutional power of his office over the long run and defeating Tillman’s argument in the short term. Tillman was not the threat to Roosevelt that Foraker was; in contending with the argument that he acted politically rather than presidentially, Roosevelt had another opportunity to buttress his institutional interpretive authority, even while facing challenges to it.

298 M. Stuckey

Political Motives The more attention focused on Brownsville, the higher the stakes for the institutionally-based actors involved, for both their individual political fortunes and the relative power of their contending institutions were at issue, and public opinion could be a crucial determinant in both struggles. Roosevelt used both the rhetorical and the institutional power of the presidency to support his case that he had behaved disinterestedly rather than ‘‘politically,’’ implying, of course, that his senatorial opponents were motivated by politics rather than principle. Rhetorically, he used both association and dissociation.65 First, Roosevelt relied upon dissociation, separating the army, which was the locus of respect and admiration, from the soldiers, who, in Roosevelt’s mind, had forfeited their right to either. He then used association, uniting his decision and the presidency, which was charged with defending the nation from the danger posed by the soldiers. Roosevelt thus supported his own institutional position by naturalizing political hierarchies and treating them as inevitable rather than as the products of specific political choices. By imbuing his institution with the authority of implicit cultural power, he strengthened his hand both politically and rhetorically. In defending General Garlington from charges of racism, Roosevelt said, The standard of professional honor and of loyalty to the flag and to the service is the same for all officers and all enlisted men of the United States Army, and I resent with the keenest indignation any effort to draw any line between them based on birthplace, creed, or any other consideration.66

According to Roosevelt, all members of the armed services were honorable and loyal to the flag. They deserved the nation’s gratitude and respect. This being the case, the soldiers had to be separated from the army in order to make their condemnation possible without damaging that army. In defending the army as an institution, Roosevelt was also defending institutional power in general. In a political culture experiencing the growth and development of formal state power, this move was important in terms of legitimating the burgeoning power of the nation’s chief executive. By defending national institutions as the repositories of civic virtue, their increased roles in national life became less threatening in terms of civic culture. In this rhetoric, the government, and specifically the president, protected rather than threatened the polity and its traditional values. By aligning his institution with the protection of national values, Roosevelt could implicitly defend the former while explicitly defending the latter. In order to make the institutionally based argument, Roosevelt had to define the soldiers as actors with full agency*he walked a fine line between the prevailing stereotypes of African Americans (as in his depiction of them as tending to shelter criminals) and his need to define them as independent actors with considerable agency. Only as independent agents could they be held culpable in the Raid.67 They thus could not be depicted as either children or dependents. In this, Roosevelt challenged some of the more racist elements in conventional wisdom regarding African Americans while relying on another*to make his case in this instance,


299

he depended upon the stereotype of black men as predators. Roosevelt said of the soldiers, These soldiers were not schoolboys on a frolic. They were full-grown men, in the uniform of the United States, armed with deadly weapons, sworn to uphold the laws of the United States, and under every obligation of oath and honor not merely to refrain from criminality, but with the sturdiest rigor to hunt down criminality; and the crime they committed or connived at was murder.68

Rather than being presumed innocent because of their association with the army, they were separated from it through language that emphasized their distance from the principles it represented. By defining the soldiers as fully responsible, Roosevelt was able to play upon the national ambivalence regarding the place of African Americans in American society. That national ambivalence made arguments from definition particularly potent. Because Roosevelt could rely on it in defining the soldiers as responsible for their actions but also apart from the military, through this act of dissociation Roosevelt was also able to underline the importance of the military as a democratic institution, a repository of cultural values. The soldiers’ renunciation of those values, exemplified for Roosevelt by their actions during and after the Raid, justified both the soldiers’ expulsion from the military and justified African Americans’ lowly place on the national hierarchy. Civic nationalist ideals thus reinforced racial hierarchies, and the clearly exclusionary institutional and political structures were made to appear both inclusive and democratic. According to Roosevelt, by behaving dishonorably, the soldiers removed themselves from the army and forfeited its protections. Rather than being characterized as brave fighting men, exemplars of the sort of citizens democracy required, after his acrimonious debate with Foraker at the Gridiron Club, Roosevelt referred to the soldiers this way: ‘‘Some of the men were bloody butchers; they ought to be hung. The only reason I didn’t have them hung was because I couldn’t find out which ones of them did the shooting.’’69 The soldiers had damaged the army, and were no longer to be considered part of it. They were ‘‘bloody butchers,’’ not soldiers. Roosevelt thus used the power of his institution to remove the soldiers from the protection of the army*both figuratively through dissociation and literally through the discharges. As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca note, all acts of dissociation imply association as well.70 In this case, the soldiers, dissociated from the army and the civic values that for Roosevelt it represented, became associated with anti-democratic values. They were ‘‘bloody butchers,’’ men who cared little for the consequences of their actions, men who had no place in a polity defined by adherence to specific ideals. Importantly, that exclusion was occasioned not by their race, but by their behavior. While using civic nationalism to support racial hierarchy, Roosevelt was acting in ways we now recognize as undemocratic. However, in refusing to rely on racism alone he also allowed for the possibility of (eventual) full inclusion for at least some African Americans (those who behaved according to his understanding of democratic citizenship). While acting in ways that clearly supported racist hierarchies in his own

300 M. Stuckey

time, Roosevelt also refused to place the growing definitional power of his institution on the side of institutionalized, explicit, and thus more permanent instantiation of those hierarchies. Rhetorically, Roosevelt’s place as arbiter of national values was also predicated on behavior. He used association to defend his position, making sure that his motives were understood, as we have seen, as both fair and compassionate. He associated his decision with the executive, as a way of reinforcing the power of both his action and the institution. Foraker, clearly staking a claim to interpretive independence, responded to the president by saying, I did not come to the Senate to take orders from anybody. . . . Whenever I fall so low that I cannot express my opinion on a great question freely, and without reservation or mental evasion, I will resign and leave my place to some man who has the courage to discharge his duties.71

Foraker could not have challenged the president more directly, and Roosevelt was apoplectic. He said of the discharges, It is my business and the business of nobody else. It is not the business of the Congress. . . . [A]ll the talk on that is academic. If they pass a resolution to reinstate these men, I will veto it; if they pass it over my veto, I will pay no attention to it. I welcome impeachment.72

This sort of hyperbole worked to associate Roosevelt with his office, and to claim for himself personally the prerogatives of the institution. It indicated the lengths to which he was willing to go to defend his decisions, his prerogatives, and his institution. Such rhetoric, public and vociferously offered in response to a senatorial challenge to his interpretive authority, did some of the political work behind instantiating presidential institutional and rhetorical primacy in Roosevelt’s time. Any argument from hyperbole ‘‘draws the mind in a certain direction only to force it later to retreat a little.’’73 In this case, Roosevelt obviously did not want to encourage Congress to either pass the resolution or to consider impeachment. He did, however, convey the seriousness with which he took his institutional prerogatives and his institutional responsibilities. By associating himself with the institution, he weakened his opponents’ ability to criticize him effectively, for the more closely tied Roosevelt was to the presidency, the more criticism of him appeared to be criticism of the institution. In defending the office and its prerogatives, Roosevelt was providing a potent self-defense as well. He also used less hyperbolic associations, on one occasion saying that, ‘‘There are plenty of precedents for the action taken.’’74 In this, he was at best disingenuous and at worst downright dishonest, for arguably there was no precedent, either in the executive or in the armed services, for a penalty as harsh as the one he inflicted on the soldiers. It was consequently all the more important that he justify his actions. He was making a claim to institutional precedent, to an institutional past, to foreclose arguments about the capacities of the present institution.75 By implication, if past presidents had asserted similar claims to interpretive and material power, it was less threatening for Roosevelt to do so. Roosevelt was silencing opposition through the


301

assertion of its illegitimacy, and buttressing that claim by referencing his institutional position and the integrity that was then associated with that position. He used the institution to do the political work of contending with his opponents, and thus strengthened both his own institutional position vis-a`-vis his critics and the position of his institution within the developing civic culture. For this dissociation to work persuasively,76 Roosevelt had to be understood as acting invariably with the best practices of the institution. He consistently claimed to be acting in a disinterested fashion for the protection of the men and the armed services. As the president put it, These comrades of the murderers, by their own action, have rendered it necessary either to leave all the men, including the murderers, in the Army, or to turn them all out; and under such circumstances there was no alternative, for the usefulness of the Army would be at an end were we to permit such an outrage to be committed with impunity.77

The soldiers could not be associated with the army, for they were associated with those who represented the army’s antithesis, they were ‘‘comrades of the murderers.’’ Using both association and dissociation, Roosevelt forced a choice between that which he wished to valorize (the army) and those whom he chose to vilify (the soldiers). Preserving the army with the soldiers still as members of it was not an option for Roosevelt. Either the army’s usefulness or the soldiers’ careers had to be ended. Roosevelt also insisted on the fairness of the proceedings. He characterized the reports as ‘‘careful,’’78 and argued they ‘‘conflicted only in the non-essentials and . . . established the essential facts beyond chance of successful contradiction.’’79 Thus, he reminded people that investigations had been launched, facts had been gathered, and testimony had been heard. The agency was hidden, the conclusion therefore all the more irrefutable. The institutions involved, depicted as repositories of cultural values and civic virtues, could be trusted to render decisions consistent with those values and virtues. The institutions became the relevant actors, and both their places and Roosevelt’s were strengthened. Roosevelt’s argument that the men had been treated with an excess of fairness was enabled. Roosevelt again tied the particular decision to more generalized claims for the cultural power of the presidency in the developing political culture of the early twentieth century. If the presidency could be seen as the protector of civic values, the president would be all the more likely to be granted unquestioned interpretive control over the meaning of those values. It was on precisely these grounds that the most potentially serious criticisms against him were leveled. The facts that the men were never given counsel, never granted a trial or even a hearing, never allowed to confront the witnesses or the evidence against them directly, all constituted a most serious breach of American judicial expectations. The results in this case were consistent with cultural norms (and thus likely to be understood as legitimate); they were not the source of Roosevelt’s political and argumentative difficulties. Instead, the focus was on the processes themselves, which meant that justifying those processes became all the more important. Roosevelt thus

302 M. Stuckey

remained adamant that no further proceedings were required or even desirable: ‘‘At my direction every effort was made to persuade those innocent of murder among them to separate themselves from the guilty and bring the criminals to justice.’’80 Given the soldiers’ seeming recalcitrance on that point, and the clarity of their guilt on other points, Roosevelt argued that his conduct had been characterized by both justice and forbearance. To the extent that the processes had been undermined, then, the fault lay not with the institution or its occupant but with the soldiers themselves. Had they cooperated, the process would have been all that Roosevelt’s critics would have desired. But absent such cooperation, the investigations were as fair as possible. At least partly because of the array of institutional forces Roosevelt could bring to bear, these charges, potentially serious, never amounted to a real challenge to his authority. The association of Roosevelt, his constitutional authority, and the legitimacy of the presidency was a powerful force in his favor, because the presumption was that the processes were fair; Roosevelt’s critics were arguing against important cultural presumptions regarding the behavior of political institutions as much as they were arguing against the president. Roosevelt argued that his actions regarding Brownsville were matters of principle, not politics. In so doing, he emphasized the importance of institutional rather than personal influences, and associated himself with the ethos of the presidency while associating the presidency with values integral the nation’s civic identity. That this tactic was available to him reveals much about contemporaneous power relations. Its success reinforced those power relations as well as the rhetorical power of the institution. Interpreting the Soldiers’ Silence The soldiers’ supposed refusal to testify to the guilt of their fellows was important evidence justifying the mass discharges. Their silence was considered to be clear evidence of their guilt, despite the constraints that were placed on their ability to speak. This voicelessness, of course, reflects the situation African Americans generally endured prior to the civil rights movement. Even when their right to speak was less obviously constrained, in few cases were black voices commensurate with those of whites. Given the importance of the military as a source of both economic stability and social status for African Americans in the years following Reconstruction, the events at Brownsville were useful both as a distraction and as a more direct means of social control over both African American soldiers and blacks in general. The soldiers’ silence was mute testimony to the efficacy of that control. Those silences were a species of ‘‘structuring absences always displaced . . . the unsaid included in the said and necessary to its constitution.’’81 In situations that call for speech but none is forthcoming, such silences speak as plainly as overt language.82 As a structuring absence, silence redirects attention where the rhetor seeks to have it focused, away from those elements the rhetor wishes to elide. Silence thus can function as rhetorical negative space, where the ‘‘hole’’ actually does the signifying work. Unlike the shared secret, which requires an unincluded audience,83 in this case,


303

absence is an overt lack, a hole of which everyone is aware but which no one dare acknowledge. This sort of silence works to maintain the relevant status quo by disempowering potential challenges to it, for one cannot object to that which is never even acknowledged. In this case, the soldiers’ silence became that rhetorical negative space, given meaning by the context as defined by the president, but also serving to erase the meaning preferred by the soldiers and their allies. For Roosevelt, that silence meant guilt, not innocence. Even when the men were allowed to ‘‘speak,’’ it was in summary fashion. In his report to the president, Secretary Taft condensed the testimony of 157 men*given in private and individual meetings with investigators*to one scant paragraph, while the unsubstantiated eyewitness testimony of the townspeople ran to 12 full printed pages.84 Roosevelt confronted this ‘‘testimony’’ with two arguments: first, that the men, when they did speak, were simply lying; second, that their silence on the matter of the guilty among them was willful, a matter of their own choice: ‘‘There is no question that many of their comrades privy to the deed have combined to shelter the criminals from justice.’’85 Since that silence was understood by Roosevelt as a refusal rather than an inability to speak, it could only be the product of guilt. Roosevelt thus framed the issue in specific and very narrow terms*terms that favored his definition of events and that brought institutional power to bear against the soldiers. Roosevelt’s argumentation rested on widespread (and thus largely unquestioned) cultural assumptions. To defeat his arguments, one would have to expose those assumptions, which would entail open discussion of ideological and material elements underlying the American political system*elements none of its beneficiaries wished to discuss.86 The polity depended on silence*not just the soldiers’ silence, but silence from all those supporting and benefiting from its institutional arrangements. Thus, the soldiers’ silence did not lack meaning.87 On the contrary, contemporary interlocutors assigned meaning to it from the very beginning:88 Never doubting for a moment that the town had been attacked by soldiers, Major Blockson could only conclude that those witnesses whose testimony was most persuasive of their innocence must be lying. If these particular soldiers had not taken part in the raid, he reasoned, they certainly knew who had, and by their silence, they were conspiring to protect the assassins.89

That ‘‘conspiracy’’ was the centerpiece of the government’s case against the soldiers, for the argument was that the government could find no evidence against the soldiers; therefore the soldiers were hiding the evidence. As in the case of the debate between Mary Church Terrell and Thomas Nelson Page, so productively studied by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell,90 this allowed those in authority to deflect attention from issues of racial hierarchy*issues that would have been central in explaining the behavior of Brownsville’s white citizens had that been the focus of presidential or investigatory attention*and to make the soldiers’ guilt the paramount concern. The soldiers’ silence, and the conditions that imposed it, meant that the context of the Raid was rendered irrelevant. The focus remained on the soldiers’ guilt, not the broader context of American racial relations. This in turn allowed the president

304 M. Stuckey

to treat the judgment of the soldiers as protective of American core values, imbuing the office with cultural power. The less evidence available for collusion, the more evidence Roosevelt found for the strength of that collusion. The men’s inability to speak of the events of which they had no knowledge became the most powerful evidence against them. Roosevelt said, So much for the original crime. A blacker never stained the annals of the Army. It has been supplemented by another, only less black, in the shape of a successful conspiracy of silence for the purpose of shielding those who took part in the original conspiracy of murder.91

Roosevelt interpreted and judged the soldiers’ silence on his own preferred terms (much as this essay interprets that silence in its preferred terms). He never heard them speak for themselves because such speech had been judged corrupt and unreliable before ever being heard. As arbiter of national identity, Roosevelt decided what speech had meaning for his polity and what had to be excluded from it. Roosevelt’s position as interpreter of events was reinforced, as the alternative interpretations were disparaged. Roosevelt reflected the national ideological norms on race while also instantiating his own position as articulator of the national identity, in that he became the dominant arbiter of the terms of that identity. The rhetorical and institutional power of the presidency combined to support the rhetorical and institutional power of this individual president. By giving meaning to the soldiers’ silence, Roosevelt both instantiated and naturalized racial hierarchies. In a political era where the position of African Americans was the subject of some uncertainty and contestation, Roosevelt’s argumentation helped to solidify their marginal place within the polity while masking the political work being thereby done. It simultaneously buttressed the president’s place atop the nation’s hierarchies and supported the chief executive’s claim as the nation’s dominant rhetorical institution. Conclusion Roosevelt’s rhetoric concerning Brownsville is particularly interesting, for it highlights the confluence of individual and institutional factors in supporting the specific decisions made regarding the soldiers as well as the institution’s rhetorical power in terms of national identity. In arguing that race did not matter, that his decision was based on principle, and that the soldiers’ silence had a specific meaning, Roosevelt was also arguing for the rhetorical primacy of the presidency, especially vis-a`-vis the Senate, an argument that was enabled and naturalized through his articulation of widely accepted ideological commitments to both core beliefs and prevailing racial hierarchies. In a time of shifting and uncertain hierarchies and changing institutional arrangements, the presidency began to emerge as a crucial locus for the articulation of the national self. Certainly, the office was rhetorically powerful before Roosevelt. But as the economic and political order shifted during the late nineteenth and early


305

twentieth centuries, the presidency began to assume a routine and institutionalized primacy previously lacking. Roosevelt’s speech in this case sheds some light on how that primacy was reinforced rhetorically. When he argued that race was not a factor in his decision, Roosevelt placed his definitional power in direct opposition to that of others, and through both institutional power and rhetorical force, he rendered his frame definitive. By arguing that when race was a factor, it served only to command an excess of fairness and a dedication to correct procedure, he made the case for the appropriateness of presidential primacy, for the president both represented and embodied the national values. These arguments were not necessarily widely persuasive, but they were consistent with how many members of the dominant culture wished to perceive themselves and their nation. Roosevelt thus protected both the contemporaneous hierarchies and a belief in their essential fairness. In arguing that his decision was a product of non-political motives, Roosevelt relied upon the image of the institution to support his individual action, and translated that image onto both himself and the ideology he articulated, rendering racial hierarchies invisible and protecting the nation’s belief in its enactment of political principle. In arguing that the soldiers’ silence had a specific meaning, Roosevelt helped place his arguments*and thus their constitutive consequences*beyond contestation. The ideological hierarchies upon which so much of the interpretations of Brownsville rested were rendered invisible, even while being reinforced. By reflecting and articulating widely held beliefs while also placing those beliefs in a context of commitment to national values, Roosevelt legitimated the contemporaneous enactment of those beliefs as the logical outcome of those values. Thus the preservation of racial hierarchies could be understood as consistent with the values of the founding and the nation’s most deeply held beliefs in equality and democracy. He also legitimated the president’s position as the articulator and interpreter of those values. These arguments and the claims to presidential primacy that accompanied them neither began nor ended with either Roosevelt or Brownsville. They were apparent in the political controversies at the end of the nineteenth century; they were apparent in the tussle for power that revolved around the League of Nations treaty; and they continued well into the twentieth century. Sometimes the president and the presidency won the case for interpretive control; sometimes not. But as the argument for executive-centered politics continued, the president’s case was increasingly strengthened and routinized into institutional practice. Through this sort of rhetoric, and its confluence with the growing institutional power of the presidency, Theodore Roosevelt helped to establish the contemporary presidency as an important site for the articulation of the parameters of national identity. In significant ways, we continue to live in what Gary Gerstle called the ‘‘Rooseveltian nation,’’92 and are still governed by his notion of what constitutes citizenship. Brownsville thus illuminates some of the ideological contours of the nation we inhabit today and the executive’s role within that nation.

306 M. Stuckey

Notes [1]

[2] [3] [4]

[5]

[6] [7]

[8]

There are several important sources for the facts of Brownsville case. The definitive history is offered by John D. Weaver, in his two books: The Brownsville Raid (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970) and The Senator and the Sharecropper’s Son: Exoneration of the Brownsville Soldiers (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1997). Another important source is Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Port Washington, NY: National University Publications, Kennick Press, 1971). For contemporaneous accounts, see Joseph Benson Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life (Cincinnati, OH: Stewart and Kidd Company, 1916); Julia B. Foraker, I Would Live it Again (New York: Arno Press, 1975); Mary Church Terrell, ‘‘The Disbanding of the Colored Soldiers,’’ in Quest for Equality: The Life and Writings of Mary Church Terrell, 1863 1954 , ed. Beverly Washington Jones, Vol. 13 in Black Women in United States History, ed. Darlene Clark Hine (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 275 82. Some information is also available online. See especially Garna L. Christian, ‘‘The Brownsville Raid,’’ in The Handbook of Texas Online , http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/ online/articles/view/bb/pkb66.html; Brooke L. Robertson, The 1906 ‘Brownsville Raid ,’ http://www.helsinki.fi/ /kmakinen/isha/carnival/texas.htm Foraker, Live it Again , 268. Foraker, Live it Again , 274. There is a substantial literature on the origins and growth of the ‘‘rhetorical presidency.’’ For discussions of it, see, most prominently, Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). See also Speaking to the People: The Rhetorical Presidency in Historical Perspective , ed. Richard J. Ellis (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998); Roderick P. Hart, The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); David Henry et al., "Report of the National Task Force on the Rhetorical Presidency," in The Prospect of Rhetoric , ed. James Arnt Aune and Martin J. Medhurst (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, forthcoming); Beyond the Rhetorical Presidency, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996); Mary E. Stuckey and Frederick J. Antczak, ‘‘The Rhetorical Presidency: Deepening Vision, Widening Exchange,’’ in Communication Yearbook 21 , ed. Michael E. Roloff (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1988): 405 42. Edward Schiappa notes, ‘‘all definitions are political, specifically in two respects: first, definitions always serve particular interests; second, the only definitions of consequence are those that have been empowered through persuasion or coercion.’’ See Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 69. David Zarefsky, President Johnson’s War on Poverty: Rhetoric and History (University, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1986), 1. Roosevelt is widely considered one of the more important contributors to the growth of the rhetorical presidency. See Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, 19. See also Leroy G. Dorsey and Rachel M. Harlow, ‘‘‘We Want Americans Pure and Simple’: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism,’’ Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6 (2003): 55 78; Leroy G. Dorsey, ‘‘Sailing into the ‘Wondrous Now’: The Myth of the American Navy’s World Cruise,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997): 447 65; Leroy G. Dorsey, ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt and Corporate America, 1901 1909: A Reexamination,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 25 (1995): 725 39; Leroy G. Dorsey, ‘‘The Frontier Myth in Presidential Rhetoric: Theodore Roosevelt’s Campaign for Conservation,’’ Western Journal of Communication 59 (1995): 1 19; Jon Paulson, ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of Citizenship: On Tour in New England, 1902,’’ Communication Quarterly 50 (2002): 123 34. See Mary E. Stuckey, Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004).

Presidential Rhetoric [9]

[10] [11]

[12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]

[27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

307

Lynn Clarke, ‘‘Contesting Defintional Authority in the Collective,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 91 (2005): 1 36. For equally optimistic views on the possibilities of public argumentation, see G. Thomas Goodnight, ‘‘Controversy,’’ in Argument in Controversy, ed. Donn W. Parson (Annandale, VA: Speech Communication Association, 1991), 1 13; G. Thomas Goodnight and David Hingtsman, ‘‘Studies in the Public Sphere,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997): 351 70. Richard M. Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1985), 86. This has been productively analyzed by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. See ‘‘The Power of Hegemony: Capitalism and Racism in the ‘Nadir of Negro History,’’’ in Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Community and Fragmentation , ed. J. Michael Hogan (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 36 61. Garna L. Christian, Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 1899 1917 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1995), 69. The racial politics of this situation are fascinating, but lie beyond the scope of this essay. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 12 13. Evan Anders, Boss Rule in South Texas: The Progressive Era (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1982), 123. Christian, ‘‘Brownsville Raid,’’ 1. Weaver, Brownsville Raid , 72. Weaver, Brownsville Raid , 75. Blockson, quoted in Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life , 233. Weaver, Brownsville Raid , 96. Weaver, Brownsville Raid , 96. It is important to note that these were not dishonorable discharges, which require counsel and a fair trial. Discharges without honor can be handled *as these were*summarily. Robertson, The 1906 ‘Brownsville Raid ,’ 4. Robertson, The 1906 ‘Brownsville Raid ,’ 4. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 76. Christian, ‘‘The Brownsville Raid’’; ‘‘New York Pastors Assail Roosevelt’s Army Order,’’ New York Times , November 20, 1906 http://www.newyorktimes.com/specials/ragtime/pastors. html. New York Times , ‘‘Pastors Assail,’’ 1. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 112. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 112. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life , 247 48. Christian, ‘‘Brownsville Raid,’’ 2. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 6. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life , 261. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 6. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life , 236 37; Weaver, The Brownsville Raid , 119 22. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 141. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life , 299. Christian, ‘‘Brownsville Raid,’’ 2; Lane, Brownsville Affair, 165; Weaver, The Senator and the Sharecropper’s Son , 154. Bruce Miroff, Outside the Arena , unpublished manuscript, 5. Weaver, The Senator and the Sharecropper’s Son , 98; see also Lane, Brownsville Affair, 139; Miroff, Outside the Arena , 5. Miroff, Outside the Arena , 6. Miroff, Outside the Arena , 7. Theodore Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of the Fifty-Ninth Congress,’’ December 3, 1906, The Works

308 M. Stuckey

[44] [45] [46] [47]

[48] [49] [50] [51] [52]

[53]

[54] [55]

[56]

[57] [58] [59]

[60]

[61] [62] [63] [64]

of Theodore Roosevelt: Presidential Addresses and State Papers (New York: Collier and Sons, n.d.), vol. 5, 911. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress,’’ 914. Lane, Brownsville Affair, 133 34. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid , 122. Theodore Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: Presidential Addresses and State Papers (New York: Collier and Sons, n.d.), vol. 5, 1073. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1064. Weaver makes a similar observation about Southern discourse on slavery. See Ethics of Rhetoric , 91. Weaver, Ethics of Rhetoric , 86. Zarefsky, President Johnson’s War on Poverty, 8. See the discussion of arguments from authority in Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996), 113 14. This was a difficult line to walk, as Roosevelt found to his sorrow when he invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House *and received serious criticism for so doing. As both president and head of the Republican Party, Roosevelt had to appear to be fair toward African Americans, but not so accommodating that he risked alienating the rest of his coalition. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1078. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency. See also Roderick P. Hart, The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1997). For examples of work that treats presidential history as profoundly rhetorical, see Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Deeds Done in Words: Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990); Leroy Dorsey, ed., The Presidency and Rhetorical Leadership (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); Karen S. Hoffman, ‘‘Going Public in the Nineteenth Century: Grover Cleveland’s Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act,’’ Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5 (2002): 57 77; Mel Laracey, Presidents and the People: The Partisan Story of Going Public (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2002); Martin J. Medhurst, ed., Beyond the Rhetorical Presidency (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1996). For an extended discussion of this point, see Vanessa Beasley, You the People (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2003); Stuckey, Defining Americans . Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1065 66. Theodore Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ January 14, 1907, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: Presidential Addresses and State Papers (New York: Collier and Sons, n.d.), vol. 5, 1103. In this, Brownsville is evocative of more recent instances: Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky matter, and Dick Cheney and Halliburton, for example, are both cases in which one of the most successful defenses was the claim that ‘‘this has been investigated to death.’’ Benjamin R. Tillman, ‘‘The Race Problem: The Brownsville Raid, in the Senate of the United States,’’ Congressional Record , January 12, 1907, 3. Tillman, ‘‘The Race Problem,’’ 4. Tillman, ‘‘The Race Problem,’’ 8. For an extended discussion of the relationship between racial and civic nationalism, see Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Presidential Rhetoric [65]

[66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82]

[83] [84] [85] [86] [87] [88] [89] [90] [91] [92]

309

For details on the workings of such arguments, see Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 231 42. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1064. Again, of course, this argument has more than a passing resemblance to the arguments of the South that slaves both were and were not men. See Weaver, Ethics of Rhetoric , 91. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1070. Weaver, The Senator and the Sharecropper’s Son , 127. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric , 190 91. Weaver, Brownsville Raid , 142. Weaver, The Senator and the Sharecropper’s Son , 127. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric , 291. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1073. For details on arguments from precedent, see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric , 306 7. ‘‘Persuasively’’ here is distinguished from ‘‘convincingly.’’ See van Eemeren, Grootendorst, and Henkemans, Argumentation Theory, 99. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1069. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1064. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1064. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1072. Editors, Cahiers du Cinema , ‘‘John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln,’’ Cahiers du Cinema no. 223 (1970), translated in Screen 13 (1972): 5 44. Greg M. Smith, ‘‘Choosing Silence: Robert DeNiro and the Celebrity Interview,’’ in Stars in Our Eyes: The Star Phenomenon in the Contemporary Era , ed. Angela Ndalianis and Charlotte Henry (New York: Praeger, 2002), 45 58. Charles E. Morris, ‘‘Pink Herring and the Fourth Persona: J. Edgar Hoover’s Sex Crime Panic,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 230. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid 129. Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1069. As Campbell demonstrates, this is very difficult to accomplish. See ‘‘The Power of Hegemony,’’ 48 49. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life , 278. We are still assigning meaning to that silence; the meaning I assign to it here is clearly different from that assigned at the time. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid 89. Campbell, ‘‘The Power of Hegemony.’’ Roosevelt, ‘‘Message Communicated to the Senate,’’ December 19, 1906, 1070. Gerstle, American Crucible .