“Three incidents marked the progress of the controversy which broke upon the country shortly after Roosevelt’s succession to the presidency. These were the Booker Washington dinner, the appointment of Crum, and the closing of the Indianola post office. There were four parties in interest—Mr. Roosevelt, the Southern press and people, the Northern press and people and the American Negro.... The President acted clearly within his ‘rights’ in each case. This point must be conceded without argument. The dinner episode was in itself no more than a matter of White House routine.... Within forty-eight hours, the President was being denounced for having crossed the social equality dead line through breaking bread with a negro.”[287] According to Mr. Stone, the attitude of the South was one of general disapproval, the attitude of the Northern press a defence of the President. After a searching consideration of some fifty or more pages, in which Mr. McKinley’s attitude in distributing patronage is compared to that of Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Stone discusses the attitude of the Negroes. After taking up in turn various expressions by Professor Kelly Miller, Dr. W. E. Burghardt DuBois and Mr. William Pickens, Mr. Stone asks—“What then is the real meaning of their words?” Mr. Pickens says: “—one side advises ‘quietly accept the imposition of inferiority. It is a lie but just treat it as the truth for the sake of peace. Diligently apply to the white man the title of gentleman, and care not if he persists in addressing you as he calls his horse and his dog. Be patient. This general disrespect and discrimination will develop into the proper respect and impartiality at some time in the long lapse of geological ages, just as the eohippus has developed into the race horse, and the ancestor of the baboon into a respectable Anglo-Saxon.’ The other side says, ‘I ask for nothing more or less than the liberty to associate with any free man who wishes to associate with me. Your colour discriminations, legal or not, are all damnable, inasmuch as they draw an artificial and heartless line, give encouraging suggestions to the vicious and allow the stronger in brute power to force bastardy upon the weaker without remedy. Colour has absolutely no virtue for me and however much I am outnumbered I will not retreat one inch from that principle. However little my position might affect savage opposition, by the God of your fathers and mine, I will never by voluntary act or word acknowledge as the truth what I know to be the grossest of lies. And you might ask all the truly valiant hearts of the world and the ages how they beat toward these contrary tenets.’”[288] It is true this utterance was some five years later; but Mr. Stone thinks that—