The inability of even cultured Negroes to sympathize with the view of the President was their misfortune rather than their fault. It indicated that they lacked the elementary principle essential to the rulership of themselves, much less to the rulership of others. It was not so much the amount of attention as the amazing attitude of the vast majority of Negroes capable of understanding what had occurred, which attended that attention. To the vast majority of Negroes, irrespective of rank, culture or professions of Christianity, there was something noble and manly in the behavior of “the veteran non-commissioned officers”, so absolutely repugnant to the practical politician Roosevelt, a high type of white. The inability of the succeeding occupant of the highest office in this country, genial in disposition, liberal in view; but yet unable to appreciate the flaming zeal and prompt action, with which a real leader of a free people meets such behavior in armed underlings, marks a certain weakness in that Northern white. Such weakness coupled as it was with the behavior of such public men as Senator Foraker did much to produce the deplorable incident ten years later so properly stamped with executive disapproval and inevitable punishment to the last degree. It is quite possible and to some degree probable that weak and vicious comments on Roosevelt’s action in the Brownsville matter had something to do with the Houston riot. The comment also affected the Southern white man profoundly in his attitude to colored soldiers and policemen. FOOTNOTES: [248] Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 239. [249] Ibid. p. 226. [250] Ibid. p. 227. [251] Ibid. p. 221. [252] Ibid. p. 223. [253] Ibid. p. 220. [254] Ibid. p. 228. [255] Ibid. p. 316. [256] Albert Bushnell Hart, The Southern South, p. 16. [257] DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 41-58-59. [258] Hart, The Southern South, p. 15. [259] Ibid. p. 134. [260] Ibid. p. 135. [261] Wm. H. Thomas, The American Negro, p. 165. [262] Ibid. p. XI. [263] Ibid. p. 264. [264] Thomas, The American Negro, p. XXII. [265] Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 318. [266] Ibid. p. XI. [267] Ibid. p. XVIII. [268] DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, p. 58. [269] Thomas, The American Negro, p. 268. [270] Ibid. p. 141. [271] Ibid. p. 75. [272] Stone, The American Race Problem, p. 397. [273] Ibid. p. 398. [274] DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, pp. 366-358-359. [275] Thomas, The American Negro, pp. 408-410. [276] Ibid. p. 280. [277] Ibid. p. 281. [278] Stone, The American Race Problem, p. 217. [279] Ibid. p. 53. [280] W. E. & Cog. List Tax Payers, City of Charleston 1859, pp. 392-403. [281] Press of the Southern Reporter, p. 1. [282] Ibid. p. 5. [283] Ibid. p. 8. [284] Sir H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. XI. [285] Jervey, Lecture Chicago University; The Elder Brother, p. 446. [286] Scruggs, Colombian and Venezuelan Republics, pp. 300, 301, 324, 325.