Pres. Theodore Roosevelt Invokes the 14th Amendment to the South: “As long as the election laws are constitutionally enforced without discrimination as to color…”

"As long as the election laws are constitutionally enforced without discrimination as to color, the fear that southern representation in Congress will be cut down is both idle and absurd."

The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution sought to penalize those states that deprived eligible persons (in effect, Southern black people) of their right to vote by taking away some of those states’ representation in Congress. It provided that “when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress…is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.” Much of Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s related to the South’s opposition to black voting and office-holding. As early as 1900, a measure was introduced into Congress by Indianan Edgar Crumpacker to invoke the Constitution and penalize Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina, which had approved state constitutions disfranchising blacks, by depriving them of 37 representatives. This would greatly increase the power of the Republicans in the House, at the cost of embittering Southerners. Crumpacker and his allies periodically reintroduced reduction measures, to the horror of Southerns, over the next years. It was a specter that haunted the South, as everyone knew that that region was flauting the 14th Amendment in actuality.

In 1904 Crumpacker and his allies managed to insert a plank calling for reduction in the Republican Party Platform. Roosevelt wanted to break the Solid Democratic South and end discrimination against blacks in voting, and would enjoy having a greater Democratic majority in the House. But he felt reduction was too radical for the times. After all, the Civil War was a clear memory to most of the population, and measures that would cause a major North/South controversy and stir up bitter feelings about Reconstruction, would be widely unpopular. In May 1908, Crumpacker, now chairman of the House Census Committee, managed to attach a reduction rider to a campaign contribution reform bill. The concept of reduction again became a national story, all the more so when the amended measure passed the House. The question became, would President Roosevelt sign the bill if it passed the Senate? The issue was a real hot potato for the President, who on the one hand could not, and did not care to, abrogate the Constitution to satisfy the South, while wanting to avoid the dangers of enacting the legislation. As for Crumpacker, he was a Roosevelt ally on various progressive measures, further complicating things for TR.

Luke Edward Wright of Tennessee was named by TR as the first full United States Ambassador to Japan. From July 1, 1908 to March 1, 1909, he joined the Cabinet as Secretary of War, replacing William H. Taft, who had resigned to run for president. As a young man Wright had served in the Confederate Army, participating in the battles of Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, the Atlanta campaign (where he was wounded), Franklin and Nashville. Wright was a loyal Democratic, so clearly opposed reduction, but a TR friend. In late 1908, with the election looming, he took the position that soon it would be a misnomer to think in terms of a Solid South completely controlled by the Democratic Party, as many Democrats were ready to support Republican candidates, at least on a national basis. So he held out the hope that, perhaps as an alternative to reduction, Republicans might hope to enjoy support on a variety of issues affecting the nation as a whole.

Typed Letter Signed, as President, on White House letterhead, Washington, October 27, 1908, to attorney Wyndham R. Meredith, soon to be President of the Virginia Bar Association, who had apparently asked the President to issue a statement opposing reduction. In it, TR refuses to thus go on record and become the lightning rod for a controversy, while saying that he agrees with Wright, but with a startling caveat: the South’s election laws must reflect the Constitution. “I have your letter. It hardly seems to me to be advisable to write a letter as you speak of. I feel that Luke Wright is speaking for me, and that I had best trust to him. I do not believe there is a single individual of any consequence who seriously dreams of cutting down southern representation, and I should have no hesitation in stating anywhere and at any time that as long as the election laws are constitutionally enforced without discrimination as to color, the fear that southern representation in Congress will be cut down is both idle and absurd."  With the original envelope.

The campaign bill with Crumpacker’s rider died quietly in the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections at the end of the 60th Congress. And so did TR’s term, as when Congress reconvened on March 4, 1909, Taft was president.