THEODORE ROOSEVELT
\nOctober 18, 1905<\/p>\n
Black and white Richmonders alike greeted Republican President Teddy Roosevelt with fervor on his swing through the Southern States in 1905. Richmond\u2019s African Americans had served as a core constituency of the \u201cParty of Lincoln\u201d since they gained the right to vote. With the disenfranchisement of blacks after Reconstruction, Republican leaders like TR began to romance white Southerners into the Republican Party to replace the crucial black electorate. \u201cIn short gentlemen,\u201d Roosevelt stated, \u201cI claim to be neither Northerner nor Southerner…nothing but a good American, pure and simple.\u201d Lauding the character and the power of the former capital of the Confederacy, TR hoped to usher in a new movement of white Southerners into the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
Northern commentators lampooned TR\u2019s Southern tour as an ill-conceived effort to court white Southern democrats. In one cartoon, the President was figured as Don Quixote, tumbling into the South riding the Democratic Party\u2019s mascot. <\/p>\n
Underwood & Underwood, President Roosevelt praising the courage of the South, Richmond, Va., 1905, Courtesy of the Library of Congress; Puck magazine, Marse Theodore, \u201cWay Down South in the Land of Cotton,\u201d October 18, 1905, Courtesy of the Library of Congress<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"