The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-03-02
PRES ROOSEVELT FIRM.
WILL NOT SWERTE ONE HAIRS
 BREADTH.
To Continue in the Future as in the Past Ills Policy of Appointments tn south-Concerned at the outcry but Net Angry-charges That It Was Started An New York.

Atlanta, Ga, March 1.-Following are extracts from a. letter from President Roosevelt to Clarke Howell, editor of the Constitution. in reply to a request for an exposition concerning a recent letter from Harry Stillwell Edwards of Macon. with reference to the matter of federal appointments in the south:
 ''In making appointments I have sought to consider the feeling of the people of each territory so far as could consistently do so without sacri- ficing principle. The prime tests have applied have been those of character, fitness and ability and when I have been dissatisfied with what has been offered men in my own party lines have with out hesitation gone to the opposite par ty-and you are of course aware that have repeatedly done this in your own state of Georgia. certainly cannot treat mere color as a bar to holding off, flee any more than I could so treat creed or birth place-always providing that in other respects the applicant or incumbent is a worthy and we'll behaved American citizen. Just as little will I treat it as conferring right to hold off, flee. I ask you to judge not by what I say, but by what during the last sev- enteen months have actually done. In South Carolina, have appointed a white postmaster to succeed a colored postmaster. Again in South Carolina I have nominated a colored man to fill vacancy in the position of collector of the port of Charleston, just as in Geor- gia have reappointed the colored man who is now serving as colored collector of the port of Savannah. Both are fit men. Why the appointment of one should cause any more excitement than the appointment of the others I am wholly at a loss to imagine.
 'As am writing to man of keen and trained intlilgence I need hardly say that to connect either of these ap- pointments or any or all of my other appointments or in other actions up- holding the law at Indianola with such questions of social equality and negro domination is as absurd as to connect them with the nebular hypothesis or the theory of atoms. I have consulted freely with your own senators and con-. gressmen as to the character and ca pacity Of any appointee in Georgia concerning whom there was question @ My party advisors In the state have been Major Manson of Macon, Walter Johnson of Atlanta-both of them ex- confedrate soldiers-and Harry Still well Edwards, also of Macon. A large percentage of the incumbents of fed eral offices in Georgia under me are as understand it, of your own political faith.
 This is true of your own state; and by applying to Thomas Nelson Page of Virginia, to General Basil Duke of Kentucky, to George Crawford of Ten nessee, to John McIlhenny of Louisiana, to Judge Jones of Alabama and Edgar s. Wilson of Mississippi, all of them democrats, and all of them men of the highest standing in their respective communities, you will find that what I have done in Georgia stands not as the exception but as the rule for what I have done throughout the south. I may add that the proportion of colored men among the new appointees is only about one in hundred.
 'In view of all these facts I have been surprised and somewhat pained at what seems to me the incomprehensible outcry in the south about my actions an outcrN apparently started in New York for reasons wholly unconnected with the question nominally at issue. am concerned at the attitude thus talk en by so many of the southern people, but I am not in the least angry; and still less will this attitude have the ef- feet of making me swerve one hairs hrea1fI1 to one side or the other from the course, have marked out-the course have consistently followed in the past and shall consistently follow in the future.''