The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.10, page xxii, in Introduction, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers NAACP. Washington's private conduct in this regard was in sharp contrast to his public show of indifference to his critics. President Theodore Roosevelt had proven to be no champion of black civil rights, but he had been personally loyal to his adviser Booker T. Washington. Though Washington had supported Taft in 1909 despite the Brownsville affair, and though Roosevelt urger! Taft to continue Washington as a presidential adviser, Taft began as soon as he entered once to dismantle Washington's black patronage machine. He kept Washington as an adviser, and even overruled Washington's appointment to the Liberian Commission on the ground that he needed him in the country for consultation. Washington's first assignment, however, was to persuade Collector William D. Crum of the port of Charleston to resign before Taft fired him. Taft adopted a policy of removal of southern black officeholders wherever whites objected to them. Furthermore, he deniecl Washington a monopoly of federal black appointments by making a man who had no obligations to Washington, Henry Lincoin Johnson, recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia. On the other hand, Taft strengthened Washington's hand in the northern black communities by appointing northern blacks to federal offices, most notably William H. Lewis as assistant attorney general. The Liberian Commission, established largely through Washington's urging, included his private secretary Emmett J. Scott and two white men. On its recommendation the United States established a protectorate over Liberia that included customs supervision and training of its frontier forces, but unfortunately not economic aid or educational development. In an energetic effort to promote better race relations and improvement of black educational and economic opportunity, Washington made whirlwind speaking tours of Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee in Dog and North Carolina in two. The magic of his name drew large crowds of both races as perhaps no other person could have, and he handled these crowds successfully with a combination of lecture and entertainment, concession and appeal, realism and optimistic dream. Washington in this period took a stand on several social issues of the day. His conservative views on woman suffrage, published in the New York Times, raised an outcry from feminists. He took · — XX11