We cannot perhaps wonder that ordinary citizens make race distinctions
when they are made by the President of the United States. In the autumn
of 1904, at Athens, Ohio, soldiers belonging to the 14th Battery of
Artillery in the regular army attempted to break open the jail in order
to rescue a comrade who had been arrested for some offense. In the
attempt they killed one militiaman and wounded at least two others.
I quote from a letter written by General Grosvenor, the Republican
Congressman from the district, to Mr. Taft, then Secretary of War, thus
summing up the facts:
“Fifty to seventy men marched into the most public street in a village
like this in the early hours of a pleasant summer evening, and without
the slightest provocation, meeting the provost guard, fired from 50 to
75 shots from loaded weapons, killing one, wounding two, and hitting
a citizen, and firing into the corridors and walls of a building, and
yet all this has been obliterated as though the waves of the ocean had
swept through sand. And not only that, but the Government officials--a
representative of the War Department bearing a commission, and a Deputy
United States District Attorney--appeared in the town and manipulated
the preliminary examination of witnesses and boldly denounced the
prosecution. And we are powerless, and the blood of Clark, a fine young
man * * * will go unavenged because of the interference of the United
States through its officials.”
One soldier was sentenced to a year in the penitentiary and another was
fined. There was no other punishment. The action of the War Department
was taken by order of the Acting Secretary, and from the letter written
by Secretary Taft in reply to General Grosvenor, the following extract
is made:
“I should think it doubtful policy on the part of the Government to
direct its officers to defend enlisted men against acts which, as
charged, are certainly offences against the state, unless there is
some ground to presume that the acts are in the discharge of lawful
duties of the enlisted men. The action of the Acting Secretary of War,
however, was based on the helplessness of the men, and the necessity
that no matter how guilty a man is he is entitled to be defended by
counsel. It probably would have been wiser had application been made to
court for the assignment of counsel. Still, an enlisted man is more or
less a ward of the Government, and if the Government steps in merely
to see that he is tried according to law, it seems to me that it is an
exercise of a discretion which the Government has.”
Here the facts were clear, but the guilty men were white.