Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
reason to believe, because he had agreed to divide the fees with B if he
were appointed; and that you finally recommended the reappointment of
H with the knowledge that if H were appointed he would abstain from
prosecuting B for criminal misconduct, this being why B advocated H's
claims for reappointment. If you care to make any statement in the
matter, I shall of course be glad to hear it. As the District Judge of
Oregon I shall appoint Judge Wolverton." In the letter I of course gave
in full the names indicated above by initials. Senator Fulton gave no
explanation. I therefore ceased to consult him about appointments under
the Department of Justice and the Interior, the two departments in which
the crookedness had occurred--there was no question of crookedness
in the other offices in the State, and they could be handled in the
ordinary manner. Legal proceedings were undertaken against his colleague
in the Senate, and one of his colleagues in the lower house, and the
former was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary.
In a number of instances the legality of executive acts of my
Administration was brought before the courts. They were uniformly
sustained. For example, prior to 1907 statutes relating to the
disposition of coal lands had been construed as fixing the flat price at
$10 to $20 per acre. The result was that valuable coal lands were sold
for wholly inadequate prices, chiefly to big corporations. By executive
order the coal lands were withdrawn and not opened for entry until
proper classification was placed thereon by Government agents. There was
a great clamor that I was usurping legislative power; but the acts were
not assailed in court until we brought suits to set aside entries made
by persons and associations to obtain larger areas than the statutes
authorized. This position was opposed on the ground that the
restrictions imposed were illegal; that the executive orders were
illegal. The Supreme Court sustained the Government. In the same way our
attitude in the water power question was sustained, the Supreme Court
holding that the Federal Government had the rights we claimed over
streams that are or may be declared navigable by Congress. Again, when
Oklahoma became a State we were obliged to use the executive power
to protect Indian rights and property, for there had been an enormous
amount of fraud in the obtaining of Indian lands by white men. Here we
were denounced as usurping power over a State as well as usurping power
that did not belong to the executive. The Supreme Court sustained our
action.
In connection with the Indians, by the way, it was again and again
necessary to assert the position of the President as steward of the
whole people. I had a capital Indian Commissioner, Francis E. Leupp. I
found that I could rely on his judgment not to get me into fights that
were unnecessary, and therefore I always backed him to the limit when
he told me that a fight was necessary. On one occasion, for example,
Congress passed a bill to sell to settlers about half a million acres of
Indian land in Oklahoma at one and a half dollars an acre. I refused to
sign it, and turned the matter over to Leupp. The bill was accordingly
withdrawn, amended so as to safeguard the welfare of the Indians, and
the minimum price raised to five dollars an acre. Then I signed the
bill. We sold that land under sealed bids, and realized for the Kiowa,
Comanche, and Apache Indians more than four million dollars--three
millions and a quarter more than they would have obtained if I had
signed the bill in its original form. In another case, where there
had been a division among the Sac and Fox Indians, part of the tribe
removing to Iowa, the Iowa delegation in Congress, backed by two Iowans
who were members of my Cabinet, passed a bill awarding a sum of nearly
a half million dollars to the Iowa seceders. They had not consulted
the Indian Bureau. Leupp protested against the bill, and I vetoed it. A
subsequent bill was passed on the lines laid down by the Indian Bureau,
referring the whole controversy to the courts, and the Supreme Court in
the end justified our position by deciding against the Iowa seceders and
awarding the money to the Oklahoma stay-at-homes.
As to all action of this kind there have long been two schools of
political thought, upheld with equal sincerity. The division has not
normally been along political, but temperamental, lines. The course I
followed, of regarding the executive as subject only to the people, and,
under the Constitution, bound to serve the people affirmatively in cases
where the Constitution does not explicitly forbid him to render the
service, was substantially the course followed by both Andrew Jackson
and Abraham Lincoln. Other honorable and well-meaning Presidents, such
as James Buchanan, took the opposite and, as it seems to me, narrowly
legalistic view that the President is the servant of Congress rather
than of the people, and can do nothing, no matter how necessary it be to
act, unless the Constitution explicitly commands the action. Most able
lawyers who are past middle age take this view, and so do large numbers
of well-meaning, respectable citizens. My successor in office took this,
the Buchanan, view of the President's powers and duties.
For example, under my Administration we found that one of the favorite
methods adopted by the men desirous of stealing the public domain was
to carry the decision of the Secretary of the Interior into court. By
vigorously opposing such action, and only by so doing, we were able
to carry out the policy of properly protecting the public domain. My
successor not only took the opposite view, but recommended to Congress
the passage of a bill which would have given the courts direct appellate
power over the Secretary of the Interior in these land matters. This
bill was reported favorably by Mr. Mondell, Chairman of the House
Committee on public lands, a Congressman who took the lead in every
measure to prevent the conservation of our natural resources and
the preservation of the National domain for the use of home-seekers.
Fortunately, Congress declined to pass the bill. Its passage would have
been a veritable calamity.
I acted on the theory that the President could at any time in his
discretion withdraw from entry any of the public lands of the United
States and reserve the same for forestry, for water-power sites, for
irrigation, and other public purposes. Without such action it would
have been impossible to stop the activity of the land thieves. No one
ventured to test its legality by lawsuit. My successor, however, himself
questioned it, and referred the matter to Congress. Again Congress
showed its wisdom by passing a law which gave the President the power
which he had long exercised, and of which my successor had shorn
himself.
Perhaps the sharp difference between what may be called the
Lincoln-Jackson and the Buchanan-Taft schools, in their views of the
power and duties of the President, may be best illustrated by comparing
the attitude of my successor toward his Secretary of the Interior, Mr.
Ballinger, when the latter was accused of gross misconduct in office,
with my attitude towards my chiefs of department and other subordinate
officers. More than once while I was President my officials were
attacked by Congress, generally because these officials did their duty
well and fearlessly. In every such case I stood by the official
and refused to recognize the right of Congress to interfere with me
excepting by impeachment or in other Constitutional manner. On the other
hand, wherever I found the officer unfit for his position I promptly
removed him, even although the most influential men in Congress fought
for his retention. The Jackson-Lincoln view is that a President who is
fit to do good work should be able to form his own judgment as to his
own subordinates, and, above all, of the subordinates standing highest
and in closest and most intimate touch with him. My secretaries
and their subordinates were responsible to me, and I accepted the
responsibility for all their deeds. As long as they were satisfactory to
me I stood by them against every critic or assailant, within or without
Congress; and as for getting Congress to make up my mind for me about
them, the thought would have been inconceivable to me. My successor took
the opposite, or Buchanan, view when he permitted and requested Congress
to pass judgment on the charges made against Mr. Ballinger as an
executive officer. These charges were made to the President; the
President had the facts before him and could get at them at any time,
and he alone had power to act if the charges were true. However, he
permitted and requested Congress to investigate Mr. Ballinger. The party
minority of the committee that investigated him, and one member of
the majority, declared that the charges were well founded and that Mr.
Ballinger should be removed. The other members of the majority declared
the charges ill founded. The President abode by the view of the
majority. Of course believers in the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the
Presidency would not be content with this town meeting majority and
minority method of determining by another branch of the Government what
it seems the especial duty of the President himself to determine for
himself in dealing with his own subordinate in his own department.
There are many worthy people who reprobate the Buchanan method as a
matter of history, but who in actual life reprobate still more strongly
the Jackson-Lincoln method when it is put into practice. These persons
conscientiously believe that the President should solve every doubt in
favor of inaction as against action, that he should construe strictly
and narrowly the Constitutional grant of powers both to the National
Government, and to the President within the National Government. In
addition, however, to the men who conscientiously believe in this course
from high, although as I hold misguided, motives, there are many men who
affect to believe in it merely because it enables them to attack and to
try to hamper, for partisan or personal reasons, an executive whom
they dislike. There are other men in whom, especially when they are
themselves in office, practical adherence to the Buchanan principle
represents not well-thought-out devotion to an unwise course, but simple
weakness of character and desire to avoid trouble and responsibility.
Unfortunately, in practice it makes little difference which class
of ideas actuates the President, who by his action sets a cramping
precedent. Whether he is highminded and wrongheaded or merely infirm
of purpose, whether he means well feebly or is bound by a mischievous
misconception of the powers and duties of the National Government and
of the President, the effect of his actions is the same. The President's
duty is to act so that he himself and his subordinates shall be able to
do efficient work for the people, and this efficient work he and they
cannot do if Congress is permitted to undertake the task of making up
his mind for him as to how he shall perform what is clearly his sole
duty.
One of the ways in which by independent action of the executive we were
able to accomplish an immense amount of work for the public was through
volunteer unpaid commissions appointed by the President. It was possible
to get the work done by these volunteer commissions only because of the
enthusiasm for the public service which, starting in the higher
offices at Washington, made itself felt throughout the Government
departments--as I have said, I never knew harder and more disinterested
work done by any people than was done by the men and women of all ranks
in the Government service. The contrast was really extraordinary between