891

Ack'd
9/10/13

152

[stamp]
THE WHITE HOUSE
SEP 10 1913
RECEIVED

Intervale, N.H., Sept. 8, 1913.

&
152a

Dear President Wilson: It is many years since
weused to meet pleasantly at Baltimore, to give Spring lectures
to the students at the Johns Hopkins University. I trust our mutual
good will has continued unabated. I voted for you, last fall, in
preference to either of the other two Presidential candidates; but
I make no claim in consequence, for political ties rest lightly
upon one who, like myself, has retired permanently from the ac-
tivities of life.

My purpose in writing you at the present time is to express
the hope that you will not allow yourself to be swayed from a
course of justice and generosity, by the appeal of a few leaders
of your party from the unknown word South who desire a new and reactionary
course pursued towards our fellow-citizens of the colored race,
under your auspices. I refer to such matters as withholding ap-
pointments such as negroes have worthily shared hitherto, segre-
gating department clerks by their complexion, and sending only
white ministers to foreign countries where rule is exercised by
races affiliated with the African.

All such harsh and humiliating discrimination appears
vicious and degrading as to ourselves, unjust and disheartening
towards a docile and industrious element of our society seeking
to better its condition in life and worthy of our heartiest encour-
agement, and, furthermore, in plain deregation of the policy direct favored
ed by our fundamental law.

Although of Southern birth you are national in your train-
ing and general environment. You need enlyemulate the earliest
and best predecessors in the Executive chair from your own State
of Virginia to prove the fitting leader of a great people whose
worthy mission for the coming years is to elevate and cheer in
philanthropy the whole human race.

Yours very truly,
James Schouler

To the President of the United States.

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