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101 Z 6 Fortune at the Helm Saint Paul, 1902 Ordinarily, Council leaders paid a New Year’s courtesy call on the White House, respectfully reminding the president of their loyalty, their influence, and their pressing issues for the year ahead. But with McKinley’s death still fresh in their minds, Walters and his court held back in January 1902. Theodore Roosevelt’s sympathies for their cause were, at best, of questionable depth, and his solid alliance with Booker T. Washington an increasing obstacle to their own agenda. How to establish a competitive, productive relationship with the new president was the question on everyone’s mind, and there was no easy answer. Roosevelt had been chief executive for scarcely three months when he was faced with a pressing need for two major black appointments—one scheduled, one unexpected. If both of the men Roosevelt eventually selected—John Dancy and John R. A. Crossland—had strong ties to the Council, their membership in the group was a secondary consideration for the new chief executive. What seemed a timely opportunity for Walters and the Council to emerge as major players in the new president’s selection process, however, soon proved illusory. Acting primarily on advice from Tuskegee, and seeking none from Walters, Roosevelt selected Dancy, a veteran of the Harrison and McKinley administrations , and newcomer John R. A. Crossland, to fill two of the top four posts traditionally held by black appointees: recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia and U.S. minister to Liberia. Both men were Republican activists. Both appointments also augured well for the prestige of the Council, at least, since Dancy had served as its original vice president and executive committee member, Crossland as a recent member of the subexecutive committee.1 Henry Cheatham had seemed a safe bet for reappointment as recorder of deeds, until mid-December, when a potentially damning scandal involving the fortune at the helm 102 former congressman suddenly threatened to overshadow all else. While details were never made public, at least one newspaper reported that the U.S. attorney general was contemplating federal charges in the case. For Cheatham, who had served nearly five years in the post and had just remarried, the unexpected furor was devastating. Gone was his strong backing by U.S. senator Jeter Pritchard of North Carolina, along with a careful recommendation by Booker T. Washington , who had heard rumors against Cheatham but was not convinced they were true (“Cheatham on the whole is as good a man as Dr. Crossland and is much more widely known throughout the country among our people”). After one of Cheatham’s former clerks—Henry Y. Arnett, son of the venerable McKinley advisor and onetime Council vice president Bishop Benjamin Arnett—brought new details to Roosevelt’s attention, the nomination collapsed.2 Other supporters, including Senator Pritchard, seemed surprised at Roosevelt ’s decision, although Pritchard was soon “very much mortified to learn the facts” behind the charges and “wanted to crawl out but did not see his way clear,” according to Whitefield McKinlay. The Washington Post soon reported that unspecified legal charges were possible, in the opinion of U.S. attorney general Philander Knox, for Cheatham’s actions “disregarding the provisions of a federal law.” Cheatham was doomed.3 The joint father-son campaign against Cheatham appeared to reflect Henry Arnett’s relentless personal ambition, perhaps tinged by animosity and his father’s stubbornness. Why the Arnetts had pushed Crossland as a replacement was never clear; the younger Arnett had traded on his father’s name for years and may have expected Crossland to retain and promote him. If so, their strategy misfired. Dancy, a familiar, trusted appointee, was a faithful party warhorse and a known quantity; Crossland, passed over, was then tapped for Monrovia—yet even this created hard feelings in some quarters, due to his more or less naked display of ambition and presumptiveness, which particularly offended the influential William Pledger. Much of Pledger’s resentment centered on Booker T. Washington, who had inadvertently raised Crossland’s stock in President Roosevelt’s eyes with a cursory endorsement (“Dr. Crossland, so far as I can get information, is a clean high toned man of ability”), an opinion specifically solicited by the secretary of the interior in November. Emmett Scott assured Pledger of Washington’s innocence in the matter, saying Washington had assumed he was vetting candidates only for the D.C. recorder’s post.4 As the months passed and spring...

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