President Theodore Roosevelt and the Armenians

In 1900, in his book called A Strenuous Life, which technically was a collection of Roosevelt’s earlier speeches and essays, he referred to Armenia on several occasions, this time criticizing Europeans for not going into war against the Ottomans. “The great blot upon European international morality in the closing decade of this [i.e. 19th- H.N.] century has been not a war, but the infamous peace kept by the joint action of the great powers, while Turkey inflicted the last horrors of butchery, torture, and outrage upon the men, women, and children of despairing Armenia. War was avoided; peace was kept; but what a peace! Infinitely greater human misery was inflicted during this peace than in the late wars of Germany with France, of Russia with Turkey,” Roosevelt wrote referring to the Hamidian massacres of the 1890s.

Interestingly, four years later, during a meeting with the Armenian delegation at the White House, when presidential adviser James Bronson Reynolds (1861-1924) said that “since 1895, more men, women and children have been massacred in Armenia by the Turkish soldiers and their auxiliaries than were killed on both sides in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870,” Roosevelt interrupted him, saying: “You are quoting from my own book: The Strenuous Life. It was I who first made that statement.” The president was obviously referring to his statement we cited earlier.

Reynold’s presence at this meeting was not accidental: in 1901 he edited a book called Two Centuries of Christian activity at Yale. This publication featured the history of Christianity at a prominent educational establishment, also conveying the stories of overseas missionaries that had graduated from Yale. As the book specified, among the “Yale men on the foreign mission field,” several were in Van, Erzerum, Sebastia, Tigranakert and other historic Armenian settlements. Overall, there were 25 Yale-affiliated missionaries in Ottoman Empire, and one American-Armenian — Hovhannes Der Sahagian, was among them. The book also referred to the Hamidian massacres by saying that Rev. Frederick D. Greene, an 1888 graduate from the Faculty of Theology of Yale, “did more than any other man in awakening Gladstone [Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the end of 19th century — H.N.], and later the world, to the awful needs of the suffers from the Armenian massacres, for whom he raised a fund of $260.000.”  In other words, Reynolds, who edited the book, doubtlessly, was aware of Armenian issues. In 1915, Reynolds was the communication official between the Armenian community and Roosevelt.

In September 1904, when he was running for reelection, the New York City-based Armenian Republican Club appealed to fellow Republican Armenians, “hoping that Armenian citizen organizations will do their utmost for the election of Theodore Roosevelt and continuation of his administration and policies which are, by far, the most favorable to the Armenians as well as Armenia.” Republican Armenians were also planning to send a representative to Washington, DC to meet the President.

In December 1904, in his State of Union statement, the president mentioned: “In Turkey our difficulties arise less from the way in which our citizens are sometimes treated than from the indignation inevitably excited in seeing such fearful misrule as has been witnessed both in Armenia and Macedonia.”

In this important annual address, the president also mentioned that Americans gave expression to their horror on occasion of the massacre of Jews in in the town of Kishinev as well as on the cruelty and oppression of which the Armenians had been the victims.