Josephus Daniels (May 18, 1862 – January 15, 1948) was a newspaper editor, Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He managed The News & Observer in Raleigh, at the time North Carolina's largest circulation newspaper, from the 1890s until his death. Daniels was a vehement white supremacist and segregationist; he and his newspaper "championed the white supremacy cause in frequent news reports, vigorously worded editorials, provocative letters, and vicious front page cartoons that called attention to what the newspaper called the horrors of 'negro rule.'"
Along with Charles Brantley Aycock and Furnifold McLendel Simmons, he was a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington massacre, in which white mobs overthrew the legitimately elected biracial government in Wilmington, expelled black and white political leaders from the city, destroyed the property and businesses of black citizens built up since the American Civil War, and killed between 60 and 300 black people. He was highly influential in the state legislature's passage in 1900 of a suffrage amendment that effectively disenfranchised most blacks in the state, excluding them from the political system for decades until the late 20th century.
A Democrat, he had been a leading progressive in the early 20th century, supporting public schools and public works, and calling for more regulation of trusts and railroads. He supported prohibition and women's suffrage, and used his newspapers to support the regular Democratic Party ticket.
He was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I. He became a close friend and supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. As Secretary of the Navy, Daniels handled policy and formalities in World War I while his top aide, Roosevelt, handled the major wartime decisions. After Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, he appointed Daniels as his U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, serving from 1933 to 1941. Daniels worked to repair relations with the government that had been damaged during the Mexican Revolution as part of Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy". In accordance with that policy Daniels and the Roosevelt Administration took a less adversarial position toward the government's 1938 expropriation of American and other foreign oil holdings than other foreign governments had. In 1941, Daniels resumed the editor's post at The News & Observer.
Early life and career Josephus Daniels was born in Washington, North Carolina on May 18, 1862, a son of shipbuilder Josephus Daniels and Mary Cleaves (Seabrook) Daniels. His brother Frank was a prominent state court judge, while his brother Charles served as an assistant US attorney general in the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Before the war, Josephus Daniels Sr. was a Whig and supporter of the Union. During the American Civil War, he repaired and maintained ships for the Confederate States Navy in Wilmington, North Carolina. Josephus Daniels Sr. was killed in Washington, North Carolina when the steamship on which he was traveling was fired at by Confederate troops. The younger Daniels moved with his widowed mother and two siblings to Wilson, North Carolina, where she supported the family as the town postmaster. He was educated at Wilson Collegiate Institute.
Daniels edited and eventually purchased a local newspaper, the Wilson Advance. Within a few years, he became part owner, along with his brother Charles, of the Kinston Free Press and the Rocky Mount Reporter. He studied law for two years at the University of North Carolina (today the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and was admitted to the bar in 1885, but did not practice law.
After becoming increasingly involved in the North Carolina Democratic Party and taking over the weekly paper Daily State Chronicle, Daniels served as North Carolina's state printer from 1887 to 1893. He was appointed as chief clerk of the U.S. Department of the Interior under Grover Cleveland in 1893–95.
The News & Observer In 1894, with the financial assistance of industrialist Julian S. Carr, also a white supremacist, Daniels acquired a controlling interest in Raleigh's News & Observer, and left his federal position. Under his leadership, the paper was a strong advocate for the Democratic Party, which at the time was struggling to maintain its power in the state against a fusion of the Republicans and Populists.Zogry, "Josephus Daniels," p. 303.
According to Daniels in his autobiography, "The News & Observer was relied upon to carry the Democratic message and to be the militant voice of White Supremacy, and it did not fail in what was expected." Daniels printed numerous articles intended to stoke fears of black men as rapists of white women. A lone white woman noticing a black man in her vicinity would be written up in the paper as a narrowly avoided rape. Daniels also argued that achieving political office emboldened black men to commit more outrages against white women.
He hired cartoonist Norman E. Jennett to spread his message among the 25 percent of white voters who were illiterate. Daniels admitted later that actual assaults committed by black men on white women were very few in number. However his newspaper coverage had the desired effect of winning Populists over to the Democratic Party. Newspapers were sold at cost to the Democratic Party, which distributed them to white voters.Zucchino, pp. 76-82
According to historian Helen Edmonds, the paper "led in a campaign of prejudice, bitterness, vilification, misrepresentation, and exaggeration to influence the emotions of the whites against the Negro." The result was the only successful coup d'état in American history, the overthrow of an elected government by force in the Wilmington massacre. In the findings of the Wilmington Race Riot Commission, Daniels is the only name mentioned as a cause of the insurrection. Later in life, while discussing his success, "Daniels admitted that the paper was occasionally excessive in its bias toward Democrats and that stories were not fully researched before publication and probably could not be 'sustained in a court of justice.'"
Daniels never apologized for using the newspaper to encourage white supremacist violence in 1898. In his memoir, he spoke positively about the actions of Red Shirts and how his white supremacy campaign had crushed "Negro domination". The News & Observer remained under the control of Daniels's family until 1995, when it was sold to The McClatchy Company. In 2006 the newspaper published an editorial apologizing for its role in the Wilmington insurrection of 1898 and consequent massacre.Zucchino, pp. 343-344
The white supremacy campaign led to Democratic victories in 1898 and 1900. Having regained control of the state legislature, the Democrats passed a suffrage amendment raising barriers to voter registration, which disenfranchised most African Americans in the state. The political exclusion was maintained into the late 1960s.
Daniels also supported a number of progressive causes, such as public education and anti-child-labor laws.
Secretary of the Navy Daniels supported native Southerner Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential election. After Wilson's victory, he was appointed as Secretary of the Navy.
Secretary Daniels held the post from 1913 to 1921, throughout the Wilson administration, overseeing the Navy during World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a future U.S. president, served as his Assistant Secretary of the Navy.Haugen, Brenda. (2006). Franklin Delano Roosevelt, p. 42.
As Secretary of the Navy, he banned the consumption of alcohol aboard U.S. naval vessels in General Order 99 of June 1, 1914. After the end of Prohibition in 1933, the Navy continued to ban alcohol on board ship but allowed limited access to beer for sailors with 45 days or more of service on their records. Limited access to harder alcoholic beverages by officers to be distributed at their discretion was subsequently maintained for use on shore during official leave from onboard duty.
In 1917, Secretary Daniels determined that no prostitution would be permitted within a five-mile radius of naval installations. In New Orleans this World War I directive resulted in the shutting down of brothels in Storyville. It had long-lasting consequences for servicemen and others during subsequent decades.Stanonis, Anthony. (1997). "An Old House in the Quarter: Vice in the Vieux Carré of the 1930s." Loyola University New Orleans History Writing Award.
During World War I, Daniels created the Naval Consulting Board to encourage inventions that would be helpful to the Navy. Daniels asked Thomas Edison to chair the board, as the Secretary was worried that the US was unprepared for the new conditions of warfare and needed new technology.Scott, Lloyd N. (2002). Naval Consulting Board of the United States, pp. 286-288. Additionally, Daniels was the first Secretary of the Navy to sponsor naval aviation. He established the first naval air station at the Pensacola Navy Yard, claiming "aircraft must form a large part of our naval force for offensive and defensive operations".Daniel J. Carrison, The United States Navy (Praeger, 1968), p. 117.
Daniels believed in government ownership of armor-plate factories, and of telephones and telegraphs. At the end of the First World War, he made a serious attempt to have the Navy permanently control all radio transmitters in the United States. If he had succeeded amateur radio would have ended, and it is likely that radio broadcasting would have been substantially delayed.
The Newport Sex Scandal erupted due to a Navy sting operation, overseen by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, that was conducted in 1919. Begun as an attempt to clean up what was seen as "immoral conditions" at Naval Station Newport, it expanded to investigations of the civilian population in Newport. It resulted in the arrests for homosexual activity of some 17 sailors and a prominent Episcopal Navy chaplain, with imprisonment imposed for some. When the tactics used in the sting operation became known, it attracted national news coverage. Congress undertook an investigation, resulting in both Secretary Daniels and Roosevelt being rebuked by a Congressional committee. The report called FDR's behavior "reprehensible," and said that the actions "violated the code of the American citizen and ignored the rights of every American boy who enlisted in the Navy to fight for his country."..
Daniels published The Navy and the Nation (1919), which was primarily a collection of war addresses he had made as Secretary of the Navy.
After leaving government service in 1921, Daniels resumed the editorship of The News & Observer. He strongly supported Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt for president in 1932.
Ambassador to Mexico President Roosevelt appointed Daniels as United States Ambassador to Mexico, a post he held from 1933 to 1941. Roosevelt expected Daniels to help carry out his "Good Neighbor Policy" in Latin America and, more particularly, to repair the damage to relations between the U.S. and Mexico caused by the U.S. invasion of Mexico during its civil war.
It was a remarkable choice as Daniels was not only an outspoken white supremacist, but had overseen an invasion of the port of Veracruz attempting to sabotage Victoriano Huerta during his time as head of the Navy. A group of Mexicans who saw this invasion as Yankee imperial intervention stoned the U.S. Embassy in protest of his appointment.Dent, David W. (1995). U.S.-Latin American Policymaking: A Reference Handbook, p. 313.
Relations with the Cárdenas Administration