Note 14 — Chapter XIX · Governor Wright—1905

Just why Governor Wright did not go back to the Philippines as Governor, after his visit to the United States in 1905–6, does not appear. It would seem almost certain that if Secretary of War Taft had wanted President Roosevelt to send him back, he would have gone. Mr. Taft never did frankly tell the Filipinos until 1907 that they might just as well shut up talking about any independence that anybody living might hope to see. Governor Wright began to talk that way soon after Mr. Taft left the Islands. Possibly Governor Wright undeceived them too soon, and thereby made the Philippines more of a troublesome issue in the presidential campaign of 1904. President Roosevelt recognized the sterling worth of the man, by inviting him to succeed Mr. Taft as Secretary of War in 1908. But President Taft did not invite him to continue in that capacity after March 4, 1909. Gossip has it that when the incoming President Taft’s letter to the outgoing President Roosevelt’s last Secretary of War, Governor Wright, was handed to the addressee, and its conventional “hope to be able to avail myself of your services later in some other capacity” was read by him, the outgoing official quietly remarked: “Well, that is a little more round-about than the one Jimmie Garfield14 got, but it’s a dismissal just the same.”