Scope and Content Note
The papers of Josephus Daniels (1862-1948) trace his career in journalism, the Democratic Party, the United States Navy, and the diplomatic service. They also reflect his private life, especially his family relationships. Although the papers span the years 1829-1948, they are concentrated in the period 1913-1921. The period before 1913 is represented mainly by family letters because a fire in that year destroyed correspondence and records stored at the Raleigh, North Carolina, News and Observer plant. The collection is organized in nine series, Diaries ; Family Papers ; Correspondence ; Subject File ; Speeches, Writings and Related Material ; Social File ; Miscellany ; Addition ; and Oversize .
Although the collection contains a broad scope of material, not much pertains to the activities of Daniels or his family before 1913. Included are Daniels's small collection of nineteenth-century North Carolina newspapers (with the July 1877 edition of the Cornucopia, an amateur newspaper that he edited with his brother Frank), detailed letters to his mother, and correspondence beginning in 1887 with Adelaide Worth Bagley, whom he married in 1888. Daniels's correspondence with his wife, which continued until her death in 1943, is the longest and perhaps the most nearly complete in the collection. Besides revealing their deep affection, the letters contain frank comments on the newspaper business, local and national politics, and Daniels's government service.
Other Family Papers include those that Daniels collected relating to five generations of the Daniels, Seabrook, Bagley, and Worth families, as well as Daniels's correspondence with his brothers Frank A. Daniels, a judge, and Charles Cleaves Daniels, an attorney for the Department of Justice. Letters exchanged with the wife, children, and grandchildren of each brother are interfiled with the correspondence of the particular brother, an arrangement that is followed throughout the Family Papers series.
Daniels's work in the Democratic Party's publicity office during the presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson is described in letters exchanged with special correspondents Newton Diehl Baker, William Jennings Bryan, Albert Sidney Burleson, Homer S. Cummings, Joseph P. Tumulty, W. G. McAdoo, and Woodrow Wilson. Other election material, including lists of county chairmen and contributors to Democratic campaigns in North Carolina and information on party activities at the national level, is in the General subseries of the Subject File .
Material concerning the Raleigh News and Observer is also in the General Subject File . Though chiefly dating from 1913, some items relate to Daniels's early years with the paper. There are a few documents concerning its reorganization under Daniels's leadership, subscription correspondence, information on a 1904 contempt of court citation against Daniels, summaries of the paper's financial condition, communications regarding various press associations or syndicates, legal briefs, and offers of help after fires in 1913 and 1915.
With Daniels's appointment to Wilson's cabinet, the letters in the News and Observer file become more concerned with day-to-day publishing activities than with such infrequent crises as lawsuits and conflagrations. From Washington, its owner attempted to influence editorial policy, improve news coverage of local affairs, increase circulation, mediate disputes between staff members, and maintain the paper's reputation for constructive criticism while avoiding embarrassments to the Wilson administration. Daniels sent lengthy instructions to editor Edward E. Britton, and he consulted frequently with business manager William Henry Bagley and financial adviser Herbert Worth Jackson, both relatives of Mrs. Daniels.
Daniels served as secretary of the navy throughout the Wilson administration. Most of the papers relating to policy decisions during his tenure are in the cabinet file of the Diary series, in the General , Special , Letterbooks , and Miscellaneous subseries of the Correspondence series, and in the Navy subseries of the Subject File . The nearly illegible notes he made in pencil about his activities, except for jottings in a pocket volume covering the period July 8-22, 1920, were published in The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels, 1913-1921 (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press [1963]), edited by Edmund David Cronon. The letterpress copies of Daniels correspondence often duplicate the carbon copies in other subseries.
The Special Correspondence files contain holograph private letters as well as official correspondence and case files in the form of enclosures. Exchanges with several naval admirals and marine generals include candid discussions of departmental affairs. Within this group are the letters of Charles Johnston Badger, George Earnest Barnett, William Shepherd Benson, Victor Blue, Frank Friday Fletcher, Albert Gleaves, John Archer Lejeune, Samuel McGowan, Henry T. Mayo, Albert P. Niblack, Hugh Rodman, Archibald Henderson. Scales, William Sowden Sims, Thomas Washington, and Albert G. Winterhalter. Correspondence between the secretary and his civilian assistants, Howard A. Banks, Edward E. Britton, Gilbert F. Close, John W. Jenkins. Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Frank Smith, tends to be concerned with the daily routine of office as do communications with his uniformed aides, Percy Foote and Leigh C. Palmer. After he left the department, Daniels continued to write to many of these men, often to clarify for his autobiography accounts of events that occurred when he was secretary.
As secretary of the navy, Daniels's innovations included an attempt to make the navy more democratic by elevating the status of enlisted men. Papers bearing on his efforts to make each ship a school are in the Navy Subject File along with information related to the recruiting, training, and treatment of enlisted men. There is also correspondence pertaining to the appointment of qualified sailors to the United States Naval Academy and Daniels's campaign to eliminate hazing at the institution as well as speeches and articles on these reforms. Other reforms initiated by Daniels include his controversial elimination of the wine mess, the serving of alcoholic beverages to officers on board naval vessels and at shore stations, and attempts to promote temperance among the sailors. The secretary's concern for the personal welfare of the men who served under him is evident in the Navy Subject File, especially in material on alcohol and vice control and on the work of organizations such as the Navy League, Red Cross, YMCA-YWCA, Commission on Training Camp Activities, and Chaplain Corps.
The Navy Subject File , as well as some of the speeches, articles, and scrapbooks in the collection, details a number of the issues that emerged during Woodrow Wilson's first term, including conflicts with revolutionary leaders in Mexico, struggles with the “steel trust” over the price of armor plate, reorganization of the department, and controversies over naval preparedness, oil reserves, and coal supply. As the war in Europe became more intense, Americans discussed the arming of merchant ships, ways of overcoming the submarine threat, and the need for selective service. In addition to information found under these headings, there is material on these topics under “Press” in the Navy Subject File. Some letters exchanged with Wilson and other cabinet members, all special correspondents, touch upon these issues.
The development of naval aviation and wireless communication was of high priority to Daniels. He had been interested in aviation since 1903, when an uncle, John T. Daniels, had helped the Wright brothers with their experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and Daniels maintained this interest when he became secretary. Also as secretary, through the activities of the Department's Communications Bureau, he became involved in the controversy over the federal government's responsibility to insure fair access to the airwaves by licensing commercial radio stations.
America's entry into World War I greatly accelerated the expansion of the navy that had begun with the shipbuilding program of 1915-1916. Changes in the department included the setting up of a Civilian Naval Consulting Board in order to take advantage of American inventive genius like that of Thomas A. Edison and his assistant, Miller R. Hutchinson. The existing bureaus of the Department—Construction and Repair, Engineering, Navigation, and Ordnance— took on additional wartime responsibilities as reflected in the increased number of papers in their files. The Office of Naval Intelligence investigated not only breaches of security but also unrest among workers at war plants, including alleged “Bolshevik” activity during the Red Scare of 1919-1920.
Congressional oversight of Daniels's work in the department is evident in letters received from members of the House and Senate Naval Affairs Committees and in the file on a controversy in 1919-1920 with Admiral William Sowden Sims. A subcommittee of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee investigated charges made by Sims and his Republican allies that the Navy failed to prosecute the war to best advantage because the secretary did not follow the professional advice of seasoned officers. Daniels, John W. Jenkins, and other staff members fashioned a rebuttal in which they reviewed the important phases of the navy's wartime activities, buttressing their arguments with comments by sympathetic naval officers. Drawing upon their experience with the mass media, they drafted a series of press releases so that the secretary's testimony would have a maximum effect upon public opinion.
Daniels continued his interest in the navy and politics after he left Washington. He completed a lecture tour, a series of articles on the navy, and several articles and a book on Woodrow Wilson, all of which are represented in the Speeches, Writings, and Related Material series. In addition to material in the election file and Correspondence series about the presidential campaigns of 1924, 1928, and 1932, there are letters from supporters who urged Daniels to seek the North Carolina gubernatorial nomination in 1932.
An erroneous report early in 1933 that Daniels had been chosen by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to head a new transportation department brought a flurry of mail from those who thought their business interests would be affected by such a bureau. His appointment as ambassador to Mexico caused an even greater outflow from well-wishers and businessmen. Daniels again worried about the management of the News and Observer and corresponded at length with his sons in Raleigh, Josephus Daniels (1894-1964), Jonathan Daniels, and Frank A. Daniels. His fourth son, Worth Bagley Daniels, who lived in Washington, D.C., was also a frequent correspondent.
Upon his departure from Raleigh, the new ambassador began a series of comprehensive diary-letters for the purpose of keeping family members informed of his personal and diplomatic activities. Daniels also wrote long letters to the president and to Cordell Hull, Summer Welles, Claude Gernade Bowers, and William Edward Dodd. In this correspondence, the ambassador discussed issues affecting relations between Mexico and the United States , especially the settlement of claims arising from the seizure of American-owned lands, the strife between the Catholic Church and the Mexican government, and expropriation of American oil properties. Additional information on these problems, Daniels's official dispatches, translations of articles from Mexican newspapers, and communications with embassy and Department of State personnel may be found in a Mexico subseries of the Subject File .
Of special interest in the Miscellany series is Daniels's autograph collection. Friends gave him a number of autograph letters of note, and he preserved others that were addressed to him. Mary Custis Lee sent a voucher signed in 1839 by her father, Robert E. Lee, then a captain in the Army Engineer Corps. Admiral French E. Chadwick provided a letter in 1915 written by Brooks Adams predicting the end of civilization. Daniels received a poignant letter in 1918 from Ernestine Schumann-Heink, the operatic mezzo-soprano who had sons in both the American and German navies during World War I, in which she writes about their service. John Philip Sousa complained in 1918 about the quality of the instruments furnished his band at Great Lakes Naval Training Station. A social note from 1934 in French from Mexican artist Diego Rivera and an appeal in 1947 on behalf of international control of atomic energy signed by Albert Einstein are also in the collection.