41 Facts About Josephus Daniels

Josephus Daniels supported prohibition and women's suffrage, and used his newspapers to support the regular Democratic Party ticket.

Josephus Daniels believed that "the greatest folly and crime" in US history was giving "Negroes" the vote.

Josephus Daniels 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.

Josephus Daniels was born in 1862 to a shipbuilder and his wife in Washington, North Carolina, located on the Pamlico River in Beaufort County.

Young Josephus Daniels moved with his widowed mother and two siblings to Wilson, North Carolina.

Josephus Daniels was educated at Wilson Collegiate Institute and at Trinity College.

Josephus Daniels edited and eventually purchased a local newspaper, the Wilson Advance.

Josephus Daniels studied law at the University of North Carolina and was admitted to the bar in 1885, but did not practice law.

Josephus Daniels was the granddaughter of former Governor Jonathan Worth.

Josephus Daniels argued that achieving political office emboldened black men to commit more outrages against white women.

Josephus Daniels admitted later that actual assaults committed by black men on white women were very few in number.

Josephus Daniels never apologized for using the newspaper to encourage white supremacist violence in 1898.

Josephus Daniels supported native Southerner Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential election.

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 US president, served as his Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Josephus Daniels believed in government ownership of armor-plate factories, and of telephones and telegraphs.

Teetotaler Josephus Daniels banned alcohol from United States Navy ships in General Order 99 of June 1,1914.

In 1917, Secretary Josephus Daniels determined that no prostitution would be permitted within a five-mile radius of naval installations.

On March 15,1919, Josephus Daniels issued General Order No 456, prohibiting all forms of work on the Christian Sabbath.

Josephus 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.

Additionally, Josephus Daniels was the first Secretary of the Navy to sponsor naval aviation.

Josephus Daniels 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".

Josephus Daniels published The Navy and the Nation, which was primarily a collection of war addresses he had made as Secretary of the Navy.

President Roosevelt appointed Josephus Daniels as United States Ambassador to Mexico, a post he held from 1933 to 1941.

Roosevelt expected Josephus Daniels to help carry out his "Good Neighbor Policy" in Latin America.

Josephus Daniels praised a proposed Mexican plan for universal popular education and, in a speech to US consular officials, advised them to refrain from interfering too much in the affairs of other nations.

Josephus Daniels saw the reforms of President Lazaro Cardenas as analogous to Roosevelt's New Deal.

Josephus Daniels particularly supported Cardenas's expropriation of large landowners, over the objections of the State Department.

Josephus Daniels was a staunch Methodist, and worked with Catholics in the US, but had little sympathy for the Church in Mexico.

Josephus Daniels believed that it represented the landed aristocracy, which stood opposed to his version of liberalism.

In Mexico, the main issue was the government's efforts to shut down Catholic schools; Josephus Daniels publicly approved these attacks and praised anti-Catholic Mexican politicians.

However Josephus Daniels warned the Mexicans they should not be so harsh against the Church.

At that time, Josephus Daniels resigned his ambassadorial post in Mexico to return to North Carolina.

Josephus Daniels published several recollections of his years in public office.

Josephus Daniels served in public office with a strong belief in improving conditions for labor and the working class.

Josephus Daniels is buried in Historic Oakwood Cemetery of that city.

Josephus Daniels divided his shares of the News and Observer among all his children and Jonathan became editor.

Josephus Daniels had a cousin, younger by 11 years, John T Daniels, the Coast Guard member assigned to the Kill Devil Life-Saving Station in 1903, who took the famous photo of the Wright brothers in humanity's first ever successful piloted airplane flight, with Orville at the controls of the Wright Flyer.

Josephus Daniels epitomized, often simultaneously, much of the best and worst in the post-Civil War South.

Josephus Daniels broke with [William Jennings] Bryan in the 1920s over the antievolution crusade and the Ku Klux Klan.

Similarly in spite of a common attachment to peace, the two men split during World War I In personality and as a public figure, Daniels combined two sets of contrasting qualities: gentle amiability and combative controversiality; unaffected simplicity of character and outlook and shrewd, skillful management of men and affairs.

In Harry Turtledove's "Southern Victory" series of alternate history novels, Josephus Daniels was US Secretary of the Navy during the timeline's analog of World War I, and the US Navy named a destroyer escort after him during the series's version of World War II.