--- title: Joseph Tumulty url: https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/joseph-tumulty/ description: 3 verified quotes from Joseph Tumulty, Secretary to the President, with sources. section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a First World War field-intelligence collage of trench maps, wireless transmission logs and aerial reconnaissance photographs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwi.jpg) [Quotes](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/) · United States # Joseph Tumulty ![Joseph Tumulty at his desk, 1913](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/wilson-administration/joseph-tumulty.jpg) [Photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_P._Tumulty_cph.3b17552.jpg): Clinedinst, Washington, D.C., Public domain (published in the United States before 1931) Secretary to the President · United States On the regime page: [Wilson administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/wilson-administration/#joseph-tumulty) 3 quotes, oldest first. [Filter with other speakers](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/#speaker=joseph-tumulty). 1. > “Replying to your recent letter and enclosures, I beg to say that it is true that 'The Birth of a Nation' was produced before the President and his family at the White House, but the President was entirely unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance.” — April 30, 1915 · Letter · Washington, D.C., White House — Reply to protests against a White House screening of D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation in February 1915. The Crisis printed it in a chronology of the protests against the film. — Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President, to W. H. Lewis of Boston and Bishop Alexander Walters, 30 April 1915, as printed in The Crisis, vol. 10, no. 2 (June 1915), pp. 88-89 [Source](https://archive.org/details/crisis910dubo) 2. **Content note:** Attributes political motives to German-American voters as a group. The words are shown as they were said or written. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) — > “It is clear, as the editorial appearing in this morning's New York World says, that the "hyphenate vote is a definite factor that cannot be discredited"; and that from the activities of the German-American Alliance every effort, as their own supporters declare, should be made to elect Justice Hughes.” — June 13, 1916 · Letter · Washington, D.C., White House — Letter to Wilson, then at the Democratic convention period, urging a public statement against the "hyphenate" vote, referring to Americans of German descent and the German-American Alliance, before the 1916 presidential election. — Joseph P. Tumulty to President Wilson, 13 June 1916, in Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1921), p. 189 [Source](https://archive.org/details/woodrowwilsonasi00tumurich) 3. **Content note:** Attributes League opposition to Irish and Jewish Americans; compares it to German propaganda. The words are shown as they were said or written. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) — > “There is a tremendous drive against League, resembling German propaganda, backed by Irish and Jews. Irish openly opposing; Jews attacking along collateral lines.” — May 26, 1919 · Letter · Washington, D.C., White House — Cable from Wilson's secretary to the President at the Paris Peace Conference reporting opposition to the League of Nations in the United States, several weeks before the Treaty of Versailles was signed. — Cablegram, Tumulty to President Wilson in Paris, 26 May 1919, printed in the Appendix to Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1921), pp. 529-530 [Source](https://archive.org/details/woodrowwilsonasi00tumurich)