The Colonel “remained in seclusion” for a short time while he and Dixon debated their next move. Later that night, he called a meeting of his delegates. Infusing them with his own energy and defiance, he “urged them to stand by him” as he resumed the fight to purge the tainted delegate roll once the convention came to order the following morning.
AS DELEGATES AND SPECTATORS GATHERED for the second day of the convention, June 19, “electricity filled the air.” The Coliseum was “a powder mine.” With the chairman in place and the convention open for business, Hadley once again moved to replace the seventy-two contested Taft delegates with Roosevelt men. Chairman Root allowed three hours of debate on the motion. Watson, speaking for the Taft campaign, persuasively countered Hadley’s motion, insisting that the full convention had “no knowledge” and was “in no temper to pass upon these contests.” Evaluating the merits of the National Committee’s controversial decisions belonged finally to the Committee on Credentials, which would be officially appointed later that day. After conferring with Hadley, Watson announced that a compromise had been reached and that Hadley would “consent to refer the resolution to the Committee on Credentials.” The news thrilled Republicans on both sides of the bitter divide. A Pennsylvania delegate dashed to the stage, shouting, “Hadley, the next president of the United States,” triggering a boisterous Hadley demonstration. Delegations marched about the hall exulting in the sudden possibility of a compromise candidate who might unite the party.
Just as suddenly, the spell was broken. An attractive young woman in a white dress, with a “radiant and infectious smile,” stood up in the gallery blowing kisses and waving a large Roosevelt poster. The band began playing; shouts of “Teddy, Teddy, Teddy” rose from every corner in the hall. The woman made her way to the floor, escorted through the aisles “with the Roosevelt State delegations and placards falling in line.” For forty-two minutes, the crowd followed her lead. Regardless of whether, as some speculated, this lady had been cued to begin blowing kisses and rallying support for the Colonel, the emotional Roosevelt demonstration ended the prospect of bringing Hadley to the stage as a compromise candidate.
When Root finally restored order, Hadley stood up, returning the convention’s focus to the delegate confirmation process for the contested seats. While both he and Root agreed that “no man can be permitted to vote upon the question of his own right to a seat in the convention,” Hadley stridently argued that the entire group of contested delegates should be barred from determining the composition of the vital Credentials Committee. Root, however, adhering to congressional parliamentary procedure, maintained that “the rule does not disqualify any delegate whose name is on the roll from voting upon the contest of any other man’s right, or participating in the ordinary business of the convention so long as he holds his seat.” This pivotal ruling, which allowed all the contested delegates to participate in the makeup of the Credentials Committee, essentially delivered control of the convention to Taft.
The committee members began their deliberations that night. Outnumbered thirty-one to twenty-one, the Roosevelt men soon realized that the Taft contingency had no intention of relitigating the National Committee’s seating decisions. It was evident that most, if not all, of the contested delegates from the temporary roll would retain their seats, thereby providing Taft a clear majority. At midnight, a message arrived from the Colonel himself. “We are requested to go at once to the Florentine room of the Congress hotel,” California’s Francis Heney shouted, dismissively observing, “We can’t get a square deal here.” Back at the hotel, rebellious delegates and regular party members debated whether to bolt. While talk of a new party had been in the air since the convention opened, they now faced the difficult reality of engineering a split and financing a new creation. Suddenly the “prospect of leaving party lines, even to support Colonel Roosevelt,” did not seem “half as attractive” as from “some miles further away.” If the prospective members were “to be anything other than ridiculous figures in their state campaigns,” this new party would require “time and money and effort,” with money the paramount resource.
Amos Pinchot would long recall “the moment when the third party was born.” At two o’clock in the morning, Roosevelt’s inner circle gathered in his bedroom suite. “A dozen were seated around the table, the rest in armchairs or leaning against the wall,” Pinchot wrote. “Roosevelt was walking rapidly up and down in silence.” All eyes were on Frank Munsey and George Perkins, who whispered together in the corner. Without the financial support of these two wealthy men, there was little hope that a new party could be organized in time for the fall election. “Suddenly, the whispered talk ceased,” Pinchot recollected, as both Munsey and Perkins “moved over to Roosevelt, meeting him in the middle of the room. Each placed a hand on one of his shoulders, and one, or both of them, said, ‘Colonel, we will see you through.’ ” Munsey, the more effusive of the two magnates, added: “My fortune, my magazines and my newspapers are with you.”
Returning to the conference room, Roosevelt read a short announcement to his delegates and supporters. If the convention refused to purge the tainted roll, the Colonel had resolved to “lead a fight for his principles in defiance of any action of the regular Republican convention.” He expressed his thanks “to those who had come thus far in his fight, but who might not care to continue with him further.” He would release these men, parting from them “on terms of friendship and undiminished gratitude.” Those who chose to stay, he invited to participate in the birth of a new party. “Grizzled veterans wiped tears from their eyes,” observed a reporter for the Washington Times, “making no effort to conceal their emotions.”
AS WORD SPREAD THAT ROOSEVELT might come in person to deliver a statement that next day, the convention hall was “jammed to its fullest capacity.” Minutes after Root gaveled the convention to order, Taft’s floor leader called for a recess, explaining that the report of the Credentials Committee was not ready. A later four o’clock session lasted only a minute because the committee was still not ready. After this second delay, the convention was adjourned until the following day. Leaving the hall, delegates and spectators “gathered in knots,” trying to piece together what was happening. Word circulated that men on both sides had revived the search for a compromise candidate—perhaps Cummins or Hughes or Hadley. It was rumored but later denied that Taft had agreed “to withdraw his candidacy providing Colonel Roosevelt would do the same.” Details of the dramatic midnight session in Roosevelt’s suite gradually began to surface—foremost Roosevelt’s pledge to continue fighting if the Credentials Committee refused to seat his “honestly elected” delegates.
The mayhem in Chicago attracted unprecedented attention in the press. Correspondents covered every reversal, every sensational, rancorous moment, with relish. Reporters from dozens of national and regional publications were busy “politicking, filing correspondence, intriguing, pretending they were making a president.” Sam McClure, who had come to the convention on his own, “stood on the edges” of the clusters of journalists, feeling “like a cipher.” He had been “shorn” as editor of his once celebrated magazine a month earlier when his accumulated debt had finally forced him to lease and then sell McClure’s. The buyer had originally promised to retain McClure as editor, but the final deal left S.S., in his own words, “unhorsed.” He had come to Chicago in search of work. At the convention hall and in the lobbies of the hotels, the fifty-five-year-old McClure met up with scores of old friends. For the first time in his life, observing the hurly-burly of the convention, Sam McClure found himself on the periphery of the action.
At noon on Friday, June 21, after two straight nights with little sleep, the Credentials Committee was finally ready to issue state-by-state reports on the contested seats. Proceeding alphabetically with Alabama, the committee chairman announced that the majority had voted to sustain the original decision of the National Committee and seat the two Taft delegates. A minority report introduced by
the Roosevelt members was immediately voted down by a safe Taft majority. “A storm of hisses and booing” broke out, but Root swiftly restored order, calling on Arizona and then Arkansas. As one state after another voted to seat the Taft delegates, a voice from the gallery rose from the din: “Roll the steamroller some more!” As each new case was decided in favor of Taft’s delegates, “a thousand toots and imitation whistles of the steamroller engine pierced the air.” Bedlam followed as the galleries “caught the spirit,” rhythmically shouting “Toot Toot” and “Choo Choo.” The police removed a man who interrupted the proceedings by repeatedly crying: “All aboard.” As he was escorted out, he grinned and waved, provoking “a great uproar.” The convention was adjourned until the following day when, amid “a chorus of shrieks, whistles, groans and catcalls,” the remainder of the states followed suit, granting Taft all seventy-two contested delegates.
With Taft’s nomination on the first ballot virtually guaranteed, Henry Allen, a Roosevelt delegate from Kansas, asked to read a statement from the Colonel. “The Convention has now declined to purge the roll of the fraudulent delegates,” Roosevelt’s announcement began. “This action makes the convention in no proper sense any longer a Republican convention, representing the real Republican Party, therefore I hope that the men elected as Roosevelt delegates will now decline to vote on any matter before the Convention. . . . Any man nominated by the Convention as now constituted would be merely the beneficiary of this successful fraud.” Roosevelt’s inflammatory words provoked near riot on the convention floor. Taft delegates physically attacked Roosevelt delegates; brawls erupted throughout the galleries. Although police stopped dozens of scuffles, they were unable “to keep track of them all.”
It was nearly 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night before the roll call for the nomination began. At 9:28 p.m., William Howard Taft was officially proclaimed the victor, with 561 votes. Three hundred forty-four Roosevelt delegates had followed the Colonel’s request, designating themselves “present but not voting.” An additional 107 delegates insisted on following the command of their primaries, casting their votes for Roosevelt. Of the remaining votes, La Follette received 41, Senator Cummins 17, and Justice Hughes 2.
THE WHITE HOUSE WAS SO quiet on the night the convention concluded, one reporter remarked, that “no one would have suspected that under the same roof was the man who had been named as candidate of the ruling party.” During the balloting, Taft had been with Nellie and their children in the living quarters. Young Charlie Taft was once again in charge of carrying the up-to-date bulletins from the telegraph office. Reporters noted that the fourteen-year-old was “all grin” when word came that his father had secured a majority vote for the nomination. But unlike the “electric” excitement that had filled the room four years earlier, when Nellie had sparkled with happiness and Taft had “laughed with the joy of a boy,” both the president and first lady clearly understood that the divisive convention had rendered Republican chances for election in November almost impossible. “No Republican convention ever adjourned,” observed the New York Tribune, “leaving so many sores and with so little prospect that the wounds would be healed.”
“I am not afraid of defeat in November,” Taft repeatedly said in the days that followed his nomination. He believed he had already achieved the victory he wanted by preventing Roosevelt from taking over the Republican Party and moving it in an incomprehensibly radical direction that threatened to upset the constitutional separation of powers and destroy “the absolute independence of the judiciary.” In the course of the campaign, he had come to regard Roosevelt as “a real menace to our institutions.” The central issue “at stake,” he declared in his first public statement after his nomination, “was whether the Republican party” would remain “the chief conservator” of the country’s constitutional guarantees. His victory, he proudly noted, had “preserved the party organization as a nucleus for conservative action.”
THE ROOSEVELT DELEGATES HAD BEGUN their exodus from the Coliseum even before the finalization of Taft’s nomination. A “mass meeting” had been called at Orchestra Hall a short distance away to begin the process of forming a new national party. Great applause greeted Edith and the Roosevelt children as they took their seats in a box near the platform. News that conservative Vice President James Sherman had been renominated added to the “delight” of the Roosevelt men, who had worried that Taft might try to bolster the Republican ticket by selecting a progressive for the second spot. As they waited for the various state delegations to arrive from the convention, the audience joined in a spirited rendition of “America.” When the California delegation paraded into the hall bearing its distinctive Golden Bear banner, the crowd erupted with “wild enthusiasm.” A new round of cheers began a few minutes later when the Ohio delegation entered the room. “Here comes Texas,” screamed a man in the audience as the Lone Star delegation marched in, followed in short order by Oklahoma. Similar waves of cheering met each of the delegations as they entered the room, creating a jubilant atmosphere.
California governor Hiram Johnson opened the formal proceedings of the new Progressive Party. “We came here,” he declared, “to carry out the mandate of the people to nominate Theodore Roosevelt. By a fraud he has been robbed of that which was his. We, the delegates free and untrammeled, have come here to nominate him tonight.” After a nominating resolution was unanimously passed, a notification committee composed of representatives from twenty-two states escorted Roosevelt into the hall. “The people leaped to their feet with a shout and for five minutes there was pandemonium,” the New York Tribune reported. Another demonstration ensued when Roosevelt mounted the stage to declare his acceptance. He charged supporters to go home, “find out the sentiment of the people,” and then reconvene a few weeks later at “a mass convention” to nominate “a progressive candidate on a progressive platform” that would truly represent people in all sections of the country. “If you wish me to make the fight I will make it,” he promised, “even if only one State should support me. The only condition I impose, is that you shall be free when you come together to substitute any other man in my place if you deem it better for the movement and in such case I will give him my heartiest support.”
The enthusiasm that had sustained the Roosevelt Progressives all week reached a peak that evening at Orchestra Hall. That a split party had little prospect for victory in November seemed irrelevant to the exuberant crowd, though not to former Republican senator Chauncey Depew, who offered a widely quoted comment as the 1912 Republican National Convention came to a close. “The only question now,” he said, “is which corpse gets the most flowers.”
DURING THE LAST WEEK OF June, as Democrats gathered in Baltimore to choose their nominee for president, reporters asked Roosevelt for his thoughts on the leading contenders—Speaker Champ Clark and New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson. “I’m in the fight for an independent Republican party,” Roosevelt defiantly declared, “and whatever the Democrats do will make no difference with me.” Bluster aside, Roosevelt knew he had a much greater chance of victory if the Democrats chose the more conservative Clark over Wilson, who had emerged as a Progressive champion. “Pop’s been praying for Clark,” Kermit Roosevelt disclosed, revealing a Roosevelt far from indifferent to the outcome.
Like the Republicans, the Democrats quickly evidenced party discord in their own battle to appoint the temporary chair. Clark, with the backing of Tammany Hall, won that “first skirmish,” but progressives refused to accept his nominee, overturning the result when the time came to choose a permanent chair. “Everybody’s doing it. Doesn’t it remind you of Chicago?” Roosevelt gleefully asked reporters. When the balloting began for the nomination, Clark took an early lead, reaching a majority vote on the tenth ballot. Democratic Party rules required a two-thirds vote for victory, however; by the fourteenth ballot, the momentum had shifted to Wilson. Sixteen ballots later, Wilson held a slight majority, but it was not until the forty-sixth ballot, eight turbulent days aft
er the Democratic National Convention opened, that the New Jersey governor finally secured the nomination. The suspenseful events in Baltimore had transfixed the nation’s attention. All week long, William White reported, “the country was standing around the billboards of newspapers in great crowds,” waiting for the latest news from that city.
Throughout the dramatic ordeal, Wilson appeared impassive. “You must sometimes have wondered why I did not show more emotions as the news came in from the convention,” he told reporters when word of his victory finally arrived, “and I have been afraid that you might get the impression that I was so self-confident and sure of the result that I took the steady increase in the vote for me complacently and as a matter of course. The fact is that the emotion has been too deep to come to the surface.”
Wilson’s nomination immediately affected Roosevelt’s campaign prospects. Chase Osborn, one of the seven governors who had originally urged the Colonel to run, announced that he intended to support New Jersey’s Democratic governor. With a progressive in the field, he explained, there was “no necessity for a new political party.” The president of Minnesota’s Progressive League agreed with Osborn, declaring that his organization would back Wilson. To illustrate that Wilson’s appeal crossed party lines, his campaign cited more than 2,000 letters from Republicans pledging support. “Warmest congratulations from a Roosevelt Progressive Republican, who will vote for Wilson,” one Californian had written. “I most gladly leave my old party—the party of my father—and join your cause,” declared a lawyer from West Virginia.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 102