Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  The race for the nomination got going in earnest when William Randolph Hearst came out for Clark at the end of January 1912. This was another case of loving Wilson less. The “personal reasons” cited by Wilson to account for Hearst’s opposition evidently dated back to the beginning of his term as governor. According to later recollections, the newspaper tycoon had made a roundabout approach to Wilson, who responded, “Tell Mr. Hearst to go to hell.” Wilson reportedly also remarked, “God knows I want the Democratic presidential nomination and I am going to do everything legitimately to get it, but if I am to grovel at Hearst’s feet, I will never have it.”22 Wilson had made a dangerous enemy. Hearst’s newspapers enjoyed a wide readership, particularly among working-class people in big cities. Those papers started to blacken the governor’s name by reprinting derogatory comments about recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe that appeared in Wilson’s History of the American People. Conversely, Tom Watson attacked him as a tool of the Catholic church because Joe Tumulty was his secretary, and as soft on race because he had spoken to African American audiences.

  The four months from February to the end of May 1912 marked a time of trial and discouragement for Wilson. His bid for the nomination met one setback after another, with only a few bright moments to relieve the gloom. In 1912, neither party chose a majority of its convention delegates through primaries, although several states did pick their delegates that way. Those primaries provided indications of how well candidates were doing and helped or hurt them in the race to gain other delegates. Wilson skipped the first of the primaries, in Missouri, because it was Clark’s home state. The Speaker won handily there, despite some factional divisions. The governor prevailed in primaries in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oklahoma, but he skipped Alabama because it was Underwood’s home state. Meanwhile, Underwood drew support throughout the South. A heavy blow to Wilson’s candidacy fell early in April in Illinois, where Clark beat him in the primary by a two-to-one margin. Soon afterward, the Speaker carried Bryan’s adopted home state, Nebraska, although with only a plurality. The news was not good in the nonprimary states either. In New York, despite the efforts of such supporters as a young Democratic state senator named Franklin D. Roosevelt, Tammany chose a delegation that was hostile to Wilson. In May, Underwood swept primaries in several southern states, including one where Wilson had strong personal ties, Georgia; in another state where he had strong ties, South Carolina, he did eke out a victory. Meanwhile, Clark won primaries in western and northeastern states, and many observers predicted that he would be the nominee.23

  The defeats were embarrassing to Wilson. He believed in primaries and had brought them to New Jersey; plus, he was running as the most progressive candidate and the one with the broadest appeal. Republicans had a ready, if disparaging, answer to the question of why Wilson had failed to do better. With them—conservatives and progressives alike—it was an article of faith that the Democrats were fundamentally unsound, triply tainted by the legacies of slavery and secession, by the corrupt influence of city machines, and by the cranky notions of farmer radicals. In the South, memories of the Civil War, with race lurking in the background, undermined Wilson’s appeal. In northern states such as Illinois and New York, Hearst’s attacks and Clark’s ties to party organizations turned politicians and voters against him. Finally, Clark had a record on economic issues, which mattered more to Bryanites than political reform, and he stood unsullied by any earlier conservative flirtations.24

  Wilson’s high-toned but hard-hitting reformist style would have worked better with Republicans. In fact, at that moment Theodore Roosevelt was showing how strong such an appeal was. “My hat is in the ring,” the ex-president announced in February 1912. He elbowed aside La Follette, who had previously carried the insurgent progressive banner against Taft, to run for the nomination against his own handpicked successor. Roosevelt denounced bosses and big business, advocated political and economic reform measures, and demanded that the will of the people be heard. He won all but one of the primaries he entered, even beating the president in his home state of Ohio. This turn of events hurt Wilson’s prospects. The spectacular internecine fight in the other party—especially because it involved such a famous and colorful figure as Roosevelt—distracted public attention from the contest for the Democratic nomination. Moreover, the damage that Roosevelt’s fight with Taft did to their party vastly improved Democratic prospects in November, so that the Democrats looked likely to win no matter whom they nominated. Why, then, turn to an unconventional newcomer when they could send a tried-and-true party man to the White House?

  Wilson’s poor showing in the primaries did not stem from lack of effort. When he spoke in various states during the first half of 1912, he gave a compelling exposition of his political thinking. He continued to hit away at the theme of unleashing the economic energies of ordinary people. In a newspaper interview, he echoed Bryan’s well-known refrain from the 1896 Cross of Gold speech: “Who are the business men of the country? Are not the farmers business men? … Is not every employer of labor, every purchaser of material and every master of any enterprise, big or little, and every man in every profession a business man?” He also invoked sacred symbols, appropriating Lincoln’s memory as an example of how high common folk could rise, and he traveled farther down the road to Monticello, avowing, “I turn, with ever renewed admiration, to that great founder of the Democratic party, Thomas Jefferson.” Wilson likewise painted his own vision of a vigorous government led by a dynamic president. Several times, he implicitly or explicitly praised Roosevelt’s assertive style, and he maintained, “Government must regulate business, because that is the foundation of every other relationship, particularly of the political relationship.”25

  By the time Wilson uttered those words, his prospects of leading the nation looked dim. Not only had the primaries gone against him around the country, but he also had to fight on his home turf. Vengeful to the end, Smith and Nugent endorsed Clark and mounted a campaign to deny the governor delegates to the convention. After some initial reluctance, Wilson came out swinging. He made speeches around the state, and in a public letter to the party faithful he asked, “Shall the Democrats of New Jersey send delegates to Baltimore who are free men, or are the special interests again to name men to represent them? … [D]o you wish to support government conducted by public opinion, rather than by private understanding and management, or do you wish to slip back into the slough of the old despair and disgrace?” Distraction from the hard-fought contest between Roosevelt and Taft in the Republican primary did not help. Wilson and Roosevelt crossed paths in Princeton, when the ex-president spoke in front of the Nassau Inn the day before the New Jersey primary and Wilson stood in the crowd across the street, in front of the First Presbyterian Church. In his own speech, on the steps of his rented house an hour later, he commented on “two very militant gentlemen” whose fight was making it hard for people to concentrate on the issues.26 Still, the primary, on May 28, went Wilson’s way. The up-and-coming new boss in Jersey City, Frank Hague, failed to deliver for Clark, and Nugent’s Newark returned the only non-Wilson delegates—four of them.

  Sweetening that outcome was an editorial endorsement two days later from the New York World. For The World, it was partly a matter of loving Clark a lot less. The paper had earlier called his nomination “Democratic suicide” and feared that it would open the way to another term for Roosevelt, whom the editorial called “the most cunning and adroit demagogue that modern civilization has produced since Napoleon III.” Wilson seemed a bit too Bryanite for The World’s taste, but that shortcoming was “vastly overbalanced by his elements of strength.” Wilson had proved “his political courage and fearlessness” and shown himself to be “the sort of a man who ought to be President.” This good news from New Jersey and The World did not hearten Wilson. He told Mary Peck, “I have not the least idea of being nominated, because … the outcome is in the hands of professional case-hardened politicians who serve only the
ir own interests and who know I will not serve them except as I might serve the party in general. I have no deep stakes involved in the game.”27

  Wilson was bracing himself to face an impending disappointment. But his prospects were not quite as bleak as he thought. Despite the primary defeats, his candidacy had attracted widespread support. In addition to The World, a number of important newspapers and magazines endorsed his nomination, such as Page’s The World’s Work, The Independent, The Nation, The Outlook, the New York Evening Post, The Kansas City Star, and Daniels’s Raleigh News and Observer. Protestant church leaders and journals embraced him as one of their own, as did teachers around the country. Wilson college clubs had more than 100 chapters by the time of the convention, with 10,000 members. Most important, Wilson had a strong, well-financed organization behind him. His wealthy Princeton friends contributed $85,000, of which $51,000 came from Cleveland Dodge, while other big donors chipped in an additional $65,000. Tensions between McCombs and McAdoo did not prevent them from resourcefully working the political circuit. They played the southern cards skillfully, gaining second-choice support from Underwood backers and extracting promises from his managers not to withdraw in favor of Clark. Moreover, Bryan declined to endorse Clark, and some people thought he might try to exploit a deadlocked convention to gain another nomination for himself. In short, Wilson’s situation was serious but not hopeless.28

  The year 1912 witnessed two of the most exciting national political conventions in American history. The first to meet and by far the more dramatic was the Republican gathering at the middle of June in Chicago. Nothing could match that convention’s furious exchanges on and off the floor between the Roosevelt and Taft forces, charges of a “steal” from the ex-president and his supporters, and the walkout by his delegates, who promised to start a third party. Roosevelt spoke to those delegates in person. In the most impassioned speech of his life, he pledged to carry the battle forward with the new party: “We fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future; unheeding of our individual hearts; with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.” Wilson’s reaction to these events was guarded and quizzical. Even before the Republican convention, he had soured on Roosevelt and what he called “his present insane distemper of egotism!”29

  The Republican split brought both peril and opportunity to Wilson’s cause. At first glance, this development worsened things for him by making victory for the Democrats now seem well-nigh certain. All they had to do was hang together, so the conventional wisdom went, and they would win no matter who headed their ticket. At a deeper level, however, Roosevelt’s bolt vastly expanded the stakes of the election. Some of the ex-president’s friends thought he got carried away with his emotions, while others shared Wilson’s view that he was at least slightly mad. Neither was true. Despite the sound and fury of the Republican convention and the pretext offered by the “steal,” there was long-pondered, deeply thought-out method in Roosevelt’s madness. He had convinced himself that the current battles over the control of big business and the extension of democracy were repeating the sectional conflict half a century earlier over slavery. He intended his new party to play the role previously played by Lincoln’s Republicans—of standing up and fighting for freedom and national unity—and to emerge as a major, lasting political force.30

  Wilson shared these views, though with a different twist. In February, he had alluded to Lincoln’s “fearless analysis” that the nation could not endure half-slave and half-free. “[T]hat statement ought be made now,” Wilson declared, “—that as our economic affairs are now organized they cannot go on.” The present division of the country was more intricate and difficult, but it was “something that can, by clear thinking, be dealt with and successfully dealt with, and no man who is a friend of this country predicts any deeper sorts of trouble.” Now Roosevelt’s actions threatened to inject dangerous passions into the present conflict and reshape the face of American politics. If the Democrats nominated a party regular like Clark or a southerner like Underwood, they would follow the Republicans in discrediting themselves in the eyes of progressive-minded voters, thus expanding Roosevelt’s new venture into a major party—so Roosevelt and his supporters believed and hoped. His son Kermit told their distant cousin Franklin, who was married to the ex-president’s niece Eleanor, “Pop is praying for the nomination of Champ Clark.”31

  The delegates who convened in Baltimore on June 25, 1912, came close to giving the ex-president his heart’s desire. On the first ballot, Clark led Wilson by 440½ to 324, with Governor Harmon of Ohio next at 148 and Underwood fourth at 117½; another 57 votes were scattered among four candidates, including 31 for Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana. On the next eight ballots, Wilson and Clark each picked up a few votes. The standoff broke on the tenth ballot. Persistent rumors predicted that Tammany would switch from Harmon to Clark, and that happened when the machine’s boss, Charles Murphy, cast the state’s 90 votes for the Speaker. That shift gave a majority of the delegates to Clark, who reportedly was writing his telegram of acceptance and expected to be nominated on one of the next few ballots, and Wilson was ready to concede.32

  If this had been a Republican convention, it would have been all over; only a majority was required for that party’s nomination. If this had been a normal Democratic convention, it would also have been all over. The party did require two thirds for nomination, but not since 1844 had a candidate won a majority and not gone on to win the nomination. But this was far from a normal Democratic convention. Though nowhere near as explosive as the Republicans’ recent fracas in Chicago, this one witnessed plenty of fireworks. Before the proceedings opened, Bryan had telegraphed the candidates to demand that they oppose anyone for temporary chairman of the convention who was “conspicuously identified with the reactionary element of the party.” He was taking a slap at Alton Parker, the party’s conservative nominee in the race against Roosevelt in 1904, who enjoyed the backing of Tammany and other northern machines. McCombs drafted a reply for Wilson that straddled the issue, just as Clark’s reply did. When the governor received McCombs’s draft, in his bedroom at Sea Girt, he said, “I cannot sign this.” Sitting on the edge of a bed, he wrote his own reply on a pad of paper. “You are quite right,” he told Bryan. “No one will doubt where my sympathies lie.” Parker won the convention chairmanship with votes from the Clark forces, thereby adding weight to the rumors about a deal with Tammany. Further fights followed over the seating of delegates and the rules for voting. Bryan stirred up more controversy when he introduced a resolution on the floor demanding that delegates allied with Wall Street moguls not be seated. It was a quixotic gesture that angered even some of his staunchest allies, but it kept progressive sentiment squarely at the fore of the convention.33

  Those fights offered a prelude to what transpired next. Tammany’s switch on the tenth ballot infuriated Bryan, who began to maneuver against Clark. According to Tumulty’s recollection, Bryan telephoned Wilson to tell him that his only chance was to declare that he would not accept the nomination with Tammany’s help. Tumulty and Wilson decided that there was nothing to lose, and the governor sent a telephone message stating, “For myself, I have no hesitation in making that declaration.” Then, possibly at Ellen’s instigation, he sent a second message saying he would not make that declaration public. McCombs later claimed he had not delivered either message to Bryan. Whatever happened, Bryan took to the warpath against Tammany. During the calling of the roll for the fourteenth ballot, he declared on the floor that he could not vote for any candidate who would “accept the high honor of the presidential nomination at the hands of Mr. Murphy.” He then switched his previously instructed vote for Clark to Wilson.34 This marked the beginning of the turn of Wilson’s fortunes.

  At Sea Girt, the governor tried to deal at long distance with what was happening in Baltimore. He tried to stay calm by playing golf and reading John Morley’s Life of Gladstone.
But as he later confessed to Mrs. Peck, “While the convention was in session there was hardly a minute between breakfast and midnight when some one of our little corps was not at the telephone on some business connected with the convention.” One telephone call came early in the morning of June 29 from a distraught McCombs, who said all was lost. According to William McAdoo’s recollection, McCombs went to pieces, and the two men got into an argument after the call. McAdoo then telephoned Wilson and talked him out of quitting. In Sea Girt, everyone around the breakfast table was dispirited—except Wilson. When he noticed a catalog from a coffin company in the morning mail, he commented, “They’ve got their catalogue here by the first mail.” But he was not ready to attend his own political funeral. Later in the day, reporters asked him what answer he might give to a telegram from Clark’s manager asking him to withdraw. “There will be none,” the governor said.35

  From then on, Wilson’s prospects improved, though at a snail’s pace. This convention offered a foretaste of the party’s fratricidal, seemingly interminable gatherings in the next decade. Behind the open debates about progressivism and bosses there were rumblings of the social and cultural conflict between country and city, “native” and immigrant, Protestant and Catholic, that would come close to destroying the Democrats in the 1920s. But in 1912, those conflicts had not yet come to the forefront. Also, an undemocratic rule and old-fashioned wheeling and dealing still prevailed. The two-thirds rule, which, like most progressive Democrats, Wilson opposed, saved him from defeat. Behind-the-scenes horse trading finally brought him victory.