Along with 23 of her progressive colleagues, Florence Collins Porter favored McGovern.
So, about three hours later, did 13 Wisconsin delegates irked by La Follette’s petulance. But the final count—558 votes for Root and 501 for McGovern—indicated that Roosevelt was still 49 votes short of the majority he needed in his quest for the nomination.
Meanwhile, the ablest public man he had ever known, in a previous life, mounted the rostrum and appealed for Party unity, to rows of emptying benches.
WHEN ROOT GAVELED the delegates to order at 11:15 the next morning, Wednesday, 19 June, the Coliseum was so crammed that the Chicago Fire Department had to bar entry to further would-be spectators. “The unfinished business before the convention,” the chairman announced, “is the motion of the gentleman of Missouri.” He said that Governor Hadley and Mr. Watson had agreed that debate on the subject of substitute delegates would be limited to three hours, divided equally.
Hadley, elegant in a double-breasted, knee-length coat that he somehow carried off casually, spoke first, expanding on his remarks of the day before. He used language as strong as Roosevelt’s to describe the “naked theft” of convention seats by Taft delegates, but his manner was unprovocative and his response to every objection patiently polite. The odor of partisanship, lingering over the hall from the day before, cleared, and the convention grew calm. Even Barnes listened attentively as Hadley presented a declaration, signed by the progressive minority of the National Committee, that the validity of plausible claims for seats among the delegations of eleven states “should be determined by the uncontested delegates of this convention.”
Much of the respect accorded Hadley came from a general awareness that he was the Colonel’s potential running mate. Taft had wanted him too, until he became one of the governors asking Roosevelt to run. (In a sure sign that the President despaired of reelection, he had chosen to retain Vice President Sherman, who was moribund with heart disease.) “I do not know if a majority of this convention agrees with me upon the proposition that Theodore Roosevelt ought to be our candidate for President of the United States,” Hadley said to a round of applause. “But there can be no difference on the proposition in the mind of any intelligent man that his voice today is the greatest voice in the western world.”
A series of more provocative, fist-waving speakers took up the seating debate. The noise level of the convention began to rise. Senator Lodge’s son-in-law, Congressman Augustus Peabody Gardner of Massachusetts, was so exasperated by the threat of a progressive, Henry J. Allen, to unload “two hundred pounds” of documents disqualifying the Washington State delegation that he stood on a chair repeatedly bellowing, “Are you going to abide by the decision of this convention?”
“I will support the nominee on one condition,” Allen replied. Pandemonium broke out, and for some minutes he could not continue. He waited for quiet. “Upon the one condition that his nomination is not accomplished by fraud and thievery.”
Instantly every Roosevelt delegate in the hall, with the exception of a few from Illinois, was leaping and cheering. William Flinn emerged as a major loudmouth, hurling insults at Elihu Root. He punctuated them with jets of tobacco juice. The chairman listened with indifference, showing disapproval only when anyone tried to interrupt a reasonable argument. Root’s voice was not strong, and his orders had to be amplified by aides sprinting down the aisles with megaphones. But he projected such an air of chilly rectitude, in his morning coat and gray trousers, that usually it was enough for him to step to the front of the rostrum to restore order.
His fairness extended to stopping the clock between speeches, so that prolonged ovations could expend themselves. The hours dragged on. In mid-afternoon Hadley and Watson had an emergency conference and agreed, with mutual alarm, that the proceedings were on track to a deadlock. Unless the question of the seventy-two contested delegates was resolved, it could split the GOP—no matter whose name was placed in nomination. Watson, gray-faced, took the podium and declared, “The convention is not in a fit condition, neither is it in a fit temper … to judge intelligently upon any one of these contests.” He said that Governor Hadley was willing, on behalf of the Roosevelt forces, to allow all seating claims to be decided by the credentials committee.
That body was not yet appointed, but for the moment, Hadley was seen as the savior of the Party. Delegation by delegation, an ovation for him built up until observers in the press box stared at the sight of William Flinn and William Barnes, Jr., cheering in tandem. The demonstration was that rare phenomenon in a national convention, a spontaneous expression of emotion, and it went through several mood changes. For the first twenty minutes it was bipartisan, with the potential of whipping up into a draft of the governor as a compromise nominee. But then rhythmic cries of “Teddy, Teddy—we want Teddy!” developed in the uproar, like the drumbeat of a coming fanfare. Attention began to divert from Hadley on the floor to a pretty woman standing in a high gallery. She wore a white dress, with a bunch of pinks at her waist. Whatever mysterious force focused fourteen thousand pairs of eyes on her, she was thespian enough to revel in it. She blew kisses at the crowd, then, leaning over the balustrade, unrolled a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. The noise became deafening. Unfazed, she began to yell, and proved to have the lungs of a Valkyrie. “Boys—give three cheers for Teddy!”
A golden bear materialized beneath her, in the shape of the mascot of the California delegation. She reached out and cuddled it as it rose on the top of a proffered totem, whereupon the poles of other Roosevelt delegations joined in and jiggled up and down in phallic rivalry. The woman in white vanished for a minute. When she reappeared on the floor, it seemed improbable that the Coliseum could contain more sound. She marched up the main aisle, flushed with excitement, followed by stampeding delegates in an unconscious parody of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. As William Jennings Bryan watched from the press box, perhaps remembering a far-off day when he had stimulated almost as great a riot, she was hoisted giggling onto a shelf of shoulders and carried to the rostrum. Elihu Root tolerantly let her take control of the proceedings.
She did so without the aid of the gavel or megaphones, merely waving a long-gloved arm to increase or decrease the applause inundating her. When she again brandished Roosevelt’s portrait—looking rather tattered now—the cries of “We want Teddy!” broke out with renewed force. It took fifty minutes for the tumult to die down and for the woman to be coaxed, as gently as possible, back into her box.
Hadley rejoined Root and Watson onstage. His luster of an hour before had been much diminished. As Roosevelt’s floor leader, he had to regret that he had agreed to let the credentials committee decide the matter of the contested delegates. If his alternative list could have been resubmitted to the whole convention, at this moment of maximum affection for the Colonel, it would almost certainly have been approved, with Roosevelt cleared for nomination, and he generally accepted as the likely next vice president of the United States.
Under the circumstances, the best Hadley could do was persuade Governor Charles S. Deneen of Illinois to move that none of the seventy-two men whose seats were being contested should be allowed to participate in the election of members of the still-unconstituted committee. Nor should they be allowed to approve or disapprove the committee’s report, when it was issued. The morality of this was to prevent any possibly fraudulent delegate from voting on the rightness of his own case, or the cases of his seventy-one contested colleagues.
Watson countered by moving to lay Deneen’s amendment on the table.
By no flicker of expression did Root, gavel in hand, reveal that he recognized that the determining moment of the convention had arrived. He ordered a roll call on Watson’s motion. “That question is not debatable.”
Hadley tried to debate it anyway. “I wish to ask if the individuals whose titles to seats are here challenged are to vote upon this motion.”
“The chair will rule upon that question at the conclus
ion of the roll call.”
As the roll slowly proceeded, the heat of the demonstration went out of the room, and instinctual loyalties reasserted themselves. There were minor variations on yesterday’s vote—Wisconsin announced itself as “solid this time” against Taft—but at the end of the call, the President’s strength had increased by nine votes, to 567 over Roosevelt’s 507, with four abstentions.
It was small comfort to Hadley and Flinn that their candidate was now only thirty votes short of being nominated, since Taft could afford to lose plenty and still defeat the Colonel. And here was Root moving in for the kill. “No man can be permitted to vote on the question of his own right to a seat in the convention,” he said. “But the rule does not disqualify any delegate whose name is upon the roll from voting on the contest of any other man’s right, or from participating in the ordinary business of the convention so long as he holds his seat.”
Otherwise, Root pointed out, any minority could assure control of a deliberative body by bringing in enough rebels, under a surprise resolution, to transform themselves into a majority. He cited as precedent the procedural manual of the House of Representatives. Adopting Hadley’s motion implied that every seat in the Coliseum could be contested, “and there would be no convention at all, as nobody would be entitled to participate.”
As the realization spread that Roosevelt had no hope of seating any more delegates, his dispirited supporters in the galleries streamed out of the hall, not bothering to hear who had been appointed to the various operational committees. They knew now that the White House would control all agenda concerning credentials, permanent organization, rules, and resolutions.
THAT NIGHT THE WOMAN in white, identified as Mrs. W. A. Davis of Chicago, was brought to the Congress Hotel to meet the Colonel. He emerged briefly from his conference room, where urgent discussions were under way, and acknowledged her contribution. “It was a bully piece of work,” he told her, then hurried back inside.
Had he been under less nervous strain, he might have thanked her more profusely. But throughout the day Roosevelt had been resisting moves to get him to withdraw in favor of Hadley, or even La Follette or Cummins, along with blandishments to keep him from bolting. He said he would not give way to any candidate unless the temporary roll was purged. And he told some furtive Old Guard emissaries, offering him a face-saving number of delegates if he would stay in the convention, that under no circumstances could he subscribe to the renomination of William Howard Taft.
He seemed convinced that the President was personally responsible for every dubious name on the roll. Thugs every one of them, they had stuck together in vote after vote on the individual state and district slates, completing the organization of the convention and proving that crime did pay in Republican politics. Or so it seemed to Roosevelt, in his red rage against Elihu Root as a “receiver of stolen goods.” There could be no debate on the subject: his old friend was his mortal enemy. Having won the chair through the machinations of Rosewater, Watson, Barnes, and other unconvicted felons, Root had shut out the legitimate delegates on Hadley’s list, all of them radiant with righteousness. Convention attendees who thought they had seen a solemn, impartial statesman on the podium were therefore subject to group delusion. Roosevelt did not need to have been there, or even listen down his telephone wire: he knew what venality looked and sounded like.
Party regulars and progressive rebels crammed his suite until well after midnight, alternately preaching loyalty and revolt. “I never saw the Colonel so fagged,” Henry Stoddard wrote afterward. “For hours, his fighting blood had been at fever heat.” At one point, Roosevelt sent for Edith and asked, “I wonder if it would be better for Hadley to head the Party.”
Her reply was unhelpful. “Theodore, remember that often one wants to do the hardest and noblest thing, but sometimes it does not follow that it is the right thing.”
The last of his visitors was Senator Borah, a man so divided that the cleft on his chin, lining up with his center part and frown, seemed to separate him into halves. He dragged Roosevelt into the bathroom and said, “This far I have gone with you. I can go no further.”
Borah made it clear that many progressives like himself would be loath to risk their political careers by bolting to a third party that might not last. Roosevelt emerged from the bathroom looking furious. But he was plainly wavering.
It was now nearly two o’clock in the morning, and the suite was almost empty. Would-be bolters had gone to the Florentine Room to hold a defiant rally against the GOP organization. Their cheers and oratory could be heard down the corridor. Three tired intimates remained: Stoddard, Frank Munsey, and George Perkins. They urged Roosevelt to go on with his fight.
“My fortune, my magazines and my newspapers are with you,” Munsey said. Perkins pledged his own wealth.
Roosevelt’s moment of decision arrived when a delegation from the Florentine Room burst in to request that he present himself. He reached for his campaign hat and turned to Borah. “You see, I can’t desert my friends now.”
When he arrived at the rally he found it consisted largely of progressive delegates with legitimate seats at the convention. Some of them, indeed, were appointees to the credentials committee, but had vowed not to serve, in solidarity with their banned colleagues. His reception was tumultuous.
“As far as I am concerned I am through,” he said. “If you are voted down,”—he was referring to the roll call on the committee report, expected later that day—“I hope you, the real and lawful majority of the convention, will organize as such, and you will do it if you have the courage and loyalty of your convictions.”
Roosevelt went on talking for several minutes, berating the callowness of the RNC and the perfidy of Senator Root, but nothing he said matched the impact of his opening statement.
After he left the room, Hiram Johnson jumped on a table and confirmed to dazed delegates what they had just heard. “Gentlemen.… We are prepared for the birth of a new Republican party which will nominate for president Theodore Roosevelt.” Gifford Pinchot thanked God. But Nicholas Roosevelt wrote in his diary, “I am depressed. It spells death.”
AS OFTEN ON the eve of some climactic battle, there ensued a period of uneasy calm in downtown Chicago, with no bands playing and traffic in the streets returning to normal. Convention officials announced a twenty-four-hour recess, purportedly because the various committees needed time to complete their work. The real reason was that Taft’s managers dreaded the coming bolt and were hoping that secessionist passions would cool.
If any sightseers were on hand that Thursday to watch the Colonel take his scheduled walk on Lake Michigan, they were disappointed. The weather was hot and damp. He spent most of the afternoon out of sight, conferring with intimates. Ominously, the Illinois delegation, which had been elected in the first great success of his primary campaign, announced that it was 56 to 2 against bolting. Four other states expressed similar qualms. Roosevelt was alarmed enough to issue a statement rejecting reports that he intended to march into the Coliseum and precipitate a riot. But he confirmed that he would bolt if it suited him, no matter how many cowards chose not to follow. “There will probably be a new national convention,” he said, “and we will then build up a new party.”
After that he was so much at leisure that he was able to spend four hours at dinner with his family and Munsey and Perkins. Timothy Woodruff, chafing under Boss Barnes’s iron control of the New York delegation, came over to report a threat from Mrs. Woodruff: “Timmy, if you don’t bolt, I’m going to Reno.”
“The crisis of the convention is at hand,” William Jennings Bryan wrote that evening.
It is no pleasant situation in which the ex-president finds himself, nor is it an ordinary situation. Twice chief executive of the nation, the second time elected by the largest majority that a president ever achieved; the recipient of honors in foreign lands and supreme dictator in his own party, he now finds the man whom he nominated and elected pitted against him
in the most bitter contest that our country has ever seen, and he sees that opponent operating with a skill of a past master the very machinery which the tutor constructed and taught him to use.
There was no immediate resumption of hostilities when the convention opened for business at midday on Friday. But the report of the credentials committee served only to increase Taft’s majority to 605. This could not have been achieved without the defection of forty or fifty Roosevelt delegates. Significantly, the day’s warmest applause was for Bryan, when he lumbered in to take his seat in the press box. Old, bald, and Democratic he may have been, but at least he had once stood for a common cause. “If you don’t look out,” a fellow correspondent joked, “the Baltimore convention will nominate you for President.”
“Young man,” Bryan said with mock sternness, “do you suppose that I’m going to run for President just to pull the Republican Party out of a hole?”
At the end of the day, it was obvious that the Taft forces were still playing for time, dragging out roll calls in order to exhaust whatever energy was left in the progressive opposition. By now, in any ordinary convention, the candidates should have been nominated. Root remarked, “Evidently there are delegates here who do not wish to go home for Sunday.” During the umpteenth procedural intermission, the band played “You’ll Do the Same Thing Over and Over and Over Again.”
THE ATMOSPHERE on Saturday, 22 June, was different and dangerous from the start. Root gaveled the convention to order early, at 10:43 A.M., and at once the fake steamroller whistles shrilled, accompanied by accelerating, chugging puffs and a mocking cry of “all aboard.” The Roosevelt family box was noticeably empty, with only Alice sitting like Cassandra, sure of coming catas trophe.
She joined in, however, when a group of delegates started chanting, “We want Teddy!” and “Roosevelt, first, last and all the time!” There was no fear of her father storming the hall and imperiling what was left of his presidential dignity. He had simply sent a message expressing the “hope” that his delegates would take no part in the nomination of a tainted candidate.
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