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Theodore Roosevelt and His Times
Chapter XIV. The Glorious Failure
by Howland, Harold
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The third act in the drama of the Progressive party was filled
with the campaign for the Presidency. It was a three-cornered
fight. Taft stood for Republican conservatism and clung to the
old things. Roosevelt fought for the progressive rewriting of
Republican principles with added emphasis on popular government
and social justice as defined in the New Nationalism. The
Democratic party under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson espoused
with more or less enthusiasm the old Democratic principles
freshly interpreted and revivified in the declaration they called
the New Freedom. The campaign marked the definite entrance of the
nation upon a new era. One thing was clear from the beginning:
the day of conservatism and reaction was over; the people of the
United States had definitely crossed their Rubicon and had
committed themselves to spiritual and moral progress.
The campaign had one dramatic incident. On the 14th of October,
just before entering the Auditorium at Milwaukee, Roosevelt was
shot by a fanatic. His immediate action was above everything
characteristic. Some time later in reply to a remark that he had
been foolhardy in going on with his speech just after the attack,
Roosevelt said, "Why, you know, I didn't think I had been
mortally wounded. If I had been mortally wounded, I would have
bled from the lungs. When I got into the motor I coughed hard
three times, and put my hand up to my mouth; as I did not find
any blood, I thought that I was not seriously hurt, and went on
with my speech."
The opening words of the speech which followed were equally
typical:
"Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't
know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but
it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose . . . . The bullet
is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I
will try my best . . . . First of all, I want to say this about
myself; I have altogether too important things to think of to
feel any concern over my own death; and now I cannot speak
insincerely to you within five minutes of being shot. I am
telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for
many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want
you to understand that I am ahead of the game anyway. No man has
had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way.
I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to
do, and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you
with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in
whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my
regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for
feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety,
but I cannot understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any
heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be
occupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty."
There was a great deal of self-revelation in these words. Even
the critic accustomed to ascribe to Roosevelt egotism and love of
gallery applause must concede the courage, will-power, and
self-forgetfulness disclosed by the incident.
The election was a debacle for reaction, a victory for Democracy,
a triumph in defeat for the Progressive party. Taft carried two
States, Utah and Vermont, with eight electoral votes; Woodrow
Wilson carried forty States, with 435 electoral votes; and
Roosevelt carried five States, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania,
South Dakota, and Washington, and eleven out of the thirteen
votes of California, giving him 88 electoral votes. Taft's
popular vote was 3,484,956; Wilson's was 6,293,019; while
Roosevelt's was 4,119,507. The fact that Wilson was elected by a
minority popular vote is not the significant thing, for it is far
beyond the capability of any political observer to declare what
would have been the result if there had been but two parties in
the field. The triumph for the Progressive party lay in the
certainty that its emergence had compelled the election of a
President whose face was toward the future. If the Roosevelt
delegates at Chicago in June had acquiesced in the result of the
steam-roller Convention, it is highly probable that Woodrow
Wilson would not have been the choice of the Democratic
Convention that met later at Baltimore.
During the succeeding four years the Progressive party, as a
national organization, continued steadily to "dwindle, peak, and
pine." More and more of its members and supporters slipped or
stepped boldly back to the Republican party. Its quondam
Democratic members had largely returned to their former
allegiance with Wilson, either at the election or after it.
Roosevelt once more withdrew from active participation in public
life, until the Great War, with its gradually increasing
intrusions upon American interests and American rights, aroused
him to vigorous and aggressive utterance on American
responsibility and American duty. He became a vigorous critic of
the Administration.
Once more a demand began to spring up for his nomination for the
Presidency; the Progressive party began to show signs of reviving
consciousness. There had persisted through the years a little
band of irreconcilables who were Progressives or nothing. They
wanted a new party of radical ideas regardless of anything in the
way of reformation and progress that the old parties might
achieve. There were others who preferred to go back to the
Republican party rather than to keep up the Progressive party as
a mere minority party of protest, but who hoped in going back to
be able to influence their old party along the lines of progress.
There were those who were Rooseveltians pure and simple and who
would follow him wherever he led.
All these groups wanted Roosevelt as President. They united to
hold a convention of the Progressive party at Chicago in 1916 on
the same days on which the Republican Convention met there. Each
convention opened with a calculating eye upon the activities of
the other. But both watched with even more anxious surmise for
some sign of intention from the Progressive leader back at Oyster
Bay. He held in his single hand the power of life and death for
the Progressive party. His decision as to cooperative action with
the Republicans or individual action as a Progressive would be
the most important single factor in the campaign against Woodrow
Wilson, who was certain of renomination. Three questions
confronted and puzzled the two bodies of delegates: Would the
Republicans nominate Roosevelt or another? If another, what would
Roosevelt do? If another, what would the Progressives do?
For three days the Republican National Convention proceeded
steadily and stolidly upon its appointed course. Everything had
been done in the stereotyped way on the stereotyped time-table in
the stereotyped language. No impropriety or infelicity had been
permitted to mar the smooth texture of its surface. The temporary
chairman in his keynote speech had been as mildly oratorical, as
diffusely patriotic, and as nobly sentimental as any Fourth of
July orator of a bygone day. The whole tone of the Convention had
been subdued and decorous with the decorum of incertitude and
timidity. That Convention did not know what it wanted. It only
knew that there was one thing that it did not want and that it
was afraid of, and another thing it would rather not have and was
afraid it would have to take. It wanted neither Theodore
Roosevelt nor Charles E. Hughes, and its members were distinctly
uncomfortable at the thought that they might have to take one or
the other. It was an old-fashioned convention of the hand-picked
variety. It smacked of the former days when the direct primary
had not yet introduced the disturbing thought that the voters and
not the office-holders and party leaders ought to select their
candidates.
It was a docile, submissive convention, not because it was ruled
by a strong group of men who knew what they wanted and proposed
to compel their followers to give it to them, but because it was
composed of politicians great and small to whom party regularity
was the breath of their nostrils. They were ready to do the
regular thing; but the only two things in sight were confoundedly
irregular.
Two drafts were ready for their drinking and they dreaded both.
They could nominate one of two men, and to nominate either of
them was to fling open the gates of the citadel of party
regularity and conformity and let the enemy in. Was it to be
Roosevelt or Hughes? Roosevelt they would not have. Hughes they
would give their eye teeth not to take. No wonder they were
subdued and inarticulate. No wonder they suffered and were
unhappy. So they droned along through their stereotyped routine,
hoping dully against fate.
The hot-heads in the Progressive Convention wanted no delay, no
compromise. They would have nominated Theodore Roosevelt out of
hand with a whoop, and let the Republican Convention take him or
leave him. But the cooler leaders realized the importance of
union between the two parties and knew, or accurately guessed,
what the attitude of Roosevelt would be. With firm hand they kept
the Convention from hasty and irrevocable action. They proposed
that overtures be made to the Republican Convention with a view
to harmonious agreement. A conference was held between committees
of the two conventions to see if common ground could be
discovered. At the first session of the joint committee it
appeared that there was sincere desire on both sides to get
together, but that the Progressives would have no one but
Roosevelt, while the Republicans would not have him but were
united on no one else. When the balloting began in the Republican
Convention, the only candidate who received even a respectable
block of votes was Hughes, but his total was hardly more than
half of the necessary majority. For several ballots there was no
considerable gain for any of the numerous candidates, and when
the Convention adjourned late Friday night the outcome was as
uncertain as ever. But by Saturday morning the Republican leaders
and delegates had resigned themselves to the inevitable, and the
nomination of Hughes was assured. When the Progressive Convention
met that morning, the conference committee reported that the
Republican members of the committee had proposed unanimously the
selection of Hughes as the candidate of both parties.
Thus began the final scene in the Progressive drama, and a more
thrilling and intense occasion it would be difficult to imagine.
It was apparent that the Progressive delegates would have none of
it. They were there to nominate their own beloved leader and they
intended to do it. A telegram was received from Oyster Bay
proposing Senator Lodge as the compromise candidate, and the
restive delegates in the Auditorium could with the greatest
difficulty be held back until the telegram could be received and
read at the Coliseum. A direct telephone wire from the Coliseum
to a receiver on the stage of the Auditorium kept the Progressive
body in instant touch with events in the other Convention. In the
Auditorium the atmosphere was electric. The delegates bubbled
with excitement. They wanted to nominate Roosevelt and be done
with it. The fear that the other Convention would steal a march
on them and make its nomination first set them crazy with
impatience. The hall rumbled and sputtered and fizzed and
detonated. The floor looked like a giant corn popper with the
kernels jumping and exploding like mad.
The delegates wanted action; the leaders wanted to be sure that
they had kept faith with Roosevelt and with the general situation
by giving the Republican delegates a chance to hear his last
proposal. Bainbridge Colby, of New York, put Roosevelt in
nomination with brevity and vigor; Hiram Johnson seconded the
nomination with his accustomed fire. Then, as the word came over
the wire that balloting had been resumed in the Coliseum, the
question was put at thirty-one minutes past twelve, and every
delegate and every alternate in the Convention leaped to his feet
with upstretched arm and shouted "Aye."
Doubtless more thrilling moments may come to some men at some
time, somewhere, but you will hardly find a delegate of that
Progressive Convention to believe it. Then the Convention
adjourned, to meet again at three to hear what the man they had
nominated would say.
At five o'clock in the afternoon, after a couple of hours of
impatient and anxious marking time with routine matters, the
Progressive delegates received the reply from their leader. It
read thus:
"I am very grateful for the honor you confer upon me by
nominating me as President. I cannot accept it at this time. I do
not know the attitude of the candidate of the Republican party
toward the vital questions of the day. Therefore, if you desire
an immediate decision, I must decline the nomination.
"But if you prefer to wait, I suggest that my conditional refusal
to run be placed in the hands of the Progressive National
Committee. If Mr. Hughes's statements, when he makes them, shall
satisfy the committee that it is for the interest of the country
that he be elected, they can act accordingly and treat my refusal
as definitely accepted.
"If they are not satisfied, they can so notify the Progressive
party, and at the same time they can confer with me, and then
determine on whatever action we may severally deem appropriate to
meet the needs of the country.
"Theodore Roosevelt."
Puzzled, disheartened, overwhelmed, the Progressive delegates
went away. They could not then see how wise, how farsighted, how
inevitable Roosevelt's decision was. Some of them will never see
it. Probably few of them as they went out of those doors realized
that they had taken part in the last act of the romantic and
tragic drama of the National Progressive party. But such was the
fact, for the march of events was too much for it. Fate, not its
enemies, brought it to an end.
So was born, lived a little space, and died the Progressive
party. At its birth it caused the nomination, by the Democrats,
and the election, by the people, of Woodrow Wilson. At its death
it brought about the nomination of Charles E. Hughes by the
Republicans. It forced the writing into the platforms of the more
conservative parties of principles and programmes of popular
rights and social regeneration. The Progressive party never
attained to power, but it wielded a potent power. It was a
glorious failure.
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