Between the election of 1912 and the Campaign of 1916, a terrible world war erupted in Europe, one that would soon devastate the European countryside and quite literally decimate the “flower of a generation.” Throughout this horrific conflict, President Woodrow Wilson and his secretary of state, the veteran of the anti-imperialism movement, the Great Commoner William Jennings Bryan, worked diligently to establish a foreign policy rooted in moral principles and respect for the sovereignty of nations. Thus in 1916, the administration promised independence to the Philippine Islands, which had been acquired as the spoils of victory in the successful war against Spain under President McKinley. Other territories acquired as a consequence of the Spanish-American War, such as Puerto Rico, were given territorial status (Cuba having already been granted independence). The foreign policies of Wilson (who was the major force behind fashioning American policy abroad) and Bryan were quite apart from McKinley-Roosevelt and represented a visible change from American exertions at the turn of the century. (In 1915, Bryan would resign his post in disagreement over the president’s response to the sinking of the Lusitania, having interpreted the president’s protest against the U-boat strike as bellicose and precipitous of war.) Most important in this regard was the determination of Wilson to maintain American neutrality regarding the Great War that was bleeding Europe white. However, close American economic ties to Britain and France led to a de facto preference for those nations and a concomitant reaction away from Germany; this in turn led to a submarine blockade around the British Isles, aimed at American shipping in particular and resulting in a state of rising tension between the United States and the German government. Wilson’s desire for neutrality was in many ways weakened by these developments. In addition to the growing difficulty in maintaining this neutrality, Wilson faced problems involving relations with Mexico, which was suffering internal violence that spilled over the border into the United States, provoking Wilson to send an American expeditionary force into Mexican territory in pursuit of the revolutionary Pancho Villa. Villa was never captured, and the troops were eventually withdrawn, but it proved a particularly unfortunate and embarrassing episode, marring Wilson’s foreign policy record.
The slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” a reminder of Wilson’s commitment to peace, was first uttered at the Democratic convention in St. Louis, and it quickly became the defining phrase of the election of 1916. Although the convention was intended to stress Wilson’s achievement as an effective president in general—that is, both in terms of domestic as well as foreign policy (“Americanism” was chosen as the rallying theme of the convention, received somewhat blandly by the participants)—it was the issue of sustained peace for Americans that grabbed the delegates, a theme that was articulated from the beginning by the keynote speaker, New York governor Martin Glynn (the first Irish Catholic to reach the governor’s office in any state), who extemporaneously thundered against the war and in praise of Wilson’s policy of restraint. Poignantly, Glynn mentioned those mothers and wives who had been able to keep their sons and husbands near the hearth and out of “the moldering dissolution of the grave.” In a call-and-response cadence, the delegates would answer Glynn’s encomiums of Wilson with the chant, “We didn’t go to war, we didn’t go to war.” By the second day of the convention, Wilson’s persistent neutrality was the theme of the convention, and the slogan “He kept us out of the war” overshadowed all other achievements of the administration.
Within the party, Wilson was universally popular and easily won renomination, with his vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, picked once again for the bottom of the ticket. Wilson’s domestic agenda, introduced as part of his New Freedom ideology, had been pursued vigorously and in close cooperation with Congress throughout his first term. Wilson pushed hard for tariff reform that would lower tariffs (a routine concern of the Democrats since long before the Civil War), currency reform, trust-busting (building on the legacy of his Republican predecessors, presidents Roosevelt and Taft), reforms supportive of labor and farming, and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System to better manage the banks as well as the economy in general. In most ways, Wilson’s New Freedom was a continuation and slight variation of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, and it was the last major push for extensive social and political reforms until the 1930s. But even more than these policies, which were not inconsiderable, it was in foreign policy—and thus in successfully steering the United States away from the carnage now under way in Europe—that Wilson had made a visible difference when compared to his recent predecessors. (It is well known that had Roosevelt won election in 1912, he would have pushed hard to involve the United States in the war.) Going into his reelection effort, Wilson was convincing as the peace candidate, his record having proved his somewhat qualified success in maintaining neutrality.
One of the more poignant moments of the convention involved Bryan, who had fallen out of favor with the party due to his criticism of the president over the Lusitania protest and his attendant resignation from his position as secretary of state. This act led to his ostracism from the party; he was not even invited to serve in the Nebraska delegation, instead forced to attend the convention as a reporter. As the convention progressed, delegates experienced a change of heart, and the old Bryanites once again called for an appearance at the podium from the Great Commoner, the man who had carried the party’s standard in three earlier elections. The rules suspended for this exception, Bryan, absent credentials, addressed the convention on Wilson’s behalf. “I have differed with our President,” Bryan admitted, “on some of the methods employed, but I join with the American people in thanking God that we have a President who does not want this nation plunged into war.”
The Republican Party’s principal goal was to restore unity, having been split in half in the election of 1912, a situation that directly led to the election of the Democrat Wilson. Having dominated presidential politics since 1860 (losing only three elections in 1884, 1892, and 1912 within that time period), the Republicans were unaccustomed to being the party out of power. As is often the case, the party did recover somewhat during the midterm elections of 1914, cutting the Democrats’ congressional majority considerably, especially in the House of Representatives. The party also appeared to have rebounded from the defection of its liberal wing to the Progressive Party. Many Republicans agreed with the Roosevelt/Progressive agenda but had refused to bolt permanently from the GOP. The leadership was still largely controlled by the conservative elements, but in the rank and file there was more diversity, including the reconciled Republican progressives. While the Republicans had reason to be optimistic after gains from the 1914 midterms, they were still vulnerable to division, as both the conservative and liberal wings of the party held their base. A candidate was needed who could somehow appeal to the progressive ranks as well as assure its conservative leadership.
Prior to the 1916 convention in Chicago, a number of potential candidates were suggested, including Elihu Root, the former senator from New York who had served in the cabinets of presidents McKinley and Roosevelt as both secretary of war and secretary of state; Ohio senator Theodore Burton; Lawrence Y. Sherman, the senator from Illinois; and Charles Evans Hughes from New York, associate justice of the Supreme Court. Neither former president Roosevelt nor former president Taft sought the nomination—nor realistically expected that they could win if they had—but both men still enjoyed enough of a following that their names were offered in spite of their own evident disinterest. All told, twenty-one candidates would receive at least one vote at the convention, just over a dozen of which would receive votes in double digits. Also among those mentioned prior to the convention or receiving support at the convention were former vice president (under Roosevelt) Charles Fairbanks of Indiana, Senator John Weeks of Massachusetts, the progressive senator Robert M. La Follette from Wisconsin, industrialist Henry Ford, Roosevelt’s close friend Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, and Senator Philander Knox, who had been a candidate for the nomination in 1908 (losing to Taft, who at that time was Roosevelt’s chosen heir). Not running themselves, Taft and Roosevelt, being former presidents (and Roosevelt being who he was), still held enough political clout to influence delegates. Roosevelt, however, was noncommittal. He admired Root’s abilities, but he now held a grudge against his former cabinet member and friend due to Root’s support of Taft in the bitter Campaign of 1912.
As the convention approached, Hughes seemed to move ahead as a front-runner, but he was by no means secure. Hughes was regarded as a safe choice; as an associate justice, he was not dogged by a potentially controversial political paper trail, and to many within the party, he seemed to be a moderate and thus the very kind of candidate that might unite both wings of the party. On the first convention ballot, Hughes won 253 delegates to 105 for Weeks and 103 for Root, with Fairbanks, progressive senator Albert Cummins of Iowa, and noncandidate Roosevelt trailing behind with 89, 85, and 81, respectively; the remainder of the votes were distributed among 15 additional candidates (including one vote for Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, a promising prospect gaining notice within the party). Had those in the gallery been credentialed to vote, Roosevelt might have had a real chance, for when his name was nominated from the floor by Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico, a thunderous and protracted demonstration broke out in the gallery that lasted for over half an hour and was reported by witnesses as “deafening” in volume. Roosevelt sustained his fierce popularity among the party regulars, but the delegates on the floor were unmoved, and thus the Bull Moose, still keeping his hat from the ring, would not receive more than a sixth-best showing on the first ballot (with his support decreasing on subsequent ballots). Hughes gained more support on the second ballot, winning 326 to Weeks’s 102, with all but two other candidates actually losing votes. The third ballot was all that Hughes needed, winning 950, with the second-best showing at 23 for La Follette (Weeks had withdrawn his name). Fairbanks was tapped to run once more for vice president—the third candidate, along with Thomas A. Hendricks (in 1876, running with Samuel Tilden, and in 1884, serving under President Cleveland) and Adlai Stevenson (in 1892, also serving under Cleveland, and in 1900, running with Bryan) to be nominated for vice president in nonconsecutive conventions.
Meanwhile, the Progressive Party that Roosevelt formed to oppose both Wilson and Taft in 1912 held its own convention across town. Without Roosevelt’s participation, the Progressives lost their unity and their focus. In a letter to the convention, Roosevelt, whose main purpose was now to eject Wilson from the White House, recommended that the Progressives support the Republicans. At one point the Progressives, in a last signal of allegiance to Roosevelt and their reformist cause, nominated him nonetheless; but Roosevelt refused to accept, and in the end the party fell in behind the Republican ticket of Hughes-Fairbanks. Roosevelt could have again run as the Progressive nominee, but perhaps in a concession to the wisdom of the two-party system that had grown out of the American political tradition, he no longer felt it made sense to promote a third party, and thus he reconciled with his old affiliations. As for Hughes, Roosevelt had little regard for him, observing that only a good shave separated the bearded Hughes from the clean-shaven Wilson. But as lukewarm as he was regarding Hughes, he abjectly despised Wilson, whom he referred to as a hypocrite and a “Byzantine logothete.” Thus Roosevelt again campaigned for the Republican cause, a cause that he understood as leading to American commitment to the war. Roosevelt notwithstanding, as a moderate it was clear that Hughes was acceptable to both wings of the party as well as those progressives who had bolted in 1912. With the nomination of Hughes, the Republican Party repeated for the third time the nomination of a jurist for the office of the presidency. Taft, nominated twice, had once served as a judge on the U.S. Sixth Court of Appeals; Hughes resigned his position as an associate justice of the Supreme Court to run for president, a body that Taft himself would eventually join as chief justice. Taft and Hughes were the only former judges to run for the presidency under the formal endorsement of a major party (although judges had been considered as potential candidates, but none had received an actual nomination other than Taft and Hughes).
Hughes was not a hawk on the war issue, but partisan attitudes led to equivocation. Roosevelt, who remained zealously hawkish and committed to immediate war against Germany, and who remained the Great Man of the party, still held pervasive influence within the GOP base; and because of this, many Republicans were less willing than the Democrats to insist on supporting Wilson’s continued neutrality. Hughes was thus caught in the hotbox between a neutral “America First” position and the more pro-Anglo critique directed against Wilson for not protecting American maritime interests against German U-boat attacks in the North Atlantic. When speaking to audiences with a high Germanic mix, Hughes took a softer line than he would otherwise with a different audience. Such waffling on the war spurred the candidate’s critics to assign him a new nickname—Charles Evasive Hughes.
With the Progressive Party moribund in the wake of Roosevelt’s refusal to carry its banner, the Republicans now enjoyed the possibility of a united party against Wilson, a situation that would have guaranteed them victory four years earlier. But Wilson, enjoying the accomplishments that burnished his record, was now a formidable incumbent, much stronger than he had been in 1912. On the other side, though not as electrifying as Roosevelt or as canny as McKinley, Hughes was, as one would expect from a Supreme Court justice, quite capable, and he was personally commanding in his own right. However, Hughes carried three liabilities to the polls in November: the perception by many of a cold personality, Theodore Roosevelt’s martial alarums, and California. To address the former, Hughes made a point of portraying himself as an ordinary chap: meeting crowds to shake hands and kiss babies, attending ball games and seeking out the players, and acting like a tourist at points of interest along the campaign trail. Hughes did enjoy some success in this, as he was gradually perceived as personally more appealing than his public speeches, which, owing no doubt to his considerable learning and juristic proclivities, could be long, dry, and dull in the context of a political campaign.
Eluding Roosevelt’s shadow proved more difficult. Additionally, Roosevelt’s militarism tagged the Republicans with the war party label, further muddying Hughes’s real sentiments. The Democrats could plausibly claim, “The less is plain: if you want WAR, vote for Hughes! If you want Peace with Honor, VOTE for WILSON!” In spite of Hughes’s waffling, there were moments when his actions inadvertently lent some credence to this claim. Hughes promised “unflinching maintenance of all American rights on land and sea,” a gesture that could only mean a more aggressive posture to the Kaiser’s U-boats, which in turn raised the real possibility of a shooting war with Germany. And yet his views were more complex; he excoriated the Wilson administration for its military adventures in Mexico, and as stated above, he at times assumed a more neutral tone, arguing for “America first” and the protection of its international standing, but then lowering his voice when addressing the prospects of armed conflict with Germany.
California is what, in the end, made the difference, and it was personal. An inadvertent snub by Hughes of California’s progressive Republican governor Hiram Johnson (who stood as Roosevelt’s Bull Moose running mate four years earlier) while visiting the Long Beach hotel where Johnson was also staying alienated the party faithful within the Golden State. Hughes would lose the state—which had in recent years been a frequently close battleground—by fewer than four thousand votes, allowing Wilson a clean sweep in the West and thus victory in what would become the closest election since 1888 (at that time former president Cleveland winning against incumbent president Harrison).
The early returns from the East (viz., New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, most of New England) favored Hughes in what was shaping up to be a possible landslide. Hughes took New York’s popular vote by 7 percentage points and Pennsylvania’s by a stunning 14 percentage points, thus allowing him to carry the Electoral College’s two biggest prizes and converting his substantial popular majorities there into 83 electoral votes (45 from New York and 38 from Pennsylvania). As the election developed further, Hughes was further bolstered by winning in Illinois (with 29 electoral votes, now the third-largest prize). It was no surprise that Wilson held the solid South, but events seemed to be rolling against him. However, he managed to win in Ohio, his biggest state (with 24 electoral votes), and which, when combined with Texas (20 electoral votes)—where he enjoyed a staggering 76 percent of the popular vote—and both Virginia and North Carolina taken together (15 electoral college votes each, for a total of 30 votes), he was able to hold on and stave off an early defeat. But it still looked dire for the president. In the Northeast and the Midwest, where the balance of the electoral votes was distributed in 1916, Hughes won decisively, losing only to Wilson in Ohio and New Hampshire in those two regions. This meant that at midnight, Hughes had claimed 254 Electoral College votes, within easy reach of victory, and major newspapers prematurely announced in print the election of a new president.
By morning, however, Hughes had not shown any further gains, and returns from the West showed Wilson in much better shape. With the exception of Oregon and South Dakota, the president had taken every western state, and once California’s returns were finally reported, Wilson was given victory by the slimmest of margins, taking California’s popular vote by winning 46.7 percent to Hughes’s 46.3 percent. This gave 13 electoral votes to Wilson, which proved to be the difference that propelled him to victory. Wilson won the popular vote by 600,000 votes, taking over 9,100,000 (or 49.2%) to Hughes’s total of slightly below 8,500,000 (around 46%), and more importantly, he won in the Electoral College, 277 to 254. Repelling a stronger challenge than expected, President Wilson would return for a second term. The Socialist Party, this time running Allan Benson instead of its veteran standard-bearer, Eugene V. Debs (who had led their ticket in the previous four campaigns), won just over 590,000 votes, which was a considerable loss when compared to the party’s encouraging 1912 total of over 900,000. The Prohibition Party, led by James Hanley, won just over 220,000 votes, which was a 12,000-vote improvement when compared to 1912.
California, which Hughes squandered all because of hurt feelings, was the clear difference in the election: the state that lost him the presidency. According to Mike Sheppard of MIT, a change of only 1,887 votes in California would have been enough to deliver the state, and the White House, to Hughes and send President Wilson home after one term. Interestingly, the election of 1916 demonstrated the power of the South and the West. Hughes dominated the Northeast and the Midwest, a veritable Electoral College bonanza, but won nothing in the South and only ten electoral votes in the West. With Wilson holding Ohio in the Midwest and the Democrats’ one-party southern bloc, and decisively winning the West, he assured his second term. For the first time since 1892, when Cleveland won by splitting these regions with Harrison, and 1884, when Blaine edged out Cleveland in this part of the country, a presidential candidate won the Northeast and the Midwest but lost the general election. But Hughes’s victory in these regions was decisive, winning more convincingly there than Blaine or Harrison in their defeats, a telling indicator of sustained Republican strength in spite of their failure to unseat Wilson. With the exceptions of the antebellum elections of Buchanan and Pierce in which California was the only true western state (Texas was then considered part of the southern bloc), never before had the South and the West combined to deliver the presidency as they had in 1916.
President Wilson was the second Democrat, along with Grover Cleveland, to win the presidency since the ascent of Republican dominance in 1860 behind President Lincoln, both Cleveland and Wilson also managing to win the White House twice. Surprisingly, even though the Democrats were the dominant party before the Civil War, Wilson became the only Democrat at that time to win the White House in consecutive elections (President Cleveland’s victories being nonconsecutive) since President Andrew Jackson in 1828 and 1832. Like Cleveland, Wilson’s two electoral victories were achieved without an absolute majority in the popular vote. The last Democratic candidate for president to win a genuine majority of the popular vote was Samuel Tilden in 1876, who won 50.9 percent of the popular vote but famously lost the election to Rutherford B. Hayes by just one vote in the Electoral College. In fact, only five Democrats to this point had managed to win a popular majority for the presidency: Andrew Jackson (twice in 1828 and 1832), Martin Van Buren (in 1836), Franklin Pierce (in 1852), and Tilden (while losing in 1876), with neither Cleveland nor Wilson managing to join them. Even though Wilson kept the White House for another term, it was still evident that, at least in the politics of the presidency, the Democrats were far from dislodging GOP dominance.
History’s many ironies mock great women and men. President Wilson, the candidate of peace throughout the summer and fall of 1916, would within a few months of his reelection commit Americans to join the blood-soaked, fire-scorched war in Europe. Thus Theodore Roosevelt’s Big America joined the Great War, and Wilson’s health would shatter in pursuit of the lasting peace that he had so strenuously guarded throughout his first term and that he so ardently desired in the war’s aftermath. Collapsing during a speech in Pueblo, Colorado, in September 1919 while promoting the League of Nations and his broader policies of concerted, peaceful internationalism, Wilson would spend the last few months of his presidency infirm, with much of the daily conduct of his administration managed by his wife, Edith. He would pass away just slightly over three years after leaving office. Wilson’s progressivism would recede with him, but the principles that he shared with his immediate Republican predecessors, Taft and Roosevelt, as well as his fellow Democrat, the Great Commoner Bryan, would eventually reemerge with still greater force a decade later, under far more desperate conditions, and under the direction of another and, as it would turn out, equally singular man named Roosevelt.
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