The Presidential Election of 1916, Part I: Challenger Charles Evans Hughes

This Is How Close the Election Was

The U.S. presidential election of 1916 helped shape the world we live in because its winner, Woodrow Wilson, put his personal stamp on the final stages of the Great War and, more important, on how Americans and their subsequent leaders would look at their role in the world, afterward.  Yet, it was a remarkably close election.   Had  Wilson's  opponent, Charles Evans Hughes – an  undeniably brilliant and  multi-gifted man –  carried either Ohio or California, America would have had a new President just as it was being drawn into war. 

Charles Evans Hughes

To some, Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) appeared larger than life. Lawyer and Associate Justice Robert H.  Jackson once said of him, “[He] looks like God and talks  like God.” A brilliant lawyer with a  photographic memory, Hughes became politically prominent in 1905 when he was appointed counsel to New York State legislative committees investigating abusive business practices by utilities and life insurance companies.  

Drafted to run by New York Republicans, he defeated newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in the 1906 gubernatorial election. As governor Hughes removed unfit officials of both parties and secured the authority to initiate investigations of executive agencies, earning the admiration of Progressives of all  stripes. Reelected governor in 1908, Hughes resigned in October 1910 after accepting President William H. Taft's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served as associate justice for six years. He wrote a number of decisions that broadened congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. In June 1916 he resigned at the behest of Republican party leaders to stand as their presidential candidate.  

Former president Theodore Roosevelt was also interested in unseating incumbent President Woodrow  Wilson in 1916.  Believing strongly in intervening on  the Allied side, he had denounced Woodrow Wilson's mediation efforts with Germany. He also mocked Hughes as "a bearded iceberg."  His political acumen had temporarily failed him, however.  Most Republicans still resented that he had split the party in 1912, resulting in a Wilson victory.  He did poorly in the early convention balloting and realized the futility of further effort.  Meeting concurrently, the Progressive party renominated him as their candidate, but he quickly declined and offered to support Hughes. 

Charles Evans Hughes had won the nomination on the third ballot and former vice president Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana was picked for the second spot.  Most of the party's regulars felt they had fielded their best ticket, hopefully a winning one.  Candidate Hughes, however, would prove to be especially formal in manner, lacking political sparkle on the stump.  Roosevelt's "iceberg" analogy was mean, but on target. Being an inveterate "good government" proponent, Hughes was also skeptical of the party insiders.  Consequently, his dealings – in what turned out to be decisive states of Ohio and California – were uncharacteristically clumsy.  None of this, though, was foreseen by the happy delegates when they headed home from the convention.

Hughes Attacked the President's Record

His early campaigning focused on efficiency in government, the merit system in the civil service, credits for farmers and legal protections for workers.  In the latter stages he criticized Wilson's support of the eight-hour day for railroad men, and he backed a constitutional amendment to ensure the right to vote for women.  

Hughes's foreign policy called for a full preparedness program, but he declined to criticize Wilson's neutrali ty posture.  During the early electioneering the two  candidates' views on the war were almost indistinguishable.  That would shift, however, at the end of September, when the president allowed himself to be portrayed as the "peace" candidate. 

After the Election and the War

Charles Evans Hughes would re-emerge as a major figure in American life and  international affairs after the Great War. In 1921 he was selected by Warren Harding to be secretary of state and was successful in securing a separate peace with Germany, concluding arbitration treaties with a number of Latin American nations and, most notably, negotiating a series of treaties at the Washington Conference  on Naval Limitation of Armaments (1921–22).  Following Harding's death, Hughes continued at State during Calvin Coolidge's first term, but returned to private practice in 1925. After heading a commission to reform New York State government (1926), he served on both the Permanent Court of Arbitration (1926–30) and the Permanent Court of  International Justice (1928–30). In 1930, Hughes was nominated chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover and served until 1941.

Next Friday:  Part II, Incumbent Woodrow Wilson

Sources: We adapted this series from several sources we should credit here.  The Miller Center of the University of Virginia,  The American Presidency Project of the University of California at Santa Barbara, 270 To Win,  OurCampaigns.com,  and Gallup.com.

Let's Not Forget Those Trenches — 11 Memorable Images

 

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Presented without Further Comment

Sources: Imperial War Museum; Wiki Commons; Private Collection of Tony Langley

First Victory for the U.S. Air Service — A Roads Classic

Alan Winslow, Douglas Campbell, John Huffer,
94th Aero Sq.

The first U.S. Air Service aerial victories by fighter planes in the American sector in France were by Lts. Alan Winslow and Douglas Campbell, two pilots of the 94th Aero Squadron, which had just been transferred to the front. On Sunday morning, 14 April 1918, they were on "alert" at Gengoult Aerodrome near Toul, France. German planes were reported in the area and the two U.S. pilots, completely inexperienced in aerial combat, took off in their Nieuport 28s. Almost immediately they saw two German aircraft and attacked them directly over the flying field at less than 1,000 feet altitude, in full view of not only the Americans at Gengoult Aerodrome, but also the French citizens of Toul. Winslow and Campbell shot down two German airplanes and were back on the ground in a matter of minutes. This initial fighter combat by the U.S. Air Service, was  probably successful due as much to luck as skill. Fifteen years later, Winslow described the event in Liberty magazine:

Spring. The airdrome at Toul. A chill early-morning mist blankets the field. 

Douglas Campbell and I are on emergency service, which at the moment consists of waiting and a game of Russian bank. Somewhere over the lines Eddie Rickenbacker and Reed Chambers are on their first patrol. 

A telephone call from headquarters: Two German planes are reported over the near-by village of Boug. 

We run to our waiting planes. I take off first. I clear the trees bordering the field. 

There, directly before me, diving out of the mist, is a German Albatross. 

We fight no more than a few feet above the tree tops. 

The entire population of Toul comes out to watch. One of my bullets actually pierces the ear of a startled peasant. (Afterward he was extremely proud of that bullet. It was his own personal war relic.) 

The fight is over in less than four minutes; I land, climb out of my cockpit, and run toward the German pilot whose plane has just crashed to earth. He is surrounded by a chattering, excited crowd. I stand awkwardly on one foot and then on the other. I am only twenty-one and this is my first air victory. 

Alan Winslow (1896–1933) was a veteran of the Lafayette Flying Corps, who subsequently joined the American Air Service and was assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron. After the event described above he continued flying until he was shot down on 31 July 1918 and became a prisoner of war for the duration. He was wounded in the left arm, which was subsequently amputated by German doctors. In his later life he became an executive for Pan Am and wrote the 1933 series of articles on the air war for Liberty magazine quoted above  titled "No Parachutes." Later the same year he died due to a fall from his hotel room during a business trip to Ottawa. Various writers have speculated this may have been a suicide because of the loss of his wife or other reasons. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Lt. Winslow with His Downed German Fighter
and Admiring French

San Francisco-born Douglas Campbell (1896–1990) was assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron on 1 March 1918. He and Lt. Alan Winslow shared the squadron's first official victory over an enemy aircraft on 14 April 1918. Flying the Nieuport 28, Campbell was the first United States Air Service pilot trained in the United States to score five confirmed victories. Scoring his final victory on 5 June 1918, he and James Meissner shot down a Rumpler near Nancy, but Campbell was wounded in the back by an explosive bullet and sent home to recover. Promoted to captain, he returned to France on 8 November 1918 and served with the Army of Occupation in Germany. Returning to the United States on 1 January 1919, Campbell was discharged from the army on 24 February. After the war, he first worked in South America for W.R. Grace and then shifted over to the commercial aviation industry.  He eventually became general manager of Pan American.

Sources:  U.S. Air Force National Museum, 1st Fighter Association,  Find-a-Grave, and The Aerodrome Websites

Medal of Honor: Charles Whittlesey Graphic Novel

Charles Whittlesey commanded the famed Lost Battalion of World War I. On 2 October 1918, he led over 500 men in an advance against the German line during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. In the face of superior numbers, they were surrounded by the enemy and cut off from their division. Whittlesey overcame the lack of supplies and mounting casualties to hold out for five days before reinforcements finally arrived. 

Published as part of their Medal of Honor Series, the Association of the United States Army is proud to offer this volume as a free pdf download HERE.

Medal of Honor: Charles Whittlesey was created by a team of professional comic book veterans:

• Script: Chuck Dixon (Batman, The Punisher, The ’Nam) 
• Pencils, Inks, and Cover: Karl Moline (Supergirl, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Rogue)
• Inks and Cover: Geof Isherwood (The ’Nam, G.I. Joe, Conan the Barbarian)
• Colors: Peter Pantazis (Justice League, Superman, Black Panther)
• Lettering: Troy Peteri (Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men)

For free downloads of the earlier volumes of the Medal of Honor Series that included World War One recipients "Wild Bill" Donovan, Henry Johnson, Sam Woodfill, and Alvin York,  see our earlier article HERE.