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. Wilson 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 neutrality 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.