As War Approached Progressives Came to Power in America

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The 1912 Presidential Candidates

Dennis Cross

The election year 1912 in the United States was one of the most consequential in the country's history. For the first time, a presidential election pitted three presidents against each other: the incumbent, his predecessor, and the man who prevailed over both of them to become the next president. After leaving the White House in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt embarked on an extended big game hunting trip to Africa. He returned to the United States in 1910 to a tumultuous welcome and news of dissension within his party.  The progressive movement was gathering strength and Republican progressives were increasingly disenchanted with William Howard Taft, Roosevelt's successor and protégé.  By early 1912 Roosevelt was edging closer to challenging Taft for the party's nomination, and by March his “hat [was] in the ring.” One of the measures advocated by progressives, choosing delegates to party conventions by primaries rather than state party conventions, had been adopted by several states. Roosevelt entered and won a number of primaries, but Taft controlled the party machinery in most of the other states. Going into the convention, the outcome would depend on the resolution of challenges to the credentials of delegates supporting the president. 

The Democratic field was even more wide open. William Jennings Bryan won the party's nomination in three of the last four election years, starting with his “cross of gold” speech at the Democratic convention in 1896. In 1912 he was still the leading progressive voice in the party, but no longer an active candidate for the nomination.  Some delegations supported favorite son candidates, and some arrived at the convention uncommitted, effectively controlled by local organizations like New York's Tammany Hall. Four candidates led the field. The leading competitors for the progressive vote were Speaker of the House Champ Clark of Missouri, a longtime Bryan supporter, and Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, a relative newcomer to the progressive cause. Governor Judson Harmon of Ohio was the candidate of northern conservatives, while Representative Oscar Underwood of Alabama was the candidate of the Deep South.  Governor Wilson surged to an early lead in the pre-convention campaign, but more recently Speaker Clark won some important primaries and prevailed in a number of state party conventions. He had the lead in the delegate count going into the convention.  

The Republicans went first. At their convention in June in Chicago, Roosevelt forces mounted challenges to the Taft delegations, but the convention chairman, Elihu Root (secretary of war and of state under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, and since 1909 a United States senator from New York), made rulings that resulted in those challenges being rejected. Irate at what they considered theft, most of the Roosevelt delegates walked out of the convention, met with Roosevelt at a hall across town, and resolved to form a new Progressive Party with Roosevelt at its head. Back in the convention, the remaining delegates nominated President Taft for a second term.  

The Democrats arrived in Baltimore for their convention the following week, anticipating a protracted fight for the nomination. In addition to the scattered field of candidates, the Democratic Party, unlike the Republicans, required a two-thirds majority to decide on a nominee. Speaker Clark led on the first several ballots and seemed to have the nomination within his grasp when, on the tenth ballot, Tammany Hall switched New York's vote from Harmon to Clark, giving him a majority. The South held firm for Underwood, however, and during the roll call on the 14th ballot Bryan announced his support for Wilson. A gradual slippage of support from Clark to Wilson followed, and Wilson was finally nominated on the 46th ballot.  

In August, the Republican progressives returned to Chicago where they nominated Roosevelt by acclamation as the standard bearer of their new party. The bitter split in the Republican Party virtually guaranteed a Democratic victory. Taft, a victim of the progressive temper of the times, was unlikely to be reelected in any event, and  Roosevelt's best hope was frustrated by the Democrats' nomination of Wilson, who  was well positioned to compete effectively for the progressive vote. In the general election, although he won less than 42 percent of the popular vote, Wilson swept the Electoral College with 435 votes to 88 for Roosevelt and only eight for Taft. The Socialist Party, led by Eugene Debs, won almost a million popular votes, the best showing in its history. 

Source: The Journal of the World War One Historical Association, Fall 2012