Election of 1912 (Edited from Wikipedia) The United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. The election was a rare four-way contest. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called his own convention and created the Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party"). It nominated Roosevelt and ran candidates for other offices in major states. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was finally nominated on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention, thanks to the support of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate who still had a large and loyal following in 1912. It is the last election in which a former, or incumbent, President (Roosevelt) ran for the office without being nominated as either a Democrat or Republican. It is also the last election in which an incumbent President running for re-election (Taft) failed to finish either first or second in the popular vote count. Wilson won the election, gaining a large majority in the Electoral College and winning 42% of the popular vote, while Roosevelt won 27%, Taft 23% and Debs 6%. Wilson became the only elected president from the Democratic Party between 1896 and 1932, and the second of only two Democrats to be elected president between 1860 and 1932. This was the last election in which a candidate who was not a Republican or Democrat came second in either the popular vote or the Electoral College, and the first election in which all 48 states of the contiguous United States participated. Background Republican President Theodore Roosevelt had declined to run for re-election in 1908 in fulfillment of a pledge to the American people not to seek a second full term. Roosevelt's first term as president (1901–1905) was incomplete, as he succeeded to the office upon the assassination of William McKinley; it was only his second term (1905–1909) that encompassed four full years. He had tapped Secretary of War William Howard Taft to become his successor, and Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the general election. During Taft's administration, a rift grew between Roosevelt and Taft as they became the leaders of the Republican Party's two wings: the progressives, led by Roosevelt, and the 1 conservatives, led by Taft. The progressive Republicans favored restrictions on the employment of women and children, promoted ecological conservation, and were more sympathetic toward labor unions. The progressives were also in favor of the popular election of federal and state judges and opposed to having judges appointed by the president or state governors. The conservatives were in support of high tariffs on imported goods to encourage consumers to buy American-made products (as were most progressives), favored business leaders over labor unions, and were generally opposed to the popular election of judges. By 1910 the split between the two wings of the Republican Party was deep, and this, in turn, caused Roosevelt and Taft to turn against one another, despite their personal friendship. Nominations For the first time, significant numbers of delegates to the national conventions were elected in presidential preference primaries. Primary elections were advocated by the progressive faction of the Republican Party, which wanted to break the control of political parties by bosses. Altogether, twelve states held Republican primaries. Robert M. La Follette won two of the first four primaries (North Dakota and Wisconsin). Beginning with his runaway victory in Illinois on April 9, however, Roosevelt won nine of the last ten presidential primaries (in order, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Oregon, Maryland, California, Ohio, New Jersey, and South Dakota), losing only Massachusetts to Taft. As a sign of his great popularity, Roosevelt even carried Taft's home state of Ohio. The Republican Convention was held in Chicago from June 18 to 22. Taft, however, had begun to gather delegates earlier, and the delegates chosen in the primaries were a minority. Taft had the support of the bulk of the party organizations in the Southern states. These states had voted solidly Democratic in every presidential election since 1880, and Roosevelt objected that they were given one-quarter of the delegates when they would contribute nothing to a Republican victory (as it turned out, delegates from the former Confederate states supported Taft by a 5 to 1 margin). When the convention gathered, Roosevelt challenged the credentials of nearly half of the delegates. By that time, however, it was too late. The delegates chose Elihu Root — once Roosevelt's top ally — to serve as chairman of the convention. Afterwards, the delegates seated Taft delegations in Alabama, Arizona, and California on tight votes of 597-472, 564-497, and 542-529, respectively. After losing California, where Roosevelt had won the primary, the progressive delegates gave up hope. They voted "present" on most succeeding roll calls. Not since the 1872 election had there been a major schism in the Republican party. Now, 2 with the Democrats holding about 45% of the national vote, any schism would be fatal. Roosevelt's only hope at the convention was to form a "stop-Taft" alliance with La Follette, but Roosevelt had alienated La Follette, and the alliance could not form. Unable to tolerate the personal humiliation he suffered at the hands of Taft and the Old Guard, and refusing to entertain the possibility of a compromise candidate, Roosevelt struck back hard. On the evening of June 22, 1912, Roosevelt asked his supporters to leave the convention. Roosevelt maintained that President Taft had allowed fraudulent seating of delegates to capture the presidential nomination from progressive forces within the Party. Thus, with the support of convention chairman Elihu Root, Taft's supporters outvoted Roosevelt's men, and the convention renominated incumbents William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman, making Sherman the first sitting vice-president to be nominated for re-election since John C. Calhoun in 1828. Republican progressives reconvened in Chicago and endorsed the formation of a national progressive party. When formally launched later that summer, the new Progressive Party chose Roosevelt as its presidential nominee and Governor Hiram Johnson of California as his running mate. Questioned by reporters, Roosevelt said he felt as strong as a "bull moose." Henceforth known as the "Bull Moose Party," the Progressives promised to increase federal regulation and protect the welfare of ordinary people. The party was funded by publisher Frank Munsey and its executive secretary George Walbridge Perkins, an employee of banker J. P. Morgan and International Harvester. Perkins blocked an anti-trust plank, shocking reformers who thought of Roosevelt as a true trust-buster. The delegates to the convention sang the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" as their anthem. In a famous acceptance speech, Roosevelt compared the coming presidential campaign to the Battle of Armageddon and stated that the Progressives were going to "battle for the LORD." However, many of the nation's newspapers, which tended to be pro-Republican, harshly depicted Roosevelt as an egotist who was only running for president to spoil Taft's chances and feed his vanity. Many of these newspapers' political cartoons portrayed Roosevelt in this fashion. The Democratic Convention was held in Baltimore, Maryland, from June 25 to July 2. It proved to be one of the more memorable presidential conventions of the twentieth century. Initially, the frontrunner appeared to be Champ Clark of Missouri, the Speaker of the House, and Clark did receive the largest number of delegate votes early in the balloting. However, he was unable to get the two-thirds majority required to win the 3 nomination. His chances were hurt when Tammany Hall, the powerful and corrupt Democratic political machine in New York City, threw its support behind Clark. Instead of helping him, this led William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and still the leader of the party's liberals, to turn against Clark as the candidate of "Wall Street." Bryan instead threw his support to New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, who had consistently finished second to Clark on each ballot, and who was regarded as a moderate reformer. Wilson had nearly given up hope that he could be nominated, and he was on the verge of having a concession speech read for him at the convention that would free his delegates to vote for someone else. Bryan's defection from Clark to Wilson led many other delegates to do the same, and Wilson gradually gained strength while Clark's support dwindled. Wilson finally received the nomination on the 46th ballot. The Socialist Party of America was a highly factionalized coalition of local parties based in industrial cities and usually was rooted in ethnic communities, especially German and Finnish. It also had some support in old Populist rural and mining areas in the West, especially Oklahoma. By 1912, the party claimed more than a thousand locally elected officials in 33 states and 160 cities, especially the Midwest. Eugene V. Debs had run for president in 1900, 1904, and 1908, primarily to encourage the local effort, and he did so again in 1912 and from prison in 1920. Campaign The 1912 presidential campaign was bitterly contested. Vice-President James S. Sherman died in office on October 30, 1912, less than a week before the election, leaving Taft without a running mate. With the Republican Party divided, Wilson captured the presidency handily on November 5. While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee on October 14, 1912, a saloonkeeper named John Flammang Schrank shot him, but the bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating both his steel eyeglass case and passing through a 50-page single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket.