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Chapter One
"My hat's in the ring! The fight is on and I'm stripped to the buff!"
‘A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences’ by Robert La Follette (1917)
JANUARY 1912: ... On the evening of the same day, I received a visit from Gifford Pinchot,[1] who called to inform me that... he, Gardner and McCormick[2] desired to notify me that there must be no break with Roosevelt and that should one come, he and the others had decided they would go with Roosevelt. Angrily, I replied:
“You know that Roosevelt once favored my being a candidate and that he sent Gardner to me to urge me to be a candidate. All appearances now indicate that he’s encouraging the use of his name. As soon as my candidacy began to take on proportions that looked like success, there was what seemed to me to be unmistakable evidence of his doing everything in his power to block it, except to come out openly against me. Such a course cannot fail to divide Progressive strength and seriously injure, if not destroy for the time being, the whole Progressive movement!”
Pinchot was about to speak but I cut him off: “Roosevelt is wrong! There can be no compromise with the interests of private enterprise that seek to control the government! Either they or the people will rule!”
He paused, clearly frustrated by my strong will. “Suppose Roosevelt does come out as a candidate,” he responded, “no amount of obstinancy on your part will stop him from steamrolling over you. What can you do? You must know that he has this thing in his own hands and can do whatever he likes!”
Pinchot then forced another point: that Roosevelt would be more acceptable to the reactionaries than I, something that I acknowledged to be true.
“I ask you to think on this:” he implored, “do you want Taft, a man who has filled his Cabinet with corporation lawyers and ignored Progressives, like you, to win the nomination? Or would you prefer somebody you once called ‘the greatest living American?”
At this, I winced. Sensing, perhaps, from my pained expression, that my self-possession had slightly faultered, Pinchot continued: “Look here, Bob, you haven’t attracted much support outside of the Midwest and the money isn’t coming in. What’s more, you’re tired and people are beginning to notice...”
His words stabbed at my heart but I knew, deep down, that he was right. I was tired and now, with my closest supporters undermining the campaign I had launched in the previous June, I hadn’t a hope of winning the nomination. All I would do if I decided to take on Roosevelt and Taft is split the Progressive vote and return the latter to the White House. I thought in silence for a few minutes - Pinchot watched me in anticipation.
“Very well,” I said resignedly, “in the interests of the Progressive moment, I must stand aside...”[3]
‘Fighting Bob La Follette’ by Nancy Ungar (2008)
La Follette and Roosevelt met several more times in the lead-up to Pinchot’s famous meeting with the Wisconsin senator at the beginning of 1912. They were intensely difficult meetings for both men, with hurtful things said on both sides. While La Follette’s account of the Pinchot meeting is true in so far as it sketches out the arguments put to him in favour of his standing aside to make way for Roosevelt, it makes one notable omission: what did he get in return for withdrawing from the race for the Republican nomination? La Follette’s claims that he stood aside ‘in the interests of the Progressive moment’ are only half-true. It is said that every man has his price and given La Follette’s ambition, surely nothing less than high office would do.
Though Roosevelt professed to “greatly admire” La Follette, the Wisconsin senator was viewed as a dangerous radical by swathes of both the Republican Party and the wider public. The Vice-Presidency was out of the question because in addition to sounding too foreign, a Roosevelt-La Follette ticket would frighten off more moderate voters. Instead, Roosevelt promised La Follette leadership of the new (and expanded) Department for Labour should he win the election in November. After agonising, La Follette accepted Roosevelt’s offer and, having collapsed of exhaustion after a family tragedy at the turn of February, he kept a low profile throughout the campaign…[4]
‘Theodore Roosevelt: A Life’ by Nathan Miller (1992)
Three weeks before the election, on 14th October, Roosevelt was in the socialist hub of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to attend a rally. Shortly before eight o’clock that evening, he left his hotel and stood in an open car to acknowledge the cheering of the assembled crowd. Suddenly, a man in the front row raised a pistol and fired a shot at his chest from a distance of fewer than thirty feet. The bullet tore through his overcoat, steel spectacles case, and the folded manuscript of his speech, before lodging below his ribs. Reelig backwards under the impact, which he later compared to being kicked by a mule, the Colonel coughed and put his hand to his mouth to see if he could split up blood. When he did not, he assumed the wound was not fatal.
“Stand back! Don’t hurt that man!” he shouted as the crowd surged forward to lynch the assailant. He ordered him brought before him and penetratingly stared at the man - John Schrank - before turning away.[5]
Even with a bullet in his body, Roosevelt shrewdly took advantage of the situation. Though his shirt was soaked with blood, he insisted on being taken to the rally. Unaware that he had been shot, the packed auditorium enthusiastically greed him, but Roosevelt raised his arms for silence. “I ask you to be as quiet as possible,” he declared in a low voice. “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I’ve just been shot… but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!”
There was a sound like air being sucked out of the hall and cries of “Oh no! Oh no!” Reaching into his coat pocket, Roosevelt pulled out his speech and, seeing that the bullet had torn a hole through the fifty folded pages, held it up: “Here’s where the bullet went through… it’s in me now, so I can’t make a very long speech; nevertheless, I’ll try my best…”
Foolhardy it may have been, but Roosevelt saw this as a supreme moment. Over the next hour and a half, he held the stage, waving off repeated appeals for him to stop and seek medical treatment. He talked of the Republican Party, the political party to which he said he was devoted “with all my heart and soul,” and its appeal to all Americans. Unless he succeeded on polling day, he argued, the nation would become divided - “haves against have nots,” ethnic group against ethnic group. Eventually, he allowed himself to be taken to a hospital, where he joked and talked politics with the physicians.
Admiration for Roosevelt’s courage was widespread and James Beauchamp Clark suspended active campaigning while he convalesced from his wound.[6] To what extent the failed assassination changed the course of the election is difficult to say, owing to the absence of any opinion polls. Roosevelt himself had been confident of victory over Clark and in the end, his confidence was well-founded (he won 356 electoral college votes to Clark’s 175). He had fared well among both rural and urban folk, but did not succeed in penetrating the South, where the conservative Clark captured all of the ex-Confederate states.
Figure 1. A nation divided - The red states are Roosevelt's; the blue states plumped for Clark.
‘The New York Times’ (4 March 1913)
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Theodore Roosevelt has, for the third time, been sworn in as President of the United States, and William Howard Taft is an everyday citizen again.
On an overcast, but mild, late-winter day, the inauguration of Mr Roosevelt was carried out. Readers may remember that this newspaper remarked four years ago that he had come into the White House like a lamb and left it like a lion. All agree that there was nothing other than the lion about Mr Roosevelt today.
Accompanied to the Capitol by President Taft and a guard of honour, there was no sign of the bitterness that divided the two men and once threatened to divide the whole Republican Party. Smiling broadly throughout and making conversation with one another, Mr Roosevelt, dressed in a cutaway coat and striped trousers, was then sworn in by Chief Justice Edward White on the Western Steps of the Capitol building at twelve o’clock.
On the return journey to the White House, the doors of the presidential carriage, drawn by four horses, were thrown open and Mr Roosevelt acclaimed along the length of Pennsylvania Avenue. For nearly three hours after that, the new president reviewed a passing column, which was replete with pomp and circumstance.
The President and Mrs Roosevelt were the centre of attention at the culminating feature of the memorable day - the inaugural ball in the Pension Building. The cavernous building was transformed into a canopied court of ivory and white, and in it, there gathered a brilliant assemblage from across the country. While the ball was in progress indoors, a display of fireworks on the Monument lot to the rear of the White House marked the end of the outdoor celebration.
A few years ago, nobody would have predicted that the one-time President would return from exploring and big game hunting in Africa to capture the Republican nomination after a deadlocked convention and then to go on to win in the Fall with a majority of 181 electoral college votes. This reporter now believes that he will have to muster the same level of determination and energy that he displayed over the past twelve months or so if he is to overcome the challenges that face the nation…
[1] Gifford Pinchot was the first Chief of the US Forestry Service when Roosevelt first occupied the White House (1901-1909). In our timeline, he later served as Governor of Pennsylvania (1923-1927, 1931-1935)
[2] Joseph McCormick was a newspaper journalist and editor, who, in our timeline, went on to become a Congressman and Senator representing Illinois
[3] This, January 1912, is the point of departure. In our timeline, Pinchot failed to sway La Follette at this meeting, whose ambition and intransigence won the day. Even after making a disastrous speech that February, in which he launched a ferocious and violent attack on the press, he refused to admit that his campaign was futile. Bizarrely, La Follette ended up backing Taft at the Republican convention in Chicago at the end of June, effectively ending Roosevelt’s campaign for the Republican nomination
[4] The Department for Labor was created by Taft in the dying days of his presidency (March 1913) with the purpose of “fostering, promoting and developing the welfare of working people, improving their working conditions, and enhancing their opportunities for profitable employment.” In this counterfactual, La Follette becomes the United States’ first Secretary for Labour, surely a job he was born to do.
[5] Schrank claimed he had been inspired by the ghost of President William McKinley, who accused Roosevelt, his one-time Vice-President, of assassinating him back in 1901 and asked Schrank to avenge him. Judged insane, he lived out the rest of his life in an asylum.
[6] Why James Beauchamp Clark and not Woodrow Wilson? Well, given that Roosevelt was adopted as the Republican nominee in Chicago at the end of June 1912, I figured that when the Democrats came together in Baltimore a work or so later, the feeling would have been to opt for a conservative candidate to counterbalance the perceived radicalism of the Republican ticket.