In this Aug. 1, 1906, Puck cartoon—“The Crown Prince”—Theodore Roosevelt wears an emperor’s garb and holds aloft his chosen successor: an infant Taft.
BY THE TIME HE RETURNED to Washington in the early winter of 1908, Taft found that the push for his nomination had “caught its second wind and straightened out for the home-stretch.” In the wake of Roosevelt’s reaffirmation that he would not run again, William Nelson of theKansas City Star informed Taft that the state now regarded him “as its first and only choice”—a resolution in his favor had gone through “with a whoop.” Furthermore, the Colorado State Committee endorsed Taft unanimously, and a poll among likely Michigan delegates showed him trouncing the field by a two to one margin.
Buoyed by the show of widening support, Taft began to actively engage in his campaign for the first time. On the eve of a Republican State Committee meeting in West Virginia, he assured Governor William Dawson that his endorsement would be a decisive blow, clinching not only West Virginia but neighboring states as well. “If you could bring this about,” he encouraged the governor, “I shall be everlastingly grateful.” He solicited activists for information on the political climate in their regions and responded to encouraging editorials with handwritten notes, telling the publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Tribune that the “friendly tone” of a recent editorial had made his “whole day and week brighter.”
Increasingly comfortable at the podium, Taft responded to questions with “rapid-fire” retorts and “witty sallies.” Asked at Cooper Union in New York why “a blacklisted laborer” should not “be allowed an injunction as well as a boycotted capitalist,” he replied succinctly: “He should be. Were I on the bench I would give him one quickly.” Explaining his preference for capitalism over socialism, Taft wryly observed that he did not trust a governmental committee “to determine the worth” of a lawyer, doctor, carpenter or judge—unless, of course, he himself was a member of that committee. Only once did Taft’s words come back to haunt him. To the daunting question of what those unable to find work during the recession might do, he had earnestly answered, “God knows. . . . They have my deepest sympathy. It is an awful case when a man is willing to work and is put in this position.” Critics seized upon the phrase “God knows” to suggest Taft’s want of empathy for the laboring class. Nonetheless, when the long question-and-answer session came to an end, “it was the general verdict that the Secretary was entitled to the referee’s decision, and when the gong rang the crowd swarmed into the ring to grasp the victor’s hand.”
By late January, New York governor Hughes was the sole remaining candidate with a national following who could potentially challenge Taft for the Republican nomination. Taft’s supporters urged him to fight Hughes for the New York delegates, but Taft insisted that a nasty struggle in the governor’s home fort would ultimately hurt Republican chances in the fall. This decision drew praise from party leaders, but Roosevelt continued to worry that Hughes was a threat. Aware that the governor intended to deliver a major campaign speech on January 31, Roosevelt deliberately chose that same date to present a special message to Congress. The president’s words proved to be so “blistering,” so “genuinely sensational,” that they stole headlines from Hughes’s “sane and sound” address.
Roosevelt’s anger over the legislature’s persistent refusal to act on his recommendations had been mounting for weeks. When the Supreme Court ruled the 1906 Employers’ Liability Act unconstitutional in early January, the president was irate, calling it “a matter of humiliation to the Nation” that an employee who suffered an accident “through no fault of his own” would not be protected. “In no other prominent industrial country in the world,” he charged, “could such gross injustice occur.” He challenged Congress to enact a new liability law and take up his additional regulatory measures without delay. Any implication that such regulations had precipitated the recent panic was wrongheaded, he maintained; in fact, as far as individual blame could be ascribed, the collapse was “due to the speculative folly and flagrant dishonesty of a few men of great wealth, who seek to shield themselves from the effects of their own wrongdoing by ascribing its results to the actions of those who have sought to put a stop to the wrongdoing.”
While critics accused Roosevelt of “prostituting his high office and the machinery of government in order to play petty and mean politics against Hughes,” the substance of his speech garnered widespread approval. “It hurls defiance at a legislature that thought in its folly that the day of Roosevelt was done,” the Denver Post observed, contending that “it appeals beyond Congress to the hearts of the American people.” The Boston Daily Globe also praised the president’s “sledgehammer eloquence,” while the Chicago Tribune rated it “one of America’s great state papers.” Even those who considered its tone incongruous with “the preconceptions of presidential dignity” acknowledged that the message had caught everyone’s attention. “It has maddened my enemies,” Roosevelt told Kermit, but “I believe it has helped Taft’s nomination.”
A New York World cartoon aptly illustrated the strategic timing of the president’s address: Hughes is pictured trying to deliver his speech while Roosevelt beats an enormous bass drum, drowning out the governor’s words. Delighted by the image, Taft wrote to the World editor and requested the original caricature. “It records something which may prove to be an epoch in the campaign,” he explained. “I should like very much to have it as a part of my memorabilia.” By spring, the president noted with satisfaction that “the Hughes boom has collapsed,” and Taft’s nomination was all but “settled.”
Still, Roosevelt continued to monitor every aspect of the campaign, counseling and comforting Taft through the inevitable vicissitudes. In March, for instance, a subordinate in his Columbus campaign office released a statement declaring that Taft would prove more acceptable to the business community than his predecessor. The statement reprinted a series of quotes from the Wall Street Journal touting Taft as deliberative and measured in his nature and training—a needful antidote to the impulsive, intemperate president. Both Taft’s temperament and his record, theJournal had suggested, boded “distinctly against any conclusion that he would continue Mr. Roosevelt’s methods.” Taft immediately repudiated the release and fired the employee, but the incident continued to disturb him. “Good heavens, you beloved individual,” Roosevelt placated him, “you’ll have any number of such experiences,” though not “as many as I have had; and, unlike you I have frequently been myself responsible!”
Far more troubling, Taft confided, was the “painful experience” of finding himself “held up to execration” as an enemy of the black race for his role as secretary of war during the Brownsville incident. From his abolitionist father, Taft had inherited a deep sympathy and support for the rights of the freed slaves. Indefatigably, he had worked in the Philippines “to oppose the color caste.” Yet regardless of his record of combating inequality, scores of traditionally Republican black leaders now considered him “a menace” and declared they would “never, never” support him. While some in Taft’s camp suggested he distance himself from the president by publicly discussing his attempt to delay the order, Taft refused; loyalty trumped political advantage. Roosevelt finally took action himself, issuing a formal statement claiming “entire responsibility for the dismissal of the negro troops” and absolving Taft of any role in the decision. As news of Roosevelt’s statement spread through the black community, resistance to Taft’s nomination dissipated. “We are satisfied,” declared the editor of a popular black newspaper, that “President Roosevelt was responsible for the discharge of the soldiers and we believe that Mr. Taft had nothing at all to do with it.”
In late spring, however, speaking at Grant’s Tomb on Decoration Day, Taft inadvertently instigated his own controversy when he referred to the Civil War general’s predilection “for strong drink,” which had forced his resignation from the Union Army. Intended as a tribute to the“wonderful resolution, strength of character, and military genius” that allowed Grant to triumph over adversity, Taft’s address sought to project a fallible exemplar for young people rather than a mythical figure, “painted as perfect without temptation.” Whatever his intention, many veterans perceived Taft’s depiction of Grant as a desecration: “I trust you will have the grace to go and hang yourself rather than attempt to belittle a nation by running for the presidency,” the commander of the New Hampshire Sons of Veterans histrionically suggested. Across the country, outraged veterans accused Taft of insulting “the mighty dead” and warned that they would not forget his “heartless” remarks on election day. When Roosevelt and Taft reconvened, the president stood “at mock attention,” solemnly exclaiming, “Viva Grant.” He advised Taft not to fret: “It is not going to hurt you. I have got the public accustomed to hearing the truth from statesmen or politicians, whichever we might be termed, without it changing the destinies of the nation.”
The president’s confidence, it seemed, was well founded; such stumbles did little to stay the momentum of Taft’s campaign. “All opposition to Taft has died down and he will be nominated easily,” Roosevelt assured a friend at the end of May. The surge of support in recent months represented “an astonishing achievement for Mr. Taft,” the Chicago Evening Post observed, affirming the candidate’s ability to evade the many snares that had beset his campaign. “We doubt whether the history of the country has ever recorded a more remarkable feat by a presidential candidate than this utter routing of each and every anti-convention attack upon him.”
ROOSEVELT’S SATISFACTION WITH THE PROGRESS of Taft’s campaign as summer arrived could not mask his chagrin that Congress had refused to act on his proposals for a second straight year. “Congress is ending, by no means in a blaze of glory,” the president complained to Whitelaw Reid, ambassador to Great Britain. The reigning conservatives in the House and Senate, he grumbled, “felt a relief that they did not try to conceal at the fact that I was not to remain as President.” While a few significant measures had passed—including a revised employer liability act and a child labor bill for the District of Columbia—the core of Roosevelt’s progressive recommendations had again been ignored. With “practical unanimity,” journalists referred to the session as the “do nothing Congress.”
In his frustration, Roosevelt failed to appreciate that conservatives were emboldened not only by his impending departure but also by the diminished power of the muckraking journalists, whose popular exposures of corporate abuse had played a collaborative role in pressuring Congress to act. Nor did the president acknowledge that his celebrated address castigating muckrakers had “crystallized” a nascent sentiment of disfavor toward the new journalism. Two years after Roosevelt’s diatribe, a survey of leading monthlies revealed a sharp decline in the fiery investigative pieces that had fueled public demand for reform. “The noon of the muckraker’s day is past,” one Iowa newspaper declared. “Look upon these magazines now,” observed the New York Times. “Read them from cover to cover. Where are the muckrakers?” Magazine publishers were acutely sensitive to capricious public sentiment, the Times concluded: “Like the manufacturers of print cloth and summer silks,” they were “prepared to offer any pattern the reader desires. We judge that quiet patterns are now in favor.”
While the country sought respite from grim catalogues of wrongdoing, members of the old McClure’s team struggled with their vacillating feelings toward Theodore Roosevelt and the Square Deal. William Allen White remained the most passionate champion of the president. Embarking on a biographical sketch of Taft for the May issue of The American Magazine, White first consulted with Roosevelt. “Don’t hold the knife edge of your balance so perfectly poised in this piece that your readers won’t see your bias,” Roosevelt had counseled him. White needed little prompting, for he had developed a genuine affection for Taft after spending several days with him on a train from Kansas City to Washington. In the weeks that followed, the two men continued to correspond as White sought to fill in details of Taft’s career. In lengthy letters to White, Taft meticulously credited every mentor and benefactor who had helped facilitate his success. “The meanest man in the world,” he remarked, “is the man who forgets the old friends that helped him on an early day and over early difficulties.”
The resulting piece portrayed Taft as an “amiable giant,” who had triumphed through the warmth of his personality, his “prodigious capacity for hard, consecutive work,” and his judicial instinct to grapple with every issue “without resting and without fatigue until it is settled or solved.” No political figure was better suited than Taft to pursue Roosevelt’s “unfinished business,” White argued, to push nearly a dozen pending anti-trust suits through the courts, to resolve the imperfections in recently enacted epoch-making laws. “The times demand not a man bearing promises of new things,” White concluded, “but a man who can finish the things begun . . . who, with a steady hand, and a heart always kind and a mind always generously just, can clean off the desk.” The piece delighted Roosevelt. “It would be impossible to get two men of fairly strong character and fairly marked individuality who would agree more closely,” he responded to White, “unless it is either one of us and Taft!”
Ida Tarbell had long shared White’s fascination with Roosevelt, though she found his pugnacity and relish for war distasteful. “I wabble terribly whenever I see him face to face,” she confessed to Baker. “He seems so amazing.” She had genuinely exulted in his crusade against the trusts, sharing his conviction that the government had a right and a duty to regulate corporations “for the sake of democracy.” Roosevelt was “in the right,” she insisted; “corporations exist not for themselves, but for the people.” As Tarbell immersed herself in the tariff issue, however, she began to suspect that the president was a “less amazing” figure than she had initially imagined. Having envisioned Roosevelt as “the St. George” who would marshal popular support for downward tariff revision after the 1907 Panic, she was sorely disappointed by his unwillingness to risk Republican Party unity. Still, Tarbell remained a proponent of the Square Deal, trusting that investigation, legislation, regulation, and judicial proceedings could right the wrongs of the industrial world.
By 1908, Lincoln Steffens had arrived at very different conclusions. Steffens no longer trusted that the Square Deal could solve the nation’s gross inequities of wealth and power, believing that more radical measures were necessary, including public ownership of corrupt railroads and trusts. “I certainly am socialistic,” he told his sister, “but I’m not a Socialist.” In the June issue of Everybody’s, he published an article comparing the leadership styles of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, and La Follette. Although he praised Roosevelt for galvanizing the public and predicted that Taft would faithfully follow his predecessor’s regulatory course, he argued that La Follette alone was fighting against the system itself.
Roosevelt responded to Steffens with a 2,000-word rebuttal. “You contend,” he began, “that Taft and I are good people of limited vision who fight against specific evils with no idea of fighting against the fundamental evil.” After a quarter of a century in politics, Roosevelt observed, he had found that change was realized by “men who take the next step; not those who theorize about the 200th step.” He pointed out that “it was Lincoln,” not Wendell Phillips, who “saved the Union and abolished slavery.” Indeed, history suggested that those, like La Follette, who fought “the system in the abstract,” accomplished “mighty little good.” Roosevelt closed by suggesting that Steffens visit the White House to continue their dialogue. Steffens replied that they had always argued about politics with such “mutual understanding” and “genuine affection” that he now felt closer to the president than to many who shared his own views.
By the final year of Roosevelt’s presidency, Ray Baker too had come to question his leadership style, though he still continued to regard him as “the most interesting personality” in the country. In a 1908 article for The American Magazine, Baker located the source of the president’s strength in what the philosopher William James termed “the art of energizing”—the ability to command ordinary talents to an extraordinary degree. Whereas most people never tapped their “vast stores of hidden energies,” Baker contended that Roosevelt succeeded through “the simple device of self-control and self-discipline, of using every power he possesses to its utmost limit—a dazzling, even appalling spectacle of a human engine driven at full speed.” Despite being an “ordinary shot,” he had practiced methodically to become a world-class hunter. Lacking the succinct poetic clarity of Lincoln’s literary genius, he had nonetheless produced an astonishingly versatile body of work. While preaching simple homilies and banal maxims, he had nonetheless reached the hearts of his countrymen and given the people voice.
After a decade of observation, however, Baker had reached a less flattering assessment of the president: “Roosevelt never leads; he always follows. He acts, but he acts only when he thinks the crowd is behind him. . . . Upon all the great issues which he has championed, the country was prepared before he entered the arena.” Though he had pushed his agenda “valiantly and fearlessly,” Baker argued, the times now demanded a thinker—someone who could deal with the unjust tariff structure and the underlying conflict between the rich and the poor, who could formulate a “European system of comprehensive social insurance to protect the injured, the sick and the aged.”
Baker’s musings provoked a lively correspondence with Roosevelt. “I think you lay altogether too much stress,” Roosevelt told the reporter, “upon your theory that everywhere and at all times political thought divides itself into two opposing forces,” driving what Baker had called “the fundamental conflict between the few and the many.” In the South, Roosevelt pointed out, the tension between the races reached “immeasurably farther” into the souls of men than any struggle between the poor and the rich. Although he believed in “equal opportunities for all,” he decried the inflammatory and unprofitable language of class warfare, which impeded the moral struggle to improve “man as a man.”
“I wish as much as you do that we had reached the stage in our civilization where we could avoid the hatred and demagogy of ignorance and class strife,” Baker promptly replied. In the present situation, he maintained, class action by unions and parties seemed indispensable. Would “any amount of effort to improve the Russian Jewish tailor of the East-side—as a man—make much headway,” he wondered, “unless there is a determined effort to change his environment and the institutions which help to make him poor, downtrodden, outcast?”
One evening, less than a week after this exchange of letters, the two men talked at the White House until midnight, and for the first time in their long acquaintance, the ever exuberant president struck Baker as a weary man. Roosevelt disclosed his plans to spend a year big game hunting in“the wilds of Africa” when his term ended. “The best thing I can do is to go entirely away,” he told Baker, “out of reach of everything here.” He admitted that he believed his time had come and gone; that he was “through.” When Baker suggested that “the people might not be through with him,” the president responded “with a curious finality, a sort of sadness” unlike anything Baker had heard from him. “New issues are coming up,” Roosevelt acknowledged. “People are going to discuss economic questions more and more; the tariff, currency, banks. They are hard questions, and I am not deeply interested in them; my problems are moral problems, and my teaching has been plain morality.” Never, Baker later reflected, had he seen the president “in a more human mood.”
ROOSEVELT’S WISTFUL DEMEANOR ON THE eve of the Republican National Convention in June 1908 in Chicago revealed residual misgivings about his ironclad pledge to forgo a third term. “When you see me quoted in the press as welcoming the rest I will have after March the 3d take no stock in it,” he informed his military aide Archie Butt. “I have enjoyed every moment of this so-called arduous and exacting task.” For all seven years of his tenure, he proudly told George Trevelyan, he had “been President, emphatically,” utilizing “every ounce of power there was in the office.” At times, he was plagued by “ugly qualms” about “abandoning great work” simply to be true to his word. Yet, if he did answer the call to run again, he feared that even those who had spurred him on would suffer a shock of “disappointment” at an unseemly quest to hold the office “longer than it was deemed wise that Washington should hold it.”
Roosevelt was not the only one preoccupied by the tantalizing prospect of a third term. As Chicago began “to throb with the confusion and excitement of arriving throngs” in preparation for the convention, “a stampede” for Roosevelt remained a distinct possibility. “Taft has nothing to fear from any combination of opponents,” The Washington Post remarked. “The only man who can defeat him is Pres. Roosevelt.” In journalistic circles, the odds of a stampede to nominate Roosevelt at the first mention of his name proved “an unfailing topic for conjecture, and the explosive possibility of its injection at the psychological moment” was widely anticipated. Any large political gathering, the San Francisco Chronicle observed, can easily become “a mob, ready to accept what psychologists call ‘suggestion.’ ”
As expectations began to mount, two antithetical factions enhanced the likelihood of a Roosevelt stampede. For progressive and moderate Republicans who “in their heart of hearts” preferred Roosevelt to anyone else, hope remained that if actually nominated, the president would feel compelled to accept the honor despite his repeated refusals. The agenda of the second group was far more calculating; for Taft’s reactionary opponents, known as “the Allies,” “a stampede” would be the “last card” in their effort to break Taft’s majority on the first ballot. By pushing for a third term, they hoped “to create a diversion against Taft and weaken him as a candidate.” If the president then refused to accept the nomination—as they anticipated—the door would open for a second or third ballot to nominate one of their own: Cannon, Knox, or Fairbanks.
The sky was “full of sunshine” on June 16, the first day of the convention. The band played patriotic airs as delegates found their seats on the floor and spectators piled into the galleries. Barely audible above the din, the presiding officer’s tribute to “the glories of the party” did not seem designed “to set the blood tingling.” Toledo mayor Brand Whitlock observed a restlessness in the gallery reminiscent of “that expectant interest in which multitudes view an animal trainer at work; down in their hearts the secret human wish, or half-wish, that the animals may turn and eat the trainer.” The analogy, he said, served only to point out that “the spectators longed for something to happen. But nothing happened.”
The agenda for the second day of the convention promised to sate the crowd’s desire for excitement. Though Will and Nellie remained in Washington with their seventeen-year-old daughter Helen and ten-year-old son Charlie, the rest of the Taft clan descended upon Chicago. Two hours before the convention proceedings opened at 10 a.m., William Howard Taft arrived at his War Department office. His quarters at the Old Executive Building included a large reception room for visitors, an adjoining space for his secretary and two clerks, and a private office with a desk, couch, and several comfortable chairs. Electricians equipped the office to receive telegraph messages directly from the convention hall, and a long-distance telephone line allowed Frank Hitchcock, Taft’s national campaign manager, to reach him from the floor of the Coliseum. To relieve his anxiety, Taft “plunged into the business of the day,” reviewing routine matters with his secretary. When a photographer arrived and suggested that he pose expectantly by the telephone, Taft balked. “I do not sit at the telephone,” he laughed, explaining that “telephone messages are taken by somebody else. I’ll not do anything unnatural.” Nellie arrived at noon, taking a seat at her husband’s desk, while young Charlie stationed himself in the anteroom with the telegraph operator, ready to carry incoming messages to his mother. She read each dispatch aloud to the assembled gathering of associates and friends as Taft paced restlessly in and out of the office, intermittently occupying an easy chair by the window. Dozens of newspapermen and clerks gathered in the outer reception room.
At 1:30 p.m., the convention chairman Senator Henry Cabot Lodge approached the podium to deliver the keynote address. For half an hour, the senator held the 14,000 attendees rapt with a powerful critique of the Democrats and a stirring defense of Republican policies, carefully avoiding any mention of Theodore Roosevelt. When he finally introduced “the magic name,” Lodge unleashed “a wild, frenzied uncontrollable stampede for Roosevelt.” The point of Lodge’s speech that touched a “burning fuse to dry powder” was the simple observation that to the great dismay of“vested abuses and profitable wrongs,” the president had “fearlessly enforced the laws,” becoming “the best abused and most popular man in the United States today.” Delegates and spectators “exploded with a roar,” clapping, whistling, stamping their feet. “Hats, fans, umbrellas, flags, newspapers, arms, coats were waved, flapped, brandished, jiggled” while the audience chanted: “Four Years More. Four Years More.”
When Lodge attempted to continue, his words were drowned in “volleys of cheers” that echoed from floor to ceiling. “It seemed,” one journalist remarked, “as if the roof would blow off.” This disruption was merely “a trifle compared with what followed.” After someone threw a four-foot Teddy bear into the air, delegates began tossing it from one state to another. “Each time it appeared above the heads of the delegates,” The Washington Post reported, “it was a signal for another outburst.” The convention was “on the verge of a good natured riot” when a national committeeman from Oklahoma captured and sat on the bear, successfully resisting all attempts to snatch it away.
Bulletins describing these outbursts on the convention floor understandably produced anxiety for the little group assembled in Taft’s office. Fortunately, Taft had departed to meet with Secretary Root about an official matter just before the pandemonium erupted, but Nellie was unnerved. Her anxiety was somewhat mollified when Frank Hitchcock called from the floor assuring everyone that he was “not at all alarmed.” The Taft delegates would remain firm.
Back in Chicago, the wild ovation persisted for a record forty-nine minutes, ceasing only when Lodge returned to the podium, wresting the crowd’s attention “by the force of his personality” and the impact of his words. “That man is no friend to Theodore Roosevelt,” he proclaimed, “who now, from any motive, seeks to urge him as a candidate for the great office which he has finally declined. The President has refused what his countrymen would gladly have given him; he says what he means and means what he says, and his party and his country will respect his wishes as they honor his high character and great public service.” Aware that Lodge was the president’s designated spokesman—and that he carried a letter confirming Roosevelt’s refusal in case of his nomination—the gathering accepted the senator’s words “as the voice of the President.” The convention quieted; the possibility of the stampede, feared by some and desired by many, had come and gone.
Nellie was still seated at the desk receiving bulletins when Taft returned to the office. After learning of the excitement, he walked over to the White House, where the president and first lady were preparing for a horseback ride through Rock Creek Park. William Loeb, Roosevelt’s secretary, remarked that the convention had simply needed “to blow off steam” before moving forward. Archie Butt had never seen Roosevelt more ebullient. Flattered by the emotional outpouring, the president recognized that the convention had paid him the highest possible compliment without forcing a decision that threatened both his party’s prospects and the credibility of his word. Taft, too, was smiling. A reassuring telegram had arrived from Frank Hitchcock: “The cheers for Roosevelt today, will be for Taft tomorrow.”
When the convention opened the following day, Nellie resumed her customary position at her husband’s desk. Charlie happily continued serving as messenger, and Miss Helen Taft, scheduled to attend Bryn Mawr College in the fall, joined the group as the nominating speeches for favorite sons were set to begin. Journalists remarked on the solidarity of the Taft family, particularly noting Nellie’s unusual role as one of her husband’s “best advisers” in every aspect of the campaign. A San Francisco Chronicle reporter described the atmosphere in the room as “electric with excitement [and] suppressed nervous tension.”
Nellie strove to remain calm as she relayed reports of the enthusiastic cheering that greeted Ohio congressman Theodore Burton’s nominating speech for Taft. Delegates stood on their chairs as a large banner bearing Taft’s picture was carried through the aisles, waving their hats and flags to a chorus of “Taft, Taft, Taft.” A burst of good-natured laughter greeted a pair of ample trousers adorning a flagpole brandished by a member of the Texas delegation: “As pants the hart for cooling streams,” they intoned, “so Texas pants for Taft!” To better view the animated demonstration, Charles Taft climbed a stepladder on the edge of the Ohio delegation. His “beaming smile” revealed pride and pleasure in the accomplishments of a younger brother whom he had mentored and supported since the death of their father. Though less protracted than the frenzy unleashed by Roosevelt’s name on the previous day, the exuberant response buoyed the spirits of Taft’s supporters.
By late afternoon, visitors inundated Taft’s inner office, with reporters streaming in and out. Just before the balloting was set to begin, Nellie was handed a bulletin causing her to turn “white as marble.” A large lithograph of Roosevelt had been carried onto the stage, she relayed to the gathering, and once again the audience had erupted into a frenzy that made it impossible for Chairman Lodge to restore order. “Scarcely a word was spoken,” one correspondent noted. “Men who ordinarily are not affected by nervousness hung over the telegraph instrument as though their lives depended upon the words which the stolid telegrapher was ticking out.” Silence prevailed for nearly fifteen minutes, until the next bulletin announced that twenty-six Massachusetts delegates had voted for Taft. No one could fathom how the roll call had reached Massachusetts until it was discovered that even as the demonstration continued unabated, Lodge had somehow proceeded with the vote. “Pay no attention to the crowd,” he shouted to the clerk, declaring, “I shall not have the president made by a Chicago mob.” Seven states managed to cast their votes before the mayhem finally subsided. “The scene was absolutely unique in American history,” one correspondent noted, “the voting being taken during a terrific uproar in behalf of a man whose name was not before the convention.”
Shortly before five-thirty, a telegram arrived declaring that the press associations had “flashed” the nomination of William Howard Taft. Her eyes “aglow with excitement,” Nellie read the news to the assembled throng. “Bubbling over with happiness,” she rose to embrace her husband, who “laughed with the joy of a boy.” A “football rush” followed as Taft’s colleagues in the War Department arrived en masse to extend their congratulations. Moments later, a bulletin confirmed that the nomination was declared unanimous, and Secretary of State Root appeared to accompany Taft to an appointment at the War College. “You know how happy I feel over this,” Root told the new nominee. “I do,” Taft replied, giving the secretary “a resounding whack on the back.” The nominee warned Root that they would face a delay as he shook hands with the assembled reporters. “It will be a long time before you will be able to shake the newspapermen,” Root quipped. Taft cordially greeted “the boys” in turn but declined to make a statement. “Words don’t frame themselves for me now,” he humbly insisted, “but I don’t deny that I am very happy.”
Roosevelt was engaged in a tennis game with Assistant Secretary of State Robert Bacon when he received word of Taft’s nomination. He had prepared a formal statement, which he directed his secretary to release straightaway to the press. “The country is indeed to be congratulated upon the nomination of Mr. Taft. I have known him intimately for many years and I have a peculiar feeling for him, because throughout that time we have worked for the same object with the same purposes and ideals. I do not believe there can be found in the whole country a man so well fitted to be president.”
That evening, against a backdrop of music and fireworks, Taft addressed hundreds of his neighbors and friends from his doorstep. “A great honor has fallen upon me today to lead a great political party in the contest that is to come,” he solemnly acknowledged. He then turned to Nellie, “the real ruler of the family,” acknowledging that “no greater need of approval could be desired.” Reminded that his nine o’clock reception at the White House would begin in two minutes, he hastened off on foot in that direction. But when the crowd thwarted his progress, he was forced to recruit the Army Band’s wagon. “Does this outfit belong to any one?” he inquired. “Everything belongs to you to-night,” he was assured. He promptly jumped into the wagon and proceeded to the White House, where his old friend, the proud kingmaker, awaited.
The convention completed its business the following day, nominating the conservative New York congressman James Sherman for vice president. Neither Roosevelt nor Taft was particularly happy with the choice of “Sunny Jim.” They had hoped to add a progressive from the West to the ticket, but when Albert Beveridge, Herbert Hadley, Jonathan Dolliver, and A. B. Cummins all refused, they had left the decision to the delegates. The platform approved by the delegates was equally unsatisfying. At Taft’s insistence, it called for a special session to revise the tariff and create a postal savings bank system, but it diluted an anti-injunction plank and blamed Democrats for the failure to act on progressive measures, exonerating the Republican majority. While Senators La Follette and Beveridge expressed “disappointment,” William Allen White defended the convention’s work in an editorial. “We can’t get all we desire,” he maintained. “A party is no place for a crank. If he cannot compromise and go forward he should flock alone.”
“THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS ARE going to be kind of a nightmare for me,” Taft confessed to a friend shortly after the convention. Each morning he awakened “with a certain degree of nervous uneasiness of what may appear in the newspaper,” he explained, and though he could handle attacks “manufactured out of whole cloth,” those blending truth and falsehood were more troubling.
To fortify himself, Taft planned to spend July and August at the Homestead, a celebrated resort hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, where he could work, relax, and replenish his energies for the fall campaign. Situated atop the Blue Ridge Mountains, a short horseback ride from waterfalls and ancient woodlands, the Homestead boasted a majestic high-ceilinged lobby, a wide veranda surrounding the entire building, and an eighteen-hole golf course. Nellie, Will, and Charlie occupied the Presidential Suite, with a private balcony overlooking the grassy links. In addition, a five-room office suite had been configured, providing two private chambers for the nominee, along with a reception area and workspace for his secretary and clerk. In the days that followed, dozens of senators, congressmen, cabinet officials, and members of the Republican National Committee made the train trip to Hot Springs. Overnight, the little town became the focus of national attention, just as Oyster Bay had been seven years earlier.
Despite the many diversions offered by the luxurious Homestead, Taft kept to a rigorous schedule. Typically awakened at seven by his Filipino valet, he favored a spare breakfast of dry toast and a single soft-boiled egg. By 8:30 a.m., he was bathed, shaved, and settled in his office, where he read and signed responses to more than 1,500 congratulatory notes in addition to general correspondence of nearly 150 letters every day. By ten, he was out on the eighteen-hole golf course with one or two invited guests. By 2 p.m., he had returned to his office, meeting with party leaders to determine strategy for each region of the country. In the late afternoon, he would devote several hours to working on his acceptance speech, scheduled for late July. At seven thirty, he and Nellie went to dinner in the public dining room with their visitors, before settling on the wide veranda that served as the “favorite promenade” for hotel guests.
The week after the Tafts arrived in Hot Springs, the Democratic Party held its convention in Denver. After the defeat of their previous nominee, conservative Judge Alton Parker, the party once again turned to the progressive hero William Jennings Bryan. Their platform demanded the passage of bills Roosevelt had failed to push through the Republican Congress—an eight-hour day, a general employers’ liability act, a progressive income tax, and a child labor law. They further advocated the direct election of senators, a public record of campaign contributions, a federal guarantee of bank deposits, and a law removing tariff protection for the products of any corporation with a market share over 50 percent.
The Democratic platform, Taft confided to Roosevelt, left him in a quandary over his own acceptance speech, for while he disagreed vehemently with some of their pledges, he approved many of them. “We will be able to riddle it,” Roosevelt assured him in reply. A few days later, the president forwarded specific suggestions on how to “slash savagely” at Bryan and his platform. After working steadily for another week, Taft sent his first draft to Roosevelt. “Both of the first two paragraphs should certainly be omitted,” Roosevelt replied, but aside from a weak section on bank deposits, he found the remainder of the address “admirable.” He added in closing: “I think that the number of times my name is used should be cut down. You are now the leader.”
While Taft’s continued desire for the counsel of the country’s “most accomplished politician” was understandable, his “extraordinarily frank announcement” that he intended to bring his final draft to Oyster Bay for Roosevelt to review provoked scorn and concern. “I have the highest regard for the president’s judgment,” he told the press, justifying his apparent deference to Roosevelt’s opinion, “and a keen appreciation of his wonderful ability for forceful expression.” Editorial writers universally lambasted “the spectacle of Candidate Taft hurrying to Oyster Bay to submit his speech of acceptance.” The New York Times likened his action to that of “a schoolboy about to submit his composition to the teacher before he read it in school,” and observed that despite great admiration for Roosevelt, people would like their next president to demonstrate “an existence independent of his late chief.” The New York Sun described the visit as a “humiliating pilgrimage,” further evidence that Taft was “but the puppet of the White House Punch and Judy manipulator.” Although the copy of the speech that Taft’s secretary released to the press after Roosevelt’s review revealed few substantial changes, the episode was “not calculated to inspire confidence in Republican breasts.”
From New York, Taft traveled to his brother Charley’s Cincinnati home, where the official notification ceremony and acceptance address would take place. The stately colonial mansion, with its white pillars and sweeping green lawns, provided a perfect setting for the festivities. Workers had constructed a platform and two temporary porches flanking the imposing entrance to accommodate members of the notification committee and distinguished visitors. A flagpole erected on the south lawn flew a silk flag which the local citizens had donated to honor Taft’s visits to Cincinnati. The spacious grounds afforded standing room for nearly 1,500 spectators. “What we thought originally would be merely a formal affair, attended by a few people,” Charley explained to a relative, “has developed into a big demonstration.” Thousands streamed into Cincinnati from neighboring states to attend the open-air concerts, fire-works, receptions, and marching band performances that accompanied the main event. A large, enthusiastic crowd greeted Taft at the Cincinnati train station with an enormous banner bearing the words NO PLACE LIKE HOME. Charles was first to grasp his brother’s hand, and they proceeded “arm in arm” to a waiting carriage. On the drive to the Pike Street home where he intended to spend a quiet weekend with Nellie before Tuesday’s big event, Taft appreciated the city’s “holiday attire”—flags waving, houses draped with bunting, streets adorned with colorful streamers.
On July 28, the designated Notification Day, “the booming of cannon” announced a two-hour parade through the city. From the reviewing stand, Taft was gratified to observe Democrats marching side by side with Republicans in a show of bipartisanship for their favorite son. The formal ceremony began at noon, with the head of the notification committee delivering the official announcement that the Republican Party had selected William Howard Taft “as its candidate for president—the highest honor that can be conferred by this constitutional republic.” Taft “smiled cordially and looked as much astonished as he could be.” And when his turn came to speak, the audience erupted in warm applause.
Disregarding Roosevelt’s admonishment, Taft opened with a tribute to the president’s “movement for practical reform,” touting his leadership in securing long-overdue regulatory legislation over corporate behavior, the railroads, the food and drug industry, and the conservation of natural resources. These laws, Taft argued, offered a far more constructive avenue for curbing corporate abuses than Democratic proposals to dismantle large corporations simply because they were big. The Republican approach “would compel the trusts to conduct their business in a lawful manner,” while Bryan and the Democrats would simply “destroy the entire business in order to stamp out the evils which they have practiced.”
Having commended the high standard of morality set by Roosevelt’s agenda, Taft was careful to delineate a policy of his own. “The chief function of the next Administration,” he pledged, “is distinct from, and a progressive development of, that which has been performed by President Roosevelt. The chief function of the next Administration is to complete and perfect the machinery by which these standards may be maintained, by which the lawbreakers may be promptly restrained and punished, but which shall operate with sufficient accuracy and dispatch to interfere with legitimate business as little as possible. Such machinery is not now adequate.” Furthermore, he expressed his personal support for two issues that conservative delegates had refused to sanction in the Republican Party platform: a progressive income tax and the direct election of senators.
After the official hour-long address, Taft spoke informally to friends and fellow citizens, expressing the gratitude and wonder he and Nellie felt at the spectacular reception. “Popular elections are uncertain,” he concluded, “but whatever betide me as a candidate, we can never be deprived of the joy we feel at this welcome home.” An elated Nellie added her own remarks: “Hasn’t it been glorious!” she exclaimed. “I love public life. To me this is better than when Mr. Taft was at the bar and at the bench, for the things before him now and in which he takes part are live subjects.”
After a luncheon party at the Country Club, the Tafts ended their long day on the Island Queen, escorted up the Ohio River by more than 150 smaller boats, “all ablaze with illumination.” From the steamer’s deck, Will and Nellie witnessed a magnificent display of fireworks. Three days later, the glow of his home city’s “tremendous outpouring” remained with Taft. “No matter what may happen,” he reflected to Roosevelt, “the joy we felt at our reception in Cincinnati was unalloyed.”
“I congratulate you most heartily,” the president wrote. “The speech is a great success and has achieved exactly the purposes you sought to obtain. Of course, the Sun, Times, and Evening Post are dreadfully pained at your having praised me,” he gleefully observed, “or rather, as they phrase it, having submitted to my insistence that you should praise me. I am glad they did not see your speech before I got at it.” In its revised form, Taft’s speech garnered a positive response. The Wall Street Journal called it “an exceedingly able and shrewd political document.” Though “not brilliant in the Roosevelt and Bryan sense,” nor studded with “telling phrases,” the Journal declared, it increased “the popular faith in Mr. Taft’s fitness for the high office” and perfectly positioned him “in the middle of the road, avoiding alike the extreme of eastern conservatism and the extreme of western radicalism.”
Relieved that his acceptance speech was behind him, Taft returned to Hot Springs for the month of August, intending to focus on a rigorous regime of dieting and exercise. By limiting his food consumption and walking three or four hours each day over the formidable fairways of the golf course, he hoped to shed the 50 pounds he had gained during the previous year. “I play golf just as I would take medicine,” he conceded to reporters, and after a brief stint of this hiking and golfing regimen under the hot sun, he proudly reported to Roosevelt that he had already lost inches in his waist. Taft’s other planned activity, trail riding, had to be abandoned after the ankles of his saddle horse proved too weak to carry his weight. “No man weighing 300 pounds has any business on a horse’s back,” declared the president of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals upon reading of the animal’s collapse, callously griping, “if he must ride let him use an automobile or an elephant.” One Taft supporter offered to donate a 3,500-pound workhorse, one so large that “a special stall” would be built to accommodate the massive creature. Undeterred, Taft continued his daily exertions on the links.
With little hard news to report, correspondents resorted to detailed accounts of Taft’s golf game, creating the unfortunate impression that the candidate engaged in little beyond recreation. The Tribune reporter, at least, observed that he played golf as he did “everything else, with the same steadiness and poise, and same equable temper, never becoming discouraged by any obstacle and never losing his temper or his nerve as a result of a bad play.”
The rash of golfing anecdotes vexed Roosevelt. “It would seem incredible that anyone would care one way or the other about your playing golf,” the president complained to Taft, but he had “received literally hundreds of letters from the West protesting about it.” Because the working class looked upon golf as a “rich man’s game,” Roosevelt cautioned his friend to suppress future reports about his golf game. Nor should he even permit himself to be photographed on the golf course, for “the American people regard the campaign as a very serious business.” Taft insisted that he was working “very hard” but acknowledged that appearances could be misleading.
As the general election drew near, Roosevelt continued to hover about Taft “like a hen over her chickens.” Early on, Taft had pledged to make public all campaign contributions as soon as the election was over. Realizing such transparency might paralyze large donors, Taft told the president that he was “willing to undergo the disadvantage in order to make certain that in the future we shall reduce the power of money in politics.” Republican fund-raising did, in fact, suffer. “I must tell you plainly,” Taft’s treasurer George Sheldon protested, that your pledge has “tied my hands and at least one of my legs and I am well nigh helpless.” The nominee caused further consternation when he refused a $50,000 check from William Cromwell, a friend who had donated despite the knowledge that his contribution would be on public record. Taft told Cromwell he could not accept such a large sum from anyone outside his own family. Though he realized the gift was prompted by “nothing but the purest friendship,” he feared its size would be “misunderstood.” Roosevelt disagreed. “I have always said you would be the greatest President,” he chided Taft, “but really I think you are altogether oversensitive. If I were in your place I should accept that contribution of Cromwell’s with real gratitude.” Taft finally agreed to accept a $10,000 check, with the understanding that the amount could be increased if necessary.
Facing a host of difficulties even before the traditional Labor Day opening for the fall campaign, Taft confessed to Roosevelt that he felt somewhat chagrined about his chances. “Don’t get one particle discouraged,” Roosevelt assured him; “you have exactly the right attitude of mind in the matter. In 1904 I never permitted myself to regard the election as anything but doubtful.” In truth, Taft had reason to worry. Williams Jennings Bryan had become a far more formidable candidate since his previous runs in 1896 and 1900. In those earlier campaigns, the Chicago journalist Walter Wellman noted, many had viewed Bryan as “a dangerous man—revolutionary, socialist, and by some, almost an anarchist.” But with the rise of Theodore Roosevelt and the progressive wing of the Republican Party, many policies championed by the Democratic candidate had become law. “No longer an outcast,” Bryan pronounced himself a more legitimate heir to Roosevelt than Taft, promising that a Democratic majority would break the stranglehold of Republican conservatives on Congress.
Taft’s political strategists were initially reluctant to send their candidate on a speaking tour, preferring to run a front-porch campaign from his brother’s home in Cincinnati. They feared that Taft “would be placed at a disadvantage appearing on the stump against the gifted Nebraskan.” Once again, Taft’s principles collided with their strategy. “If the candidate does not go out and work himself,” he told Roosevelt, “the subordinates in the ranks are not liable to tear their shirts, whereas the personal presence of the man at the head will have an encouraging and stimulating effect.” At Taft’s direction, party strategists designed a strenuous tour, focused mainly in the West and Midwest, where Bryan was gaining substantial momentum.
Fearing that Taft would be too reticent on the stump, Roosevelt barraged him with incessant advice. “Do not answer Bryan; attack him!” he counseled in early September, adding, “Don’t let him make the issues.” A week later, the president resumed. “Hit them hard, old man,” he encouraged, offering a slew of new suggestions: “Let the audience see you smile always, because I feel that your nature shines out so transparently when you do smile—you big, generous, high-minded fellow. Moreover let them realize the truth, which is that for all your gentleness and kindliness and generous good nature, there never existed a man who was a better fighter when the need arose.” Taft promised to confront Bryan directly, but he remained reluctant to launch an uncharacteristic, dramatic offensive. “I cannot be more aggressive than my nature makes me,” he told a concerned supporter. “That is the advantage and the disadvantage of having been on the Bench. I can’t call names and I can’t use adjectives when I don’t think the case calls for them, so you will have to get along with that kind of a candidate.”
“I am not very pleased with the way Taft’s campaign is being handled,” Roosevelt complained to his son-in-law, Nicholas Longworth, adding, “I do wish that Taft would put more energy and fight into the matter.” Constitutionally incapable of remaining on the sidelines, Roosevelt decided “to put a little vim into the campaign” with a series of public letters. The first of these missives challenged Bryan’s claim that he, rather than Taft, was the president’s “natural successor.” “The true friend of reform,” Roosevelt clarified, “is the man who steadily perseveres in righting wrongs, in warring against abuses, but whose character and training are such that he never promises what he cannot perform . . . and that, while steadily advancing, he never permits himself to be led into foolish excesses.” William Howard Taft “combines all of these qualities to a degree which no other man in our public life since the Civil War has surpassed,” he ardently insisted. “For the last ten years,” he added, “I have been thrown into the closest intimacy with him, and he and I have on every essential point stood in heartiest agreement, shoulder to shoulder.”
Bryan’s further assertion that Roosevelt’s views aligned more closely with the Democratic platform than with the agenda of his own Republican Party prompted a fiery exchange between the two men. “You say that your platform declares in favor of the vigorous enforcement of the law against guilty trust magnates and officials,” Roosevelt noted, “and that the platform upon which Mr. Taft stands makes no such declaration. It was not necessary. That platform approved the policies of this administration.” He pointed out that under Grover Cleveland, the last Democratic president, not a single anti-trust case was instituted—nor was action taken to stop rebates. Deeds, he argued in a further exchange, were far more important than words.
Roosevelt’s fiery declarations put Bryan on the defensive, and spurred the sluggish Republican campaign. Bryan “walked into a trap,” Taft gratefully told Roosevelt, “and that gave you an opportunity, at his instance, to hit him, two or three blows between the eyes.” Throughout the West, Taft added, Bryan’s “claim to be the heir of your policies is now the subject of laughter and ridicule rather than of serious weight.”
Ascribing “the revival in the Republican campaign” to his pugnacious friend, Taft overlooked his own winning impression made at every stop. The “Taft Special,” which carried him to twenty-one states in forty-one days, consisted of four cars: a private car for the nominee and his guests, a dining car, a sleeping car for the newspapermen, and a baggage car. Addressing friendly crowds at each city and town along the whistle-stop tour, Taft “proved to be a good deal more of a speaker than most of those present had counted on hearing.” While he was in no sense “a professional entertainer,” one reporter remarked, his words displayed such openness and were uttered with such conviction that “he strengthened himself in the hearts of his hearers.” Audiences invariably came away persuaded that Taft was “on the level,” that he told “the truth about himself,” and stated his thoughts without equivocation. “That man has a fine face,” one spectator enthused. “I would trust him anywhere.” As the crowds continued to grow, Taft became more confident in his oratory. “I have been in real touch with the people,” he proudly observed. “They have come to see me and hear me in numbers far beyond my anticipation, and what seems of even more importance, they have responded to what I have had to say in a way that I could feel their sympathy.”
“You are making such a success with your speeches,” Nellie wrote from New York where she was busy settling her children into their various schools. For weeks, she had been nettled by gossip that Roosevelt was disappointed by Taft’s inability to generate campaign momentum. Now, these sanguine reports of the whistle-stop tour left her “treading on air.” The president, she informed her husband, had requested a meeting with her: “I can’t imagine what Teddy wants,” she wrote, “but probably only to complain of some thing.” Nellie was mistaken. In fact, the president was growing more confident about Taft’s prospects in the general election. Recognizing that Taft’s speaking tour had invigorated the campaign, he simply wanted to share his enthusiasm with her. Nellie “had a most delightful time,” Will wrote afterward to Roosevelt. “You gave her courage and hope.”
Expressing a similar optimism to Kermit in late October, Roosevelt wrote that the political outlook had “changed materially for the better.” He was now certain, he told his son, that Taft would be elected. To everyone’s relief, the speaking tour had succeeded “tremendously,” an achievement for which Roosevelt did not hesitate to take credit—forgetting that Taft had done yeoman work in both his 1904 and 1906 campaigns. Archie Butt told of his amusement at the president’s skewed recounting of how he transformed Taft from a soporific lecturer into a popular draw: “I told him he simply had to stop saying what he had said in this or that decision,” for at that point people “promptly begin to nod. I told him that he must treat the political audience as one coming, not to see an etching, but a poster. He must, therefore, have streaks of blue, yellow, and red to catch the eye, and eliminate all fine lines and soft colours. I think Mr. Taft thought I was a barbarian and a mountebank at first, but I am pleased to say that he is at last catching the attention of the crowd.”
Such indiscretions invariably filtered into Taft’s camp, fueling resentment at the president’s condescending and potentially damaging self-aggrandizement. Taft’s supporters had long felt that Roosevelt “was keeping himself too much in the limelight,” creating the impression that Taft was incapable “of standing on his own feet.” Always gracious, Taft assured Roosevelt that he did not know who had spread rumors that his people were rankled by the president’s active role. Personally, he had been “very touched” by Roosevelt’s speechmaking advice and “delighted” by everything done to support him.
Nellie joined Taft in Buffalo on the last day of his speaking tour. In western New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, they were met by “monster” crowds brimming with enthusiasm. Reporters noted that Nellie “seemed to enjoy it immensely.” They reached Cincinnati at 8 a.m. on November 3, spending the day at Charley’s home before going to vote in the afternoon. In preparation for receiving the election returns, Charley had converted the veranda into a telegraph room with wires directly connected to the national Republican headquarters in New York, Western Union, the Associated Press, and the United Press.
The extended family and friends gathered in the large drawing room, surrounded by the exquisite art collection Charles and Annie had assembled during their sojourns in Europe. Newspapermen who had traveled with the candidate on the whistle-stop tour joined them. Gus Karger, theCincinnati Times reporter who had served as Taft’s publicity agent during the campaign, read out the returns. Early reports from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Maryland soon indicated a magnificent victory for William Howard Taft.
The excited candidate paced throughout the evening, “exhibiting the finest specimen of that smile which the campaign had made famous.” At 8:45 p.m., he finally agreed to make a statement: “Just say that everything looks favorable,” he directed modestly. Nellie was more forthcoming, exclaiming, “I was never so happy in my life.” Though Taft’s popular margin was only half the size of Roosevelt’s 1904 victory, he carried twenty-nine of the forty-six states, beating Bryan by over a million and a quarter votes. Later that night, Taft delivered a short speech with his distinctive, self-effacing sincerity: “I pledge myself to use all the energy and ability in me to make the next Administration a worthy successor to that of Theodore Roosevelt,” he said. “I could have no higher aim than that.”
At the White House, Archie Butt reported, Roosevelt “was simply radiant over Taft’s victory, and made no attempt to disguise it,” interpreting the victory as a vindication of his own policies. When the conversation turned to Taft’s struggle to lose weight through golf and horseback riding, the president offered pithy advice: “If I were Taft, I would not attempt to take much exercise. I would content myself with the record I was able to make in the next four years or the next eight and then be content to die.”
Taft addressed his very first letter as president-elect to his friend and mentor Theodore Roosevelt. “My selection and election are chiefly your work,” he told him. “You and my brother Charley made that possible which in all probability would not have occurred otherwise.” In later years, Roosevelt would express resentment at being yoked with Taft’s brother as a joint benefactor, heedless that Charles’s decades of financial support had enabled Will to sustain a career in public service. At that moment, however, Roosevelt responded with unalloyed joy. “You have won a great personal victory as well as a great victory for the party,” the president wrote, “and all those who love you, who admire and believe in you, and are proud of your great and fine qualities, must feel a thrill of exultation.”