Four Hats in the Ring
Four Hats in the Ring

Author: Lewis L. Gould

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2008-04-09

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0700618562

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Imagine a presidential election with four well-qualified and distinguished candidates and a serious debate over the future of the nation! Sound impossible in this era of attack ads and strident partisanship? It happened nearly a century ago in 1912, when incumbent Republican William Howard Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt running as the Progressive Party candidate, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs all spoke to major concerns of the American people and changed the landscape of national politics in the bargain. The presidential election of 1912 saw a third-party candidate finish second in both popular and electoral votes. The Socialist candidate received the highest percentage of the popular vote his party ever attained. In addition to year-round campaigning in the modern style, the 1912 contest featured a broader role for women, two exciting national conventions, and an assassination attempt on Roosevelt's life. The election defined the major parties for generations to come as the Taft-Roosevelt split pushed the Republicans to the right and the Democrats' agenda of reform set them on the road to the New Deal. Lewis L. Gould, one of America's preeminent political historians, tells the story of this dramatic race and explains its enduring significance. Basing his narrative on the original letters and documents of the candidates themselves, he guides his readers down the campaign trail through the factional splits, exciting primaries, tumultuous conventions and the turbulent fall campaign to Wilson's landslide electoral vote victory in November. It's all here-Gene Debs's challenge to capitalism, the progressive rivalry of Roosevelt and Robert La Follette, the debate between the New Freedom of Wilson and the New Nationalism of Roosevelt, and the resolve of Taft to defeat his one-time friend TR and keep the Republican Party in conservative hands. Gould combines lively anecdotes, the poetry and prose of the campaign, and insights into the clash of ideology and personality to craft a narrative that moves as fast as did the 1912 election itself. Americans sensed in 1912 that they stood at a turning point in the nation's history. Four Hats in the Ring demonstrates why the people who lived and fought this significant election were more right than they could ever have known.

1912
1912

Author: James Chace

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2009-11-24

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1439188262

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Beginning with former president Theodore Roosevelt’s return in 1910 from his African safari, Chace brilliantly unfolds a dazzling political circus that featured four extraordinary candidates. When Roosevelt failed to defeat his chosen successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican nomination, he ran as a radical reformer on the Bull Moose ticket. Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson, the ex-president of Princeton, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the bosses who had made him New Jersey’s governor. Most revealing of the reformist spirit sweeping the land was the charismatic socialist Eugene Debs, who polled an unprecedented one million votes. Wilson’s “accidental” election had lasting impact on America and the world. The broken friendship between Taft and TR inflicted wounds on the Republican Party that have never healed, and the party passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness under Reagan and George W. Bush. Wilson’s victory imbued the Democratic Party with a progressive idealism later incarnated in FDR, Truman, and LBJ. 1912 changed America.

The 1912 Election and the Power of Progressivism
The 1912 Election and the Power of Progressivism

Author: Brett Flehinger

Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education

Published: 2019-01-04

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1319242952

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Faced with the challenge of adapting America’s political and social order to the rise of corporate capitalism, in 1912 four presidential candidates — Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Eugene Debs — shaped Americans’ thoughts about their public futures. Their positions would come to frame national conversation over the role of corporations in American life, determine the relation between the state and society that still controls our thinking about market regulation, and usher in a period of Progressive reform. Connecting the debates of 1912 to some of the most pressing issues of the Progressive Era, this volume presents selected sensational speeches, correspondence between these important figures and their allies and opponents, and 12 lively political cartoons. The documents are supported by an interpretive essay, a chronology, a bibliography, and a series of questions for student consideration, including ideas for a classroom debate.

Roosevelt's Revolt
Roosevelt's Revolt

Author: John C. Skipper

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-03-21

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1476632197

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The presidential election of 1912 was the only one whose candidates included an incumbent president, a former president and a future president. Theodore Roosevelt, in the Oval Office from 1901 to 1909, chose not to run again. When his former Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, took controversial actions as his successor, Roosevelt challenged him for the 1912 Republican nomination. Taft emerged as the nominee and Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate on the Progressive (Bull Moose) ticket, causing a split in the GOP that allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency. The author examines the election in detail and traces the effects of Roosevelt's actions on the Republican Party for decades. Appendices detail Republican primary results and all of the parties' platforms and provide a summary of presidential assassinations and attempts.

Gendered Politics
Gendered Politics

Author: Linda Van Ingen

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-02-07

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1498537618

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This book explores women’s campaign strategies when they ran for state and national office in California from their first opportunity after state suffrage in 1911 to the advent of modern feminism in 1970. Although only 18 won, nearly 500 women ran on the primary ballots, changing the political landscape for both men and women while struggling against a collective forgetfulness about their work. Mostly white and middle-class until the 1960s, the women discussed in this book are notable for their campaign innovations which became increasingly complex, even if not consciously connected to a usable past. They re-gendered politics as political “firsts,” pursued high hopes for organizational support from their women’s clubs, accommodated to opportunities created through incumbency and issue politics, and explored both separatist and integrationists politics with their parties. In bringing these campaigns to light, this study explores the history of California women legislators and the ways in which women on the ballots sought to transcend gendered barriers, supporting women’s equality while also recognizing the political value of connections to men in power. Organized in a loose chronology with the state’s governors, this study shows the persistent nature of women’s candidacies despite a recurring historical amnesia that complicated their progress. Remembering this history deepens our understanding of women running for office today and solidifies their credibility in a long history of women politicians.

Labor’s Great War
Labor’s Great War

Author: Joseph A. McCartin

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-11-01

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 146961703X

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Since World War I, says Joseph McCartin, the central problem of American labor relations has been the struggle among workers, managers, and state officials to reconcile democracy and authority in the workplace. In his comprehensive look at labor issues during the decade of the Great War, McCartin explores the political, economic, and social forces that gave rise to this conflict and shows how rising labor militancy and the sudden erosion of managerial control in wartime workplaces combined to create an industrial crisis. The search for a resolution to this crisis led to the formation of an influential coalition of labor Democrats, AFL unionists, and Progressive activists on the eve of U.S. entry into the war. Though the coalition's efforts in pursuit of industrial democracy were eventually frustrated by powerful forces in business and government and by internal rifts within the movement itself, McCartin shows how the shared quest helped cement the ties between unionists and the Democratic Party that would subsequently shape much New Deal legislation and would continue to influence the course of American political and labor history to the present day.

From Open Secrets to Secret Voting
From Open Secrets to Secret Voting

Author: Isabela Mares

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-06-17

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 131630079X

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The expansion of suffrage and the introduction of elections are momentous political changes that represent only the first steps in the process of democratization. In the absence of institutions that protect the electoral autonomy of voters against a range of actors who seek to influence voting decisions, political rights can be just hollow promises. This book examines the adoption of electoral reforms that protected the autonomy of voters during elections and sought to minimize undue electoral influences over decisions made at the ballot box. Empirically, it focuses on the adoption of reforms protecting electoral secrecy in Imperial Germany during the period between 1870 and 1912. Empirically, the book provides a micro-historical analysis of the democratization of electoral practices, by showing how changes in district level economic and political conditions contributed to the formation of an encompassing political coalition supporting the adoption of electoral reforms.