Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [395]
21 All the same, Roosevelt The clearest analysis of the bias of the Republican National Committee in 1912 remains that in Bishop, TR, 2.324–26.
Historiographical Note: The exact number of delegates won in primary elections by TR and WHT in 1912 has been the subject of much dispute among historians and biographers. (See above, 637, for the similar elusiveness of the total primary vote.) Mowry, e.g., allows WHT only 48 delegates, whereas Bishop gives him 68, and Sullivan and Pringle 71. There is even disagreement on how many primaries were held. In their general tendency to emphasize TR’s popularity among rank-and-file GOP voters, these historians mystifyingly exclude New York. Technically, it is true that the Barnes machine exerted an undue influence on the voting in that state, but the canvass held on 26 March was very definitely a primary, and treated as such by all participants.
The 83 delegates pledged to WHT from New York, plus the 7 pledged to TR, should be therefore included in the overall tally, making the President’s unpopularity less marked, while a recalculation of TR’s performance hardly affects the decisiveness of the outcome. The following table, compiled in calendar order, includes delegates-at-large who remained loyal to their candidate despite contrary instructions (as in Massachusetts) or who were added on by state conventions (as in Ohio). It does not, however, include 28 Taft delegates from the primary in Georgia, a state where the GOP was effectively disenfranchised.
STATE TAFT TR
North Dakota
(La Follette) 0 0
New York 83 7
Wisconsin
(La Follette) 0 0
Illinois 2 56
Pennsylvania 9 65
Nebraska 0 16
Oregon 0 10
Massachusetts 18 26
Maryland 0 16
California 0 26
Ohio 14 34
New Jersey 0 28
South Dakota 0 10
TOTALS 126 294
When these numbers are subtracted from the aggregates brought by each candidate to the convention, it will be seen that the real conflict in the spring of 1912 was not between WHT and TR, but between two delegate-producing systems: the modern primary one, confined to northern states tolerant of progressivism, and the old caucus-convention method, supreme in the South and other regions where authority mattered more than popularity. If the primary states had not so suddenly doubled in number, they would have posed less of a challenge to what Taft called “the principles of the party … the retention of conservative government and conservative institutions.” (Gable, “The Bull Moose Years” [diss.], 40.) They gave TR a more than two-to-one advantage, whereas a reverse imbalance in favor of the President applied in the other 35 states, contributing to his overall majority. Until one or other of the systems won out (TR himself was not persuaded that the primary should be adopted everywhere), it would always be foolhardy for a popular candidate to take on a party-sanctioned one.
22 “The Taft leaders” The New York Times, 9 June 1912.
23 There was nothing For TR’s post-campaign sabbatical at Oyster Bay, see Sullivan, Our Times, 4.496–504.
24 “confusion and comparative” The New York Times, 16 June 1912.
25 He found Roosevelt Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the Republican National Convention at Chicago, June 12, 1912, compiled from notes taken on the spot,” bound vol., 1 (TRC). See also Nicholas Roosevelt, TR, 86ff.
26 “Well, Nick” Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 1.
27 The New York party Harper, a stenographer dispatched by The Outlook to assist TR on his tour of Europe in 1910, had stayed with him ever since. The following account of TR’s journey to Chicago is based on Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC.” Extra details from The New York Times and Syracuse Herald, 15, 16 June 1912, and Sullivan, Our Times, 4.505–6.
28 “the great effort” Nicholas Roosevelt, “Account of the RNC,” 1, 20.
29 In mid-afternoon John