thanks for joining us for our american history tv series, historic presidential elections.

during this current election season, we're taking a look back at past presidential races. well, it was the year 1912 and former republican president theodore roosevelt was running for his old job. this time under the banner of the progressive party, known at that time as the bull moose party. it eventually became a four way race, and on election day. teddy roosevelt split the gop vote. the former president won 27% of the vote. the sitting president, william howard taft, won 23%. and democrat woodrow wilson took 42%. and the presidency. helping us understand the ups and downs of that tumultuous election year is our guest, nicole hemmer history professor at vanderbilt university in nashville. professor hammer has taught classes and written about this period. and professor hammer, let's start with teddy roosevelt. first, explain when and why he decided to seek his old job, a job that he held from the years 1901 to 1909.

so teddy roosevelt had kind of hand-selected his successor, william taft, and then he left the united states for a yearlong safari. he goes off to england and to europe on a tour. and over the course of all that time, two things happen. first, he grows increasingly unhappy with the way that taft is serving as president and increasingly critical of of taft. he also is in the midst of all of these political debates and discussions in europe that make him excited for new policy. is that if you were president again, he might be able to pursue. and so when he gets back to the united states, first of all, he is greeted with a hero's welcome. he is tremendously popular. and both that grievance with taft and that excitement about these new ideas really begin to push him into thinking, well, maybe, maybe this would all be easier if i were just president again. and so that's what pushes him into running. how did americans react in 1912

to the idea of a former president running against a sitting president, a sitting president that he had helped tap for the job? oh, for some americans, it struck them as disloyal. but other americans, again, just love teddy roosevelt. they liked having him as president. they thought he was an interesting and charismatic figure. and so he also drew a lot of support from americans who wanted to see him back in the white house. and so that that kind of split reaction is something that you're ultimately going to see play out in the campaign as the republican party splits between the two men. there's also kind of a third issue that came up when roosevelt decided to run again, and that is, would he technically be breaking that true term limit? he had gotten into office just a few months after becoming vice president when president mckinley was assassinated. so he'd served pretty close to two full terms. and so would this count as kind of breaking tradition and running for a third term?

and so there were a handful of americans who were a little concerned about that. what had teddy roosevelt himself said about that two term limit or the the what was set by george washington, the precedent of george washington stepping down after two terms? well, i think he kind of looked at it as a technicality. and if he'd only been elected to the presidency once in the 1904 election, and so he still had one campaign left in him. and also, he felt again compelled to serve. and so i think to the extent that there were any misgivings about running for a third term, he felt uniquely appointed to be the person that broke that streak because he felt, again, almost a moral mission to serve again. well, here's a snapshot of what the united states of america looked like in 1912. president william howard taft, of course, was running for reelection. the population of the united states at the time was nearly 100 million people, with some 15

million immigrants. adding to the u.s. population between the years 1919 15. there were 48 states in the union at the time. some of the big news events, the titanic sinks in the north atlantic on april the 14th, 1912, and of course, looming two years in the future, world war one would begin in europe. nicole hemmer what were the key issues facing america. in 1912? so all of that growth that you described and all that new immigration and urbanization was was spreading during this period in time. all of that was happening because the u.s. was becoming an industrial manufacturing powerhouse. there were all of these new jobs, all of this new manufacturing work and all of these new giant corporation islands that were tremendously wealthy. and what that had created was the united states packed with people and it really defined by inequality. the people who had a lot of money had a lot of money.

and others. i mean, most americans were living in poverty. and so that disparity was driving a lot of unrest in the united states. so, too, was this idea that those corporations had grown so powerful that they had more power than the government. and in fact, because they had so much money, they had essentially bought the government. and so there were all these reform movements that were trying to wrest the government away from corporate power. and that was the big focus over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century, was this idea there had to be some kind of reform to make the united states more fair and more democratic. and that's where a lot of the energy in the 1912 election is coming from. and on foreign affairs, what was america's position in the world at the time? again, world war one looming two years in the future. what were those issues that teddy roosevelt was learning about during his tour in europe that he was excited about and brought back to the united states? the united states position in

the world had changed pretty dramatically, in part because of the spanish-american war, where the u.s. had begun to become a colonial power. taft himself had served as a provincial governor in the philippines. and so there was more of a u.s. presence in the world. one of the big things that teddy roosevelt had done while he was president was to expand the navy in the united states to make it more of a naval power and global power. and at the same time, there was this sense that if things were going poorly in europe, that was not a united states problem, that the united states didn't want to get bogged down in european issues because it saw itself as this new power that was untainted by europe. and in fact, saw europe as a source of a lot of ideas. in the case of teddy roosevelt, but also a lot of problems. and so there was a kind of a mixed attitude toward europe during this period. and a lot of that gets worked out in foreign policy, but it also gets worked out in

attitudes toward immigration and some of the hostility toward european immigrants that you see in the early 20th century. let's focus on the sitting president. in 1912, william howard taft. how did americans feel about the sitting president going into that year's election? so taft was it necessarily a bad president? but following teddy roosevelt, he was less sort of aggressive or bold as president. and he was also a lot less charismatic. he sometimes would flip flop on issues that were important to republicans, particularly on tariffs and on trade policy. and so the republican party wasn't entirely united behind him. and americans, as a whole, they didn't hate taft, but he just wasn't the kind of inspiring leader roosevelt had been. and so he paled in comparison to roosevelt. it didn't help that roosevelt was also kind of bad mouthing him in the press, a fair amount during his presidency. so i think that that dragged down some of his popularity.

so take us back to 1908, then. how was taft seen by the american public in 1908, and how did that relationship change between becoming the person that roosevelt put in office to follow him, to bad mouthing him while he's in office? it's a really big shift because taft and roosevelt had been friends at point for at least a couple of decades. and they had worked closely together. taft was more kind of a legal minded person. he was amiable. people liked him. he had taken all these powerful positions in the government. he had been solicitor general again. he had served in the philippines. and teddy roosevelt had essentially handpicked him as his successor. taft wasn't his vice president, but he was the person who roosevelt believed could carry on his legacy. and i think that roosevelt genuinely believed that when he left office in 1909, but because

of, you know, again, that the less forceful personality that taft had, because taft fired gifford pancho, who had been somebody who roosevelt was pretty close with in the federal government. and because roosevelt didn't like not having power, the combination of all of those things led him to tell friends that he thought that taft was weak, that he was well-meaning, but he wasn't actually a strong leader. and that continuing to sour on taft, that would happen over the next few years. you know, he tries to do a little bit of public outreach to make it look like it's not so big of a rift. but he really does see taft as in many ways a failure as a successor. what was the tipping point? what was the moment that that roosevelt decided he was going to get back in the ring? so i think at the tipping point for his relationship with taft, who was this issue with pancho? but i think has his is tipping point for getting back into the race was coming back to the united states. getting that hero's welcome.

and then he went out on a speaking tour. and when he went out on that speaking tour, he had these big rapturous audiences essentially the big kind of rallies that we see in campaigning today. and through that, he believed he had real popular support so that his ideas were popular and he was popular and he believed that that was the winning combination for setting the country back on the right course. and he saw setting the country back on the right course as electing roosevelt to another term. well, jeffrey rosen is president and ceo of the national constitution center in philadelphia. he wrote a book on william howard taft and he talks more here about the relationship between taft and teddy roosevelt. the reason taft ran again. even though he didn't like being president and was viewed as his liberation from the white house as a relief, was because he felt the election of 1912 was a crusade to defend the constitution and against the demagogic populism of both roosevelt and woodrow wilson.

as the most fascinating story in the election of 1912. george will said that a great event to the constitution center on this book that all of american politics can be traced to the election of 1912. and you can tell who's a conservative today based on who they would have voted for in the election of 1912. he says conservatives would have voted for the constitutionalist. taft, who's trying to defend judicial independence and the rule of law against the demagogic attacks of roosevelt. who says that the people should be able to overturn judicial decisions by popular vote? it was that claim that most alarmed the great constitutionalist taft and made him run for election. even though he didn't want to to defend the constitution. roosevelt, for the first time, insists that the president is a steward of the people who can directly channel the people's will, and he endorses instruments of direct democracy like the initiative and referenda them that he believes empower the president to be a channel of populism. and wilson, too, is a progressive populist who insists

in his latest book on constitutional government that the president in congress is like a prime minister who represents the people's will directly. and this just appalls taft, who says, no, the president derives his authority not directly from the people, but from the constitution. the framers designed an electoral college to filter popular will so the people elect wise delegates who will choose a president and this populist presidency, which became the imperial presidency in the 20th century, appalled taft's constitutionalist heart. so that's why he ran. it was a noble but doomed crusade. and we're back with nicole hemmer of vanderbilt university. let's set the stage of 1912, that election year and changes that year to the primary system in this country. what would the new president have to do to win the the nomination and the presidency? so because of that desire for more reform rooms and more democratic systems that had been boiling up in the system over the previous decades, several states had put in place

primaries. so the idea of picking a presidential nominee through the popular vote rather than through there was smoke filled dark rooms where the party would hand-pick the person who the party nominated. and what you have in 1912 is that 12 of the 48 states decided to put in place primaries for the popular vote. and this really does begin to change the playing field for how presidential nominees are selected, because you get a kind of barren, bitter for how the people of the party feel. an important caveat, which i know we'll talk more about, is that, for instance, in the republican party, there were more than 300 electoral votes that were up for grabs or 300 delegate votes that were up for grabs through the primary system. but that wasn't enough to get a majority. so even if you swept all the primaries, you would still have to get the support of party delegates through kind of conversations and building up support within those those

personal networks and those party networks. that was still that still meant that that old style of party politics was still, you know, holding strong in 1912. there was more democracy, but it was not a purely democratic system at that point. one history site referred to the 1912 election as the high watermark of the progressive era. one what does that mean? and two, would you agree? so the idea that it's the high watermark of the progressive era suggests that reform was front and center. that the idea of making government less corrupt but also stronger, was on the tables. that government would be kind of the main institution through which reform flowed. that democratic reforms were on the table. things like the direct election of senators and women's suffrage and india, election of 1912. not only are all of those things on the table, not only is that a part of the discussion, but basically every candidate that

in some way supported most of those changes. in particular, the candidates of the democratic party, teddy roosevelt for the progressive party, and another independent party candidate, the socialist candidate, eugene debs, all represented some pretty progressive forces in the u.s. government. so as you mentioned at the start, this is a four way race and at least three and arguably four of the candidates in that race supported progressive policy views. so this was really a direction of how strongly in the direction of progressivism the country was going to go rather than a debate over, say, progressivism versus the status quo. well, staying on the primary for a minute, more here of the republican primary. theodore roosevelt decides to get back in the ring first as a republican and loses that primary. take us through that story and how taft ended up winning the gop nomination. so roosevelt, because of this intense public support that he

had really believed that the primaries were the way that he was going to show that he had the party support. so like i said, there were 12 primaries. the first two were won by a progressive senator, robert lafollette, and then roosevelt very quickly overtakes him and sweeps ten of the next primaries. and so roosevelt does show a strong popular support through the primary system. that said, he goes into the convention with to a little over 200, maybe 300 votes. he needs more than 500. and while he was working on getting all of those primary votes cast, was shoring up his relationship with members of the party. this was something that he had been working on for the better part of a year where he was going to delegates, winning over their support, figuring out how to win over the convention so that when the convention voted for who their nominee was going to be. he would have the most votes. and so they had two very different ways of approaching the election. popular support or party support. and it turned out at the end of

the day, that party support was still more decisive. half goes into the convention, and his favorite pick for the chair of the convention wins. and then when the first ballot comes down, even though teddy roosevelt had done an unprecedented thing, he had come to the convention himself to make the case for himself. he'd given a real barnburner of a speech. but ultimately, that wasn't enough, because taft had locked up so many delegates. and so when the first ballot comes down, taft easily wins a majority and he becomes the party's nominee. where was the republican convention that year and what was the reaction among the republican party voters to that high stakes, high profile matchup between a former and current president so that the republican convention took place in june in chicago and it party was et divided between taft supporters and roosevelt supporters. so there were fights on the floor.

there were people who were shouting. e were delegates outs for roosevelt who were clashing with delegates for taft. there was a lot of energy in the party around this nomination because there was such a big division in the party and that does play out over the course of the convention. there's wild excitement for roosevelt when he shows up, but there'slso still, again, that division. and when the vote ultimately happens and taftinthe nomination, roosevelt says he's leaving the party. so that split that was already visible in the convention become a real party. split after this june convention, because roosevelt basically says, if you're not going to nominate me, i'm going to take my ideas, are going to take my platform and i'm going to take my personality and i'm going to start a new party that will be the vehicle for those ideas. well, let's leave teddy roosevelt there for one second and move over to the democratic primary. and how woodrow wilson, a former professor from princeton, ends

up becoming the nominee of the democratic party in 1912. i think this is a surprise for just about everyone because woodrow wilson hadn't even held elected office before 1910. but the democratic party was looking for something new, in part because they have largely been shut out of a presidential elections since since the civil war. i think that they'd only had one democratic president in the intervening years. and so they were trying to figure out how can we put forward somebody new who can actually build a national majority? and the party was split in a lot of ways between kind of old school long term democrats were part of the party machines where there was a lot of graft and a lot of corruption. and these new reformers who were coming up through the party. and wilson is such a good emblem of that division in the party because in new jersey, he had sort of won over the state party

machine and that had gotten him the nomination to become democratic governor in 1910. and as soon as he got the nomination, he turned into a reformer and began attacking the very machine that had gotten him the nomination and that actually shored up his progressive bona fides because here he was somebody who was willing to go after machine politics in new jersey, and that put him on the national map as an up and coming democratic reformer. and so as the party is casting about for a candidate, his name is in the mix now. he is not the frontrunner or going into this. the speaker of the house is is the is the front runner. but the problem is the speaker of the house gets the support of tammany hall. tammany hall was the new york political machine. and as soon as he gets the support of the political machine, the reformers are like, well, we have to stop him because he is going to be beholden to these these corrupt

organizations. and so william jennings bryan, who had been the democratic nominee for the past for three of the past four presidential elections, soundly defeated each time. but a real hero in the party as a progressive reformer. he throws his support behind woodrow wilson. and when he throws his support behind woodrow wilson, the party gets behind wilson. and on something like that, 53rd ballot. wilson is made the party's nominee. so it's a it's a long and surprising road for wilson. but he gets there because he's aligned with this this new reform energy in the democratic party. why was william jennings bryant still a hero of the party after so many losses as the candidate? and for a party that hadn't won a presidential election but once since 1860 was 1888. the other time the democrats won. until 1912. the reason that william jennings bryan was still so popular was because he wasn't necessarily a

political leader. he was a move ment leader. he was someone who could give a speech that would move the masses. he was the face of a populist movement. so the supporter of farmers and the little guy. and even though he wasn't able to pull together majorities, i think in part because the democratic party has had such a hard time winning the presidency, it wasn't really blamed on him. he wasn't blamed for those losses. it was seen as kind of a systemic failure of the democratic party. but he still had the ability to inspire and the ability to lead. so i think that's why he still had so much sway within the party, even though he wasn't able to win them presidential actions. so it takes 46 ballots at the democratic convention. where was the democratic convention that year, by the way? the democratic convention was in baltimore. so woodrow wilson wins after 46 ballots. and what is his standing in the party? what does the party look like coming out of a convention that

took 46 ballots to find a nominee? well, it sounds like a pretty divided party. and in some ways it is. but it's also an underdog party. so the democratic party understands that it needs to pull everyone together if they are going to win a presidential election. and there are a couple of things that help bring the party together. one, the vice president that or the running mate that woodrow wilson chooses is thomas marshall. he's a very popular, progressive governor of indiana. so there's some regional diversity added to the ticket that's kind of bringing the party together that way. but the democrats are also watching what's happening in chicago with the republicans. and as they see the republican party splitting, they know there is a real opportune ity here for democrats to win because the republicans will be divided, those votes will be split, and that creates an opening that democrats hadn't really had for the better part of half a century. so there's there's an excitement that helps to bring the party together as well. well, one other candidate in

that 1912 race was eugene debs of the socialist party. we featured eugene debs in a 2011 c-span series, the contenders. here's a look at eugene debs. well, many people remember him. most of all, as a as a dynamic speaker. this is an era of wonderful stump speakers who could who could fill two and 3 hours with a speech. debs, many said, was was really the best in that genre. and in fact, so good that he could he could afford to charge a modest admission for his audience. and that's how they funded the the socialist campaigns in many cases. and he was just a he was just a very charismatic and had the ability. i think he began as a sort of staid victorian speaker. but as he became more comfortable over the years, he developed a sort of more modern, impromptu style that really made a tremendous impact on his audience. and over your shoulders is debs, his library and my understanding

is that debs dropped out of school at age 14. and i'm curious about his extensive library and how he educated himself. well, he was he was very much self-taught in work, very hard at that. he began as a working in the railroad union was very interested in the literature there. he worked for a while as a as a grocery clerk in town, always wanted to get more education, but really had to rely on doing that on his own. and we're back with nicole hemmer of vanderbilt university, talking about the election of 1912. and nicole hemmer, bring us back to teddy roosevelt and where he is with his ideas and the new party that he wants to form. after leaving the republican convention in chicago that year. roosevelt leaves chicago to start the new party this progressive party, and swears he's going to come back to chicago. and he does come back to chicago in august of 1912 in order to hold a party convention.

and it's at that party convention that he is going to be nominated as the progressive party candidate. and in a lot of ways, i mean, the progressive party brought together a number of different progressive leaders who were in the republican party, progressive governors, others, progressives who just thought that taft wasn't the right leader for this moment, who really saw in roosevelt's vision of possibility for politics that they hadn't seen before. and so when they follow roosevelt to to the progressive party, that's what they're signing on to. they're signing on to this new politics, this new agenda, this new vision. and it all happens very quickly. there hadn't been a progressive party before. and so it's sort of comes into being over the course of a couple of months and at the august convention, it has it has the feeling of a revival meeting. it has an almost religious fervor because there's so much excitement and there's so much energy from these progressive reformers.

roosevelt again, comes to the convention. he gets an hour of applause and singing of songs before he's able to launch into his convention speech. and he again gives the convention speech. that's essentially like we have been chosen by god for this moment. and the crowd is sort of surging in support of him. and his nomination is seconded by jane addams, who is a very famous and still, i think, very famous reformer in chicago. she was part of the reform house movement where she was taking care of women and immigrants and creating kind of a progressive infrastructure in chicago. and so what you really see in chicago at the progressive party convention is also the different threads of the progressive movement coming together and sort of coalescing around teddy roosevelt. where did the term bull moose party come from? that comes from a nickname for teddy roosevelt. teddy roosevelt would talk about

how he was strong as a bull moose and also stubbornness bull moose. so that really was that the partsyol was itself an embodiment of teddy roosevelt and his personality. did teddy roosevelt see at the time the progress of party as a new third party in the united states, as a party that would that would take over the republican party. and it still be a two party system. what was the future beyond the 1912 election in the vision that teddy roosevelt was laying out the history of the united states suggested that while the system would tend toward two parties, that third parties could emerge and replace other parties. that's how the republican party became a party in 1854, by replacing the whig party before it. so the key understood the dynamics of the u.s. political system well enough to understand that ultimately you'd be left most likely with the two parties, but you wanted the progressive party to be the other party because they thought that the republican party just hadn't changed enough in order

to meet the moment and to meet the demands of the american people. in the early 20th century. so that gives hope was that he was building something new and stable, just like lincoln was seen as as the father of the republican party, that roosevelt would be seen as the new head of the progressive party. so after four different conventions for different parties, the 1912 presidential ticket looks like this. on the republican ticket, it's william howard taft with his vice presidential pick, nicholas butler, for the democratic ticket. woodrow wilson with thomas marshall as his vice presidential pick for the progressive party. it's teddy roosevelt at the top of the ballot and it's hiram johnson. and then the socialist party, eugene debs, with emil seidel as the vice presidential pick. well, you talked a little bit about thomas marshall already. what do you want to say about nicholas butler or hiram johnson? nicholas butler is an interesting choice because just like woodrow wilson, he was an ivy league college president. woodrow wilson had been the president of princeton

university and nicholas butler was the president of columbia university, perhaps the most interesting thing about butler is that he's not added to the ticket until late october, early november, so just days before the election. and that happens because the vice president dies. but who who taft was running against. so there's a lot of tumult on the republican ticket in the closing days of the election. and hiram johnson was the progressive governor of california. he helped found the progressive party with teddy roosevelt. and again, it was seen as the states are these places where a lot of reform is happening, they're trying to bring that reform to the federal government. and so you have these very charismatic, dedicated reformers who are in government. and in the case of the progressive party ticket, you have two of them on the ticket. and in the case of roosevelt and appear. hmm johnson was a shock was the sudden death of the vice president in 1912. yeah i mean so the vice

president had been ill with kidney disease for the better part of a decade at that point. but no one was expecting him to die just before the just before the election. so, yeah, it came as a it came as a shock and it required taft, who already kind of knew he was going to lose the election. it caused him to scramble to find somebody else. well, bring us back to those final months of the campaign and the general strategies of each one of the candidates there. you say taft kind of knew he was going to lose the election. at what point did he come to that realization? pretty much as soon as teddy roosevelt's split the ticket, as soon as he left the party, that's when taft sort of took a sort of jaundiced view towards his political fortunes for the rest of the campaign. and so taft is essentially not going to campaign in any real way. he's not going to go out on the campaign trail. he's going to let surrogates do that. but he himself is not going to be a particularly active

campaigner, kind of hangs out at the white house. roosevelt, on the other hand, is stumping from coast to coast. he is giving as many speeches as he possibly can in order to rally public support behind his candidacy and his ticket. woodrow wilson is doing much the same thing. and this is an important development. i mean, it had really only been over the past ten or 15 years that you saw this kind of active campaigning by candidates. and in this case, because you had a big personality and teddy roosevelt and a democratic party that could just taste victory, which had been denied them for so long, there was a real effort to just prosecute the campaign up until the very last moment. and debs as well was going to socialist gatherings. he was making his case through socialist publications in order to try to bring out as many of his supporters as possible. so it was pretty active campaign season after the different

conventions. well, the library of congress holds audio recordings from the 1912 campaigns of william howard taft, theodore roosevelt and wilson as well. here's what they sounded like on the campaign trail in 1912, before all reform for all change or every other consideration and importance is the furnishings of the people. the means of living the means of enjoying comfort their lives and of educating their children, of making their homes attractive. and all this depends upon the high rate of wages, the great demand for labor and the continuing prosperity and good business. how foolish the american people would be to hazard the continuance of this by voting into a power. a party whose first declared principle is hostility to the policy of perfection upon which our business is conducted under republican had administration. there's nothing to fear from the policy of congress in respect to the tariff or any other economic

policy which will disturb business or frighten capital. and look at the politics of the day from the viewpoint of the neighboring man is not to suggest there is one new republican of another that the employer, another capitalist, another to the conventional man, but merely to the life of the country as a whole. may be looked at from various points of you and of the whole of our business of politics is to bring parties together on a platform of accommodating harmony in a political campaign, the voters are called upon to ascertain, but only parties and platform and candidate will be frankly put under examining to see what they will. and there are a great many questions we can then maybe ask the only to get the definite up political party as exists in

secure responsible government and executes the will of the roosevelt. over the obama years have done by extended into months to promote the general welfare and become all the corrupted free for offering a fair healthy the behind the us system of government systems all and invisible government always oh one and acknowledged no responsibility for the to destroy this invisible. go. is all the unholy alliance between corrupt business corrupt politics in this place? fabulous statesmanship, some of they have worked by tradition. uncle corrupted by follow us is ready for the magnitude of it that the view of the opposite is the lives of the people, but we all that it is the bill. that you and not common. and we're back with nicole hemmer of vanderbilt university. the role of the media and those campaign events where some of

those recordings took place. what was the role of the media that year, especially in an election in which a current sitting president is running? a former president is running, and somebody who was not expected to be at the top of the ticket, woodrow wilson is suddenly the favorite in a race. it's a fascinating media moment because you still have some partizan media outlets and so in the united states in the 19th century, you would have republican papers and democratic papers, but now you have a republican party that's split. and so you have proge papers aphle that are being circulated, but you also have an increasingly media in the united states. this is the era of the telegrap this is the era of mass print culture. we're starting to see the very early days of radio in the united states. and so what you are getting are stories that are coming out of, for instance, new york media that are then being relayed across the country and being relayed very quickly across the

country. you can go to a roosevelt campaign speech, write it up, and it could be running in all of the newspapers or lots of newspapers within the next day. and that really does give you more campaign coverage, but it also gives, especially newspaper outlets, more power. and this works out in interesting ways for particularly the democrats. woodrow wilson because he was coming from new jersey, actually have fairly close ties with a lot of new york newspapers, men and and outlets. and so he's getting some support, not just from democratic newspapers, but from new york media. and that's important because, again, because of the telegraph as those new york institutions are beginning to really flex muscle in their influence over national news. and so wilson is getti some pretty good coverage thanks to those relationships that he has. and of course, teddy roosevelt coming from new york is also getting some pretty good coverage as well. we mentioned before that at the time the united states was a country growing quickly with

immigration. what was the role of immigrants and the role of demographics in general race in this country when it came to the campaigns of the four major candidates here? immigration played an enormous role because as you mentioned, the country is very rapidly changing, even just the size of electorate had grown astronomically in the previous years as immigrants became naturalized citizens or actually are children, grew up and became citizens. and so that's part of the change that's happening. but it's also reflected in policy. the democratic party and the progressive party and the socialist party were supporters of immigration. they wanted to find ways to bring immigrants into the body politic, to make their lives a little bit easier. the republican party at the time had a fairly strong anti-immigrant line. and even though we mentioned this at the top, that the republicans are going to lose pretty badly in the 1912 election, they're their policy on immigration is going to become the law of the land within a decade. so the united states is going to be taking a pretty strong

anti-immigration turn by the start of the 1920s. race is also a fascinating issue in a couple of differe ways. teddy roosevelt had made some inroads in bringing a black republican international politics while he was president. he continued to do that outreach for the progressive party. woodrow wilson had, grown up in the segregated south, and he brought those ideas with him to government and to the presidency. and it's one of the ways that he was able, in some ways, to unite the democratic party, because he was promoting progressive policies in terms of, you know, greater government power, more ways to safeguard workers and to curb the powers of corporations. but that came along with kind of a promise not to use a stronger government to secure more rights for, black americans. so race plays a really interesting role in both

roosevelt's case and in wilson's case, but in very different ways. who made up the voting population in the united states at the time? how large was was the black vote in this country in 1912? the black vote was still relatively small in the united states because even though you'd had 15th amendment that was ratified in 1870, black men had been systematically stripped of the right to vote in the south. black americans at this point in time still are predominantly almost located in southern states where they don't have access to the ballot. so it's a pretty small black vote in 1912, and it's still a very republican black vote. and of course, i mentioned black men, women at this point in time only have the right to vote in some western states. so black women are largely cut out of the electorate as well. you mentioned the candidates what their strategy was in 1912. who were there surrogates? who were the other famous american to who stepped in and played a role in the 1912 election? so you had folks in in in media

and in newspapers who were stepping forward for the candidates. but for the most part, the candidates in the 20 in the 1912 race were the celebrities. so in the case of teddy roosevelt, teddy roosevelt was the big draw and the big celebrity who drew people out to rallies. and so it was less. by the 1920s, you're going to see many more surrogates who are drawn from the world of celebrity, from the the new world, hollywood, and from radio. but in this period, you know, the big surrogates are progressive leaders like william jennings bryan. but really, really, the candidates themselves are the stars of the show. want to take our viewers to october the 14th of 1912. this is a photo of teddy roosevelt speaking from a car in front of the kilpatrick hotel in milwaukee. minutes later, an assassin tried to kill him. here's more from presidential historian douglas brinkley on

that moment. he went to give a speech in milwaukee. and a crazed anarchist took a shot at him. he was bleeding. now, what people he had such bad eyesight roosevelt that he had always carried bird glasses with him in his pocket and he had a stick script kind of in their papers and he had his case metal like case with his bird so he could see the coloration details he kept it. and that's what the bullet hit now, wounded him terribly. but there's some thinking that if it hadn't gone through that bird watching glasses, he would have died. but here he is, bleeding, shot. and t.r., it'll take more than that to kill a bull moose and, you know, keeps going. and much like when ronald reagan was shot in march of 1981, the public opinions folk, he becomes a folklore moment. the thought that now in folklore, the bull moose or can be knocked down.

he lost, obviously, as the bull moose party. it was the most successful third party run ever. but the folklore of roosevelt, which he was always very conscious of, just grew with that story. and we're back with nicole hemmer of vanderbilt university. the assassination attempt on teddy roosevelt, how did it change him? how did it impact the campaign that year? it was one of those moments that in some ws shored up the legend of teddy roosevelt. the idea that he gets shot in the chesanthen goes ahead and speaks for an hour before going to the hospital, that is part of the roosevelt legend. but it came to the campaign itself. really, the impact that it has is it takes roosevelt off the campaign trail for the last few weeks of the election, all of the candidates decided in the week after roosevelt was shot that they wouldn't campaign. but as soon as the clock runs out on that, woodrow wilson brings back out to the campaign trail. and he really has the field more less to himself because

roosevelt just isn't able to campaign because it was wounded fairly, fairly seriously in the assassination attempt. and so in the short term, not that it would have changed the results of the 1912 election, but in the short term, it really meant that in the closing days of the election, wilson is the voice out there, you know, hitting the stump, making the speeches, getting the the media coverage. and i think that really fills his sails as he goes into the final days of the campaign. well, we mentioned the death of the sitting vice president, the assassination attempt on the former president. are we missing any other key moments from the election trail that year, in the final weeks before the 1912 election? those are the pretty big ones. those are those shake up the race. it just it didn't pick up necessarily the fundamentals of the race. but there are moments that when you think back to 1912, that you think just how much madness was in the campaign and around the

election and in a period in which americans really felt like the world was changing very rapidly all around them, a lot of that that chaos and uncertainty is reflected in the campaign as well. and come election day, it was an election that wasn't very close. the 1912 election results, woodrow wilson wins about 6.2 million votes, about 42% of the popular vote, 435 electoral votes, taking 40 states. roosevelt. wins 4.1 million votes. that's about 28%, 27% of the popular vote. he gets 88 electoral votes. he wins six states. president taft wins just 3.5 million votes that year, 23% of the popular vote. and two states, eight electoral votes. eune debs, though he doesn't take any states or votes, wins about 900,000 votes from americans that year. how did the country react to that landslide for woodrow

wilson? i think most americans were expecting it at that point because of the split in the republican party. it was in some ways a breath of fresh air. it was a new political party. you know, the democrats hadn't been in office, as we talked about, for a very long time. wilson was a pretty new figure on the scene, and i think the other reaction that's worth thinking about is that americans had a choice, right? they had this really broad array of candidates that they could choose from and as you as you mentioned, they cast their ballots in a pretty, pretty dispersed way. so of course, wilson wins, but he only gets a plurality. he doesn't get a majority. and i think that that just reflects it was a country that was hungry for change, and that change was packaged in a number of different ways. but, you know, 77% of the electorate is voting for someone other than the incumbent president. and while because there are so many candidates that doesn't end up in a landslide in terms of

the popular vote for any particular candidate, it does mean that, you know, the idea that the country want to change is very much reflected in those results. how did teddy roosevelt feel about his 27% and about splitting the gop vote that year? i think he felt i mean, he would have rather won, but he made the best showing, still the best showing for a third party candidate in u.s. history. so he he entered the record books for that. and he showed better than taft and given the kinds of tensions that had emerged between taft and roosevelt over the past several years. the fact that he was able to st taft and really deliver him kind of humiliating third place, third place position, which for an incumbent president, it's just a really tough blow. i think roosevelt walked away thinking, yeah, i would have liked to have won, but i made a real mark on this election. taft ends up only winning utah and vermont.

do you have any idea why those two states and the case of utah? there was a pretty strong republican machine and there was a population, particularly the mormon population, who was doing very well in farming and mining. so under taft, they had a pretty good life and they had a political organization atas very strongly behind him. and so he was able to eke out a victory there. and in vermont, vermont was just a very, very republican state. and it was closely divided between taft and roosevelt. and taft just happened to eke out about a thousand more votes than roosevelt did. what happened to taft after the election? taft got his dream job. he was appointed as chief justice of the supreme court, which as somebody who had had his eyes on the legal system and on working a lawyer and wanting to be a judge again, he had been solicitor general. he had wanted to be on the supreme court. his entire political career. and so he ultimately makes his way onto the supreme court and i

think is much there than he was as president. and what happened to eugene debs, the other candidate in that race? so, debs, who had already run for president a few times, would run for president. in 1920 when he ran in 1920. he was running from prison. and that's because he had come out against world war one. he was arrested violation of the sedition act. it was seen as kind of a kind of a political prisoner of sorts because he was he was jailed for his speech against the war. and ends up getting about the same number of votes, maybe a few more votes in the 1920 election when he's running as an inmate. did roosevelt ever have any thoughts of running again? and continuing with the bull moose party? you know, they tried to reel him back in in 1916. and i think that he might consider it. but i think he knows that it's not a particularly good year for him to run. and he's in declining health over the course of the 19 teens.

and so they try to get him to run in 1916 for the progressive party, and he turns them down and he he won't run again. well, how did the country begin to change after the 1912 election? under the presidency of woodrow wilson, the election of wilson really did unleash that progressive of the pent up progressive reform spirit in the u.s. and part, you know, not just because he was elected, but because so progressives had pulled so many votes in that election. and so you see things like the creation of the income tax, the direct election of senators, a real push for women's suffrage, which will go into effect in 1920. and then, of course, things on the world stage change pretty significantly. the united states gets much more involved in the caribbean and in places like haiti and the occupation of haiti. and then, of course, the u.s. enters world war one as well under wilson. so not only do you have a government that is growing in size because of new progressive

reforms and new roles for the government in order to sort of counter corruption of corporations and corruption in government more generally. but you also see the government grow pretty significantly because of the turn to total war during world war one. well, what if's are always dangerous. sometimes when it comes to history. but i wonder to big what ifs about the 1912 election nicole hemmer what if teddy roosevelt hadn't challenged taft? do you think taft could have beaten woodrow wilson? and then the other what if about 1912? is what if it was teddy roosevelt who was president? when war breaks out in 1914 in europe? these are great what ifs. so i think taft probably would have beaten wilson if he had not had a divided party. the party structure was very strong in this period. and as you saw again, wilson got 42% of the vote. certainly some progressive republicans would have floated over wilson, but i'm not sure

that it would have been enough to swing the election if roosevelt had been president. going into what i mean, roosevelt had some experience in war. he left his position, cleve as assistant secretary of the navy in order to go and fight in cuba and so he he had a an affinity in some ways for war. so it's it's entirely possible that the u.s. would have gotten involved sooner. but again, that would have depended on public sentiment and how roosevelt read that public sentiment. and, of course, the issue in the 1916 campaign was whether the u.s. would get involved in the war or not. and roosevelt had he respected term limits, might have chosen not to run in 1916. and then the question would have been tossed to someone else entirely. well, coming back to the reality of the time, how did the progressive ideas that we talked about the high point in the progressive era, how did those ideas of 1912 impact the

politics and the elections in the years to come? oh, they really affected governance in the united states. there were a number new agencies that were created that would regulate things like food and workplace safety. they really laid the groundwork for what would become the new deal in the 1930s. but we should also note that for all of the progressivism in the 1912 campaign, when it came to the 1920 election, when the war and harding won, that the country took a decidedly conservative turn in its national politics. you would see an era of immigration restriction. you would see an era in which government deferred to business. and so you do get this broad support for progressivism that's going to be picked back up in the 1930s. but for a period of time, americans say, okay, enough. and head back to the republican party from the 1920 election until 1932. and finally, we mentioned at the top that you teach classes about

this election. what should students of history today? what do you want them to take away? what are the lessons of the 1912 election for a student who walks into your class? i think the biggest lesson of the 1912 election is how much and up desire there was for reform and the way that worked itself through the system. even in a party like, the socialist party, whi i think, you ow, because of the cold war, would become a party that received a lot less support, that received a lot more government surveillance. but that in that moment, americans were willing look across a wide range of options for how they were going to achieve change and that the political system adapted to that, that there was space for americans to advocate for change, that the political system was responsive enough to those calls for change. i also think it's a great reminder of the contingency and the flexibility of the u.s. system. i think often students and americans more broadly get a little frustrated with the two

parties system and they don't see much room for third parties. and in this case, like most third parties, roosevelt doesn't win. he doesn't secure a long, bright future for the progressive party, which is basically defunct by 1920. but third parties introduce new ideas and new energy. and if they can show support for their ideas, the two major parties change. in order to respond to that pent up desire. and so i think in a in a period in which students often feel like there isn't enough democracy in a democratic system, this is one of those places you can point to and say there are ways of getting more democratic ideas into the system and even in the case of the direct election of senators getting people to give up power in response to public outcry. and that's a pretty impressive result and something that i think can give students hope. when you teach about it, nicole hemmer is a professor of history at vanderbilt university in

nashville, tennessee. appreciate you joining us for our series historic

all right. good morning, everyone and we are going to wrap up one part of america's in the first world war by addressing explicitly the