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Calling for collaboration among “decent citizens”
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. Typed Letter Signed, to Henry M. Wallace, New York, N.Y., August 14, 1914. On personal stationery, 4 pp. 8 x 9½”.
Inventory #21879 $11,000
Challenging a demand for party conformity, Roosevelt recalls the flexibility of Lincoln and his fellow Civil War Republicans in accomplishing their aims. Threatened with a censure by a Progressive Party leader, the feisty Roosevelt declares his intention to stand firm.
Partial Transcript:
“…I have just been shown your letter to [Albert] Beveridge in which you say that you desire that the entire National Committee of the Progressive party meet and ‘censor’ the action taken in the State of New York and also everybody connected with the same. You of course understand that I was more connected with this action than anyone else. You are entirely at liberty to go ahead with your proposal and censure me and the others. I shall certainly not alter my position in the matter. There is no man in this country who would be so pleased and so benefited by the action you suggest as Barnes. He and Murphy have for years been fighting every proposal for a fusion of decent citizens to secure good government in either the State or the City of New York. The present primary law was framed by the two machines with this end in view. The men like myself have for years in New York been endeavoring to make decent citizens understand that they ought not to be misled by machine talk of regularity into keeping the machines continually in power. Your proposal is to reinforce Messrs. Barnes [2] and Murphy by having the Progressive Party in New York adopt the same attitude that the old parties have adopted, and ensure the domination of one of the old machines – doubtless at this time the Republican machine – in the State. You would play the game of the machine Republican leaders. I fear you would convince the best men in the State that we had already grown so machine ridden ourselves as to put party above principle…[3]…It is extraordinary how impossible it seems to be to make men learn the lessons of history. Apparently you and the gentlemen who feel as you do have absolutely forgotten how things were done in the early days of the Republican party. There was no attempt made to insist upon uniformity of action in every state. During the War Massachusetts was an overwhelmingly Republican State and the Republicans were a unit against Slavery and for the Union. In that state Republicans were run for Governor every year on a platform straight against Slavery and straight in favor of the Union. Ohio was a very close state, very doubtful. It was lukewarm and possibly hostile as regards Slavery. In that State the Republicans ran in succession for Governor two War Democrats, two men who had voted against Lincoln but who were for the Union, and they ran on a Union ticket [inserted in Roosevelt’s hand: ; not on an anti-slavery ticket;] It would have been folly to have made Ohio do as Massachusetts did or Massachusetts do what Ohio did. There were [inserted in Roosevelt’s hand: a] very few extremists, Wendell Phillips, for instance, who took substantially the view that you now take and who frantically denounced Lincoln because he was not extreme enough and thorough-going enough for them. Of course, I am no more to be compared to Lincoln than the present crisis is to be compared to the [4] Civil War; but the principles are the same in the two cases…”
Historical Background:
In May 1914, two years after his “Bull Moose Party” run, Roosevelt was approached by Progressives seeking mid-term election help. Many were surprised to find the former president advocating fusion with independent-minded Republicans and Democrats to oppose the big political machines in New York and elsewhere.
Roosevelt’s response was colored by the outbreak of World War I in Europe on July 28. He found he had more in common with former Republican allies than with many pacifist Progressives. Roosevelt quickly became an outspoken critic of President Wilson’s neutrality policy, and the foremost advocate for entering the war against Germany.
Additional Historical Background:
Roosevelt returned from his perilous voyage into the Amazon rain forest in May 1914. Almost immediately upon his return, according to some observers, Roosevelt appeared willing to mend fences with Republicans. After seeing Roosevelt deliver a speech on his South American journey to the National Geographic Society, newsman Gus Karger reported to ex-President Taft that there was “something pathetic in that midnight gathering of Progressives at the Colonel’s feet. I could not help but feel that in cold blood … he was contemplating the best methods of ‘dumping’ them if their canine loyalty should become uncomfortable to himself.”
Karger was perceptive in predicting Roosevelt’s ambivalent relationship to the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party in the months leading up to the 1914 midterm elections. Roosevelt’s outspoken advocacy of entering the war against Germany put him at odds with many pacifist Progressive comrades like Jane Addams. Still suffering bouts of malaria, he sought the company of his family at Sagamore Hill.
In the summer of 1914, many Progressive leaders were disappointed by Roosevelt’s support of old-line Republicans like Harvey Hinman, who became Roosevelt’s preferred Progressive Party candidate in the 1914 gubernatorial race in New York. Hinman declared that he would be the candidate of any party that attacked Democratic boss Charles Murphy and Republican State Chairman William Barnes and committed himself, if elected, to “weeding out the corruption, inefficiency, incompetency, waste, and extravagance which now exist” in government. Roosevelt and Hinman were of the same opinion, that New York State primary laws favored the entrenched two-party system. Ironically, Hinman remained in the Republican Party and lost in the party primary to incumbent Governor Charles Whitman. His experience, like Roosevelt’s defeat to Wilson in 1912, shows how difficult it is in American politics for third parties to thrive. The elections effectively destroyed the aspirations, as well as the apparatus, of the third party that had done so well in 1912.
Barnes would unsuccessfully sue Roosevelt for libel a few weeks after this letter. Roosevelt won the case in a Syracuse courtroom later that year. Barnes unselfishly stepped down from the chairmanship of the state Republican Party, arguing that the Progressive Party would no longer have a raison d’ětre. It appears that Wallace did not follow through on the threatened Progressive censure of Theodore Roosevelt that summer.
References: Marquis, Albert. The Book of Detroiters (1914), p. 509; New York Times, July 28, 1914, “Hinman Has Made No Pledges;” O’Toole, Patricia. When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House (New York, 2005), pp. 259-268.
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