1916 United States presidential election
The United States presidential election of 1916 was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson defeated Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. Wilson was the only sitting Democratic president to win re-election between 1832 and 1936. Wilson was re-nominated without opposition at the 1916 Democratic National Convention; the 1916 Republican National Convention chose Hughes as a compromise between the conservative and progressive wings of the party. Hughes defeated John W. Weeks, Elihu Root, several other candidates on the third ballot of the convention, becoming the only Supreme Court Justice to serve as a major party's presidential nominee. While conservative and progressive Republicans had been divided in the 1912 election between the candidacies of then-incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt, they united around Hughes in his bid to oust Wilson.
The election took place during the time of the Mexican Revolution and World War I. Although neutral in the European conflict, public opinion in the United States leaned towards the Allied forces headed by Great Britain and France against the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, due in large measure to the harsh treatment of civilians by the German Army in Belgium and northern France and the militaristic character of the German and Austrian monarchies, but in spite of their sympathy with the Allied forces most American voters wanted to avoid involvement in the war and preferred to continue a policy of neutrality. Wilson's campaign used the popular slogans "He kept us out of war" and "America First" to appeal to those voters who wanted to avoid a war in Europe or with Mexico. Hughes criticized Wilson for not taking the "necessary preparations" to face a conflict, which only served to strengthen Wilson's image as an anti-war candidate; the United States would enter the war in April 1917, one month after Wilson's inauguration as president.
After a hard-fought contest, Wilson defeated Hughes by nearly 600,000 votes in the popular vote. The 1916 election saw an increase in Wilson's popular vote from the four-way election of 1912, but a major decline in the number of electoral votes won. Wilson secured a narrow majority in the Electoral College by sweeping the Solid South and winning several swing states with razor-thin margins. Wilson won California by just 3,773 votes. Allan L. Benson of the Socialist Party and Frank Hanly of the Prohibition Party each finished with greater than 1% of the popular vote. Republican candidates: Charles Evans Hughes, U. S. Supreme Court Justice and former Governor of New York John W. Weeks, U. S. senator from Massachusetts Elihu Root, former U. S. senator from New York Theodore E. Burton, former U. S. senator from Ohio Charles W. Fairbanks, former Vice President of the United States from Indiana Albert B. Cummins, U. S. senator from Iowa The 1916 Republican National Convention was held in Chicago between June 7 and 10.
A major goal of the party's bosses at the convention was to heal the bitter split within the party that had occurred in the 1912 presidential campaign. In that year, Theodore Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party and formed his own political party, the Progressive Party, which attracted most of the Republican liberals. William Howard Taft, the incumbent president, won the nomination of the regular Republican Party; this split in the Republican ranks divided the Republican vote and led to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Although several candidates were competing for the 1916 nomination—most prominently conservative Senator Elihu Root from New York and liberal Senator John W. Weeks from Massachusetts—the party's bosses wanted a moderate who would be acceptable to both factions of the party, they turned to Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, serving on the court since 1910 and had the advantage of not having publicly spoken about political issues in six years. Although he had not sought the nomination, Hughes made it known that he would not turn it down.
Former Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks was nominated as his running mate. Hughes was the only Supreme Court Justice. Democratic candidate: Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States The 1916 Democratic National Convention was held in St. Louis, Missouri between June 14 and 16. Given Wilson's enormous popularity within the party as well as being an incumbent President, he was overwhelmingly re-nominated. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall was re-nominated with no opposition. In the campaign Edward M. House declined any public role, but was Wilson's top campaign advisor. Hodgson says, "he planned its structure; the Progressives re-nominated former President Theodore Roosevelt and nominated John Parker of Louisiana as his running-mate. However, Roosevelt telegraphed the convention and declared that he could not accept their nomination and would be endorsing Republican nominee Charles Hughes for the Presidency. With Roosevelt refusing to be their candidate, the Progressive Party fell into disarray.
Temperance movement
The temperance movement is a social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement criticize alcohol intoxication or promote complete abstinence, with leaders emphasizing alcohol's negative effects on health and family life; the movement promotes alcohol education as well as demands new laws against the selling of alcohols, or those regulating the availability of alcohol, or those prohibiting it. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the temperance movement became prominent in many countries English-speaking and Scandinavian ones, it led to Prohibition in the United States from 1920 to 1933. In the late-seventeenth century, alcohol was a vital part of colonial life as a beverage and commodity for men and children. Drinking was accepted and integrated into society. Despite that, drunkenness was common and not seen as a social problem; the attitudes towards alcohol began to change in the late eighteenth century. One of the reasons for the shifting attitudes was the necessity for sober laborers to operate heavy machinery, developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution.
Anthony Benezet suggested abstinence from alcohol in 1775. As early as the 1790s, physician Benjamin Rush researched the danger that drinking alcohol could lead to disease that leads to a lack of self-control and he cited abstinence as the only treatment option. Rush condemned the use of distilled spirits; as well as addiction, Rush noticed the correlation that drunkenness had with disease, death and crime. According to, “Pompili, Maurizio et al,” there is increasing evidence that, aside from the volume of alcohol consumed, the pattern of the drinking is relevant for health outcomes. Overall, there is a causal relationship between alcohol consumption and more than 60 types of diseases and injuries. Alcohol is estimated to cause about 20–30% of cases of esophageal cancer, liver cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, homicide and motor vehicle accidents. After the American Revolution, Rush called upon ministers of various churches to act in preaching the messages of temperance. However, abstinence messages were ignored by Americans until the 1820s.
In the eighteenth century, there was a "Gin Craze" in the Kingdom of Great Britain. The bourgeoisie became critical of the widespread drunkenness among the lower classes. Motivated by the bourgeoisie's desire for order, amplified by the population growth in the cities, the drinking of gin became the subject of critical national debate. In the early nineteenth-century United States, alcohol was still regarded as a necessary part of the American diet for both practical and social reasons. On one hand, water supplies were polluted, milk was not always available, coffee and tea was expensive. On the other hand, social construct of the time made. Drunkenness was not a problem, because people would only drink small amounts of alcohol throughout the day, but at the turn of the nineteenth-century and subsequent intoxication became an issue that led to the disintegration of the family. Early temperance societies associated with churches were located in upstate New York and New England, but only lasted a few years.
These early temperance societies called for moderate drinking, but had little influence outside of their geographical areas. In 1743, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Churches, proclaimed "that buying and drinking of liquor, unless necessary, were evils to be avoided". In 1810, Calvinist ministers met with a seminary in Massachusetts to write articles about abstinence from alcohol to use in preaching to their congregations; the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance was formed in 1813. The organization only accepted men of high social standing and encouraged moderation in alcohol consumption, its peak of influence was in 1818, but the MSSI ended in 1820 and made no significant mark on the future of the temperance movement. Other small temperance societies appear in the 1810s, but had little impact outside their immediate regions and they disbanded soon after, their methods had little effect in implementing temperance, drinking increased until after 1830. The temperance movement began at a national level in the 1820s, having been popularized by evangelical temperance reformers and among the middle classes.
There was a concentration on advice against hard spirits rather than on abstinence from all alcohol and on moral reform rather than legal measures against alcohol. An early temperance movement began during the American Revolution in Connecticut and New York state, with farmers forming associations to ban whiskey distilling; the movement spread to eight states, advocating temperance rather than abstinence and taking positions on religious issues such as observance of the Sabbath. After the American Revolution there was a new emphasis on good citizenship for the new republic. With the Evangelical Protestant religious revival of the 1820s and'30s, called the Second Great Awakening, social movements began aiming for a perfect society; this included temperance. The Awakening brought with it an optimism about moral reform, achieved through volunteer organizations. Although the temperance movement was nonsectarian in principle, the movement consisted of church-goers; the temperance movement promoted temperance and emphasized th
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a Christian denomination based in the United States. With more than 15 million members as of 2015, it is the world's largest Baptist denomination, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the second-largest Christian denomination in the United States, smaller only than the Catholic Church; the word Southern in Southern Baptist Convention stems from it having been organized in 1845 at Augusta, Georgia, by Baptists in the Southern United States who split with northern Baptists over the issue of slavery whether Southern slave owners could serve as missionaries. After the American Civil War, another split occurred when most freedmen set up independent black congregations, regional associations, state and national conventions, such as the National Baptist Convention, which became the second-largest Baptist convention by the end of the 19th century. Others joined new African-American denominations, chiefly the African Methodist Episcopal Church, established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 19th century, as the first independent black denomination in the United States.
Since the 1940s, the Southern Baptist Convention has shifted from some of its regional and historical identification. Since the late 20th century, the SBC has sought new members among minority groups and to become much more diverse. In addition, while still concentrated in the Southern United States, the Southern Baptist Convention has member churches across the United States and 41 affiliated state conventions. Southern Baptist churches are evangelical in practice; as they emphasize the significance of the individual conversion experience, affirmed by the person having complete immersion in water for a believer's baptism, they reject the practice of infant baptism. Other specific beliefs based on biblical interpretation can vary somewhat due to their congregational polity, which allows local autonomy; the average weekly attendance is 5,200,716. Most early Baptists in the British colonies came from England in the 17th century, after the established Church of England persecuted them for their dissenting religious views.
The oldest Baptist church in the South, First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina, was organized in 1682 under the leadership of William Screven. A Baptist church was formed in Virginia in 1715 through the preaching of Robert Norden and another in North Carolina in 1727 through the ministry of Paul Palmer; the Baptists adhered to a congregationalist polity and operated independently of the state-established Anglican churches in the South, at a time when non-Anglicans were prohibited from holding political office. By 1740, about eight Baptist churches existed in the colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, with an estimated 300 to 400 members. New members, both black and white, were converted chiefly by Baptist preachers who traveled throughout the South during the 18th and 19th centuries, in the eras of the First Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening. Baptists welcomed African Americans, both slave and free, allowing them to have more active roles in ministry than did other denominations by licensing them as preachers, in some cases, allowing them to be treated as equals to white members.
As a result, black congregations and churches were founded in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia before the American Revolution. Some black congregations kept their independence after whites tried to exercise more authority after the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831. Before the Revolution and Methodist evangelicals in the South had promoted the view of the common man's equality before God, which embraced slaves and free blacks, they urged planters to abolish slavery. They accepted them as preachers. Isaac analyzes the rise of the Baptist Church in Virginia, with emphasis on evangelicalism and social life. A sharp division existed between the austerity of the plain-living Baptists, attracted from yeomen and common planters, the opulence of the Anglican planters, the slaveholding elite who controlled local and colonial government in what had become a slave society by the late 18th century; the gentry interpreted Baptist church discipline as political radicalism, but it served to ameliorate disorder.
The Baptists intensely monitored each other's moral conduct, watching for sexual transgressions and excessive drinking. In Virginia and in most southern colonies before the Revolution, the Church of England was the established church and supported by general taxes, as it was in England, it opposed the rapid spread of Baptists in the South. In Virginia, many Baptist preachers were prosecuted for "disturbing the peace" by preaching without licenses from the Anglican church. Both Patrick Henry and the young attorney James Madison defended Baptist preachers prior to the American Revolution in cases considered significant to the history of religious freedom. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted in 1786 by the Virginia General Assembly. Madison applied his own ideas and those of the Virginia document related to religious freedom during the Constitutional Convention, when he ensured that they were incorporated into the national constitution; the struggle for religious toleration erupted and was played out during the American Revolution, as the Baptists worked to disestablish the Anglican church in the South.
Beeman explores the conflict in one Virginia locality, showing that as its population became more dense, the county court and the Anglican Church were able to increase their authority. The Baptists protested vigorously
1912 United States presidential election
The United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey unseated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft and defeated former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party nominee. Roosevelt remains the only third party presidential candidate in U. S. history to finish better than third in the electoral vote. Roosevelt had served as president from 1901 to 1909, Taft had won the 1908 Republican presidential nomination with Roosevelt's support. Displeased with Taft's actions as president, Roosevelt challenged Taft at the 1912 Republican National Convention. After Taft and his conservative allies narrowly prevailed at the Republican convention, Roosevelt rallied his progressive supporters and launched a third party bid. Backed by William Jennings Bryan and other progressives, Wilson won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination on the 46th ballot, defeating Speaker of the House Champ Clark and several other candidates.
Meanwhile, the Socialist Party renominated Eugene V. Debs; the election of 1912 was bitterly contested by three individuals, Wilson and Taft, who all had or would serve as president. Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" platform called for social insurance programs, an eight-hour workday, a strong federal role in regulating the economy. Wilson's "New Freedom" platform called for tariff reform, banking reform, a new antitrust law. Knowing that he had little chance of victory, Taft conducted a subdued campaign based on his own platform of "progressive conservatism." Debs claimed that the other three candidates were financed by trusts and tried to galvanize support behind his socialist policies. The Progressive party was nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party" after journalists quoted Roosevelt saying that he was "feeling like a bull moose" on the campaign trail shortly after the new party was formed. Wilson carried 40 states and won a large majority of the electoral vote, taking advantage of the split in the Republican Party.
He was the first Democrat to win a presidential election since 1892, would be one of just two Democratic presidents to serve between the Civil War and the onset of the Great Depression. Roosevelt won 88 electoral votes. Wilson won 41.8% of the national popular vote, while Roosevelt won 27%, Taft 23%, Debs 6%. The 1912 election was the first to include all 48 of the current contiguous United States. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt had declined to run for re-election in 1908 in fulfillment of a pledge to the American people not to seek a second full term. Roosevelt's first term as president was incomplete, as he succeeded to the office upon the assassination of William McKinley, he had tapped Secretary of War William Howard Taft to become his successor, Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the general election. During Taft's administration, a rift grew between Roosevelt and Taft as they became the leaders of the Republican Party's two wings: the progressives, led by Roosevelt, the conservatives, led by Taft.
The progressive Republicans favored restrictions on the employment of women and children, promoted ecological conservation, were more sympathetic toward labor unions. The progressive Republicans were in favor of the popular election of federal and state judges and opposed to having judges appointed by the president or state governors; the conservative Republicans were in support of high tariffs on imported goods to encourage consumers to buy American-made products, favored business leaders over labor unions, were opposed to the popular election of judges. By 1910 the split between the two wings of the Republican Party was deep, this, in turn, caused Roosevelt and Taft to turn against one another, despite their personal friendship; the 1910 Midterm elections proved to be rather rough for the Republicans which seemed to further cement the growing divide among the party. Taft's popularity among Progressives collapsed when he supported the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act in 1909, abandoned Roosevelt's anti-trust policy and fired popular conservationist Gifford Pinchot as head of the Bureau of Forestry in 1910.
Republican candidates: William Howard Taft, President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States from New York Robert M. La Follette, Senator from Wisconsin For the first time, significant numbers of delegates to the national conventions were elected in presidential preference primaries. Primary elections were advocated by the progressive faction of the Republican Party, which wanted to break the control of political parties by bosses. Altogether, twelve states held Republican primaries. Robert M. La Follette won two of the first four primaries. Beginning with his runaway victory in Illinois on April 9, Roosevelt won nine of the last ten presidential primaries, losing only Massachusetts to Taft; as a sign of his great popularity, Roosevelt carried Taft's home state of Ohio. The Republican Convention was held in Chicago from June 18 to 22. Taft, had begun to gather delegates earlier, the delegates chosen in the primaries were a minority. Taft had the support of the bulk of the party organizations in the Southern states.
These states had voted solidly Democratic in every presidential election since 1880, Roosevelt objected that they were given one-quarter of the delegates when they would
1936 United States presidential election
The United States presidential election of 1936 was the thirty-eighth quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1936. In the midst of the Great Depression, incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Governor Alf Landon of Kansas. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular and electoral vote since the uncontested 1820 election; the sweeping victory consolidated the New Deal Coalition in control of the Fifth Party System. Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner were re-nominated without opposition. With the backing of party leaders, Landon defeated progressive Senator William Borah at the 1936 Republican National Convention to win his party's presidential nomination; the populist Union Party nominated Congressman William Lemke for president. The election took place. Roosevelt was still working to push the provisions of his New Deal economic policy through Congress and the courts. However, the New Deal policies he had enacted, such as Social Security and unemployment benefits, had proven to be popular with most Americans.
Landon, a political moderate, accepted much of the New Deal but criticized it for waste and inefficiency. Although some political pundits predicted a close race, Roosevelt went on to win the greatest electoral landslide since the beginning of the current two-party system in the 1850s. Roosevelt took 60.8% of the popular vote, while Landon won 36.5% and Lemke won just under 2%. Roosevelt carried every state except Vermont, which together cast eight electoral votes. By winning 523 electoral votes, Roosevelt received 98.49% of the electoral vote total, which remains the highest percentage of the electoral vote won by any candidate since 1820. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular vote since 1820, though Lyndon B. Johnson would win a higher share of the popular vote in the 1964 election. Before his assassination, there was a challenge from Louisiana Senator Huey Long. But, due to his untimely death, President Roosevelt faced only one primary opponent other than various favorite sons. Henry Skillman Breckinridge, an anti-New Deal lawyer from New York, filed to run against Roosevelt in four primaries.
Breckinridge's challenge of the popularity of the New Deal among Democrats failed miserably. In New Jersey, President Roosevelt did not file for the preference vote and lost that primary to Breckinridge though he did receive 19% of the vote on write-ins. Roosevelt's candidates for delegates swept the race in elsewhere. In other primaries, Breckinridge's best showing was 15% in Maryland. Overall, Roosevelt received 93% of the primary vote, compared to 2% for Breckinridge; the Democratic Party Convention was held in Philadelphia between July 23 and 27. The delegates unanimously re-nominated incumbents President Roosevelt and Vice-President John Nance Garner. At Roosevelt's request, the two-thirds rule, which had given the South a de facto veto power, was repealed; the 1936 Republican National Convention was held in Cleveland, between June 9 and 12. Although many candidates sought the Republican nomination, only two, Governor Landon and Senator William Borah from Idaho, were considered to be serious candidates.
While favorite sons County Attorney Earl Warren from California, Governor Warren Green of South Dakota, Stephen A. Day from Ohio won their respective primaries, the seventy-year-old Borah, a well-known progressive and "insurgent," won the Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oregon primaries, while performing quite in Knox's Illinois and Green's South Dakota; the party machinery, however uniformly backed Landon, a wealthy businessman and centrist, who won primaries in Massachusetts and New Jersey and dominated in the caucuses and at state party conventions. With Knox withdrawing to become Landon's selection for vice-president and Day and Warren releasing their delegates, the tally at the convention was as follows: Alf Landon 984 William Borah 19 Many people, most Democratic National Committee Chairman James Farley, expected Huey Long, the colorful Democratic senator from Louisiana, to run as a third-party candidate with his "Share Our Wealth" program as his platform. Polls made during 1934 and 1935 suggested Long could have won between six and seven million votes, or fifteen percent of the actual number cast in the 1936 election.
However, Long was assassinated in September 1935. Some historians, including Long biographer T. Harry Williams, contend that Long had never, in fact, intended to run for the presidency in 1936. Instead, he had been plotting with Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest and populist talk radio personality, to run someone else on the soon-to-be-formed "Share Our Wealth" Party ticket. According to Williams, the idea was that this candidate would split the left-wing vote with President Roosevelt, thereby electing a Republican president and proving the electoral appeal of Share Our Wealth. Long would wait four years and run for president as a Democrat in 1940. Prior to Long's death, leading contenders for the role of the sacrificial 1936 candidate included Idaho Senator William Borah, Montana Senator and running mate of Robert La Follette in 1924 Burton K. Wheeler, Governor Floyd B. Olson of the Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party. After Long's assassination, the two senators lost interest in the idea, while Olson was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer.
Father Coughlin, who had allied himself with Dr. Francis Townsend, a left-wing political activist, pushing for the creation of an old-age pension system, Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, was forced to run Representative William Lemke (R-North D
Clinton B. Fisk
Clinton Bowen Fisk, for whom Fisk University is named, was a senior officer during Reconstruction in the Bureau of Refugees and Abandoned Lands. He endowed Fisk University with $30,000. In addition, he helped establish the first free public schools in the South for European-American and African-American children. Fisk was born in Livingston County, New York, the son of Benjamin and Lydia Fisk; as part of the 19th-century westward migration, his family soon moved to Michigan. He studied in the preliminary course at Albion Seminary before becoming one of the five students to matriculate on the opening day of Michigan Central College in 1844. Fisk became a merchant and banker in Coldwater, he suffered financial disaster in the Panic of 1857. He moved to Missouri where he started working in the insurance business. An abolitionist, Fisk was appointed colonel of the 33rd Missouri Volunteer Infantry of the Union Army on September 5, 1862, he organized a brigade and was commissioned brigadier general November 24, 1862.
He served most of the American Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas, commanding first the District of Southeast Missouri and the Department of North Missouri. The primary duty of these commands was opposing raids into Missouri by Confederate States of America cavalry and guerrillas. After the Civil War, Fisk was appointed assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for Kentucky and Tennessee, he worked through the Bureau of Refugees and Abandoned Lands and the American Missionary Association to establish the first free schools in the Southern United States for both African-American and European-American children. He made the abandoned barracks in Nashville, Tennessee available to the American Missionary Association for the creation of the Fisk School, endowed it with a total of $30,000. After authorizing legislation expired for the Freedmen's Bureau, Fisk returned to his native New York, he became successful in banking. In 1874 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the Board of Indian Commissioners.
Fisk was a leader in the temperance movement and became the presidential candidate for the Prohibition Party in the 1888 election. He came in third with 249,506 votes; the election was won by Benjamin Harrison of the Republican Party. Fisk was surpassed by the incumbent President of the United States Grover Cleveland of the Democratic Party. But, Fisk did receive one of the highest results of any Prohibition Party candidate in history; the Party has run candidates in every presidential election since 1872. Fisk died in New York City on July 9, 1890, was buried in Coldwater, Michigan. Fisk University was named after him. In 2001 he was the first to be inducted into the new Hillsdale County, Michigan Veterans' Hall of Fame, for his distinguished service in the American Civil War. Prohibition Park, a planned community on Staten Island, New York, named one of its major streets Clinton B. Fisk Avenue in his honor; the name remains. List of American Civil War generals Alphonso A. Hopkins, The Life of Clinton Bowen Fisk Reavis L. Mitchell Jr. Fisk University Since 1866: Thy Loyal Children Make Their Way.
Clinton B. Fisk Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
1904 United States presidential election
The United States presidential election of 1904 was the 30th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1904. Incumbent Republican President Theodore Roosevelt defeated the Democratic nominee, Alton B. Parker. Roosevelt's victory made him the first president to win a term in his own right after having ascended to the presidency upon the death of a predecessor. Roosevelt took the office in September 1901 following the assassination of his predecessor, William McKinley. After the February 1904 death of McKinley's ally, Senator Mark Hanna, Roosevelt faced little opposition at the 1904 Republican National Convention; the conservative Bourbon Democrat allies of former President Grover Cleveland temporarily regained control of the Democratic Party from the followers of William Jennings Bryan, the 1904 Democratic National Convention nominated Alton B. Parker, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. Parker triumphed on the second ballot of the convention, defeating newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
As there was little difference between the candidates' positions, the race was based on their personalities. Republicans emphasized Roosevelt's success in foreign affairs and his record of firmness against monopolies. Roosevelt defeated Parker, sweeping every region in the nation except the South. Two third-party candidates, Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party and Silas C. Swallow of the Prohibition Party, each took over 1% of the popular vote. Roosevelt's popular vote margin of 18.8% was the largest since James Monroe's victory in the 1820 presidential election. Republican candidates: As Republicans convened in Chicago on June 21–23, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt's nomination was assured, he had maneuvered throughout 1902 and 1903 to gain control of the party to ensure it. A dump-Roosevelt movement had centered on the candidacy of conservative Senator Mark Hanna from Ohio, but Hanna's death in February 1904 had removed this obstacle. Roosevelt's nomination speech was delivered by former governor Frank S. Black of New York and seconded by Senator Albert J. Beveridge from Indiana.
Roosevelt was nominated unanimously on the first ballot with 994 votes. Since conservatives in the Republican Party denounced Theodore Roosevelt as a radical, they were allowed to choose the vice-presidential candidate. Senator Charles W. Fairbanks from Indiana was the obvious choice, since conservatives thought of him, yet he managed not to offend the party's more progressive elements. Roosevelt was far from pleased with the idea of Fairbanks for vice-president, he would have preferred Representative Robert R. Hitt from Illinois, but he did not consider the vice-presidential nomination worth a fight. With solid support from New York and Indiana, Fairbanks was placed on the 1904 Republican ticket in order to appease the Old Guard; the Republican platform insisted on maintenance of the protective tariff, called for increased foreign trade, pledged to uphold the gold standard, favored expansion of the merchant marine, promoted a strong navy, praised in detail Roosevelt's foreign and domestic policy.
Source: US President - R Convention. Our Campaigns.. Source: US Vice President - R Convention. Our Campaigns.. Democratic candidates: In 1904, both William Jennings Bryan and former President Grover Cleveland declined to run for president. Since the two Democratic nominees of the past 20 years did not seek the presidential nomination, Alton B. Parker, a Bourbon Democrat from New York, emerged as the frontrunner. Parker was the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals and was respected by both Democrats and Republicans in his state. On several occasions, the Republicans paid Parker the honor of running no one against him when he ran for various political positions. Parker refused to work for the nomination, but did nothing to restrain his conservative supporters, among them the sachems of Tammany Hall. Former President Grover Cleveland endorsed Parker; the Democratic Convention that met in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 6–9, 1904, has been called "one of the most exciting and sensational in the history of the Democratic Party."
The struggle inside the Democratic Party over the nomination was to prove as contentious as the election itself. Though Parker, out of active politics for twenty years, had neither enemies nor errors to make him unavailable, a bitter battle was waged against Parker by the more liberal wing of the party in the months before the convention. Despite the fact that Parker had supported Bryan in 1896 and 1900, Bryan hated him for being a Gold Democrat. Bryan wanted the weakest man nominated, one who could not take the control of the party away from him, he denounced Judge Parker as a tool of Wall Street before he was nominated and declared that no self-respecting Democrat could vote for him. Inheriting Bryan's support was publisher, now William Randolph Hearst of New York. Hearst owned eight newspapers, all of them friendly to labor, vigorous in their trust-busting activities, fighting the cause of "the people who worked for a living." Because of this liberalism, Hearst had the Illinois delegation pledged to him and the promise of several other states.
Although Hearst's newspaper was the only major publication in the East to support William Jennings Bryan and Bimetallism in 1896, he found that his support for Bryan was not reciprocated. Instead, Bryan seconded the nomination of Francis Cockrell; the prospect of having Hearst for a candidate frightened conservative Democrats so much that they renewed their efforts to get Parker nominated on the first ballot. Parker received 658 votes on the first roll call, 9 short of the necessary two-thirds. Before the result could be an
