EVEN BEFORE OFFICIALLY THROWING HIS hat in the ring, Roosevelt realized that his only chance for the nomination lay in expanding the direct primary beyond the half-dozen states that had adopted the system. In his letter to the governors, he had voiced his “hope that so far as possible the people may be given the chance, through direct primaries, to express their preference as to who shall be the nominee.” Initially led by La Follette and his band of insurgents, the movement for direct primaries had been slow to catch on. Two years earlier, Roosevelt had unsuccessfully tried to persuade the New York state legislature to change its nominating system. As a presidential candidate, however, he transformed the “sluggishly moving cause” into “a torrential crusade.”
“Get the Direct Primary for Your State,” proclaimed a Roosevelt supporter in Collier’s Weekly, alerting constituents that “the Presidential primary means that you can go to the polls (if you are a Republican) and say whether you want Taft or Roosevelt. If you don’t do the choosing the bosses will.” Roosevelt operatives pressured legislatures in one state after another to change their rules. “Don’t let the politicians tell you it is too late,” the progressive journalist Mark Sullivan proclaimed. “The Presidential primary can be got for every State if the people demand it.”
The call for a popular voice in party nominations was a delicate issue for the Taft campaign. While the president’s strength lay in the old convention system, the political climate made public opposition to direct primaries awkward. Nor did Taft oppose the concept in principle; he told Horace that he had “no objection at all” to Republican primaries, so long as the law provided safeguards to prevent Democrats from voting. Meanwhile, his managers did everything possible to prevent states from adopting primaries. “Legislatures are being dragooned, officeholders are being set at work,” the Washington Times reported, “and big business is using its influence at every point.” Challenged to explain why Taft’s campaign organizers were leading the fight, William McKinley flatly stated: “I do not favor changes in the rules of the game while the game is in progress. To propose the recall of conventions in the midst of the campaign is contrary to the dictates of fair play.” It appeared the campaign would progress smoothly, Taft assured Horace, if he could “only keep my people from talking too much.”
Roosevelt sounded the central theme of his own campaign in a speech at Carnegie Hall on March 20. Every seat was occupied; the speaker’s platform was jammed with chairs; women in evening gowns crowded the upper boxes. Five thousand people had to be turned away. Roosevelt “waved his hand energetically” to stop the “wild cheers” that greeted him as he entered, but the demonstration only escalated when someone in the back began the singsong refrain: “What’s the matter with Roosevelt?” To which the crowd chanted: “He’s all right!” At last, the audience reluctantly quieted and Roosevelt began to speak.
“The great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly,” he thundered, posing the rhetorical question: “Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not.” Declaring that he stood by the sentiments in his Columbus speech, Roosevelt adroitly folded his proposal for the recall of judicial decisions into the larger issue of popular rule. Any attack on his proposal, he maintained, was in effect “a criticism of all popular government,” grounded in “the belief that the people are fundamentally unworthy.”
For the first time, the New York Times reported, Roosevelt proceeded to pour “ridicule” on the president, deriding his misguided interpretation of the principles of American government. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, who believed in “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” Roosevelt charged that Taft ostensibly held that “our government is and should be a government of all the people by a representative part of the people,” the very definition of “oligarchy.” Where progressives trusted that the entire voting republic would rule correctly most of the time, Taft rested his hope in the courts—“a special class of persons wiser than the people.” In recent years, Roosevelt pointed out, these very courts had proved “the most serious obstacles” to social justice—repeatedly striking down legislation designed to better the working conditions of ordinary citizens. “Our task as Americans is to strive for social and industrial justice, achieved through the genuine rule of the people,” he urged. “We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world.” The destiny of “our great experiment” would mean nothing, he warned, “if on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity,” rather than a genuine democracy based on “the rule of all the people.”
As spring commenced, vigorous efforts by the Roosevelt campaign to spread the direct primary system had succeeded in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio, South Dakota, Illinois, and New York, bringing the number of participating states to thirteen. The New York struggle resulted in multiple litigations regarding the format of the ballot and the placement of the delegates’ names, but the primary was finally set for March 26. In Illinois, the Chicago Tribune led a successful campaign to force the reluctant governor to call a special legislative session to pass the bill. With primaries scheduled nearly every week between mid-March and early June, the first presidential campaign conducted under this new system generated widespread interest and high emotions.
The primary season opened on March 12 in North Dakota, where Robert La Follette still “had his fighting clothes on,” determined to prove that he was the sole progressive in the race. Roosevelt, he charged, was merely a “switch engine” that ran on “one track, and then on another.” Aware that La Follette was generating widespread enthusiasm, Roosevelt’s managers published a last-minute appeal in newspapers across the state: “Today’s primary crucial. On the returns,” the statement advised, “will depend whether Col. Theodore Roosevelt is to be further considered as a factor in the fight for the nomination.”
In Washington, Alice Roosevelt Longworth waited anxiously. After placing repeated telephone calls to her father’s campaign manager, she finally received the “very bad news” that La Follette had beaten Roosevelt by a margin of 58 percent to 39 percent. Though Taft garnered but a miserable 3 percent of the vote, Roosevelt had predicted that if he did not win, “the East will construe it not as a defeat for Taft but as a defeat for me.” The Washington Post confirmed Roosevelt’s assessment: “The small vote count for President Taft means very little, as he was not fighting for recognition of the primaries as were Roosevelt and La Follette.” Moreover, Taft could not anticipate much support in a state on the Canadian border, where many farmers still resented his advocacy for reciprocity. “In a nutshell,” the Post concluded, the outcome in North Dakota “is decidedly embarrassing to Roosevelt, encouraging to La Follette and the subject of mixed amusement and satisfaction to Taft.”
A week later, Roosevelt suffered a far more significant loss when Taft crushed him by a margin of eight to one in New York’s “first trial of the new primary law,” securing eighty-three out of ninety district delegates. “They are stealing the primary election from us,” Roosevelt protested. It was evident that “an entire breakdown of the election machinery” in New York had occurred. Litigation by both the Taft and Roosevelt campaigns had delayed getting the ballots to the printer. In some districts, they arrived only after the polling had closed; in others, the long ballots had been so badly folded that the bottom section bearing the delegates’ names became detached. Despite these technical difficulties, the press reported “the indisputable fact” that Taft had scored a decisive victory over Roosevelt.
The day after the New York primary, Roosevelt boarded a train to begin a weeklong swing through the West in anticipation of the Illinois primary. Having studied the returns from New York, he reached Chicago “in a fighting mood.” Discarding his prepared speeches, he “raised the cry of fraud,” claiming that the Taft men in New York “had cheated the people out of their
will by the grossest corruption” since “the days of Tweed.” Had he simply been unable to gain support for his political philosophy, the Colonel maintained, he “should be sorry” but would not complain. “If the politicians subvert the will of the people,” however, he would “have a great deal to say.” Buoyed by immense crowds yelling “Teddy, Teddy, hooray for Teddy,” Roosevelt escalated his rhetoric against bosses, machines, and William Howard Taft. “Our fight,” he claimed, “is the biggest fight the Republican Party has been in since the Civil War.” Before a packed Decatur crowd, he linked Taft directly to Republican William Lorimer, who would soon be expelled from the Senate for bribing members of the Illinois state legislature to obtain his Senate seat. Generating wild applause, he proclaimed: “As an American citizen, it is a shock to me to see the name of Lincoln desecrated by its use as a mask for Mr. Lorimer.”
“Easter came on April seventh that year,” Alice Roosevelt recalled, “but all that I could think of was the Illinois primary, two days off.” A loss in Illinois after his humiliating New York defeat would cripple the Roosevelt movement. But before midnight on April 9, it became clear that Roosevelt had won a sweeping victory, “carrying every district in the State but one, and electing fifty-six of the fifty-eight delegates.” His campaign secretary, Oscar King Davis, later designated April 9 as “the day on which the Roosevelt ‘band wagon’ got its real start, and from then on there was a rush to get aboard it.” Well aware that he had benefited from widespread anti-Lorimer sentiment, Roosevelt claimed the stunning victory as “a stinging rebuke to the alliance between crooked business and crooked politics.” As he headed toward Pennsylvania, where voters would go to the polls in four days, he wore his broadest smile. “We slugged them over the ropes,” he told supporters. The outcome was almost “too good to believe,” Alice Roosevelt recorded in her diary. “How wonderfully happy I am.”
A somber mood enveloped the Taft camp. Taft confided to Howard Hollister that the Illinois defeat had “given his campaign a heavy jolt.” More frustrating than the loss itself, Taft told his friend, was the unjust way that the Lorimer issue had been used to debase him. Roosevelt knew that Taft had never supported Lorimer; indeed, he and the Colonel had exchanged letters, working together to determine how they might persuade a reluctant Senate to expel one of its own. Despite the blow suffered in Illinois, Taft assured Hollister, the campaign could easily “recover by a good result in Pennsylvania.”
On Saturday, April 13, the people of Pennsylvania crushed Taft’s hope “for turning the avalanche of sentiment” that Roosevelt had unleashed. “It was long after midnight,” the Washington Times reported, “before the weary managers quit bringing their discouraging telegrams and Mr. Taft sought a few hours rest.” By Sunday morning, it was clear that Roosevelt had achieved another staggering triumph, gaining sixty-eight of seventy-six delegates. After hearing the final tally, Taft wrote a long letter to his brother Horace. “One of the burdens that a man leading a cause has to carry is the disappointment that his friends and sympathizers feel at every recurring disaster,” he began. With every unfavorable report in the papers, that load grew heavier. “I felt more sorrow at Nellie’s disappointment and yours, and that of all who have become absorbed in the fight on my behalf than I did myself,” he explained. Nevertheless, he assured his brother, he had no plans to withdraw. Nor did he intend to “make any personal attacks on Roosevelt.” If Roosevelt persisted in his “lies and unblushing misrepresentations,” however, he could not prevent his campaign managers “from pointing out his mendacity.”
“I wish I could help,” Horace replied. “I can’t manage to think of much else. I don’t see how you stand it. I don’t mind a licking. I can get used to anything. But the continued uncertainty is hard to bear.” No matter the eventual outcome, Horace told his brother, William Taft would never lose the affection and respect of “the thinking men,” the men who understood the fight being waged for the Constitution. Hoping to cheer his brother, Horace recounted a conversation with Taft’s eldest son, Robert, who had “never loved him so much” and expressed certainty “that his place in history is sure if he never does another lick.”
“The stampede is on,” the Pittsburgh Press proclaimed. “Those who have been led to believe that Roosevelt has been fighting a lost cause will have to change their minds. Theodore Roosevelt is stronger today than he has been at any time since his hat was cast into the ring.” Optimism reigned too at Roosevelt’s headquarters in Washington. “Of course, Pennsylvania settles it,” Chicago Tribune correspondent Cal O’Laughlin wrote to Roosevelt on April 14. “I am absolutely convinced that you will be nominated hands down at Chicago,” noting with satisfaction that “the gloom around the White House to-day was so thick, it could be cut with a knife.”
KEEPING ABREAST OF THE INCREASINGLY bitter nomination struggle from abroad, Major Butt decided to cut his vacation a little short, “anxious to be home,” where he could offer comfort and companionship to his beleaguered Chief. On April 10, 1912, he boarded the White Star Line’s palatial new ocean liner, RMS Titanic, for her maiden crossing of the North Atlantic.
On Monday morning, April 15, the press reported that the Titanic, carrying more than 2,300 passengers and crew, had struck a giant iceberg. The first reports erroneously suggested that the great ship had been “held afloat by her water-tight compartments” and was “slowly crawling” toward Halifax. Relieved to hear that “all onboard had been saved,” Taft went to see the comedy Nobody’s Widow at Poli’s Theatre that evening. Learning at around 11 p.m. that the ship had actually gone down in the early morning hours, “he looked,” one reporter observed, “like a man that had been stunned by a heavy blow.” He rushed back to his office, where he closeted himself in the telegraph room to read the latest bulletins. Shortly before midnight, he dispatched a telegram to the White Star offices in New York: “Have you any information concerning Major Butt? If you communicate at once I will greatly appreciate.” The response offered little reason for optimism. There was “no definite information” available. Before returning to the mansion, Taft instructed the telegraph operator to bring him the most recent news regardless of how late it arrived.
The days that followed would drive Taft down into a profound state of grief. By early Tuesday morning, White Star officials had compiled a list of over seven hundred survivors, mainly women and children, who had been loaded into lifeboats and taken aboard the nearby Carpathia. At noon, the Washington Times reported, the president’s telegraph operator received a message from the White Star office, expressing their profound “regret that Major Butt’s name” was not to be found on any list of survivors. “Even with the list of the rescued made public,” the press reported, “Washington found it hard to realize that the President’s military aide, the tall, stalwart, light-hearted man who won such popularity, who knew pretty nearly everybody in the Capital, and was loved by all of them is really dead.” The White House canceled all social activities as “news of the disaster swallowed up all such temporary minor considerations as politics and official business.”
Both the president and the first lady were “greatly depressed,” The Washington Post reported; “in fact, the entire White House staff was plunged into sorrow.” With tears in his eyes, Taft told callers he considered Archie a member of his family and felt “his loss as if he had been a younger brother.” To his friend Mabel Boardman, Taft confessed that it was impossible to believe he would never see Archie again. “I miss him every minute,” he wrote; “every house, and every tree, and every person suggests him. Every walk I take somehow is lacking his presence, and every door that opens seems to be his coming.”
As survivors began talking about their ordeal, Taft absorbed stories about Archie’s last hours. Marian Thayer, a Philadelphia Main Liner whose husband had perished on the ship, sent a heartfelt letter to the president. “In my own grief I think often of yours,” she told him, “and feel I must write to tell you how I spent the last Sunday evening with Major Butt.” Sh
e had dined with Archie at a small dinner party in honor of the Titanic’s captain, Edward J. Smith, and could not forget “how devoted he was to you and what a lovely noble man he was!” Archie had told Mrs. Thayer about the scores of letters he had written to his mother and his sister-in-law over the recent years and shared his hope that if published posthumously, this correspondence might leave “his mark and memorial of truth to the world.” He admitted that he was “very nervous” about returning home, Marian confided to Taft, knowing that the nomination battle between “you and someone else he loved but I do not” was in full swing. “Oh, how he loved you” she added, “and how frightfully you will miss his care—such a true, devoted, close more-than-friend.”
According to reports, Archie had been in the smoking room enjoying a game of cards at 11:40 p.m. when the Titanic hit the iceberg. “A slight rocking of the ship” followed, but the passengers remained unaware of danger until forty minutes later, when a steward announced: “The captain says that all passengers will dress themselves warmly, bring life preservers and go up to the top deck.” Over the next two hours, as water continued to flood the vessel, women and children were lowered into lifeboats. Mrs. Henry Harris, wife of the celebrated theatrical producer who died on board, recalled that Archie Butt had been “the real leader” during the rescue operation. A male passenger who survived by jumping at the last moment told reporters: “My last view of Major Butt—one that will live forever in my memory—was of that brave soldier coolly aiding the officers of the boat in directing the dis-embarkation of the women from the doomed ship.” Even before the limited survivor list and the testimony of witnesses reached him, William Taft was grimly certain of his companion’s fate: “After I heard that part of the ship’s company had gone down, I gave up hope for the rescue of Major Butt, unless by accident. I knew that he would certainly remain on the ship’s deck until every duty had been performed and every sacrifice made.”