Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics

Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics
ISBN-10
0700615644
ISBN-13
9780700615643
Category
Political science (General)
Pages
235
Language
English
Published
2008
Publisher
University Press of Kansas
Author
Lewis L. Gould

Description

Choice Outstanding Title

Imagine a presidential election with four well-qualified and distinguished candidates and a serious debate over the future of the nation! Sound impossible in this era of attack ads and strident partisanship? It happened nearly a century ago in 1912, when incumbent Republican William Howard Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt running as the Progressive Party candidate, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs all spoke to major concerns of the American people and changed the landscape of national politics in the bargain.

The presidential election of 1912 saw a third-party candidate finish second in both popular and electoral votes. The Socialist candidate received the highest percentage of the popular vote his party ever attained. In addition to year-round campaigning in the modern style, the 1912 contest featured a broader role for women, two exciting national conventions, and an assassination attempt on Roosevelt's life. The election defined the major parties for generations to come as the Taft-Roosevelt split pushed the Republicans to the right and the Democrats' agenda of reform set them on the road to the New Deal.

Lewis L. Gould, one of America's preeminent political historians, tells the story of this dramatic race and explains its enduring significance. Basing his narrative on the original letters and documents of the candidates themselves, he guides his readers down the campaign trail through the factional splits, exciting primaries, tumultuous conventions and the turbulent fall campaign to Wilson's landslide electoral vote victory in November.

It's all here--Gene Debs's challenge to capitalism, the progressive rivalry of Roosevelt and Robert La Follette, the debate between the New Freedom of Wilson and the New Nationalism of Roosevelt, and the resolve of Taft to defeat his one-time friend TR and keep the Republican Party in conservative hands. Gould combines lively anecdotes, the poetry and prose of the campaign, and insights into the clash of ideology and personality to craft a narrative that moves as fast as did the 1912 election itself.

Americans sensed in 1912 that they stood at a turning point in the nation's history. Four Hats in the Ring demonstrates why the people who lived and fought this significant election were more right than they could ever have known.

Other editions

Similar books

  • The First Modern Clash over Federal Power: Wilson versus Hughes in the Presidential Election of 1916
    By Lewis L. Gould

    ... The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Volume 37, 525. 45 T. G. Joslin to James T. Williams, Jr., July 10, 1916, Williams, Jr. Papers. 46 “Hughes Will Pose for Movie Camera,” Washington Times, July 2, 1916. 47 “I'm Perfectly Human, Says Hughes ...

  • Hats in the Ring: An Illustrated History of American Presidential Campaigns
    By Evan Cornog, Richard Whelan

    "America suffers from a sort of intermittent fever. . . . Every fourth year there come terrible shakings, passing into the hot fit of the presidential election; then follows what...

  • The William Howard Taft Presidency
    By Lewis L. Gould

    Leaving the White House in 1913, Taft wrote that "the people of the United States did not owe me another election." What his presidency deserved is the lively and wise appraisal of his record in office contained in this superb book.

  • Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter
    By Gautam Mukunda

    Hough, First Sea Lord, 119–120; Lambert, SirJohn Fisher's Naval Revolution, 74–75; Mackay, Fisher of Kilverstone, ... Lambert, SirJohn Fisher's Naval Revolution, 18–36, 90–91, 97, 109–110; Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., “The Origins of the ...

  • Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Creating the Modern First Lady
    By Lewis L. Gould

    Gould looks beneath the surface of her life to examine the intricate legacy of her tenure from 1901 to 1909. The narrative in this book thus uncovers much new about Edith Roosevelt.

  • Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century
    By Margaret O'Mara

    Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian Zelizer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 222–49. ... Farley, Behind the Ballots: The Personal History of a Politician (New York: Harcourt, 1938), 65. 3. Ibid., 66, 67. 4.

  • The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On
    By John Stauffer, Benjamin Soskis

    Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, 53–82 (quote on 55), 292, 381 (Invaders quote); Miller, Martin Luther King's ... President Kennedy threaded the needle by declining to attend himself, but sent his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy ...

  • Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment
    By Lewis L. Gould

    This book is the result of Gould’s extensive research in the LBJ Library and draws on his interviews with such key figures as Interior Secretary Steward Udall, Press Secretary Liz Carpenter, District of Columbia Mayor Walter Washington, ...

  • Bull Moose on the Stump: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt
    By Theodore Roosevelt

    As standard bearer of the Progressive Party in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt played to enthusiastic crowds wherever he traveled. When he was targeted by an assassin while campaigning for president, a...

  • The Development of the American Presidency
    By Richard J. Ellis

    For instance, Michael J. Gerhardt, author of The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical ... “Removing a 'Disabled' President,” in Constitutional Cliffhangers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 61–82. 152.