{"id":61292,"date":"2017-01-23T09:08:27","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T15:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61292"},"modified":"2017-01-23T09:08:27","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T15:08:27","slug":"3800-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61292","title":{"rendered":"3,800 Votes"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series. \u00a0Over the next few weeks\/months, we\u2019re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar.<\/em><\/p>\n

As the night of November 7th, 1916 became the early morning hours of November 8th, supporters of Charles Evans Hughes were becoming increasingly confident.<\/p>\n

The former New York Governor, Supreme Court Justice and Republican nominee for President, Hughes had waged a brief campaign – he hadn’t sought the office but accepted the nomination in June – but looked as though he was on the verge of winning. \u00a0Hughes had all but swept the Eastern states, racking up victories in large electoral college states like New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. \u00a0By the time the reported results had turned to the Western states, Hughes already had nearly 249 electoral votes (New Hampshire was still too close to call) out of the 266 he needed to win. \u00a0The early numbers in the West had favored incumbent President Woodrow Wilson, but Hughes’ camp felt secure that he would obtain at least Oregon and California’s votes. \u00a0Together, they would deliver the Presidency to Hughes.<\/p>\n

Despite Germany’s\u00a0unrestricted submarine warfare<\/a> and numerous acts of terrorism<\/a>, America had remained neutral in Europe’s conflict. \u00a0Wilson had campaigned largely on his ability to keep America out of the war, while Hughes had spent the last five months questioning the nation’s preparations. \u00a0Despite Hughes wanting to side-step any mention of the war directly, the campaign’s final weeks had devolved into a pro-neutrality versus pro-Entente\/pro-war election.<\/p>\n

The results from Oregon and California, although not official, arrived early in the morning – Hughes looked likely to win them both. \u00a0As Hughes drifted off to sleep, it was as the President-elect of the United States. \u00a0America had taken one step closer to preparing for war.<\/p>\n

\n

It’s not quite “Dewey Defeats Truman” but the nation assumed they had narrowly elected Charles Hughes as President<\/p><\/div>\n

The common historical refrain of America’s attitude about the Great War in 1914 was that the nation staunchly preferred peace. \u00a0In reality, the nation was strongly divided on a variety of issues surrounding Europe’s conflict. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Distance at first dimmed the reality of the war. \u00a0The invention of the telegraph and the laying of the Atlantic cable could provide nearly up-to-the-hour reporting on events on either side of the ocean, but it still could be days or more for news to spread beyond the coasts. \u00a0For the average American, the newspaper stories on the war might as well have described fictional locations – as they involved lands they had never seen and likely never would. \u00a0And for the nearly 1\/3 of the United States that was first or second generation immigrants, the war in Europe represented precisely what they or their parents had worked to escape.<\/p>\n

Still, ethnic loyalties lingered. \u00a0A month after the sinking of the Lusitania<\/i>, Irish and German protesters mounted a massive peace demonstration in New York City, while there were pro-German\/pro-neutrality picnics and rallies throughout the summer in the Midwest. \u00a0The streets of Chicago erupted in violent clashes between Slavs and Germans. \u00a0Cincinnati Jews talked of raising a Jewish militia to join the German forces fighting the Tsar.<\/p>\n

Wilson hadn’t wanted to focus on the war to start the campaign – fearing it would backfire. But his insistence on keeping America out of the war would ensure his re-election<\/p><\/div>\n

Every American institution – politics, religion, business – found themselves torn over the war.<\/p>\n

Few, if any, prominent political figures openly argued for the United States to intervene in Europe, but the degree of the nation’s neutrality was hotly contested. \u00a0Former President Theodore Roosevelt had been highly critical<\/a> of Wilson’s handling of American neutrality in the face of German naval attacks while other Republican Senators like\u00a0Robert La Follette and George W. Norris backed a strict non-interventionalist policy. \u00a0The war would divide Wilson’s Cabinet, as Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan would resign following Wilson’s relatively tepid rebuke to the Germans after the Lusitania<\/em> – deeming it too inflammatory. \u00a0“Why be so shocked by the drowning of a few people,” Bryan stated, “if there is to be no objection to starving a nation?”<\/p>\n

Most American religious institutions were too busy evangelizing for the temperance movement to offer much commentary on the war beyond a “plague on both houses” mantra, but a theological divide still simmered. \u00a0Catholics, many given their Irish or German roots, had little sympathy for the Entente while many Protestant denominations attempted relief operations for Belgian civilians following the lurid tales of German repression<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wilson was running for re-election during a major American economic boom – unemployment fell from 9.7% in 1915 to 4.8% in 1916. \u00a0Hughes’ critiques would center on the nation’s preparedness and the belief that reuniting the pre-1912 GOP coalition would be enough to win<\/p><\/div>\n

American industry loved neutrality as a policy, but most assuredly chose sides. \u00a0The nation’s GNP jumped 20% as exports to the Entente increased from $824.8 million before the war to over $2 billion by the beginning of 1917. \u00a0Many of those exports were being bought on credit as the Allies began to bankrupt themselves \u00a0 J.P. Morgan alone financed a $500 million credit deal with Britain and France – roughly the equivalent of nearly $12 billion today. \u00a0Still, there those industrialists who decried the entire conflict. \u00a0Henry Ford attempted to personally sail peace delegates to Europe in 1915 aboard his “Peace Ship” (the press dubbed it the “Ship of Fools”).<\/p>\n

For whatever the strengths or weaknesses of neutrality as an official U.S. policy, it was easier than trying to unite a divided people to participate in a conflict they felt had little impact upon them.<\/p>\n

\n

For some prominent American leaders, the nation’s policy was naivet\u00e9, not neutrality.<\/p>\n

Wilson was strongly criticized by all sides for his reaction to the German sinking of the Lusitania. Liberals thought Wilson too hard while conservative thought him too soft<\/p><\/div>\n

The United States Army consisted of only 98,000 troops in 1914 – and almost half of that number were stationed outside of the U.S. \u00a0Even with the inclusion of the National Guard, America’s infantry would rank only as the 13th largest in the world; outnumbered 20-to-1 by Germany’s manpower alone. \u00a0The Army had invested no funds into tactical research of trench warfare, gas weapons, tank or plane development and had nearly had their budget cut in 1915. \u00a0Only after the Lusitania<\/em> and the Pancho Villa Expedition<\/a> did Congress halt their proposal.<\/p>\n

For Theodore Roosevelt and U.S. Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood, America was dangerously unready for a potential war. \u00a0Partnering with\u00a0former secretaries of war Elihu Root and Henry Stimson, the group launched what would be known as the “Preparedness Movement.” \u00a0In practicality, the group was as much political as practical. \u00a0Roosevelt, Wood, Root and Stimson were all Republicans who agreed on a far more robust foreign policy than being currently proposed by President Wilson. \u00a0In execution, “Preparedness” was largely a movement in favor of conscription – in this case, a plan to require six-months of military service for all 18 year-olds.<\/p>\n

The concept of mandatory military participation was extremely unpopular, and it likely rankled the Movement’s founders that critics unfavorably compared the idea to Germany’s two-year active service law. \u00a0But “Preparedness” was not deterred, forming a camp at Plattsburgh, New York for military training. \u00a0The concept was very similar to the recruitment of the “Rough Riders” decades earlier, and for good reason – Roosevelt had been a major proponent of the Rough Riders, with Wood that group’s commanding officer. \u00a0The Plattsburgh camp was so popular, that similar camps and programs sprung up around the nation. \u00a0Over 40,000 young men, most of them coming from middle to upper class families, would attend Plattsburgh over the next year.<\/p>\n

The Plattsburgh camp – Teddy Roosevelt and Gen. Leonard Wood are on the bottom right<\/p><\/div>\n

Plattsburgh and “Preparedness” on their own didn’t spur much action from Washington, but the prospective presidential campaigns of Roosevelt, Wood and Root did. \u00a0Wilson’s immediate response was to attempt to downplay the status of the American military. \u00a0With Democrats in control of Congress, Wilson’s administration had a series of generals and admirals testify as to the war-readiness of their units. \u00a0Wilson’s Republican opponents didn’t buy the testimonies and the administration’s insistence that America was fully capable of defending herself came across as worryingly defensive to the public at large.<\/p>\n

Unable to sell the public that improvements to the military weren’t necessary, Wilson next proposed a massive military expansion – of the navy. \u00a0A program to build the U.S. Navy to the size of the British Royal Navy within the next decade was intended to mollify skeptics, but it only reinforced the growing notice that Wilson was ignoring the global state of affairs. \u00a0Wilson’s supporters viewed him as having sold out the “war lobby” while critics hounded on the notion that the United States should be planning on a strategy that seemed designed to counter Britain, not Germany.<\/p>\n

With the conventions of both parties approaching in the summer of 1916, Wilson and the Democratic Congress made one last attempt to cut off the political support for “Preparedness” at it’s knees without alienating the anti-war sentiments of the Democratic Party. \u00a0The National Defense Act of 1916 provided a significant increase in the size of both the standing army (up to 175,000) and the National Guard (450,000). \u00a0375 new aircraft would be produced and the navy was given a 3-year timetable for the introduction of new ships. \u00a0America’s military would still lag far behind their European counterparts, but rearmament was happening.<\/p>\n

Preparedness Parade – the nation’s appetite for being militarily prepared was high enough that Wilson would essentially co-opt it for his campaign<\/p><\/div>\n

Now all Wilson had to do was win re-election.<\/p>\n

\n

Before the Republican Party of 1916 could focus on defeating Woodrow Wilson, they had to attempt to mend their own internal divisions.<\/p>\n

The Grand Old Party had badly fractured in 1912 as former President Theodore Roosevelt openly challenged Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, only to split off with the Progressive Party (often known as the “Bull Moose Party” from Roosevelt’s own comments after being shot during the 1912 campaign – “it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose”). \u00a0With a three-way contest, and Progressive candidates up and down the ballot, Wilson had won and the Democrats gained 61 congressional seats.<\/p>\n

Four years later, Roosevelt was bound and determined not to let Wilson return to the White House – even at the expense of his own ego. \u00a0When the Progressive Party contacted Roosevelt to inform him that he’d been nominated again by them to run for President, TR telegraphed the convention that he would decline the nod. \u00a0Roosevelt was planning on endorsing the Republican nominee. \u00a0The telegraph started a veritable stampede out of the door, with many Progressives abandoning the party to rejoin the GOP. \u00a0As a result, the Progressives wouldn’t field a presidential candidate in 1916 and the party would quickly die on the vine.<\/p>\n

The Republican convention in Chicago – Hughes hadn’t run in the primaries but was still nominated<\/p><\/div>\n

If many liberal Republicans were eager to rejoin the GOP, the Party’s leadership was equally eager to find a candidate they could support. \u00a0Charles Evans Hughes had spent the last six years out of the electoral limelight as a fairly center-left Supreme Court Justice. \u00a0Appointed by Taft, Hughes had previously been the Governor of New York and counted Roosevelt as a close supporter. \u00a0Hughes hadn’t announced or planned for a candidacy and yet won the nomination in three ballots as party leaders pushed him as a compromise candidate.<\/p>\n

Hughes would prove to be a cautious campaigner, preferring to let surrogates like Taft and Roosevelt make his salient points. \u00a0Doing so only put Hughes in a bind. \u00a0While Roosevelt repeatedly hammered Wilson’s handling of the Lusitania<\/em>\u00a0(TR suggested Wilson was letting Germany “bully” the U.S.) and the concept of “Preparedness”, Hughes desperately wanted to bypass the issue of the war, lest he come across as the “pro-war” candidate. \u00a0It was a difficult proposition; between his handling of German submarine warfare and his seemingly confused Mexican intervention, Wilson was vulnerable on his foreign policy, but generally popular on the most important foreign policy point – he had kept America out of the war.<\/p>\n

Hughes and the GOP were nevertheless confident – a Democrat hadn’t won consecutive presidential elections since 1832. \u00a0Hughes was so confident (or perhaps so cautious), he didn’t meet with California’s Progressive Republican Governor Hiram Johnson. \u00a0Johnson was a leading anti-war Republican (and Roosevelt’s former 1912 running mate) and was now seeking the Senate. \u00a0It was better, Hughes rationalized, to not been seen with Johnson close before the election than risk re-opening some party divisions.<\/p>\n

Wilson too had issues with how to approach the war. \u00a0At the Democratic convention, William Jennings Bryan would coin the slogan that Democrats would use throughout the fall – “He Kept Us Out of War.” \u00a0Wilson disliked the slogan, partially fearing it might make him look too weak and partially sensing how oddly it played as he criss-crossed the nation touting the National Defense Act; essentially his own preparations for war. \u00a0Still, Wilson hammered Hughes relentlessly as the candidate who would embroil the United States in Europe’s affairs if elected. \u00a0It was proving to be an effective tactic.<\/p>\n

Hughes campaigning in Winona, Minnesota<\/p><\/div>\n

The issue of the war was also significant with a new voter demographic – women. \u00a0While the 19th amendment was still four years away, 12 states already allowed women to vote. \u00a0If the election were to turn on the support of women, it looked as though Charles Hughes would walk away in a landslide. \u00a0Wilson had been less than supportive of the women’s suffrage movement while Hughes publicly backed them. \u00a0The “Hughsettes” as they would become know, would include a number of notable suffrage leaders who campaigned for the Republican across the country. \u00a0Wilson supporters would often riot and attack the “Hughsettes” rallies.<\/p>\n

Despite Hughes’ public support, women overwhelmingly voted for Wilson. \u00a0In the 12 states where women could vote, 11 of them went to Wilson. \u00a0The Republican might push for granting them the vote, but Wilson would keep them out of the war.<\/p>\n

\n

It was the morning of November 8th, 1916 as the telephone rang in Charles Hughes’ residence in New York. \u00a0A reporter wished to get Hughes’ reaction to the election news from earlier that morning. \u00a0Not wishing to disturb Hughes’ slumber after such a late evening, Hughes’ butler informed the reporter that “the President is sleeping.” \u00a0The reporter replied: “When he wakes up, tell him he isn’t the President.”<\/p>\n

By the end of the week, the results had flipped – Wilson was re-elected<\/p><\/div>\n

Oregon had indeed gone for Hughes that night, although not New Hampshire (by 56 votes). \u00a0But California and it’s critical 13 electoral college votes had gone to Wilson…by 3,800 votes. \u00a0Wilson would eventually win 277 electoral votes to Hughes’ 254. \u00a0Hiram Johnson, so incensed by Hughes’ snub, refused to put his political machine to work for the Republican nominee. \u00a0Perhaps as painful? \u00a0Women had gone for Wilson by a 3-to-1 vote in California.<\/p>\n

It appeared as though the United States had voted to ensure it stayed out of Europe’s blood bath. \u00a0Within a month of Wilson’s inauguration in March of 1917, America would be at war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series. \u00a0Over the next few weeks\/months, we\u2019re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar. As the night of November 7th, 1916 became the early morning hours of November 8th, supporters of Charles Evans Hughes were becoming increasingly confident. The former New York Governor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,281],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-ww1-fact-and-myth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61292"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61901,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61292\/revisions\/61901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}