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| Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Parker/Davis, Red denotes those won by Roosevelt/Fairbanks. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The United States presidential election of 1904 held on November 8, 1904, resulted in the election to a full term for President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had succeeded to the presidency upon the assassination of William McKinley. The Republican Party unanimously nominated him for president at their 1904 national convention. During the election campaign, Roosevelt called on the voters to support his "square deal" policies. The nominee of the Democratic Party was Alton B. Parker, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who appealed for an end to what he called "rule of individual caprice" and "usurpation of authority" by the president.
Theodore Roosevelt easily won the election, thus becoming the first president to assume the office upon the death of a president to secure a full term of his own.
Contents |
Republican candidates:
As Republicans convened in Chicago on June 21-23, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt's nomination was assured. He had effectively maneuvered throughout 1902 and 1903 to gain control of the party to ensure it. A dump-Roosevelt movement had centered on the candidacy of Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio, but Hanna's death earlier in the year had removed this obstacle. Hanna's death in February 1904 ended any real opposition to Roosevelt within the GOP. Roosevelt's nomination speech was delivered by former governor Frank S. Black of New York and seconded by Senator Albert J. Beveridge of 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 of Indiana was the obvious choice, since conservatives thought highly 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 of Illinois, but he did not consider the vice-presidential nomination worth a fight. With solid support from New York, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, Fairbanks was easily 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, and praised in detail Roosevelt's foreign and domestic policy.
| Presidential Ballot | |
| Ballot | 1st |
|---|---|
| Theodore Roosevelt | 994 |
Source: US President - R Convention. Our Campaigns. (September 9, 2009).
| Vice Presidential Ballot | |
| Ballot | 1st |
|---|---|
| Charles W. Fairbanks | 994 |
Source: US Vice President - R Convention. Our Campaigns. (September 9, 2009).
Democratic candidates:
In 1904, both William Jennings Bryan and former President Grover Cleveland declined to run for president. The Republican Party had nominated Roosevelt to succeed himself; the Democrats knew that he was colorful and popular with the people; it was felt that only a good man could defeat a good man. Many believed the Democrat best qualified for this task was Alton B. Parker, a Bourbon Democrat from New York.
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 actively 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 exciting 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 radical 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. After his nomination, he charged that it had been dictated by the trusts and secured by “crooked and indefensible methods.” Bryan also said that labor had been betrayed in the convention and could look for nothing from the Democratic Party. Indeed, Parker was one of the judges on the New York Court of Appeals who declared the eight-hour law unconstitutional.[1]
Inheriting Bryan's support was publisher, now congressman, 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. 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.
With the exception of the Bryan and Hearst backers, everyone called for Parker. So great was the feeling of unanimity that he received 658 votes on the first roll call, 9 short of the necessary 2/3. Before the result could be announced, 21 more votes were transferred to Parker; the nomination was his. Parker handily won the nomination on the first ballot with 679 votes to 181 for Hearst and the rest scattered. Former Senator Henry G. Davis of West Virginia was nominated for vice-president; at 80, he was the oldest major-party candidate ever nominated for national office. Davis had received the nomination because it was believed he could swing his state. Davis had an honorable career in politics and was also a millionaire mine owner, railroad magnate, and banker.
Parker sprang into action when he learned that the Democratic platform pointedly omitted reference to the monetary issue. To make his position clear, Parker, after his nomination, informed the convention by letter that he supported the gold standard. The letter read, “I regard the gold standard as firmly and irrevocably established and shall act accordingly if the action of the convention today shall be ratified by the people. As the platform is silent on the subject, my view should be made known to the convention, and if it is proved to be unsatisfactory to the majority, I request you to decline the nomination for me at once, so that another may be nominated before adjournment.”
It was the first time a candidate had made such a move. It was an act of daring that might have lost him the nomination, making him an outcast from the party he had served and believed in all his life.[2]
Parker protested against "the rule of individual caprice," the presidential "usurpation of authority," and the "aggrandizement of personal power." But his more positive proposals were so backward-looking, such as his proposal to let state legislatures and the common law develop a remedy for the trust problem, that the New York World characterized the campaign as a struggle of "conservative and constitutional Democracy against radical and arbitrary Republicanism."[3]
The Democratic platform called for reduction in government expenditures and a congressional investigation of the executive departments "already known to teem with corruption"; condemned monopolies; pledged an end to government contracts with companies violating antitrust laws; opposed imperialism; insisted upon independence for the Philippines; and opposed the protective tariff. It favored strict enforcement of the eight-hour work day; construction of a Panama Canal; the direct election of senators; statehood for the Western territories; the extermination of polygamy; reciprocal trade agreements; cuts in the army; and enforcement of the civil service laws. It condemned the Roosevelt administration in general as "spasmodic, erratic, sensational, spectacular, and arbitrary."[4]
| Presidential Ballot | Vice Presidential Ballot | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Alton B. Parker | 679 | Henry G. Davis | 654 |
| William Randolph Hearst | 181 | James R. Williams | 165 |
| Francis Cockrell | 42 | George Turner | 100 |
| Richard Olney | 38 | William Alexander Harris | 58 |
| Edward C. Wall | 27 | Abstaining | 23 |
| George Gray | 12 | ||
| John Sharp Williams | 8 | ||
| Robert E. Pattison | 4 | ||
| George Brinton McClellan, Jr. | 3 | ||
| Nelson A. Miles | 3 | ||
| Charles A. Towne | 2 | ||
| Bird Sim Coler | 1 |
Source: US President - D Convention. Our Campaigns. (March 10, 2011).
The Election of 1904 was the first election in which the Socialist Party participated. The Socialist Party of America was a highly factionalized coalition of local parties based in industrial cities and usually was rooted in ethnic communities, especially German and Finnish. It also had some support in old Populist rural and mining areas in the West. Prominent socialist Eugene V. Debs was nominated for president and Benjamin Hanford was nominated for vice-president.
The campaigning done by both parties was much less vigorous than it had been in 1896 and 1900. The campaign season was pervaded by good will, and it went a long way toward mending the damage done by the previous class-war elections. This was due to the fact that Parker and Roosevelt, with the exception of charisma, were so similar in political outlook.
So close were the two candidates that few differences could be detected. Both men were for the gold standard; though the Democrats were more outspokenly against imperialism, both believed in fair treatment for the Filipinos and eventual liberation; and both believed that labor unions had the same rights as individuals before the courts. The radicals in the Democratic Party denounced Parker as a conservative; the conservatives in the Republican Party denounced Theodore Roosevelt as a radical. People were heard to say that Parker should have been the Republican nominee, and Roosevelt should have been the Democratic nominee.
During the campaign, there were a couple of instances in which Roosevelt was seen as vulnerable. In the first place, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World carried a full page story about alleged corruption in the Bureau of Corporations. President Roosevelt admitted certain payments had been made, but denied any "blackmail." Secondly, in appointing George B. Cortelyou as his campaign manager, Roosevelt had purposely used his former Secretary of Commerce and Labor. This was of importance because Cortelyou, knowing the secrets of the corporations, could extract large contributions from them. The charge created quite a stir and in later years was proven to be sound. In 1907, it was disclosed that the insurance companies had contributed rather too heavily to the Roosevelt campaign. Only a week before the election, Roosevelt himself called E. H. Harriman, the railroad king, to Washington, D.C. for the purpose of raising funds to carry New York.[5] Roosevelt also begged for money from Henry Clay Frick, the steel magnate, and his friends. Years later, Frick admitted that "He got down on his knees to us. We bought the son of a bitch..."[6]
Insider money, however, was spent on both candidates. Parker received financial support from the Morgan banking interests, just as Bourbon Democrat Cleveland had before him.[7] Thomas W. Lawson, the Boston millionaire, charged that New York state Senator Patrick Henry McCarren, who brought out Judge Parker for the nomination, was on the pay roll of Standard Oil as political master mechanic at twenty thousand dollars a year. He also claimed that Parker was the chosen tool of Standard Oil. Lawson offered Senator McCarren $100,000 if he would disprove the charge.[8] According to one account, "No denial of the charge was ever made by the Senator." One paper even referred to McCarren as "the Standard Oil serpent of Brooklyn politics."[9]
Theodore Roosevelt won a landslide victory, taking every Northern and Western state. He also carried the state of Missouri, the first Republican to do so since 1868.
Roosevelt won the election by more than 2½ million popular votes. No earlier president had won by so large a margin. Roosevelt won 56.4% of the popular vote; this percentage, along with his popular vote margin of 18.8%, were the largest recorded between James Monroe's uncontested re-election in 1820 and the election of Warren G. Harding in 1920.
| Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote | Electoral vote |
Running mate | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Pct | Vice-presidential candidate | Home state | Elect. vote | ||||
| Theodore Roosevelt | Republican | New York | 7,630,457 | 56.4% | 336 | Charles W. Fairbanks | Indiana | 336 |
| Alton B. Parker | Democratic | New York | 5,083,880 | 37.6% | 140 | Henry G. Davis | West Virginia | 140 |
| Eugene V. Debs | Socialist | Indiana | 402,810 | 3.0% | 0 | Benjamin Hanford | New York | 0 |
| Silas C. Swallow | Prohibition | Pennsylvania | 259,102 | 1.9% | 0 | George W. Carroll | Texas | 0 |
| Thomas E. Watson | Populist | Georgia | 114,070 | 0.8% | 0 | Thomas Tibbles | Nebraska | 0 |
| Charles Hunter Corregan | Socialist Labor | New York | 33,454 | 0.2% | 0 | William Wesley Cox | Illinois | 0 |
| Other | 1,229 | 0.0% | — | Other | — | |||
| Total | 13,525,002 | 100% | 476 | 476 | ||||
| Needed to win | 239 | 239 | ||||||
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1904 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 28, 2005).Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).
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