Hello and welcome back to another edition of Lace ‘Em Up’s Presidential Election series for today we will be going over the Election of 1916. It’s the first major election since 1864 in which the incumbent president is seeking re-election during wartime and his gonna need to pull out all the stops to win what becomes the closest presidential election in the early 20th century.

The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson

Upon winning the election of 1912 in a chaotic four way race, Woodrow Wilson went on to make a swiping amount progressive changes during his time in office such as supporting child labor laws, the creation of Federal Trade Commission and signing into the law the Revenue Act and Federal Reserve Act of 1913 with these acts seeing the beginning of the federal income tax which affected three percent of the country’s wealthy class as well as paving the way for a centralized banking system in the United States.

Despite these major reforms, Wilson’s presidency also saw the former New Jeresy Governor do things that were anything but progressive with his handling of race relations in the U.S. specifically towards African Americans being the more abhorrent.

Wilson would bring institutionalized racism back into the federal government with many African Americans losing their jobs and allowing many branches of government to segregate against blacks. In fact, the president would further spread the ideas of Jim Crow laws outside of the South by allowing places to discriminate against African Americans most infamously with signs that says: ‘Blacks Only’ when it came to places that were usually in poor conditions.

This resulted in a number of  black activists attempting to confront the president about his actions which led to Wilson basically saying “Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be regarded as such by you gentleman.” But it wasn’t just African Americans Wilson didn’t care for, he also ignored the idea of women being given the right to vote in the early stages of his presidency and allowed numerous interventions in Latin America while also sending troops to Mexico to hunt for Pancho Villa all of which led to growing tensions during the Mexican Revolution.

The Great War Rages

As Wilson attempts to advance while also regress much of the U.S. with his policies, the rest of the world was getting involved in a “The Great War” or as we know it today as World War One in which the Allied Powers (British, France, Italy, Russia etc.) went up against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire etc.)

By 1914, the war officially began with countries quickly getting drawn into the conflict as numerous battles saw the implementation of new technologies like flamethrowers, tanks and machine guns and the usage of chlorin/mustard gas while air and overseas battles saw the usage of submarines and airplanes to conduct warfare and espionage.

As 1916 rolled around, many lives were lost on both sides with the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Verdun being prime examples of that as these battles saw the deaths of over a million soldiers and many more causalities with them being the most costliest and deadliest fights in the entirety of the first world war.

The United States meanwhile, tried its best to stay neutral when it came to war, but a number of events occurred along the way that attempted to push the U.S. into the conflict.

The most notably would have to be the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, where a German submarine shot torpedoes at a British ocean liner following Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare against the United Kingdom and this event saw close to 1,200 passengers dying with some of them being American citizens and it led to public opinion turning on Germany.

Even still, many Americans were against entering the war and some people like famous industrialist Henry Ford took it upon themselves to travel to Europe as a way to end the conflict through diplomacy rather than violence.

It’s this conflict that become the major issue for the upcoming 1916 presidential election as Woodrow Wilson and his Vice President, Thomas Marshall get unanimously re-nominated by the Democrats.

Charles Evans Hughes: The Judge Turn Presidential Candidate

After their embarrassing defeat in 1912, the Republicans were looking to get the progressives back into the party in order to make Woodrow Wilson a one term president; To do that, the GOP attempted to find a candidate that was appealing to both sides of the Republican Party.

While some names actively pursued the nomination, the party bosses looked at one person as a potential candidate and that was Charles Evans Hughes, the former Governor of New York who actually ran for his party’s nomination back in 1908, but lost.

Hughes by this point became a Supreme Court Justice after being appointed to that position by President Taft in 1910 and although Hughes showed little interest in becoming the nominee at first, he had the advantage over the other candidates as he was on the Supreme Court for six years and therefore his views on many issues were unknown to many especially when it came to the great war.

Many high profiled names withdrawed by the time of the Republican National Convention and by the third ballot, Hughes won the nomination thus making Charles Evans Hughes the only Supreme Court Justice to ever be nominated by a major political party for president.

Hughes’ running mate was Charles Fairbanks, the former Senator from Indiana who served as Theodore Roosevelt’s Vice President from 1905-1909; While Fairbanks didn’t have much interest in becoming the VP once again, he ultimately accepted after beating former Nebraska Senator, Elmer Burkett for the nomination.

The Republicans are looking to play it safe this time around as their hoping the team of Hughes and Fairbanks will be popular enough to not only get progressive voters back to the party but to defeat President Wilson.

The Progressive Party Crumbles

Following his performance as a third party candidate in 1912, many within the Progressive Party expected Theodore Roosevelt to run again especially as the U.S. was facing the down the prospect of getting involved in the Great War. However much to shock of many progressives in the party, Roosevelt refused to run mostly because the former president didn’t want the election to be thrown into Wilson’s favor like how it was in 1912 and he wasn’t a big fan of the incumbent president following many disarrangements both men had in the lead up to 1916. 

Roosevelt would further shock the Progressives when he attempted to run for the Republican Party’s nomination in 1916 only to withdrawn by the third ballot, leading to him endorsing Hughes in hopes that this would lead to many of his followers supporting Hughes, but some within the Progressive Party refused to so.

This led to the Progressives looking for someone else to run but after a bunch of names refused the nomination, John Milliken Parker (who was a progressive) informed everyone that he would be on the party’s presidential ticket in 1916 but only…as the running mate?

This confused many and led to some progressives endorsing either Hughes or Wilson thus putting an end to the party’s existence.

The Socialist Party

Following their success with the popular vote in the previous election, you’d think the Socialist would run Eugene Debs for president a fifth time, but instead the former union leader decided to run for Congress in this election leaving the presidential ticket wide open for Socialist Party.

Unlike the Progressive Party, the Socialists were able to nominate a candidate for president when they chose Michigan newspaper publisher, Allen Benson as their nominee with George Ross Kirkpatrick, a writer and lecturer from New Jersey as his running mate.

Like many within the Socialist Party, both Benson and Kirkpatrick were staunchly against the United States entering the war and made that part of their platform going into this election with the Socialists proposing the idea of a national referendum to decide on whether or not the U.S. should get involved in the conflict.

Political Campaigns & Views on the War

The issue of foreign policy as you can imagine dominated the two major parties with both sides running on two different platforms that are making equally strong cases to the American people regarding World War One.

The Republicans and Theodore Roosevelt are out making speeches in support of Hughes who is running on the idea of military preparedness which calls for the country to be ready for war as it’s becoming more and more likely that the U.S. is going to get involved.

Since Hughes was a moderate on many poltical issues he appeared at first like someone who could bridge the gap between Conservatives and Progressives, however his refusal in supporting an 8-hour workday and supporting many pro-business ideas are going to turn away some voters especially factor workers in the Midwest.

Wilson meanwhile, is running on the successful aspects of his domestic policies while also portraying the Republicans as the party more in line with getting American involved in the war. The Democrats are also promoting Wilson’s isolationist policies with the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War!” this is despite the fact that Wilson’s administration sent troops to Mexico and other Latin American conflicts.

Despite Wilson’s best efforts, some outlets believed that Hughes would decisively win the presidency come election day; In fact some newspapers like The Portland Daily Press printed out papers with the title “Hughes Elected President” on the front page before the election was over.

Hughes himself was so confident in victory that he went to bed the night before the election believing he would wake up the next day as the new president while Wilson devised a plan in case he lost in 1916 that would see Hughes become the New Secretary of State followed by Wilson and his VP resigning for their positions, making Hughes and Fairbanks the next ones in charge before inauguration.

Much like Hughes, Wilson secretly believed the U.S. was going to get drawn into the war, so in order to prevent the country from having a lame duck president at a time of war he decided to concoct this scheme as the line for presidential succession allowed the Secretary of State to become president upon the resignation or death of the previous president and vice president…Will Hughes emerge the winner thus leading to Wilson’s plan being put into affect or while the president escape with the victory?

Election of 1916: The Results

While the electoral map at first glance looks like a blowout victory for the president, it’s actually the closest presidential election since 1876 as Woodrow Wilson narrowly wins re-election with 277 electoral votes and 49.2% of the popular vote. 

Charles Evan Hughes received 254 electoral votes and 46.1% of the popular vote; Wilson won 30 states to Hughes 18, but the election was very close in places like California with Wilson winning the state with just 3,800 votes out of one million votes.

In fact, the biggest factor that many see as to why Hughes didn’t win was his snubbing of then California Governor and progressive, Hiram Johnson during a meeting; Had Hughes won all of the 13 electoral votes California had at the time, he would have received 267 votes to Wilson’s 264 votes making Hughes the new president…that’s how close this race was.

The Socialist Party came in third place with 3.2% of the popular vote and the Progressive Party received less than 1% of the popular vote.

With this victory, Woodrow Wilson became the first Democratic president to win two consecutive terms in office since Andrew Jackson, and it also made Wilson and Marshall the first presidential party ticket to win re-election since James Monroe and Daniels D. Tompkins in the Election of 1820.

On top of that, Wilson also became the second of three Democrats to win an election and re-election despite getting less than 50% of the popular vote since Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892.

If you like this kind of content, be sure to leave your thoughts down below in the comment section and be sure to follow Lace ‘Em Up on X @laceemupoffice you can follow me also on X @hakeemfullerton and I’ll see you in the next article.