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1912 Presidential Campaign - Theodore Roosevelt

1912 Presidential Campaign - Theodore Roosevelt

William Howard Taft served as both president of the United States and chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Progressive Republicans openly challenged Taft in the Congressional elections of 1910 and in the Republican presidential primaries of 1912. When Taft won the Republican nomination from a party in disarray, the Progressives organized a rival party and selected Theodore Roosevelt to run against Taft in the general election. Roosevelt's Bull Moose candidacy split the Republican vote and helped to elect Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

On June 9, 1902, Woodrow Wilson was unanimously elected president of Princeton University, a position he held until he resigned in 1910 to run for governor of New Jersey. In 1910, he received an unsolicited nomination for the governorship of New Jersey, which he eagerly accepted. As governor, he developed a platform of progressive liberalism in matters of domestic political economy. In 1912, the Democratic Party nominated him as their presidential candidate.

On the evening of June 22, 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt asked his supporters to leave the floor of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Republican progressives reconvened in Chicago's Orchestra Hall and endorsed the formation of a national progressive party. When formally launched later that summer, the new Progressive Party chose Roosevelt as its presidential nominee.

Campaign address on the day of the New Jersey primary.