The American Presidential Election of 1916

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The 33rd episode in a very long series about the American presidential elections from 1788 to the present. In 1916, World War One rages on in Europe and things are crazy in Mexico, so foreign policy dominates each campaign.

The 33rd Presidential election in American history took place on November 7, 1916. Over in Europe, it pretty much seemed like the end of the world. Quite literally. The entire continent was destroying itself. Millions were mobilized and millions were dying in what later became known as World War One. I have song about World War One, of course.
How horrifying was World War One? Well I strongly recommend the Great War YouTube channel to get the specific details, but to give you a sample...The Battle of Verdun, which was still going on by election day, had been going on since February, with no end in sight. Just in this one battle- hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died. This was a new kind of war. One with industrialized weapons that could cause massive destruction, and one that simply the majority of Americans didn’t want anything to do with.

Still, Americans had good reasons for not being too happy with the Germans. After a British ocean liner carrying Americans called the Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine the previous year, many had called for some kind of action against the Germans.

At the same time, the Mexican Revolution was happening to the south, and people didn’t know what was going to happen with their government there. It was a truly scary time, but most Americans felt the United States should just stay neutral with foreign affairs. Let’s just mind our own business, alright?

President Woodrow Wilson had kept the country neutral, and ran for re-election with the overwhelming support of the Democratic Party. Wilson and Vice President Thomas Marshall were easily renominated. The Democrats built their entire campaign around the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” scaring people into thinking that the Republicans would get the country in a war with both Germany and Mexico.

After suffering their worst Presidential defeat in history in 1912, the Republicans tried to rebound and heal the division that had caused the Progressives to leave. They went with the moderate and uncontroversial Charles Evans Hughes, who hadn’t spoken publicly about political issues in six years because he was a Supreme Court Justice. Hughes was the only Supreme Court Justice to ever be nominated for President by a major political party. The Republicans nominated former Vice President Charles Fairbanks as his running mate, another safe choice.

The Progressive Party tried to renominate Theodore Roosevelt, but he turned it down, saying it didn’t want to throw the election again to the Democrats. Because Roosevelt now just really wanted to see Wilson out of there, he endorsed Hughes, and many Progressives followed his lead. This left the Progressive Party in a mess, and they simply did not recover from this.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Party had to find someone else to run this time, as Eugene Debs was running for Congress instead this election. They nominated Allan Benson, a newspaper editor from Michigan, with George Ross Kirkpatrick, a political activist and writer from New Jersey, as his running mate. Both Benson and Kirkpatrick were very outspoken about getting involved with the war. In fact, they argued that all citizens should be able to vote by referendum whether to go to war or not.

The Prohibition Party nominated Frank Hanly, the former of Governor of Indiana, with Ira Landrith, a minister and activist from Tennessee, as his running mate.

Foreign policy dominated all of the campaigns. Wilson’s people tried to promote the idea that he was the “peace candidate,” despite the fact that Wilson had sent troops to intervene in the Mexican Civil War. Hughes just wanted the United States to be more ready to fight in case they had to.