CHAPTER XI

THE LION HUNTER

Other important events of President Roosevelt’s administration will best be described farther on.  For their importance increased after he was out of office, and they had a great influence upon a later campaign.

Here, it should be said that in 1904, as the term for which he was acting as Mr. McKinley’s successor, drew toward an end, he was nominated by the Republican Party to succeed himself.  There was some talk of opposition within his party, especially from the friends of “big business” who thought that he was not sufficiently reverent and submissive to the moneyed interests.  This opposition took the form of a move to nominate Senator Hanna.  But the Senator died, and the talk of opposition which was mostly moonshine, faded away.

When the campaign came in the autumn of 1904, his opponent was the Democratic nominee, Judge Parker, also from New York.  Mr. Roosevelt was elected by a majority of more than two million and a half votes,—­the largest majority ever given to a President in our history, either before or since that time.

On the night of election day he issued a statement in which he said:  “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.”  Of this he writes: 

The reason for my choice of the exact phraseology used was twofold.  In the first place, many of my supporters were insisting that, as I had served only three and a half years of my first term, coming in from the Vice-Presidency when President McKinley was killed, I had really had only one elective term, so that the third term custom did not apply to me; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion.  I believed then (and I believe now) the third term custom or tradition to be wholesome, and therefore, I was determined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble over the words usually employed to express it.  On the other hand I did not wish simply and specifically to say that I would not be a candidate for the nomination in 1908, because if I had specified the year when I would not be a candidate, it would have been widely accepted as meaning that I intended to be a candidate some other year; and I had no such intention, and had no idea that I would ever be a candidate again.  Certain newspaper men did ask me if I intended to apply my prohibition to 1912, and I answered that I was not thinking of 1912, nor of 1920, nor of 1940, and that I must decline to say anything whatever except what appeared in my statement. [Footnote:  “Autobiography,” pp. 422-3.]

From March 4, 1905, until March 4, 1909, he was an elected President, not a President who had succeeded to the office through the death of another.  When the end of his term approached he threw his influence in favor of the nomination of Mr. William H. Taft, Secretary of War in his Cabinet.  He could have had the nomination himself if he had wished it; indeed he had to take precautions against being nominated.  But Mr. Taft was nominated, and in November, 1908, was elected over Mr. Bryan, who was then running for the Presidency for the third time.