ON A HOT SUMMER DAY IN EARLY AUGUST 1912, Theodore Roosevelt stood before an ecstatic crowd of 15,000 in the Chicago Coliseum to accept the new Progressive Party’s nomination for President.1 After speaking for well over an hour, Roosevelt closed by urging his followers to gird themselves for a “great new fight in the neverending warfare for the good of humankind...” Arms outstretched, Roosevelt thundered: “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.” The audience had already yelled themselves hoarse, but with these words there was pandemonium, ending with a reverential singing of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Asked shortly after how he felt, Roosevelt declared “I feel as fit as a bull moose,” instantly giving the new party its nickname, the Bull Moose Party.
Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft: Marching Toward Armageddon
Biography
William Kolasky is a Par tner, WilmerHale, Washington, DC, and an ssociate Editor of this magazine. There are a wealth of books about the Progressive Era and its larger-than-life political and business leaders.
This account is drawn largely from the following secondary sources, which contain overlapping narratives of many of the events it describes: EDMUND MORRIS, THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1979); EDMUND MORRIS, THEODORE REX (2001); EDMUND MORRIS, COLONEL ROOSEVELT (2010); LEWIS L. GOULD, THE WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT PRESIDENCY (2009); JEAN STROUSE, MORGAN: AMERICAN FINANCIER (1999); JOHN A. GARRATY, RIGHT-HAND MAN: THE LIFE OF GEORGE W. PERKINS (1957); RON CHERNOW, TITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER (1998); ABRIEL KOLKO, THE TRIUMPH OF CONSERVATISM (1963); and MARTIN J. SKLAR, THE CORPORATE RECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM, 1890–1916 (1988). I have supplemented these excellent secondary sources with a number of primary sources, which are identified in the endnotes attached to the material drawn from them.
