Taft Declares That Denying Roosevelt the Presidency Again is Victory Enough

“Love is a growing, or full constant light,” the poet says, “And his short minute, after noon, is night.” As if John Donne telling us this isn’t enough, here we have William Howard Taft, once the darling of Theodore Roosevelt – he had said T.R. was “the most lovable personality I have ever come in contact with” – turning on his old chief who had, after all, just turned on him at the Chicago convention by trying to deny him re-nomination and grab the nod once more for himself. Thanking the loyal Mrs. E.H. Harriman for her support, Taft writes:

Whatever may hereafter result, it is a great victory to have removed forever the danger of Mr. Roosevelt's coming again to the Presidency or into control of the Republican party. The character of Mr. Roosevelt's campaign has been so unprecedented and so unfair, that it is a just judgment which he has suffered.

On Saturday, June 22nd, Taft had finally won out - and Roosevelt, furious, bolted from the party to found his own, which he would take into the 1912 election - only to come in second again, though this time, to a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

Autograph Letter Signed, as President, 2 pages, octavo, The White House, Washington, Sunday, June 23, 1912. To Mrs. Mary Williamson Averell Harriman in Arden, New York.