Illinois

Magazine article featuring a letter from Theodore Roosevelt to John Hay recounting his trip west in 1903.

Collection

Grand Canyon National Park

Creation Date

1951-12-10

Irving H. Trowbridge offers Theodore Roosevelt his opinion on current political conditions. Despite supporting Roosevelt’s refusal to enter the race, Trowbridge is not sure Taft or La Follette will be able to win the presidency. Based on his considerable experience, Trowbridge believes only one man can lead the Republican’s to victory.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-14

Senator Robert M. La Follette will be leaving Washington soon to campaign aggressively in Ohio, William H. Taft’s home state. Public opinion has changed, indicating La Follette is not in the running for the nomination, instead Theodore Roosevelt and Taft will be the ones to fight to lead the Republican Party.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-14

President Roosevelt appreciates Representative Sherman’s letter and notes that his reports on Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois align with outside sources. Roosevelt is concerned about New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes’s chances at re-election but believes that Hughes’s speeches in the West helped. Roosevelt is pleased with Sherman’s work during the election. He encloses a letter and notes that Kerwin or Delaney should see Sherman and that Eugene V. Debs’s article on William H. Taft should be circulated as they propose.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-10-09

President Roosevelt records the facts about his influence on the nomination of William H. Taft in the Southern states, countering reports in the press. Roosevelt analyzes the breakdown of support for candidates in each area of the country, and summarizes that the Northern officials followed the trajectories in their districts, and opposition to Taft in the Southern states was largely a result of the influence of outside interests.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-10-05

President Roosevelt thanks Lawrence F. Abbott for his answer to R. T. Vann. The only way Roosevelt influenced office holders was by preventing them from nominating him for a third term. He details what candidates the office holders were mostly supporting in various states. Enclosed are two letters regarding Oklahoma Governor Charles Nathaniel Haskell, one from Mrs. Williams which Roosevelt would like to see published and one which has already been published.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-10-03

President Roosevelt thinks that if Herbert Knox Smith can find the right man through United States District Attorney Walter Edwin Sims and the president of the University of Chicago, it would be good, because Illinois has not been given many places in the administration.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-07

President Roosevelt approves of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s decision, and congratulates Edwin Walter Sims on his work as District Attorney.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-06

Victor A. McClanahan tells Theodore Roosevelt of “chautauquas,” meetings held throughout Illinois to promote honesty and temperance. They have raised enough money to bring in a “headliner” for the next assembly, and although several big names were suggested, they hope Roosevelt will speak.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-10-10

Attorney General Stead of Illinois hopes to let President Roosevelt know in the next few days about the conclusion he has reached on the Chicago and Alton Railroad matter. Stead will also provide his suggestions on the regulation of corporations by the federal government.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-03-21

Adolphus Clay Bartlett states his opinion to Paul Morton why Arizona and New Mexico should not be combined. He states that Arizona is clearly American and that New Mexico is clearly Mexican. There is only one reason they should be combined and it is merely a political excuse. Bartlett looks to Morton to use his influence to prevent this from happening.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-12-16

Uncle Sam looks up at the sky and sees several eclipses: a “partial eclipse in New York” with Charles Evans Hughes, a “partial eclipse in Penns.” with Philander C. Knox, a “partial eclipse in Wisconsin” with Robert M. La Follette, a “partial eclipse in Indiana” with Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, a “partial eclipse in Illinois” with Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, a “total eclipse in Chicago,” and a “partial eclipse in Ohio” with William H. Taft. “My world” with President Roosevelt is about to overshadow Taft.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Things were looking up in 1908. . .or at least people were looking up to the heavens. An unusually high number of solar and lunar eclipses were due that year, and the spectacular once-in-a-lifetime Halley’s Comet was due to brighten the skies in 1910. All were matters of public discussion and newspaper feature stories.

President Roosevelt holds “that big stick” as he whacks the table on the stage of the Republican National Convention. In the crowd, signs for “Ohio,” “New York,” “Pennsylvania,” “Vermont,” “Kansas,” “Indianne,” “Missuri,” and “Illinois” can be seen. Caption: The next Republican National Convention.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Albert Turner Reid’s vision of the 1908 Republican Presidential Convention was meant to suggest, as per the caption, a nightmare for Democrats — not, as the bare cartoon would suggest, a captive and frightened hall of delegates, nervous eyes and anxious expressions. In fact most Republicans clamored for Roosevelt to break his declination pledge and decide to run again.

President Roosevelt bangs the lectern as he addresses delegates that all look like himself from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and New York. A messenger dressed like Roosevelt brings him a message. On the wall is a flag that has four large “R’s” and two big sticks.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon from early in C. R. Macauley’s association with the New York World humorously asserts President Roosevelt’s utter dominance of the Republican Party. As a president he was popular with the public, and he had been a famed celebrity, but control of the party and its apparatus, as suggested by Macauley, was another matter.

William H. Taft stands with a gavel in his hand as the delegates select President Roosevelt as the nominee. In the audience are Secretary of State Elihu Root, Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw, Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, and New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes. A balloon in the top right-hand corner shows William Jennings Bryan and William Randolph Hearst holding signs that read, “Gov’t Ownership” and “Socialism” respectively as they step on Minnesota Governor John Albert Johnson.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Whether cartoonist Tyler McWhorter drew this cartoon as a prophecy or a hopeful dream, it was another cartoonist’s speculation on whether President Roosevelt would break his pledge of Election Night 1904 that he would not allow his name to be put into nomination in 1908. With its long caption, it also might have been an illustration for an article, or part of series. In any event the St. Paul Dispatch drawing was pasted in the White scrapbook, and presumably seen by the president.

Two segments of Theodore Roosevelt during a midwestern speaking tour in support of military preparedness. On September 27, 1917, Roosevelt visited the officers’ training camp at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Views of troops marching past a reviewing stand for inspection by Roosevelt and several civilian and military personnel; identified on the platform with Roosevelt are Captain Georges Etienne Bertrand (wearing beret), a visiting Frenchman who instructed the trainees in trench warfare, and Colonel James A. Ryan, commanding officer of Fort Sheridan. Roosevelt addresses the troops after the review. The second segment shows scenes from a parade staged in Roosevelt’s honor in Chicago on April 28, 1917. Views of men on horseback who appear to be mounted police, sailors, and cavalry. View of Roosevelt standing and waving his hat in an open touring car; identified in the car with Roosevelt are Arthur Meeker and Samuel Insull, Chicago businessmen who are members of the welcoming committee, and other unidentified men.

Collection

Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound

Creation Date

1917

Several newspaper articles pertaining to Republican politics in Illinois.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902

The delegates in Illinois are favorable and Albert J. Hopkins will likely be the next senator from Illinois.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-04-01

An elderly man, John R. Walsh, is being assailed from all sides by people who have been defrauded by his misappropriation of funds from their savings and investments. Caption: Cursed by those whose savings he has squandered and whose trust he has betrayed.

Comments and Context

John R. Walsh, an Irish immigrant active in Chicago, is at the center of this Carl Hassmann cartoon. Typically dramatic and apocalyptic, his portrayal such that he might be considered one of American history’s notable villains. Yet he is barely remembered, and might be categorized as an entrepreneur who continually struggled and mismanaged his multitude of dreams.

Around the time of the cartoon, three Chicago banks founded by Walsh had failed. According to Walsh and his family, the businessman covered all losses, with no detriment to depositors; Puck, and the courts, disagreed. Walsh was sentenced to a lengthy sentence in Leavenworth, chiefly for the crime of “borrowing” funds from his own banks. The 1907 financial panic ended his ability to shuffle accounts. Before that, Walsh invested in a small railroad, which also failed. He had built the line in order to make his Indiana mines profitable; they also failed. (Subsequent owners profited from their deposits of limestone.) Walsh’s initial businesses in America were the Western News chain of newsstands, which he sold at a loss to an Eastern syndicate, and the Chicago Herald newspaper, which after his management merged with the Times and William Randolph Hearst’s American.

Writing from Wilcoxes Farm, Theodore Roosevelt informs his sister Anna that he will be spending ten days at the farm before making a longer trip through Iowa and Minnesota. He tells his sister where to send his mail and that he and Elliott have been hunting. He finds the “farm people” “pretty rough.”

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1880-08-22