Vice-Presidents

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1915-08-07

Vice President Roosevelt would like to assist his comrade, but both law and custom prevent him from intervening in the matter.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1901-07-02

Senator Lodge encourages President Roosevelt to release Fairbanks’s report, letters, and a statement concerning his intentions in order to prove that all have been acting in “the utmost good faith.” Lodge believes that the documents will put an end to one part of the “agitation.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-01-06

Senator Fairbanks’s capabilities and the importance of the office of the vice-president are discussed in these extracts of speeches by Elihu Root, Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna, and Secretary of State John Hay.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904

Two articles in The Minneapolis Journal discuss the nomination of President Roosevelt and Senator Charles W. Fairbanks as the Republican candidates for president and vice-president. Given Roosevelt’s “accidental” rise to the presidency following the assassination of William McKinley and his subsequent nomination as presidential candidate in his own right, the vice presidency now has more importance than it has at any point since Martin Van Buren held that office. A third article discusses the addition Senator Knute Nelson’s amendment regarding the Dingley tariff to the Republican party platform.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-06-24

Charles W. Fairbanks, as Robinson Crusoe, sits on a rock labeled “Vice-Presidency” on the shore of a vast sea.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The first cover of the first issue of 1906 had cartoonist Udo J. Keppler engaging in what must have been one of his favorite sports — ridiculing Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks for daring to have presidential ambitions. Looking ahead to 1908, he had sparse support among Republican faithful, and was absolutely shunned by President Roosevelt. The nominating convention, not the presidential candidate, had chosen the famously icy senator.

Charles W. Fairbanks, dressed as a Rough Rider, stands in front of a mirror and sees himself as Theodore Roosevelt. Caption: Fairbanks — De-light-ed!

comments and context

Comments and Context

The context of Keppler’s cover cartoon in Puck is that Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana had just been nominated for Vice President, as President Roosevelt’s running mate. The famously taciturn and colorless Fairbanks had a personality that in no way mirrored that of the ebullient Roosevelt, except in a cartoon’s mirror (note the reflection of the real Roosevelt, complementing the props and notes associated with him).

Several vignettes illustrate the difficulty of catching a vice presidential candidate, including offering some “Possible Premiums,” such as a “Cabinet Portfolio,” a “Carnegie Hero Pension,” use of the “Vice Pres’ yacht Tailenda,” and a “10 years lease for pedestal in the Hall of Fame.” Caption: What’s the matter with the Vice-Presidential Chair?

comments and context

Comments and Context

As the presidential nominating conventions of the political parties approached in 1904, Puck asked a question regarding the vice presidency that was not only humorous but legitimate. The country had been without a vice president since Theodore Roosevelt succeeded the assassinated William McKinley in September of 1901.

Illustration showing “Teddy” Roosevelt in his Rough Rider uniform, being drawn to “Vice Presidential Waters” by four women labeled “North,” “East,” “South,” and “West.” The women represent Sirens of Greek mythology — beautiful creatures who lured men to their doom.

comments and context

Comments and Context

In the months prior to the 1900 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, there was great public speculation about who would be President William McKinley’s running mate because Vice President Garret A. Hobart had died in office the year before. Theodore Roosevelt was both a recent war hero and a popular, successful governor of New York. The major drama at the convention was not the renomination of the popular McKinley. It was not even who was the main choice for Vice President, but whether Roosevelt would accept the nomination. He disdained the largely irrelevant office of Vice President and declared that he relished the challenges of work as Governor. He became a pawn of Republican bosses who either wanted him “on the shelf” and out of New York, or who were irritants to McKinley and political kingmaker Mark Hanna of Ohio. Legend largely holds that Roosevelt accepted the nomination wholly in helpless protest, but he was clear to friends and associates that, while preferring to remain as Governor, he would see the Vice Presidency as a duty he could not shirk. Of course, half a year after Inauguration Day, fate and an assassin propelled him to the Presidency.

Special Easter edition centerfold shows President William McKinley as a rooster standing next to a broken egg labeled “Vice-Presidential Aspirations” from which several chicks have emerged, identified as: Lodge, Black, Bliss, Teddy, Root, Beveridge, and Timmy Woodruff.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Less than five months before this cartoon was published, Vice President Garret A. Hobart died in office. Especially given President McKinley’s popularity, the speculation about his running mate, later that year, was rife. Of the “chicks” depicted by cartoonist Louis Dalrymple and viewed approvingly by McKinley is, most prominently, Theodore Roosevelt.  He was then Governor of New York and a popular war hero and famed as a cowboy, drawn with a Western hat. Interestingly, other Vice Presidential possibilities seen here were also New Yorkers: former Governor Frank S. Black, Secretary of War Elihu Root, Lieutenant Governor Timothy L. Woodruff; and former Secretary of Interior Cornelius N. Bliss. Roosevelt’s friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge is pictured, as is Indiana Senator Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, later a strong ally of Roosevelt in the Progressive party campaign.

Senator Hanna walks away from a beckoning chair labeled the vice-presidency as President Roosevelt and a teddy bear look on. Caption: Hanna for Vice-President?

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-03-10

On behalf of Theodore Roosevelt, Frank Harper gives Daniel LeRoy Dresser permission to make a statement at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois, regarding Roosevelt’s acceptance of the vice-presidency under President McKinley.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-10-08

Theodore Roosevelt is pleased by Albert Shaw’s writing in the Review of Reviews. Roosevelt discusses his views of the Progressive Party as a new party comparable to the Republican Party after it broke away from the Whig Party. Roosevelt discusses the Progressive Party running as a third party and also agrees with Shaw about the Vice-Presidency.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-08-03

Theodore Roosevelt believes that the baby’s name fixes candidates for president and vice-president to be nominated by the People’s Party. Regarding the “ark business,” he feels sympathy for Noah’s friends that expected a light shower.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-19

Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary explains to Walter A. Miller that once Roosevelt became president after President William McKinley’s assassination that Senator William Pierce Frye was temporarily elected Senate president until Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks was elected.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-01-26

President Roosevelt asks Senator Lodge about rumors that he has heard concerning several planks in the Republican Party’s platform. Roosevelt thinks that omitting references to postal savings banks and injunctions would not be favorable. He also informs Lodge that he has heard protests against J. S. Sherman being nominated as the Vice Presidential candidate. William H. Taft thinks that discussion of the candidate for Vice President can be postponed until after the platform is adopted and the Presidential nominee selected.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-06-15

President Roosevelt is not interfering in the Vice Presidential matter, and believes that the information Herman Henry Kohlsaat writes about should be told to Secretary of War William H. Taft in confidence.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-06-03

President Roosevelt is not taking any part in the nomination for Vice President, and has not expressed any opinion on the subject.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-05-30

President Roosevelt thanks Major Bridgman and Squadron A of the New York National Guard, and has made the request for them to be his personal escort. Roosevelt may also have members of the Rough Rider Regiment as part of the escort but says he will work out details later. Because Squadron A was his escort when he was made Governor of New York and Vice President, he would like them to be in the same position now.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-10

Vice President Roosevelt’s secretary informs Reverend Bittner that Roosevelt must decline his request for financial assistance for his church.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1901-09-07