Tweets. A. M. Easternt 8 00 on washington journal and American History tv on cspan3. Hughes is what we claim we want in a president ial candidate and president. The man who did get it a man , named Charles Evans hughes. He had been governor of new york and a Supreme Court justice. He had all but won the election. When Woodrow Wilson went to bed that Election Night, he thought he was beaten. If he had been elected, how American History goes on in several Different Directions on suffrage for women, civil rights, what you do in Foreign Policy. He is the one you could write novels about. You had Charles Evans hughes, who was on the Supreme Court. He left the Supreme Court. He ran for president. Then he went back to the Supreme Court. One of the finest minds on the court. A fellow justice called hughes the greatest in a great line of Supreme Court justices. Why hughes . Jackson said that hughes looks like god and talks like god. [laughter] Charles Evans hughes the republican president ial nominee soon after the national convention. Tonight, the contenders look at the life and legacy of Charles Evans hughes who was a twoterm governor, secretary of state, and twice a Supreme Court justice. Of all of this he was perhaps , best known as the chief justice during the new deal. The contenders is live this evening just across from the capitol. He inaugurated this building when it first opened in 1935. Let me introduce you to our two guests this evening who are joining us to talk about the life and legacy of Charles Evans hughes. My first guest is an historian, david pietrusza, and Bernadette Meyler is a professor at Cornell Law School. That is his alma mater. Lets just jump into the election. I want you to set the stage for us. 1916, Woodrow Wilson wants to be reelected. Europe is at war. Frame what was going on in the country and the president ial campaign. President wilson said it would be a tragedy if his administration was framed by poor by Foreign Policy or was defined by foriegn policy. It turned out to be just that. America starts his term focusing on the progressive era, the income tax, lowering the tariffs, the Federal Reserve system. Changes after 1914. We have the war in europe. America is fighting to stay out. But there is a question of preparedness for the war. Are we prepared if anything happens . Are we being tough . Are we weak . The secretary of state resigns from wilsons cabinet because he thinks were being too tough. It is really a question of war and peace in europe, war and peace in mexico. Aside from all the domestic issues. War overshadows everything. Charles evans hughes was on the Supreme Court. How does he get from the Supreme Court to the nominating process . He gets there somewhat reluctantly because he enjoyed his position as associate justice on the court, and he was quite satisfied with his role there. But then he felt called by duty after several candidates did not pan out for the republicans. He felt called to accept the nomination for president. In a sense, he was not a particularly gungho candidate. What was the Republican Party like . It fractured in 1912. There was the great Teddy RooseveltWilliam Howard taft split. Teddy ran as the Bull Moose Party candidate. There is a real question. Are they going to be able to put the Republican Party back together again . Do you take roosevelt . Roosevelt is still radioactive with the old guard. If you take someone too conservative, then the progressives will not come back. Even though there party has been dying on the vine. You have got to pick someone who is respected by both sides. Someone who is not some wild man from the prairies or from the west like johnson, someone who was not a conservative like root, and the man to do it, also the man who has been out of politics since 1910, he was on the Supreme Court. He was not part of the 1912 battle. That is mr. Hughes. And he is respected by just about everyone in the party. What were his politics at the time . His politics were mildly progressive. He is not a wild man from the west like norris. But what he is, he had moved from the practice of law. He was never interested really in being part of politics. When he first comes to new york and establishes his law practice, they ask, would you like to run for judge . No. Would you like a judicial appointment . No. But he is asked to investigate the gas monopoly in new york city. It is really gouging the customers. It is six companies. It has been going on since 1880. They come to him and they say, do you want to take over this investigation . No, i really do not. But he does. He asks how much time he has to prepare testimony for the hearings. They say a week. And with the great brilliance this man had, he was able to pull it all together, not do it in a bombastic way go through , all the papers, grill the executives on the stand, bring the whole thing down. Ultimately what this leads to is a Public Service commission in new york state, and to have the gas rates and electricity rates cut by a third, and then he moves on to fixing the insurance agencies in new york state and he really becomes a national figure. This is 1906 until just before 1906. He is a progressivetype candidate who is opposed to the machine of the democrats in tammany, because they are protecting these monopolies, but also the massive new york state political machine. Boss plat, and and Teddy Roosevelt would defer to the bosses to some extent. Hughes wins the governorship and puts forward a whole bunch of reforms. Then he moves on to the court for the first time. Today it would be unimaginable for someone to resign from this position and run for a National Elected office. What was the reaction of the time . Was it a surprise . How was it viewed . I think some were surprised, but i think the office of the Supreme Court justice was not quite what it has become now. I think part of the reason people would be shocked if a justice resigned today is that the appointment process is so much more difficult to get through and so much more difficult to confirm any justice. Justices are appointed young and expected to stay for the rest of their working career. His first appointment as justice was actually quite uncontentious. His second one was almost the beginning of the contentiousness within the appointment process. It occurred fairly soon after there were new rules on the Senate Debate for nominees and garnered a lot of criticism from progressives, actually. We are on the plaza of the Supreme Court. Beautiful early october night here. We will be here for two hours tonight for our series, the contenders, 14 men who ran for the presidency and lost but changed political history. Charles evans hughes made his mark through many positions, but particularly in his role as chief justice. In the second half of our program, we will focus on that whole contentious era with the Court Packing and the new deal. He was at the helm during that. Lots of interesting things to talk about. We will open up our phone lines for each of these programs and allow you to offer your questions and observations as part of our discussion. Where was the Republican Convention that year . I think it was in chicago, maybe philadelphia, i am not sure there were two conventions. There were two conventions going on within a block of each other. That is the real interest in geography that year. The republicans are through a series of ballots. I think hughess third on the first ballot. He moved up until he is nominated on the third ballot. Meanwhile, the progressives are meeting just a short ways away, and what they are doing is debating who they can accept. T. R. Is basically saying i am not going to do it. He throws out a couple of names. Leonard wood, a big army general, an advocate of preparedness. He has gotten in trouble with the Wilson Administration. Or henry cabot lodge. Neither one is acceptable to the progressives. He is throwing out that poison pill. At the end, the only one they can agree on, a progressive, to any extent, is hughes. But they still are in a great tiff, and they kind of dissolve the party. The party just evaporates. They go away. They do not run a third party. This is one of the great things of the legacy of hughes race. We take the Republican Party for granted as a continuing thing since 1916, since lincoln. It did not have to be in 1916. If he is not a guy willing to put it back together, maybe the progressives go back in again and we do not know what happened. Maybe the republicans go the way of the whigs. Maybe the progressives replace it. Who can say . The thing is, hughes takes the position. He did not want to do it. He is uncertain what to do. He walks away from the Supreme Court judge ship. What he had said when he had taken it and they were talking in 1912, he would be the compromise candidate to avoid the Taft Roosevelt split. He said no, no, no, i will not do it. The democrats cannot fully criticize nominating a judge for the presidency. And there is a reason for that. In 1904, they take alton b. Parker off the Supreme Court of the state of new york and run him for the presidency. Does he get the nomination on the first ballot . Parker . No, hughes. No, he gets it on the third ballot. How difficult was it . Do they come to the court and sit down with him and say here is our offer . Even not reluctant candidates would not go to the convention. There was a nominating process. A week later, they have a speech and, surprise, you are our nominee. The fellow doing it that year was warren harding. The chair of the convention. He was really undecided. His family members, his closest associates are not sure what he is going to do. There had been people in the early days of the republic who resigned from the court to take a position. There was a david davis bid to a judicial Senate Nomination back in illinois. But not since then, and not since hughes. Can you tell us how was he as a National Campaigner . That campaign is probably the worst thing he ever does. In his life really. Not just his public career. He excels at everything. That campaign, he is getting off the mark slowly. He is doing a dance. It is the dance that jack kennedy and Richard Nixon do in 1960. We have the black vote in the north, the southern white vote. What do we do . Kennedy carries both. The same thing occurs with the peace votes and the prowar people in 1916. Wilson runs a campaign he kept us out of war. And its hughes doing this dance. And he ends up losing both sides really. He ends up losing the prowar people and the people who want to stay neutral. He is branded as being progerman. You see these editorial cartoons from William Randolph hearst, with the irish nationalists and all of this. And at the end of the day, the germanamericans vote goes to wilson. He does not elucidate the Campaign Themes well. She is fighting things like the tariff he is fighting things like the tariff. It is not a popular position for the republicans that year. There are labor issues. There are labor issues that are very important. There are two things that cross him up. Even though as governor of new york, he has an admirable record. He establishes cases, that entire system, the first in the country. Theres also labor regulations put in place for the first time. He is really a champion of labor. But there there are two things that happened. On the infamous california trip, which we will get into later, there are two things that happen. The one thing that is never talked about, he blunders into san francisco, and the chamber of commerce was trying to break the unions, particularly in the restaurants, wanted them to be open shop. In other words, you do not have to join the union to work there. They wanted the restaurants to offer up open shop signs. Where did they schedule in his appearance . In a restaurant, an open shop sign right on the door. This is a problem not only in california, but around the country. Union Members Around the country. Also, in september, there is a National Rail strike threatened. The administration and Congress Passes the adamson act, which establishes the eighthour day, first time nationwide. The constitutionality is threatened later. Hughes opposes it. Again, this cuts into his labor vote. So he has got problems and he really does not he is not able to come out and say what he would do better than wilson. Here are the phone numbers. We will get to calls in about six, seven minutes. In addition to labor issues, there were also womens suffrage issues. Women did not have the right to vote at the national level. Can you tell us about that aspect of the campaign . Wilson had already changed his position to some extent on womens suffrage. Initially he was opposed to the , notion women would have the vote. Both of his wives were actually of this view. One of his daughters though became quite active in the suffrage movements, and his views were gradually shifting. At the time of the Election Campaign in 1916 he still believe womens suffrage should be decided on a statebystate level. Rather than by a national amendment. Hughes went far beyond that. And far beyond all the republicans. He claimed that there should be a womens suffrage amendment. And this is puzzling because the states in which women could vote actually went for wilson rather then hughes, which is somewhat paradoxical given his support. There could be many reasons for that, one of them being this issue of the war and the womens peace movement. 12 states have given women the right to vote at that time. For his support of womens suffrage, a group of supporters of Charles Evans hughes formed a fan club, campaigned for him, and they went by the hughesettes. Kind of modern if you think about it. We have some interesting things to show you. One of the nieces of the hughesettes has put together a hughesettes website. Alisha freeman we are showing. Org. You some history of her aunt in the 1916 election. Just to also further explain your position, his law firm where he practiced in private practice does exist today. We went there and spoke to one of the Senior Partners to talk a little bit about Charles Evans hughes and his support for women voting. Also very proud of the original edition of the independent weekly magazine, which came out the week after Justice Hughes got the republican nomination for the presidency. That is miss issues mrs. Hughes, she is on here in support of womens suffrage, which she supported as well. Something in the magazine one of , and the things we were not aware of the Republican Party platform in 1916 was that each state would have the right to determine whether or not women would have the right to vote. Justice hughes gave a speech in which he said he would go beyond the Republican Party platform and support the susan b. Anthony amendment to the constitution that would give women the right to vote throughout the United States and would not give each state the right to determine whether each woman could vote. And from that we will move to the election. I know that some of you will have questions about the outcome. I read that Woodrow Wilson went to bed on Election Night thinking he had lost. I would not say he was resigned to it. He was about ready to either give up the presidency nobly or in a huff. It is your call. He has a plan where it is like, ok, i have lost. I am getting out. Back then, president s did not take office in january. You had a big interregnum. You had a situation where the country was moving towards war. What do you do . His plan was he would appoint hughes as secretary of state, getting the jump on warren harding, because secretary of state was second in line to the presidency. Once hughes or secretary of state lansing was shuffled aside for hughes, then thomas markle, then the Vice President would resign and then wilson it was sort of a threepoint plan then hughes would become president until he formally took his term. What happened was it was an incredibly close election. Oh, yes. Incredibly. Tell us about the electoral vote. It was about a quarter of a million popular vote. Not that close in the popular total. What it is, it is so close in california. That is the key. It is divided by 13 electoral votes, and that is what the situation was in california. On the second incident that occurs in california, and really the particular nature of the incident is overplayed, because again, bac