After every election, the winning candidates celebrate their victories, and their defeated challengers are consoled by their supporters. Representing the Progressive Party (better known as the Bull Moose Party), former president Theodore Roosevelt mounted a third party run for the presidency in 1912 against the incumbent Republican president William H. Taft, the Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, and the Socialist Party nominee Eugene V. Debs. Although the split in the Republican Party exacerbated by Roosevelt’s candidacy helped Woodrow Wilson win the White House, Roosevelt secured the second highest number of votes, which was an impressive showing for a new political party.
But second place wasn’t a win, and Roosevelt’s ardent supporters flooded his mailbox with letters expressing their sorrow at his defeat, their hopes for a better outcome in the future, and their continued admiration for him. Included in this correspondence were letters from children who had followed the presidential election and wanted Roosevelt to succeed. Many such letters are included in the Theodore Roosevelt Papers. Like the adults who wrote sympathetic letters to Theodore Roosevelt, the children seemed motivated to write as much to console themselves as to console their candidate.
“I am very sorry to hear of your defeat,” thirteen-year-old Olive Biggs of Baltimore, Maryland, wrote to Roosevelt the day after the election. “We are all bull-mooses and expected them to sweep the country. My sister and I sat up nearly all night watching for the green light, which would indicate your success.” Biggs further lamented that the women of Maryland could not vote in the election, but hoped that women’s suffrage would be a reality by the time she was eligible to vote. Roosevelt’s “little friend” Kathryn App of Elgin, Illinois, shared with the former president that his election loss made her want to cry. “I felt so bad that I just had to write and tell you about it,” she explained.
Albert Craumer, “a lad from the Keystone State” of Pennsylvania, extended his sympathies to Roosevelt for his electoral loss, but suggested that thanks to Roosevelt, his family of “Snorting Rip Roaring Republicans” had become “Americanized Bull Moose” that spring. Eleven-year-old Ruth Hamblen of Chicago, Illinois, wrote with more defiance than sympathy, promising to wear her “bull-moose and Roosevelt and Johnson pin all the harder” because of the election’s outcome.
Some children shared the results of straw polls taken at school in which Roosevelt had triumphed, and their dismay at the outcome of the actual election. Eleven-year-old Helen M. Lovelace of Rochester, New York, who described herself as “a Progressive girl,” reported to Roosevelt that he had won the straw poll among the sixth graders in her school with eighteen votes to Taft’s seven and Wilson’s five. While crestfallen that Roosevelt had not won the real election, she and her friend Olive Knickerbocker decided that “as long as children used to write to Abraham Lincoln, we could write to you” to convey their regrets.
Given his fondness for children, Theodore Roosevelt no doubt appreciated all the correspondence he received from them during and after the 1912 election. And secretarial notations on the letters themselves suggest that the children’s letters were acknowledged in some way. But if Roosevelt himself read the letter he received from eight-year-old Athelone Anthony of Bloomfield, New Jersey, it is easy to imagine him chuckling appreciatively at her comments. Athelone began with the usual disappointment and anger that Roosevelt had not been reelected president. She then relayed that her brother had called the former university president Woodrow Wilson “a Princeton stiff.” She encouraged Roosevelt to run for the presidency another time and to “get good and stronge [sic] again as my brother says you can kill Lions.” After then asking for Roosevelt’s photograph when he had time to send one, she noted that she had seen him when he visited Bloomfield and “I liked your looks.”
The 1912 election turned out to be Theodore Roosevelt’s final presidential campaign. In 1913 he joined an expedition to explore a previously uncharted tributary of the Amazon River called the River of Doubt, an adventure he barely survived. Although energized in spirit by his loathing of President Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt’s heart was weakened by illness and the death of his son Quentin in World War I. Theodore Roosevelt died in January 1919. A decade after writing to Roosevelt in 1912, Athelone Anthony married Sidney Peters and eventually became the mother of two daughters. She remained a resident of New Jersey until her death in 1959. However, the former president and his enthusiastic elementary-school-aged fan, as well as the other children who wrote to Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, remain forever connected at that moment in time through their correspondence in the Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress.
Help us discover more letters from children to Theodore Roosevelt by becoming a By the People volunteer for the “Rough Rider to Bull Moose: Letters to Theodore Roosevelt” transcription campaign!
Do you want more stories like this? Then subscribe to Unfolding History – it’s free!
“the green light…” The New York Times used electric lamps on its New York City headquarters to signal to surrounding areas the results of the 1912 election. A green light was assigned to Theodore Roosevelt. It is not known if Olive referred to the green light of New York in her letter, or if similar colored light indicators were used in Baltimore as well. “Election Results to be Signaled from the Times Tower,” New York Times, November 4, 1912, p. 7.
“relayed that her brother…” Athelone Anthony does not specify which brother, or brothers, made the comments about Woodrow Wilson being “a Princeton stiff” and Roosevelt’s lion killing abilities. According to federal census records for 1910 and 1920, Anthony had three older brothers: Claudius, Clifford, and Wesley.
“seen him when he visited Bloomfield…” Roosevelt visited Bloomfield, New Jersey on May 23, 1912. https://www.oysterbayhistorical.org/uploads/4/9/5/1/4951065/__tr_in_12_daily_schedule_of_year_1912.pdf
“until her death in 1959…” “Peters-Anthony,” Montclair Times (Montclair, NJ), June 3, 1922; 1930 federal census, Bloomfield, Essex, New Jersey; “Mrs. Sidney Peters,” Courier-News (Bridgewater, NJ), June 25, 1959; Athelone M. Peters entry, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/169520544/athelone-m-peters