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1912 Democratic National Convention

American presidential nominating convention

Field	Value
year	1912
party	Democratic
image	Woodrow Wilson-H&E (3x4 A).jpg
image2	Thomas Riley Marshall headshot (3x4 b).jpg
caption	Nominees
Wilson and Marshall
date	June 25 – July 2, 1912
venue	Fifth Regiment Armory
city	Baltimore, Maryland
presidential_nominee	Woodrow Wilson
presidential_nominee_state	New Jersey
vice_presidential_nominee	Thomas R. Marshall
vice_presidential_nominee_state	Indiana
previous_year	1908
next_year	1916

Wilson and Marshall

Delegates assembled on the convention floor

The 1912 Democratic National Convention was held at the Fifth Regiment Armory off North Howard Street in Baltimore from June 25 to July 2, 1912.

The Convention

The convention was held at the Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore from June 25 to July 2, 1912. It proved to be one of the more memorable United States presidential conventions of the 20th century.

1904 presidential nominee Judge Alton B. Parker of New York served as the Temporary chairman and Keynote Speaker while Representative Ollie M. James of Kentucky served as Permanent Convention chairman.

, this is the last major party convention to be held in Baltimore.

Presidential candidates

Image:Woodrow Wilson-H&E.jpg|Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey Image:ChampClark.png|Speaker of the House Champ Clark of Missouri Image:JudsonHarmonLOC.jpg|Governor Judson Harmon of Ohio Image:Thomas Riley Marshall headshot.jpg|Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana Image:Simeon E. Baldwin, 1910.png|Governor Simeon E. Baldwin of Connecticut

Withdrew During Balloting

Image:Oscar W. Underwood.jpg|House Majority Leader Oscar Underwood of Alabama Image:Governor Foss.png|Governor Eugene Foss of Massachusetts

Declined

Image:JohnBurke1908.png|Governor John Burke of North Dakota

The main candidates were House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri and Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. Both Clark and Wilson had won a number of primaries, and Clark entered the convention with more pledged delegates than did Wilson. However, he lacked the two-thirds vote necessary to secure the presidential nomination.

Initially, the front runner appeared to be Clark, who received 440¼ votes on the first ballot to 324 for Wilson. Governor Judson Harmon of Ohio received 148 votes while U.S. Representative Oscar W. Underwood of Alabama, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, received 117¼ with the rest of the votes scattered among the other delegates. No candidate managed to gain a majority until the ninth ballot, when the New York delegation shifted its allegiance to Clark. Due to the then-official two-thirds rule used by the Democratic Party, Clark was never able to secure the presidential nomination as he failed to get the necessary two-thirds vote for victory.

C. Vann Woodward stated that the 1912 Democratic nomination was "the first in half a century in which the South played a conspicuous and perhaps even decisive part". Earl Black and Merle Black stated that Underwood was the first southerner following the Civil War to seriously seek the Democratic nomination. Clark was able to gain a majority of the delegate vote, but lacked support in the south which prevented him from passing the two-thirds requirement.

In past conventions, once a candidate received a majority of the votes, it would start a bandwagon rolling to the nomination. Clark's chances were hurt when Tammany Hall, the powerful and corrupt Democratic political machine in New York City, threw its support behind him. This was the move that gave Clark a majority on the ninth ballot, but instead of propelling Clark's bandwagon towards victory, the endorsement led William Jennings Bryan to turn against the Speaker of the House. A three-time Democratic presidential candidate and still the leader of the party's liberals, Bryan delivered a speech denouncing Clark as the candidate of "Wall Street".

Up until the Tammany endorsement, Bryan had remained neutral, but once the corrupt machine put itself behind Clark, he threw his support to New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, who was regarded as a moderate reformer.

Additionally Illinois Democratic Boss, Roger Charles Sullivan and Indiana Democratic Boss Thomas Taggart made a deal with a member of Wilson's campaign. In exchange for having Thomas R. Marshall be Wilson's running mate, Illinois and Indiana would put their support behind Wilson.

Before these events, Wilson had consistently finished second to Clark on each ballot, Ironically, Wilson had nearly given up hope that he could be nominated, and he was on the verge of having a concession speech read for him at the convention freeing his delegates to vote for someone else. After receiving the support of Bryan, Sullivan, and Taggart, Wilson gradually gained in strength while Clark's support dwindled. Wilson received the presidential nomination on the 46th ballot.

Presidential balloting

The 46 ballots were the most cast at a convention since 1860.

(1-22)	Presidential Ballot			1st		2nd		3rd		4th		5th		6th		7th
324	339.75	345	349.5	351	354	352.5	351.5	352.5	350.5	354.5	354	356	361	362.5	362.5	362.5
440.5	446.5	441	443	443	445	449.5	448.5	452	556	554	547.5	554.5	553	552	551	545
148	141	140.5	136.5	141.5	135	129.5	130	127	31	29	29	29	29	29	29	29
117.5	111.25	114.5	112	119.5	121	123.5	123	122.5	117.5	118.5	123	115.5	111	110.5	112.5	112.5
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0
31	31	31	31	31	31	31	31	31	31	30	30	30	30	30	30	30
22	14	14	14	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1	2	1	0	0	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	2	2	1	1
0	0	1	2	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	0	2	2	2	4.5
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2		0.5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.5	0	0	0	0	3.5

(25–46)	Presidential Ballot			25th		26th		27th		28th		29th		30th		31st		32nd	33rd	34th	35th	36th	37th	38th
405	407.5	406.5	437.5	436	460	475.5	477.5	477.5	479.5	494.5	496.5	496.5	498.5	501.5	501.5	499.5
469	463.5	469	468.5	468.5	455	446.5	446.5	447.5	447.5	433.5	434.5	432.5	425	422	423	424
29	29	29	29	29	19	17	14	29	29	29	29	29	29	29	28	27
108	112.5	112	112.5	112	121.5	116.5	119.5	103.5	101.5	101.5	98.5	100.5	106	106	106	106
43	43	38	38	38	30	30	28	28	28	28	28	28	28	28	28	28
30	30	30	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
0	0	0	1	4	2	2	2	2	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
0	1.5	2.5		0.5		0.5		0.5		0.5		0.5		0.5		0.5		0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5

Presidential Balloting / 3rd Day of Convention (June 27)

File:1912_DNC_Ballot_1.svg|1st Ballot

Presidential Balloting / 4th Day of Convention (June 28)

Presidential Balloting / 5th Day of Convention (June 29)

Presidential Balloting / 6th Day of Convention (July 1)

Presidential Balloting / 7th Day of Convention (July 2)

File:1912_DNC_Ballot_43.svg|43rd Ballot File:1912_DNC_Ballot_44.svg|44th Ballot File:1912_DNC_Ballot_45.svg|45th Ballot File:1912_DNC_Ballot_46.svg|46th Ballot

Vice presidential candidates

Image:Thomas Riley Marshall headshot.jpg|Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana Image:George E Chamberlain 2.jpg|Senator George E. Chamberlain of Oregon Image:Elmore W. Hurst LC-DIG-ggbain-12725.jpg|Former State Representative Elmore W. Hurst of Illinois

Withdrew During Balloting

Image:JohnBurke1908.png|Governor John Burke of North Dakota Image:James H. Preston.jpg|Mayor James H. Preston of Maryland

Declined

Image:ChampClark.png|Speaker of the House Champ Clark of Missouri Image:Martin Wade (cropped).jpg|Former Representative Martin J. Wade of Iowa Image:William Jennings Bryan, 1860-1925.jpg|Former Representative William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska

Clark and Bryan were both proposed as vice presidential nominees, but both declined, with Clark preferring to remain as Speaker and Bryan fearful of overshadowing Wilson. Bryan instead proposed Oregon Senator George E. Chamberlain and North Dakota Governor John Burke, the latter of whom became the main progressive candidate. Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana, who had swung his state's delegate votes to Wilson in later ballots, became the major candidate of conservatives. After the second ballot, Representative William Hughes, a leading campaign manager of Wilson's, successfully proposed making the nomination of Marshall unanimous. Wilson and Marshall went on to win the 1912 presidential election against a split Republican Party.

Vice Presidential Balloting	Candidate
389	644.50	1,088
304.67	386.33
157	12.50
78	0
58	0
26	0
18	0
8	0
3	0
46.33	44.67
6	6	6

Vice Presidential Balloting / 7th Day of Convention (July 2, 1912) File:1912DemocraticVicePresidentialNomination1stBallot.png|1st Vice Presidential Ballot File:1912DemocraticVicePresidentialNomination2ndBallot.png|2nd Vice Presidential Ballot

Black delegate

John D. Harkless, commonly known as J. D. Harkless, was the first African American delegate to a Democratic National Convention. He was from Denver and an alternate delegate to the Democratic Party National Convention of 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland, that advanced Woodrow Wilson, then governor of New Jersey, to be the party's nominee. He was vice president of the National Negro Educational Congress. J. Milton Waldron and Harkless wrote The Political Situation in a Nut-shell; Some Un-colored Truths for Colored Voters published in 1912. It was anti-Republican.

Female delegate

Anna Pitzer was the only female delegate and also represented Colorado. She was the sister-in-law of Champ Clark, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives who was a candidate for the nomination.

References in popular culture

The primary battles leading up to the 1912 Democratic Convention are a pivotal event in Taylor Caldwell's 1972 novel Captains and the Kings. In the novel, the fictional Irish-Catholic Rory Daniel Armagh, a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, emerges as the front-runner for the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination after beating Woodrow Wilson in multiple primaries. (Unlike in real life, Champ Clark is not a factor in the novel.) Armagh is assassinated as part of a conspiracy of international power brokers before the convention.

Scenes of the convention are depicted in the 1944 biographical film Wilson.

References

Works cited

Bibliography

Official report of the proceedings of the Democratic national convention, held in Baltimore, Maryland, June 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and July 1 and 2, 1912
William Jennings Bryan, Virgil V. McNitt. A Tale of Two Conventions. Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1912.

References

(5 August 2020). "When Baltimore was convention central". Baltimore Sun.
Roger C. Sullivan and the Triumph of the Chicago Democratic Machine, 1908-1920 p.82-101
(July 3, 1912). "Woodrow Wilson is Nominated for President; Gov. Marshall of Indiana for Vice President". New York Times.
Luke, Bob. (January 17, 2020). "Bromo-Seltzer King: The Opulent Life of Captain Isaac "Ike" Emerson, 1859-1931". McFarland.
Gauer, Neil A.. (1982-06-27). "Ah, what a grand do was the 1912 convention". [[The Baltimore Sun]].
(1912-07-25). "Negro Alternate Never Returned From Baltimore". The Fort Collins Express and The Fort Collins Review.
(July 4, 1912). "Colored Alternate Delegate". [[The New York Age]].
(1910-12-10). "National Negro Education Congress". Franklin's Paper the Statesman.
(August 1981). "Origins of the New South, 1877–1913: A History of the South". LSU Press.
(1912). "United States Congressional Serial Set, Issue 6178". U.S. Government Printing Office.

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