Taft nor Roosevelt.
In August the Progressive Party was founded at a convention held
in Chicago. Roosevelt and Johnson were the nominees for President
and Vice-President. The men gathered at this convention were out
of the Republican Party; they had not left it, but the party had
left them. Not willingly did they take this action; men whose
grandfathers voted for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860,
and again for Lincoln in 1864, when the fate of the Republic
really depended on the success of the Republican Party. The sons
of men who had fought for the Union did not lightly attack even
the name of the old party. But there was nothing left but its
name; its worst elements led it; many of the better men who stayed
in it kept silent. Probably even they realized the nauseous
hypocrisy of the situation when Mr. William Barnes of New York
came forward and implored that the country be saved, that our
liberty be saved, that the Constitution be saved!
For the destroyer, from whom the country was to be saved, was one
of the greatest and most honorable men of his time,--while it was
later established in court that it was no libel to say that Mr.
Barnes was a Boss and had used crooked methods.
The Progressives, soon called the Bull Moose Party, attracted the
usual group of reformers, and some cranks. Each new party does
this. Roosevelt had, many years before, spoken of the "lunatic
fringe" which clings to the skirts of every sincere reform.
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