Patronage Influence in Nominating Conventions

Report Outline
Southern Delegate Controversy of 1908
Southern Delegates and the 1912 Split
Republican Organization in the Solid South
Reduction of Squthern Representation in Conventions

The defeat of President Arthur in the Republican National Convention of 1884 is the only instance since the Civil War in which a President of the United States, working to succeed himself in office, has been deprived of his party's presidential nomination. Two former Presidents Grant and Roosevelt were rejected, however, as candidates for renomination after each had served two terms and spent one term out of office.

Cleveland and Wilson, the only Democrats elected to the presidency since before the Civil War, both were renominated without opposition during their first terms in the White House. The third nomination of Cleveland in 1892, after his defeat by Harrison in 1888, is the only case in which a former President has again been chosen as his party's nominee after four years out of office. In that year President Harrison won renomination, with the support of the Southern delegations in the Republican National Convention, and was defeated in the ensuing election.

When Roosevelt, following his defeat by Taft in the 1912 convention, became the candidate of the Progressive party and the third-term issue was raised against him in the campaign he said: