pected to give to the parties who nominate them; that the Republican indorsement of an independent candidate for Governor would leave the rest of the Republican ticket with no support except the strict party vote; that, under these conditions, some or all of the machine nominees would be defeated by the Democrats, to the further demoralization of the machine; and that as Governor Mr. Roosevelt would have an unhampered initiative and a fine opportunity to break up certain abuses immemorially entrenched in the State government at Albany.

Accounts differ as to what took place at the secret negotiations that followed. The independent leaders asserted, in an address made public on September 25, 1898, that Roosevelt gave his approval to their plan, with the one stipulation that if it "should so far fail that he should not receive the Republican nomination, he must then be free to accept or decline the independent nomination"; that later he conferred with them about the technical preliminaries to launching their ticket; but that on September 20 they received word from him that he found himself in an "impossible position" with respect to their nomination and this

BREAK WITH INDEPENDENTS

was followed by a letter under date of September 22 cutting off further relations with their project.

Mr. Roosevelt's version of the chain of conditions leading up to this end was never given, I believe, in any newspaper interview or other authorized statement, but was freely quoted among his friends at the time. It was to the general effect that, although he had consented under certain contingencies to their use of his name, the independents themselves had insisted that he was not to give, and could not give, his acceptance of their nomination till it should be formally offered to him; that he did not understand, when the subject was first broached to him, that such consent would involve his desertion of the fortunes of any candidates who might be associated with him on the Republican State ticket; that a controversy having arisen as to something which the independent platform should contain, the independent managers sent him a written version of their original interview with him, marking in the margin a single passage that covered the point at issue; that in his acknowledgment of receipt he indorsed this marked passage as containing a correct statement of the facts, but that his indorsement was

construed by his correspondents as extending to everything in the enclosure; and that when, in the light of later utterances by the independents, he grasped their plan in all its bearings, he did not feel that he could afford to be placed in a false position before his party and the voters of the State, and made haste to notify the managers accordingly. His letter of September 22, already mentioned, put the gist of the matter thus:

"The independent nomination has not been formally offered me, but I am now receiving so many questions as to my intentions in the matter that I am not willing to wait longer.

"My name will probably be presented to the Republican State Convention at Saratoga on the 27th. If I am nominated, then it will be on the same ticket with those who are named for the other State offices. The Republican party will also have congressional and legislative tickets in the field. National issues are paramount this year; very few municipal officers are to be elected. The candidates will be my associates in the general effort to elect a Republican Governor, Republican Congressmen to support President McKinley and the cause of sound money, and a Legislature which

CHANGING CANDIDATES

will send to the Senate a Republican United States Senator.

"It seems to me that I would not be acting in good faith toward my fellow candidates if I permitted my name to head a ticket designed for their overthrow; a ticket, moreover, which can not be put up because of objections to the character or fitness of any candidates, inasmuch as no candidates have yet been nominated.

"I write this with great reluctance, for I wish the support of every independent. If elected Governor, I would strive to serve the State as a whole, and to serve my party by helping to serve the State. I should greatly like the aid of the independents, and I appreciate the importance of the independent vote, but I can not accept a nomination on terms that would make me feel disloyal to the principles for which I stand, or at the cost of acting with what seems to me bad faith toward my associates."

Although two or three conferences with the leaders of the independent movement had preceded the delivery of this letter, they had failed of any results in the direction of conciliation, and the independents went on and put a separate ticket in the field containing the name of Theodore Bacon, of Rochester, a lawyer of

note, for Governor. Some embarrassment and delay were occasioned by the fact that the arrangement for nominating Roosevelt had been by a form prescribed in the statutes for certain cases a petition to the Secretary of State with a given number of signatures attached. The independents' petition, circulated all over the State, had been signed by 8,000 persons—a great many more than required by law. But these signatures were for an independent nomination of Roosevelt, not Bacon, and it took some time and trouble to provide for the substitution. The Republican Convention, meanwhile, had carried out its purpose of nominating Roosevelt; there was nothing else for it to do. It had done so, moreover, without exacting a single pledge from him, and this was all that the independents had aimed at. When the votes were counted on election night, Roosevelt was found with a plurality of 17,786 to his credit. It was not a very big plurality for New York with her 1,500,000 voters, but, like Mercutio's wound, 'twould serve.

The interesting feature of the count was that it showed Roosevelt to have run several thousand votes ahead of his ticket.

Bacon's total

was about 2,100. This number presumptively