Singing Hymns for Teddy: The 1912 Progressive Party as a Charismatic Movement

Observers of the Progressive Party’s 1912 national convention, which nominated ex-President Theodore Roosevelt for President, encountered an environment many later described as bizarre.  Instead of the usual electioneering and smoke-filled rooms, the convention featured hymn-singing, Biblical allusions, and experiences that resembled religious conversions.  This paper asks two central questions about the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party: first, what caused the party to display these strange quasi-religious features?  And second, how did this unusual emotional fervor affect Roosevelt, his followers, or the outcome of the campaign?  In answering these questions, the paper uses the framework of charisma to analyze the Bull Moose Party as a social movement.  It situates the party within a tradition of charismatic oratory that included religious figures such as Henry Ward Beecher and Billy Sunday; political leaders such as James G. Blaine and William Jennings Bryan; and Roosevelt’s 1912 running mate, Hiram Johnson.  It explains Roosevelt’s unique popular appeal as an intentional charismatic strategy and outlines the role charismatic strategies played in the presidential campaign.  It examines followers’ emotional response to the ex-President using letters, articles, and autobiographies.  Finally, it analyzes the flaws in the Progressives’ grasp of charismatic techniques – flaws that weakened the party and the movement and led Roosevelt to make a poorer-than-expected showing in the 1912 election.  Ultimately, the paper argues that the Progressives misunderstood charisma in the same ways they misread American culture.  The failure of the Bull Moosers to fulfill their own charismatic hopes, then, reveals much about the contradictions of progressivism itself.