ABSTRACT
There were bosses and bosses, and certainly the memory of Mark Hanna of Ohio is in the image of a boss. In the preconvention period, Hanna’s campaign for McKinley was against the bosses, and indeed there were many bosses supporting other candidates and willing to trade. Hanna’s trouble was with the bosses–the other bosses–and especially the boss of New York. Hanna’s troubles were not just with the bosses, but also with Governor Theodore Roosevelt personal appeal to the youthful and frontier spirit of the nation. Roosevelt was overwhelmingly supported by the delegates who refused to be influenced by the bosses. In short order an assassin’s bullet had made Roosevelt president, and the strongest boss of the era had been powerless to prevent that situation. Whether Roosevelt could have been nominated for president had he remained vice-president cannot be answered. Roosevelt, renominated and reelected, left the presidency to William Howard Taft in 1909 but returned in 1912.
