We feel that you will be unresponsive to a plain public duty if you decline to accept the nomination coming as the voluntary expression of the wishes of a majority of the Republican voters of the United States through the action of their delegates in the next National Convention.
To this message Roosevelt replied:
One of the chief principles for which I have stood and for which I now stand, and which I have always endeavoured and always shall endeavour to reduce to action, is the genuine rule of the people; and, therefore, I hope that so far as possible the people may be given the chance, through direct primaries, to express their preference as to who shall be the nominee of the Republican Presidential Convention.
During this period I called on Roosevelt one day at the offices of "The Outlook," and he handed me the galley-proof of a speech he was to make before the Constitutional Convention at Columbus, Ohio. He called it "The Charter of Democracy." His room was full of callers, so I went into Dr. Abbott's office and there carefully read the speech. In it Roosevelt advocated, among other reforms such as the short ballot and the initiative and referendum, the recall of judicial decisions. When I came to that subject I confess I was shocked, and so expressed myself to one of the editors of "The Outlook"; as I remember it, it was Dr. Abbott himself. Compelled to keep another appointment, I left the office when I had finished reading the speech, saying that I should return later.
Upon my return I met Roosevelt just as he was going out to keep an engagement.
"I hear you don't like my speech," he said to me.
"I like your speech; I think it is fine; all but that portion of it which refers to the recall of judicial decisions," I answered. I started to give my reasons, but seeing that he was pressed for time, I said: "I should like to discuss that matter with you, provided your mind is open on the subject." To my great surprise he said that he had thought the subject over very carefully, and frankly told me that he had come to a definite decision on it.
That was so unlike the Roosevelt I knew in the many discussions I had had with him, when invariably I found his mind responsive, that I was quite disappointed and somewhat taken back. But I did not want him to feel that I had joined the ranks of the many who had parted political company with him because he had made it known that he would accept another nomination for President, and so, on reaching my office, I wrote him a letter, briefly explaining why I objected to his statements regarding the recall of judicial decisions. I assured him that on that account I did not part from him politically, for after all I agreed with him more than with any other candidate who might possibly be named.
The birth and development of the Progressive Party is, of course, an element of national history that has often been detailed. William Draper Lewis, in his "Life of Theodore Roosevelt," and Lawrence F. Abbott, in his "Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt," both give clear accounts of it. Roosevelt's candidacy and defeat have been variously analyzed, but I believe now, as I believed in 1912, that but for this unfortunate statement regarding judicial decisions, Roosevelt would have been re-elected President in 1912. It is true that he afterwards clarified the meaning of his use of the word "recall"; that its application was limited to such decisions as held legislative acts unconstitutional, and that such decisions might at the following election be submitted to popular vote, in accordance with the method employed by a State for the adoption of its constitution. But his clarification never overcame the effects of the Columbus speech. William Draper Lewis, who was one of Roosevelt's closest advisers at the time, says in his biography:
Looking back now over the events leading up to the Republican National Convention of 1912, it would appear almost certain that had he, in his address before the Ohio Convention, either refrained from making the proposal or had he called it a new method of amending the constitution, and carefully explained it so that it could not have been misunderstood, it is most probable that he would have been nominated at Chicago, and that the whole course of the recent history of the United States would have been other than it has been.