Today -100: June 21, 1912: Of women’s suffrage, and credentials

Both Taft & TR supporters will support a women’s suffrage plank (though probably not a federal constitutional amendment). On hearing this, the secretary of the New York Man’s League for Woman Suffrage immediately goes to Roosevelt’s office to drop off a membership form for him. Sadly, TR’s secretary says he does not wish to join at the present time.

New Hampshire’s constitutional convention rejects women’s suffrage, 208-149.

The Theodores on the convention’s credentials committee end their boycott. The convention will be considering the credentials of its members for the entire time it sits. Nothing much happened in the convention itself yesterday.

Roosevelt himself seems to be vacillating on exactly what his next step should be and is ordering his delegates to continue attending the convention but not participate, in other words a holding action. He’s saying he’ll run as a non-Republican “if there was found to be a demand for me,” but isn’t saying precisely in what form such a demand would be expressed. William Jennings Bryan notes that Roosevelt has no way of knowing how many delegates would bolt if he ordered it and, indeed, many will only make up their minds when the time comes.

A Civil War veteran from Chicago, I presume a delegate, accuses a negro delegate of selling his vote. The negro delegate knocks him down.

Cuba thinks that the proclamation by the leader of the negro rebellion threatening to kill all whites who didn’t leave the El Cobre district was actually written by the French consul.