(06-20-2024 01:29 PM)Anita Wrote:  You nailed it Rob!

Nellie Taft made a permanent mark in history by becoming the first First Lady to ride in the Inaugural Parade with her husband, following the swearing-in ceremony. Many newspapers at the time considered it a symbol of what they assumed to be her support of full suffrage for women. Against the advice of traditionalists, she had decided she would make the ride several days earlier when she learned that outgoing President Roosevelt was opting out of the tradition to accompany his successor back to the White House. http://archive.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=27

(06-21-2024 08:04 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  In early 1908, Nellie Taft held two unprecedented meetings with President Roosevelt, confronting him on his true motives for suggesting that he would support Taft over the other potential candidates. Nellie Taft firmly asserted in private letters that Roosevelt wanted another term but that his rash statement on election night 1904 in which he declared that he would not run again held him back. She believed it was a technicality and that if there was a popular groundswell for his re-nomination that he would abandon his support of Taft and accept the draft as candidate.

Nellie Taft was more thoroughly involved in the political elements of her husband's 1908 campaign than she was at any other point in his career. In dozens of letters, she advised him on how to position himself, sometimes down to what words to use, so that he would be seen as supporting some of Roosevelt's popular policies yet also standing on his own, apart from Roosevelt. Her role was largely hidden from the public, conducted instead through private correspondence or in closed-door meetings.

Throughout the Republican Convention in June of 1908, Nellie Taft and her husband kept in close contact with their representatives there; she was certain a stampede for Roosevelt would lead to his spontaneous nomination, instead of it coming to Taft.