Presidents and First Ladies Trivia

[David Lockmiller]

(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.

Early in Taft's term, in May 1909, his wife Nellie had a severe stroke that left her paralysed in one arm and one leg and deprived her of the power of speech. Taft spent several hours each day looking after her and teaching her to speak again, which took a year.

Source: Rosen, Jeffrey (2018). William Howard Taft: The American Presidents Series. New York: Time Books, Henry Holt & Co., pages 61-62.