As Maine went, so did nation; Teddy won landslide

The saying “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” once meant a lot more than it does today. Mainers were so confident in the old saw a century ago that they virtually stopped debating who would be elected president in November 1904, after the Republican candidate for governor, William T. Cobb, crushed his Democratic opponent in the state election held two months before.

Back then, Mainers voted twice – on the second Monday in September for governor, legislators and U.S. congressmen and again in November for president. The state’s September vote was considered a bellwether for the national elections in November during the many decades after the Civil War when Republicans usually dominated both in Maine and the nation.

Cobb’s big win had convinced everyone that President Theodore Roosevelt would be elected for a second term. Maine Democrats appear to have been so demoralized they accepted defeat as inevitable in the presidential election as well.

The youngest president in U.S. history at the time and certainly one of the most energetic was already popular in Maine, while his Democrat opponent, Alton B. Parker, was a colorless stranger.

While still a student at Harvard, Roosevelt had come to Maine to hunt and fish and live the “strenuous life” with Bill Sewall, a genuine lumberman and guide who lived in Island Falls.

A great friendship emerged. Teddy hired Sewall and his nephew to help manage his ranch in the Dakota Territory. That didn’t work out, and Sewall came back to Maine.

Teddy, or T.R., as he was popularly known, came to Bangor in 1902, a year after taking over the presidency after President William McKinley was assassinated, and gave a speech from the balcony of the Bangor House.

The first words he bellowed to the assembled thousands reportedly were: “I want to ask if anybody has seen Bill Sewall of Island Falls. If anybody sees him, or if anybody knows where he is, I want them to say for me that I expect him to dine with me today in the hotel.”

Two years later, on the day of the national election in 1904, the newspapers described just how dead the campaign had been. “The absence of even the semblance of a presidential campaign in Maine has been the feature of the past four weeks. Not only have there been no rallies, torchlight parades nor campaign literature, but neither party organization will make any effort Tuesday to get out the vote,” said a wire story on the front page of the Bangor Daily News.

Nevertheless, expectations of a lopsided Republican victory hadn’t stopped the betting that usually went on in Bangor. The most notorious wager that election was between Albert Lewis, “the B.C.M. cigar man,” and Elgin Greenleaf, “man about town.” After conducting a debate that was “hot enough to wither the grass in Centre Park,” Greenleaf put $300 on Roosevelt against “the cigar man’s” $100 for Parker.

“Why,” says Lewis, “I guess I’ve got a chance. Remember 1892 [the year Democrat Grover Cleveland won]! And if I win I’ll be a long way from even. Elgin’s been winning from me for about 20 years.”

A century ago, election night was a grand and exciting occasion, as much a social event as political. Men visited their favorite clubs or went to the Bangor Opera House or roamed the streets listening to the results outside the Bangor Daily News, where they were read periodically over a megaphone, and at other locations. Extra operators were on duty at the phone company to answer callers’ queries.

“Both the Western Union and the Postal have made elaborate preparations for the night. The work has been about evenly divided between the two and they are already for the whirlwind,” reported the Bangor Daily News on the morning of election day.

“Returns will be read from the News office, from the stage of the Opera House between acts, City Hall, Tarratine Club, Madockawando Club, YMCA, Masonic club, Charter Oak club, Elks’ club, J.J. Quinlan & Co. stockbrokers, Bangor Bowling Academy, Prescott’s Billiard Hall, in all the hotel offices and in many private offices and residences,” said the paper.

At the YMCA, there would be an open house for members. A bout between two Japanese wrestlers and a basketball game were planned. Fred C. Ball was going to be the master of ceremonies in the reading and posting of the election returns.

That night, restless crowds shifted from place to place trying to keep warm. A few bonfires sputtered as “the streets took on their customary sepulchral aspect.”

As it became clear Roosevelt was winning by a landslide, Republicans tried to awaken a little old-fashioned excitement. “Shortly after midnight a crowd of 25 prominent Republicans headed by county attorney-elect Patten came to City Hall with a permit from the mayor to start the bell going. Capt. Fahey rang for Night Janitor Bean and the delegation adjourned to the sky parlor where the machinery that controls the ponderous clapper was started.”

But overall it was a disappointing evening – “the quietest election night ever known in the good city of Bangor,” wrote a disappointed reporter in the next morning’s paper.

The vote reflected the lack of interest. While 131,486 voters had turned out in September, only 97,021 had done so for the presidential contest. Roosevelt, however, had received more than twice as many votes as Parker in Maine, and he had swept every county.

Governor-elect William T. Cobb had achieved a sizable victory in September, but nothing like Roosevelt’s, with half again as many votes as his chief opponent, and Cobb had lost by a whisker in two counties, Androscoggin and, ironically, Knox, where he was from.

In Maine, the Republicans didn’t seem to have the strength they did nationally, and in the years to come party divisions would erode their power further, although it would be 50 years before Edmund Muskie’s gubernatorial upset would change Maine politics dramatically. (For more details, see my column of Sept. 13.)

The nation, meanwhile, still seemed to still be fighting the Civil War. In his landslide victory, Roosevelt won all the northern and border states from Delaware and West Virginia to California. Parker, despite his New York address, took the South as a block, from Maryland to Texas. The division portended the terrible civil rights strife yet to come as the nation continued in its effort to leave the evils of slavery behind.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters including “The Diaries of Sarah Jane” and “Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.