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Vice President Garret Hobart had died in November 1899, leaving a vacancy on the Republican national ticket of 1900. To attain geographic balance with President William McKinley, who was from Ohio, Uncle Sam asserts in the cartoon’s caption that the vice-presidential nomination should be awarded to a New Yorker. At the time, New York had the largest number of electoral votes and had been represented on a Republican or Democratic national ticket by one or more candidates in every election between 1868 and 1892. Here, the five potential vice-presidential nominees from New York are (left-right): Elihu Root, secretary of war; Cornelius Bliss, former secretary of the interior (1897-1899); Timothy Woodruff, lieutenant governor of New York; Theodore Roosevelt, governor of New York; and, Frank Black, former governor of New York (1897-1899). Cartoonist Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman clearly favored Roosevelt, who is the only figure the right size for the suit and whose military experience in the Spanish-American War would make the dress uniform a natural fit. The suit’s major emphasis is the gold standard, but other desired characteristics of a vice-presidential nominee are “Americanism,” “statesmanship,” “political honor,” “patriotism,” “clean record,” and tariff “protection.” |
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Warning
1860
