What Happened on Election Night 1916?

On the night of November 7th, 1916, about a hundred thousand people packed Times Square while the Hotel Astor spelled one name in electric lights: Hughes. Several New York newspapers had already printed that Charles Evans Hughes, a man who had quit the Supreme Court to run, was the next president. By Thursday, the country learned that Woodrow Wilson had won, after California went his way by fewer than four thousand votes out of nearly a million. The Sun's front page had listed California as a Hughes state. The story people tell about it involves a hotel, a snub, and a man who slept through it all. Part of that is well documented, and part of it is probably a legend. What this covers: The Times Square crowd, the early calls in The World and The Sun, and a Pennsylvania paper that printed "President Hughes?" and then a special edition reading "Wilson the winner" Wilson's sealed letter of November 5th, a plan to resign the presidency and hand it to Hughes if he lost, and why it stayed in a drawer The count: Minnesota under four hundred votes, New Hampshire under sixty, and California at 466,289 to 462,516 The Virginia Hotel in Long Beach, where Hughes and Governor Hiram Johnson were under one roof and never met Why historians say the feud helped cost Hughes California, and why nobody can prove it was the only reason The "the president is asleep" story: who supposedly answered the phone, and why the sources are decades late Hughes's two-sentence telegram of November 22nd, after waiting for California's official count What happened next: the war in April 1917, Hughes as Secretary of State and Chief Justice, and how the Associated Press decides when to call a race The crowd was real. The searchlights were real. The last votes were still on their way. Sources are listed below, with the parts each one supports. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ❤️ It's just me making these. If this one was worth your time, a like helps more than you'd think. If not, all good. See you in the next one. Wren ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S O U R C E S ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE NIGHT AND THE EARLY CALLS Election Night 1916, Bowery Boys: New York City History, November 2016. The Times Square crowd, the Hotel Astor lights, and Hughes voting in a laundry on Eighth Avenue. Waxman, M., "Avoiding Post-Election Chaos: Wilson vs. Hughes, 1916," Lawfare, 6 October 2020. The early calls by The World and other papers, the crowd, and the count timeline. 1916 United States presidential election, Wikipedia (and the California article). The Sun's front page, the six states it listed, the California totals, and the electoral vote. Sullivan, N., "President Hughes?," Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The local paper that reversed its headline. THE COUNT Electoral College results, 1916, National Archives. The 277 to 254 electoral vote and the 266 needed. Presidential Election of 1916, Library of Congress research guide. A slightly different California margin and national popular vote, which is why the video hedges. Hughes, C. E., telegram to Woodrow Wilson, 22 November 1916, The American Presidency Project. The concession, sent from Lakewood, New Jersey. THE SNUB AND THE LEGEND Greenfield, J., "The Closest Calls: How America Nearly Forged a Different Path in 1916," Politico Magazine, 2023. The Long Beach hotel, Hughes's later words, the failed amends and Johnson's reply (secondhand). Woodrow Wilson: Campaigns and Elections, Miller Center, University of Virginia. Hughes's slights to Johnson and labor, the slogan, and the "bearded iceberg." Cullinane, M. P., The Conversation, 2015; Hill, R., Knox Focus, 2016. The "president is asleep" story and the differing tellings. Charles Evans Hughes; Hiram Johnson; 1916 U.S. Senate election in California, Wikipedia. Hughes's career dates, Johnson's governorship, and the Senate vote of 574,667. WILSON'S PLAN AND WHAT CAME AFTER Kauffmann, B. G., "President Woodrow Wilson's audacious plan to resign," Observer-Reporter, 2018. The letter to Lansing and the order of resignations. Election of 1916, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library. The slogan "He kept us out of war." Bomboy, S., "The remarkable career of Charles Evans Hughes," National Constitution Center, 2024. Hughes's later years on the Supreme Court. Norwood, C., "How the AP calls races and what to expect on election night," PBS NewsHour, 2020. The Associated Press standard for calling a race. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #history #uspolitics #documentary #americanhistory #1916