National Expansion
ticket. The drift of popular sentiment was undoubtedly toward the Republican party. But owing to the circumstances mentioned, the Democrats won by the narrowest margin since the disputed election of 1876, forty years before. They got 277 electoral and 9,129,269 popular votes, while the Republicans got 254 electoral and 8,547,328 popular votes. The Socialist vote was 590,579, the Prohibitionist 221,329 and the Socialist Labor 14,180. The Democrats retained control of Congress.
Thereafter, for the first half of the second Wilson administration, covering the period of American participation in the great war, Democratic control of the government was complete and under it the President was invested with an autocratic and dictatorial power never before approximated or contemplated in American history. Shortly after his installation in the second term, to which he had been elected chiefly on the pretence that “he kept us out of war,” the President was compelled by the logic of events to ask that the nation be plunged into the war. To that momentous step and all through the succeeding transactions for the prosecution of the war the Republican minority offered no factious opposition. With patriotic zeal it co-operated heartily with the Democratic government in every measure that was necessary to win the victory. In some important respects, particularly the legislation for creating and preparing a great army, the Republicans gave the President more hearty support than did the members of his own party.
Nevertheless, as the war drew near its close and as the time approached for the election of a new Congress which would be in office during the period of peace-
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