The national Republican Party splintered in August 1912, when former President Theodore Roosevelt bolted the Republican convention, bellowed that he felt strong as a bull moose, and went on to make history as the only third party candidate ever to finish second in a presidential election.

Springfielders got a sneak preview of what was to come that May when the Clark County Republican Party started disintegrating as Roosevelt and incumbent Republican President William H. Taft brought their campaigns to town.

With the Ohio primary days away, Roosevelt supporters cheered as his campaign came in by rail for a Wednesday, May 15, rally in the tabernacle evangelist Billy Sunday had built for a string of revivals here the previous fall.

As Taft-backers saw pictures of Roosevelt with the Rev. C.E. Gardner of First Lutheran Church on the front page of the May 16 newspaper, they smiled over the quarter-page advertisement about their man’s appearance in the tabernacle that Sunday.

Although in recent elections, Ohioans have felt overrun by presidential and vice presidential hopefuls, the Springfield Daily News had reason to say “the coming of the only living ex-president (Roosevelt) is considered a distinct honor and his followers were confident early in the day that sufficient interest had been around in his coming to assure a large audience.”

The campaign of 1912 was one of the first in which the candidates themselves campaigned among the people.

In his Springfield appearance, Taft “referred to the fact that the office of president has in the past carried with it a dignity which presented the occupant going upon the stump,” the Daily News reported.

Although he “offered a half apology for being present,” the paper said, Taft added that “attacks upon him personally, as an executive, and upon his administration had made it necessary to appear.”

Larry Marple, a Springfield elementary school teacher and history enthusiast who portrays Roosevelt at events around the nation, said Roosevelt had forced Taft’s hand in breaking tradition.

Campaigning against an incumbent of his own party, “TR knew it was an uphill battle,” said Marple, who added that the contest involved a personal dispute from the very start.

Taft had served in T.R.’s cabinet as secretary of war. Moreover, Roosevelt hand-picked Taft as his successor after announcing he’d not seek a third term in the Oval Office because two had been enough for Washington and Lincoln.

“When (as president) Taft didn’t do the things TR thought he should, it bothered him,” Marple said.

The day Roosevelt appeared in Springfield, Taft was in Galion, saying Roosevelt “has called me everything in the category of bad names that are mentioned in polite society.”

For his part, Roosevelt said he was concentrating on issues but that his progressive candidacy opposed reactionaries in both the Democratic party and his own.

The bitter tone dripped like gall into Clark County Republican politics just as the candidates arrived.

“Charging that his actions were unfair, reprehensible and in utter violation of decent politics,” the Springfield Daily News reported, A.O. Huffman, president of the Roosevelt Club of Clark County, charged Republican Central Committee Chairman N.H. Fairbanks had used the party’s stationery “furthering the candidacy of Taft delegates” to the Ohio party convention.

Calling for Fairbanks’ resignation, Huffman’s letter “states that Chairman Fairbanks as chairman represents the entire Republican Party in this county and neither the progressive (Roosevelt) nor conservative (Taft wing),” the report said.

The following day, the paper said “the bomb exploded yesterday by the Roosevelt faction … under the feet of the Taft faction … was still sputtering lively.”

“I do not recognize that there are any classes in the Republican Party,” Fairbanks shot back. He then accused his accusers “of attempting to make a division” in the party that would be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

On their way to Springfield, the whistle stop tours of both candidates stopped in Urbana. A May 15 photo taken there shows Roosevelt standing in a crowded downtown square, with Moore’s Business College behind him and arches of electric streetlights rising overhead.

Roosevelt made a special appeal to farmers both in Urbana, and in these remarks made later that day in Springfield: “I know it’s hard to give up your time from the plow to go to the polls, but if you don’t get in this fight, the professional politicians will take advantage of it.”

When he arrived at the same Tabernacle and was introduced by J. Warren Keifer, Taft “did not spare invective or ridicule,” the Daily News wrote.

The president came out “orally flaying Theodore Roosevelt” before a crowd of 6,000, lashing out at the “unfair means” Roosevelt had used “to put him in a wrong light” and defending his administration and “soliciting the support of the voters of Ohio at the primaries Tuesday.”

Despite nice weather that Taft forces predicted would keep farmers in the fields and help their man’s cause, Roosevelt won 32 of the 42 delegates up for grabs.

Taft forces partially restored balance by garnering all six at-large delegates at the June Ohio Republican Party convention in Columbus.

Future President Warren G. Harding was hissed in Columbus when he said Roosevelt supporters “were driving their Titanic full speed ahead into the ice.” But history proved Harding’s comparison to the recent shipwreck apt.

That November, the incumbent Taft won an embarrassing eight electoral votes to Roosevelt’s 88. Although the former friends’ combined popular vote was nearly 50 percent, Woodrow Wilson’s 41.8 percent plurality handily beat both, as he won Ohio and racked up 435 electoral voters, more than 80 percent of the total.

That, too, had been foretold in Springfield.

On May 18 — after Roosevelt’s departure and before Taft’s arrival — the Daily News ran a front page cartoon that shows Roosevelt standing on top of a log with a sledge hammer in his hand.

He’s driving a wedge labeled “third term,” into a log labeled “The Republican Party.” The label beneath the picture reads “Rail Splitter,” an ironic reference to Abraham Lincoln, who had helped to bring the Republican Party together.