The 1908 Republican Convention was held in Chicago Coliseum, Chicago, Illinois, July 16-19, 1908. It convened to choose a sucessor to the popular President Theodore Roosevelt and the lesser popular Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks.

It nominated Secretary of War William Howard Taft (Ohio) and New York Representative James Schoolcraft Sherman for President and Vice President.

The Platform

The Republican platform celebrated the Roosevelt administration` s policies, the keeping of the protective tariff, establishment of a permanent currency system, more supervision and control over trusts, enforcemnt of rail-road rate laws and to make the Interstate Commerce Commission able to ivestigate interstae railroads, reduction of work-hors for rail-road workers, and to reuce burden for workers, court reform, extension of rural-mail delivery, upholding the rights of the negro, conservation, supportion of an army-naval build-up, protection of american citiziens abroad, extension of foreign commerce, supprt of vigorous arbitration and of Hague treaties, a revival of the american merchant marine, supprt of war veterans, enforcement of civil service protection, greater effience in National Public Health agencies, estab- lishment of a Bureau of Mines and Mining, self-government of Cuba and the Phillipines, citizien-ship for Puerto Rico, pride of the american involvement in the building of the Panama route,admission of the new me´xico and Arizona territories, celebration of the birth-day of Abraham Lincoln, deplored the Democratic party and celebrated the policies of the Republican party.

The Candidates for the Presidential Nomination

• Joseph G. Cannon (Illinois)
• Charles W. Fairbanks (Indiana)
• Joseph B. Foraker (Ohio)
• Charles Evans Hughes (New York)
• Philander Chase Knox (Pennsylvania)
• Robert M. La Follette (Wisconsin)
• Leslie M. Shaw (Iowa)

The Candidates for the Vice Presidential Nomination

• Curtis Guild Jr (Massachusetts)
• Franklin Murphy (New Jersey)