by Stephen Yellin
Yesterday I covered the first part of the story of Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican who ultimately held the fate of millions of Americans in his hands as Chief Justice of the United States. An accomplished lawyer, jurist and Governor of New York, with an impressive record of progressive reforms and principled stances, Hughes came within an eyelash – 4,000 votes from California – of winning the White House in 1916. As history tells us, however, Hughes had another role to play in our nation’s history. In the midst of the most difficult crisis since the American Civil War, the former ally of Theodore Roosevelt found himself eyeball to eyeball with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.