The Progressives turned out to be a pretty strong organization, and they made some gains during the next four years. The split in Republican thought was still pretty wide when it came time to think about the 1916 campaign, and Theodore Roosevelt was still one of the biggest men in the country. There were some indications that in his promotion of harmony between the Progressives and the regular Republicans he might accept a nomination and run for a third term. Gossip had touched on two other men who might be considered by the delegates--Charles Evans Hughes, who had been governor of New York for two terms, and Major General Leonard Wood, former Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army, commander of the Department of the East and close friend of Theodore Roosevelt. Hughes was an old-line Republican. Wood was a Progressive. To the former President, Gutzon sent a five-page letter showing his fear for the disunity between the different groups and the certain disaster it could bring to the nation. He said: You can be the next nominee for the Presidency of the U. S. if that is what you wish. But it will be wrung from the powerful grip of powerful forces, and I very much question the result that would follow such a conquest. I think you should boldly and frankly name a man close to you, a man long known and tried by you, a man who would include you in his private councils. There is another advantage in this besides quieting the antagonism and putting the lie to a million or more irreconcilables. You would enter for good that position so enviable as the First American. There was no doubt whatever that General Leonard Wood was the man Gutzon had in mind when he made this appeal. He had been on friendly terms with the general for years, and had boundless respect for the abilities he had shown as a soldier and as the chief administrator of Cuban affairs after the Spanish-American War. He had never been more cheered than when a newspaper reported that Colonel Roosevelt had himself proposed General Wood as a nominee to be considered by the Chicago convention. Promptly, in April 1916, he wrote to Roosevelt, “In naming Leonard Wood, your lifelong friend, you have given the conservatives and the irreconcilables the key to the threatened deadlock, or, as some have boasted, ‘deathlock.’ You have said the first thing that has been said to make impossible a bitter struggle.” He had many friends who did not share his belief that Roosevelt would turn out to be altruistic at Chicago. It is interesting to see how he clung to his faith in his hero despite all indication that for once he might be wrong ... and it is also a little pathetic.