#30 Calvin Coolidge Part 2

Real Cool Stuff about Calvin Coolidge
1. Even though he was known as Silent Cal, he held more press conferences than any other president. “He held 520 presidential press conferences, meeting with reporters more regularly than any chief executive before or since” (p. 7).
2. At the 1920 Republican convention, Coolidge’s name was seconded by a woman, for the first time in history. “Coolidge’s nomination drew some notice for being seconded by a woman, the actress Alexandra Carlisle—a historic first for a second” (p. 37).
3. Coolidge was the first president to add a speechwriter to the executive payroll. “In effect, Welliver served as a White House publicity man and the first dedicated presidential speechwriter. (It was Welliver who coined the phrase ‘Founding Fathers,’ though Harding often received the credit” (p. 48).
4. It was under the Coolidge administration that J. Edgar Hoover began his long tenure as head of the FBI. “Coolidge also fired William Burns, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was implicated in the scandals, replacing him with a young man with a reputation for honesty, J. Edgar Hoover” (p. 53).
5. Coolidge wasn’t just one of the first presidents to appear in a talking film but one of the first Americans ever. “In April 1925, he became one of the first Americans to appear in a talking film” (p. 64).
6. This item is specifically for all you Georgians out there because I found Stone Mountain mentioned in this book. Sadly, it’s mentioned in reference to the resurgent KKK. “But in 1915, a Methodist preacher in Stone Mountain, Georgia, reconstituted the infamous brotherhood. Preaching not only white supremacy but also the inferiority of Catholics and Jews, he won few adherents until the early 1920s, when membership mushroomed to five million—not only in the South but also in other rural regions where old-stock Protestants feared the swelling urban masses” (p. 85).
7. In the summer of 1924, a horrific tragedy struck the Coolidge family. John and Calvin Jr., Coolidge’s sons, were playing tennis on the White Hours lawns. Calvin Jr., 16-years-old, hadn’t bothered to wear socks that hot summer day and contracted a particularly awful blood blister with a staph infection. Since antibiotics were yet to be invented, the doctors tried everything they could but to no avail. It became infected and the boy was dead in one week.
8. Coolidge and Dawes won the 1924 election in another Republican landslide vote. In fact, Davis, the Democratic presidential candidate, had the worst showing of any Democrat in history. “Davis garnered the lowest percentage of the vote of any Democrat ever” (p. 106).
9. Coolidge was the first president to broadcast his oath of office over the radio. “The president’s speech was unmemorable, historic only as another first in readio broadcasting” (p. 109).
10. Coolidge was the first president to visit Cuba. “Leaving the United States for only the second time in his life, Coolidge delivered the keynote address, arguing that the American nations shared common values and goals. But Coolidge’s overture—the first trip by a sitting president to Cuba—couldn’t suppress long-standing resentments” (p. 120).
11. In 1927, the Mississippi flooded and it would be considered one of the worst natural disasters in American history. “Indeed, these floods would culminate in the worst natural disaster in American history until Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005” (p. 132).

I think that Greenberg does a great job with Coolidge. While this bio does not rank up in my list of all time favorites, I was really impressed with how the author handles Coolidge’s life. I knew very little about Coolidge initially and it seemed that over the years had learned even less about him. Yet Greenberg gives a quite thorough account of this intensely personal man.

I also enjoyed Greenberg’s discussion on the various reasons for the stock market crash and the Great Depression. I can understand why most people would blame Coolidge, not Hoover, for the problems with the economy in the 1930s. Coolidge had a very laissez-faire attitude concerning business and business regulations that affected the economic problems later on. In an effort to defend Coolidge’s role in the subsequent crash, Greenberg sought to detail the reasons for the economic collapse but to also give credit where credit was due. In other words, part of the problem of that era was certainly Coolidge’s hands-off attitude towards the business sector. Here are Greenberg’s reasons for the Great Depression (p. 147-150):
1.) An unregulated stock market.
2.) The money supply and the role of the FED
3.) Coolidge’s fiscal policy that encouraged speculation and promoted inequality.
4.) The increasing farm crisis
5.) The imbalance in global trade and credit
6.) The demise of the gold standard.

Do you agree with this list of factors? I have a feeling that we will be introduced to more reasons in the Hoover and Roosevelt bios. I’ll be interested in seeing if those other authors agree with Greenberg on governmental policies and their impact on the economic situation in the United States during the 1930s. Let’s see, shall we?

#30 Calvin Coolidge (1872-1932)

What do I remember about Calvin Coolidge? I’m rather ashamed to admit that the only thing I can recall about ol’ Silent Cal is a story I once heard about him. And to this day I’m not sure if it’s an urban legend or not. Oh well. Here it is: One night Calvin Coolidge was at a dinner party, sitting next to his benevolent hostess. Well she turned to him and said, “Mr. President. I made a bet that I could get you to say more than three words tonight.” Coolidge then turned to her and said, “You lose.” End of story.

Hahahah…good one, right? Well it’s all I got. I guess it’s time for me to learn about the man behind the silent demeanor. Back to the library where I grabbed Calvin Coolidge: The American Presidents Series by David Greenberg (New York: Times Books, 2006). The first thing I noticed about the author of this book is that he’s young! He’s also the professor of several erudite classes at Rutgers. Impressive. Let’s see how he handled our 30th prez.

John Calvin Coolidge (he later dropped the John) was born on July 4, 1872 to John and Victoria in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Not much is known about Calvin’s early years growing up in the New England countryside except for the fact that in 1885, his mother died with his sister following her 5 years later. The very next year, Calvin was sent away to school at Black River Academy. “A wallflower at school social events, he wrote to his father about his homesickness, and on weekends he frequently returned to Plymouth Notch to see his father or visit an aunt and uncle in a nearby town” (p. 18). In 1891, he moved on to Amherst College in western Massachusetts where he focused on history, politics, and oratory, even while remaining a loner. “His classmates came to appreciate his deadpan wit and talent for speech making, which he developed through conscientious application in and out of class” (p. 20).

After college, his father urged his son to practice law and so in 1897, Coolidge passed the bar. He never actually practiced law though because starting in the next year, he began his career in the political field by being elected to the city council of Northampton, MA. While working in Northampton, Coolidge met Grace Goodhue, a teacher at the Clarke Institute for the Deaf in Northampton and by 1905, they married. (They would eventually have two sons, John and Calvin Jr.).

For someone allegedly so quiet, Coolidge really rose quickly through the political ranks. In 1909, Coolidge became the Mayor of Northampton and then was elected to the state senate. He attained the highest office in the state when he became Governor of Massachusetts in 1918. “He signed into law measures to improve working conditions, regulate landlords, fund new forests, and control outdoor advertising. He endorsed b ills crossing his desk that provided bonuses, hiring preferences, and other benefits to returning veterans, though he opposed more sweeping measures to guarantee them jobs. And his most significant feat as governor married progressivism’s efficiency to conservationism’s taste for small government: he restructured the state government, consolidation in a single year more than one hundred agencies into fewer than twenty” (p. 28).

In 1919, Coolidge faced the hardest battle of his career to date: the Boston Police Strike. “Poorly paid, saddled with long hours, subject to danger in their daily work, the officers, mostly Irish-Catholic, resented the city’s English-descent Protestant elite” (p. 29). Once the police went on strike, Boston descended into city-wide riots. Coolidge came down hard on the side of the middle class and against labor in this dispute. He said “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time” (p. 31) and sent in the military.

His conservative stand in regards to the Boston Police Strike recommended him to the Republican brass. With the election of 1920 fast approaching, they put him on the Republican ticket with Warren Harding which propelled him into the Vice Presidential office after they won the election. Quiet and unassuming, the position of vice president suited Coolidge quite well. He agreed. “Aside from speeches, I did little writing but I read a great deal and listened much. While I little realized it at the time, it was for me a period of most important preparation” (p. 39). Indeed before he knew it, on August 3, 1823, Coolidge became the 30th President of the United States.

Unfortunately it was after Harding’s death and after Coolidge was president that the scandals of Harding’s administration would gain momentum and hit the public like a sledgehammer. Coolidge had to walk a fine line between upholding Harding’s memory and punishing those near him who deserved it. “While Coolidge’s morality and old-fashioned values reassured a public concerned about the erosion of public virtue, the president was no crusading ideologue seeking to turn back the clock. Rather, his parsimony, his modesty, and his preachments about small government seemed to demonstrate that these values could thrive in a contemporary environment” (p. 53). He loved watching movies and playing practical jokes on people. However, he could also be curt, stern, prickly and passive at times.

Coolidge’s laissez-faire role in government promoted the prosperity of the 1920s. “But the prosperity was beginning to reach an enlarged middle class, and it appeared to bode well for increasingly widespread and long-lasting material comfort in the future” (p. 67). Most do not know this about Coolidge but he began the first application of “trickle down” economics: “the idea that cutting taxes on the rich (or providing them with subsidies) would lead them to invest their windfall and spur productive advances that would benefit workers and consumers alike” (p. 71). It was an extremely popular economic policy at the time.

Coolidge also busted trusts but out of the 70 suits, most of them ended in favor of the trust in question. It was also during this time that the incidents of Ku Klux Klan activity began to rise again along with the Red Scare. Excitement over Prohibition waned while angst over immigration (specifically Jews and the Japanese) increased. The Harlem Renaissance was in full swing and overseas, the Dawes Plan went into effect which promised US monetary aid to war-torn Germany. “Still, when the Dawes Plan was signed, few people foresaw dire consequences. In the summer of 1924 the resolution of the European crisis, however temporary, enhanced Coolidge’s popularity” (p. 90). On this wave of popularity, Coolidge and his vice president, Dawes, won the 1924 election.

Coolidge tried to use his reputation to get the United States to join the League of Nations World Court but he failed every time. On the other hand, he helped fix the situation with Mexico and promoted the Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed in 1928, which outlawed war internationally. In 1926, Andrew Mellow put forth a bill which “provided for across-the-board income tax cuts, zeroed out the gift tax, halved the estate tax, and slashed surtaxes on the wealthy to 20 percent” (p. 128). Lindbergh successfully flew over the Atlantic Ocean in 1927 and Coolidge passed through Congress the Radio Act which foreshadowed the inception of the FCC.

Coolidge decided not to run for a second term in 1928 even though the stock market went into a huge boom and everyone seemed happy. However even then there presaged problems to this prosperity. “This maldistribution of wealth and income compounded the downturn in key economic sectors, because poorer Americans, including farmers and low-wage workers—many of whom still wanted to buy homes and cars and appliances in the decades later years—remained barred at the gates of the new economy” (p. 143).

Upon retirement, Coolidge and his wife moved back to Northampton and traveled a little to Florida, Louisiana, and California. He took the time to head the Harding Memorial Association and the American Antiquarian Society. He even worked for the New York Life Insurance Company and in 1929, published his autobiography. In 1929, he also witnessed the start of the Great Depression, one he would be accused of having begun. Calvin Coolidge died on January 5, 1932 from a heart attack.

#29 Warren Harding Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Warren Harding
1. Warren’s wife, Florence Kling, had a baby out of wedlock which was quite shocking back in that time period. “Six months after they [Florence and her baby daddy] eloped to Columbus in 1880 (they never married), their son was born” (p. 16).
2. One of the slurs against Harding was that he was of African descent. “Harding had been dealing with the false accusation of African ancestry since childhood. Such rumors would later be whispered during all his Ohio political campaigns, and they would surface nationally during his 1920 run for the White House” (p. 19).
3. The Republicans, in the Ohio Senate, abolished their one-term rule because they liked Harding so much. They decided that he must have a second term.
4. For the 1912 election it was Harding who put Taft’s name up for nomination at the convention.
5. In a bold political move, Harding hired an advertising agency to promote his presidential campaign in 1920. “Indeed, Lasker introduced many of the advertising and public relations techniques that have become the norm in political campaigns” (p. 69).
6. Al Jolson, a popular entertainer, wrote a song for Harding’s campaign. “Daily he met visitors to Marion: traveling salesmen, women’s groups, the Chicago Cubs, governors, congressmen, senators, and even a Hollywood contingent led by Al Jolson, who serenaded Harding with a song he’d written for the occasion” (p. 72).
7. Florence Harding voted in the 1920 election. “Senator Harding and his wife were driven to the polls, where Florence became the first wife to vote for her husband as president” (p. 76).
8. Harding won the largest landslide victory in Republican history in 1920.
9. This was the first time that an active member of the Senate was also the president-elect of the United States. “Lodge, noting that this was the first time an active member of the Senate had been elected president, requested that Harding be given permission to address his colleagues from the chair” (p. 80).
10. Harding was the first in history to broadcast his inaugural address. “His inaugural address was the first ever to electronically amplified for the assembled crowd, as well as broadcast via radio throughout the country and around the world” (p. 95).
11. Harding allowed his vice president, Coolidge, to join cabinet meetings. “Another precedent Harding set was the make his vice president a member of his cabinet. This decision later resulted in a nearly seamless transition of power following Harding’s death” (p. 98).
12. Harding was the first president to visit Alaska.
13. Albert Fall, indicted under the Teapot Dome scandal, was the first cabinet officer to go to prison. "Fall was convicted in 1931 and became the first former cabinet officer to go to prison, where he served some nine months” (p. 160).

“Warren G. Harding is best known as America’s worst president” (p. 1). Daaaammmnnn! This is the first sentence of the entire book and it made me extremely interested to continuing my reading on Warren Harding. And I was not disappointed. Dean, the author, takes several pages to record the various rumors still swirling around Marion, OH about the 29th president. Awesome! People still discus his wife’s scandalous behavior, his affairs, and his presidential scandals. I love this stuff.

Dean does a great job with presenting both the good and not-so-good sides of Harding’s character. Harding was a master networker but he also gave speeches that used over-the-top language which he called bloviating. In fact, Dean quotes H.L Mencken, a popular writer of the time. “H.L. Mencken cringed at Harding’s speechifying: ‘It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washings on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of a dark abysm…of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash’” (p. 73).

Dean also tackles the fact that Harding, who was so popular when he was elected, is now considered one of the worst presidents in history. “Few presidents have fallen from adulation to excoriation as fast as Harding did after his death in office on August 2, 1923…While in office, Harding had his critics, as do all presidents, but few presidents have experienced the unrequited attacks and reprisals visited on one of the most kindly men to every occupy the Oval Office. It hasn’t been pretty” (p. 3-4). Dean attributes this fall from grace to the posthumous information that people published about the Harding administration and this was directly related to the scandals of his presidency. “Harding’s reputation became inseparable from the bad apples in his administration. Their disgrace became his disgrace…It was not the headlines or news accounts that hurt Harding. Rather, the cultural tastemakers and political writers who later played up these stories set the stage for Harding’s descent into history’s dustbin” (p. 160-61).

With presidents that die in office there is always a ‘what-if’ scenario involved and it makes historians go bat-shit crazy over stuff like this. Getting into a game of what-ifs—if you’re a historian—can be dangerous because speculation like that has no end and is therefore very tantalizing. What-ifs are like catnip to historical authors. I swear. Well this author is no different. Dean falls into this trap as well. Classic. Except for the fact that he doesn’t even bother to speculate on whether Harding would have been a better president or not had he lived. No. He goes all the way back to Harding’s senate days to conjecture on what could have happened. “Had he stayed in the Senate, he might have both lived longer and had an illustrious Senate career” (p. 44). I wonder.

#29 Warren Harding (1865-1923)

Here’s a funny story about Warren Harding. Several months ago, I was having dinner with a good friend of mine and her husband. It just so happens that her husband is a high school social studies teacher and when I mentioned my Presidential Reading Project, we went into a long and mutually satisfactory lovefest over American history, specifically presidential scandals. I am not totally sure how we got on the subject to begin with but nevertheless, the conversation became noticeably heated after the Teapot Dome scandal came up. He declared that Teapot Dome occurred before the Civil War and I heartily disagreed.

“No, no, no,” I protested. “I have already read all presidents up to Wilson. It couldn’t have happened before the Civil War.” I then channeled Mr. Black (my American history AP teacher) and said, “It was under Harding.”

He had a good chuckle over this until I told him to get out his smartphone and look up the information. Sure enough, a look of chagrin soon passed across his features. “You were right,” he mumbled, “it was Harding.”

I gave a giant whoop! of victory, said something like “eat it history teacher,” and then walked out of the restaurant in triumph. Harding was so mine!

Just because I’m an absolute monster when it comes to mindless trivia does not mean that I really know anything at all about Warren Harding. In fact, other than the Teapot Dome scandal (and I couldn’t quite remember what it was even about), I knew nothing about this guy. I thus visited my handy neighborhood library and I came away with Warren Harding: The American Presidents Series by John W Dean (New York: Times Books, 2004).

Born on November 2, 1865 in Grove, OH, Warren Gamaliel, whose father was a fifer in the Civil War for the Union Army, became the eldest of 8 children. His father became a doctor after the war and then purchased a newspaper, the Caledonia Argus. This newspaper would affect Harding’s future profession.

By the age of four, Warren learned to read. He spent his early education at local schools but by 1874 at the age of 14, he enrolled at Ohio Central College. “He worked his way through college by painting houses and barns, and, during the summers, doing heavy construction work on railroad gradings” (p. 7). While in college, he focused on literature and philosophy which, upon graduation in 1882, led him to start his own newspaper with his friend, Frank Harris. Unfortunately his family moved to Marion, OH shortly thereafter and there Warren tried to teach school and practice law but he did not like either profession. He started a band—the Marion’s Citizen’s Band—and then purchased another newspaper called the Marion Star, where he was the publisher and editor. Due to his work with the newspaper, Harding became more involved in politics. His press pass allowed him to attend numerous political events, including the Republican National Convention in 1884.

It was during this time that Harding met Florence Kling. She was a single mother, living with friends, who provided piano lessons to the public. In fact, she visited the Harding household to give lessons to Warren’s sister, Charity. Florence had a hard life—her baby daddy ran off—leaving her to face her merciless and strict father, Amos Kling. On July 8, 1891, Florence and Warren married and this union produced a rift between Warren and his father-in-law.. “In Warren Harding, Florence had found a man through whom she could channel her own ambitions; and in Florence Kling, Warren had found a partner whose judgment he trusted, and someone who was committed to building their future together” (p. 21).

The rising prominence of the newspaper kept Harding travelling continuously but in 1894, he checked in to a sanitarium in Michigan for health reasons. In 1895, he ran in his first election for county auditor but lost. Several years later, he ran for a position in the Ohio Senate and won. Next he was elected as Ohio’s lieutenant governor but resigned in 1905 due to his wife’s health this time. During his time away from politics, Harding simply stepped back into his role as newspaper writer and editor. In 1910, he lost the election for the governorship of Ohio.

There is evidence that also during this time Harding began an affair with a friend’s wife, Carrie Phillips. This affair lasted for another 15 years and would only end when Harding headed to the White House.

An important event in Harding’s rise to the presidency occurred in 1914 when he was elected to the US Congress as a senator from Ohio. “In the Senate of this era, new senators were expected to keep a low profile while learning the rules of the club, and Harding dutifully kept his head down” (p. 38). Through careful networking and ‘keeping his head down,’ Harding, by 1916, had earned the acclaim of his fellow senators, culminating in an invitation to give the keynote address at the Republican National Convention. “Harding had acquitted himself well on the national stage, looking presidential while acting like a regular guy, and his skills as a politician were obvious” (p. 43). His prominence grew and he was given a position on the coveted Foreign Relations Committee.

“Still, Harding continued to position himself as a potential candidate. He delivered a steady stream of speeches, many of which ere reprinted and sent throughout the country by anonymous friends, with some being printed in newspapers” (p. 47). At one point he was invited to the White House to discuss the League of Nations and there apparently Harding got the better of Wilson in a verbal battle. Harding wanted the Republican nomination in 1920 and worked hard to succeed in this endeavor. “No historical distortion has persisted longer than the notion that Warren Harding was an accidental president, a fluke selected by a cabal of Senate colleagues in a smoke-filled room when the 1920 Chicago convention deadlocked” (p. 52).

The 1920 elections boiled down to Harding and Coolidge versus Cox and FDR with the major issues being the League of Nations, the return to ‘normalcy’ and ethnic issues. Harding won in a landslide victory for the Republicans. “Few men have entered the presidency with less baggage than Harding. He had made no deals and owed no one any favors or patronage, particularly in the U.S. Senate” (p. 79). After the election, Harding took an extended vacation golfing, fishing and playing poker in Texas and then cruising to Panama with his wife.

Unfortunately, Harding would almost immediately need to deal with the post-war woes of the American economy. “The nation’s economy in the aftermath of the war was not good. It was experiencing deflation, credit was tight and domestic markets were glutted with heavy inventories, accompanied by a sharp drop in foreign trade” (p. 84). He also needed to put together a stellar cabinet to prop him up politically. “It was a carefully crafted, well-built cabinet, composed of distinguished, self-made men of independent public standing. It was a cabinet with a future president (Hoover), a future chief justice (Hughes), and a future felon (Fall)” (p. 93).

After Wilson’s extended and debilitating illness, the country was in a shambles. Harding turned his attention to tax reform, agricultural issues, and instituting an emergency tariff. Immigration was restricted with the Per Centum Act and Harding, due to financial issues in the government, created the Bureau of the Budget in the Treasury department. There were a myriad of labor problems; there were coal and railroad strikes and Harding helped end steel’s 12-hour workday. In 1921, Harding participated in a post-war disarmament conference in an effort to make the world a safer place.

Harding was slowly wearing himself out with the problems confronting the executive branch and in 1923, he contracted the flu. Recovering from this illness, Harding then had to face a veritable slew of scandals that would rock his presidency and tarnish his reputation for future generations. There was the scandal of the Veterans Bureau (where hospital supplies were being sold in the private sector for profit), the Ohio Gang scandal (friends and associates of Harding who sold bootleg liquor and partook in other illegal activities) and finally the Teapot Dome scandal (where the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, leased national oil reserves to private investors).

Warren Harding died on August 2, 1923 of an apoplectic stroke while visiting San Francisco

#28 Woodrow Wilson Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Woodrow Wilson
1. Wilson had dyslexia and did not learn to read until 10 years of age. “A later generation of pediatricians and educators likely would have diagnosed dyslexia, but in Tommy’s time the boy just seemed slow…He perceived letters and words as possessing a mysterious power, a power not easily captured and the more potent for its elusiveness and mystery. When he finally did decode the alphabet and enter the priesthood of the literate, he felt an exhilaration that stayed with him his whole life” (p. 3).
2. Wilson was the author of several books. He wrote Congressional Government (1885), The State (1889), and History of the American People (1902).
3. The election of 1912 was the first national election that used state primaries to affect election results. “The election of 1912 was the first in which party primaries played on important role” (p. 19).
4. Wilson was the first president to read the State of the Union address personally to the Senate. Previous presidents had simply written this address and had it sent over to Congress where an orator would read it aloud. When asked about this change in tradition, Wilson said “I think that this is the only dignified way for the President to address the houses on the opening of a session, instead of sending the thing up by messenger and letting the clerk read it perfunctorily in the familiar clerk’s tone of voice” (p. 29-30).
5. The Congress during Wilson’s first term, established loads of progressive legislation. “The latter had been busy delivering legislation progressives had sought for some time: banishing most child labor, mandating an eight-hour day for railroad workers, establishing an inheritance tax” (p. 71).
6. Wilson barely won the 1916 election—barely. In fact, he went to bed the night of the elections thinking that Charles Evans Hughes had already won. “He went to bed behind in the balloting and woke up to read papers proclaiming Hughes the next president. But late returns from the West eroded Hughes’ lead, and in the following days Wilson nosed in front. He finally won by a margin of 23 electoral votes and not quite 700,000 popular votes” (p. 72).
7. When Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference, he was doing something that no other American president had done before. Traditionally heads of state were not involved in treaty-making. “But again Wilson overruled the naysayers. He wasn’t simply a head of state; he was also a head of government, and in this regard quite the equivalent of Clemenceau and Lloyd George. Moreover, supremely confident of his eloquence, he knew that no one—not Lansing, not House—could speak as forcefully as he for the League of Nations, the linchpin, as he saw it, of any satisfactory settlement” (p. 103).
8. In the same vein, when Wilson attended the peace conference, he was the first president to travel away from the United States for such a long length of time, December through February. “The conference wasn’t over, and he [Wilson] made clear he would be back. But no American president had ever been gone from the United States so long, and with Republicans newly in control of Congress, Wilson felt obliged to return to Washington to remind them that the Democrats still ran the executive branch” (p. 107).
9. In another break with tradition, Wilson personally carried the Treaty of Versailles over to Congress. “On July 10 Wilson personally delivered the treaty to the Senate (breaking another long-standing tradition)” (p. 118).
10. During Wilson’s presidency, the 18th (Prohibition) and 19th (Women could vote) amendments were passed.

Woodrow Wilson was, I thought, rather an odd guy. His view of the presidency and the way that he handled presidential affairs spoke of the fact that he was first and foremost a scholar. I thought it was interesting that the failure of the Treaty of Versailles in the United States was a direct result of Wilson’s poor decision-making.

#28 Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

I am a big fan of World War I and that means that I was quite interested in finally reading about Woodrow Wilson. Back in the day (i.e. in high school), I wrote a short story about the beginning of WWI for English class and I became very familiar with David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Vittorio Orlando. Isn’t it impressive that I still recall these names? I mean it’s been several thousand years since I was in high school, people. They were the Big Four, if you know what I mean, with Wilson rounding out the quartet. If I can find this story then I’ll upload it as an attachment for you all to read. I’m sure it’s quite wonderful 

Back to Wilson. As is my usual custom, I went searching for an appropriate book. Since Wilson was a two-termer and a rather big shot on the world stage, I thought that a bigger book was warranted. However, that’s when I discovered that H.W. Brands wrote the American Presidents Series version of Woodrow Wilson’s biography. H.W. Brands!?! I was excited and without hesitation, immediately checked that book out of the library. The reason, you ask? H.W. Brands was the author of that fabulous book on Andrew Jackson that I read. I know that I should have chosen a different author to widen my range but this was too awesome a coincidence and I couldn’t resist. Thus I read Woodrow Wilson: The American Presidents Series by H.W. Brands (New York: Times Books, 2003).

The interesting thing about Woodrow Wilson was that he was a first generation American due to the fact that his mother had recently immigrated to the United States from England. Woodrow’s father was a minister from Ohio but he was also descended from Scotch-Irish immigrants. His father moved to Staunton, VA where he married and soon they had their first son, Thomas Woodrow, on December 28, 1856. Afterwards, the Wilsons moved to Augusta, GA because of Mr. Wilson’s job where he fought for the Confederate States of America in the Civil War. In 1870, the family then moved to Columbia, SC where Mr. Wilson became a Professor of Pastoral Theology in conjunction with his ministerial duties.

In the meanwhile, young Woodrow was tutored by local professors and at age 17, he left home and went to Davidson College in North Carolina. While he was in college, his family moved up to Wilmington, NC and due to lack of finances (pastors aren’t known to make a lot of money), Woodrow dropped out of school after only one year. Several years later, however, Woodrow was accepted by Princeton where he arrived in September 1875. He seemed to do rather well there; he enjoyed public speaking and he became the editor of the Princetonian. In 1876, Woodrow was involved for the first time in politics when he electioneered for Tilden. He eventually graduated in 1879.

Woodrow was admitted to the University of Virginia for law studies but he found that he really disliked law. Wilson wrote, “I wish now to record the confession that I am most terribly bored by the noble study of Law sometimes…But when one has nothing but Law, served in all its dryness, set before him from one week’s end to another, for month after month and for quarter after quarter, he tires of this uniformity of diet. This excellent thing, the Law, gets as monotonous as that other immortal article of food, Hash, when served with such endless frequency” (p. 9). He disliked law so much that he dropped out of school with only one semester left before graduating.

In this age, men did not need a degree to practice law. Thus Wilson was able to practice law after he moved down to Atlanta but he disliked it as much as he ever did and eventually decided to return to school. In 1883, he enrolled in a new school in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, where he studied politics and where proceeded to publish his landmark work called Congressional Government. Soon after, in 1885, he left to teach at Bryn Mawr, a prestigious school for girls. In this same year, he met and married Ellen Axson and she would die several years later of kidney disease in 1914. After a while, he moved on and became a professor at Wesleyan College. By 1890, he had been installed back at Princeton where his classes were so well-liked that his popularity led him all the way to the presidency of that college.

Wilson, though, had health problems starting at this time. In 1896, he suffered from a minor stroke due to high blood pressure. Ten years later he had another stroke which gave him hypertension which burst a blood vessel in his eye, blinding him for several months. His health continued to plague him over the years.

In spite of his popularity with the students, Wilson’s tenure as president of Princeton made him many enemies. It became increasingly evident that Wilson was quite the autocrat and after a prolonged contretemps with the president of Princeton’s graduate school, Wilson found it expedient to resign. It was around this time that several politicians sought Wilson’s permission to enter his name in the Democratic nomination for governor of New Jersey. Even though he was a relative newcomer to New Jersey politics (or politics in general), the heavy Democratic backers (and his first book) did such a good job of promoting him that he won handily. Now Wilson had a national stage in which to propound his progressive views.

In fact, Wilson was riding a progressive, Democratic wave of popularity that was enhanced by the public’s growing discontent under Taft and the Republicans. In order to fully capture this growing esteem, Wilson allowed his name to be forwarded at the 1912 Democratic Nominating Convention where he received the nomination with the forty-sixth ballot. He then had to prove himself against the Republican candidate, President Taft, and the Progressive candidate, former president Theodore Roosevelt. “The general campaign of 1912 was one of the great contests of American political history” (p. 20). Wilson knew that he had nothing to fear from Taft so he spent most of his orations against Roosevelt and vice versa. Even though Roosevelt was a political heavy-hitter, Wilson carried the day and won the election with a good-sized majority.


Upon entering into office, Wilson immediately began to put his progressive policies into operation. He began with the problem of tax restructuring. The national government up to this point had gotten most of its income from various tariffs and other taxes however Wilson wanted to institute an income tax to bolster governmental funds. He began by radically lowering tariffs and then basing his argument on the newly instituted Sixteenth Amendment, he commenced the federal income tax. He then went to work on the trust problems by passing the Federal Reserve Act and the Federal Trade Commission, primarily to deal with antitrust law.

In 1913, the United States went into a slight recession while problems in Mexico were heating up. Mexico was in revolt as Huerta tried to consolidate power in Mexico City. Wilson detested Huerta and mistakenly, sent in US troops to create order out of chaos. Things increasingly got out of control as Carranza ousted Huerta, giving Pancho Villa permission to take the war into New Mexico.

In other foreign policy news, 1914 witnessed the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the subsequent commencement of World War I. Wilson, initially, declared strict neutrality. “I can only say that the United States has never attempted to interfere in European affairs” (p. 51). The problem was that strict neutrality was just not an option with the war raging out of control. In 1915 German U boat attacks increased leading to American lives being lost, especially with the sinking of the Lusitania. Although international events were playing havoc with American neutrality, Wilson took time to marry his second wife, Widow Edith Bolling Galt in December 1915. He had been devastated and depressed when Ellen died and his new marriage, although pretty soon thereafter, was generally looked upon as a good thing.

1916 was an election year so Wilson, with renewed vigor, attacked the Republican candidate, Supreme Court Justice, Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson still won the election with the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War” but by a relatively small margin compared to 1912. Unfortunately the Germans were not on the same page as Wilson. In 1917, they began unrestricted submarine warfare while the Zimmerman telegram scared the American populace with the German promise of war. By April, only months after releasing the Zimmerman telegram, Wilson sent a declaration of war to Congress which was instanteously accepted.

As the United States mobilized for war, Wilson also passed the Sedition Acts of 1918, the Espionage Act and even a military draft. Troops (or doughboys) were sent overseas, aiding the Allies, while some troops were sent to Russia to keep the Russian Revolution under control. Regrettably, the influx of American troops into Russia was not a good idea in the long run. “They accomplished nothing good and left a legacy of distrust among the Russians, who never forgot—or allowed the West to forget—that the capitalists had tried to smother the socialist revolution in the cradle” (p. 93).

With American help, the war ground to a close with a formal armistice beginning on November 11, 1918. Of course, the Allies won. Wilson, as a leader of the Allies, had a definite stake in the outcome of the war due to his insistence in his Fourteen Points. These Fourteen Points were his brainchild and they were a step-by-step approach for what the peace treaty should contain. Included in the Fourteen Points was Wilson’s most brilliant idea, the League of Nations. To make sure that the peace conference took these ideas into consideration Wilson went to Paris himself, even though this was almost politically verboten. Wilson fought hard for inclusion of the League in the treaty, literally wearing himself out in pursuit of this cause. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1918 with a happy Wilson because of an incorporated League of Nations.

The unfortunate fact however was that Wilson, in his fervid drive to uphold the importance of the League, alienated many Americans back home. The Republicans had reclaimed Congress in the last election and while Wilson proudly brought the Treaty back to the US, the Congress became determined to vote against it. Wilson tirelessly promoted the Treaty and he took off immediately for a tour of the US. “The stress of the tour on Wilson was very great; the president spoke for hours a day, for weeks on end” (p. 122).

He would have kept on for several months more except that he now, in April 1919, suffered a severe stroke. This stroke was much more dangerous than the others and it so severely debilitated him to the point that the tour was cancelled and he was virtually a prisoner in the White House. For over seventeen months, Wilson’s wife kept his health a secret from the nation and conducted business in his name. “Behind the curtain took place a unique and astonishing chapter in the history of the American presidency. For seventeen months Edith, Grayson, and Tumulty kept the true state of Wilson’s condition secret from the American people, and during most of this period Edith served as sole conduit between the president and the rest of the world” (p. 126). It is not known the extent of Edith’s influence on policy at that time.

In the end, the Treaty of Versailles was not ratified in the Senate. Part of the problem was Wilson himself due to the fact that he was inflexible over changing any part of it. “It was a tragic end to a presidency that had started with such promise. Senate Democrats, hoping to salvage something from the ruins, broke with Wilson on a second treaty vote and accepted Lodge’s reservations; but even their backing failed to put the ratifiers past the requisite two-thirds mark. As it involved the United States, the treaty died, and with it Wilson’s dream of American leadership in the new world beyond the war” (p. 130).

In the final year of Wilson’s presidency, things were not good. There were race riots and ethnic issues plaguing the nation. Wilson left the White House a defeated, sickly man as he retired to a house in Washington DC with Edith and just a few years later, on February 3, 1924, he died of stomach failure.

#27 William Taft Part 2

Cool Stuff about William Howard Taft
1. It was during his years in the White House that Taft hit his maximum weight of 355 lbs. Anderson doesn’t mention the fact that Taft got stuck in his bathtub (so that may be an urban legend) but she does note that during the renovations in the White House, the bathtubs were all enlarged (see picture!)
2. I thought this was an interesting incident—one of those coincidences of history if you will—because General MacArthur’s (of Korean War fame) father, Arthur MacArthur was the military commander of the Philippines. Just like his son, who would get into it with Truman, MacArthur Senior got into it with Taft. “He [MacArthur] held military charge of the Islands, which he was reluctant to relinquish, and Taft immediately encouraged a struggle between the civil authority and the army” (p. 70). Just remember, people, that we have another MacArthur coming up during the Truman bio. Exciting!
3. Even though the Supreme Court was Taft’s ultimate ambition, he actually turned down the position two times (October 1902 and January 1903) before he became president.
4. We can thank Mrs. Nellie Taft for the abundance of cherry trees that line the streets of Washington DC. “When the mayor of Tokyo heard that she planned to purchase some of these beautifully flowering trees, he decided to make a gift of them to the United States. Consequently, in December 1909, three railroad cars, loaded with two thousand Japanese cherry trees and accompanied by a special agent, were on their way to Washington from the West Coast. As millions of visitors to Washington have seen each spring, they were successfully planted around the tidal basin of the Capitol. The following spring the Tafts rode along the Potomac Drive Way to view the trees, all of which were covered with delicate pink flowers, causing Mrs. Taft to clap her hands in delight” (p. 155-56).
5. Taft was the first president to receive the then-startling salary of $100,000.
6. It was during Taft’s presidency that that the Department of Labor and Commerce split into two separate cabinet positions: the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Commerce.
7. Arizona and New Mexico were admitted to statehood under the Taft administration.
8. We can also thank Taft for legalizing the income tax, along with the 17th amendment, which legitimized the direct election of senators. “…the Sixteenth Amendment (Income Tax) was passed; and the Seventeenth Amendment enacting a reform long desired by Populists and progressive Republicans, the direct election of senators, was finally adopted” (p. 199).
9. Taft was the very first president to ever actively campaign in a primary election. “Reporting that Taft would be the first president ever to stump in a primary, the New York Times, which strongly opposed Roosevelt, happily noted that Taft’s underdog position and the ‘radical’ pronouncements of Roosevelt had finally activated the president” (p. 228).
10. Mrs. Taft was quite the innovative lady and she liked to open figurative doors for the women of Washington DC. For instance, she was the first First Lady to ever attend a nominating convention for the opposite political party. “Mrs. Taft was so concerned about the outcome that she broke all precedent by attending the [Democratic] convention” (p. 241).
11. Nellie also became an author, a distinction that most First Ladies did not have. “New Haven offered a lively assortment of people and cultural events, and for the first few years she was busily, though guardedly, completing her memoirs, Recollections of Full Years, which was published in 1914” (p. 256).
12. The Tafts were the first presidential couple to be buried at Arlington Cemetery.
13. The Taft children—Robert, Helen, and Charles—also ended up doing some interesting things as well. Robert became a long-time Senator and even was considered for president at that several Republican nominating conventions. Charles became a lawyer and was an active reformer. Helen seemed to be a professional student, garnering a PhD and also a law degree, while authoring several books, and speaking out for reform.

I mentioned in the beginning that I thought this biography a trifle boring. The reason for that hasty statement was due to the fact that I definitely got a PhD-dissertation-vibe from the pages of this book. I’m not really sure how to explain the PhD vibe to you but basically, it has to do with word usage, esoteric topics, and a sort of dry delivery that are indicative of dissertations. No offence to those worthy academic benchmarks, of course.

Another dislike I had with this work was with Anderson’s rampant speculation with which she surrounds the facts. I was chillingly reminded of the John Wilkes Booth book when that author went off for pages and pages about imaginary thoughts and conversations. Ugh! This is history, people, and not if you’re not writing historical fiction, speculations about your topic really do not apply here. Anderson had a bad habit of hypothesizing on various motives and feelings connected with the Taft family. I find that aspect extremely frustrating in a good biography.

In general, I just wasn’t a fan of the layout of this book. Anderson uses a lot of what I call “psycho-babble” during her prognostications on Taft’s life. Here is a good example of what I mean:
The parent who constantly directs and supervises his child with endless reminders and demands often ends with a child who has learned to rely excessively on just this sort of external direction. Children require a certain freedom to pursue their own interests and develop a personal motivating force, and that part of their development is retarded by too much parental coerciveness. Demanding perfection from the child, such parents usually withhold approval or full acceptance until superior achievement is forthcoming. Children usually respond to demanding parents by striving to meet their standards and consequently develop and overconcern for accomplishment. In addition, they learn always to demand more of themselves than most people, and, also, to become dissatisfied with their achievement. William Howard Taft strove to be the ‘model schoolboy’ that his parents desired, but at the same time he developed the life-long habit of dissatisfaction with himself and his accomplishments, hence the tendency to belittle his own abilities. Since he felt he could not drive himself enough, he sought someone to require him to ‘do better and be better,’ as he himself once put it.

A second common reaction to demanding parents is in opposition to the first, that is, the child sporadically tries to assert his independence as an individual in whatever ways he can, often by stubbornly resisting being pushed. These ways usually involve a kind of passive resistance to constant parental coercion—such as dawdling, daydreaming, and procrastinating. These tactics were, of course, precisely what young Taft adopted, causing his parents to wonder anxiously if he was a lazy boy. Because procrastination is not active resistance to parental demands, the risk of the child’s losing his parents’ love and approval is minimal, since he feels he can, and usually does, make up his losses before they become irretrievable.

The pattern which develops from this kind of parent-child relationship—labeled the ‘command-resistance’ cycle by Dr. Hugh Missildine—is continued into adult life. People tend to recreate within themselves the same sort of emotional and psychological atmosphere in which they were raised. They simply feel at home in it. Adults are, in a way, ‘parents to themselves’; once they leave home, they internalize the parental attitudes they learned as children. Recreation of this ‘emotional atmosphere’ includes both the pleasant and the painful attitudes that characterized their childhood relationships at home. In addition, adults often invite their spouses to treat them much as their parents hasd, continuing to seek their approval in the same way they once sought it from their parents. This is precisely what William Howard Taft did upon marrying Nellie Herron” (p. 46-7).

Did you guys get that!?! Yes, it was just this impossible to consume the first time I read it.

For the most part, I merely felt sorry for William Taft because in today’s vernacular, he was “whipped.” First, he had an independent and domineering mother and then he goes from that to an independent and domineering wife (see above). But Taft was such a sweet, easygoing dude that this was probably the best thing for him. After all, I can probably safely say that he never would have been President of the Untied States had it not been for Nellie’s influence on his life. Actually, after reading about 27 presidents, I had yet come up against such an interesting phenomenon—a gentleman that sincerely did not want to be president of the United States. Huh.