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.
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