The Pope and the President

With Benedict XVI in the US this week, it brings to mind the many times US presidents have meet with the Roman Catholic Popes. Last year, President Bush also met with the Pope in Italy (he also attended John Paul II’s funeral – he’d meet with John Paul II two times). The San Luis Obispo also has a pictorial show of past presidential meetings. The Seattle Times has a list of all 25 meetings.

I thought I’d talk specifically about the first meeting – Woodrow Wilson and Benedict XV (made sense to me since we have Benedict XVI here…I liked the continuity). Benedict XV actually tried to bring World War I to an early end in 1917 by mediating between the warring factions:
In the spring of 1917, Pope Benedict XV called on the warring governments to make a peace of mutual forgiveness and forbearance. As a starting point, the Pontiff proposed the restoration of Belgium, disarmament, arbitration machinery to prevent future wars, and freedom of the seas for all nations.

To the Americans, the timing of the Pope's message seemed almost devilishly unpropitious. In Stockholm, international socialists had convened a peace conference to appeal over the heads of the warring rulers to the workers of the world. In Petrograd, the Bolshevik wing of the Russian revolution had already called for peace on the basis of no annexations and self determination for all peoples, and bullied the so called Provisional Government of Russia into going along with them.

The Germans and the Austro-Hungarians promptly accepted the Pope's proposal, although Berlin avoided specific commitments. The provisional Russian government also welcomed the papal mediation. The leaders of France and Italy, with largely Catholic, extremely war weary populations, were transfixed with alarm. They wanted a fight to the finish but they hesitated to take issue with the Pope. The English, even more determined to go for what Prime Minister Lloyd George called "a knockout blow," decided to let Wilson answer for all of them.

At first the president was inclined to say nothing. He seemed angry at the Pope's intrusion into the war. However, as the impact of the pontiff's appeal grew larger, Wilson decided he had to reply. The Pope was saying many of the same things Wilson had said before he opted for war. Now, as British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice wryly pointed out, the president was doing "his utmost to kindle a warlike spirit throughout [the] states and to combat pacifists." No wonder the pope's appeal gave him indigestion.

Colonel House strongly seconded this presidential decision -- and warned Wilson not to dismiss the Pope's proposals out of hand in his reply. The new Russian ambassador in Washington had informed House that alarming splits were appearing in the revolutionary government, with the call for immediate peace one of the chief issues. A dismissal could lead to the overthrow of Russia's moderate leader, Alexander Kerensky.

House also revealed that the Pope's proposal had evoked a sympathetic response in him. The colonel wondered if it would be a good thing in the long run if "Germany was beaten to her knees." That might leave a vacuum in central Europe which the Russians would be eager to fill. Before the declaration of war, Wilson had agreed with this balance of power viewpoint. It was the idea behind his appeal for a peace without victory.

Later during his tour of Europe, Wilson stopped at the Vatican to officially visit Benedict XV. Benedict gave Wilson a mosiac of St. Peter that hangs in the Woodrow Wilson House (so you can go see it in DC if you want or check it out here in the drawing room picture).

Poll: Which 20th century American President was the most responsible for starting a war?

The poll has closed for the question, "Which 20th century American President was the most responsible for starting a war?" Thanks to all who participated by voting.

George H.W. Bush was the leading vote getter with 41% for the Persian Gulf War. President Kennedy was second with 29% for the Vietnam War. President Clinton was third with 12% for the Kosovo War. Truman polled 9% for the Korean War and Wilson got 6% for World War One.

I could only place five Presidents on the poll. As such, I left FDR off. I hardly think he started World War Two so I think this was a good choice. I am going to get off the war theme and try a different sort of poll question next.

Poll: Which president was least loyal to his party or campaign promises after being elected?

The poll has closed for the question, "Which president was least loyal to his party or campaign promises after being elected?" Thanks to all who participated by voting.

The current President Bush was the winner with 39%. Bill Clinton was a close second with 30%. President Wilson was third with 14%. Thomas Jefferson and FDR were fourth and fifth with 8% and 7%. Thanks to Inner Prop for the poll suggestion.

These polls are a popular feature at this blog. However, it is also a pain to think up a new question every week. Starting with the new poll, I am going to let each one run fourteen days instead of seven. As always, feel free to post a comment if you have a suggestion for a poll.

Happy New Year's!

Hope everyone has a happy and safe 2008! For something related, read this 1913 NYT article for President Wilson's plans to call off New Year's reception for 1914.

Edith Wilson: The Secret President

Edith Wilson: The Secret President. This site offers speculation as to how much influence Edith Wilson had in running the United States during her husband's disability from a stroke. It is short and easy to read. It also gives a brief summary of Edith's life.

Was Edith Wilson the de facto President of the United States of America for a brief time? The evidence suggest the possibility as real.

From the site:

On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed. Edith suggested to the doctors that her husband resign from office, but they told her that doing so might kill him. They advised her, however, that he must not be burdened by government problems. Edith felt she was the only person who knew the President’s mind and could act as he would wish.

For the next six weeks, she became the power behind the presidency, although she claimed, “I, myself, never made a single decision regarding the disposition5 of public affairs. The only decision that was mine was what was important and what was not.”

Government officials and the public were never told how ill the President was. Cabinet members, members of Congress, and ambassadors who wished to speak to the President had to consult Edith first. Whenever possible, she convinced an official to solve a problem within his own department. Somehow she always found a clever way to preserve the President’s secret.

Speculation about the President’s illness and questions about who was running the country swept the nation. Wilson’s opponents in Congress and the press claimed the United States was a “petticoat government” run by an “acting ruler.”

Wilson 1923 Armistice Day Speech

Happy Armistice Day! World War One ended on this date in 1918. It is now called Veteran's Day in the USA.

On Saturday, November 10, 1923, President Wilson gave his last national address. He sounded weak and many listeners were shocked at how frail Wilson sounded. Click here to hear part of his speech.

Here is the text of the speech:

The anniversary of Armistice Day should stir us to great exaltation of spirit because of the proud recollection that it was our day, a day above those early days of that never-to-be-forgotten November which lifted the world to the high levels of vision and achievement upon which the great war for democracy and right was fought and won; although the stimulating memories of that happy time of triumph are forever marred and embittered for us by the shameful fact that when the victory was won-won, be it remembered-chiefly by the indomitable spirit and ungrudging sacrifices of our incomparable soldiers-we turned our backs upon our associates and refused to bear any responsible part in the administration of peace, or the firm and permanent establishment of the results of the war-won at so terrible a cost of life and treasure-and withdrew into a sullen and selfish isolation which is deeply ignoble because manifestly cowardly and dishonorable.

This must always be a source of deep mortification to us and we shall inevitably be forced by the moral obligations of freedom and honor to retrieve that fatal error and assume once more the role of courage, self-respect and helpfulness which every true American must wish to regard as our natural part in the affairs of the world.

That we should have thus done a great wrong to civilization at one of the most critical turning points in the history of the world is the more to be deplored because every anxious year that has followed has made the exceeding need for such services as we might have rendered more and more evident and more and more pressing, as demoralizing circumstances which we might have controlled have gone from bad to worse.

And now, as if to furnish a sort of sinister climax, France and Italy between them have made waste paper of the Treaty of Versailles and the whole field of international relationship is in perilous confusion. The affairs of the world can be set straight only by the firmest and most determined exhibition of the will to lead and make the right prevail.

Happily, the present situation in the world of affairs affords us the opportunity to retrieve the past and to render mankind the inestimable service of proving that there is at least one great and powerful nation which can turn away from programs of self-interest and devote itself to practicing and establishing the highest ideals of disinterested service and the consistent maintenance of exalted standards of conscience and of right.

The only way in which we can worthily give proof of our appreciation of the high significance of Armistice Day is by resolving to put self-interest away and once more formulate and act upon the highest ideals and purposes of international policy. Thus, and only thus, can we return to the true traditions of America.

Wilson's War Message

Woodrow Wilson is know more for his actions to keep the US out of the First World War and then his efforts to create the League of Nations, than his actual leadership during the war. So as something a little different, here is Wilson's War Message to Congress:

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the 1st day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the at tempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people can not be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last, I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we can not make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the Navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation....

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs.

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted [Zimmermann] note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us -- however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship -- exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy, who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts -- for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

Mirrors of Washington

Politics in Washington have always been brutal. Every President of the United States is the worst President ever according to someone. This was true in the 1920s as well. In 1921, an anonymous book was released titled Mirrors of Washington. It skewered many of the political figures of the day including President Harding. It was later revealed that the book was written by Clinton Wallace Gilbert who was a reporter for the New York Evening Post.

A description of the book reads, "The 1920's equivalent of today's bloggers and pundits, Gilbert is opinionated, aggressive, and incisive in his analysis of the inside machinations he observed as a reporter. With its firsthand perspective, The Mirrors of Washington is not only a unique view on the politics of a fascinating era in modern American history but an unusual document of the development of American journalism in the 20th century."

Here is a description of Harding from the book, "As a legislator he had left no mark on legislation. If he had retired from Congress at the end of his term his name would have existed only in the old Congressional directories, like that of a thousand others. As a public speaker he had said nothing that anybody could remember. He had passed through a Great War and left no mark on it. He had shared in a fierce debate upon the peace that followed the war but though you can recall small persons like McCumber and Kellogg and Moses and McCormick in that discussion you do not recall Harding. To be sure he made a speech in that debate which he himself says was a great speech but no newspaper thought fit to publish it because of its quality, or felt impelled to publish it in spite of its quality because it had been made by Harding. "

Here is some commentary on President Wilson, "This debate goes on and on. Mr. Wilson is either the worst hated or the most regretted personality of the Great War. The place of no one else is worth disputing. Lloyd George is the consummate politician, limited by the meanness of his art. Clemenceau is the personification of nationality, limited by the narrowness of his view. Mr. Wilson alone had his hour of superlative greatness when the whole earth listened to him and followed him; an hour which ended with him only dimly aware of his vision and furiously conscious of pin pricks."

This is a fun book to read. Go beyond the chapter on Harding though. Some of the commentary on the other players in Washington at the time is pretty wicked.

This Day in Presidential History....

Today in 1913, the Wilson Administration certified the 17th amendment. The 17th amendment changed the election of senators to a direct popular election (before that most were appointed).

The Wilson administration actually saw THREE constitutional amendments: the 17th, 18th, and 19th. The 18th enacted prohibition and the 19th gave women the right to vote. There were also many other important legislative acts passed during Wilson's tenure:

Federal Reserve Act (1913)
The banking system was put under governmental supervision, loosening Wall Street's grip on the nation's finances. This act is considered Wilson's most significant accomplishment.

Federal Trade Commission Act (1914)
The Federal Trade Commission was charged with enforcing antitrust laws and preventing the unlawful suppression of competition.

Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)
The trusts were attacked and labor unions protected under this act. This law prohibited interlocking directorates and clearly defined unfair business practices. Labor unions were exempted from antitrust considerations. Benefiting labor further was the legalization of peaceful strikes, picketing and boycotts.

Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (1916)
The child labor act limited the work hours of children, forbade the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor, and began a new program of federal regulation in industry.

Adamson Act (1916)
This legislation established an eight-hour workday for railroad employees, and dramatically averted a potentially crippling railroad strike.

Workingmen's Compensation Act (1916)
With this act the government provided financial assistance to federal employees injured on the job.

If you go to the link above, you will find even more! History tends to remember Wilson as a wartime president - the president who sent our boys to Europe to fight in World War I. But Wilson's real strength was in domestic policy:
During his first two years as president, Wilson demonstrated his political acumen in accomplishing one of the most impressive strings of domestic legislative victories in history.

David Kennedy, a historian, wrote: "The first two years of Wilson's first term are one of the most remarkable moments in modern American politics. There's more reform agenda accomplished in that brief moment that in virtually any other two year period in the 20th century."

Wilson was a scholar (he was a professor!) and highly idealistic - look at his goals for peace in 1918 and the League of Nation. Unfortunately, the US and the rest of Europe were not ready for any of this, but we see the weight of his domestic policy even today with things like workman's comp.

1912 Presidential Ballot

This picture is from the Henry Ford Museum and is the “official ballot for presidential elector for Election District No. 2, Town of Castile…”

I find the pictures which each party fascinating! The 1912 election was one of the few times that a third party (TR and the Bull Moose Party) made a major dent in our two party system. Actually TR got a million more votes than the Republican nominee, Taft. The Henry Ford Museum writes about this election: “The presidential election of 1912 brought Americans a difficult choice between a reform Democrat, a conservative Republican, and one of the most popular presidents of the era.”

President Wilson's Other Wife

Ask many people about President Woodrow Wilson’s wife and they might tell you things like, “Oh, she’s the one that took over the White House after Wilson’s stroke.”

Yes, some historians refer to the period immedately following Wilson’s stroke in 1919 as the Petticoat Government since Edith Wilson did curtail prying eyes from viewing the stricken president. The First Lady didn’t allow any visitor or document reach the President without her approval. She managed to hold off everyone long enough for Wilson to recover somewhat. However, what we need to remember here is Edith Gault Wilson was the President’s second wife. Today I’d like to take a look at the “first” First Lady during Wilson’s presidency.

In this week’s Wordless Wednesday over at History Is Elementary, I hinted that the painting in question involved a famous artist colony, the city of Rome, and government service. The title of the featured piece is Side Porch, Griswold House, 1910 and the artist is Ellen Axson Wilson, the first wife of President Woodrow Wilson.

The first Mrs. Wilson was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1860, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Most of her life was spent in Rome, Georgia’s own version of the city of seven hills. President Wilson also grew up in Georgia, and was also the child of a minister. Your can see his childhood home here.

Mrs. Wilson studied art at the Art Students’ League in New York. The New Georgia Encyclopedia advises she created crayon portraits from photographs and sold them. She often put her art pursuits on hold to run her household, attend to her three daughters, and to be available for her husband as he progressed through academic ranks to finally become president of Princeton in 1902.

In 1905, Mrs. Wilson returned ernestly to her art when her brother, his wife, and their son drowned in a Georgia river. She created a scholarship at Berry College in memory of her brother and sold various paintings to fund it. It was during this time that Mrs. Wilson did her most serious painting. She, along with President Wilson and their daughters, began to spend their summers in Connecticut at the bording house of Francis Griswold. Many Impressionist artists such as Childe Hassam and Frank Dumond stayed with Mrs. Griswold as well, and this community of painters became known as the Old Lyme Art Colony. Today the Florence Griswold home is a museum. Many of Wilson’s paintings bear only the initials E.W. as she did not want to overshadow her husband’s career in any way, however, her works often appeared in one-woman shows, she won awards, and some of her artwork was displayed at the Chicago Art Institute.

It would appear from his correspondence that President Wilson enjoyed the trips to Old Lyme as much as his wife. In his article Woodrow Wilson, A Lighter Side Edmund T. Delaney quotes Wilson from correspondence dating back to 1909 where Wilson advises

“Lyme is one of the most stately and old fashioned of New England villages, and we shall be boarding not with New Englanders, who get on my nerves, but with a jolly irresponsible lot of artists, natives of Bohemia, who have about cleared the air of the broad free world . . . Lyme is a delightful haven in which to sleep, sleep interminably, as I love to do, when I am worn out."

Unfortunately, the trips to Connecticut stopped for the Wilsons once Woodrow Wilson was elected governor of New Jersey. He noted, “if we take a house by the sea, it must be in Old New Jersey, which would not forgive us if we went elsewhere". Thus the family opted to forgo the seashore and settled for the hills of Cornish on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River.

Once the Wilson’s reached the White House Ellen Wilson did not give up her art pursuits. She had a studio with a skylight installed in 1913. Many of her biographers quote White House staff members fondly remembering her as calm, sweet, motherly, pretty, and refined.

Mrs. Wilson pursued more than just her art as First Lady, however. She worked for the poor in an attempt to clean up the slums of Washington D.C., she organized the White House Rose Garden, and besides the regular round of official duties and dinners she also arranged for the White House wedding for not one daughter but two.

Unfortunately, Ellen Axson Wilson died seventeen months into Woodrow Wilson’s presidency from Bright’s Disease. Currently she is the only First Lady buried in Georgia. She lies next to her parents at Mrytle Hill Cemetary in Rome, Georgia.

This post was also published at History Is Elementary.

Presidential China

Presidential china is one of the ways that First Ladies have left their mark on the White House. There is now a special room at the White House (appropriately called the China Room) where pieces from each set are displayed. The plate to the left is from the Wilson set. Not every First Lady has added new china, but many have. The reason for new china every other administration or so is that the sets are used and therefore get broken, stole (yes, this is a big problem! Eleanor Roosevelt actually had some of the plates made larger so that they couldn't easily be put into purses or pockets!), and generally used heavily.

My favorite china is actually the Hayes set, which is displayed to the left. You can see that this china is very color and intricate. Theodore Davis designed these plates and the Haviland company produced them. Davis took designing the china to the next level because he made the plate itself part of his designs.

Woodrow Wilson’s Childhood Home

Thomas Woodrow “Tommy” Wilson lived in Augusta, GA for ten years. His boyhood home is now a museum. You can take a preview tour of the house on the web. Here are a few pictures from it to entice you:

The Presbyterian Manse that Tommy Wilson lived in from 1860-70.

Tommy Wilson’s room

Dining Room with the original table and chair from when the Wilsons lived here.

Foreign Policy and Woodrow Wilson

We'd Be Better Off If Our Foreign Policy Was Less Woodrow Wilson and More Colonel House by Godfrey Hodgson

This article addresses that recent US Presidents are harkening back to Wilsonian policy, so Mr. Hodgson’s feels its time to discuss Wilson and his foreign policy (and of course, we at the APB never mind that!). Hodgson defines Wilsonian policy as “the idea, that is, that it is the destiny and the duty of the United States to use its great power to spread American ideas of democracy and also the American version of capitalism throughout the world.”

Wilson’s foreign policy was heavily influenced by Colonel Edward House, as Wilson himself had little experience or knowledge of foreign policy. Hodgson sees Wilson as an idealist, while House was a realist. The article goes on to discuss this in terms of world politics:
The difference was that Wilson saw politics not as a map, with stubborn, irremovable features — rivers and mountain ranges to be crossed — but as a theorem inscribed with the luminous simplicity of his own moral purity on a sheet of blank paper. House saw political leadership as a matter of dealing with people as they were, warts and all.

Hodgins ends with this thought:
At a time when an American administration is inspired with a Wilsonian vision of a world transformed by American democracy, it is time, I believe, to reexamine the debate at the heart of the Wilson Administration’s foreign policy between Wilson himself, with his faith in the transforming power of American ideals, expressed in blazing, biblical rhetoric, and the more patient, realistic skills of Colonel House, with his nose for politics, whether in Europe or in Washington, as the art of the possible.

American Presidents and Flag Day

Today is June 14th. In the United States, that means today is Flag Day. If you are an American, please take some time to show your respect for the flag.

Several presidents have had a role in the recognition of Flag Day. Wikipedia notes, "In the United States, Flag Day (more formally, National Flag Day), is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened that day by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day; in August 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress."

In addition to Wilson, President Truman also had a role. The History Of Flag Day notes, "While Flag Day was celebrated in various communities for years after Wilson's proclamation, it was not until August 3rd, 1949, that President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day."

The President of the United States has a role in designating Flag Day every year. Title 36 of the US Code is the actual statute for Flag Day. It requires, "The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation (1) calling on United States Government officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on Flag Day; and (2) urging the people of the United States to observe Flag Day as the anniversary of the adoption on June 14, 1777, by the Continental Congress of the Stars and Stripes as the official flag of the United States."

Although the President has the option not to issue a Flag Day proclamation, I do not think that is a likely scenario for any president.

The Election of 1912

The Election of 1912 has always been intriguing to me mainly due to the effects three candidates can have and the fact that the three candidates involved were very distinct men.

Candidate number one, Woodrow Wilson, was a former Princeton president and had served as New Jersey’s governor. Wilson had catapulted to state and national political levels due to the assistance of the New Jersey political machine. He had surprised many, however, when he had announced that if elected governor he would not be controlled by any special interest groups. Under Wilson, New Jersey became a model of Progressive reform. Election laws were improved, military regularity boards were established and cities were allowed to change to commissioner forms of government.

William Howard Taft, the incumbent, had been elected in 1908 largely in part due to the support of Theodore Roosevelt. Taft had served in Roosevelt’s administration as a judge, governor of the Philippines, and as Roosevelt’s Secretary of War. The American Heritage Pictorial History of the Presidents of the United States relates the following events:

One evening in January 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt sat chatting with Secretary of War William Howard Taft and his wife, Nellie, in the second-floor White House library. The mood was relaxed. Seated comfortably in his easy chair, Roosevelt was talking about a subject he had often discussed with his guests: the future role of Taft. Roosevelt toyed with a couple of options. “At one time it looks like the presidency,” he mused, considering a role for his future lieutenant, “then again it looks like the chief justiceship.”

The Tafts knew that Roosevelt had the power to bring about either of these options. “Make it the presidency,” interrupted Nellie Taft, always ambitious about her husband’s career. Taft himself was less convinced that he would make a good chief executive. “Make it the chief justiceship,” he uttered.

In the end, Taft bowed to the wishes of his wife and his boss. Following George Washington’s example and honoring his own promise in 1904, Roosevelt decided not to seek reelection in 1908. Instead, he endorsed an experienced administrator and moderate progressive to run for president on the Republican ticket: William Howard Taft.

Taft probably should have listened to his own heart and spoke up for a position on the Supreme Court. Several days after taking the oath of office Taft wrote to Theodore Roosevelt that when the words, “Mr. President” were spoken Taft was still in the habit of looking around for Theodore Roosevelt.

Taft never quite lived up the ideal replacement for Theodore Roosevelt. Progressives soured on him rather quickly. He angered many with his position on the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act and Taft had a different take on “trust busting” that the larger than life Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt became the third candidate for the Election of 1912 and attempted to gain the Republican nomination away from Taft. When Taft was declared the nominee Theodore Roosevelt declared he was “fit as a bull moose” and a new political party was born. At this point it can be correctly predicted that Republican votes would split between the Republican nominee, Taft, and the Bull Moose Party nominee, Roosevelt. Taft was quickly jostled back to the third position as the national focus remained on Roosevelt and Wilson.

Roosevelt’s platform was called New Nationalism. The basics were a stronger national government with more powers for the executive branch to regulate trusts, legislation to protect women and children in the workforce, worker’s compensation for those injured on the job, and the formation of a Federal Trade Commission to regulate industry.

Wilson and the Democrats countered with their platform called New Freedom which mainly focused on Roosevelt’s plan for trusts. The Democrats argued that Roosevelt simply wanted to regulate monopolies while they wanted to eliminate them completely. The Federal government would have to much power if Roosevelt was allowed to have his way.

The split in the Republican Party did cause a split in the vote and predictably Wilson won the presidency. Woodrow Wilson received 435 Electoral Votes while only receiving 42% of the popular vote.

The Election of 1912 was the first time since Grover Cleveland in 1892 that a Democrat became president.

President Wilson Locks up Debs

As we listen to the media and the blogosphere complain about the alleged erosion of civil rights and constitutional violations under the current administration, it is easy to forget that past American presidents did things which would seem far worse by comparison.

FDR had thousands of Americans locked up in interment camps because of their Japanese ancestry. President Lincoln repeatedly suspended the right of habeas corpus on American soil during the Civil War. President Andrew Jackson defied the Supreme Court (an impeachable offense!) and moved the Cherokee down the trail of tears. John Adams allowed the Alien and Sedition Acts to be used to throw supporters of Thomas Jefferson in jail.

However, one 20th century case I have always found shocking is Eugene Debs. The Wilson Administration persecuted him for the act of giving an anti-war speech during World War I. Wikipedia notes it, "On June 16, 1918 Debs made an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, protesting World War I, and was arrested under the Sedition Act of 1918. He was convicted and sentenced to serve ten years in prison and disenfranchised for life."

I still find this outrageous. Even in war time, free speech of this sort should be allowed. President Harding pardoned Debs so that he did not have to serve the whole ten years. I think this case from 80+ years ago shows that constitutional protections are actually stronger today that they have been in the past. Thankfully, war protestors today do not face jail time for speaking peacefully and they can hold all the rallies and post all the blog entries they want.

Did Lincoln Have Mental Problems? Why Did Wilson Fail Us?

Did Lincoln Have Mental Problems? Why Did Wilson Fail Us?Adversities Suffered by U. S. Presidents. This is a column by Allen Cornwell which looks at some of the personal failings of American Presidents.

One of the biggest was alcoholism. Here is the part of the article which focuses on that:

A number of Presidents suffered from alcoholism, including Grant, Buchanan and Franklin Pierce (and probably others). Many Presidents enjoyed drinking and also the business side of spirit-making. George Washington was considered the largest whiskey distiller in the country at that time. He was also known to be a red wine lover, and his monthly wine bill at Mount Vernon was sometimes included more than 100 bottles a month; he entertained, of course –sometimes. Washington was known to personally put away a number of glasses at dinner, and then retire to his study with friends or alone --- and have more. It is also known that Tom Jefferson acted as Washington’s wine advisor since he considered himself an expert in the field and had even started his own winery.

Grant seemed to have a chronic problem that started early on in his military career and continued in the White House and afterward. Although his administration was corrupt, most historians agree that Grant was an honest man, and also a compassionate one, yet one must wonder if he was out of touch or just drunk. Recent historians suggest that Grant really did not have a drinking problem, but instead suffered from stress-induced migraine headaches giving the impression of a “hangover”. While this is a respectable opinion it is difficult to accept this since there are numerous eyewitness accounts of the General being intoxicated.

Franklin Pierce’s story is a sad one. He was known to be inexperienced, but ambitious, and at that time, was the youngest man to be elected President. A train accident in Washington just a month prior to his inauguration changed his administration and life dramatically. The Pierce’s eleven year-old son was crushed to death while in the company of his parents. Mrs. Pierce became a recluse for the remainder of her life, and this horrible incident totally diluted Pierce’s focus and increased his drinking problems. Pierce, like Buchanan, was a President faced with a changing world trying to deal with the issue of slavery, an issue that neither president was strong enough to confront. Pierce’s one-term administration was less than notable, and he became more increasingly out of touch with the country. He is the only sitting President, who desired a second term but was not nominated by his party.

James Buchanan stood at the threshold of the events leading up to the Civil War. There is much speculation regarding Buchanan’s drinking during those years. Some historians note that he was in control of his senses, while others doubt that he could have been. It is not clear how Buchanan’s drinking influenced his decision-making, but he was known to have been kicked out of college because of it. It is interesting to note that during his Presidency on Sunday mornings, he rode his horse over to the Jacob Bailey distillery in Washington to pick up a new 10-gallon cask of whiskey. The President loved entertaining, and he especially enjoyed the great laughs that came when he poured his friends a glass of libation with a label that said “Ole JB’s Whiskey”. Buchanan was an experienced politician and enjoyed taking positions on both sides of a sensitive issue. This approach worked well until it came to slavery, when both parties turned on him. It is interesting to speculate if Buchanan had been strong enough and certainly sober enough to lead, and had taken a position that was heartfelt and not politically motivated, how that would have affected history? One has to wonder about both Pierce and Buchanan and their places in history. Collectively these Presidents served the last eight years prior to the pot boiling over and the start of the American Civil War. What could they have constructively added to defuse the war, if anything? Why were these men so weak, and why did they falter at such a turning point in our history? Was it depression, drinking, or simply a real lack of vision as to what lay ahead?

Second Inaugural Address of Woodrow Wilson

Second Inaugural Address of Woodrow Wilson. This is the text of the speech that President Wilson delivered when he was sworn in on March 5th, 1917.

From the site:

The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place have been crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful of important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full of significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics to a broader view of the people's essential interests.

It is a record of singular variety and singular distinction. But I shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing influence as the years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is time rather to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present and the immediate future.

Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention-- matters lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current and influence.

First Inaugural Address of Woodrow Wilson

First Inaugural Address of Woodrow Wilson. This is the text of the speech that President Wilson delivered when he was sworn in as President on March 4th, 1913.

From the site:

There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be Democratic. The offices of President and Vice-President have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean? That is the question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion.

It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view. Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life.

We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance.