Tragic Events Have Made Us Citizens of The World

“It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.”

Woodrow Wilson, swearing in eighteen months before WWI

H. W. Brands is a pretty big deal when it comes to books on American History. He’s written over thirty of them. He was shortlisted twice for a Pulitzer Prize. So how is this asshole going to write an entire biography on Woodrow Wilson and not mention that he won a Nobel Peace Prize?!? Or that the League of Nations still became a thing, overcoming fervent opposition in the Senate. Or Wilson’s inarguably-racist legacy. 

In any case, I thought prior to reading this book that Wilson deserved further study. I just didn’t have 700+ pages in me for this guy. I left Brands’ biography wanting to know more; not an ideal situation with limited reading time and many, many books still to go. Woodrow Wilson is lauded as one of the near-great presidents. He saw through consequential legislation that lasts to this day. Multiple constitutional amendments were added on his watch. He guided the country onto the winning side of a world war.

Alas, the brighter the picture, the darker the negative. Wilson brought a fresh wave of Jim Crow policies and “lost cause” sympathizing to the federal bureaucracy. He somehow pulled off the charade of being a vegetable his last year and a half in office (from his various strokes) and still held onto the presidency via the smoke screen of his wife and close advisers. Even the 19th Amendment, the one that gave women the right to vote, has a darker side; many supporters of the measure assumed that rich white women would vote far more than poor blacks and minorities, neutralizing the ethnic influence.

Back to the beginning. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856. He quite literally grew up in the Confederacy. His father, a Baptist preacher, even left his home church for a stint to serve with the rebel army. Racism is taught. And our 28th President had plenty of teachers willing to share their views on racial hierarchy. (Future reading will include an in-depth examination of Wilson’s racist legacy.)

Despite this unfortunate foundation, Wilson was one of the most formally educated of the Commanders-in-Chief. A Bachelor’s Degree at Princeton was followed by a stint at the University of Virginia Law School and later a doctorate in History of Government at Johns Hopkins. (Heads up trivia nerds: Woodrow remains the only American president to earn a PhD. Also, while he was later admitted to the Georgia bar, he didn’t complete law school due to an illness that caused him to withdraw.) Wilson would put all this knowledge into action. He published several works including Congressional Government in 1885 and The State four years later. His teaching CV includes Bryn Mawr College, Wesleyan University in Connecticut and one of his alma maters, Princeton, where he taught government for more than a decade. He parleyed his classroom service in the administrative offices, becoming president of Princeton in 1902.

It was during his eight-year tenure as university president that Wilson met many major figures including JP Morgan, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington. Wilson also popped up on the radar of the Democratic Party, a group that by this time saw an electoral map saturated in Republican red and badly in need of a war horse to compete. Wilson was wooed from the halls of academia to the back rooms of politics. At the prodding of party regulars seeking to boost Woodrow’s political capital, Wilson would run for and win the governorship of New Jersey in 1910. By flipping the office blue after fifteen years of Republicans, the Democratic brass felt they had a real contender for the presidential election two years later.

As discussed in the Theodore Roosevelt article, the election of 1912 was a complete circus. With Roosevelt’s vindictive comeback bid against fellow Republican incumbent William Howard Taft fragmenting the party, Wilson swept easily into the Oval Office. I’ll give WW his due. His legislative record is impressive. He got several laws passed in his first term including banning most child labor, mandating an eight-hour workday for railroad workers and establishing an inheritance tax, all progressive ideas that had been on the table for some time but couldn’t get over the finish line. Against the cries of socialism and feet dragging by the banks, Wilson got the Federal Reserve Act passed in 1913 and created the Federal Trade Commission a year later. His term also saw through the 18th Amendment (Prohibition, booooo!) and the 19th Amendment (Women’s suffrage, yeaaaaa!).

However, when it comes to Cabinet choices, Wilson scores high on nepotism and abysmal on preparedness. Woodrow’s picks were purely to reward fealty and punish enemies. William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State, had never been out of the country. Lindley Garrison, heading the War Department, was not a veteran and had no military knowledge. Josephus Daniels at Navy was a newspaper editor who knew even less about the navy than Garrison of the army. William McAdoo at Treasury had no background in finance. But hey, they all whipped votes in key swing states and that was enough. Only three of the ten members of Wilson’s initial Cabinet would serve out their full term.

Lastly, Wilson is inextricably tied to America’s involvement (albeit reluctant) in World War I. He didn’t think foreign affairs would be a big part of his administration. Whoops! It creates a sticky wicket when William Jennings Bryan, a great pacifist who opposed war and intervention, is your Secretary of State in a nation clamoring to go to war. (Ed. note: The fever pitch was so high that during the war, such measures were taken as calling sauerkraut “liberty cabbage”, bars boycotting pretzels and schools banning the teaching of the German language. One man from Germany, living in St. Louis, was stripped, beaten, wrapped in an American flag and hanged by a mob. Several were tried for homicide but acquitted in 30 minutes by a “patriotic” jury as the defense called it a “patriotic murder.” WHAT?!?!)

The isolationist stance worked for a few years, but the combination of the dragged out European conflict, rumors of a Mexican alliance with Germany, the Russian Revolution and the constant torpedoing of American ships by German U-boats, caused the dam to break and sent the troops “Over There.” But war needs money, and entrance into the fray meant a quicker transition from tariffs to income tax. Wilson got Congress to raise income tax rates and to supplement this with an excess-profits tax and other taxes on the wealthy. Before the war, three-quarters of federal revenue was from tariffs and excise taxes. After the war, that same amount came from income and estate taxes. WWI didn’t just change the global political map, it changed the basis of the American Treasury.

And that’s where I have to stop. I’d love to discuss the legacy of racism Wilson left in his wake. I’d love to dive into those last 17 months when he was incapacitated and his wife was deciding which pieces of mail and which matters of national security were, in her opinion, to be bothered with bringing to her invalid husband. Or the fight over the League of Nations and subsequent Nobel Peace Prize. But I can’t! I have to go to the library and get another book.

Trivia

• Only US President with a PhD
• 1915 – marries Edith Bolling Galt (16 years his junior) a year after his first wife passes
  • Joined Tyler and Cleveland as only presidents to marry while in office
• Narrowly wins reelection over Charles Evans Hughes in 1916
• Placed the first Jewish Justice on the Supreme Court (Louis Brandeis)
• His near-vegetative state at the end of his presidency inspired the 25th Amendment
• Only US president buried within Washington, D.C.

Follow-up Reading

• Wilson by A. Scott Berg
• Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by August Heckscher
• The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt by John Milton Cooper