Woodrow Wilson

V

Domestic Policies

During his first term as president, Wilson, acting on his belief in strong executive leadership, pushed through major domestic programmes. In 1913 and 1914 he carried out his plan for the New Freedom with the Underwood Tariff Act, which lowered duties for the first time in 40 years; the Federal Reserve Act, which set up a new system to back finance and banking; the Clayton Antitrust Act, which strengthened earlier laws limiting the power of large corporations; and the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission. In 1916 Wilson secured federal loans and marketing aid for farmers, an 8-hour day for railway workers, and a law prohibiting child labour (later struck down by the US Supreme Court). His liberalism was epitomized by his appointing to the Supreme Court the noted reform lawyer Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish member of that body. Wilson's domestic record drew strong farmer, labour, and reform support in 1916 in his re-election over the Republican challenger, Charles Evans Hughes. He won by a narrow margin in the electoral college but had a popular majority.

VI

Pre-war Foreign Policy

Foreign affairs demanded Wilson's attention early in his administration, when the Mexican revolution became a civil war in 1913. Wilson's efforts to influence it led to the US occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and an expedition against the Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco (Pancho) Villa in 1916. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 coincided with the death of Ellen Wilson, a heavy blow that was lightened when Wilson was married again in November 1915, to Edith Bolling Galt, a Washington widow. The war was a continual problem for the United States, as the British blockade interrupted trade and German submarines threatened ships and lives. The sinking of the British liner Lusitania in May 1915, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, created a crisis during which Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned rather than risk war, while critics such as Theodore Roosevelt denounced Wilson for not being tougher. Wilson eventually convinced the Germans to moderate submarine warfare in April 1916, and tensions relaxed for a time. Meanwhile, he attempted to end the war, first through secret mediation by his confidant, Colonel Edward M. House, and then at the end of 1916 with a public appeal for peace terms, and finally with his own call in January 1917 for “peace without victory”. Despite Wilson's warnings, Germany resumed submarine attacks in February. After agonizing and grasping for alternatives, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on April 2. The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917.

VII

World War I: The War Effort

Wilson mounted the most efficient and corruption-free American war effort up to that time. A draft was instituted and functioned smoothly, inducting nearly 3 million of the 5 million men who served in the armed forces. Large numbers of American troops commanded by General John J. Pershing went into combat in France during the summer of 1918, in time to join the counter-offensive that finished the war that autumn. On the home front, new forms of government-directed economic organization were introduced under the War Industries Board, headed by Bernard Baruch, while several million dollars were raised through Liberty loan bond drives. The Committee on Public Information used advertising and public relations techniques to arouse popular fervour for the war effort, but espionage and sedition laws also led to widespread curtailment of civil liberties, including the imprisonment of the Socialist party leader and war critic Eugene V. Debs.

VIII

War Aims and the Peace

Wilson diplomatically worked to liberalize Allied war aims, and in January 1918 he outlined his peace programme in the Fourteen Points, which called for national self-determination, an end to colonialism, and a League of Nations to maintain peace. The Fourteen Points not only raised the hopes of liberals around the world but also helped shorten the war by furnishing the conditions under which Germany sued for the armistice that ended the fighting in November 1918.

At the war's end Wilson journeyed to Europe, first for a triumphal tour of the Allied capitals and then for six months of gruelling negotiations for a peace settlement in Paris that led to the The Treaty of Versailles. Wilson was the dominant figure of the peace conference, but he had to agree to imposing harsher terms than he would have liked on Germany in order to get the Allies to cooperate in establishing the League of Nations, which he regarded as indispensable to world peace.

IX

Rejection of the Peace Treaty

The worst defeat and disappointment of his life awaited Wilson when he returned home in the middle of 1919. Opposition had already gathered against the peace treaty, both from those who feared that joining the League of Nations would plunge the United States into future wars and from those who opposed restrictions on US independence and military action. Republican senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, threatened either to defeat the treaty by denying the two-thirds vote necessary for ratification or to attach stringent limits on participation in the league. Wilson tried to sway public opinion to his side with a cross-country speaking tour, but his health, badly strained by the war and the peace negotiations, collapsed, and he could not finish the tour. In October 1919 he suffered a severe stroke that nearly killed him and left him partly paralysed. For three months, his wife and his doctors effectively functioned as president. Although Wilson later recovered sufficiently to perform official duties, he never regained his previous leadership, and he remained an invalid for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, in November 1919 and March 1920, the peace treaty twice failed to win Senate approval, as Wilson and his opponents both refused to compromise. The United States never joined the League of Nations.

Wilson left the White House in March 1921, a broken man. In the 1920 election a landslide victory was won by the conservative Republican candidate, Warren G. Harding, who called for a return to “normalcy” and a repudiation of virtually all Wilson's domestic and foreign politics. Wilson lived almost three years longer, at one time attempting to practise law but not fit enough for any active work. He died in Washington, D.C., on February 3, 1924.