Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  33. WW speech at Harrison, Feb. 28, 1911, PWW, vol. 22.

  34. WW to MAHP, Mar. 5, 1911, PWW, vol. 22; WW, quoted in PWW, vol. 22, n. 1.

  35. Trenton Evening Times and Trenton True American, Mar. 14, 1911, PWW, vol. 22, n. 1.

  36. WW statement, Mar. 20, 1911, PWW, vol. 22; WW to MAHP, Mar. 26, 1911, PWW, vol. 22. On Tumulty’s activities, see Blum, Tumulty and the Wilson Era.

  37. On the passage of the Geran bill, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  38. On these bills, see, ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, and PWW, vol. 22, n. 4.

  39. On these measures, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, and PWW, vol. 22, n. 2.

  40. WW to MAHP, Apr. 23, 1911, PWW, vol. 22.

  41. James Nugent, quoted in PWW, vol. 23, n. 1. On the committee meeting, n. 3. For another account of Nugent’s behavior, see Kerney, Political Education.

  42. WW speeches, Sept. 19 and 21, 1911, PWW, vol. 23; Newark Evening News, Oct. 4, 1911, PWW, vol. 23.

  43. WW speeches, Oct. 5 and 7, 1911, PWW, vol. 23, 416.

  44. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, The Wilsons.

  45. Kerney, Political Education.

  46. SA, Brother Woodrow: A Memoir of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, N.J., 1993).

  47. Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson.

  7 NOMINEE

  1. On Walter Page’s activities on Wilson’s behalf, see John Milton Cooper, Jr., Walter Hines Page: The Southerner as American, 1855–1918 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1977).

  2. WW to MAHP, Mar. 26, 1911; Apr. 2, 1911, PWW, vol. 22.

  3. WJB to WW, Jan. 5, [1911], PWW, vol. 22; WW to MAHP, Mar. 12, 1911, PWW, vol. 22; EAW, quoted in James Kerney, The Political Education of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1926).

  4. WW to MAHP, Apr. 9, 1911, PWW, vol. 22.

  5. WW speech, Feb. 21, 1911, PWW, vol. 22; Archibald Butt to Clara Butt, Mar. 11, 1911, in Archibald Butt, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt (Garden City, N.Y., 1930), vol. 2; WW to MAHP, Mar. 13 [12], 1911, PWW, vol. 22.

  6. WW speech, Apr. 13, 1911, PWW, vol. 22.

  7. On Jefferson’s legacy, see Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New York, 1960), esp.

  8. WW speeches, Nov. 2, 1910; May 12, 1911, PWW, vol. 21; vol. 23.

  9. Portland Oregonian, May 19, 1911, PWW, vol. 23; WW speeches, May 25, 1911; June 2, 1911, PWW, vol. 3.

  10. Nebraska State Journal, May 27, 1911, PWW, vol. 23; WW to Walter Page, June 7, 1911, PWW, vol. 23. On the meeting in Washington, see Frank Stockbridge, interview by RSB, Nov. 2, 1927, RSBP, box 122.

  11. William McCombs to WW, Sept. 26, 1911, PWW, vol. 23. On McCombs’s role, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, The Road to the White House (Princeton, N.J., 1947).

  12. On McAdoo, see his autobiography, Crowded Years: The Reminiscences of William G. McAdoo (Boston, 1931), and a contemporary biography, Mary Synon, McAdoo: The Man and His Times, a Panorama in Democracy (Indianapolis, 1924).

  13. WW speech, Oct. 26, 1911, PWW, vol. 23; WW to MAHP, Apr. 30, 1911, PWW, vol. 22.

  14. Charlotte Observer, Dec. 7, 1911, quoted in ASL, Wilson, vol. 1; George Fred Williams, quoted in ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  15. WW statement, Dec. 5, 1911, PWW, vol. 23; EAW to Richard Heath Dabney, Feb. 12, 1912, PWW, vol. 24.

  16. WW to MAHP, PWW, vol. 23. The original letter from WW to Adrian Joline, Apr. 29, 1907, is in vol. 17.

  17. Dudley Field Malone, interview by RSB, Nov. 1, 1927, RSBP, box 111. On Daniels’s influence on Bryan, see JD, The Wilson Era, vol. 1, Years of Peace, 1910–1917 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944).

  18. Malone, interview by RSB, Nov. 1, 1927, RSBP, box 116; WW speech, Jan. 8, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; WW to MAHP, Jan. 12, 1912, PWW, vol. 24.

  19. EAW to Robert Ewing, Jan. 12, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; WW to George Harvey, Dec. 21, 1911, PWW, vol. 23; Commoner, Jan. 26, 1912, quoted in ASL, Wilson, vol. 1. On this incident, see also SA, interview by RSB, Mar. 12, 1925, RSBP, box 99, and Malone, interview by RSB, Nov. 1, 1927, RSBP, box 111.

  20. On James Beauchamp Clark, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, 401. There is no biography of Clark, and his autobiography, My Quarter Century of American Politics (New York, 1920), is singularly unreflective and uninformative, even in a genre noteworthy for those failings.

  21. On the division of support in the South, see John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1983). On the presidential candidacy of Oscar W. Underwood, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, and Evans C. Johnson, Oscar W. Underwood: A Political Biography (Baton Rouge, La., 1980).

  22. WW, quoted in ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  23. For an excellent account of these primaries, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  24. On the appeal of James Beauchamp Clark, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  25. New York World, Dec. 24, 1911; WW speeches, Jan. 12, 1912; Apr. 17, 1912; May 23, 1912, PWW, vol. 24.

  26. WW public letter, May 24, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; Newark Evening News, May 28, 1912, PWW, vol. 24. On the near encounter with Roosevelt, see William Starr Myers, “Wilson in My Diary,” in Woodrow Wilson: Some Princeton Memories, ed. William Starr Myers (Princeton, N.J., 1946). On the primary results, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  27. New York World, Apr. 25, 1912; May 28, 1912; WW to MAHP, June 9, 1912, PWW, vol. 24.

  28. On Wilson’s organization and contributors, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, 402–3.

  29. TR speech, June 17, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Hermann Hagedorn (New York, 1926), vol. 17; WW to Edith Gittings Reid, May 26, 1912, PWW, vol. 24. Of the many accounts of the 1912 Republican convention, the best is Lewis L. Gould, Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics (Lawrence, Kan., 2008).

  30. On Roosevelt’s thinking, see Cooper, Warrior and Priest.

  31. WW speech, Feb. 12, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; Kermit Roosevelt, quoted in JD, “Wilson and Bryan,” Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 5, 1925.

  32. On these ballots, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  33. WJB to WW, June 21, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; WW to WJB, June 22, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; New York Times, July 4, 1912. On these incidents, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, 442–43.

  34. WW telephone messages, June 29, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; New York Times, June 30, 1912. For Joseph Tumulty’s recollection and William McCombs’s claim, see PWW, vol. 24, n. 1.

  35. WW to MAHP, July 6, 1912, PWW, vol. 24; New York World, June 30, 1912. On the back and forth among Wilson, McCombs, and McAdoo, see McAdoo, Crowded Years, and PWW, vol. 24, n. 3.

  36. On the Wilson managers’ tactics and Sullivan’s switch, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  37. New York Times, July 3, 1912.

  38. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, The Woodrow Wilsons (New York, 1937); WW to MAHP, July 6, 1912, PWW, vol. 24.

  8 THE GREAT CAMPAIGN

  1. Soon after Wilson’s nomination, a Democratic senator told him that Robert La Follette, who nursed a grudge against Roosevelt for snatching away the insurgent Republican leadership, had said that “the real fight would be between you [Wilson] and Roosevelt in November and that Taft would not win the electoral vote of more than six states—a view very generally shared by the shrewdest of the Washington correspondents and by many well-informed members of Congress.” Luke Lea to WW, July 13, 1912, PWW, vol. 24.

  2. TR speech at Chicago, Aug. 6, 1912, in TR, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Hermann Hagedorn (New York, 1926), vol. 17, 292, 299.

  3. WW speech, Aug. 7, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  4. TR to Hiram Johnson, Oct. 27, 1911, in TR, Letters, ed. Elting E. Morison, vol. 7, The Days of Armageddon, 1900–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). On Roosevelt’s attitude toward Wilson, see also John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 160.

  5. WW to MAHP, Dec. 17, 1911, PWW, vol. 23. On the discussion of the New Nationalism, see Winthrop M. Daniels to WW, Oct. 13, 1910, PWW, vol. 21, and WW to Daniels, Oct. 17, 1910, PWW, vol. 21. On Wilson’s attitude toward Roosevelt, see Cooper, Warrior an
d Priest.

  6. On the early visits and arrangements, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, The Road to the White House (Princeton, N.J., 1947).

  7. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, The Woodrow Wilsons (New York, 1937); WW to MAHP, Aug. 25, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  8. McAdoo, The Wilsons; WJB to WW, Aug. [1]8, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  9. On Brandeis, see Alpheus T. Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life (New York, 1946), and Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (Cambridge, Mass., 1984).

  10. New York Times, Aug. 29, 1912; Louis Brandeis, interview by RSB, Mar. 3, 1929, RSBP, box 102.

  11. WW to Brandeis, [Nov. 12, 1912], PWW, vol. 25. On the meeting and Brandeis’s influence, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, and Cooper, Warrior and Priest.

  12. WW speech, Sept. 2, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  13. TR speech at Fargo, Sept. 6, 1912, Outlook, Sept. 11, 1912.

  14. Oscar King Davis, Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, 1898–1918 (Boston, 1925).

  15. WW speech, Sept. 9, 1912, PWW, vol. 25; TR speech at San Francisco, Sept. 14, 1912, in TR, Works of Roosevelt, vol. 17, 313–14.

  16. Charles Willis Thompson to Bernice M. Thompson, Oct. 6, 1912, PWW, vol. 25. On this point, see also WW, A Crossroads of Freedom: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Woodrow Wilson, ed. John Wells Davidson (New Haven, Conn., 1956).

  17. WW speeches, Sept. 17, 18, and 20, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  18. WW speeches, Sept. 23 and 25, 1912, PWW, vol. 25, 236, 250.

  19. New York Times, Sept. 27, 1912.

  20. WHT to Myron T. Herrick, June 20, 1912, quoted in Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft (New York, 1939), vol. 2; New York Times, Sept. 29, 1912.

  21. Wilson speech at Boston, Sept. 27, 1912, quoted in WW, Crossroads of Freedom, 293. See also Louis Brandeis memoranda, Sept. 30, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  22. WW speeches, Oct. 3 and 5, 1912, PWW, vol. 25; Charles Willis Thompson to Bernice M. Thompson, Oct. 6, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  23. WW speeches, Oct. 8, 9, and 11, 1912, PWW, vol. 25; WW to MAHP, PWW, vol. 25.

  24. TR speech at Chicago, Oct. 12, 1912, quoted in TR to WJB, Oct. 22, 1912, TR, Letters, vol. 7.

  25. TR speech at Milwaukee, Oct. 14, 1912, TR, Works of Roosevelt, vol. 17. For speculation on Roosevelt’s feelings about the situation, see Cooper, Warrior and Priest; 391, n. 30.

  26. McAdoo, The Wilsons.

  27. WW speeches at Wilmington, Del., Oct. 17, 18, and 19, 1912, PWW, vol. 25, 429, 458, 464–65; speech at Clarksburg, W. Va., Oct. 18, 1912, WW, Crossroads of Freedom.

  28. Crisis, [Aug 1912], quoted in David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York, 1993). On the overtures to Wilson and ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  29. WW to Alexander Walters, [Oct. 21, 1912], PWW, vol. 25.

  30. New York Times, Oct. 20, 1912.

  31. On the conflicts in New Jersey and New York and the campaign organization, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, 494–98.

  32. On the campaign’s finances, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  33. WW speeches, Oct. 28, 1912, PWW, vol. 25; WW speech, Oct. 28, 1912, WW, Crossroads of Freedom; Trenton True American, Nov. 5, 1912, evening ed., PWW, vol. 25.

  34. Dudley Field Malone, interview by RSB, Dec. 1, 1927, RSBP, box 116.

  35. New York World, Nov. 6, 1912; Malone, interview by RSB, Dec. 1, 1927, RSBP, box 116; WW speech, Nov. 6, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  36. For analyses of the 1912 vote, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1, and Cooper, Warrior and Priest, 207.

  37. On Debs’s vote, see Cooper, Warrior and Priest, n. 37.

  38. William Allen White, Woodrow Wilson: The Man, His Times, and His Task (Boston, 1924). For a comparison of the Democrats’ and the Progressives’ 1912 platforms, see TR, Letters, vol. 7, n. 3.

  39. On the early drift toward Wilson, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 1.

  40. On the contest in California and Roosevelt’s chances in a two-man race, see David Sarasohn, The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era (Jackson, Miss., 1989). The only state that Wilson campaigned in but did not carry was Pennsylvania, which, along with Vermont, was one of the most solidly Republican states in the country. The last election in which a Democrat had carried Pennsylvania was 1856, when a native son, James Buchanan, was the nominee and the Republicans were still a fledgling party. Pennsylvania would not go Democratic again until 1936.

  41. This analysis and the following paragraphs follow the interpretation I have presented in somewhat different form in Warrior and Priestff.

  42. On these later developments, see Cooper, Warrior and Priest.

  43. WW speech, Dec. 28, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  44. WW speech, Dec. 28, 1912, PWW, vol. 25. The reference was to Representative Hal Flood, a leader of the Virginia machine.

  45. Ibid..

  9 PREPARATION

  1. Edward Grant Conklin, interview by RSB, June 3, 1925, RSBP, box 104.

  2. Edward House still needs a full biography—a need that will be filled by the work of Charles Neu. The best work thus far on his earlier life is Rupert N. Richardson, Colonel Edward M. House: The Texas Years, 1858–1912 (Abilene, Tex., 1964).

  3. EMHD, entries for Nov. 8 and 16, 1912, PWW, pp. 532, 550.

  4. EMH to WW, Nov. 22, 28, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  5. Trenton Evening Times, Dec. 16, 1912, PWW, vol. 25; WW speech, Dec. 17, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  6. WJB to WW, Dec. 25, 1912, PWW, vol. 25. See also WJB and Mary Baird Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Philadelphia, 1925).

  7. WJB to WW, Dec. [22 and] 25, 1912, PWW, vol. 25. In later years, Brandeis’s protégé, Felix Frankfurter, would often quote with contempt a statement of Bryan’s: “Any man with real goodness of heart can write a good currency law.” See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 3, The Politics of Upheaval (Boston, 1960).

  8. WW speech, Jan. 11, 1913, PWW, vol. 27, 40.

  9. Carter Glass to H. Parker Willis, Dec. 29, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  10. WW speech, Jan. 28, 1913, PWW, vol. 27; New York Times, Jan. 29, 1913.

  11. On these legislative wrangles, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 2, The New Freedom (Princeton, N.J., 1956).

  12. John Dos Passos, U.S.A., pt. 2, Nineteen Nineteen (New York, 1940).

  13. Their meetings and telephone calls are recounted in EMHD entries, PWW, vol. 27. Correspondence between the two men was sparse at this time, probably because they were meeting so often. House’s letters contain some matters of substance; Wilson’s are strictly routine.

  14. The list is in EMH to WW, Jan. 9, 1913, PWW, vol. 27. See also EMHD, entry for Jan. 8, 1913.

  15. EMHD, entry for Feb. 13, 1913, PWW, vol. 27. On the machinations against Brandeis, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 2.

  16. A. Mitchell Palmer to WW, Feb. 24, 1913, PWW, vol. 27; EMHD, entry for Feb. 22, 1913, PWW, vol. 27. On Garrison’s appointment, see PWW, p. 133, n. 3.

  17. WW to JD, PWW, vol. 27; Oscar W. Underwood to WW, Jan. 13, 1913, PWW, vol. 27. On these appointments, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 2.

  18. EMHD, entry for Jan. 8, 1913, PWW, vol. 27. On these appointments, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 2.

  19. EMHD, entry for Dec. 12, 1912, PWW, vol. 25.

  20. EMHD, entry for Aug. 16, 1913, PWW, vol. 28.

  21. JD to NDB, Feb. 3, 1936, NDB Papers, box 62, LC.

  22. WW to EBG, Aug. 28, 1915, PWW, vol. 34.

  23. EMHD, entry for Jan. 8, 1913, PWW, vol. 27.

  24. EMHD, entries for Jan. 8, 1913; Feb. 23, 1913, PWW, vol. 27.

  25. Helen Woodrow Bones to Jesse Bones Brower, Feb. 12, 1913, PWW, vol. 27.

  26. On the proposed amendment and Wilson’s response, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 2, and PWW, vol. 27, n. 1.

  27. WW to A. Mitchell Palmer, Feb. 5, 1913, PWW, vol. 27.

  28. On the handling of the amendment, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 2.

  29. WHT to EAW, Jan. 3, 1913, PWW, vol. 27; WHT to WW, Jan. 6, 1913, PWW, vol. 27. See also Frances Wright Saunders, Ellen Ax
son Wilson: First Lady between Two Worlds (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985).

  30. WW to MAHP, Mar. 2, 1913, PWW, vol. 27. For descriptions of the departure, see ASL, Wilson, vol. 2, and Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson. For a recollection of the event by an eyewitness who was then a Princeton freshman, see Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Peace and Counterpeace: From Wilson to Hitler (New York, 1971).

  10 BEGINNINGS

  1. For descriptions of the inauguration, see New York World, Mar. 5, 1913; New York Times, Mar. 5, 1913.

  2. WW inaugural address, Mar. 4, 1913, PWW, vol. 27.

  3. For a description of the family’s first evening in the White House, see Frances Wright Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson: First Lady between Two Worlds (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985).

  4. See Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson, 239–42, 250–51.

  5. For Ellen’s activities and the toll on her health, see Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson.

  6. For descriptions of Wilson’s office routine and workday, see John M. Blum, Joe Tumulty and the Wilson Era (Boston, 1951), and ASL, Wilson, vol. 2, The New Freedom (Princeton, N.J., 1956).

  7. Enclosure, John Reed to JPT, June 30, 1914, PWW, vol. 30. This interview did not appear in print. The editors of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson speculate that Wilson may have refused permission to publish it because he spoke too frankly about Mexico. PWW, vol. 30, n. 2.

  8. WW statement, Mar. 22, 1913, PWW, vol. 50. For an account of the first press conference, see Robert C. Hilderbrand, Power and the People: Executive Management of Public Opinion in Foreign Affairs, 1897–1921 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981).

  9. Press conference, Mar. 19, 1914, PWW, vol. 50. No transcripts of the press conferences were made for nearly seventy years, until the editors of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson had Charles Swem’s shorthand notebooks transcribed.

  10. Richard V. Oulahan to RSB, Mar. 15, 1929, RSBP, box 112.

  11. On the cessation of the press conferences, see Hilderbrand, Power and the People.

  12. JD, The Wilson Era, vol. 1, Years of Peace, 1910–1917 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944).

  13. JDD, entry for Apr. 11, 1913, PWW, vol. 27.

  14. On the effort to introduce segregation and the appointment of African Americans, see ASL, Wilson, vol 2; Kathleen Long Wolgemuth, “Woodrow Wilson’s Appointment Policy and the Negro,” Journal of Southern History 24 (Nov. 1958), and Morton Sosna, “The South in the Saddle: Racial Politics During the Wilson Years,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 54 (1970).