Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  In just four years, Wilson had raised the standards of scholarship and more than half the $12.5 million he had proposed when he assumed office. Even more astonishing, he had completely altered Princeton’s national reputation. As the New York Evening Post put it, “He has ruined what was universally admitted to be the most agreeable and aristocratic country club in America by transforming it into an institution of learning.” In 1907—exactly 130 years after General George Washington had led his army to a decisive victory over Britain’s royal troops—Wilson commenced the second Battle of Princeton.

  On Sunday, June 9, he delivered the baccalaureate address before graduation. With club life on his mind, the Epistle to the Romans inspired him to preach “that non-conformity is not antagonism.” He urged each new graduate to become “a man who thinks for himself, a man renewed by fresh contact with the sources and originals of thoughts and inspiration.” The purpose of a college education, Wilson said throughout his academic career, was to teach young men to think as differently from their fathers as possible.

  The next day, he addressed the Board of Trustees. His message was much the same as his December report, though he tempered its tone. He praised the clubs, faintly—saying they were “not consciously doing anything to the detriment of the University.” But, he added, “in spite of their admirable spirit and of every watchful effort they have made to the contrary . . . a system of social life has grown up in the University . . . which divides classes, creates artificial groups for social purposes, and renders a wholesome university spirit impossible.” Intellectual and spiritual development, Wilson reminded his board, were “the chief and, indeed, the only legitimate aims of university life.” And residential quadrangles addressed that mission. The present system encouraged “disconnection between the life and the work of the University,” putting the life of the student and the life of the clubman in competition with one another.

  Holding the report of a committee that had studied the problem, Wilson admitted the remedy was “radical” but not out of line with the system it meant to replace. “The associations formed in the quads will be like the associations formed in the clubs,” he said, “with the elective principles left out . . . but with all the opportunities for a natural selection of chums and companions that the larger number in residence will afford.” Just as Princeton had reformed pedagogy, Wilson now urged the university to reorganize its community structure. “We are making a university,” he exhorted, “not devising a method of social pleasure.”

  For the moment, he called upon each club to vest its property in the hands of a small board of its own choice “who should be charged with administering it for the benefit of the University.” The clubs, Wilson said, had been “most honourable and useful,” but also transitional, getting Princeton through a period when no social coordination of the university existed. Wilson was so compelling that all but one of the twenty-five trustees present—including Grover Cleveland and Moses Taylor Pyne—voted in favor of his plan, despite its lack of specifics. The Princeton Alumni Weekly carried all the statements pertaining to the Quad Plan, allowing all constituencies to study the proposal over the summer.

  Alumni reacted within days. Professor and trustee Henry van Dyke of the Class of 1873 wrote of his “profound regret” that Wilson appeared to be proceeding as though his plan had been adopted; van Dyke suggested that Wilson was pulling a fast one on the college, issuing “a change which seems to me full of the gravest perils to the life and unity of Princeton.” Andrew West expressed indignation. “I feel bound to say that not only the thing that has been done, but the manner of doing it,” he wrote Wilson, “are both wrong—not inexpedient merely—but morally wrong.” West praised Wilson’s last five years, under which he served “for something more than salary and office”; but now, he contended, “If the spirit of Princeton is to be killed, I have little interest in the details of the funeral.”

  Most distressing were the words from Jack Hibben. In the days before the two friends parted for their respective summer vacations, Hibben tried alerting Wilson to the mounting opposition to the Quad Plan. Even more than his own reservations, he spoke of the discontent among trustees, faculty, and alumni. As Ellen Wilson could not even imagine her husband enduring this battle without his staunchest ally by his side, she took the liberty of telling Hibben that his words had, in fact, disheartened him for the fight.

  “Now, Woodrow it certainly makes my heart exceedingly heavy as I reflect that the poor but well intended offices of friendship have so miscarried,” he wrote. “You know that I would never have sought to ‘rob you of hope,’ as Mrs. Wilson characterized it, unless I had thought that I might at the same time forarm you by forwarning you of the gathering opposition.” Hibben hoped Wilson might be willing to reopen the question for further discussion. And he expressed deep regret if his “too blunt & too frank words” had “inflicted wounds which had no healing power.”

  Wilson delivered an Independence Day speech at the Jamestown Exposition (honoring the tercentenary of the colony’s founding) that began as a historical commendation of Thomas Jefferson but ended as a political condemnation of trusts and robber barons. (He shared the podium that day with Governor Charles Evans Hughes of New York, whose trust-busting stands were making him a current favorite for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1908.) Afterward, the Wilsons retreated to upstate New York.

  Not unlike England’s Lake District, the hamlet of St. Hubert’s in the Adirondacks—twenty-five miles from the nearest train station—promised fresh air, breathtaking vistas, and mountain hikes. From his primitive country cottage, Wilson wrote Hibben that his recent comments had not dimmed their friendship because he believed his friend was mistaken about the prevailing sentiment toward his Quad Plan. And before concluding that he might be wrong, Wilson said he must do everything that is honorable “to convince all upon whom I depend for support of the wisdom and necessity of what I propose.” Wilson granted there could be negative consequences to his agitation, but wrote, “I should feel a mere contempt for myself should I lose courage or falter: for I never had a clearer sense of duty. . . . To shirk would kill me; to fail need not.”

  As for what Stockton Axson called Woodrow’s “all involving, complete friendship with a man,” Wilson wrote that he loved and honored Jack for doing his duty. Woodrow wrote again on July 10: “I shall try to . . . win your love and respect. You would not wish me to do otherwise, and our friendship, by which I have lived . . . is to be as little affected by our difference of opinion as is everything permanent.”

  Wilson spent much of his summer shaping his argument and shoring up support. “The fight is on,” he wrote Cleveland Dodge, “and I regard it, not as a fight for the development, but as a fight for the restoration of Princeton. My heart is in it more than it has been in anything else.” In accepting an honorary degree from Harvard at the start of the summer, Wilson had referred to his ancestry, which he trusted would help him through the months ahead. “The beauty about a Scotch-Irishman,” he said, “is that he not only thinks he is right, but knows he is right.” Wilson wrote two essays that summer, which revealed his bifurcated mind—one called “Education,” the other called “Politics.” When Ellen’s sister Madge discovered a Ouija board up in St. Hubert’s, Wilson could not resist conjuring the spirit of James McCosh, seeking support everywhere to his side in the campus arguments. After considerable “conversation” with his model and mentor, Wilson asked, “What do you think of Andrew West, Doctor?” From “the other side,” came the reply: “West will burn in hell to the greater glory of God.”

  “Wilson is not in as good physical or mental condition as I should like to see him,” Henry B. Thompson wrote fellow trustee Cleveland Dodge at summer’s end. “This subject has taken such a hold on him, he is nervous and excitable, but keeps all this well under restraint in discussion. This, in itself, is exhausting. . . . His holiday has contained too much work and not enough re
laxation.” On September 19, 1907, Wilson opened the new school year with a reading from the first chapter of the Book of Joshua, in which the Lord spoke upon the death of Moses, urging Joshua to “be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them.” He then spoke of the magnificent new classroom building on campus, McCosh Hall.

  Nassau Hall had recently been remodeled, its onetime library and chapel transformed into a Faculty Room, largely to Wilson’s specifications. The magnificent chamber—seventy-six feet in length—was paneled in English oak; benches flanked each side of a long table, leading to a raised dais from which officers ran the faculty meetings. At four o’clock on Thursday, September 26, over a hundred members of the faculty took their places beneath the portraits of Princeton’s former presidents. Two pro-Wilson professors endorsed the trustees’ action of the previous June and proposed faculty acceptance in the form of a committee to cooperate with the administration in enacting the Quad Plan. Henry van Dyke objected, offering a counterproposal that suggested the debate was far from over—that the board appoint a joint committee of trustees and faculty to “investigate the present social conditions of the University in conjunction with representatives of the Alumni and students.” Its very proposal was a slap in Wilson’s face, a suggestion that all his work of the spring was about to unravel. Silence filled the great hall, until another faculty member stood to second the motion.

  “Do I understand,” Wilson asked in a measured voice that belied his tense expression, “that Professor Hibben seconds the motion?”

  “I do, Mr. President,” Hibben said calmly. Another faculty member noted, “The air was electric for a few minutes,” until the faculty voted to adjourn until the following Monday. Wilson had every reason to believe the faculty remained solidly behind him, which made Hibben’s active support of the opposition even harder to bear. After years of grooming his dearest friend for future leadership at the college—favoring him with committee assignments and leaving him in charge during his absences—Wilson had never felt so betrayed. “That is hurting your father dreadfully,” Ellen wrote daughter Jessie, then away at school. The wound would fester for the rest of Wilson’s life. He would forever thereafter think of Hibben as a “little snob.” More than that, he once told Stockton Axson, “Hibben has shaken my faith in friendship.”

  The faculty reconvened in Nassau Hall on September 30 and listened to spirited support of the tabled van Dyke Resolution. They discussed the need to include alumni in deciding upon the Quad Plan. Well into the two-hour debate, Wilson at last held forth, standing perfectly erect upon the dais. His plea was earnest and emotional. Second-year preceptor William Starr Myers wrote in his diary that it was “one of the most wonderful speeches I have ever heard”; and the votes that day confirmed as much, rejecting van Dyke’s measure 80 to 23.

  But the battle had just begun. Opposition to the quads raged in what had been renamed the Daily Princetonian and in the Princeton Alumni Weekly: class and school spirit would diminish, many argued; secret societies would increase; and a social ranking among the quads themselves would develop. Building a defense for the next faculty meeting, on October 7, Wilson prepared unusually extensive notes, with important phrases written out. And on that day, he spoke as eloquently as he ever had—holding forth for an hour and a half. An American college, he said in his central argument, was “not a place for exclusiveness.”

  “We now have to make our choice of ideal,” he told the faculty, “whether we wish to invite youngsters to a life which they shall form for themselves or to a life which shall form them.” Professor T. W. Hunt, a fixture in the English Department for almost forty years, wrote Wilson that “it has never been my privilege to hear a more inspiring address on the subject of University Education than that which you gave us yesterday.” Two of Wilson’s statistics reverberated for most of the educators in the room: 9.63 percent of clubmen earned academic honors at Princeton; and for non-clubmen, that figure was 41.7 percent.

  The press picked up the story and created nationwide interest in what emerged as a class war. Trustees West and Cleveland and van Dyke had rallied opposition all summer, their ranks growing as they organized a united front. Not having met a single fellow alumnus who favored Wilson’s plan, Adrian Joline, president of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company, suggested in the alumni magazine that Wilson was imposing a plan “without a single redeeming feature.” Wealthy alumni threatened to withdraw support, at a moment when a university could ill afford antagonizing its donors, what with a major economic recession looming over the nation: the New York Stock Exchange had lost half its value in the last year; banks were going bust; unemployment had suddenly risen from 3 percent to 8 percent. When even Wilson’s allies suggested that he was fighting a losing battle, he only became more obdurate. “We dearly love Woodrow,” said one of them, “but he does drive too fast.”

  By the time the board gathered in the Trustees’ Room in the Chancellor Green Library on the morning of October 17, 1907, all sides of the issue had been voiced. Wilson proceeded quickly to new business, at which time Momo Pyne, long a proponent of the new Princeton, now offered three resolutions that passed, rescinding all of Wilson’s recent progress. Having anticipated such action, Cleveland Dodge promptly offered another resolution, one that would not only allow Wilson to save face but also protect the university from negative publicity that might arise from the board having handed its president such a resounding defeat. Dodge suggested the issue could be reconsidered later. It passed.

  Wilson told the New York Evening Sun that he did not consider the trustees’ vote to be opposition to the quad system on principle so much as an expression of their feeling that the university community was not sufficiently prepared. He said he intended to build support by explaining it to Princetonians across the country. But the board’s actions were not lost on him, as a fragment of an unsent letter to the members reveals: “Your rejection,” he scratched out in his precise shorthand, “. . . makes it plain to me that you will not feel able to support me any further in the only matter which I feel that I can lead and be of service to you.” To his daughter Jessie, he wrote: “It is most humiliating; and I have not yet seen my way to the next step I should take; but God rules in all things, and I am sure that I shall see sooner or later which way my duty lies.” He refrained from resigning—“because I saw at last that I did not have the right to place the University in danger of going to pieces; and because I felt that the men who were forcing this surrender upon me had made all that I have accomplished financially possible.” Momo Pyne wrote a colleague that he was much surprised to read Wilson’s comments in the Evening Sun, because the plan had, in fact, been turned down “finally and for good, and the only reason it was not turned down harder was to save the feelings of the President.”

  Ironically, the defeat enabled Wilson to see the politics of the university with greater clarity. As the fights got more petty, his thoughts got more grand. “The pushing things in this world are ideals, not ideas,” he had long held. “We live by poetry, not by prose, and we live only as we see visions.” Now he assigned new value to fighting to the death for an ideal. Virtually every Wilson speech thereafter contained a political subtext, often that of attacking the attainment of power through money. His speeches likened a university to the nation, and undergraduates to its citizens.

  As had been the case in almost a dozen instances of emotional duress, Wilson’s body broke down once again. People attributed the numbness and pain in his right arm and shoulder to neuritis. The constant politicking and the extensive travel had certainly contributed to Wilson’s condition; but the person who knew him best believed he was suffering from the “loss of the friend he took to his bosom.” Wilson’s inability either to explain or to excuse Hibben’s behavior gives credence to Ellen’s contention. “Mr. Hibben can thank himself for this illness of Woodrow’s,” Ellen said. “Nothing el
se has caused it but the fact that his heart is broken.”

  Wilson sailed on January 18, 1908, for Bermuda, where he put his political losses at Princeton aside for six weeks. But he felt unmoored in other ways as well. For the first time in twenty years, he and Ellen faced an empty nest. Relatives continued to come and go, but the Wilson daughters had grown and moved away from home, each taking after him in a different way. Jessie had become an ethereal beauty and possessed her father’s gentle and spiritual temperament; Margaret was a dead ringer for him, inheriting some of his haughty reserve. After they persuaded their mother that higher education would not render them “unfeminine,” they both attended the Women’s College of Baltimore City, soon renamed Goucher. Having musical ambitions, Margaret remained in the city, where she studied voice at the Peabody Conservatory, a division of Johns Hopkins. The youngest daughter, Nellie, was in her own words “the frivolous one.” She looked the least like her father and was—in the words of another family member—“a pretty girl who enjoyed her prettiness.” She inherited his private playful side. Unafraid to say she was “bored with Sir Walter Scott and Thackeray and Anthony Trollope,” she “loved clothes and dancing and going to football and baseball games with her father or a beau. She said she didn’t want to go to college and detected a gleam of sympathy in her mother’s eyes.” Because Woodrow felt she might become too dependent on the family and Ellen feared she “talked like a Yankee,” they sent her to St. Mary’s College, an Episcopal boarding school and junior college in Raleigh, North Carolina. With the loss of so many other family members, melancholia frequently overcame Ellen. She sometimes needed to put distance between herself and Woodrow. When he went away, she took to visiting relatives in Georgia.