“The whole country is marvelling at it,” Wilson boasted to Mrs. Peck, “and I am getting more credit than I deserve.” In the end, he pitied Smith, whose strategies had long come right out of Machiavelli’s playbook as he preferred to be feared more than loved. “The minute it was seen that he was defeated,” Wilson explained further, “his adherents began to desert him like rats leaving a sinking ship. He left Trenton (where his headquarters had at first been crowded) attended, I am told, only by his sons, and looking old and broken. He wept, they say, as he admitted himself utterly beaten. Such is the end of political power—particularly when selfishly obtained and heartlessly used.” Smith rapidly descended into financial decline, as he burned through his $5 million fortune. With the Smith forces “routed horse, foot, and dragoons,” Wilson believed much of the resistance had dissipated. Even so, he observed, “I know that the work has only just begun.”
• • •
“My heart aches at the break-up of the old life,” Wilson wrote Mary Peck at the end of the month, “interesting and vital as the new life is.” He did not realize it, he said, “until it touched our home and sent us into lodging at an inn. I feel like a nomad! The idea of a man of fifty-four (no less!) leaving a definite career and a settled way of life of a sudden and launching out into a vast sea of Ifs and Buts! It sounds like an account of a fool.” But in that moment, Woodrow Wilson converted from a political scientist to a politician.
In fact, Wilson had just told the American Political Science Association in St. Louis that “politics is of the very stuff of life. It is very dangerous to reason with regard to it on principles that are fancied to be universal; for it is local.” While still in St. Louis, Wilson had also spoken to the City Club, where he handed down a list of moral imperatives as though they had been dictated by God. They formed a declaration of principles by which he intended to live.
Mind your public business all the year round, not only at election time.
Force public officials to report often, and watch their eyes to see if they are telling you all they know. . . .
Concentrate responsibility and hold it accountable.
You can trust the people, providing you serve them.
Reveal everything and the people will be just: conceal anything and make them jealous. . . .
Legislators blindly follow leaders. Sometimes the bellwether is trustworthy; sometimes he is an old goat.
Cure politics as you would tuberculosis—with open air.
The practical politician should sleep in the open; it will purify him.
Declaring himself an ardent Democrat—“with a big D and a little d,” he liked to say—Wilson pored over the writings of William Simon U’ren, a fourth-generation blacksmith who became a progressive political leader in Oregon, where he helped forge such implements for the people as the initiative, the referendum, the recall, and the direct primary. As a professor, Wilson had opposed these measures; as the most popular figure in New Jersey, he now considered them “useful tools for an emergency,” necessities in safeguarding the democracy of his state.
The Governor detailed his ambitious new agenda, the most immediate items on which were the regulation of public utilities, a Corrupt Practices Act, a Direct Primaries Act, and the Employers’ Liability Act. Knowing that the passage of any one of the items would be an ordeal and the entire package an affront to the Republican opposition and the Smith Democrats, he asked George Record, the Republican who had kept Wilson’s feet to the fire in the recent election, to prepare the bills for legislative consideration. Wilson solicited the opposition’s support, meeting with legislators individually and in committee, motivating them by acting more as a team-mate than a captain. He excluded the bosses from his conferences. In the case of his election bill—sponsored by one of his former students, Elmer H. Geran—Wilson recognized that it was meant to undermine the very system of corruption that still controlled the legislature.
On February 6, 1911, the Geran bill came before the lawmakers. It was a sweeping plan by which New Jersey might leapfrog to the vanguard of election reform in the nation. It included standardized regulations for voter registration, secret ballots, and direct primaries for all elective offices and party officials. Boss Nugent took Jim Smith’s place working the corridors and the actual floor of the legislature itself, lining up votes in opposition. After a month, enough Democrats in the State Assembly had their doubts about the bill, which they prepared to defang in caucus. Learning of this meeting, Wilson asked to be invited. To even his staunchest allies, the Governor seemed to have overstepped the boundary that separated powers. When Wilson appeared, one legislator flatly asked what constitutional right permitted his presence.
“Since you appeal to the constitution,” Wilson replied, “I can satisfy you.” He pulled a copy from his pocket and began to read: “The governor shall communicate by message to the legislature at the opening of each session, and at such other times as he may deem necessary, the condition of the state, and recommend such measures as he may deem expedient.” For the next three hours, Wilson conducted a preceptorial, which covered material he explored in The State and which he intended to apply in his own state. “You can turn aside from the measure if you choose,” he said; “you can decline to follow me . . . but you cannot deprive me of power so long as I steadfastly stand for what I believe to be the interests and legitimate demands of the people themselves.”
Everybody emerged from the chamber feeling—as one of the legislators reported—“that we had heard the most wonderful speech of our lives. . . . It has been said that debate no longer accomplishes anything in American legislation, that nobody is now persuaded by talk. Here was a case, however, which refutes this idea.” The Assembly passed the bill and forwarded it to the Republican-controlled Senate.
Nugent, the chairman of the Democratic State Committee, was so set upon killing the Geran bill there, he began crossing the Senate aisle to court Republicans. At last, Wilson invited him to his office, where he said, “Don’t you think, Mr. Nugent, that you are making a grave mistake in opposing the election bill?” Nugent said no and began baiting the Governor. He questioned Wilson as to how he secured the number of votes he already had and said Trenton was buzzing that he got them by patronage. To the man who had prided himself on both campaigning and governing without buying votes with jobs, Nugent had just suggested that Wilson was as corrupt as he. His eyes burning, the Governor quietly rose, bowed, gestured toward the door, and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Nugent.” Expecting a confrontation and frustrated without one, Nugent repeatedly tried to reengage the Governor. But Wilson only repeated himself, adding new emphasis each time he said “Good afternoon, Mr. Nugent.” At last, Nugent departed, but not without hurling one final remark at Wilson: “You’re no gentleman!” And Wilson snapped right back, “You’re no judge!”
Within minutes the story had rung through the halls; and within days, across the country. One editorial cartoon, entitled “Good Afternoon,” showed Nugent flying headfirst through a door, propelled by a foot labeled “Wilson.” Waiting on the floor, nursing his bruises, was Boss Smith. Such encounters left Wilson feeling “a bit vulgar,” debased to the level of the men he felt obliged to snub. But, he realized, “They commend me to the rank and file, and particularly to the politicians themselves.” He did not fully appreciate the greater ramifications, as the quadrennial search for new leadership in the United States was already under way, even though the national election would not be held for almost two years.
• • •
Woodrow Wilson’s campaign for the Presidency began at the very moment that the groundswell of Progressive thought directed the mainstream of American politics. Without his even announcing that he was running, isolated trickles of support suddenly coalesced, creating a flash flood, the likes of which had seldom been seen in American history. Local media across the country realized it had covered the New Jersey Gover
nor’s speeches for years, whenever he had come to town on behalf of Princeton; and now, alumni proved to be an effective army of early organizers, with base camps nationwide. One former student organized a Woodrow Wilson for President Club in Staunton, Virginia, even before Wilson had been elected Governor of New Jersey. Other Princeton alumni—especially such wealthy friends from the Princeton board as Cleveland Dodge, Thomas D. Jones, and Cyrus McCormick—always stood at the ready to underwrite a campaign, with no strings attached. Indeed, Dodge would contribute more than $50,000 of his own money and raise almost as much again from fellow Tigers.
Another group of Democratic kinsmen pledged early support as well—those who recognized the merits of running a transplanted Southerner, one who could deliver the solid bloc of votes from Dixie but could also reach out to the progressive West, the industrial North, and perhaps even the moneyed interests of New York. Chief among the Southerners was Walter Hines Page, who had become a partner in the publishing firm of Doubleday, Page & Company and then an editor of the magazine The World’s Work. Page soon met Walter McCorkle, a Virginian who became a Wall Street lawyer and president of the Southern Society of New York, a social and patriotic organization one thousand members strong. And then reentering Wilson’s life was William F. McCombs, an Arkansan who had fractured his hip in a childhood accident, which left him permanently lame and reliant on two walking sticks. A brilliant former student of Wilson’s, he had graduated from Princeton in 1898 before studying law at Harvard and becoming an attorney. Paying a call on his former professor in the State House in Trenton to discuss the pending Employers’ Liability Act, McCombs noticed that Wilson’s desk was covered with mail. The Governor explained that it was mostly unanswered requests for him to speak, largely from the Northeast.
Only days after Wilson had booted Jim Nugent from his office, Page, McCorkle, and McCombs invited the Governor to New York for an unexpected conference. These Manhattan Southerners wanted to fund an organization to promote Wilson as the Democratic nominee for President. They intended to raise a few thousand dollars right away to send him on a speaking tour—an exploratory journey without any long-term commitment. They would start planning the itinerary by inspecting the unanswered mail, but they believed the tour should begin by testing Wilson’s viability in the West, allowing him to accrue political capital as he worked his way east. It would be arranged largely through the network of Princeton men who were civic leaders, if not elected officials, and it was “not to wear the look of being anything political.” Wilson hesitated but consented.
They hired Wilson’s secretary, Frank P. Stockbridge, to serve as publicity director. According to him, Wilson delivered instructions that were utterly anomalous, nearly impossible to obey, and counterproductive: “I am not to be put forward as a candidate for the Presidency. . . . You must not ask any one to say a word or print a line in my behalf. Confine your activities to answering requests for information. When such inquiries come, tell them the whole truth; there is nothing to be concealed or glossed over. If you are in doubt as to where I stand on any question of public policy concerning which you are asked, come and see me or telephone.”
Upon their acceptance of his ground rules, Wilson agreed to follow this team’s game plan. He allowed himself a tryout in Atlanta, where America’s top elected officials were gathering for the Southern Commercial Congress. At a breakfast of the Young Men’s Democratic League before his major address, Wilson was introduced by Judge George Hillyer, the very Justice who had presided over his examination for admission to the Georgia Bar almost thirty years prior. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft also in town, Hillyer said: “Last evening we listened to a man who has been president; this evening we shall hear a man who is president; but we have with us this morning a man who is going to be president.”
In case such a pipe dream should ever come true, Wilson clarified what sort of President the nation might expect. At a dinner hosted by Governor Hoke Smith in a hotel banquet hall, he said, “The present is a time of rejoicing for the coming back of the south into national politics.” He commented on the power of that cohesive block of Southern Representatives and how it was misperceived as “conservative to the point of being reactionary.” For himself, Wilson asserted, “The older I get the more radical I get along certain lines. Radical in the literal sense of the word, and I long more and more to get at the root of the whole matter.” With a Jeffersonian belief in the power of the people, he maintained that the current leadership of the United States failed to see the populace as a whole, that most of the country was at the mercy of a “provincial” New York City. “The most serious thing facing us today,” he said, “is the concentration of money power in the hands of a few.” As soon as he finished speaking to the enthusiastic crowd of eight thousand in the Atlanta Auditorium, he raced home to New Jersey for an even more important meeting, with an audience of one.
Over the course of the twentieth century, history has treated few more unfairly than William Jennings Bryan, often reducing him to little more than a three-time Presidential loser and a Christian fundamentalist buffoon. He did, in fact, head the failed Democratic tickets in 1896, 1900, and 1908; and he died suddenly in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, just five days after successfully prosecuting the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, which challenged the teaching of Darwinism. But historical reductions and subsequent theatrical interpretations of Bryan degraded a patriotic American and devout Presbyterian who became the most popular orator of his day, a Presidential candidate at thirty-six years of age, the voice for the silent but angry American. “The Great Commoner,” as he was called, invigorated the Democratic Party by urging an activist government with such farsighted notions as enfranchising women, empowering labor unions, and endorsing a graduated income tax. For a decade he edited a hugely popular weekly newspaper, The Commoner, much of which he filled with his political preaching. In 1911, Bryan was the party’s “elder statesman,” though he was only fifty-one—four years younger than Wilson—and while he would probably not head the Presidential ticket in 1912, he could certainly help determine the nominee.
Still living in the Princeton Inn and without a house to keep, Ellen Wilson had become engrossed in the news, reading as many newspapers as possible and clipping any article relevant to Woodrow’s unannounced campaign. With their great admiration for the same man, she and Joe Tumulty became “fast friends” and confidants. Remaining in the background, she maintained a clear-sighted perspective on current events. More than once, Tumulty told Wilson, “She’s a better politician than you are, Governor”—as she proved the second week of March, when she read that the Princeton Theological Seminary had invited William Jennings Bryan to speak. Ellen promptly invited Bryan to dinner and wired her husband to return from Atlanta as quickly as possible. He arrived in time to join the capacity crowd in Alexander Hall, where Bryan held forth for an hour and a half on “Faith.” After the speech, Bryan dined with the Wilsons and two of their daughters at the Inn. The dinner was a revelation for Wilson. “He has extraordinary force of personality, and it seems the force of sincerity and conviction,” he reported to Mrs. Peck. “He has himself well in hand at every turn of the thought and talk, too; and his voice is wholly delightful. A truly captivating man, I must admit.” The feelings were mutual. After the dinner, Tumulty turned to Ellen and said, “You have nominated your husband, Mrs. Wilson.”
At the same time, Tumulty felt compelled to inform Wilson that a good number of lawmakers, especially Republicans, still found him professorial and doctrinaire, that they sensed a cold austerity that “prevented that intimate contact” that was so necessary to push through his legislative program. Eager to display Wilson’s good nature, Tumulty arranged a dinner at the Trenton Country Club for Senators from both parties. They gathered in a private dining room, where three black musicians played old Southern favorites. Wilson was at his most charming all night, even when Republican Joseph S. Frelinghuysen walked up to the Governor
and challenged him—to a Virginia reel. For the next several minutes, the Governor of New Jersey and the President of the State Senate twirled and do-si-doed around the room to the delight of their legislature. Some days later, Wilson found himself at a fried chicken supper and led another formidable Republican around the floor in a cakewalk. “This is what it costs to be a leader!” Wilson wrote Mrs. Peck, realizing the political gains far exceeded the losses of dignity. “They know me for something else than ‘an ambitious dictator.’”
On April 13, 1911, the Republican-controlled New Jersey Senate passed the Geran bill—unanimously. And over the next week, the legislature closed its session by passing Wilson’s Corrupt Practices Act, his workmen’s compensation act, and another act giving a public commission control over state transportation and utilities. Former rival George Record now proclaimed: “The present legislature ends its session with the most remarkable record of progressive legislation ever known in the political history of this or any State.” For that, he credited the Governor, who had delivered on all his major campaign promises and who had effectively put machine politics out of business in the state—all within three remarkable months. “After dealing with college politicians,” Wilson explained, “I find that the men with whom I am dealing with now seem like amateurs.”
That very night, Woodrow Wilson took the stage at the Murat Temple, an Islamic-themed edifice in downtown Indianapolis, to speak to twelve hundred guests at the Jefferson’s birthday banquet of the Democratic League of Clubs. When the committee had invited Wilson to pinch-hit for William Jennings Bryan, who had been called away, nobody in the party leadership quite considered him an actual star. But then the toastmaster read a telegram announcing the results of that day’s success in the New Jersey legislature; and in that moment, Woodrow Wilson became a national figure. He reminded his audience that the party of Jefferson—“the patron saint of Democracy”—was “the party of hope.”
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