Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  Between mid-December and his inauguration, Wilson also delivered a handful of speeches outside the state, reiterating a few basic themes. On his second night after returning from Bermuda, he addressed the New York Southern Society at the Waldorf-Astoria, telling the roomful of transplants from Dixie that America was “not what it was when the Civil War was fought”—that while regional pride was to be appreciated, sectionalism was not, and that the Progressive principles for which he had been fighting in New Jersey should apply across the country. Weeks later, addressing the Commercial Club of Chicago, Wilson said he hoped to bring about an end to “the old feeling that the Southerner was not of the same political breed and purpose as the rest of American citizens” and that he hoped to see the death of “many another prejudice, particularly of these prejudices which are getting such formidable root amongst us as between class and class, as between those who control the resources of the country and those who use the resources of the country.”

  “The business future of this country,” Wilson asserted, “does not depend upon the government of the United States. It depends upon the business men of the United States. . . . only the temper and the thought and the purpose of business men in America is going to determine what the future of business shall be.” Wilson indicated several fights he intended to pick—against the protectionist Payne-Aldrich tariff, the banking structure, and the constricting monopolies in America.

  Between the New York and Chicago addresses, Wilson visited Virginia. His train stopped at five stations, each crowded with cheering throngs—especially in Charlottesville, where the student body had turned out en masse. In Staunton, most of the town greeted him, including a band playing “Home, Sweet Home.” Wilson spent the night in the manse at the top of the hill, in the very bedroom in which he had been born. The next day, December 28, the celebration of his fifty-sixth birthday began with a rhapsodic introduction from his host, a successor to the Reverend Joseph Wilson. “He went out from us as a very little boy, laden with the prayers and benedictions of a small congregation of Christian people,” said the Reverend A. M. Fraser of the honoree. “He comes back to us to-day, by the favour of an overruling Providence, a proven leader of men.” Wilson visited an old aunt, whom he had not seen since childhood. She had grown extremely deaf and required a long black ear-trumpet, which made conversation no easier. At one point, she said, “Well, Tommy, what are you doing now?” And Wilson said, “I’ve been elected President, Aunt Janie.”

  “Well, well,” said old Aunt Janie, “president of what?”

  Wilson told the citizens of Staunton exactly the sort of President of the United States he intended to be. For a generation, a Protestant-based movement called “the Social Gospel” had infused American thought. With it came improvements in health and housing, and the establishment of salvation armies and Christian associations to help young men from the country adjust to life in the city. The notion that Christian acts might cure social ills was nothing new to Wilson; he approached his new bully pulpit fully aware of his power as evangel in chief. Moral forces were at work, Wilson told his audience at a birthday banquet at the Staunton Military Academy. In another talk, on the steps of the Mary Baldwin Seminary, he said, “There must be heart in a government; there must be a heart in the policies of government. And men must look to it that they do unto others as they would have others do unto them.” Wilson believed such thought strengthened—not softened—him. “This is not a rosewater affair,” he said. “This is an office in which a man must put on his war paint. . . . And there must be some good hard fighting, not only in the next four years, but in the next generation, in order that we may achieve the things that we have set out to achieve.”

  Republican opposition was already insinuating that the Democratic Party was going to institute changes destructive to the economy. Wilson assured his audiences that only those trying to create such panic had reason to fear. To those attempting to game the system, Wilson promised “on behalf of my countrymen, a gibbet as high as Haman.”

  A member of the press had recently suggested to Wilson that this Christmas must be the happiest of his life. “My young friend,” he replied, “evidently you have never been elected President of the United States. Can you see how a man can have a light heart looking forward to the responsibilities of that great office, particularly at this time?”

  “The President is not all of the Executive,” Professor Woodrow Wilson wrote in Congressional Government. “He cannot get along without the men whom he appoints . . . and they are really integral parts of that branch of the government which he titularly contains in his one single person. The characters and training of the Secretaries are of almost as much importance as his own gifts and antecedents.” Through the winter of 1912–13, Colonel House discreetly interviewed numerous prospects, arranging with Tumulty for Wilson to meet the most promising contenders in either Trenton or Princeton. With so short a political career of his own, Wilson had few political debts to service; but, reluctantly, he accepted that he headed a century-old party with political machinery in place. With that in mind, Wilson began wading through both enthusiastic and contradictory advice, starting with his first appointment.

  “What will be done with Bryan?” was the urgent question. Edith Gittings Reid, an epistolary friend of Wilson’s since his days in Baltimore, said, “The East was uneasy and prophesied dire results if Bryan was given a leading position. The West vowed that dire results would happen—they’d see to it—if he was not given the best that could be had.” Roosevelt called him “a blithering ass”; H. L. Mencken said he was an insincere demagogue, “a poor clod . . . deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things.” And yet, this unsophisticated icon of the American heartland had been to more places than almost any man alive. Besides his political stumping and countless speeches as the most popular speaker on a rural circuit known as the Chautauqua, he had seen Mexico and Europe; and in 1905, he had taken his family on a yearlong odyssey around the world. He observed Japan at the peak of its empire, China “awakening from the sleep of twenty centuries,” and the Philippines as “American ideas [were] spreading.” He witnessed imperialism firsthand—the Dutch in Java and the British in India. The Bryans visited Egypt, Syria, and Turkey before the summer heat drove them north to Germany and Austria-Hungary, where he saw royal strongholds unwittingly breed a desire for independence. On an earlier trip to Russia, he had discussed “free speech” with Czar Nicholas II himself (“he seemed quite interested,” Bryan observed); and he journeyed to the legendary Yasnaya Polyana, where he spent twelve hours discussing Christian anarchism and pacifism with the landlord, Leo Tolstoy. Wherever Bryan journeyed, he rejoiced in the spreading influence of America. He processed everything through his fundamentalist lens, a fervent belief in the Christian brotherhood of man. Such aspects hardly disqualified him from Cabinet service; but Wilson could not ignore that Bryan had long been a freewheeling leader, with no experience in either statesmanship or having a boss. With such aggressive imperialists as John Hay and Elihu Root having recently run the State Department, it remained to be seen whether a pacifistic Midwestern isolationist could hold his own in a changing world order.

  Wilson never doubted that he would offer Bryan a Cabinet position; he struggled only with the question of which one. From the moment he was elected, he began corresponding with Bryan, engaging more with him than with any other politician. “I have thought of you very constantly throughout the campaign and have felt every day strengthened and heartened by your active and generous support,” he wrote on November 9. Increasingly, he saw how Bryan might do the same for his Presidency. As William McAdoo suggested, “there was a manifest political advantage in having him in the Cabinet. A very large element of the Democratic Party stood squarely behind the man. His cooperation with the Administration meant the smoothing-out of many diverse views about the currency an
d the tariff.” Indeed, in each of Bryan’s Presidential defeats, he had won more popular votes than Wilson had; and he was strongest in the battleground regions beyond the Democratic South, namely the West. Ever since George Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson, the office of Secretary of State has carried the most prestige in the Cabinet. Upon returning from Bermuda, Wilson met Bryan in Trenton and, after four hours, offered him the position. It would be Wilson’s one political payoff.

  Bryan accepted—and discussed two policies he hoped to instate. The first was a series of treaties between the United States and as many other nations as possible, pre-emptive agreements committing each party to diplomatic resolution of problems before resorting to military means. “The proposed plan provided for the submission of all international disputes of every kind and character to a permanent tribunal for investigation, when not by other treaties submitted for arbitration,” Bryan explained. The second proposal was more audacious: Mr. and Mrs. Bryan were dedicated teetotalers; and at diplomatic dinners, Mrs. Bryan said she intended to serve grape juice. Wilson did not object to either—though the juice policy would invite ridicule. He assured Bryan that the Department of State was his to run. Indeed, if Wilson was to master the details of any one department, State seemed the least likely. As he had told a Princeton colleague while preparing for his move to Washington, “It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.”

  Because Wilson intended to focus primarily on the economy, he considered the Secretary of the Treasury the most important Cabinet position. Nobody had proved to be more wise and tenacious during the campaign than William G. McAdoo; and House had since spent more time with him than with any other adviser. While he told McAdoo that he was investigating a number of men and that he wanted the benefit of his judgment, House was vetting McAdoo himself. On the morning of February 1, 1913, McAdoo had just put a fresh blade in his safety razor when a servant summoned him from the bathroom to speak to a Secret Service agent guarding the President-elect.

  Wilson and McAdoo had not conversed since the election; but now the future President asked McAdoo to accept this vital position. “He had a delightful way of putting things,” McAdoo recalled; “he created the impression that by accepting this great honor I would be doing him a favor.” Although House had occasionally suggested that he was being considered for the post, McAdoo regarded himself unfit and told Wilson as much—that he was a man of business, not banking. “I don’t want a banker or a financier,” Wilson exclaimed. “The Treasury is not a bank. Its activities are varied and extensive. What I need is a man of all-round ability who has had wide business experience.” McAdoo also had personal reservations: a widower for less than a year, with six (mostly grown) children, he was not a man of means. The job paid $12,000 a year, which would not go far in meeting the social expenses generally associated with the position. Wilson appealed to McAdoo’s sense of duty, explaining that he could not perform the great responsibilities of office alone. “If I can’t have the assistance of those in whom I have confidence,” he said, “what am I to do?” McAdoo discreetly withdrew from the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Company.

  To serve as the Postmaster General, the largest employer in the United States, Colonel House recommended Albert S. Burleson, an eight-term Congressman from Texas who had become an aggressive Wilson supporter during the Baltimore convention. He struck Wilson as too much of an old-time politician, but House believed his familiarity with the inner workings of Congress and the patronage system would benefit both the department and the President. A letter from Oscar Underwood, the House Majority Leader and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, with whom Wilson had already taken up the subject of a tariff bill, persuaded the President that Burleson was exactly what this highly political position required, if only because it would please the Speaker of the House. The first Texan ever to serve in a Cabinet and the son of a Confederate officer, Burleson was a known segregationist—which, at that time, was not a political liability. Upon receiving the official offer from the President-elect, Burleson told Wilson, “I will be loyal to your administration and sympathetic with your policies. When I reach the point where I cannot give you my undivided loyalty, I will tender my resignation. When I talk to you, I will always tell you my candid views. I can’t know what is in your mind, but I can tell you what is in mine.” As the boss of more Negroes in America than any other man, Burleson would prove to have enormous influence on life in Washington and the rest of the nation. For his vow of intense fealty to his administration, Wilson remained equally loyal to him, allowing him to run his department as he saw fit.

  Colonel House recommended another Texan he knew well, one whose curriculum vitae closely resembled Wilson’s. David F. Houston was born in North Carolina and educated at South Carolina College in Columbia, where he had studied under Wilson’s uncle Dr. James Woodrow. After earning a master’s degree at Harvard, Houston taught government at the University of Texas, where he became the school’s president, a position he would subsequently hold at Texas A&M University before becoming chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. Many found him cold and incommunicative but also “a man of intellectual force and solid information.” Wilson had met him several times over the years and, upon learning of House’s confidence in him, offered him the Department of Agriculture. Like most of the men in the Wilson Cabinet, he too wondered how he could relocate and live on the modest salary.

  Josephus Daniels was a North Carolinian and, like Wilson, a nonpracticing attorney. This alumnus of the law school at Chapel Hill became active in state and then national Democratic politics, using the press to advance himself and his causes. He ran the Raleigh News and Observer and married into the political Worth family. A true Progressive and a friend of William Jennings Bryan, Daniels had helped defuse the “cocked hat” incident and had proved himself valuable as publicity director of the Democratic National Committee. For these reasons—not any maritime experience, for he had none—Wilson chose him to be Secretary of the Navy. His not knowing the ropes bespoke the lack of importance Wilson ascribed to the position. On the heels of the appointment, Wilson remarked to his friend and adviser Walter Page, “You do not seem to think that Daniels is Cabinet timber.” Page replied, “He is hardly a splinter.” Daniels was also an avowed white supremacist.

  Upon receiving the appointment, Daniels immediately found his Assistant Secretary—the ambitious, anti-Tammany Franklin Roosevelt, a genuine lover of the sea. As Daniels noted in his diary, “He had supported Wilson for the nomination, and taken an active part in the campaign, and I found him a singularly attractive and honorable and courageous young Democratic leader.” Wilson thought it was a “capital” idea. Although thirty-year-old Roosevelt had served but one term in Albany, he already provoked strong reactions. As soon as his name was floated, New York Senator (and TR’s Secretary of State) Elihu Root warned Daniels that “every person named Roosevelt wishes to run everything and would try to be the Secretary.” Daniels told him that any man who feared being supplanted by a subordinate was tacitly confessing his own inadequacy for the job. When Wilson heard that story, he was convinced he had both the right Secretary and Assistant. That young FDR was an ardent Democrat and a cousin of TR—and was even married to the former President’s niece—gave Wilson and the party some unexpected bragging rights.

  A sign of the rising power of the conjoined labor and Progressive movements could be seen in 1913, as a bill arrived on President Taft’s desk that would bisect the existing Department of Commerce and Labor. A reluctant Taft signed it on his last day in office, knowing the incoming President would establish the new position if he did not. The first man nominated for Secretary of Labor carried all the credentials Wilson needed to trust him: born in Scotland, the Presbyterian William Beauchop Wilson (no relation to his new boss) had worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania as a child and then rose in the ranks of the labor movement, becoming an officer of the U
nited Mine Workers of America before getting elected to Congress. McAdoo called him “level-headed, able, and trustworthy.”

  Wilson had intended his Secretary of Commerce to be one of America’s staunchest Progressives, his adviser Louis D. Brandeis. Earliest mentions of his name, however, incited considerable protest. Politicians, businessmen, and attorneys denounced him as a radical—a reckless meddler who would queer any possibilities of investment in a Democratic-led prosperity. Wrote one Boston Brahmin to Cleveland Dodge, knowing he had the President-elect’s trust, “I have no hesitation in pronouncing Mr. Brandeis treacherous, and I sometimes doubt if he is sane.” Wilson overlooked the specific criticisms and even the unveiled anti-Semitism. But not only did Adamses, Lowells, and Peabodys oppose Brandeis, so too did many Jews themselves, such as Jacob Schiff, the financier and philanthropist—those who had a foot in the establishment door and did not want Brandeis’s extremist reputation to spoil opportunities for more accommodating Jews. But plumbing fixture heir and Wilson insider—and latent anti-Semite—Charles R. Crane paid Brandeis nothing but his highest praise, calling him “the only important Jew who is first American and then Jew,” a tribute that revealed the primary accusation American Jews then faced. Wilson wrote Brandeis supporter Bryan that he felt “the people’s lawyer” had been “grossly aspersed,” but he simply could not ignore the widespread prejudice against him. Not until a week before the inauguration did he settle on William C. Redfield of Brooklyn, who had spent his life in business, mining, manufacturing, banking, and insurance before getting elected to Congress, where he earned a reputation as a tariff specialist.