Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  But the Republicans were not ready to reembrace the man they believed had put personality and even principles before party. As the convention opened, the delegates seemed predisposed to an undeclared candidate who said he would accept the nomination—the former Governor of New York and current Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Charles Evans Hughes. Eager to be drafted, he received as many votes on the first ballot as the next two contenders combined, while former President Roosevelt ran a distant sixth. Hughes obtained the nomination on the third ballot. Running with TR’s former Vice President, Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana, he remained pro-business and eager to enter the war.

  As Hughes became the only Supreme Court Justice ever to leave the bench in order to run for President, Wilson promptly elevated the progressive John Hessin Clarke, whom he had appointed as a District Court Judge. Clarke would become a reliable vote within the liberal bloc, though he would remain on the Court only six years. Insiders knew that animosity between him and Justice McReynolds contributed to his early departure; and, indeed, the retirement letter from his brethren—like Brandeis’s—would fall one signature short.

  Wilson spent the early weeks of June drafting the national Democratic platform. The document expanded upon the programs of the New Freedom; and it made particular mention of extending the franchise to the women of the country, though he maintained that the most effective means of achieving such equality was through state-by-state ratification.

  The following week, Democrats gathered at the St. Louis Coliseum for their convention, which was more of a coronation. Although the incumbent did not appear for the ceremonies, he controlled the convention from the White House. The three days of ballyhoo played according to the script, with the exception of one speech. Former New York Governor Martin H. Glynn, at Wilson’s behest, delivered the keynote address. Seeing one issue overshadowing all the rest, Glynn provided a brief review of moments in history when Presidents of all parties could have drawn the nation into international hostilities but refrained. As Glynn cited example after example, from Washington to Benjamin Harrison, he recited a simple chorus—“But we didn’t go to war.” Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, Pierce, and Grant all “settled our troubles by negotiation just as the President of the United States is trying to do today.” The applause at the end of the speech raised the Coliseum’s rafters and resonated across the country. While there were plenty of issues on which to run, the Democrats chose to peg their campaign to one irrefutable theme: “He kept us out of war.”

  The office of the Vice President of the United States was still something between a figurehead and a fool; and in each capacity, Thomas R. Marshall excelled. A few Vice Presidents served as liaisons between the White House and the Senate; but because Wilson made regular Congressional visits, Marshall was redundant even in that role. The President invited him to attend Cabinet meetings but showed so little interest in his opinions, Marshall saw no reason to appear. Like many of his predecessors who served as President of the United States Senate, Marshall considered the Executive Mansion out of bounds. In his four-hundred-page memoirs, Marshall would mention Woodrow Wilson’s name only a handful of times. Even so, he remained a popular figure in Washington. TR’s acerbic daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth especially enjoyed poking fun at him, claiming that his business card read “Vice President of the United States and Toastmaster.” Indeed, Marshall was a delightful speaker and always had an amusing quip on the tip of his tongue. During one session when a Senator was holding the floor too long, yammering about all the things “this country needs,” Marshall leaned in toward a clerk and said in a stage whisper, “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.” The quotation stands as Marshall’s most durable legacy, coupled, perhaps, with his anecdote of a mother who had two sons, one of whom became Vice President while the other was lost at sea . . . “and nothing has been heard from either of them since.” But while Wilson and Marshall had private policy disagreements, the Vice President never displayed anything but loyalty toward the President. There was no reason to break up a winning ticket. Besides, Indiana—with its admixture of rural and industrial populations—was sure to be a close race in the national election; and the Republican nominee, Charles Fairbanks, had been a popular Hoosier Senator, a political figure once so promising that he even had a town in Alaska named after him.

  The railroad crisis and insufferable heat that summer exacerbated Wilson’s gastric distress, severe headaches, and extreme fatigue. “I get desperately tired somedays,” he wrote his daughter Jessie, “and am glad to get to bed every day.” Colonel House was especially mindful of how tired he had looked at Dr. Grayson’s recent wedding.

  The Wilsons were not able to leave Washington until the first of September for their summer vacation at a large estate called Shadow Lawn, in Long Branch, New Jersey, near Asbury Park. The big white house—complete with a semicircular portico—suggested a seaside version of the Wilsons’ home in Washington. Edith said it felt like a hotel and referred to the entry as “the lobby.” Woodrow said it reminded him of a gambling hall. But the expansive grounds could accommodate crowds for campaign speeches, and the gates in front provided privacy. Hoping to avoid the scourge of infantile paralysis that plagued the East Coast, the McAdoos, with their two young children, joined the President at the Jersey Shore. The Wilsons and the rest of their extended “family”—which included her brother Randolph, Helen Bones, the Graysons, and Tumulty—quickly settled into Shadow Lawn until the election, in part to reassert Wilson’s right to vote in New Jersey. The other reason they abandoned the Executive Mansion for several months, according to Edith, was “my husband declined to use the White House, the Nation’s property, for a political purpose.”

  Because custom prevented Presidential nominees (even sitting Presidents) from attending their nominating conventions, the conventions came to them. On September 2, the Notification Committee of the Democratic Party arrived at Shadow Lawn, with the Vice President, the Cabinet, Congressmen, and party leaders in tow, and twenty thousand partisans in their wake. A speaker’s platform had been erected for Wilson. After thanking the party for renewing its trust in him, he catalogued the formidable record the Administration had amassed—from the revision of the tariffs to its most far-reaching piece of legislation, that very week’s Revenue Act of 1916. This statute incorporated several items dating back to the Populist movement a quarter century earlier, including a graduated tax rate based on ability to pay. The bill raised the tax from 1 to 2 percent on net annual incomes above $4,000 and included a surtax as high as 13 percent on incomes above $2 million; it also imposed an estate tax as high as 10 percent on $5 million legacies, and, foreseeing a windfall for one particular industry, a steep tax on the manufacture of munitions. Critics gasped at this redistribution of wealth; Wilson considered it “equitable.”

  His speech—with its recital of 1912 campaign promises delivered—ran justifiably long; but it emphasized America’s commitment to the future. “We are to play a leading part in the world drama whether we wish it or not,” he said. “We shall lend, not borrow; act for ourselves, not imitate or follow.” Far from his 1914 insistence upon neutrality, Wilson now insisted that no nation “can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful disturbance of the peace of the world. The effects of war can no longer be confined to the areas of battle. No nation stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interest of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril. . . . The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees that whatever is done to disturb the whole world’s life must first be tested in the court of the whole world’s opinion before it is attempted.”

  He left New Jersey to make several speeches—including one at Lincoln’s birthplace in Kentucky—before bringing his “non-campaign” to a halt when he learned that his sister Annie, ill in New London, Connecticut, had taken a turn for the worse. Woodrow and Edith immediately went north to visit and remained there for several days. Be
cause of the obvious strain on the President, and because nobody could predict how much longer Annie Wilson Howe might live, her physician urged him to return to Shadow Lawn. Two days later, Annie died. They accompanied her coffin to her funeral in South Carolina, where Woodrow walked his wife through his childhood house. He would assume his sister’s debts.

  Upon returning to New Jersey, the President undertook the double duty of running the country and campaigning for the privilege of continuing to do so. Every Saturday he delivered a political address from the front porch at Shadow Lawn; and any given day brought Cabinet members, Colonel House, Ambassador Page from England, or Vance C. McCormick, a former Mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, whom Wilson had anointed the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Henry Ford, who admired Wilson’s strength in maintaining American neutrality and in keeping the trains running, offered nominal (though not monetary) support. He told the President that based on their conferences, he had taken the unusual step of providing pay equality for his women employees. Ignacy Paderewski, the brilliant Polish pianist and political activist, paid a visit, asking the President to remember the Poles caught in the crossfire between Russia and Germany. Edith could not help kneeling on the landing above the two men, watching Paderewski’s moving expression as he pled so earnestly for his people.

  Wilson did take to the hustings in a few of the many toss-up states. Half the electoral college map was already accounted for: Republican New England plus New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan would deliver the same number of electors as the solid Democratic South. Thus, the battleground became the Midwest and the less populous but more Populist states of the far West. Except for California, the stakes were so low in each of the farthermost Western states that they hardly merited a nominee’s time. Wilson traveled only as far as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Nebraska.

  Political campaigns had grown savvier in analyzing demographics; and the Democrats targeted specific constituencies, sending the most appropriate surrogates to address them. In multicultural New York, Jewish, Polish, and Italian leaders mobilized their neighborhoods. William Jennings Bryan campaigned aggressively for Wilson in the West. And, because he was the most consistent vote for peace and progressivism, the National Democratic Speakers’ Committee sent the popular blind Senator T. P. Gore to speak up and down the California coast. Gore disagreed with the President on several issues, but he effectively argued that Wilson had kept America out of war and showed the most promise to continue doing so.

  W. E. B. Du Bois wrote the President of his disappointment in his tenure and called upon him to account for the dismissal of colored public officials and for segregation in the Civil Service. As a member of that underclass, he asked what progress Negroes had seen, even when it came to lynching. Wilson replied through Tumulty that he had tried to live up to his original assurances, “though in some cases my endeavors have been defeated.” He had, in fact, issued a strong statement condemning lynching—hardly conscience-challenging, one would have thought, though it did mark the first time a President had gone on record doing as much. Although some Negro organizations continued to trust Wilson enough “to do the just thing at the proper time,” Du Bois urged his followers to vote Socialist.

  Wilson was still the most inspiring orator on the stump. His refusal to talk down to audiences continued to elevate them; and the inevitable patriotic punch line with which he closed every speech went straight from his heart to that of his audience. He was so eloquent the day he addressed the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Atlantic City—maintaining his position of state-by-state enfranchisement—even outgoing NAWSA president Dr. Anna Howard Shaw could not resist him. The very fact that he did not pander for votes by coming out in favor of the federal amendment as so many wanted him to do, she said, “showed such respect for our intelligence” and a “sincerity of purpose when he said he would fight with us.”

  Wilson could also play rough. An Irish agitator named Jeremiah O’Leary was president of the American Truth Society, an ostensibly nonpartisan—but fanatically anti-English—organization. With their support, O’Leary released an unusually vitriolic letter to Wilson, condemning his “dictatorship over Congress” and his “truckling to the British Empire.” Wilson called a press conference, at which he read the wire he had sent in reply: “Your telegram received. I would feel deeply mortified to have you or anybody like you vote for me. Since you have access to many disloyal Americans and I have not, I will ask you to convey this message to them.”

  And he could be funny. The President instinctively knew how to warm up audiences, invariably opening with a light remark. One of his favorites was about a magazine correspondent researching the life of Mark Twain. The writer had gone to Hannibal, Missouri, where he encountered the only local who actually remembered Samuel Clemens as a child. He was, unfortunately, somewhat feebleminded; and so the interviewer had to keep jogging recollections out of him. He tried prompting the old fellow with the names of famous Twain characters—such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But upon hearing each name, the old Missourian just blankly scratched his head. In a final attempt, the interviewer asked if he had ever heard of Pudd’nhead Wilson. “Oh, yes,” said the old man, looking up and beaming, “I voted for him last year.”

  Although Wilson appeared younger than his opponent, Charles Evans Hughes—with his sculpted beard and mustache—was, in fact, six years the President’s junior. But the two men were in many ways alike. The son of a (Baptist) minister, Hughes was a skilled debater, a lawyer, and a scholar (who had taught Greek and mathematics and, later, law at Cornell); and he too was a compelling orator. But his campaign never expressed either a consistent vision or a positive message. The Republicans’ pro-business platform criticized Wilson’s positions against tariffs and trusts, but the recession he had inherited had dissipated within two years and citizens felt the Democrats were looking after their interests. Wilson announced to a group of businessmen in Detroit that the United States had just become a creditor nation. It currently held more of the surplus gold in the world than ever before, and “our business hereafter is to . . . lend and to help and to promote the great peaceful enterprises of the world.” Finding little traction, the Republicans offered derogatory generalizations or carped over tax tables.

  The Republicans denounced Wilson’s halting foreign policy, but they had to keep from sounding bloodthirsty. Hughes was nowhere near as vituperative as TR, or even Henry Cabot Lodge, who summarized Wilson’s foreign policy after the German sinking of the Sussex as little more than “brave words. More notes. More conversation.” Because Hughes often restrained his feelings, some Republicans called him “Wilson with whiskers.” His tendency to make one set of arguments for pro-German audiences and another for the pro-British earned him the nickname “Charles Evasive Hughes.” In the words of Vice President Marshall, the Allies revealed themselves to be the “less corrupter” of the two sides in the Great War; but still, “war was abhorrent to the great mass of Americans, and the campaign of 1916 . . . [was] based largely on the fact that the president had kept us out.”

  The Republican Party never united behind its candidate. “It had no constructive policy,” recalled Secretary McAdoo. “The Republicans carried on a campaign of criticism. Professional critics are seldom elevated to positions where creative talent is the chief quality required.” Roosevelt’s contempt for Wilson grew satanic—enough for him to set aside his own reservations about Hughes and campaign in a few strategic states for him. “Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick,” said TR in Louisville, “President Wilson spoke bombastically and carried a dishrag.”

  TR never stopped attacking the President for reducing the country to an “elocutionary ostrich.” Roosevelt derided Wilson’s “He kept us out of war” slogan as nothing more than “ignoble shirking of responsibility . . . clothed in an utterly misleading phrase, the phrase of a coward.” In reality, Colonel Roosevelt explained, “war
has been creeping nearer and nearer, until it stares at us from just beyond our three-mile limit, and we face it without policy, plan, purpose or preparation.” Because Roosevelt endorsed Hughes, the Bull Moose Party disbanded. TR hoped to lead his Progressives home to the Republican Party. The more chauvinistic patriots among them followed, but many found greater kinship among the Democrats.

  Unlike Wilson, Hughes barnstormed the country. While campaigning in California, he checked into the Virginia Hotel in Long Beach, where Governor Hiram Johnson happened to be staying while running for the Senate. This popular figure rather expected to receive at least a message if not a courtesy call from his party’s leader, but none came; and Johnson resumed his campaign running for himself and not his party. Hughes’s widely reported snub did nothing to stanch the flow of Progressives to the Democrats, and the Republicans turned even more mean-spirited. Secretary Daniels believed “that no campaign in the history of the country has been quite so marked by viciousness, bitterness and invective. All the elements of hate and misrepresentation were brought into play.” As the election neared, Wilson felt his opposition had sunk to unspeakable depths, so low, he told a reporter, that he had “an utter contempt for Mr. Hughes.”

  Indeed, Hughes shouted for months about the Adamson Act and the intrusion of government into the lives of Americans. He cried that he was not “too proud to fight”; some Republicans whispered about “Mrs. Peck” and the spurious affair while the first Mrs. Wilson was alive, and a party representative offered Mary Hulbert several hundred thousand dollars for Wilson’s letters, an offer she refused; other Republicans shrieked that the Revenue Act was nothing less than Socialism. As for the Socialists themselves, their leader, Eugene Debs, forwent a fifth consecutive run for the White House in favor of a more pragmatic path to power. He ran for Congress from his home district in Indiana, railing against the President. “Mr. Wilson, who had all his life been opposed to militarism, has now become the avowed champion of plutocratic preparedness,” he argued, “and today he stands before the country pleading in the name of Wall Street and its interests for the largest standing army and the most powerful navy in the world.” But after months of campaign cacophony—and with German U-boats cruising the waters off Connecticut and Rhode Island—one phrase continued to resonate: “He kept us out of war.”