American History Hit - President Woodrow Wilson: Progressive? Warmonger? Overrated?

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

The 20th Century is up and running and the next President in our series, Woodrow Wilson, is in for a challenge. Reconstruction is over, Europe is on the precipice of war, and women are campaigning for suffrage. So how does this two term presidency play out?From granting women the right to vote to segregating the Federal Government, how progressive was the 27th President? Where did Wilson stand on American isolationism during the First World War? And where did the League of Nations come from?Don is joined by Dr Michael Kazin for this episode. Michael is a professor of History at Georgetown and author of several acclaimed books including 'What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party' and 'War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918'.Produced by Freddy Chick and Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. April 24th, 1913, New York City. A brilliant celebration is set to mark the opening of the Woolworth Tower in downtown Manhattan.

At 792 feet, it is now officially the tallest building in the world, a marvel of modern engineering and American ambition. Financed by Frank W. Woolworth, the retail magnet, designed by architect Cass Gilbert, the structure is a lofty symbol of the nation's industrial prowess and cultural transformation. A month earlier, the new president of the United States was inaugurated at the U.S. Capitol, facing the stark realities of shifting economic and social priorities across the country, with millions of citizens moving to the cities for factory jobs

and technology altering the fabric of everyday life. Woodrow Wilson seeks to meet the call for national leadership that can keep pace with the progress and the struggles. The Woolworth Tower ceremony will fit the spirit of these times. The event will be marked by the illumination of the building's 80,000 light bulbs, a dazzling display, making of the Woolworth a beacon of this modernist age. As the invited guests and dignitaries here in New York toast the promise of their era, 200 miles to the south in Washington, D.C., President Wilson is poised to push a button,

igniting all those bulbs to light the way ahead into a new century full of hope, commerce, and supreme challenges. No one could possibly predict. Good day, listeners, to another episode of American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman. Welcome. It's feeling increasingly exciting. Our presidential histories these days so relevant in this new election season. We are recording this on the week of the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

But today we're digging deep into the early 20th century with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Our 28th Commander-in-Chief served two terms from 1913 to 1921 following on William Howard Tafts. single term. Wilson was the first Democrat elected to the White House since Grover Cleveland, 20 years before in 1893. The Republicans had begun to feel quite secure in the White House by that time. Wilson was also the first southern-born president since the Civil War, 50 years before. So much of Wilson's legacy leans on that to source a major cause of lost-cause sentiment in America look no further than Woodrow Wilson. But you also find in this story one of the most complex minds ever to step into the office. Woodrow Wilson was an accomplished academic, a famous historian, no less,

author, university president, state governor before he arrived in Washington. His activist policies domestically and internationally engage us to this day. On one hand, he was a brilliant mind addressing the growing pains of an ever-expanding nation, putting into action progressive policies still in place today, not least of which was the 19th Amendment, women's right to vote, changing America foundationally. He tried to block prohibition. He unleashed reluctantly the U.S. military power upon the world, demonstrating our willingness to forcefully lead a global movement toward democracy. But for all his glowing talk of peace, justice, and human rights in the world, here at home, he instated some racist policies within the federal government that would

help drag Jim Crow deep into the 20th century and reignite the racial struggle still present in today's society. A leader of massive contradictions is one way to say it. But let's discuss in subtler fashion with Dr. Michael Kaysen, professor of history at Georgetown University, author of several acclaimed books, including most recently What It Took to Win, the History of the Democratic Party, and War Against War, the American Fight for Peace, 1914 to 1918. Hello, Michael, welcome. Great to be here. There's an awful lot to unpack with President Woodrow Wilson.

So much of his presidency is about its timing at the emergence of a globalized world. It's also about industry and technology. The world is shrinking through telecommunications and transportation. Just scanning the events of Wilson's presidency is overwhelming, backing up far enough to take it all in. He enters office in 1913. Why had he sought the presidency, do you think, after such a resume? Well, first of all, he thought he'd be a good president because he knew a lot about American government. He'd written a best-selling, multivulume work on American history, focused on politics.

He'd written books about congressional government, criticizing American government the way it worked and praising the British parliamentary system. He was really one of the best orators of his day in a time when oratory was how you got to be known as a prominent man in the country. And also, the Democratic Party was becoming a more progressive party at that time. Wilson had not begun as progressive, but he, as governor of New Jersey, signed a lot of important progressive legislation, sometimes against the bosses of his own party. He signed bills for workman's compensation, for direct primary, against corrupt practices in the state, and several others. So he was what used to be called an available man. That is,

he was a popular governor. He was a great speaker. He could appeal to elite figures in journalism and elsewhere because he'd been the president, rather reformist president of a major Ivy League University, Princeton University, and also he was a well-known author, a best-selling author. So all these reasons, he seemed to be an ideal candidate, both for elite members of Democratic Party who didn't like William Jennings Bryan, who'd won the nomination three times before him and lost every time. At the same time, he was in favor of a more progressive set of reforms, which is pretty much what most of the party was for by that point as well. In many ways, we're still feeling the effects of Teddy Roosevelt, even on Wilson's administration,

aren't we? Well, yes, in Roosevelt, 1912, ran himself as a progressive party, a third-party candidate. breaking from his own party from the Republican Party. And some people argue it's controversial among historians that if the Republican Party hadn't been split in 1912, that Wilson would have had no chance to win. Ironically, Wilson got only 42% of the popular vote. He got fewer votes than William James Bryan had got losing in the last slide in 1908. That's because Teddy Roosevelt came in second that year. And the incumbent president, William Howard Taft, came in third. It's a fascinating election story. It's really one of the big independent

candidate stories, third party candidates. Teddy Roosevelt actually, you know, peels off, as you say, he turns against his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, and runs against him, creating the Bull Moose Party. And that is really what you're referring to as far as he steals enough votes away from the Republicans so that the Democrat actually, Woodrow wasn't wins in a landslide, doesn't he? Electoral vote, yeah, but of course only two or 42 percent. And not to be forgotten, this is the heyday of the Socialist Party in America, too. Eugene Debs got 6 percent of the vote, which doesn't sound like very much, but he had large votes in place like Oklahoma and Nevada that is not safe, we don't usually associate with socialism.

Any of these two-term presidencies are big subjects to talk about, but especially in Wilson's case, it really is worth taking this in two parts. The first part is really this progressive reform agenda that he comes in, head full esteem, really, gets a lot done. And then, of course, the second term is mostly about World War I, starting up and getting dragged into that. So So let's move through this story in those two parts by and large. But first, let's talk about the background of Wilson. He's from Virginia, Staunton, Virginia. He's one of two Confederate state presidents, right? He was born in a Confederate state. Yeah, his father was a leading Confederate minister. He came from Presbyterian background on both sides, both his mother's side and his father's side,

and he was born 1856, and he was old enough, or young enough, to have seen the Civil War. He saw Jefferson David's carried in chains near his hometown, for example. So both from parentage and also from his own childhood experiences, he knew what civil war was like, he knew what reconstruction was like, from the point of view of a, you know, rather privileged white kid, at least. And he was a reformist in many ways, but when it came to race, he was, let us say, terrible from our point of view today. And that's a lot because of his southern background. He couldn't turn his back on his father, who continued to be a hero of his, by the way, throughout his. life. Right. A lot has been written about his father. A real stickler, real perfectionist, this is where

Wilson gets a lot of his personality. Yeah, and also where he gets his idea that he's doing God's work, because even though he was not a minister, he was deeply religious where the Bible memorized a lot of it and really believe that he was doing work his father would have been proud of. Yeah, there's a book called Thomas Woodrow Wilson Psychological Study, which takes a Freud view of it, that he was, you know, genuinely, his father was a messianic figure. in his mind. I mean, it really, you can go anywhere where you want with that. It's like Seapidreveloid co-wrote a book about him as well. Oh, really? Interesting.

And that's not, Seaboroy didn't read a lot of biographies. But I think he's probably the only, I think he's the only one. Yeah. His mother also is from England, which is interesting, and sort of foreshadows a much more Euro-American view on Wilson's part, which had been very much what presidents weren't doing. Before Theodore Roosevelt, of course, this is really the beginning. of those 20th century presidents that we now still live with of seeing our role in the world as a global leader? Yes, we still talk about Wilsonian democracy, though our current idea of democracy, which is, of course, multiracial. He wouldn't qualify. But he was in his foreign policy,

he continued to talk in very idealistic terms about spreading American influence, not for American economic self-interest, though he wasn't opposed to that, but to spread democracy around the world. And when he, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, when he, when he, He went to Congress in April 1917 to ask for declaration of war against imperial Germany. He said, we want to have a world made safe for democracy. And he became a huge hero after the war. He went to Paris, huge numbers of French people turned out to see him. And the disappointment that the democracy was not really the legacy of World War I around the world,

or for that matter, in most of Europe, is something which is part of the reason why he's seen by many historians today. is a much more ambiguous figure. He's not seen as a hero by many, many historians. We today sort of attribute the city on the hill idea to Reagan, who really dates back before this, especially to Wilson, doesn't it? We have this special calling by God to do something as a nation. Yeah, that's very much, that's very much too. And also, he was, he became present at a time when the government was becoming larger, the central government was becoming larger. And, you know, so we'll talk about that. So one of the things that progressives in both parties were in favor of, was using the central government in order to restrain the power of big business

in order to, to a certain degree, help labor unions to organize and also to conserve the environment. And so the idea that a president like him was the center of discussion politically is not something which is true in the 19th century. Many presidents late 19th century probably talked about this in your other previous shows were, you know, the historian Thomas Wolf called Lost Men. Not many Americans idolize Rutherford B. Hayes or Chester Arthur or even Grover Cleveland, who was won two terms. But Wilson was an idol for a lot of people, especially a lot of intellectuals, more progressive intellectuals. I want to talk about this 10-volume history that he was writing this in what year, I guess, early 20th century?

Late 1890s, yeah. Oh, okay. How did he see American exceptionalism? Well, in a very traditional way. I mean, I haven't read the whole thing. I've just skimmed it. It's very large. But this was a celebratory book, as most textbooks of American history were in the 19th century. He was a Democrat, capital D. So he did, like Jefferson and Jackson, more than the Wigs. But, of course, he wasn't down on Lincoln because that's not something you could be.

But by the 1890s, on either side of the aisle, really. So, but he was a great storyteller. He's a very good narrative historian, which is something that, as a political scientist, one could not take for granted then or now for that matter. But he did make it seem as if the reconstruction process, which, of course, was led by Democrats, depriving black people often violently of their rights was a very good thing. So it was a apology for racism as well as a celebration of what you might call white male democracy. Interesting. Tell me how he reshapes the Democratic Party with his presidency.

Well, actually, I would argue, because I wrote a biography of William Jennings Bryant. I'd argue that actually Brian was just as important as reshaping the party, even though he didn't win. Because before 1896, when Brian ran against McKinley, the Democrats were very much a conservative party in many ways in American politics, not just because they were the racist party, but also because they didn't want the government to have much power over people's lives, the federal government. And in industrializing economy, they tended to represent small farmers much more than people in the big industrial states. Whereas Wilson wins, he wins with a coalition of labor, American Federation of Labor, led by Samuel Gompers.

he wins with, as I said before, progressive intellectuals on his side. He really wins with a lot of reformers signing with him as well as with the White South. And so he puts together this Democratic coalition, which in a country which until 1912, for several decades, the Republican Party had been the majority party. So he was trying to make the Democratic Party, the majority party, by using the federal government to help those who were voting for Democrats, industrial workers, small farms, But at the same time, he wasn't going to make such a huge break from the Southern-based Democratic Party as to lose his whole region. And unfortunately, one of the things people don't realize enough, I think, is that the many Southern Democrats, white Democrats, were terrible on race, but they were progressive on economic issues as long as they help their own people, that is, white voters.

So a lot of the bills that were passed in his first term from 1913 and 1917, actually, we still know them by the names of the Southern Congress. and senators who sponsored them. The Clayton Antitrust Act, the Adamson Act for eight-hour day for railroad workers, for example. Adamson was a guy from Georgia. Clayton was from Tennessee. So you had progressive white Democrats who were very important in his administration. So he put together this coalition of, you might say, northern workers and southern workers and farmers. And that was enough to narrowly win re-election in 1916. Minus the racial aspect of things and policies, you are seeing the beginning of the redefinitions of both parties. I mean, over the last 20 years, the Republicans at that time have been embracing big business.

They've been defending all of that. And the Democrats, on the other hand, have been embracing the workers. And that's really how that continues right up to today. The other aspect of this that's important to acknowledge is that they see the Democrats start to see that big government can fix things on a big, scale. This is partly, as you say, because the country is just growing massively. And so they see this as the tool to use, whereas Republicans don't. That's still the same modern day policies in both parties back then. No, I think that's true. Labor has, in almost every election, supported, organized labor, has supported the Democrats since Wilson, up until today, 112 years later,

and will this year, of course, as well. And, you know, look, a lot of Americans from both parties, realized that big business was too powerful in the early 20th century. The banks controlled the money supply in effect. Back then, there was very little regulation of that until the Federal Reserve Act, which was passed in Wilson's first year in 1913. There was an antitrust act passed in 1890, but it had very few teeth. It was used as much against labor as it was against big business. So if Senator Roosevelt had been elected in 1912 as a third-party candidate, a lot of things he would have done would have been very similar kind of things that Wilson did. Wilson was just lucky enough that the Republicans were split. But there was a real hunger, I think,

among Americans, most Americans, except for heads of corporations to make sure that the economy is working better for the ordinary person. Also was an important factor in passing bills, which to a certain degree helped to do that. You mentioned in our previous episodes, those, you know, bank failures, the panics that had been happening, you know, recurring every, I don't know, 10 years or something like that's amazingly frequent. That had probably reached its breaking point, right? This is the beginning of somebody's got to do something about this. We can't leave this up to local concerns.

Money supply and borrowing rates and all that sort of thing has to be centralized. That's the beginning of this Federal Reserve. I'm curious, when did that talk start? It certainly wasn't under Wilson. Well, it started during the depressions of 1870s and the 1890s. You know, people also felt that the banks were investing money only among their friends, and that would be used against them since Andrew Jackson back in the 1830s, a lot of bankers themselves, actually, by the time Federal Reserve was established, realized that

this could not go on because public opinion becomes so strong because of the bank failures and also because of the stock market panics, which you mentioned, the big one in 1907, for example. But the idea that some of the biggest investors in the country, like J.P. Morgan, had more power over the financial system than any politician did who was elected, that seemed pretty outrageous to a lot of people. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, it's one of those early discoveries in your childhood when you're staring at that new cash in your hand and you look at the front of the bill and you see that little insignia

on the left, Federal Reserve of, you know, Bank of, I'm looking at one right now, St. Louis or Bank of Dallas. Those actual sort of independent Federal reserves are part of this system. Just to explain this system that we still live with today that happens under Wilson. There are 12 separate units of the Federal Reserve that are set up in different parts of the country. This is to keep money supplies steady. It works to this day. Yeah, to regulate the banks, too, make sure they have enough money on hand if they are doing badly that the people, the depositors won't lose everything.

That began with the Federal Reserve. It really took off under Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression in 1930s. But the precedent was set, in other words, by Wilson for some power over the financial system. And anyone who's listening to this podcast a few months ago remembers the populists, you know, the greenbacks, all of those issues that come through the 19th century are what the Federal Reserve has really started for. I can mention one other part of the federal government set up under Wilson, which is still very important today.

The Federal Trade Commission was set up in 1914. It's a very controversial commission even today. The head of it is a very progressive economist named Lena Kahn. And under the Biden administration, she tried to. get the Federal Trade Commission to ban non-compete agreements for workers. And a federal judge just yesterday, appointed by Donald Trump said, no, no, no, that's not constitutional. You can't do that. So the whole idea of what is all called the administrative state really takes off under Wilson.

That's one of the reasons why a lot of conservatives today hate Woodrow Wilson. This is as much as people in favor of racial equality, hate Woodrow Wilson. He's hated by people on both the left and right for different reasons. Conservatives are so quick to blame FDR for the New Deal and the growth of the federal government, but it really starts under Wilson. It's fascinating. I want to switch to an incredibly important moment, which we'll probably handle another podcast, but the 19th Amendment. Was Wilson in favor of the women's vote or against it? He was in favor of it only when it was impossible for him not to be in favor of it. Let's put it that way. No, he never supported it. And, you know, that shows how he was a conservative white southerner at heart.

You know, the White South was one of the bastions of opposition to suffrage. The only way it suffered to the South is that women said, well, you know, some black men are still voting here. Do you want black men to vote while white women, your mothers and daughters can't vote to the politicians who had to pass it? But some Democrats were in favor of it. William James Bryan wasn't in favor of it before Wilson was. But Wilson doesn't really come out for it until it's clear that enough states are for it, that the Republican Party was for it. There were women suffragists who chained themselves to the White House in 1916 because they want to draw attention to the fact that Wilson is not for. And also, but by the time the U.S. enters World War I, the major suffrage organization, which had been opposed to rearmament, have been opposed to going to war, which is basically led by people who are pacifists, women who are pacifists, supports the government, supports a declaration of war.

And women take the jobs of some men who were who have been drafted and away at war. And so that helps to make it really impossible for any politician to oppose women's suffrage at that point. And, of course, to pass an amendment, you need two-thirds of each House of Congress because of the state legislature. So amendments don't get through unless they're pretty popular among different parties. Right. So within this first term, he is an incredibly popular president. Am I wrong? Well, yes and no. I mean, remember, Republicans are still the majority party. Democrats only take over the House of Representatives in 1910 and then expand their majority in 1912 and take the Senate as well. But before then, from the mid-1890s on, the Republicans had pretty much run everything.

So he's popular enough. We don't have public opinion polls yet, so we don't really know. But 1916, he narrowly wins re-election. And partly because he opposed the U.S. entering World War I at that point. In 2016, if the socialist candidate who was not Eugene Debs that year, had got, gotten as many votes as Debs had gotten in 1912 in California, Charles Heaven's Hughes, a Republican candidate, would have won California in 1916, which would have given a majority electoral vote, which means Woodrow Wilson dependent on the weakest of socialism in America in

2016 to win re-election. So, no, he was in some ways the only, he was the only Democrat, of course, to win the presidency from now 1892 up until 1932. So he was battling against a party whose strength was really only in the South and otherwise a very, very perilous majority he had. You can almost parallel the power of the Republican Party from the Civil War to this point, to Wilson's administration, the same way that the Democrats from FDR up until the 70s and Ronald Reagan were. It's kind of the flip side of the same coin, isn't it? Yeah. To be fair, to the Democrats in the guilty age, late 19th century, they did control the House

and in several occasions as much as Republicans did. But they only did that when Republicans failed. They didn't do it because it was more because they were the out-party and midterm elections, especially, the out-party often does well. Sure. Well, you see the same with under Dwight Eisenhower. There's a brief moment of Republican power in the 50s, and then it goes back. I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

Let's talk about his racial policies, which is a huge theme in his time here, and important to explain it carefully. 1912 W.D. DeBoys, the famous black intellectual of America at that time, supported Wilson. Later on, he regrets it for the reasons we'll discuss this. Let's step through this throughout his whole presidency as to how it evolves under Wilson to the point of a pretty critical decision that he ends up making after World War I. Well, 1912, Wilson makes some overtures to black leaders who have been very disappointed with both Taft and Roosevelt for various reasons because they had really backed away from the Lincolnian grantian support for black whites. And they're taking a chance

with Wilson. They say, well, if a white Democrat from the South can be on our side, then the country will really change in major ways. But then Wilson is a Southerner. A lot of the cabinet members come in are white Southerners as well. And he lets the head of the post office department in the cabinet and the Secretary of the Treasury as well to segregate their department. So what that means is a lot of black men, mostly a few black men who had jobs as clerks, white collar jobs, paid fairly well, were either fired altogether or they were forced to take lower jobs as say janitors, working far away from white employees. And also he met with some black leaders in the White House in 2013, 1914, not Du Bois, but others. And they criticized what he was doing. And he thought

that they were very discourteous to him. He said, I'm not going to have these people back in the White House again. They're going to talk to me like that. And then, Infamously, he allowed probably the greatest, cinematically, the greatest film up to that time had been made, Birth of a Nation, directed by the Southern director, D.W. Griffith to be shown in the White House. And part of the reason he did that was because it's a silent film,

but it was a feature-like film, incredibly popular among white audiences in America at the time. It was a film about the Civil War and Reconstruction, and it made heroes out of Confederates and former Confederates who were torpedoed Reconstruction. And throughout the film in the captions, whose style of films have these captions, they kept quoting from Wilson's history of the American people. So not surprisingly, Wilson, well, they're quoting me. People say it's a great film.

I'll let it be shown. And the NAACP was just getting started at the time, tried to boycott the film. They had demonstrations against the film in many northern cities. But nevertheless, the film was very well made, unfortunately. It was based on a book that was written by Wilson's friend, Tom's Dixon, right? The Klansman. Klansman. I still close to my students all the time, and they're both amazed by the praise for the Klan. And also, you know, one has to respect, unfortunately, the skill in which he made the film.

I compare sometimes to Lini Riff installs great propaganda films for the Nazis, which are still quite watchable, unfortunately. And, of course, they were films that helped to legitimize Nazism for a lot of foreign audiences. Yeah. I mean, it's important to nail this. down. I mean, birth of a nation basically revives what had been very effectively suppressed under Grant. The clan had been, you know, put down by federal intervention back in the 1870s. It is the celebration of the clan through the book, the Klansman, and then the making of this extraordinary movie, I mean, cinematically extraordinary. And then it is Wilson's support of it, showing it in the White House. I mean, in the days when movies were hard to find, this suddenly, you know, it's

is not only an endorsement of the movie, but also the movie industry. So it's this huge story. So when this happens, it really puts the fire under the clan. No pun intended. It was like, you know, this was what they needed, the very propaganda they needed. And as a result, as you're saying, the NAACP and everyone else comes out against this thing. And there are riots in the street. Yeah, the clan was not the second.

This is called the Second Ku Klux Klan because it was revived in 2015 with the help of the film. it becomes a major organization really only after World War I in 1920, when it has as many as four million members. And it's as opposed to Jewish Americans and Catholic Americans as opposed to black Americans, some of whom, of course, are Catholic and Jewish. So it's really a response to immigration, Catholics. And the growing influence, actually, of Catholic Jews and African Americans in America. In effect, the Klan is saying to blacks and Jews and Catholics, you will not replace us.

You mentioned the quotes of Wilson's own words. Here's one right here. The white men were roused. This would have been one of those captions that come up in a silent film. The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation. Until at last, there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect the southern country. Quoted Woodrow Wilson. Oosh, that is pretty damning stuff right there for a present mind to consider.

It's complicated because Du Bois, he's. the editor of the NWACP magazine, The Crisis. Once he gets into World War I, he doesn't praise Wilson, but he does write a famous editorial called Close Ranks advising African Americans to allow themselves to be drafted, to enlist in the military, and to support World War I. Because he says, this will give white Americans a sense that black Americans are as patriotic as they are. Sure. So, you know, he doesn't support Wilson, certainly, but he does support the war, which Wilson leads the country into. And exactly what we need to talk about next. But before we go there, I want to understand. So very early in his presidency, he instates a segregation policy within parts of

the federal government. I mean, this is really part of the first term. Things become even more heightened as we get later on with the great migration. But this is a big part of Wilson's presidency. Two very large departments, Treasury and post office are segregated. Other departments, black employees, are sort of put into different jobs, not fired as much. And some, they continue in the same jobs. It's a more complicated story than sometimes here. But it's certainly true that he is not in favor and his department heads, various cabinet secretaries, are not at all going to support promoting black workers, which had been done to certain degree under Republican presidents. This is an epic story, Michael. I mean, this first term has really turned America on its head

in terms of all pre, well, not all previous presidencies. Certainly, as we say, Teddy Roosevelt has a lot to do with this kind of dynamic. But things get even more complicated as we come back for his second term, which involves the First World War. Yes. Wilson was aggressive within the Western Hemisphere doing his first term as well. Fair to say, the U.S. troops occupy Humac Republic, occupy Haiti, doing that first term to make sure that there won't be chaos, as they put it, and sometimes to make sure that anti-American leaders won't take over. But World War I is clearly the central, well, central event in the world from 1914 up until 1918. And in the second term, it's a central event. And it's important event in the first term as well, because he has to try to keep the U.S.

out of the war, which a lot of Republicans wanted the U.S. to get into. What was Wilson's view of what was happening in Europe with World War I? He wanted no part of it. He planned to be neutral. Well, he did say, after World War I broke out, August 1914. He said Americans should be neutral in word as well as deed. And he did understand that America, an immigrant country, had a lot of people on both sides. Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, sided with the central powers as they were known. French, British, sided with the Russians, tend to side with the allies, the triple-ontas, as they were known. So he knew that, at least when the war broke out, most Americans did not want to get into the war. The U.S. had not fought a war overseas.

in American history. So he understood politically it would have been disastrous. This begins to change when the Germans start torpedoing British ships, which have Americans on board, especially in early 1915, when Lusitania, when the biggest ocean lines in the world, which is owned by the Koonard lines, a British steamship line, is torpedoed by a German U-boat. Over 1,200 Americans die. This outrages Americans, and a lot of them think, well, this is an act of war, even though actually the German embassy in the United States had warned Americans to stay off that chip. They didn't say why, but they had warned them in an ad in American newspapers before. Teddy Roosevelt, who's still very active in politics, as a Republican now, not a third-party candidate anymore, he says,

we have to go to war, obviously. Wilson says an angry note to the Germans, but he doesn't want to go as far as declaring war. He still thinks America has no great interest in the war. At the same time, as he wants the U.S. to stay neutral in terms of military might, U.S. is helping to fund the British war effort and the French war effort by giving loans to the British, by trading with the British as much as they can, given the German U-boat threat. The British embassy in the U.S. is pointing to possible German spies, that then the Justice Department arrests. So Wilson was neutral in Word up until he calls for a declaration of war in 1917, but the government was not really neutral indeed. U.S. was a financial supporter of the Allies, especially with the British, from late 1914 up until the U.S. declares war.

So in that sense, the Germans, from their point of view, were justified in torpedoing ships carrying Americans because they thought, and they torpedoed some ships, American ships, too, which would carrying goods over to overseas because the U.S. was, in effect, a financial economic ally of the British. It's really its own story. This is an incredible bunch of events that happened with Mexico, the Zimmerman letter. All of these things are very famous. And we'll get into that in a different episode because it's so interesting and the beginning of real espionage. I want to get out of World War I because a huge theme of Wilson's worldview takes place. as a result of this. And of course, this is the beginning of the League of Nations. Tell me how he comes up with the idea of the League of Nations, or was he sort of co-opting someone else's

idea? Yeah, there's a whole peace movement before World War and also during World War I. I wrote about some in a book called War Against War, people like Andrew Carnegie and others were very involved in a sort of elite-sponsored peace movement. And one of the ideas they had had before the U.S. got into the war and before World War started was some sort of federation of nations, which some somehow could at least mediate disputes between nations. So the idea of a League of Nations was not completely new. Wilson did embrace it before the U.S. got into the war because it was clear that after this terrible war, the worst war in human history, was called the Great War for a reason. After the war was over, it was going to be a need, he believed, and a lot of people believed,

for some worldwide conciliatory mediation body, which could make sure that a, terrible war like this would never happen again. But it was not original with him. But he put a stamp on it because he was the American president because U.S. troops did make the difference in giving victory to the Allies. And so he had a lot of prestige coming out of the war. And that's why he was able to get the peace conference in 1919 to agree to set up a League of Nations. And it's his sales job of this directly to the people when he's struggling to get this past that actually causes his stroke. Some speculate. Yeah, well, we never know completely of cause his stroke.

because that's for historical doctors to tell us no autopsy, as far as I know, was done on him when he eventually died in 1924. But he was a very high-strong guy anyway, put him oddly. He was something that didn't bring criticism very well. And he did go on around-the-country tour in 1919 to sell this treaty. And Democrats were completely four. Some Republicans were forwarded. But back then, you needed two-thirds, well, we still do, two-thirds of the Senate to edify a treaty. And the Republicans had taken control of the Senate in 1980, mid-term election. So he was dealing with a Congress led by a party which wanted him to fail and led by again in Henry Caput Lodge, the chair of the Final Relations Committee in the Senate who had hated Wilson from way back when he wanted the U.S. to get to World War I, and Wilson opposed that. So he had the stroke in Colorado, but he probably would have lost anyway, even if he continued to be in good health. We covered in a previous episode the fascinating story of Edith, his wife's sort of shadow presidency that she has because he's so debilts.

as a result of this stroke that upwards of a year, I suppose, she had been kind of making, you know, running interference at least, but it's an amazing period of time. Wilson is remarkably the only president buried in Washington, D.C., in the Washington National Cathedral, which had been new, newly built in those days, that funeral orchestrated by his wife. What's your takeaway, Michael, of Wilson's presidency in general? Well, several things we haven't had a chance to talk about. First of all, yes, he was the main architect of what we call the administrative state today. and whether you're like it or not, that's an important achievement.

He did leave the nation after not wanting to into what was then the greatest war in history and made the difference in who won that war. If the Germans had won the war, the history of the 20th century would have been quite different, I think. Also, something else we haven't talked about, but worth underlining, I think. He helped to initiate what someone would call the rhetorical presidency. Senator Roosevelt done some of this, but Wilson was the first president since John Adams to go to Congress and give a speech front of Congress, to give the State of the Union address by himself. Before that, the State of Union address had just been a document which had read by a clerk.

But he was the first to do that. He also went around the country speaking as Senator Roosevelt had, but he was the first Democrat president to do that. And so in a sense, he elevates the presidency as Theta Roosevelt had into a, you might say, symbolic importance, greater than it had before, and immediate importance, too, because Americans could hear him speak on wax discs. His speeches were not broadcast yet because it wasn't radio until the old 1920s, but there were people who had heard him and talked about hearing him. He had a beautiful speaking voice. And so in some ways, as a symbolic or rhetorical president, he was very important as well.

And because every president since then, with hardly any exceptions, has had to be a really good orator. Michael Kaysen is a professor of history at Georgetown University, author of several acclaimed books, including most recently What It Took to Win, The History of the Democratic Party and War Against War at the American Fight for Peace, 1914 and 18. Really appreciate it. It's great to be here. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit.

Please remember to like, review, and subscribe. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next time.