Woodrow Wilson

E

End of War

Wilson's leadership had made him known all over the world. American troops to support the tired Allied lines arrived in June 1917 and helped them withstand the last desperate German assaults. The new German chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, on October 6, 1918, decided that Wilson's Fourteen Points gave his government a way to surrender without admitting defeat. Wilson was at the height of his career.

On November 11 an armistice was signed by Wilson and his discontented Allies, who would have preferred total military victory. In less than a year, however, Wilson would lose all direct influence on world events. On October 24, 1918, he appealed to voters to reelect a Democratic Congress so that he could “continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad.” The voters, however, gave narrow control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives to the Republicans, and control of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed to some of Wilson's strongest enemies.

Nevertheless, Wilson sailed for Europe on December 4, a move that shocked many citizens. Many thought it was inappropriate for a president to leave the United States during his term of office, and in doing so he removed himself from the rapid social and political change at home. In Europe he was given extraordinary receptions and spontaneous demonstrations reminiscent of his election campaign in 1912. The response persuaded him that popular opinion was overwhelmingly in his favor and would overcome any effort to halt the construction of a league of nations.

F

Fight for the Covenant

On January 18, 1919, Wilson addressed the opening session of the peace conference in Paris, urging it to create a permanent agency to ensure justice and peace. By February 14 he was able to define the organization and duties of a league of nations. Despite his triumphs, Wilson was disliked by European notables, many of whom saw him as arrogant and unrealistic.

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On the next day he set sail for the United States to sign important legislation, but when he returned to Paris he discovered that Allied diplomats had tried to bury the plans for the league. They advocated dividing the spoils of war and returning to prewar diplomacy. By sheer weight of his own prestige, Wilson, who was fighting sickness and exhaustion, turned the conference back to treaty and covenant negotiations.

Wilson desperately tried to create fair principles to settle issues from the war, but he found himself caught in a web of trickery and compromise. Only his belief that the league would rectify all errors sustained him. His most obvious mistake was agreeing to punitive taxes upon the ruined German economy. He had said earlier that he made war not against the German people but its government, but now that government had fallen.

Wilson also blundered by failing to include prominent Republicans in his delegation to Paris and while he was away his opponents conspired to defeat his treaty. Popular sympathy favored joining the league, and a majority of the Senate agreed. Senators led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts wanted to attach reservations, or conditions, to the treaty creating the league and were called “reservationists.” They were joined in opposition to the treaty by the “irreconcilables,” senators who were entirely opposed to the treaty because they felt that European affairs were not the business of the United States. The latter group included famous progressive senators William E. Borah of Idaho and Hiram W. Johnson of California. Despite the clever reservations that Lodge attached to the treaty, the Senate seemed sure to pass it.

Yet Wilson, although he had accepted numerous compromises from his peers at Paris, was now irreconcilable in his own way. The people, he felt, would force through a sweeping acceptance of the complete treaty. Returning home in July, he was determined to convince them to defend the league.

At Columbus, Ohio, on September 4, 1919, Wilson began the first of his detailed explanations of the league's operation. He traveled west, with the passion that in 1912 had brought him to the White House, but in 1912 he had also won over audiences with wit and had courted minority groups. These minority groups were later angered by his war decisions. Now Wilson was discussing and pleading for something that seemed to many of them far removed from their immediate concerns.

G

Illness and defeat

On September 25, on his return from the West Coast, Wilson spoke at Pueblo, Colorado, his last appearance on tour. He suffered a stroke in Kansas and never recovered entirely. On November 19 the Senate rejected the treaty, both the original and the one with Lodge's reservations.

Wilson's stroke left him physically incapacitated but his condition was not made public. Returning to peacetime conditions was already difficult, and the lack of a working administrator made more acute the problems of the poor, the needy, the bewildered, as well as those in government charged with running its bureaus. Had Wilson resigned, his vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, would have taken his office, and though he might well have satisfied the “irreconcilables” and brought the United States into the league he lacked the will to seek power for himself. In addition, Mrs. Wilson jealously guarded her husband's prerogatives, and may have feared that the president's resignation might sap his will to live, and to her he was “first my beloved husband whose life I was trying to save ... after that he was the president of the United States.” As a result, the president's Cabinet members were denied access to him, as was Colonel House. His wife determined what printed materials he could see, and his state papers became few and unsatisfactory. He held stubbornly to his view of the league and American responsibility to it and to his belief that involvement in European affairs had been justified in every respect. His bitterness toward those who disagreed did not diminish. He refused a pardon to the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, who had been jailed for publicly opposing the war.

The Democratic Party, at its 1920 convention, bestowed lavish praise on Wilson but decided to nominate James M. Cox, a mild proleague advocate and reform governor of Ohio.

VII

Last Years

The league remained Wilson's constant preoccupation. As president he had created no organization to carry on his program and had developed no associates to sustain his cause. After leaving office he retired to a house in Washington, D.C., and for the most part he disappeared from public view. Although he had led the country during the course of the war, the country was now in other hands. Wilson died on February 3, 1924, and was buried in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

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