Woodrow Wilson

One of the ways in which Woodrow Wilson stands out amongst other presidents is just how differently people view him depending on their relationship with American history. Mere enthusiasts tend to absolutely loath him. These groups harp on the racism, authoritarianism, and interventionism of the Wilson Administration, using these traits to lambaste him as one of the worst presidents to ever reside within the White House. Meanwhile, actual historians praise him for his leadership during WW1, idealistic visions for a postwar global civilization, and economic reforms. Between these two extreme depictions of Wilson lives the truth.

Woodrow Wilson replaced William Howard Taft as president on March 4, 1913. One of his first actions as president also happens to be one of his worst and most justly critiqued: The resegregation of the federal government. During Reconstruction, a law was passed allowing both black and white government employees to work with one another in the same environment. Almost immediately after assuming the office of president, Wilson repealed this policy, reasserting the barrier between government employees of separate races. This is an untenable decision and is one of the many reasons Wilson is not higher on my list.

The resegregation of the federal government is not the extent of anti-black racism in the Wilson White House. In 1915, Wilson screened the very first movie to ever be shown in the White House: The Birth of A Nation. This film praised the Ku Klux Klan and painted them in an irrationally positive light. Wilson's decision to display this film inspired racists across the country, and heavily contributed to the revival of the KKK. This is yet another reason I can't bear to raise Wilson's position in my rankings. However, while both of these things are terrible, Wilson also had some significant accomplishments in terms of civil rights.

In early 1917, Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act, which I consider to be his greatest achievement. This wonderful law granted citizenship to the residents of Puerto Rico, an island acquired by the US government in the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War. Around this same time, Wilson also vetoed the Immigration Act of 1917. This bill proposed two new policies: One, a ban on virtually all immigration from Asia to the US, and two, a requirement for all immigrants to America to pass a "literacy test" before being allowed into the country. Unfortunately, Wilson's veto was overridden, but he deserves credit for trying to prevent the law's passage. Throughout his presidency, Wilson was also a supporter of the woman's suffrage movement. My last point on the subject of civil rights is that Wilson also appointed Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, the first Jewish member of that institution.

Earlier, I mentioned that one of the first things Wilson did upon assuming the presidency was the reinstate the segregation of the federal government. Another thing Wilson did around the time of his initial entry into the Oval Office was to launch the New Freedom. The New Freedom was a broad set of economic reforms implemented with the aim of making the actualization of Thomas Jefferson's view of how American society should function more likely. In other words, Wilson wanted to create a Jeffersonian America where all US citizens were farmers who produced their own food, bedding, shelter, etc., so that they wouldn't be reliant on a potentially-tyrannical government to access those necessities. Wilson sought to meet this goal by ripping down what he dubbed "the triple-wall of privilege", i.e. tariffs, large banks, and monopolies.

So, to pursue these goals, Wilson reduced tariffs with the 1913 Underwood Tariff. While I, as a protectionist, disagree with this, I like certain elements of the Underwood Tariff. More specifically, the bill sought to substitute the loss of government funds brought by a reduction in tariffs through the extension of the income tax to private citizens. His predecessor, William Howard Taft, had supported the 16th Amendment, which legalized the implementation of income taxes. However, Taft only passed income taxes targeting businesses. Wilson placed such taxes on wealthy Americans as well. Being an economic progressive, I appreciate this decision.

As part of his effort to take down monopolies, Wilson founded the Federal Trade Commission, a government agency tasked with enforcing anti-trust laws. Wilson also signed the Clayton Antitrust Act. This statute makes it illegal for corporations to merge specifically with the goal of stifling competition. It also outlawed anticompetitive price discrimination and officially declared labor activity, such as unionization, legal and protected under US law. Both of these are great decisions.

During his tenure, Wilson also implemented various other progressive economic policies. For example, he was the first president to send economic aid to farmers. Wilson also signed the Adamson Act, which instituted the 8-hour workday for people employed in the railroad industry. This all goes without mentioning what I consider the crown jewel of the New Freedom: The Keating-Owen Act. The very first restriction on child labor passed in all of US history, this law prohibited the sale of products made with child labor outside of the state they were made in.

Researching the Wilson presidency will also reveal that he was an adamant environmentalist. Not only did Wilson just generally expand the amount of land protected under conservation policies, but Wilson also founded the National Park Service to tend to the country's national parks.

Wilson's foreign policy is iffier. For example, Wilson sent American troops to occupy the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two things that obviously warrant criticism. However, Wilson's diplomatic and geopolitical decisions also contain some truly great actions. For example, Wilson signed the Philippine Autonomy Act, which promised to give the Philippines, another former Spanish colony obtained by the US government in the Treaty of Paris, its independence once it could establish a stable government. The Philippine Autonomy Act then directly led to Filippino independence under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. The law also established an elected legislature in the Philippines.

My commentary on Wilson's foreign policy leads into the main thing he is known for: Leading the US through World War 1. On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian high schooler and anti-imperialist, shot and killed Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Because Princip was of Serbian ancestry, had traveled to and studied in Serbia, had ties to Serbian nationalism, wanted to unite Bosnia with Serbia into one country, and used a gun produced in Serbia to kill Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian state accused the Serbian government of being involved in the attack. As a result, it began preparing for war with Serbia.

However, Serbia was a strong ally of Russia. Consequently, war with Serbia likely meant war with Russia. So, on July 5, 1914, Austro-Hungarian officials met with Kaiser Wilhelm II, the king of Germany. At the meeting, they asked the kaiser to support the Austro-Hungarian government and military in any action they took against Serbia, regardless of whether or not Russian institutions got involved. He agreed, and Vienna began preparing a document known as the July Ultimatum.

The July Ultimatum was a set of demands that, if the Serbian government managed to fulfill within 2 days, would allow Belgrade to avoid war. However, the ultimatum was purposefully unrealistic, as the Austro-Hungarian state had been searching for an excuse to attack, invade, and annex Serbia for years leading up to the 1914 assassination. On July 23, 1914, the faux offer was completed and sent to Belgrade. As expected, the demands were too difficult for the Serbian government to meet, and when the deadline of July 25, 1914, came and went, the document was left unfulfilled. Consequently, on July 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian government declared war on Serbia, beginning WW1.

Later that same day, also on July 28, 1914, the Russian government declared war on Austria-Hungary in support of Serbia. A few days later, on August 1, 1914, the German government, fulfilling its promise to Vienna, declared war on Serbia and Russia in support of Serbia and Russia. Then, on August 2, 1914, the Montenegrin government declared war on Austria-Hungary and Germany in support of Serbia and Russia. Because of its strong alliance with Russia, the French government declared war on Austria-Hungary and Germany in support of Serbia, Russia, and Montenegro on August 3, 1914.

With the French declaration of war, the German military was facing war on two fronts: To the west was France, to the east was Russia. So, they adopted a strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan, in which they'd take advantage of the fact that the Russian military took a while to mobilize and use that time to invade France, being able to use almost all of their supplies due to the lack of actual Russian attacks. This would knock France out of the war, and allow them to dedicate all their resources to defeating Russia once its military finished mobilizing. In doing this, they would easily beat Russia, hastening the end of the war.

On August 4, 1914, in line with the Schlieffen Plan, German troops began marching toward France. However, the French armed forces had already placed troops on the country's southeastern border. Not wanting to deal with these troops, the German military instead marched through neutral Belgium. In retaliation against the invasion, the Belgian government declared war on Austria-Hungary and Germany in support of Serbia, Russia, Montenegro, and France. Later that day, the British government, an ally of Belgium, also joined the Entente, i.e. Serbia and its allies, against the Central Powers, i.e. Austria-Hungary and its allies.

At first, Wilson was determined to stay out of the war. However, German troops perpetrated a series of atrocities against Belgians throughout their invasion of the country, including the slaughter of civilians, destruction of entire villages, and the decimation of prominent landmarks, including a university that had existed since 1426. The brutality of these actions began to cause Americans to prefer the Entente over the Central Powers. Similarly, on February 11, 1915, the German military adopted a strategy known as unrestricted submarine warfare. Under this strategy, any neutral or Entente ship spotted in the waters surrounding Britain and Ireland would be attacked by German forces. The goal of this was to prevent the arrival of crucial imports into Britain, making continual involvement in the war unbearable for normal Britons, and hence placing additional pressure on London to surrender. Like the German atrocities in Belgium, the barbaric nature of this tendency further radicalized Americans against the Central Powers.

Because of unrestricted submarine warfare, the RMS Lusitania, a ship containing 128 Americans, was destroyed and sank by the German navy on May 7, 1915. The large number of American citizens who perished in this tragedy inflated the disdain for the Central Powers present amongst the US population. In fact, when Wilson refused to declare war on Germany and its allies after this incident, his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, resigned in protest. However, Wilson did successfully convince the German military to abandon unrestricted submarine warfare following the destruction of the RMS Lusitania.

Just under two years later, on January 12, 1917, the German minister of foreign affairs, Arthur Zimmerman, sent a telegram to the German ambassador to Mexico. In the letter, known as the Zimmerman Telegram, Zimmerman asked the ambassador to broker a deal with the Mexican government regarding the war: If America joined the Entente, Mexico would, in response, join the Central Powers. Additionally, throughout the remainder of the war, the Mexican government would try to convince the Japanese state, which had joined the Entente back in August of 1914 as an excuse to attack German colonies in Oceania, to either surrender to defect to the Central Powers. In exchange, when the war ended, the German military would help Mexican forces invade the US and recapture land it lost to America because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo under James K. Polk.

Four days later, on January 16, 1917, the Zimmerman Telegram was discovered by British spies, who then sent it to Wilson. Then, on March 1, 1917, Wilson leaked the text to journalists. Exactly a month prior, on February 1, 1917, the German military announced its intentions to resume the use of unrestricted submarine warfare. These two events collectively became the straw that broke the camel's back. On April 2, 1917, Wilson appeared before Congress, asking them to draft a declaration of war against the Central Powers. They obliged, and Wilson signed the resulting document on April 6, 1917. With this, the US joined World War 1.

Soon after, Wilson signed a statute that made it illegal to criticize US involvement in the conflict. Additionally, he established a small organization called the Committee on Public Information, chaired by a reporter named George Creel. The CPI worked to produce pro-war propaganda in hopes of catalyzing jingoistic support for the American military specifically and the Entente generally. The CPI was successful, but its efforts led to the xenophobic harassment of German-Americans. Both of these things are disgusting and absolutely warrant criticism. However, Wilson's response to WW1 vastly improved by the beginning of 1918.

On January 8, 1918, Wilson appeared before Congress and presented the 14 Points, a set of the provisions he wanted to incorporate into the postwar peace treaty. The 14 Points are as follows:

1. All treaties and agreements must be public knowledge
2. All countries should be able to freely navigate the Ocean as they wish
3. Tariffs must be abolished
4. The size of all militaries must be reduced
5. Every solution to colonial disputes must be created by an unbiased party
6. Russia must be given back all land it had prior to the war
7. Belgium must have its independence restored
8. Alsace-Lorraine must be returned to France
9. Italy's borders must be redrawn to include all ethnic Italians in that part of Europe
10. All Austro-Hungarian colonies must be given self-determination
11. All countries in the Balkans must be given self-determination
12. All Ottoman colonies must be given self-determination
13. Poland must have its independence restored
14. An international organization tasked with mediating disputes in hopes of preventing future conflicts must be founded

I generally like the 14 Points. More specifically, I support points 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. In fact, I believe that if the 14 Points defined the Treaty of Versailles, rather than the vindictiveness of leaders like David Lloyd George of Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France, they would have prevented the rise of Hitler.

As I explained in my article on Warren G. Harding, specifically in the section regarding his Dawes Plan, the Treaty of Versailles directly led to the rise of Hitler, Nazism, and the NSDAP in Germany. Because Clemenceau and George wanted to punish Germany and shunned Wilson's 14 Points, the Treaty of Versailles was mainly composed of provisions damaging the German economy. The document placed official blame on Germany for the war, stripped Germany of all of its colonies (Germany was the only member of the Central Powers that Wilson didn't want to strip of its colonies), gave complete control over Alsace-Lorraine to France, stripped the German military of its weapons, and most importantly, required the German government to pay off all debts that stemmed from the conflict.

That last provision proved to be especially harmful, though they all burdened Germany with some level of humiliation and/or damaging. The German government, desperate to liquidate its debt, literally printed money to give to other nations. As the economic stories of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren have taught us, printing money in excess ultimately causes immense anguish, as it causes the value of a singular dollar to decrease. This, in turns, leads to companies demanding additional money in exchange for products, causing prices to shoot up. This exact situation unfolded in Germany. Hitler then ignored the role of the Treaty of Versailles in creating these circumstances his country was facing. Rather, he blamed German Jews for this. German citizens liked this narrative, causing Hitler to become an extremely popular figure. Had Wilson's more forgiving interpretation of a post-WW1 treaty manifested, these events likely wouldn't have taken place.

While most of the 14 Points failed, some of them did see the light of success. For example, point 13, as previously mentioned, called for Polish independence. At the Paris Peace Conference, the meeting where the Treaty of Versailles was drafted, Wilson convinced its authors to include a provision guaranteeing Polish sovereignty. It's actually for this reason that Wilson is the subject of several statues across Poland, and even Eastern Europe as a whole. Wilson also convinced the document's drafters to write a clause establishing the organization he described in Point 14, which was known at the time as the League of Nations. Eventually, the League of Nations even evolved into the United Nations.

On June 28, 1919, exactly 5 years after Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Franz Ferdinand, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Afterward, Wilson returned to the US and embarked on a tour of the country. The tour, coupled with the chaos of WW1 and the ironic stress of the Paris Peace Conference, put an immense strain on Wilson's mental health and psychological stability. On September 25, 1919, he nearly suffered a mental breakdown. While he averted this crisis, he ended up suffering a stroke on October 2, 1919, regardless. Because of this stroke, he was left incapacitated and unable to manage the duties of president. Yet, he didn't resign. Instead, he merely let his wife Edith effectively manage the presidency until Harding replaced them at the beginning of 1921. This is an incredibly selfish and reckless choice and contributes to Wilson's inability to be higher on my list, even if I like him.

Yet another major issue with the Wilson Administration is its awful response to the Spanish flu. On March 11, 1918, the first cases of the illness appeared at Camp Funston, a military training base in Kansas. The disease then swiftly spread across the area. Then, as the soldiers staying at the camp travelled from fort to fort, it spread even further. Consequently, it became an epidemic in the US. And as troops left America to fight abroad, it transformed into a pandemic. As these events unfolded, Wilson censored journalists raising alarms about the outbreak. As a result, few people legitimately knew how severe the Spanish flu was. So, when American troops started returning home in the summer and early autumn of 1918, US citizens felt perfectly comfortable attending parades honoring their arrival. This further worsened the outbreak, causing tens of thousands of deaths.

A few months after WW1 ended upon the German surrender of November 11, 1918, Wilson, on February 25, 1919, founded the American Relief Administration. The ARA was a government agency that worked to provide critical supplies to people suffering in a postwar Europe. Directed by future-president Herbert Hoover, the organization set up thousands of soup kitchens, sent medical supplies to numerous hospitals, helped provide a portion of the wages of European teachers, and conducted 4,000,000 different vaccinations. The ARA was so great that even Vladimir Lenin of the Soviet Union accepted its assistance.

Despite what many say, Woodrow Wilson was a good president. He had immense flaws - the racism, the corruption, the imperialism in Latin America, the support of free trade, the authoritarianism, and the atrocious response to the Spanish flu - but overall, he was a great leader. He gave Puerto Ricans citizenship, supported women's suffrage, vetoed xenophobic policies, convinced the German military to stop engaging in unrestricted submarine warfare, expanded conservation, ensured Filipino independence, implemented wonderful economic reforms, and most importantly, almost prevented the rise of Hitler.