Category Archives: Woodrow Wilson

Wilson gets a Secretary of War

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Woodrow Wilson

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Newton Baker and General Hugh Scott, circa 1916

Newton Baker and General Hugh Scott, circa 1916

The other day I posted about Major General Hugh Scott’s month as Woodrow Wilson’s interim Secretary of War. One hundred years ago today Newton Baker was sworn in as the full-time secretary. Baker was an excellent choice and he served President Wilson well for the next five years. I uploaded this to the Strawfoot Facebook page this morning, but over at Roads to the Great War they uploaded my article about Secretary Baker. I have always found it odd that Baker is not better known today than he is. I think it may have to do with his break with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s over the New Deal. The Democrats seem to have written Baker off. Also, Baker died in 1937 when Europe was getting ready for Round Two. By this time the world was focused on the rise of Hitler, Mussolini’s taking of Ethiopia, and the Japanese threat in the Pacific. By 1945 the WW1 generation must have seemed entirely anachronistic to most Americans.

The Baker piece was the second of a two part series. If you didn’t see it, here is the link to the piece about the February 1916 resignation of Baker’s predecessor, Lindley M. Garrison.

(image/Library of Congress)

Secretary Garrison resigns

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Woodrow Wilson, WW1

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at his office in the State, War, and Navy Building

Garrison at his office in the State, War, and Navy Building

They have uploaded my article about the resignation of Lindley M. Garrison over at Roads to the Great War. Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of War stepped down one hundred years ago today under intense pressure over a disagreement with the president about how best to prepare for American involvement in the First World War.

(image/Library of Congress)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882-1945

30 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, Woodrow Wilson

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A youthful Franklin Roosevelt as he was circa 1916 in his mid-30s. He loved performing these types of duties as assistant secretary of the Navy

A youthful Franklin Roosevelt as he was circa 1916 while in his mid-30s. He loved performing these types of duties as assistant secretary of the Navy

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on this day in 1882. It’s interesting how we commemorate Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays and then it drops off from there. I suppose with Washington commemoration had much to do with binding the tenuous nation together through the early decades of the republic; Lincoln then joined pantheon as the first president to be assassinated. That’s pretty much it. I thought it would be interesting to see what FDR was doing a century ago. His tenure as assistant secretary of the Navy is one of the least studied periods of his life, probably because he was not making policy per se but carrying out the orders of Naval Secretary Josephus Daniels and President Wilson.

In January 1916 Roosevelt was campaigning hard for Preparedness. He gave a talk in Binghamton, New York 100 years ago this week in which he averred that the U.S. Navy should give up “not one dollar” in appropriations. He was in accord with Wilson in many respects; the sinking of the Lusitania that past May had hardened Wilson’s stance. What is more, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was gone by this time, having resigned over what he saw as Wilson’s belligerent stance. In many ways Franklin Roosevelt was making the case better and more forcefully than Wilson, whose appeals to Congress and elsewhere were largely met with skepticism from all sides. FDR’s cousins Theodore Roosevelt for one was not impressed with Wilson’s proposals and called them “half-preparedness.” Of course as a former president he had more leeway than his cousin did to call it as he saw it.

Franklin Roosevelt returned to Washington after his Binghamton speech to get back to work and attend to Eleanor and his kids. He needed to be close to home. He and Eleanor’s last child, John Aspinwall Roosevelt, would be born just six weeks later. It is lost on us how young he was when so much of this was going on.

(image/Library of Congress)

Sunday morning coffee

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson, WW1

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3g10020vYesterday Mike Hanlon over at Roads to the Great War posted my article about the grain crisis and Prohibition. In a nutshell, the drys used the food shortage as a means to further their goal of passing the Eighteenth Amendment. Anti-Irish and, especially, anti-German sentiments were also part of the equation. Please read the whole piece. It’s a fascinating topic, and Hoover and Wilson found themselves unfortunately stuck in the middle.

On a more general note, if you have not done so already please check out Mike’s website worldwar1.com for extensive coverage of the WW1 centennial. For years now he and his staff have been maintaining several web platforms relating to the conflict. They do a great job discussing the war in all its complexity. The Great War centennial is an opportune time to take a fresh look at these events that did so much to shape the world we live in today.

(image/Library of Congress)

Happy Thanksgiving

26 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Washington, D.C., William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson

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St. Patrick's Church, Washington D.C. 26 November 1914: the mood was somber the first Thanksgiving of the Great War

St. Patrick’s Church, Washington D.C., 26 November 1914: the mood was somber the first Thanksgiving of the Great War

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I thought I would share these photographs from the Pan American Mass held at Washington D.C.’s St. Patrick’s Church in 1914. St. Patrick’s Monsignor William T. Russell conceived the idea of a Pan American Mass after hearing President Taft’s Thanksgiving proclamation in mid November. The monsignor pitched the idea to his boss Cardinal Gibbon who signed off on the idea. The Pan American concept goes back to the Pan Am Expo held in Buffalo nearly a decade earlier. That is of course where McKinley was killed and Roosevelt ascended to the presidency in 1901. William Howard Taft attended all four Thanksgiving Pan American Masses during his presidency.

Though undefined in the crowd, William Jennings Bryan was in attendance that Thanksgiving Day. His attendance assuaged concerns of Protestant exclusion and signaled America's determined neutrality in the escalating war.

Though undefined in the crowd, William Jennings Bryan was in attendance that Thanksgiving Day. His attendance at the Pan American Mass assuaged concerns of Protestant exclusion and signaled America’s determined neutrality in the escalating war.

Woodrow Wilson was there in 1913 but conspicuously absent in 1914. It seems there was a messy public dispute after the 1913 Thanksgiving mass when Protestants complained about what they saw as the mass’s exclusion. Wilson was at his retreat house in Williamsport, Massachusetts with his daughter, the two quietly celebrating Thanksgiving while mourning the death of his wife and her mother Ellen. Mrs. Wilson had hied the first of August during what turned out to be the first week of the Great War. Three months later peace was the topic of the day in St. Patrick’s. The president’s personal aide, Joe Tumulty, and his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, represented his that Thanksgiving day. Tumulty and Bryan were wise if subtle choices; Tumulty was a practicing Catholic and Bryan a devout Protestant pacifist. With war in Europe entering its fourth month Bryan’s attendance signaled to both domestic and foreign audiences that the United States was determined to stay out of it.

St. Patrick’s marked the Pan American Thanksgiving Mass well into the 1950s, with presidents, ambassadors and Supreme Court justices usually in attendance.

(images/Library of Congress)