Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him - free ebook by Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick) Tumulty

WOODROW WILSON AS I KNOW HIM

To the memory of my dear mother Alicia Tumulty whose spirit of generosity, loyalty, and tolerance I trust will be found in the lines of this book...

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

In preparing this volume I have made use of portions of the following books: "The War The World and Wilson" by George Creel; "What Wilson Did at Paris," by Ray Stannard Baker; "Woodrow Wilson and His Work" by William E. Dodd; "The Panama Canal Tolls Controversy" by Hugh Gordon Miller and Joseph C. Freehoff; "Woodrow Wilson the Man and His Work" by Henry Jones Ford; "The Real Colonel House" by Arthur D. Howden Smith; "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson" by Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West.

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PREFACE

Woodrow Wilson prefers not to be written about. His enemies may, and of course will, say what they please, but he would like to have his friends hold their peace. He seems to think and feel that if he himself can keep silent while his foes are talking, his friends should be equally stoical. He made this plain in October, 1920, when he learned that I had slipped away from my office at the White House one night shortly before the election and made a speech about him in a little Maryland town, Beth

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WOODROW WILSON AS I KNOW HIM CHAPTER I

My introduction to politics was in the Fifth Ward of Jersey City, New Jersey, which for many years was the "Bloody Angle" of politics of the city in which I lived. Always Democratic, it had been for many years the heart and centre of what New Jersey Democrats were pleased to call the great Gibraltar of Democracy. The ward in which I lived was made up of the plainest sort of people, a veritable melting pot of all races, but with a predominance of Irish, Germans, and Italians, between whom it was,

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CHAPTER II

For the young man who wishes to rise in the politics of a great city there is no royal road to preferment but only a plain path of modest service uncomplainingly rendered. Of course, there seem to be exceptions to this rule. At times it is possible for the scion of a great family to rise to temporary distinction in politics without a preliminary course in the school of local politics, for as a Democratic boss once said to me: "Great family names are fine window-dressers," but in my own experienc

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CHAPTER III

After serving my apprenticeship as a ward worker, devoted friends from my home ward urged my name upon the Democratic leader, Mr. Robert Davis, for a place upon the Democratic legislative ticket for Hudson County. I had grown to have a deep regard and affection for this fine old fellow. While he was a boss in every sense, maintaining close relations with the Public Service Corporations of the state, he had an engaging human side. He never pretended nor deceived. With his friends he was open, fra

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CHAPTER IV

Although the intrepid Colonel Harvey was defeated in the first skirmish to advance the cause of Woodrow Wilson, he continued to pursue his purpose to force his personal choice upon the New Jersey Democracy. The approaching gubernatorial election in 1910 gave the Colonel his opportunity and he took full advantage of it. Rumours began to circulate that the machine run by Davis, Smith, and Ross, the great Democratic triumvirate of the state, was determined to nominate the Princeton president at any

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CHAPTER V

No campaign in New Jersey caused so great an interest as the gubernatorial campaign of 1910. The introduction of a Princeton professor into the political melee in New Jersey had given a novel touch to what ordinarily would have been a routine affair. The prologue to the great drama, the various scenes of which were now to unfold before the voters of the state, had been enacted at the Democratic Convention at Trenton under the masterly direction of the members of the Democratic Old Guard of the s

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CHAPTER VI

Woodrow Wilson opened his gubernatorial campaign with a speech in Jersey City, my home town. It was a distinct disappointment to those who attended the meeting. His speech in accepting the nomination had touched us deeply and had aroused in us great expectations, but after the Jersey City speech we were depressed in spirit, for it seemed to us that he was evading the real issues of the campaign. I was most anxious to meet the candidate and give him, if he invited it, my impressions of this speec

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CHAPTER VII

The crisis of the campaign came when George L. Record, Progressive leader in the ranks of the Republican party in Hudson County, uttered a ringing challenge to the Democratic candidate to debate the issues of the campaign with him. The challenge contained an alternative proposition that the Democratic candidate either meet Mr. Record in joint debate in various parts of the state or that he answer certain questions with reference to the control of the Democratic party by what Mr. Record called th

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CHAPTER VIII

The final meeting of the gubernatorial campaign was held in a large auditorium in Newark, New Jersey, where the last appeal was made by the Democratic candidate. It was a meeting filled with emotionalism such as I had never seen in a campaign before. The Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, had covered every section of the state and it was easy for even the casual observer to note the rising tide in his favour. The campaign had, indeed, become a crusade; his eloquence and sledge-hammer blows at

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CHAPTER IX

All the prophecies and predictions of the political seers and philosophers of New Jersey, many of them of course feeling their own partisan pulse, were annihilated and set adrift by the happenings in New Jersey on the first Tuesday in November, 1910. Woodrow Wilson, college professor, man of mystery, political recluse, the nominee of the most standpat Democratic convention of many years, had been chosen the leader of the people of the state by the unprecedented majority of 39,000, and was wearin

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CHAPTER X

The conferences and meetings in preparation for the great senatorial fight having been concluded, the scene of activities was transferred to Trenton, where shortly after the Inauguration plans were laid for the final battle. Immediately upon the conclusion of the Inaugural ceremonies, the hand-to- hand contests for the great prize and incidentally the leadership of the Democrats, was on in full swing. At the beginning of the fight the bosses counted upon the active support of the influential Dem

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CHAPTER XI

The election of Martine having been settled and the preferential vote having been validated through the courageous handling of a delicate situation, the new Governor was firmly in the saddle. His leadership had been tested and only the fragments of the Old Guard machine were left. The road was thus cleared of all obstacles in his own party that might be put in the way of his programme of constructive legislation. Having delivered his first message, which contained a full and detailed discussion

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CHAPTER XII

Upon the completion of the legislative work of the first session of the New Jersey Legislature the name of Woodrow Wilson quickly forged to the front as a strong Presidential possibility. Intimate friends, including Walter Hines Page, afterward United States Ambassador to Great Britain; Cleveland H. Dodge and Robert Bridges, the two latter old friends and classmates of the Governor in the famous class of '79 at Princeton, set about by conferences to launch the Presidential boom of their friend,

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CHAPTER XIII

While Governor Wilson came out of this controversy with the two Colonels, Harvey and Watterson, with flying colours, he was by no means beyond the danger line. His enemies both within and without the party hotly contested his leadership, and the bitterness of the opposition grew in proportion as his candidacy gained daily advantages. Everything possible was done to block his progress and to make more difficult his road to the Presidency. Everything he had ever said or written, especially his "Hi

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CHAPTER XIV

Old line politicians, like Roger Sullivan of Illinois and Tom Taggart of Indiana, were turned to the Princetonian by his notable speech at the Jackson Day dinner and now gave sympathetic ear to the New Jersey Governor's claims for the nomination. An incident which happened at the conclusion of the banquet, as the Governor was on his way to make his train for New Jersey, illustrates the character of the victory he had won over difficulties which at the time seemed insurmountable. The old Illinois

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CHAPTER XV

The contests for the delegates to the National Convention were on in full swing throughout the various states. In the early contests, particularly in the far western states, like Utah, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana, the Wilson candidacy, according to primary returns, began to take on the appearance of a real, robust boom. As the critical days of the Convention approached, evidences of a recession of the favourable tide to Wilson began to manifest themselves, particularly in the states

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CHAPTER XVI

At Sea Girt we kept in close touch with our friends at Baltimore, so that after each ballot the New Jersey candidate was apprised of the result. During the trying days and nights of the Convention the only eager and anxious ones in the family group, besides myself, were Mrs. Wilson and the Wilson girls. The candidate himself indeed seemed to take only perfunctory interest in what was happening at Baltimore. He never allowed a single ballot or the changes those ballots reflected to ruffle or dist

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CHAPTER XVII

Shortly after the Democratic National Convention I gave a dinner at the newspaper men's cottage at Sea Girt, to which I invited the Democratic candidate and the newspaper men, in order that they might be given a chance to meet him in the most intimate way and obtain from him what he was pleased to call the "inside" of his mind. Upon the conclusion of the dinner, the Democratic candidate opened his heart in a little talk of the most intimate and interesting character. It contained not only his vi

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CHAPTER XVIII

The election being over, the President-elect proceeded with the selection of his Cabinet and with that end in view immediately began those conferences with his friends throughout the country in an effort to gather information upon which to base a final selection. All sorts of suggestions began to flow into the Executive offices at Trenton. Tentative slates were prepared for consideration, and the records and antecedents of the men whose names appeared on them, were subjected to a searching scrut

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CHAPTER XIX

A presidential inauguration is a picturesque affair even when the weather is stormy, as it frequently is on the fourth of March in Washington. It is a brilliant affair when the sun shines bright and the air is balmy, as happened on March 4, 1913, when Woodrow Wilson took the oath of office at noon, delivered his inaugural address a few minutes later, reviewed the parade immediately after luncheon, and before nightfall was at his desk in the White House transacting the business of the Government.

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CHAPTER XX

Many grave matters inherited from the Taft regime pressed upon the new Administration for immediate solution. One of the most serious was the situation in Mexico, growing out of the revolution against the Madero Government which broke out in Mexico City on February 9, 1913. The murder of ex-President Madero and Vice-President Suarez, and the usurpation of presidential authority by General Victoriano Huerta, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the general industrial and social chaos of Mexico, made

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CHAPTER XXI

In an introduction to "The Panama Canal Tolls Controversy," edited by Hugh Gordon Miller and Joseph C. Freehoff, Mr. Oscar S. Straus wrote: "There is no more honourable chapter in the highly creditable history of the diplomacy of our country than the repeal of the Panama Tolls Act under the present administration. Being a controversy affecting our international relations, it is gratifying that, aside from the leadership of the President, the repeal was effected not solely by the party in power,

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CHAPTER XXII

I have bitterly resented at times the imputation and charge that Woodrow Wilson is so egotistical, self-willed, and so wedded to his own ideas that he not only does not invite suggestion from the outside but that he resents it and refuses to be guided by it. I feel that my daily intimacy with him for eleven years gives me the right to speak frankly in the matter. Of course, like every great man, he is firmly set in his opinions. He holds and cleaves to them with a passionate devotion and tenacit

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CHAPTER XXIII

As the days of the 1916 Convention at St. Louis approached, it was a foregone conclusion that there would be no serious contender against the President for the nomination and that he would win the prize by a practically unanimous vote. While at times the friends of Mr. Bryan and Mr. Clark were hopeful that the President might withdraw from the contest, after the Democrats at the Convention were assured that the President was ready to accept a renomination, the field was made clear for the settin

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CHAPTER XXIV

Between the Democratic Convention and the time of his departure for his summer home at Long Branch, New Jersey, the President was engaged in Washington in completing the most important items of his legislative programme, including the Income Tax, Child Labour Law, and the Adamson Eight-Hour Law. A disastrous strike, involving the whole system of railroad transportation, now seemed imminent. At this critical juncture the President intervened. On August 13th he invited the disputants, before reach

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CHAPTER XXV

Early in January, 1916, German sympathizers throughout the country began a drive on both Houses of Congress for the passage of a resolution warning or forbidding Americans to travel on passenger ships belonging to citizens or subjects of the belligerent nations. Petitions of various kinds, demanding vigorous action in this matter, began to pour in upon us at the White House from various parts of the country. While these petitions were signed by many devoted, patriotic Americans, it was clear to

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CHAPTER XXVI

After the delivery of the speech of acceptance on September 2nd quiet ruled over the Wilson camp at Shadow Lawn. This lull in the matter of politics was intensified by the President's absence from Shadow Lawn because of the death of his only sister, which called him away and for a while took his mind and his energies from the discussion of politics. On September 11th, the state elections in Maine were carried by the Republicans. The total vote was the largest ever cast in Maine in a state electi

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CHAPTER XXVII

While President Wilson was giving his whole thought and effort to the solution of exacting domestic tasks, the European war broke upon him and thus turned his attention and study to the age-long and complicated political struggle between Germany, France, and England. Fully conscious from the very beginning of the difficulties that lay in his path, he was aware of the eventualities the war now beginning might lead to. As a profound student of history he saw with a clear vision the necessity of ne

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CHAPTER XXVIII

The feelings of the people throughout the country began to be aroused as they witnessed the outlawry of Germany in ruthlessly attacking and wantonly interfering with American commerce on the high seas. The agitation for preparedness to meet a critical world situation was on in full swing. Congress and the President were harassed by conflicting demands from every side immediately to "put our house in order" and to set America safely on the road to national preparedness. Theodore Roosevelt was cla

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CHAPTER XXIX

In October, 1916, during the Presidential campaign, while the President was at Shadow Lawn, New Jersey, Ambassador Gerard, at the President's invitation, paid a visit to him and reported in detail the general situation in Germany as to the submarine warfare. He said that the restrictions as to submarines imposed by Germany's acceptance of the President's ultimatum after the Sussex affair, were growing burdensome and intolerable to the military and naval masters of Germany and that they were brin

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CHAPTER XXX

The critics of the President will ask the question: "What was the President doing to prepare the country for war, which to him seemed inevitable?" From the inside, and without the blare of trumpets, he was quietly engaged in conferring with the heads of the Army and Navy departments. Indeed, from the minute the third Lusitania note was dispatched, actual preparations for war were begun. Immediately upon the dispatch of the note, the following statement was issued from the White House, under date

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CHAPTER XXXI

During this time the President was constantly on guard at the Executive offices, never for a moment out of touch with the situation. He was the intimate associate of the men who were his co-labourers on the various boards that had been set up to prosecute the work of the war. He seemed to know what was going on in every phase. His evenings were given to examination of the long dispatches that came from diplomatic and consular representatives of America at the various capitals of Europe, apprisin

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CHAPTER XXXII

It will be recalled that early in the war Colonel Roosevelt called at the White House to confer with the President regarding his desire to lead a brigade to the other side. I recall distinctly every fact of that meeting. I was seated a few feet away in the Red Room of the White House at the time these two men were conferring. Nothing could have been pleasanter or more agreeable than this meeting. They had not met since they were political opponents in 1912, but prior to that they had had two or

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CHAPTER XXXIII

The President had but one object: to throw all the nation's energy into the scale for the defeat of Germany. Because he did not bluster and voice daily hymns of hate against Germany, he was singularly misunderstood by some of his fellow-citizens, who, in their own boiling anger against the enemy, would sometimes peevishly inquire: "Does he really hate Germany?" The President was too much occupied with deeds to waste time in word- vapouring. By every honourable means he had sought to avoid the is

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CHAPTER XXXIV

Germany had begun to weaken, and suddenly aware of the catastrophe that lay just ahead, changed her chancellor, and called upon the President for an armistice upon the basis of the Fourteen Points. The explanation of Germany's attitude in this matter was simply that she knew she was beaten and she recognized that Wilson was the only hope of a reasonable peace from the Berlin point of view. Germany professed to be a liberal and was asking Wilson for the "benefit of clergy." On the 6th day of Octo

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CHAPTER XXXV

The President's appeal to the country of October 24, 1918, asking for the election of a Democratic Congress, brought down upon him a storm of criticism and ridicule. Many leading Democrats who had strongly urged an appeal by the President as a necessary and proper thing in the usual war situation which confronted him, as the criticism directed toward it grew more bitter, turned away from it and criticized what they said was the ineptitude and lack of tact of the President in issuing it. As a mat

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CHAPTER XXXVI

As we conferred together for the last time before the President left Washington for the other side, I had never seen him look more weary or careworn. It was plain to me who had watched him from day to day since the Armistice, that he felt most keenly the heavy responsibility that now lay upon him of trying to bring permanent peace to the world. He was not unmindful of the criticism that had been heaped upon him by his enemies on the Hill and throughout the country. The only thing that distressed

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CHAPTER XXXVII

It has often been said by certain gentlemen who were associated with President Wilson on the other side that he was unyielding and dogmatic, that he insisted upon playing a "lone hand," that he was secretive and exclusive, and that he ignored the members of the Peace Commission and the experts who accompanied him to the Conference. Contrary to this criticism, after an uninterrupted, continuous, and most intimate association with him for eleven years, an association which brought me into close co

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CHAPTER XXXVIII

One of the settlements embodied in the Versailles Treaty upon which the enemies of the President in this country concentrated their fires of wrath and hatred against the President was the so-called Shantung settlement. The partisan enemies of the President, realizing the irreconcilable antagonism of certain of our people to the Japanese, did everything they could to intensify this antagonism, picturing the President as one who had conceded something to Japan at the expense of helpless China. Not

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CHAPTER XXXIX

To one standing on the side-lines in the capital of the nation and witnessing the play of the ardent passions of the people of the Irish race, demanding that some affirmative action be taken by our government to bring about the realization of the right of self-determination for Ireland, it seemed as if the American President, Woodrow Wilson, who first gave utterance to the ideal of self-determination for all the oppressed peoples of the world, was woefully unmindful of the age-long struggle that

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CHAPTER XL

One of the things for which the Wilson Administration was held to "strict accountability" was the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, establishing nation-wide prohibition. Unfair critics of the President, in their foolish attempt to charge the Administration with every unusual happening in the eight years of Democratic control, had stated that the President was the real motive force that lay back of the movement to establish the Eighteenth Amendment as part of the fu

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CHAPTER XLI

Upon his return home from Paris, the President immediately invited, in most cordial fashion, the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to confer with him at the White House. Some of those who received the invitation immediately announced that as a condition precedent to their acceptance they would insist that the conference should not be secret in character and that what would happen there should be disclosed to the public. The President quickly accepted the conditions proposed by th

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CHAPTER XLII

Tentative plans for a Western trip began to be formed in the White House because of the urgent insistence from Democratic friends on the Hill that nothing could win the fight for the League of Nations except a direct appeal to the country by the President in person. Admiral Grayson, the President's physician and consistent friend, who knew his condition and the various physical crises through which he had passed here and on the other side, from some of which he had not yet recovered, stood firm

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CHAPTER XLIII

On June 25, 1919, I received from President Wilson the following cabled message: My clear conviction is that the adoption of the treaty by the Senate with reservations will put the United States as clearly out of the concert of nations as a rejection. We ought either to go in or stay out. To stay out would be fatal to the influence and even to the commercial prospects of the United States, and to go in would give her a leading place in the affairs of the world. Reservations would either mean not

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CHAPTER XLIV

There is no one who wishes to feel the camaraderie of life, "the familiar touch," more than Woodrow Wilson; but it seems that it cannot be so, and the knowledge that it could not saddened him from the outset of his public career. I remember a meeting between us at the Governor's Cottage at Sea Girt, New Jersey, a few hours after the news of his nomination for the Presidency had reached us from Baltimore in 1912. In this little talk he endeavoured in an intimate way to analyze himself for my bene

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CHAPTER XLV

During the winter of 1919-1920 President Wilson was the target of vicious assaults. Mrs. Wilson and Admiral Grayson with difficulty curbed his eagerness to take a leading hand in the fight over the Peace Treaty in the Senate, and to organize the Democratic party on a fighting basis. It was not until after the Chicago Convention had nominated Mr. Harding and enunciated a platform repudiating the solemn obligations of the United States to the rest of the world that the President broke his silence

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APPENDIX "A"

Cablegram The White House, Washington, 10 December, 1918. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, Paris, France. Stories that you have agreed to sinking of German ships have caused great deal of unfavourable comment here. * * * * * Cablegram The White House, Washington, 16 December, 1918. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, C/O American Embassy, Paris, France. Most popular note in this country in your speech are the words Quote We must rebuke acts of terror and spoliation and make men everyw

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APPENDIX "B"

Cablegram The White House, Washington, 16 March, 1919. PRESIDENT WILSON, Paris. Former President Taft asks if he may cable to you direct, for your consideration only, some suggestions about which he has been thinking a great deal and which he would like to have you consider. He said that these suggestions do not look to the change of the structure of the League, the plan of its action or its real character, but simply to removing objections in minds of conscientious Americans, who are anxiou

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THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON

24 April, 1919. PRESIDENT WILSON, Paris. As we see it from this distance, the selfish designs of Japan are as indefensible as are those of Italy. The two situations appear to parallel each other in their bearing upon the fate of weak and helpless nations. Would it not be an opportune time to cast another die, this one in the direction of Japan, that the whole world may know once and for all where America stands upon this, the greatest issue of the peace we are trying to make? Now is the time t

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