Another comparison between Wilson and Harding would be Wilson's decision to send U.S. troops to intervene in the Russian Civil War. Compare that to the United States' famine relief effort during Harding's administration.
Indeed. And I believe a good bit of the credit goes to Harding's Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, who was probably responsible for that staple of mid-century parenting: "Eat your peas, Junior. There are starving children in Europe who would be glad to have them."
> John Maynard Keynes and others warned Wilson that draconian punishment of Germany at Versailles would lead to disaster, and he ignored all the prescient advice.
Perhaps the one most worth noting is not Keynes, but Foch, the French general who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in WWI. He was so disgusted by the Treaty of Versailles that he called it "treason" and proclaimed that it was not truly a peace treaty, but "an armistice for 20 years." 20 years later, almost exactly, Hitler invaded Poland.
But his objection was not to the "draconian punishment of Germany." Quite the opposite; he believed that Germany was getting off far too easily for the damage they had caused, and that they needed to be forcibly disarmed and broken up. And like his prophetic 20-year timeline, history has borne out his view on this point. Failure to do so led to WWII. After WWII, significantly harsher punishments imposed on both Germany and Japan proved successful in transforming them into well-behaved, peaceful nations. (It was admittedly a rather bumpy road in Germany's case, due largely to the character of the nation that ended up as caretaker of the eastern half, but the fact remains that in the approximately 80 years since, we haven't seen either Germany or Japan starting wars of aggression.)
Not so far as World War I performance goes. I'll stick with Richard Watt's judgment of Petain's performance in suppressing the 1917 French Army mutinies.
Yes. It comes to us by way of Old French. I suspect that Nostradamus told his readers, "In around 400 years, a leader will arise across the sea, and you're going to need this word."
I grew up 30 miles west of Harding’s Ohio home town, Marion, Ohio. Always had a great interest in presidents. I’ve known for years about Harding’s Alabama speech. And in the 1920s the GOP was the party of civil rights. Now in the 2020s the GOP has become something much, much worse. There is now a new Harding Presidential site in Marion.
As with century-old comparisons, contemporary comparisons are fraught with complexity and ambiguity. But I'll save all that for future columns. Thanks for writing.
Thanks! I’ll fix that date. Hoover and Roosevelt are tougher climbs for this sort of column. Despite perceptions to the contrary, Hoover and Roosevelt were quite similar in their economic policies. Whatever shortcomings Roosevelt had, he was, in my view, unrivaled in his competence in war. It took Lincoln 2 or 3 years to gather the right high command. Roosevelt mostly nailed his picks right of the starting gate—and gave them the latitude and support to do their jobs brilliantly. That doesn’t erase the petty vindictiveness and early fecklessness that Amity Shlaes describes so well in “The Forgotten Man,” but winning WWII is a pretty damned good mulligan. 3-term+ Roosevelt stands up much better than a 2-term-and-out Roosevelt would have been.
Oh yeah, economic policy is what I had in mind. Many, maybe most of Roosevelt's programs were actually Hoover's ideas, and would have been implemented by him if Roosevelt hadn't been able to defeat him by blaming the Depression on him.
I found this to be a fascinating comparison of two presidents about whom I know so little. It’s amazing to see how decisions, both good and bad, can have such far reaching consequences!
AS usual, thoughtful, detailed, well-written -- a concise compilation, indeed. I remember being repulsed by Wilson when PBS - way back in the late 70s or early 80s ran 'Birth of a Nation'; the commentators were appalled at Wilson's groveling before D.W. Griffith (the film's director) ...
Given that Wilson and Griffith never met (from Richard Schnickel's biography of Griffith) that's a neat trick to make Wilson grovel. Wilson was much closer to Thomas Dixon, author of the novel the film was based on.
Wilson was the most outspoken avowed white supremacist President since Lincoln, whose military measure of purporting to free slaves where he didn't have the clout to do so has been used to spin his reputation. Wilson stands out even further from the slavery-era Presidents when one considers that the issue wasn't simply freeing the slaves, but positioning them for self-sufficiency as free people as well. Southerners who voluntarily emancipated slaves before the War took this into account. The Northern states, after they effected compensated emancipation, were apartheid states with laws meant to limit severely the presence of black people. Reconstruction Era officials fomented racial antagonisms, and "Birth of a Nation" fanned the flames. Harding should absolutely be held up as a positive example, as should others who worked for racial reconciliation after Reconstruction.
I’m more charitable toward Lincoln. But your self-sufficiency point is well taken. For me, the clearest statement of what the Confederacy was about was VP Alexander Stephens’s “Cornerstone Speech.” He said that the Founders--and he was only talking about 30-40 years earlier--thought slavery was evil and doomed, but they didn’t know how to do so without collapsing the economy and hurling the freedmen into an untenable situation for them. Stephens said the Confederacy viewed the Founders as wrong. That slavery was a positive, permanent force for good. I think Lincoln fit the Founders’ mode, but strove to find the solution. for me, the great missed opportunity was the failure of his Delaware Plan, whereby states would compensate slaveholders for emancipation. In my view, that would have been just, as it implicitly recognized that people who didn’t own slaves had nevertheless benefited from the system and should pay a portion of the cost of eradicating the foul institution. He did expend vast political capital to ensure passage of the 13th Amendment. i don’t pretend to know his inner soul, but I know his actions. I would also say that whatever Lincoln’s moral failings on race, his VP and successor, Andrew Johnson, was considerably worse. Next to Wilson, Johnson is probably my least favorite president. But I agree with your assessment that the north was essentially apartheid, Reconstruction brought horrors, and Harding tried to set things right. His Birmingham speech ought to be taught in schools alongside the Gettysburg Address and the I Have a Dream speech. Unfortunately, Harding lacked the literary talents of Lincoln and King.
Yes, the Delaware Plan was a great idea. The Northern states ended slavery with compensated emancipation. So, too, most notably, did Great Britain, and there are those who say the funds disbursed for that, when reinvested, jump started the build-out of the Industrial Revolution. Sadly, New Englanders were pretty adept at fudging data when the compensation was a few more years of service calculated from birth dates, and at selling their slaves when that service time was nearly up.
I've also seen a commentary quoting Allen Guelzo's book on the Emancipation Proclamation and saying the Act's sponsor in the Delaware legislature "was surprised to find, over and over again, that even Unionists 'who look upon slavery as a curse' were so deeply dyed by racial hatred that 'we look upon freedom possessed by a negro, except in a very few cases, as a greater curse.'"
That a major issue was expansion of slavery into the territories gets overlooked. While slave-powered agriculture had reached the limits of viable land, there were still the questions of 1) "free soil for free white people", but more importantly, 2) new senate seats going to corporatist, high tariff philosophical northerners or free trade, low tariff philosophical southerners. There was also the sentiment on the part of slaveholders that all Americans should have use of the territories. Thus "squatter sovereignty," which resulted in more free states (pay no attention to the bloodshed behind the Kansas curtain).
Not to mention that the territories were places to which the railroads were trying to attract European immigrant farmers to create markets for freight hauling, which means they could also have been used for those mythical 40 acres and a mule grants.
As regards "slavery as a positive good," there were those touting that who meant it was a positive good for their pocket books, and those touting it as a means to train people from an entirely different continent in skills they would need here. I think there was indeed an issue of dismounting from the tiger, per what you say about Stephens.
John Greenleaf Whittier, call your office. ("For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
All good stuff, as usual, Beth. Richard Brookhiser’s bio of Lincoln is a good read. But what I remember most from it was the material on Stephens. When the Emancipation Proclamation painting was unveiled, Stephens was in the House, enfeebled, wheelchair-bound. He spoke about the War, the painting, about Lincoln, and about emancipation. He essentially said it was good that the war ended in the way that it did, and good that slavery was gone. But, just when he would be on a roll of saying the right things, he would wander back into a defense of the the antebellum South and slavery. Just couldn’t break free from it.
There's no doubt about Wilson's racism, but I can't see it playing a big role in the 1912 election. For example, Wilson was silent about the split personality of T. Roosevelt's Progressive Party. In the North, the Progressives courted black voters and blacks were eligible to \join the party. In the South,, the Progressives aimed to displace the Democrats as the 'lily white' party, no blacks allowed, let alone courted. Yet Wilson never blasted Roosevelt for this policy. 1912's issues were far more economic,, and governmental e.g. Roosevelt's demanding that judicial decisions be subject to recall, or the best way to rein in corporate power.
2. "Harding made significant strides in world disarmament..."
True enough, but this drive for disarmament was pushed at least as much from a desire to balance the budget as it was to be peaceful. It is worth noting the US had no hesitation in 'intervening' in Latin American affairs, e.g. the interventins in Hait, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. It's true that all those interventions began under Wilson (except the second intervention in Nicaragua) but Harding and Coolidge had no problem with 'sending the Marines" every time.
3. "Harding wholeheartedly supported anti-lynching laws—including during the 1920 campaign, when it really mattered."
I haven't found a single mention of anti-lynching laws in the 1920 campaign. What are your sources?
4. "His Supreme Court and Cabinet appointments were mostly outstanding. "
Choke. You do mention Fall and Daugherty, truly hideous nominations. But you don't mention Denby, Secretary of the Navy who allowed the Teapot Dome oil reserves to be transferred to Fall's Interior Department fueling the Teapot Dome scandal.. Nor Mellon, whose idiotic policies on tariffs helped keep the war debt/reparations issue alive and poisonous. Nor Hoover who gladly accepted the praise that "Hoover is Secy of Commerce and UnderSecy of everything else,"---yet somehow as the bustling, busy UnderSecy of everything else managed not to see any of the scandals that were to topple Harding's reputation posthumously. Harding's Cabinet did not serve him well. As for SCOTUS nominations, no one but me has ever heard of any of them except for William Howard Taft---and he is best known for a) being the only ex-Prez to serve on SCOTUS, and b) getting the modern SCOTUS building underway. As for decisions of the Harding Court, I offer BUCK v. BELL, the decision that told states, sure go ahead and sterilize those in your asylums. "Three generations of imbeclies are enough," warbled the majority opinion.
5. On Mrs Wilson: "...nd allowed his wife to effectively assume presidential responsibilities from his bedside."
That's not quite right. Mrs. Wilson was far less a 'do this, do that" First Lady than a "Don't bother my sick husband with your petty problems," First Lady, leaving Wilson's subordinates to find their own solutions to problems that the Prez would normally give guidance on. Hoover confirms this on pp. 270-278 of his book THE ORDEAL OF WOODROW WILSON:
Excellent post, thanks. On (1), you are correct. I shall add a bit of strikeout and correction there. (2) I was not so interested here in praising his policy, but rather to contrast his personal relations with the Senate with Wilson's cold shoulder. (3) The 1920 Republican platform said “We urge Congress to consider the most effective means to end lynching in this country which continues to be a terrible blot on our American civilization,” and Harding was strident on the topic in his Birmingham speech. I'll look into the campaign questions. (4) This deserves a long answer, but I'm short on time tonight. I disagree vehemently with numerous policies pursued by Mellon, Hoover, etc., but they were decent and competent, as was Taft. Yes, Taft was there for Buck v Bell (see my two columns from last week), but sadly, eugenics was a horrid bipartisan thing. But, that decision aside, I can still respect Taft on many dimensions. (5) As for Mrs. Wilson, I think our difference on her is more semantic than substantive. Even telling subordinates to go solve their own problems is administration of a sort, and one where she had no legal authority. I'm not sure whether she was complicit in keeping VP Marshall in the dark. ... ... Anyway, you make excellent points, and when I have a bit of free time, I'll add some notation to the article referencing your points. Thanks so much.
As I mentioned to another reader, I'll give FDR a mixed review. Amity Shlaes's "The Forgotten Man" took a pile-driver to his reputation as "the man who ended the Depression." She also painted him as a smug, vindictive, impulsive toff. She uses his relentless pursuit of Andrew Mellon, who was quietly accumulating art to donate to the American people. A two-term FDR would be a pathetic disgrace. The mixed review comes from his stewardship of the war effort, and there I'll give him his due. Compared with previous wartime presidents, he had a stunning record of picking superb military leaders, deploying them well, and giving them the resources necessary. I could also provide a long litany of complaints, but defeating Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini is good for some significant points in my scoring system.
Robert,I agree with all of that.But the problem with his wartime record is that the assistance to Russia enabled the subjugation of Eastern Europe.The war,in effect,for Poland, for example,did not end until 1989.The recent history of that country shows that they are at last joining their compatriots in Europe in prosperity.
This is what happens when you agree that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Great article. Regarding FDR, I’d recommend Conrad Black’s biography. It’s a door stopper of a book, but I found it to be a fair analysis and corrective to many of the unfair or misinformed attacks his reputation has suffered, while still being honest about his shortcomings and personality flaws.
"Wilson invited D. W. Griffith to the White House in 2015 for a screening of The Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915–the first film ever shown at the Executive Mansion."
Wilson was one of the bottom five Presidents in our history. He hated the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He had nothing but contempt for the working man and total hatred for blacks. Giving women the right to vote was the only reason he got elected..
Wilson was one of the bottom five Presidents in our history. He hated the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He had nothing but contempt for the working man and total hatred for blacks. Giving women the right to vote was the only reason he got elected..
My impression is that the greatest evil Wilson sowed on the world was midwifing the cynicism and despair in interbellum Europe, which led to the 2nd great cataclysm, from which arguably Europe has never recovered -- which destroyed Europe's polycultural leadership of the Western world, and turned it into the weird pseudo-Manicheaen US-vs-somebody bipolar world it's been ever since.
I say this because my impression is that one of the things that kept the First World War going was the fear of the major combatants that there was no way to disengage without disaster, that whichever party had any kind of edge would use it to ruin and obliterate the other. Wilson's soaring rhetoric about self-determination -- a sea change from the Victorian-Edwardian social Darwinist approach of the weakest to the wall -- seemed to provide an enlightened way out, and my impression is that many of the combatants (and important minor demographics, e.g. within the Austrian Empire) seized on the hope that Wilson, apparently a more objective judge, with a fresh and strong army at his disposal to boot, might firmly steer peace talks such that self-determination and the rights of the peoples to their own land and to decide their own fate might trump any imperialist or vengeful impulses among the governments of the major combatants that might otherwise drive the process.
But in the end, he did none of that. His talk turned out to be...just talk. In Paris he apparently made no real effort to rein in the allies, or insist on self-determination for the various minor demographics that were callously bartered and traded like chips at the poker table, and the peace was indeed a wretched thing that satisfied nobody and embittered millions. In his defense, of a sort, my impression is that he was already so disabled -- I believe his detachment was explained as his having suffered severely from the flu, but I bet he'd already had a small stroke -- that he was unable to muster the energy to even try to deliver on the substance of his prior pontifications, and narrowed his gaze to the foundation of the League of Nations, which he held onto as some kind of talisman, a magic totem that would remedy by miraculous apparition any ills that had been conceived by the grubby workings out of the peace. A universal solvent, magic elixir, that would undo in a moment all the many ills stacked up by years of folly and intransigence which he was too exhausted and incapacitated to tackle directly. Sensing this, the other negotiators were more than happy to feed Woodrow his symbolic League of Nations, and accept in return his passivity with respect to everything of substance.
At least, this is how I guess it was from inside his head, how he rationalized away his failure to either act on his supposed convictions or resign the role and appoint someone with energy and vision who would. A vain and hard man, when it came to the hardest decisions of all -- to recognize when he was, even by his own standards, no longer the man for the job, he failed -- he allowed his vanity to override duty to even his own principles.
This is a fantastic take. I had never heard the suggestion that he might have been incapacitated prior to Versailles--but that does make some sense, given the outcome. Of course, the next Democratic president, FDR, was clearly in steep decline at Yalta and, many believe, gave away Eastern Europe as a result of his physical and cognitive decline. So, if these theories about Versailles and Yalta are correct, then hundreds of millions of lives were either lost or destroyed as a result of two American presidents (the second of whom worked for the first) who were in no position to hold the world's fate in their enfeebled hands and minds.
Another area to research about Wilson is his being blackmailed by bankers. He had an affair with a neighbor when he was at Princeton. The lawyer for the bankers brought a few letters for sale for $40,000. Quite a few horrible policies were born on Wall Street. Also, check out the budgets that Harding cut by 20%! Coolidge finished what Harding started but this was the last time we had a significant budget cut in history.
Some background on Harding’s speech: 1921 Birmingham was a Klan stronghold. The city was over 30% black, and Irish, Italian and Puerto Rican immigrants were flooding the city in.order to work in the factories.
Federal agents had already warned Mobile Bishop Allen about threats against the dynamic young priest assigned to St Paul’s downtown (now the cathedral for the new Diocese of Birmingham), Father James Coyle. On August 11, 1921 he married Ruth Stephenson to Pedro Gussman. Ruth’s father Edwin was already livid that Ruth had converted in April, and shot and killed Father Coyle. He turned himself in to the sheriff immediately.
The Klan quickly raised money to hire Klan attorney Hugo Black, among others. The trial convened October 17, and the mostly-Klan jury found Stephenson not guilty on October 20. It was widely recognized that this was a terrible miscarriage of justice, and was in this atmosphere that Harding made his courageous speech.
Wow. Sometimes, I republish worthy comments from readers in the body of later articles. No promises, but this is a possibility.
Extraneous, more pleasant story: My dad was working for the federal government in an office with Hugo Black’s niece when the Klan story exploded. He liked her very much but ribbed her about the story and she apparently was somewhat mortified by it all. Three decades later, as a teenager, I wrote to Black, said my dad had worked with his niece and asked for an autographed picture. What soon arrived was an autographed composite of the entire Court, which I still have.
Another comparison between Wilson and Harding would be Wilson's decision to send U.S. troops to intervene in the Russian Civil War. Compare that to the United States' famine relief effort during Harding's administration.
Indeed. And I believe a good bit of the credit goes to Harding's Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, who was probably responsible for that staple of mid-century parenting: "Eat your peas, Junior. There are starving children in Europe who would be glad to have them."
> John Maynard Keynes and others warned Wilson that draconian punishment of Germany at Versailles would lead to disaster, and he ignored all the prescient advice.
Perhaps the one most worth noting is not Keynes, but Foch, the French general who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in WWI. He was so disgusted by the Treaty of Versailles that he called it "treason" and proclaimed that it was not truly a peace treaty, but "an armistice for 20 years." 20 years later, almost exactly, Hitler invaded Poland.
But his objection was not to the "draconian punishment of Germany." Quite the opposite; he believed that Germany was getting off far too easily for the damage they had caused, and that they needed to be forcibly disarmed and broken up. And like his prophetic 20-year timeline, history has borne out his view on this point. Failure to do so led to WWII. After WWII, significantly harsher punishments imposed on both Germany and Japan proved successful in transforming them into well-behaved, peaceful nations. (It was admittedly a rather bumpy road in Germany's case, due largely to the character of the nation that ended up as caretaker of the eastern half, but the fact remains that in the approximately 80 years since, we haven't seen either Germany or Japan starting wars of aggression.)
Excellent comments! Thanks. Of the Marshals whose names I know, Foch certainly did way better than Pétain.
"...Foch certainly did way better than Pétain."
Not so far as World War I performance goes. I'll stick with Richard Watt's judgment of Petain's performance in suppressing the 1917 French Army mutinies.
In posterity. :)
Surely “execrable” was invented to have a non-scatalogical apt descriptor for Wilson.
Yes. It comes to us by way of Old French. I suspect that Nostradamus told his readers, "In around 400 years, a leader will arise across the sea, and you're going to need this word."
I grew up 30 miles west of Harding’s Ohio home town, Marion, Ohio. Always had a great interest in presidents. I’ve known for years about Harding’s Alabama speech. And in the 1920s the GOP was the party of civil rights. Now in the 2020s the GOP has become something much, much worse. There is now a new Harding Presidential site in Marion.
As with century-old comparisons, contemporary comparisons are fraught with complexity and ambiguity. But I'll save all that for future columns. Thanks for writing.
Fraught with complexity and ambiguity. A phrase for the ages!
There are less polite ways of saying it, but this is a family publication. :)
Thanks for this. I am astounded that Wilson hasn't yet been tossed out of National Cathedral; I had not heard of Harding's speech in Alabama.
A typographical quibble: "Wilson promised in 2016 to keep the U.S...." (off by a century).
Now do Hoover and Roosevelt.
Thanks! I’ll fix that date. Hoover and Roosevelt are tougher climbs for this sort of column. Despite perceptions to the contrary, Hoover and Roosevelt were quite similar in their economic policies. Whatever shortcomings Roosevelt had, he was, in my view, unrivaled in his competence in war. It took Lincoln 2 or 3 years to gather the right high command. Roosevelt mostly nailed his picks right of the starting gate—and gave them the latitude and support to do their jobs brilliantly. That doesn’t erase the petty vindictiveness and early fecklessness that Amity Shlaes describes so well in “The Forgotten Man,” but winning WWII is a pretty damned good mulligan. 3-term+ Roosevelt stands up much better than a 2-term-and-out Roosevelt would have been.
Oh yeah, economic policy is what I had in mind. Many, maybe most of Roosevelt's programs were actually Hoover's ideas, and would have been implemented by him if Roosevelt hadn't been able to defeat him by blaming the Depression on him.
Great comparison. And wow -- that music!
As a pianist, I say "Yup!"
I found this to be a fascinating comparison of two presidents about whom I know so little. It’s amazing to see how decisions, both good and bad, can have such far reaching consequences!
Thanks! And it is indeed amazing.
AS usual, thoughtful, detailed, well-written -- a concise compilation, indeed. I remember being repulsed by Wilson when PBS - way back in the late 70s or early 80s ran 'Birth of a Nation'; the commentators were appalled at Wilson's groveling before D.W. Griffith (the film's director) ...
Given that Wilson and Griffith never met (from Richard Schnickel's biography of Griffith) that's a neat trick to make Wilson grovel. Wilson was much closer to Thomas Dixon, author of the novel the film was based on.
Really??!! I always thought that Griffith was at the screening. Interesting.
Well, let's correct it to 'groveled before D.W. Griffith's movie' ...
Wilson was the most outspoken avowed white supremacist President since Lincoln, whose military measure of purporting to free slaves where he didn't have the clout to do so has been used to spin his reputation. Wilson stands out even further from the slavery-era Presidents when one considers that the issue wasn't simply freeing the slaves, but positioning them for self-sufficiency as free people as well. Southerners who voluntarily emancipated slaves before the War took this into account. The Northern states, after they effected compensated emancipation, were apartheid states with laws meant to limit severely the presence of black people. Reconstruction Era officials fomented racial antagonisms, and "Birth of a Nation" fanned the flames. Harding should absolutely be held up as a positive example, as should others who worked for racial reconciliation after Reconstruction.
I’m more charitable toward Lincoln. But your self-sufficiency point is well taken. For me, the clearest statement of what the Confederacy was about was VP Alexander Stephens’s “Cornerstone Speech.” He said that the Founders--and he was only talking about 30-40 years earlier--thought slavery was evil and doomed, but they didn’t know how to do so without collapsing the economy and hurling the freedmen into an untenable situation for them. Stephens said the Confederacy viewed the Founders as wrong. That slavery was a positive, permanent force for good. I think Lincoln fit the Founders’ mode, but strove to find the solution. for me, the great missed opportunity was the failure of his Delaware Plan, whereby states would compensate slaveholders for emancipation. In my view, that would have been just, as it implicitly recognized that people who didn’t own slaves had nevertheless benefited from the system and should pay a portion of the cost of eradicating the foul institution. He did expend vast political capital to ensure passage of the 13th Amendment. i don’t pretend to know his inner soul, but I know his actions. I would also say that whatever Lincoln’s moral failings on race, his VP and successor, Andrew Johnson, was considerably worse. Next to Wilson, Johnson is probably my least favorite president. But I agree with your assessment that the north was essentially apartheid, Reconstruction brought horrors, and Harding tried to set things right. His Birmingham speech ought to be taught in schools alongside the Gettysburg Address and the I Have a Dream speech. Unfortunately, Harding lacked the literary talents of Lincoln and King.
Yes, the Delaware Plan was a great idea. The Northern states ended slavery with compensated emancipation. So, too, most notably, did Great Britain, and there are those who say the funds disbursed for that, when reinvested, jump started the build-out of the Industrial Revolution. Sadly, New Englanders were pretty adept at fudging data when the compensation was a few more years of service calculated from birth dates, and at selling their slaves when that service time was nearly up.
I've also seen a commentary quoting Allen Guelzo's book on the Emancipation Proclamation and saying the Act's sponsor in the Delaware legislature "was surprised to find, over and over again, that even Unionists 'who look upon slavery as a curse' were so deeply dyed by racial hatred that 'we look upon freedom possessed by a negro, except in a very few cases, as a greater curse.'"
That a major issue was expansion of slavery into the territories gets overlooked. While slave-powered agriculture had reached the limits of viable land, there were still the questions of 1) "free soil for free white people", but more importantly, 2) new senate seats going to corporatist, high tariff philosophical northerners or free trade, low tariff philosophical southerners. There was also the sentiment on the part of slaveholders that all Americans should have use of the territories. Thus "squatter sovereignty," which resulted in more free states (pay no attention to the bloodshed behind the Kansas curtain).
Not to mention that the territories were places to which the railroads were trying to attract European immigrant farmers to create markets for freight hauling, which means they could also have been used for those mythical 40 acres and a mule grants.
As regards "slavery as a positive good," there were those touting that who meant it was a positive good for their pocket books, and those touting it as a means to train people from an entirely different continent in skills they would need here. I think there was indeed an issue of dismounting from the tiger, per what you say about Stephens.
John Greenleaf Whittier, call your office. ("For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'")
All good stuff, as usual, Beth. Richard Brookhiser’s bio of Lincoln is a good read. But what I remember most from it was the material on Stephens. When the Emancipation Proclamation painting was unveiled, Stephens was in the House, enfeebled, wheelchair-bound. He spoke about the War, the painting, about Lincoln, and about emancipation. He essentially said it was good that the war ended in the way that it did, and good that slavery was gone. But, just when he would be on a roll of saying the right things, he would wander back into a defense of the the antebellum South and slavery. Just couldn’t break free from it.
Mr. Graboyes, many thanks for that clip. It's a marvel.
I question several of your assertions:
1. "Wilson owed his 1912 nomination to the Klan’s open and enthusiastic support, and he repaid them in kind for the entirety of his presidency."
Since the second Klan was not founded until 1915, this is a neat trick, viz:
https://en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/William_Joseph_Simmons
There's no doubt about Wilson's racism, but I can't see it playing a big role in the 1912 election. For example, Wilson was silent about the split personality of T. Roosevelt's Progressive Party. In the North, the Progressives courted black voters and blacks were eligible to \join the party. In the South,, the Progressives aimed to displace the Democrats as the 'lily white' party, no blacks allowed, let alone courted. Yet Wilson never blasted Roosevelt for this policy. 1912's issues were far more economic,, and governmental e.g. Roosevelt's demanding that judicial decisions be subject to recall, or the best way to rein in corporate power.
2. "Harding made significant strides in world disarmament..."
True enough, but this drive for disarmament was pushed at least as much from a desire to balance the budget as it was to be peaceful. It is worth noting the US had no hesitation in 'intervening' in Latin American affairs, e.g. the interventins in Hait, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. It's true that all those interventions began under Wilson (except the second intervention in Nicaragua) but Harding and Coolidge had no problem with 'sending the Marines" every time.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States
3. "Harding wholeheartedly supported anti-lynching laws—including during the 1920 campaign, when it really mattered."
I haven't found a single mention of anti-lynching laws in the 1920 campaign. What are your sources?
4. "His Supreme Court and Cabinet appointments were mostly outstanding. "
Choke. You do mention Fall and Daugherty, truly hideous nominations. But you don't mention Denby, Secretary of the Navy who allowed the Teapot Dome oil reserves to be transferred to Fall's Interior Department fueling the Teapot Dome scandal.. Nor Mellon, whose idiotic policies on tariffs helped keep the war debt/reparations issue alive and poisonous. Nor Hoover who gladly accepted the praise that "Hoover is Secy of Commerce and UnderSecy of everything else,"---yet somehow as the bustling, busy UnderSecy of everything else managed not to see any of the scandals that were to topple Harding's reputation posthumously. Harding's Cabinet did not serve him well. As for SCOTUS nominations, no one but me has ever heard of any of them except for William Howard Taft---and he is best known for a) being the only ex-Prez to serve on SCOTUS, and b) getting the modern SCOTUS building underway. As for decisions of the Harding Court, I offer BUCK v. BELL, the decision that told states, sure go ahead and sterilize those in your asylums. "Three generations of imbeclies are enough," warbled the majority opinion.
5. On Mrs Wilson: "...nd allowed his wife to effectively assume presidential responsibilities from his bedside."
That's not quite right. Mrs. Wilson was far less a 'do this, do that" First Lady than a "Don't bother my sick husband with your petty problems," First Lady, leaving Wilson's subordinates to find their own solutions to problems that the Prez would normally give guidance on. Hoover confirms this on pp. 270-278 of his book THE ORDEAL OF WOODROW WILSON:
https://www.google.Com/search?tbm=bks&q=ordeal+wilson+hoover
Many thanks for an interesting post.
Excellent post, thanks. On (1), you are correct. I shall add a bit of strikeout and correction there. (2) I was not so interested here in praising his policy, but rather to contrast his personal relations with the Senate with Wilson's cold shoulder. (3) The 1920 Republican platform said “We urge Congress to consider the most effective means to end lynching in this country which continues to be a terrible blot on our American civilization,” and Harding was strident on the topic in his Birmingham speech. I'll look into the campaign questions. (4) This deserves a long answer, but I'm short on time tonight. I disagree vehemently with numerous policies pursued by Mellon, Hoover, etc., but they were decent and competent, as was Taft. Yes, Taft was there for Buck v Bell (see my two columns from last week), but sadly, eugenics was a horrid bipartisan thing. But, that decision aside, I can still respect Taft on many dimensions. (5) As for Mrs. Wilson, I think our difference on her is more semantic than substantive. Even telling subordinates to go solve their own problems is administration of a sort, and one where she had no legal authority. I'm not sure whether she was complicit in keeping VP Marshall in the dark. ... ... Anyway, you make excellent points, and when I have a bit of free time, I'll add some notation to the article referencing your points. Thanks so much.
I have added some corrections and clarifications. Thanks so much for your sage advice.
Time for a revisionist review of FDR who is likewise overpraised by presidential historians.
As I mentioned to another reader, I'll give FDR a mixed review. Amity Shlaes's "The Forgotten Man" took a pile-driver to his reputation as "the man who ended the Depression." She also painted him as a smug, vindictive, impulsive toff. She uses his relentless pursuit of Andrew Mellon, who was quietly accumulating art to donate to the American people. A two-term FDR would be a pathetic disgrace. The mixed review comes from his stewardship of the war effort, and there I'll give him his due. Compared with previous wartime presidents, he had a stunning record of picking superb military leaders, deploying them well, and giving them the resources necessary. I could also provide a long litany of complaints, but defeating Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini is good for some significant points in my scoring system.
Robert,I agree with all of that.But the problem with his wartime record is that the assistance to Russia enabled the subjugation of Eastern Europe.The war,in effect,for Poland, for example,did not end until 1989.The recent history of that country shows that they are at last joining their compatriots in Europe in prosperity.
This is what happens when you agree that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Indeed. Though, antipathy toward his caving at Yalta has been out there for a while. Thanks.
Great article. Regarding FDR, I’d recommend Conrad Black’s biography. It’s a door stopper of a book, but I found it to be a fair analysis and corrective to many of the unfair or misinformed attacks his reputation has suffered, while still being honest about his shortcomings and personality flaws.
Thanks much! "Door stopper" will probably dissuade me. But I'll look into it.
"Wilson invited D. W. Griffith to the White House in 2015 for a screening of The Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915–the first film ever shown at the Executive Mansion."
Who's gonna tell him?
Dang! Did that twice! I'll fix it. Thanks. I am simply too much a man of the 21st century. :)
Wilson was one of the bottom five Presidents in our history. He hated the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He had nothing but contempt for the working man and total hatred for blacks. Giving women the right to vote was the only reason he got elected..
Wilson was one of the bottom five Presidents in our history. He hated the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He had nothing but contempt for the working man and total hatred for blacks. Giving women the right to vote was the only reason he got elected..
My impression is that the greatest evil Wilson sowed on the world was midwifing the cynicism and despair in interbellum Europe, which led to the 2nd great cataclysm, from which arguably Europe has never recovered -- which destroyed Europe's polycultural leadership of the Western world, and turned it into the weird pseudo-Manicheaen US-vs-somebody bipolar world it's been ever since.
I say this because my impression is that one of the things that kept the First World War going was the fear of the major combatants that there was no way to disengage without disaster, that whichever party had any kind of edge would use it to ruin and obliterate the other. Wilson's soaring rhetoric about self-determination -- a sea change from the Victorian-Edwardian social Darwinist approach of the weakest to the wall -- seemed to provide an enlightened way out, and my impression is that many of the combatants (and important minor demographics, e.g. within the Austrian Empire) seized on the hope that Wilson, apparently a more objective judge, with a fresh and strong army at his disposal to boot, might firmly steer peace talks such that self-determination and the rights of the peoples to their own land and to decide their own fate might trump any imperialist or vengeful impulses among the governments of the major combatants that might otherwise drive the process.
But in the end, he did none of that. His talk turned out to be...just talk. In Paris he apparently made no real effort to rein in the allies, or insist on self-determination for the various minor demographics that were callously bartered and traded like chips at the poker table, and the peace was indeed a wretched thing that satisfied nobody and embittered millions. In his defense, of a sort, my impression is that he was already so disabled -- I believe his detachment was explained as his having suffered severely from the flu, but I bet he'd already had a small stroke -- that he was unable to muster the energy to even try to deliver on the substance of his prior pontifications, and narrowed his gaze to the foundation of the League of Nations, which he held onto as some kind of talisman, a magic totem that would remedy by miraculous apparition any ills that had been conceived by the grubby workings out of the peace. A universal solvent, magic elixir, that would undo in a moment all the many ills stacked up by years of folly and intransigence which he was too exhausted and incapacitated to tackle directly. Sensing this, the other negotiators were more than happy to feed Woodrow his symbolic League of Nations, and accept in return his passivity with respect to everything of substance.
At least, this is how I guess it was from inside his head, how he rationalized away his failure to either act on his supposed convictions or resign the role and appoint someone with energy and vision who would. A vain and hard man, when it came to the hardest decisions of all -- to recognize when he was, even by his own standards, no longer the man for the job, he failed -- he allowed his vanity to override duty to even his own principles.
This is a fantastic take. I had never heard the suggestion that he might have been incapacitated prior to Versailles--but that does make some sense, given the outcome. Of course, the next Democratic president, FDR, was clearly in steep decline at Yalta and, many believe, gave away Eastern Europe as a result of his physical and cognitive decline. So, if these theories about Versailles and Yalta are correct, then hundreds of millions of lives were either lost or destroyed as a result of two American presidents (the second of whom worked for the first) who were in no position to hold the world's fate in their enfeebled hands and minds.
Another area to research about Wilson is his being blackmailed by bankers. He had an affair with a neighbor when he was at Princeton. The lawyer for the bankers brought a few letters for sale for $40,000. Quite a few horrible policies were born on Wall Street. Also, check out the budgets that Harding cut by 20%! Coolidge finished what Harding started but this was the last time we had a significant budget cut in history.
Never heard the Wilson story. And I do know some about Harding, Coolidge, and the budget. Thanks!
Some background on Harding’s speech: 1921 Birmingham was a Klan stronghold. The city was over 30% black, and Irish, Italian and Puerto Rican immigrants were flooding the city in.order to work in the factories.
Federal agents had already warned Mobile Bishop Allen about threats against the dynamic young priest assigned to St Paul’s downtown (now the cathedral for the new Diocese of Birmingham), Father James Coyle. On August 11, 1921 he married Ruth Stephenson to Pedro Gussman. Ruth’s father Edwin was already livid that Ruth had converted in April, and shot and killed Father Coyle. He turned himself in to the sheriff immediately.
The Klan quickly raised money to hire Klan attorney Hugo Black, among others. The trial convened October 17, and the mostly-Klan jury found Stephenson not guilty on October 20. It was widely recognized that this was a terrible miscarriage of justice, and was in this atmosphere that Harding made his courageous speech.
Wow. Sometimes, I republish worthy comments from readers in the body of later articles. No promises, but this is a possibility.
Extraneous, more pleasant story: My dad was working for the federal government in an office with Hugo Black’s niece when the Klan story exploded. He liked her very much but ribbed her about the story and she apparently was somewhat mortified by it all. Three decades later, as a teenager, I wrote to Black, said my dad had worked with his niece and asked for an autographed picture. What soon arrived was an autographed composite of the entire Court, which I still have.