Woodrow Wilson Presidency
In the presidential election of 1912, the Democratic Party nominated Wilson as its presidential candidate - even though Champ Clark was widely expected to get the nomination. William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican Party by running against each other, allowing Wilson's victory.
On the day before the Woodrow Wilson Presidency inauguration in March 1913, members of the Congressional Union, later known as the National Women's Party, organized a suffrage parade in Washington, DC, to siphon attention away from inaugural events. It is said that when Wilson arrived in town, he found the streets empty of welcoming crowds and was told that everyone was on Pennsylvania Avenue watching the parade.
Wilson experienced early success by implementing his "New Freedom" pledges of antitrust modification, tariff revision, and reform in banking and currency matters. His actions led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System and Federal Trade Commission, during the Woodrow Wilson Presidency.
Suffrage was only one of the volatile issues he faced during the Woodrow Wilson Presidency. Domestically, his generally progressive measures for reform often met with opposition, although he did succeed in passing a bill instituting the Federal Reserve. His attitude to racial issues is generally regarded as a stain on his reputation. His administration instituted segregation in federal government for the first time since Abraham Lincoln began desegregation in 1863, and required photographs from job applicants to determine their race. Wilson praised the movie Birth of a Nation (based on a book by his former classmate Thomas Dixon), saying: "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true." Wilson also regarded those whom he termed "hyphenated Americans" (German-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc.) with suspicion: "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."
In the last year of the Woodrow Wilson Presidency, Wilson assembled an impressive record of progressive legislation, borrowing much from Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 platform and the Socialist party. Wilson signed the Federal Farm Loan Act, which lowered interest rates for farmers. The Farm Loan Act immediately lowered interest rates and farmed hailed it as "the Magna Carta of American farm finance." Wilson aggressively and successfully lobbied on Capital Hill for the Keating-Owen Act, which banned child labor, the Kern-McGillicuddy Act, which set up a workmen's compensation system, and the Adamson Act, which improved conditions and wages for railroad workers. To prepare for the possibility of entering the War, Wilson expanded the army and navy with an estate tax and tax on high incomes. (To End All Wars, 90-92)
Wilson was able to narrowly win reelection of the Woodrow Wilson Presidency in 1916 by picking up many votes who had gone with Roosevelt and Debs in 1912. Even radicals like John Reed and Max Eastman happily supported Wilson. Mother Jones wrote "I am a Socialist, but I admire Wilson for the things he has done . . . And when a man or woman does something for humanity I say go to him and shake him by the hand and say 'I'm for you.'" (Ibid, 94)
During the Woodrow Wilson Presidency, he spent 1914, 1915, 1916, and the beginning of 1917 trying to keep America out of the War in Europe. He offered to be a mediator, but neither the Allies nor the Central Powers took his requests seriously. When Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and made a clumsy attempt to get Mexico on its side in the Zimmerman Note, Wilson took America into the Great War as an "associated belligerant."
Wilson pushed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 through Congress to suppress socialist, anti-British, pro-Irish, pro-German, or anti-war opinions. He also set up the United States Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel (thus its popular name, Creel Committee), which filled the country with anti-German propaganda and, during the first Red Scare, ordered the Palmer Raids against leftists. Wilson had Eugene V. Debs arrested for attributing World War I to financial interests and criticizing the Espionage Act.
Between 1914 and 1918 the United States invaded or intervened in Latin America many times, particularly in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama. The United States maintained troops in Nicaragua throughout his administration and used them to select the president of Nicaragua and then to force Nicaragua to pass the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty. American troops in Haiti forced the Haiti legislature to choose the candidate Wilson selected as Haitian president. After Haiti refused to declare war on Germany, Wilson had Haiti's government dissolved and then forced a new less democratic constitution on Haiti through a sham referendum. American soldiers also expelled small farmers from their lands to work in chain gangs on public works projects and transferred the land to plantation owners. In 1919, Haitians rose up in rebellion against the Americans, resulting in 3,000 deaths. Gleijesus (1992) notes: "It is not that Wilson failed in his earnest efforts to bring democracy to these little countries. He never tried. He intervened to impose hegemony, not democracy."
Between 1917 and 1920 the US supported the "White" side of the Russian civil war, first monetarily, but later with a naval blockade and ground forces in Murmansk, Archangelsk, and Vladivostok.
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