The Germans ignored Wilson’s proffered olive branch. Submarines began to sink merchant vessels at an alarming rate, and for the first time in two years they attacked American ships. Those incidents fueled agitation to arm American ships and protect them in convoys with naval vessels. The cabinet discussed the matter six times in February. Wilson held out against hasty action. He was suspicious, he told House, of “the support I am receiving from certain once hostile quarters.” Conservatives wanted to “have a coalition cabinet at my elbow. It is the Junkerthum trying to creep in under cover of the patriotic feeling of the moment. They will not get in.”36
During these weeks, Wilson did turn his attention occasionally to domestic matters, as when he continued to press congressional leaders to pass labor legislation and act on measures for government development of hydroelectric power sites, which would become a big political issue during the next decade. Those efforts came to naught. This last, short session of the Sixty-fourth Congress produced only two important legislative results. One was a new revenue bill, initiated by Representative Kitchin, which raised the inheritance tax by 50 percent and levied an excess-profits tax. The other was a bill requiring all adult immigrants to show that they could read and write in their native language—a measure aimed at shutting out immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Wilson had vetoed a similar literacy-test bill two years earlier, and he did so again at the end of January, stating, “It is not a test of character, of quality, or of personal fitness, but would operate in most cases merely as a penalty for lack of opportunity.” Both houses overrode the veto, thereby restricting European immigration for the first time. Immigration restriction would become another big issue during the next decade.37
Those matters did not divert Wilson long from the diplomatic crisis. Despite his reluctance, he agreed to arm merchant ships. After the cabinet meeting on February 20, he asked Lansing to prepare a memorandum on the subject, and he spent the afternoon and evening of February 22 writing a speech that he planned to deliver to Congress the following Monday. Making this decision was one thing; liking it was something else. At the cabinet meeting, he lashed out at McAdoo, Houston, and Secretary of the Interior Lane for taking a hard line and charged them, Lane said, “with appealing to the spirit of the Code Duello. We couldn’t get the idea out of his head that we were bent on pushing the country into war.” According to Lane, he also resented Republican efforts to force him to call the next Congress into session: “The President believes, I think, that the munitions makers are back of the Republican plan.”38
On February 26, after meeting with Senator Stone and Representative Flood, Wilson again went to the Capitol to address Congress. He told the senators and representatives that he believed he already possessed the necessary authority to take defensive measures, but he wanted to know that “the authority and power of Congress are behind me” in order to “defend our commerce and the lives of our people in the midst of the present trying circumstances.” Hoping not to have to exercise that authority, he asked Congress only to “authorize me to supply our merchant ships with defensive arms” and said nothing about naval convoys. Wilson maintained, “It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. … I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization.” This speech also lasted just fifteen minutes, but it did not get as good a reception as its predecessor. One observer noted that La Follette threw up his hands in despair when the president asked for authority to arm ships, while Lodge sat through the speech tapping his fingers together. Democrats cheered when the president left, but Republicans stood in silence. While Wilson was speaking, word arrived of the sinking of the British liner Laconia—without warning, off the coast of Ireland—and the news spread in whispers through the House chamber. The next day, newspapers would report that of the twenty Americans aboard—six passengers and fourteen crewmen—two of the passengers, a mother and daughter from Chicago, died of exposure in an open lifeboat. The reports of the deaths of the two American women helped whip up editorial indignation and support for Wilson’s request to arm ships.39
On February 28, still more sensational news reached the American press—the text of the Zimmermann Telegram. Behind publication of this document lay intrigue by the British and deliberation by Wilson. Once the Germans unleashed the submarines, the leaders in London started scheming to exploit the telegram’s value as propaganda in the United States. To cover the code-breaking operation, they instructed their spies in the German embassy in Mexico City to steal a decoded copy; variations between that copy and the transmitted one would remove any trace of prior interception. Covering their tracks took time, so Balfour had not been able to turn the document over to Page until February 24. Page immediately cabled the text of the Zimmermann Telegram to Washington, and Wilson received it the next day. He decided against immediate publication, and he did not tell Stone and Flood about it when he met with them the next day or drop any hints about it in his speech to Congress. After further reflection, however, he instructed Lansing to release the telegram to the press.40
The Zimmermann Telegram stirred up the furor that the British hoped for. Thus far, the controversies with Germany had involved few Americans—crewmen and passengers on foreign ships—and, since February 1, some vessels registered under the Stars and Stripes. Now possible attacks from south of the border and the prospect, though seemingly ludicrous, of losing Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona made the war reach out and touch the United States. Editorial indignation flared across the country. Many newspapers called the Zimmermann Telegram an act of war, and some called for war in response. Some German American leaders claimed that the telegram was a hoax and a British plot, but Zimmermann himself eliminated that defense when he stated publicly on March 3 that he had, indeed, sent it. The furor over the telegram seemed to sweep away resistance to an armed-ships bill on Capitol Hill. The House passed the measure on March 1 by the lopsided margin of 403 to 13. Still, many congressmen who voted for the bill maintained that they did not want war, and an amendment to prohibit armed ships from carrying munitions attracted 125 votes.41
Swift Senate passage of the armed-ships bill also looked likely. The Republican effort to force Wilson to call the next Congress into session early by filibustering appropriations bills collapsed in the face of this national uproar. The Senate tried to take up the House bill on March 2, but La Follette blocked unanimous consent, delaying consideration for a day. When debate began on March 3, he and three other midwestern insurgent Republicans—George Norris of Nebraska, Albert Cummins of Iowa, and Asle Gronna of North Dakota—repeatedly blocked attempts to bring the measure to a vote. The Senate stayed in session through the night as the clock ticked toward the constitutionally mandated end of the session at noon on March 4. Anxious to avoid blame for the filibustering tactics, Lodge and other Republicans introduced a petition—called a round-robin—in which they stated that if given the opportunity, they would vote for the bill. Seventy-five senators signed the round-robin; eleven refused: La Follette, Norris, Cummins, Gronna, and two other Republican insurgents—Moses Clapp of Minnesota and John Works of California—along with five Democrats—Stone, William F. Kirby of Arkansas, Harry Lane of Oregon, James O’Gorman of New York, and James K. Vardaman of Mississippi.42
The last hours of the debate witnessed one of the wildest scenes ever enacted in the halls of Congress. A flamboyant actor and orator since his youth, La Follette intended to take up the last two hours of the debate with one of his grand speeches. Democrats who supported the bill denied him that chance to take center stage by holding the floor themselves. Fighting Bob was enraged. At several points, he and some Democrats appeared on the verge of violence. La Follette had brought a loaded pistol into the Senate chamber and put it in his desk. One of his supporters, Harry Lane, was prepared to use a small file as a dagger if anyone laid a hand on La Follette. La Follette’s son, Robert Junior, surreptitiously removed the pistol and scribbled a note to his father: “You are noticeabl
y extremely excited. For God’s sake make your protest & prevent passage of the bill if you like but … do not try to fight Senate physically. I am almost sick with worry.” At noon, the bill died without a vote when the vice president pronounced the Senate adjourned sine die.43
Wilson was nearby, in the President’s Room, when that drama transpired. He had come to the Capitol to take the oath of office for his second term in a private ceremony. It was a Sunday, and the public inaugural ceremonies would take place the following day. When Wilson got back to the White House, he railed at the antics in the Senate. Colonel House urged him to “say to the public what he was saying to me, and say it immediately.” Wilson thought it would be unseemly to raise the subject in his inaugural address, but House urged him “to strike while the iron is hot.” The president spent the afternoon writing a statement, which he showed to McAdoo, Burleson, and Tumulty, who all approved it. That statement, which appeared in newspapers the next day, called for changing Senate rules to cut off debate and affirmed the president’s authority under existing laws to arm merchant vessels. Wilson also threw out a stinging rebuke: “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”44 His opponents were not the only ones who had let their passions get the better of them.
Inauguration day was cold, windy, and overcast, and the ceremony was subdued. In his address, Wilson noted that “matters lying outside our own life as a nation … have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current and influence.” Despite being “deeply wronged upon the seas,” Americans remained determined “to play … the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace.” He reaffirmed armed neutrality, but he left the door open for “a more active assertion of our rights,” without specifying what that might be. Above all, he pledged to serve larger purposes in the world: “We are provincials no longer. The tragical events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world.” He reiterated some of his earlier principles for a lasting peace, including equality of nations, freedom of the seas, and reduction of armaments, and he concluded, “The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves.”45 If this second inaugural address seemed to sound notes from an uncertain trumpet, it was because the trumpeter was uncertain about the song he wished to play.
Back at the White House, Wilson reviewed the inaugural parade, the first to include women, and afterward he and Edith and House had dinner upstairs and watched the fireworks. “The President was holding Mrs. Wilson’s hand and leaning his face against [hers],” House reported. “We talked quietly of the day, and I spoke my joy that we three, rather than the Hughes family, were looking at the fireworks from the White House windows.” Wilson insisted that they take a ride around town, where people on the streets recognized them and cheered. The situation made House nervous: “I sat with my automatic in my hand ready to act if the occasion arose.” Later, the colonel sat with them and talked until eleven o’clock. Edith again pressed House to become ambassador in London, but Wilson said he had inadvertently promised to keep Page on. That promise saved House from being separated from Wilson, but it did not stop him from soon trying to get someone else who had influence with Wilson sent to London. “I suggested taking Baker from the War Department and sending him to England in place of Page,” House wrote, but the president reiterated that “in a misguided moment” he had told Page to stay on.46 If the world had turned upside down for Wilson in February 1917, the following month brought its weight pressing down on his shoulders. March 1917 became a time of peculiar trial for him. This was the time that would lead Winston Churchill to say “that the action of the United States with its repercussions on the history of the world depended … upon the workings of this man’s mind and spirit to the exclusion of almost every other factor.” Wilson sought an alternative to war, but armed neutrality proved to be a complicated and burdensome business. Naval crews had to outfit merchant ships with guns, and naval vessels assumed some convoy duties. The British, through the Morgan firm, began to disclose hints of their financial straits, and the Federal Reserve Board nullified its earlier warning against foreign loans.47 On the seas, submarines sank ships in ever mounting numbers, including more American vessels. At the middle of March, a revolution in Russia toppled the czar’s autocracy and established a liberal provisional government.
Surprisingly to some, there was no great rise in interventionist sentiment. Roosevelt predictably scorned armed neutrality, and a cadre of northeastern Republicans joined him in pressing for intervention. Metropolitan newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune also came out for war, while the revolution in Russia excited progressives by removing an autocratic stain from the Allied cause. Most newspapers and magazines did not take a stand, however, and ordinary citizens did not seem to be in a belligerent mood. In Congress, several observers commented that more than half the members of the House would vote against war if there could be a secret ballot. Clearly, the president was not feeling a push for war from Congress or the public.48
Wilson once more kept to himself, receiving few callers and conducting mostly routine correspondence. He declined speaking engagements and usually left the White House only to play golf. Also, for more than a week at the middle of the month, he did not go to his office because he was confined to his bedroom with a bad cold and sore throat. Two matters did intrude on his bed rest. One was the next Congress. The Senate was meeting in special session before the new Congress convened, to consider the treaty of indemnity with, and apology to, Colombia, stemming from the 1903 Panamanian revolution, an issue that had languished through Wilson’s first term and then come alive again when Colombia sought to take advantage of America’s security concerns. The senators pleased the president by adopting a cloture rule, under which a two-thirds vote could shut off filibusters, but Lodge and other Republicans succeeded in blocking the treaty nevertheless. Because of the urgency of the international situation, Wilson also issued a call for the Congress to convene on April 16 rather than the following December, as mandated by the Constitution.
The other matter that Wilson had to deal with was a threatened railroad strike, together with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the law mandating an eight-hour workday for railway workers. Mediation by McAdoo and Secretary of Labor Wilson averted a strike, and the Court narrowly upheld the law. At one point, McAdoo barged into Wilson’s bedroom to talk about the strike. “Damn it, he makes me tired,” a White House servant quoted the president as saying. “He’s got too much nerve and presumes on the fact that he’s my son-in-law to take up with me in my private apartment matters that a Cabinet Officer ought to take up in my office. I’m getting damn sick of it.”49
Wilson left few clues about what he thought during this time. Given his habits, he almost certainly prayed. He harbored no illusions that God would tell him what to do, but the words with which he ended the speech that he would soon give to Congress indicated that he had reached back to his youth and religious background. Wilson did not write to or send for House. The colonel came to the White House only at the end of the month, on his own initiative and after the president had probably already made his decision about whether to go to war. Wilson did reveal his inner turmoil about that decision to two people in addition to his wife. One was Congressman Adamson, the author of the eight-hour law, who later recalled how passionately Wilson wanted to avoid war. Besides the loss of lives, the president feared the war’s effects at home: “He said that a state of war suspended the law, and legal and moral restraints being relaxed,” things would get so bad that “it would require a generation to restore normal conditions.”50
The other person to whom Wilson opened his heart and mind was Frank Cobb, the editor of the New York World, who came to the White House on the afternoon of March 19. Cobb later recalled that Wilson believed going to war would mea
n “there would be a dictated peace, a victorious peace,” which would require “an attempt to reconstruct a peacetime civilization with war standards. … There won’t be any peace standards left to work with. There will be only war standards.” The war’s effects at home frightened him even more. “Once lead this people into war,” Cobb also quoted him as saying, “and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life, infecting congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street. … If there is any alternative, for God’s sake, let’s take it!” This was possibly the most anguished cry from the heart ever uttered in the White House by a president. The most eloquent argument against going into this war came from the lips of the man who would take the country into it.51
When and how he made that decision is not completely clear. At a cabinet meeting the day after he talked with Cobb, Wilson asked whether he should call Congress into session before April 16 and, if so, what message he should send. The cabinet members were unanimous for war, including Daniels, who was the most reluctant. When Burleson said that people were demanding war, Wilson answered, “I do not care for popular demand. I want to do right, whether popular or not.” After everyone had spoken, he said, “Well, gentlemen, I think there is no doubt as to what your advice is. I thank you.” When Lansing asked Wilson whether he was going to call Congress into session earlier, he reportedly replied, “Oh, I think I will sleep on it.” The following day, March 21, he did issue a call for Congress to meet on April 2. He also authorized Baker and Daniels to federalize the National Guard, increase the size of the regular army, take anti-submarine actions at sea, and explore cooperation with the Royal Navy. Outreach to the British included ordering a senior naval officer, Rear Admiral William S. Sims, and an aide to depart at once for London, traveling in civilian clothes and under assumed names. Yet Lansing lamented to House that he no idea what Wilson was going to do, and he asked the colonel to come to Washington to try to smoke him out.52
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