ALSO BY JOHN MILTON COOPER, JR Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900–1920 The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt Walter Hines Page: The Southerner as American, 1855-1918 The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War, 1914–1917 To the memory of my sister, Jere Louise Cooper Marteau, 1946–2001 Contents PROLOGUE “THIS MAN’S MIND AND SPIRIT” TOMMY WOODROW PROFESSOR BOLD LEADER ACADEMIC CIVIL WAR GOVERNOR NOMINEE THE GREAT CAMPAIGN PREPARATION 10 BEGINNINGS 11 TAKEN AT THE FLOOD 12 TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY 13 IRONY AND THE GIFT OF FATE 14 THE SHOCK OF RECOGNITION 15 SECOND FLOOD TIDE 16 TO RUN AGAIN 17 PEACE AND WAR 18 WAGING WAR 19 VICTORY 20 COVENANT 21 PEACEMAKING ABROAD AND AT HOME 22 THE LEAGUE FIGHT 23 DISABILITY 24 DOWNFALL 25 TWILIGHT Notes Sources and Acknowledgments PROLOGUE “THIS MAN’S MIND AND SPIRIT” Each year, in the morning on December 28, a military honor guard carrying the American ag presents a wreath that bears the words “The President.” Accompanying the honor guard are members of the clergy, who carry a cross and say a prayer The clergy are present because the wreath-laying ceremony takes place in front of a tomb in the Washington National Cathedral Since the day is only a week after the winter solstice, the low angle of the morning sun causes bright colors from the stained glass windows to play across the oor of the alcove where the tomb is located, over the stone sarcophagus, and on the words carved on the walls The alcove contains two ags, the Stars and Stripes and the orange and black–shielded ensign of Princeton University The wreath laying takes place on the birthday, and at the nal resting place, of the thirteenth president of Princeton and twenty-eighth president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson The ceremony and the tomb capture much about this man The military presence is tting because Wilson led the nation through World War I The religious setting is equally tting because no president impressed people more strongly as a man of faith than Wilson did His resting place makes him the only president buried inside a church and the only one buried in Washington The university ag attests to his career in higher education before he entered public life Wilson remains the only professional academic and the only holder of the Ph.D degree to become president The inscriptions on the alcove walls come from his speeches as president and afterward Wilson made words central to all that he did as a scholar, teacher, educational administrator, and political leader; he was the next to last president to write his own speeches No other president has combined such varied and divergent elements of learning, eloquence, religion, and war In 1927, three years after Wilson’s death, Winston Churchill declared, “Writing with every sense of respect, it seems no exaggeration to pronounce that the action of the United States with its repercussions on the history of the world depended, during the awful period of Armageddon, on the workings of this man’s mind and spirit to the exclusion of every other factor; and that he played a part in the fate of nations incomparably more direct and personal than any other man.” Churchill was referring to the part that Wilson played in World War I and above all, his decision in 1917 to intervene on the side of the Allies That was the biggest decision Wilson ever made, and much of what has happened in the world since then has owed from that decision Unlike the other American wars of the last century, this one came neither in response to a direct attack on the nation’s soil, as with World War II and Pearl Harbor and the attacks of September 11, nor as a war of choice, as with the Gulf War and the Iraq War, nor as a smaller episode in a grand global struggle, as with the Korean War and the Vietnam War Many have argued that the United States joined the Allies in 1917 because great underlying forces and interests involving money, ties of blood and culture, and threats to security and cherished values were “really” at work Perhaps so, perhaps not, but one incontrovertible fact remains: the United States entered World War I because Woodrow Wilson decided to take the country in.1 Despite his deep religious faith, he did not go to war in 1917 because he thought God was telling him to it When someone telegraphed him to demand, “In the name of God and humanity, declare war on Germany,” Wilson’s stenographer wrote in his diary that the president sco ed, “War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human a air entirely.” To Wilson, as an educated, orthodox Christian, the notion that any person could presume to know God’s will was blasphemy Likewise, as someone born and raised in the least evangelical and most God-centered of Protestant denominations, the Presbyterian, the notion of a personal relationship with the Almighty was foreign to him Three months after the outbreak of World War I in Europe and at a time when he was enduring agonies of grief after the death of his rst wife, he told a YMCA gathering, “For one, I am not fond of thinking about Christianity as a means of saving individual souls.”2 Wilson practiced a severe separation not only between church and state but also between religion and society Unlike his greatest rival, Theodore Roosevelt, he never compared politics with preaching Unlike the other great leader of his Democratic Party, William Jennings Bryan, he never supported the greatest moral reform crusade of their time—prohibition Also unlike Bryan, he saw no ict between modern science and the Bible, and he despised early manifestations of what came to be called Fundamentalism By the same token, however, he had little truck with the major liberal religious reform movement, the Social Gospel Wilson remained a strong Presbyterian, but his second wife was an Episcopalian who continued to worship in her own church He was the first president to visit the pope in the Vatican He counted Catholics and Jews among his closest political associates, and he appointed and fought to confirm the first Jew to the Supreme Court, Louis D Brandeis A person with that kind of religious background and outlook could never be either of the two things that many people would charge him with being—a secular messiah or a naïve, woolly-headed idealist Wilson was bold, extremely sure of himself, and often stubborn, and he did think of himself as an instrument of God’s will But according to his beliefs, every person was an instrument of God’s will, and even his own defeats and disappointments were manifestations of the purposes of the Almighty Such an outlook left no room for messianic delusions It did leave room for idealism, but that did not distinguish him from the other leading politicians of his time Except for a few crass machine types and hard-bitten conservatives, all the major gures in public life during the rst two decades of the twentieth century proclaimed themselves idealists Roosevelt and Bryan did so proudly, and nothing infuriated Roosevelt more than to hear Wilson called an idealist Moreover, this was, as Richard Hofstadter characterized it, “the age of reform.” Prohibition, woman su rage, anti-vice campaigns, social settlement houses, educational uplift, and an embracing set of political movements loosely gathered under the umbrella of “progressivism” were the order of the day In that context, Wilson came o as one of the most careful, hardheaded, and sophisticated idealists of his time His circumspection extended to foreign as well as domestic a airs By his own admission, he did not enter the White House with much of what he called “preparation” in foreign a airs As a scholar, he had studied and written almost exclusively about domestic politics, and the only o ce he had held before coming to Washington was a state governorship Even before the outbreak of World War I, two years into his presidency, he began to deal with problems abroad, particularly fallout from the violent revolution next door in Mexico Wilson had to learn diplomacy on the job, and he made mistakes, particularly in Mexico, where he originally did harbor some facile notions about promoting democracy He learned hard lessons there, which he applied later in dealing with both the world war and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia Like others at the time, Wilson invested American intervention in the world war with larger ideological signi cance and purpose But he had no illusions about leading a worldwide crusade to impose democracy The most famous phrase from his speech to Congress in 1917 asking for war read, “The world must be made safe for democracy”—perhaps the most signi cant choice of the passive voice by any president A year later, speaking to foreign journalists, he declared, “There isn’t any one kind of government which we have the right to impose upon any nation So that I am not ghting for democracy except for those peoples that want democracy.” Wilson did not coin the term self-determination—that came from the British prime minister David Lloyd George, who also coined the phrase “war to end all wars,” words Wilson probably never uttered Later, he did sparingly adopt “self-determination,” but always as something to be applied carefully and contingently, never as a general principle for all times and places.3 Wilson’s most renowned policy statement, the Fourteen Points, addressed speci c problems of the time as much as larger conditions Half of the points addressed general matters—such as open covenants of peace, freedom of the seas, and an international organization to maintain peace, all carefully couched as aims to be pursued over time The other half dealt with speci c issues of the war—such as the restoration of Belgium, an independent Poland, the integrity of Russia, and the matter of autonomy—but not necessarily in speci c terms—so, for example, there is no mention of independence for subject peoples of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires Wilson’s moral authority and America’s lesser taint of imperialism made the soberly stated Fourteen Points a rallying ground for liberals and progressives throughout the world, but if he could have heard the ways later generations would use “Wilsonian” as an epithet to scorn naïve e orts to spread democracy in the world, he 10 WW veto message, May 27, 1920, PWW, vol 65 On the override vote, seventeen Democrats voted in favor, and two Republicans voted against On the Knox resolution, see Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World 11 Homer Cummings diary, entry for May 31, [1920], PWW, vol 65 12 WW notes, [ca June 10, 1920], PWW, vol 65 13 Carter Glass memorandum, June 16, 1920, PWW, vol 65 See also Woolley, “Politics Is Hell,” Robert W Woolley Papers, box 44, LC 14 New York World, June 18, 1920 On Tumulty’s intentions, see PWW, vol 65, n 15 New York World, June 18, 1920 16 Carter Glass memorandum, June 19, 1920, PWW, vol 65, p., 435 For Glass’s discouragement of a third term, see New York Times, June 21, 1920 17 On this convention, see Wesley Marvin Bagby, The Road to Normalcy: The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1920 (Baltimore, 1962) 18 Albert S Burleson to Daniel C Roper, July 12, 1920, quoted in PWW, vol 65, n See also New York Times, June 29, 1920 19 See CTGD, entries for July [and July 6] 1920, PWW, vol 65; Charles E Swem diary, entry for [ca July 6, 1920], PWW, vol 65; Bainbridge Colby to WW, July 2, 1920, PWW, vol 65 Colby used Homer Cummings’s code in the telegraph to Wilson Swem claimed that Wilson dictated to Edith a telegram in reply approving Colby’s plan (see Swem diary, entry for [ca July 6, 1920], PWW, vol 65), but no copy of such a telegram survives, and Colby did not mention it in his communications with Wilson 20 JPT to EBGW, July 4, 1920, PWW, vol 65; Irwin Hood Hoover, Forty-two Years in the White House (Boston, 1934), quoted in PWW, vol 65, n On the meeting in San Francisco, see Colby to WW, July 4, 1920, PWW, vol 65; Cummings memorandum, [July and 4, 1920], PWW, vol 65 Cummings recalled that two meetings took place on July 4, and not all the men named may have been present at both of them On the move to re Albert Burleson, see James Kerney, The Political Education of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1926) Ike Hoover’s memoir also states that Tumulty kept Burleson “afloat.” 21 Franklin D Roosevelt to Claude G Bowers, quoted in James M Cox, Journey through My Years (New York, 1946); Memoir See also CTGD, entries for July 18 and 19, 1920, PWW, vol 65, 529 22 Charles E Swem diary, entry for July 26, 1920, PWW, vol 65 See also Edmund W Starling with Thomas Sugrue, Starling of the White House: The Story of the Man Whose Secret Service Detail Guarded Five Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D Roosevelt (New York, 1946) 23 William W Hawkins interview, [Sept 27, 1920], PWW, vol 66 24 WW statement, [Oct 3, 1920], PWW, vol 66 25 WW to Selden P Spencer, Oct, 6, 1920, PWW, memorandum, Oct 5, 1920, PWW, vol 66 vol 66; Homer Cummings 26 WW to Warren G Harding, Oct 18, 1920, PWW, vol 66; WW speech, Oct 27, 1920, PWW, vol 66 27 WW to James M Cox, Oct 29, 1920, PWW, vol 66 28 Voters had not so much turned against the Democrats as they had stayed home Thanks to the Nineteenth Amendment, nationwide woman su rage boosted the total vote, but in percentages, participation fell For the rst time in American history, less than half of all eligible voters cast ballots in a presidential election For a good assessment of the election results, see Bagby, Road to Normalcy 29 Henry J Allen to White, Mar 23, 1920, William Allen White Papers, series E, box 51, LC 30 Bagby, Road to Normalcy On the role of foreign policy in the election, see Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World 31 Charles E Swem diary, entry for Nov 3, 1920, PWW, vol 66; SA to Jessie Wilson Sayre, Nov 4, 1920, PWW, vol 66; Homer Cummings memorandum, [Nov 6, 1920], PWW, vol 66; WW to Bainbridge Colby, Nov 6, 1920, PWW, vol 66 32 A Mitchell Palmer to WW, Jan 30, 1921, PWW, vol 67; WW notation, PWW, vol 67, n 8; Ida M Tarbell memorandum, May 22, 1922, PWW, vol 68 33 WW to Lawrence C Woods, Dec 1, 1920, PWW, vol 66 On Tumulty’s role and the functioning of the government, see editors’ comments, PWW, vol 63, n 6, and vol 66 34 RSBD, entry for Nov 28, 1920, PWW, vol 66; EBGW to RSB, Nov 30, 1920, PWW, vol 66 35 RSBD, entry for Dec 1, 1920, PWW, vol 66; CTG memorandum, Dec 6, 1920, PWW, vol 66 36 WW message, Dec 7, 1920, PWW, vol 66 37 See WW veto message, Mar 3, 1921, PWW, vol 67 38 Memoir 39 For the figure on Wilson’s savings, see New York Tribune, Sept 27, 1921 40 Memoir On the Wilsons’ nances, see Phyllis Lee Levin, Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House (New York: 2001) 41 Memoir, 308 On the house hunting 42 JDD entry on Jan 17, 1921, PWW, vol 67 43 New York Times, Mar 5, 1921 44 Ibid 45 New York World, Mar 4, 1921 For Wilson’s expression of appreciation, see WW to Frank Cobb, Mar 7, 1921, PWW, vol 67 25 TWILIGHT In her memoir, Edith insisted that the painting in the bedroom was a portrait of herself See Memoir For descriptions of the house and RSB, “Memorandum of a Talk with Mrs Woodrow Wilson, January 27, 1925,” RSBP, box 124 Memoir On the routine, see Memoir RSBD, entry for Mar 22, [1921], PWW, vol 67 WW to Robert S Henderson, May 7, 1921, PWW, vol 67; RSBD, entry for May 25, [1921], PWW, vol 67 See also SA to John Hibben, June 11, 1921, PWW, vol 67 On the law partnership, see Memoir; RSB, “Memorandum of a Talk with Mrs Woodrow Wilson at 2340 S St., N.W., Washington, D.C., on December 7, 1925,” RSBP, box 124; and Bainbridge Colby, interview by RSB, June 19, 1930, RSBP, box 103 WW to Colby, Feb 17, 1918, PWW, vol 67; WW to Colby, June 10, 1918, vol 68 Colby to WW, Aug 22, 1922, PWW, vol 68; WW draft letter and telegram to Colby, Aug 23, 1922, PWW, vol 68; RSB, “Memorandum of a Talk with Mrs Woodrow Wilson at 2340 S St., N.W., Washington, D.C., on December 7, 1925,” RSBP, box 124 Edith erroneously recalled that Wilson telephoned Colby; she also recalled that Colby had already entertained second thoughts of his own WW to Colby, Nov 29, 1922; Dec 14, 1922, PWW, vol 68 Almost eight years later, when Baker interviewed Colby, he found him almost worshipful in his attitude toward Wilson See Colby, interview by RSB, June 19, 1930, RSBP, box 103 10 WW to William Gibbs McAdoo, Sept 17, 1922, PWW, vol 68 11 New York Times, Nov 12, 1921 12 WW to Bainbridge Colby, Feb 24, 1922, PWW, vol 67; RSBD, entry for Apr 4, [1922], PWW, vol 67 13 WW notes, Apr 26, 1922; [ca May 1], 1922, PWW, vol 68; WW to J Franklin Jameson, May 11, 1922, PWW, vol 68 14 WW, “The Road Away from Revolution,” [ca Apr 8, 1923], PWW, vol 68 15 George Creel to EBGW, Apr 19, 1923, PWW, vol 68; SA, interview by RSB, Sept 2, 1931, PWW, vol 68, n 16 SA, interview by RSB, Sept 2, 1931, PWW, vol 68, n 17 On the formation of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, see New York Times, Dec 29, 1922, and PWW, vol 68, n 18 New York Times, Nov 12, 1922; Dec 29, 1922; CTG memorandum, [ca Dec 28, 1922], PWW, vol 68 19 WW statement, [ca Oct 20, 1921], PWW, vol 68; WW statement, Nov 6, 1921, PWW, vol 67 20 WW to John Hessin Clarke, Oct 27, 1922, PWW, vol 68; WW to Hamilton Holt, Nov 5, 1922, PWW, vol 68 21 For Baker’s account of writing Woodrow Wilson and the World Settlement, see RSB, American Chronicle: The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker (New York, 1945) 22 WW to JPT, Apr 6, 1922, PWW, vol 67; “Dictated by Mrs Woodrow Wilson, to Give Her Memory of the Tumulty Incident,” Nov 21, 1924, RSBP, box 124 23 JPT to WW, Apr 10, 1922, PWW, vol 68; New York Times, Apr 9, 1922; WW to editor, New York Times, Apr 12, 1922, PWW, vol 68; WW to Arthur Krock, Apr 12, 1912, PWW, vol 68; Memoir On the recommendaton of Tumulty for the Senate, see WW to James Kerney, Oct 30, 1923, PWW, vol 68, and Kerney, “Last Talks with Woodrow Wilson,” Saturday Evening Post, Mar 29, 1924, PWW, vol 68 24 Wilson to James F McCaleb, July 8, 1922, PWW, vol 68; WW to John Hessin Clarke, Nov 13, 1922, PWW, vol 68 After William Cabell Bruce’s victory in the primary, Wilson wrote a bitter letter about him to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee See WW to Cordell Hull, Sept 12, 1922, PWW, vol 68 25 WW to Frederick I Thompson, Nov 4, 1922, PWW, vol 68 26 New York Times, June 10, 1923 27 On the McAdoo visit, see RSB, “Memorandum of an Interview with Mrs Woodrow Wilson—January 4, 1926,” RSBP, box 124 28 Ida Tarbell memorandum, May 5, 1922, PWW, vol 68 29 WW to EBGW, [Aug.] 31, 1923, PWW, vol 68 30 Lord Riddell diary, entry for [Sept 10, 1923], PWW, vol 68; Margaret Wilson, quoted in Edith Gittings Reid, Woodrow Wilson: The Character, the Myth and the Man (New York, 1934) 31 WW to Raymond Fosdick, Oct 22, 1923, PWW, vol 68; Fosdick to RSB, June 23, 1926, RSBP, box 108 32 Fosdick to WW, Nov 27, 1923, PWW, vol 68; WW to Fosdick, Nov 28, 1923, PWW, vol 68; Raymond B Fosdick, Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiography (New York, 1958) 33 WW speech, Nov 10, 1923, PWW, vol 68 34 New York Times, Nov 12, 1923 See also Arthur Link’s description of the scene in PWW, vol 68 35 New York Times, Dec 29, 1923 36 WW to RSB, Dec 13, 1923, PWW, vol 68; WW to NDB, Jan 20, 1924, PWW, vol ; New York Times, Jan 17, 1924 On the delivery of “The Document,” see Randolph Bolling to NDB, Jan 21, 1924, PWW, vol 68, n 1; 544 37 Raymond Fosdick to RSB, June 23, 1926, RSBP, box 103 38 WW notes, [ca Jan 21, 1924], PWW, vol 68 39 Margaret H Cobb to WW, Dec 27, 1923, PWW, vol 68; WW foreword, [Jan 6, 1924], to Frank Irving Cobb, Cobb of “The World,” ed John L Heaton (New York, 1924), in PWW, vol 68; Raymond Fosdick to RSB, Jan 23, 1924, RSBP, box 103 40 RSB to WW, Jan 7, 1924, PWW, vol 68; WW to RSB, Jan and 25, 1924, PWW, vol 68 41 RSB, American Chronicle Two other letters Wilson dictated that day were condolences to an old friend and supporter among the Princeton trustees, Thomas Jones, on the death of his brother David, another friend and supporter, and a brief reply to an inmate in a federal prison who had requested help in having his sentence commuted 42 On these days, see Randolph Bolling, “A Brief History of the Last Illness of Honorable Woodrow Wilson,” [Feb or 8, 1924], PWW, vol 68 43 Bolling memorandum, PWW, vol 68; White House sta memorandum to Calvin Coolidge, Feb 2, 1924, PWW, vol 68; New York Times, Feb and 4, 1924 44 New York Times, Feb 4, 1924; CTG statement, [Feb 3, 1924], CTG Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Va.; death certi cate, CTG Papers See also, “Memorandum of Interview with Dr Cary T Grayson on February 18, 19, 1926 at Washington,” RSBP, box 109 45 Helen Manning Hunter, quoting WHT in Lewis L Gould to John Milton Cooper, Jr., June 13, 2008 46 EBGW to HCL, Feb 4, 1924, PWW, vol 68; New York Times, Feb 7, 1924 47 New York Times, Feb 7, 1924 48 Raymond Fosdick to RSB, June 23, 1926, RSBP, box 103 Sources and Acknowledgments In a display of excessive modesty, Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I make the same claim with no modesty whatever If I have seen further into Woodrow Wilson and his times, it is entirely by standing on the shoulders of giants Some of those giants come from the time I have written about, so the debts I wish to acknowledge include men and women from Wilson’s time as well as my own The rst and greatest debt owed by any Wilson biographer is to the man himself He remains perhaps the most self-revealing of all American presidents He was not secretive or elusive, and he shared his thoughts and motives with others, particularly with the women in his life Fortunately for the biographer, he began his life when people communicated mainly by letters, and despite the inroads of the telephone and more rapid transportation later in his life, he and his contemporaries continued to rely on written communication for important and intimate matters The letters Wilson exchanged with his rst wife, Ellen, before and after their marriage stand alongside the correspondence of John and Abigail Adams as the frankest, deepest, and most touching exchanges between a president and his spouse The letters he wrote to his second wife, Edith, before their marriage o er comparable views into his mind and spirit, but they not cover as long a period, and her responses are not as insight-filled as Ellen’s Likewise, his letters to Mary Hulbert (also Peck) reveal his thoughts and emotions at a particularly signi cant juncture in his life Unfortunately, her letters to him not survive, most likely because he destroyed them for fear of potential scandal Those were among the few papers Wilson ever discarded—much to the gratitude of biographers and historians He also wrote what seem to be astonishingly revealing letters from a president to a variety of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances Earlier, at di erent times in his life, he bared his plans, dreams, and feelings to close friends, most notably Robert Bridges during his rst decade out of college These letters alone would su ce to make Wilson a biographer’s dream subject His contemporaries also contributed greatly to making him accessible to future generations Fortunately, the great tradition of diary keeping had not yet died out—as it largely would later in the twentieth century—and several of Wilson’s closest associates served as a small team of Boswells for him First, foremost, and most controversially comes Colonel House His deviousness and his agendas, both open and hidden, require the reader to approach his diary and correspondence with caution Although House could lie and often shade the truth to suit his listener, he kept a diary that was usually accurate on the facts as far as it went The main problems in using this diary come from its shades of meaning—which magnify House’s importance and sagacity—and its aspersions on others—although those a ord important, though unintended, insight into House himself Another problem is having only House’s side of the story for most of the time until the peace conference; then other important gures also kept diaries, against which his accounts can be checked Only once, in a letter to Edith before they were married, did Wilson speak for himself about House and their relationship Still, despite those pitfalls and drawbacks, House’s diary remains an indispensable source from the time of Wilson’s election as president in 1912 to the end of the peace conference in 1919 Wilson’s physician, Cary Grayson, likewise kept a diary during the conference and on the speaking tour in September 1919, and he wrote frequent memoranda relating particularly to his patient’s health Grayson’s diary entries in Paris recount what Wilson told him and Edith, usually at the end of each day The president evidently did the same thing with the press secretary to the American delegation, Ray Stannard Baker, who was long practiced at keeping a diary Grayson and Baker include information about others at Paris, and Baker often makes shrewd comments on the principal negotiators, members of the delegation, and the progress of the conference Grayson’s diary entries during the speaking tour are open to question about whether he altered them later to cover himself in diagnosing the president’s deteriorating physical condition Unlike the earlier diary, there are no manuscripts of this one, only a typescript The memoranda that he wrote after Wilson’s stroke are more reliable Another diary keeper during his presidency was Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, whose entries often give the only account of cabinet meetings Daniels’s entries tend to be brief, sometimes almost like shorthand, but they are always valuable He and other members of the cabinet conducted voluminous, frequently revealing correspondence, most of which is preserved in the collections of their papers at the Library of Congress Many of those cabinet secretaries also wrote memoirs of their service under Wilson; these are most valuable when they can be checked against contemporary letters and diary entries Joe Tumulty, the ever-faithful Horatio of Wilson’s political career, likewise contributed greatly to illuminating the thoughts and actions of his boss Even though they were in daily personal contact, the two men exchanged frequent notes and memoranda, which illuminate the workings of the president in his White House o ce Su ering as he did from the machinations of House and the dislike of Edith Wilson, Tumulty was sometimes not privy to important matters, but his perseverance at the “governor’s” side a ords a view of the personality dynamics surrounding Wilson Tumulty, too, wrote a memoir—one of the rst to appear after Wilson left the White House—but, either through faulty memory or a highly sentimentalized view of events, he left accounts that often have to be regarded with skepticism One other contemporary who also provided great insight into Wilson was his brother-in-law Stockton Axson He later titled his memoir Brother Woodrow, and he was closer to Wilson than his own brother or than any other person except his two wives As a young man, Axson frequently lived with his sister and brother-in-law, and as a fellow faculty member at Princeton he came to their house practically every day Later, he was a frequent visitor to the White House and the house on S Street Besides his memoir, which was not published until 1993, Axson left extensive written accounts of parts of Wilson’s life, annotations on the manuscript of the rst biography of him, and extended interviews, which are in Ray Stannard Baker’s papers at the Library of Congress Two other family memoirs are also valuable The youngest Wilson daughter, Eleanor (Nell), who married William Gibbs McAdoo, wrote a memoir of her parents and later edited their letters, and Ellen’s sister, Margaret (Madge) Axson Elliott, likewise wrote an account of the family, with whom she lived from the age of ten until her marriage The Elliott memoir contains some inaccuracies, but it o ers an intimate look at life in the home of the professor and university president The biographer’s good fortune with Wilson does not end with him and his contemporaries Other biographers and scholars who have come afterward have continued to shed light on him and his career Two of them have stood out from all the others The rst of them, Ray Stannard Baker, straddled the roles of contemporary observer and biographer Wilson’s own deathbed anointment of him and Edith’s cajolery brought him to his task while memories were still fresh As a journalist, Baker re exively sought out reminiscences of his subject through correspondence and interviews This was fortunate because academic historians still remained in the thrall of strictly contemporary documents and would not come to appreciate the value of oral history for another generation Baker did not neglect documents, and he collected a number of letters that might otherwise have gone astray, but his greatest contribution was to gather recollections of Wilson dating back to his childhood The transcripts of his interviews and the commentary Stockton Axson produced as Baker wrote the biography, together with the other material he collected, make his papers in the Library of Congress second only to Wilson’s own papers in value to the biographer and to historians of this era The other outstanding contributor to the illumination of this man and his times was Arthur S Link Born three years before Wilson died, Link did not know him, but he began work on him soon after Baker completed his multivolume authorized biography Link approached Wilson di erently, as a historian of the era rather than as a biographer Over the course of twenty years, Link produced a ve-volume history of Wilson’s political career up to intervention in World War I The four volumes dealing with Wilson’s time in the White House constitute the fullest, most insightful history of a presidential administration ever written Their only rivals are Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s two volumes on the rst Franklin Roosevelt administration and Henry Adams’s eight volumes on the Jefferson and Madison administrations My notes to the chapters dealing with the years from 1910 to 1917 begin to indicate my reliance on Link’s work Having used many of the same sources that he did, I continually marvel at how he “got it right.” Link’s work can be corrected only where evidence to which he did not have access has come to light, and the instances of that are infrequent Link also made a second, still greater contribution to an understanding of Wilson Starting in the 1950s, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation dedicated its assets and Princeton University provided institutional support for a comprehensive multivolume edition of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson Link was the editor of this edition from start to nish, which came with the publication of the nal volume in 1993 He enjoyed able assistance throughout most of the project from his associate editors, John Wells Davidson, David W Hirst, and John Little, as well as his wife, Margaret Douglas Link There was also an editorial advisory committee, which included Richard W Leopold, William H Harbaugh, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., among others, for the duration About twenty years into the project I also joined that advisory committee, and I was proud to serve to its completion In the process, I became a close friend of Arthur and Margaret Link, and I regret that I began this biography when they were no longer alive to help me with their counsel and criticism Important as the assistance of others was, what Link always called The Papers was his work: it perfectly ful lls Emerson’s dictum, “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” The sixty-nine volumes of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson constitute one of the great editorial achievements in all history Of the great documentary editions that began to ourish in the second half of the twentieth century, this is the only one that has been completed and the only one that has had only one editor Second only to Wilson himself and equal to Baker, Link deserves the greatest credit for making this man so accessible to anyone who wants to know a little or a lot about him These volumes bring together and reproduce nearly all the significant contemporary documents by and about Wilson and the events in which he played a major role Much of the material comes from the Wilson manuscripts in the Library of Congress, but, particularly for his earlier life—when people wrote longhand letters and did not make copies—this edition gathers material from widely scattered sources Those volumes also contain extensive editorial notes that add up to a biography of Wilson in those years For the presidency, the selection sometimes leaves out material and requires consulting the manuscripts—which are available on micro lm—but those instances are rare All relevant diary entries are included, and when foreign a airs are involved there is material from archives in other countries Again, my notes indicate my heavy reliance on PWW, as they are abbreviated there They are the indispensable source for anyone who studies Wilson or this era For the biographer, it is amazing how seldom he or she needs to venture beyond PWW, except to Baker’s collection and a few other sources I have likewise relied on the work of other historians and biographers The notes give some indication of those whose work I found most helpful One whose work is frequently cited deserves additional thanks Henry Bragdon served as a bridge between Baker and Link In the 1930s, he also interviewed people who had known Wilson during his years as a student, professor, and college president He was able to talk with some people whom Baker missed or could not get much out of, and even when he repeated interviews, these elicited fresh information and provided a second take on the person’s memories Bragdon then produced an excellent biography of Wilson’s “academic years,” prior to his entry into politics in 1910 It is also a ne contribution to the history of higher education in America, although it has been supplemented and in some instances supplanted by a still better work in that eld, James Axtell’s history of Princeton in the century that started with Wilson’s presidency there Axtell tells the story of what Wilson attempted in the way of transforming Princeton into one of America’s and the world’s great universities and how, by ts and starts and over a long time, his vision came to be a reality It is the finest history of an American university yet written Other works on Wilson that I found helpful and are cited in the notes, though not often enough, are John Mulder’s account of Wilson’s life to 1910, Edwin Weinstein’s medical and psychological biography of Wilson, Neils Thorsen’s study of his prepresidential political thought, and Robert Kraig’s study of Wilson’s rhetoric All are excellent works Mulder emphasizes the religious environment of Wilson’s youth Weinstein brings matters of Wilson’s health into perspective, as notes in PWW for the time surrounding his stroke in 1919 Thorsen probes into what a truly gifted student of politics Wilson was Kraig places Wilson in the Western rhetorical tradition dating back to classical times and illuminates the in uences and contributions that he made to that tradition—now horribly eroded by modern techniques of political manipulation and appeals through mass media Thomas Knock’s book on Wilson’s foreign policy and Margaret MacMillan’s account of the peace conference also guided me through these aspects of Wilson’s life and work At the risk of immodesty, I should mention two of my previous books, a comparative biography of Wilson and his great rival Theodore Roosevelt and a study of the League Fight The rst puts Wilson in an indispensable context that sheds light on both him and his greatest rival; the second examines not only him but also his friends and foes in the last great debate over American foreign policy—the culmination of what Kraig aptly terms “the lost world of oratorical statesmanship.” There are many other ne works on Wilson and the momentous events of his time, and a good way to approach them is through the comprehensive bibliography published in 1997 by John Mulder and his associates Finally comes the happiest task of all, thanking the individuals and institutions that have aided and speeded me along the path to this book Early on Frank Smith and my children, John M Cooper III and Elizabeth Cooper Doyle, together with my wife, Judith Cooper, encouraged and prodded me to write a biography of Wilson I resisted, but not for long, because they were asking me to something I really wanted to Along the way, several people have helped me nd material, including Robert Cullinane, Kathleen Dalton, Lewis Gould, Arthur S Link III, Samuel Scha er, William Walker, and Katherine Wilkins At Princeton’s Mudd Library, Dan Linke and Chris Kitto aided me in gathering illustrations, and at the National Gallery of Ireland, Adrian Le Harivel a orded me the opportunity of a close-up examination of the Sargent portrait of Wilson and helped arrange its reproduction Others have read and commented on portions of the manuscript, including Anthony Gaughan, Bruce Freed, Christine Schillig, Marc Winerman, Victoria Brown, Edward Co man, and Michael Dickens Three people have read everything in one version of this work and sometimes more My wife, Judy, has patiently gone over several incarnations line by line, constantly raising questions about what I meant, how I said things, and how I interpreted a number of Wilson’s and others’ motives and actions Jim Axtell performed the same service, reading and writing comments on everything and raising constant questions Since he was writing his history of Princeton at the same time, we became something like co-conspirators as we read each other’s chapters and traded opinion and lore Justus Doenecke took great pains to spot numerous errors To all these friends and loved ones, I can o er only small thanks for making a lonely job far more enjoyable and stimulating Two institutions provided greatly appreciated aid toward the end of this work The University of Wisconsin–Madison granted me a sabbatical for the academic year 2007–8, which allowed me to write full-time I would like to thank the university for this opportunity The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars made me a Policy Scholar for ve months in 2008 Besides time, a pleasant place for writing, and proximity to sources, the Wilson Center furnished me with the services of an intern, Colin Biddle, who found material for me, read portions of the manuscript, and checked references for the rst part In addition, the Wilson Center provided a most enjoyable and stimulating place to be, living up to its mission of bringing together scholars and persons in public life I would like to thank its director, Lee Hamilton, and its associate director, Samuel Wells, for making this possible From manuscript to book, this biography has enjoyed the indispensable services of giants in the world of publishing My agent, Alexander Hoyt, navigated the waters of this industry for me, landing me with a superb publisher and aiding and encouraging me all along the way At Alfred A Knopf, I have pro ted from the gifts of two outstanding editors, who have proven that the truly noble work of the golden age of American publishing is not dead I began rst with Ashbel Green, who is a legend in his own time for his work with a long line of distinguished historians If I had written faster, Ash could have seen this through to the end, but he graciously read the rest of the work in retirement and gave me the bene t of his eagle eye for infelicities of wording and curbed my tendency toward slanginess His retirement meant that I also bene ted from the services of another equally gifted editor, Andrew Miller, who reinforced Ash’s oversight and went on to suggest ways to streamline and improve the work As I have told him, Andrew really knows how to make a book move, and the ow of this one owes a great deal to him In addition, Andrew was a fount of ideas for how to improve the interpretations and depictions of persons and events Sara Sherbill and Andrew Michael Carlson patiently and cheerfully shepherded me through the indispensable tasks of transforming a piece of writing into a book Finally, Abigail Winograd copy-edited the book with truly extraordinary skill and insight—I have never had a more attentive and helpful reader My deepest thanks to each of them In the end, all remaining errors, bad uses of words, quirks, and dubious interpretations remain entirely my own This book comes out of a companionship with its subject that goes back a long way, and I hope it reflects some of his virtues A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Milton Cooper, Jr., is E Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he has taught since 1970 He is a graduate of Princeton University and took his M.A and Ph.D at Columbia University He is the author of ve previous books, including The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt and Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been a Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars He has served as Fulbright Professor of American history at Moscow State University, and for fteen years he was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee to The Papers of Woodrow Wilson He appeared on and was a consultant to the television biography of Theodore Roosevelt and was chief historian to the television biography of Woodrow Wilson, both of which appeared on the Public Broadcasting Service’s American Experience He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and Harpswell, Maine THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A KNOPF Copyright © 2009 by John Milton Cooper, Jr All rights reserved Published in the United States by Alfred A Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House Limited, Toronto www.aaknopf.com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cooper, John Milton Woodrow Wilson : a biography / by John Milton Cooper p cm eISBN: 978-0-307-27301-7 Wilson, Woodrow, 1856–1924 Presidents—United States—Biography United States—Politics and government— 1913–1921 I Title E767.C 695 2009 973.91′3092—dc22 [B] 2009019097 v3.0 ... the alcove walls come from his speeches as president and afterward Wilson made words central to all that he did as a scholar, teacher, educational administrator, and political leader; he was the... a direct attack on the nation’s soil, as with World War II and Pearl Harbor and the attacks of September 11, nor as a war of choice, as with the Gulf War and the Iraq War, nor as a smaller episode... The war and the denominational split caused a family rift as well The break was worse with the Wilsons than with the Woodrows Joseph Wilson s father had earlier taken anti-slavery stands, and