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Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him
Chapter XXXV - Appeal For A Democratic Congress
by Tumulty, Joseph P.
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The President's appeal to the country of October 24, 1918, asking for the
election of a Democratic Congress, brought down upon him a storm of
criticism and ridicule. Many leading Democrats who had strongly urged an
appeal by the President as a necessary and proper thing in the usual war
situation which confronted him, as the criticism directed toward it grew
more bitter, turned away from it and criticized what they said was the
ineptitude and lack of tact of the President in issuing it. As a matter of
fact, opinion in the Democratic ranks as to the wisdom and necessity of a
general appeal was unanimous prior to the issuance of the statement. What
the President was seeking to do when he asked the support of the country
through the election of a Democratic Congress was to prevent divided
leadership at a moment when the President's undisputed control was a
necessity because of the effect a repudiation of his administration would
work upon the Central Powers. He realized that the defeat of his
administration in the midst of the World War would give aid and comfort to
the Central Powers, and that the Allied governments would themselves
interpret it as a weakening of our war power and while the enemy would be
strengthened, our associates would be distressed and disheartened.
He looked upon it, therefore, not as a partisan matter but as a matter
involving the good faith of America.
At previous elections the White House had been inundated with requests
from particular senators and congressmen, urging the President to write
letters in their behalf, and this had resulted in so much embarrassment to
the Chief Executive that as the critical days of the November elections of
1918 approached, the President was forced to consider a more general and,
if possible, a more diplomatic method of handling this difficult
situation. The gentlemen who criticized the appeal as outrageously
partisan evidently forgot that for months Will Hays, chairman of the
Republican National Committee, had been busily engaged in visiting various
parts of the country and, with his coadjutors in the Republican National
Committee, openly and blatantly demanding an emphatic repudiation of the
Administration from the country.
The President and I discussed the situation in June, 1918, and I was asked
by him to consider and work out what might be thought a tactful, effective
plan by which the President, without arousing party rancour or bitterness,
might make an appeal to the country, asking for its support. I considered
the matter, and under date of June 18, 1918, I wrote him a letter, part of
which was given over to a discussion of the way the matter might
discreetly be handled:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
June 18, 1918.
DEAR GOVERNOR:
I think the attitude of the leaders of the Republican party, as
reflected in the speeches of Will Hays, National Chairman, and Senator
Penrose, on Saturday last, will give you the opportunity at the
psychological moment to strike and to define the issue in this
campaign. I think for the present our policy should be one of silence
and even a show of indifference to what the leaders on the other side,
Messrs. Hay and Penrose, are saying and doing. This will, no doubt,
embolden them to make rash statements and charges and by the time you
are ready to make your general appeal, the whole country will realize
how necessary it is for you frankly to ask for the reelection of the
Democratic Congress. In a speech on Friday night, delivered at
Philadelphia, in urging the election of a Republican Congress, Will
Hays said: "We will bring the Government back to the limitations and
principles of the Constitution in time of peace and establish policies
which will again bind up the wounds of war, renew our prosperity,
administer the affairs of government with the greatest economy,
enlarge our strength at home and abroad, etc...."
Senator Penrose at the same time urging a Republican Congress said:
"Let us keep up an efficient Republican organization in Pennsylvania
and all through the United States, and make a successful Republican
contest at every opportunity in every congressional district and at
the next Presidential election, and endeavour to assure the election
of Republican candidates."
I think these speeches will give you an opportunity some time in
September or October frankly to state just what your attitude is
toward the coming campaign, and thus lay before the country what the
Republicans hope to gain by bringing about the election of a
Republican Congress. I would suggest that some man of distinction in
the country write you a letter, calling your attention to partisan
speeches of this character, emphasizing the parts I have mentioned,
and ask your opinion with reference to the plan of the Republican
party to regain power. In other words, we ought to accept these
speeches charging incompetency and inefficiency as a challenge, and
call the attention of the country to the fact that the leadership of
the Republican party is still reactionary and standpat, laying
particular emphasis on what the effect in Europe would be of a divided
leadership at this time. I think a letter along the lines of the
Indiana platform which I suggested a few weeks ago would carry to the
country just the impression we ought to make. This letter should be
issued, in my opinion, some time in September or October.
[Illustration:
In view of the unprecedented record or this Congress, doesn't the
President wish to make some statement?
The Secretary.
C.L.S.
(Transcriber's note: also contains two manuscript letters.)
Incidents in the daily routine at the White House.]
While it would seem from a reading of my confidential letter to the
President that we were engaged in preparing the way for an appeal, we were
simply doing what other administrations had done.
Some time after this the President communicated with Colonel House, and
when I next discussed the matter with the President, he informed me that
he and Colonel House had finally agreed that the thing to do was frankly
to come out without preliminaries of any kind and boldly ask for the
election of a Democratic Congress. I told him that I thought the method I
had proposed for bringing him into the discussion was one that would be
most effective and would cause least resentment; but he was firm in his
resolve to follow the course he finally pursued. He was of the opinion
that this was the open and honourable way to ask for what he thought would
be a vote of confidence in his administration.
It has often been stated that in this matter the President had acted upon
the advice of Postmaster General Burleson, and many of those individuals
throughout the country who criticized the President's appeal, pointed an
accusing finger at General Burleson and held him responsible for what they
said were the evil consequences of this ill-considered action. Simply by
way of explanation, it can be truthfully said, in fairness to General
Burleson, that he had nothing to do with the appeal and that he had never
been consulted about it.
These facts are now related by me not by way of apology for what the
President did, for in openly appealing to the country he had many
honourable precedents, of which the gentlemen who criticized him were
evidently ignorant. As Mr. George Creel, in his book, "The War, the World,
and Wilson," says: "In various elections George Washington pleaded for
'united leadership,' and Lincoln specifically urged upon the people the
unwisdom of 'swapping horses in midstream.'"
In a paragraph in Herndon's "Life of Lincoln," I find the following
appeal:
He did his duty as President, and rested secure in the belief that he
would be reflected whatever might be done for or against him. The
importance of retaining Indiana in the column of Republican States was
not to be overlooked. How the President viewed it, and how he proposed
to secure the vote of the state is shown in the following letter
written to General Sherman:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, September 19, 1864.
MAJOR GENERAL SHERMAN:
The State election of Indiana occurs on the 11th of October and the
loss of it to the friends of the Government would go far toward losing
the whole Union cause. The bad effect upon the November election, and
especially the giving the State Government to those who will oppose
the war in every possible way, are too much to risk if it can be
avoided. The draft proceeds, notwithstanding its strong tendency to
lose us the State. Indiana is the only important State voting in
October whose soldiers cannot vote in the field. Anything you can
safely do to let her soldiers or any part of them go home and vote at
the State election will be greatly in point. They need not remain for
the Presidential election, but may return to you at once. This is in
no sense an order, but is merely intended to impress you with the
importance to the army itself of your doing all you safely can,
yourself being the judge of what you can safely do.
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
Mr. Creel shows that the precedents established by Washington and Lincoln
were followed by Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft:
In a speech delivered at Boone, Iowa, October 11, 1898, President
McKinley pleaded for a Republican Congress in these words:
This is no time for divided councils. If I would have you remember
anything I have said in these desultory remarks, it would be to
remember at this critical hour in the nation's history we must not be
divided. The triumphs of the war are yet to be written in the articles
of peace.
In the same year Theodore Roosevelt, argued for a Republican Congress as
follows:
Remember that whether you will or not, your votes this year will be
viewed by the nations of Europe from one standpoint only. They will
draw no fine distinctions. A refusal to sustain the President this
year will, in their eyes, be read as a refusal to sustain the war and
to sustain the efforts of our peace commission to secure the fruit of
war. Such a refusal may not inconceivably bring about a rupture of the
peace negotiations. It will give heart to our defeated antagonists; it
will make possible the interference of those doubtful neutral nations
who in this struggle have wished us ill.
Ex-President Benjamin Harrison besought the people to "stand behind the
President," saying:
If the word goes forth that the people of the United States are
standing solidly behind the President, the task of the peace
commissioners will be easy, but if there is a break in the ranks--if
the Democrats score a telling victory, if Democratic Senators,
Congressmen, and governors are elected--Spain will see in it a gleam
of hope, she will take fresh hope, and a renewal of hostilities, more
war, may be necessary to secure to us what we have already won.
When Colonel Roosevelt himself became President, he followed the usual
precedent without even the excuse of a war emergency. In a letter dated
August 18, 1906, to James E. Watson, he wrote:
If there were only partisan issues involved in this contest, I should
hesitate to say anything publicly in reference thereto. But I do not
feel that such is the case. On the contrary, I feel that all good
citizens who have the welfare of America at heart should appreciate
the immense amount that has been accomplished by the present Congress,
organized as it is, and the urgent need of keeping this organization
in power. To change the leadership and organization of the House at
this time means to bring confusion to those who have been successfully
engaged in the steady working out of a great and comprehensive scheme
for the betterment of our social, industrial, and civic conditions.
Such a change would substitute a purposeless confusion, a violent and
hurtful oscillation between the positions of the extreme radical and
the extreme reactionary for the present orderly progress along the
lines of a carefully thought out policy.
Is it not clear in the light of the events that followed the repudiation
of the President and his administration in 1918 that he was justified by
reason of the unusual circumstances of a great world war, in asking for a
"team" that would work in cooperation with him? Some of those who most
indignantly criticized him for his partisan appeal attacked him and the
measures which he recommended for the peace of the world with a
partisanship without parallel in the history of party politics. Some who
most bitterly condemned what he did gave the most emphatic proof that what
he did was necessary. Nor can they honestly defend themselves by saying
that their partisan attacks on the treaty were justifiable reprisal.
Before he ever made his appeal they were doing all in their power to
undermine his influence at home and abroad, and he knew it. The appeal was
no reflection on Republicans as such, nor any minimization of the heroic
service rendered in the war by Republicans and Democrats alike in the
fighting and civilian services, but the President knew that Republicans
organized in party opposition in Congress would not assist but obstruct
the processes of peace-making under his leadership. And all the world now
knows that his judgment was correct. It will be interesting to read the
President's appeal to the country, written by him on the typewriter:
My Fellow Countrymen: The Congressional elections are at hand. They
occur in the most critical period our country has ever faced or is
likely to face in our time. If you have approved of my leadership and
wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at
home and abroad, I earnestly beg that you will express yourself
unmistakably to that effect by returning a Democratic majority to both
the Senate and the House of Representatives. I am your servant and
will accept your judgment without cavil, but my power to administer
the great trust assigned me by the Constitution would be seriously
impaired should your judgment be adverse, and I must frankly tell you
so because so many critical issues depend upon your verdict. No
scruple of taste must in grim times like these be allowed to stand in
the way of speaking the plain truth.
I have no thought of suggesting that any political party is paramount
in matters of patriotism. I feel too keenly the sacrifices which have
been made in this war by all our citizens, irrespective of party
affiliations, to harbour such an idea. I mean only that the
difficulties and delicacies of our present task are of a sort that
makes it imperatively necessary that the nation should give its
undivided support to the Government under a unified leadership, and
that a Republican Congress would divide the leadership.
The leaders of the minority in the present Congress have
unquestionably been pro-war, but they have been anti-Administration.
At almost every turn, since we entered the war, they have sought to
take the choice of policy and the conduct of the war out of my hands
and put it under the control of instrumentalities of their own
choosing. This is no time either for divided counsel or for divided
leadership. Unity of command is as necessary now in civil action as it
is upon the field of battle. If the control of the House and Senate
should be taken away from the party now in power, an opposing majority
could assume control of legislation and oblige all action to be taken
amidst contest and obstruction.
The return of a Republican majority to either House of the Congress
would, moreover, certainly be interpreted on the other side of the
water as a repudiation of my leadership. Spokesmen of the Republican
party are urging you to elect a Republican Congress in order to back
up and support the President, but even if they should in this way
impose upon some credulous voters on this side of the water, they
would impose on no one on the other side. It is well understood there
as well as here that the Republican leaders desire not so much to
support the President as to control him. The peoples of the Allied
countries with whom we are associated against Germany are quite
familiar with the significance of elections. They would find it very
difficult to believe that the voters of the United States had chosen
to support their President by electing to the Congress a majority
controlled by those who are not in fact in sympathy with the attitude
and action of the Administration.
I need not tell you, my fellow countrymen, that I am asking your
support not for my own sake or for the sake of a political party, but
for the sake of the nation itself, in order that its inward unity of
purpose may be evident to all the world. In ordinary times I would not
feel at liberty to make such an appeal to you. In ordinary times
divided counsels can be endured without permanent hurt to the country.
But these are not ordinary times. If in these critical days it is your
wish to sustain me with undivided minds, I beg that you will say so in
a way which it will not be possible to misunderstand either here at
home or among our associates on the other side of the sea. I submit my
difficulties and my hopes to you.
[Illustration: The President's appeal for a Democratic Congress,
as he wrote it on his typewriter and with his corrections.
[Transcriber's note: contains a reproduction of the first page of the
above-quoted letter.]]
In an address at the White House to members of the Democratic National
Committee, delivered February 28, 1919, which was never published, the
President expressed his own feelings with reference to the defeat of the
Democratic party at the Congressional elections a few months before.
Discussing this defeat, he said:
Personally, I am not in the least discouraged by the results of the
last Congressional election. Any party which carries out through a
long series of years a great progressive and constructive programme is
sure to bring about a reaction, because while in the main the reforms
that we have accomplished have been sound reforms, they have
necessarily in the process of being made touched a great many definite
interests in a way that distressed them, in a way that was counter to
what they deemed their best and legitimate interests. So that there
has been a process of adaptation in the process of change. There is
nothing apparently to which the human mind is less hospitable than
change, and in the business world that is particularly true because if
you get in the habit of doing your business a particular way and are
compelled to do it in a different way, you think that somebody in
Washington does not understand business, and, therefore, there has
been a perfectly natural reaction against the changes we have made in
the public policies of the United States. In many instances, as in the
banking and currency reform, the country is entirely satisfied with
the wisdom and permanency of the change, but even there a great many
interests have been disappointed and many of their plans have been
prevented from being consummated. So that, there is that natural
explanation. And then I do not think that we ought to conceal from
ourselves the fact that not the whole body of our partisans are as
cordial in the support of some of the things that we have done as they
ought to be.
You know that I heard a gentleman from one of the southern States say
to his Senator (this gentleman was himself a member of the State
Legislature)--he said to his Senator: "We have the advantage over you
because we have no publication corresponding with the Congressional
Record and all that is recorded in our state is the vote, and while
you have always voted right we know what happened in the meantime
because we read the Congressional Record." Now, with regard to a
great many of our fellow partisans in Washington, the Congressional
Record shows what happened between the beginning of the discussion
and the final Vote, and our opponents were very busy in advertising
what the Congressional Record disclosed. And to be perfectly plain,
there was not in the minds of the country sufficient satisfactory
evidence that we had supported some of the great things that they were
interested in any better than the other fellows. The voting record was
all right and the balance in our favour; but they can show a great
many things that discount the final record of the vote.
Now, I am in one sense an uncompromising partisan. Either a man must
stand by his party or not. Either he has got to play the game or he
has got to get out of the game, and I have no more sufferance for such
a man than the country has. Not a bit. Some of them got exactly what
was coming to them and I haven't any bowels of compassion for them.
They did not support the things they pretended to support. And the
country knew they didn't,--the country knew that the tone of the
cloakroom and the tone of the voting were different tones. Now, I am
perfectly willing to say that I think it is wise to judge of party
loyalty by the cloakroom, and not by the vote and the cloakroom was
not satisfactory. I am not meaning to imply that there was any kind of
blameworthy insincerity in this. I am not assessing individuals. That
is not fair. But in assessing the cause of our defeat we ought to be
perfectly frank and admit that the country was not any more sure of us
than it ought to be. So that we have got to convince it that the ranks
have closed up and that the men who constitute those ranks are all on
the war-path and mean the things they say and that the party
professes. That is the main thing.
Now, I think that can be accomplished by many processes.
Unfortunately, the members of Congress have to live in Washington, and
Washington is not a part of the United States. It is the most
extraordinary thing I have ever known. If you stay here long enough
you forget what the people of your own district are thinking about.
There is one reason on the face of things. The wrong opinion is
generally better organized than the right opinion. If some special
interest has an impression that it wants to make on Congress it can
get up thousands of letters with which to bombard its Senators and
Representatives, and they get the impression that that is the opinion
at home and they do not hear from the other fellow; and the
consequence is that the unspoken and uninsisted-on views of the
country, which are the views of the great majority, are not heard at
this distance. If such an arrangement were feasible I think there
ought to be a Constitutional provision that Congressmen and Senators
ought to spend every other week at home and come back here and talk
and vote after a fresh bath in the atmosphere of their home districts
and the opinions of their home folks.
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