Woodrow Wilson: Progressivism Fuels Racism and Racism Fuels Progressivism

One man has served as a symbol for two things: Woodrow Wilson is a symbol for the Progressivist movement, and he is a symbol for egregious racism. Harvard Professor Gautam Mukunda writes that Wilson’s “extreme racism” led him to “views and actions” that were and are “abhorrent.”

When President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House — the dinner took place in October 1901 — Woodrow Wilson was furious, and reacted by using hateful and inappropriate racial epithets. Wilson’s vulgar language was unacceptable by the social standards of his era, as Gautam Mukunda explains:

He discouraged Black students from attending Princeton and segregated the (previously integrated) federal workforce.

Wilson’s racism was perhaps the most obvious feature of his leadership of the Progressive movement, but it was not the only one. Other features of his career and his policies including violating the free speech rights of millions of Americans: During WW1, anyone who opposed Wilson’s actions could be arrested for merely expressing an opinion.

In fact, however, Wilson’s record as President was disastrous, and his failures were the foreseeable products of his own shortcomings, not difficult circumstances or bad luck.

Wilson’s attitudes and actions were an extension of Progressivism and of the Democratic Party. Wilson was supported and elected by a movement and by a party that gave in to its deepest desires.

As a candidate, Wilson was an impressive speaker and writer, giving the impression that he was wise and intelligent, and that he would make thoughtful decisions. The record of his choices, however, proved problematic.

But his flaws stretch beyond bigotry. Understanding how someone like him could become President illuminates a common but all too often devastating mistake made in leader selection — picking someone based on their perceived talent instead of their real record. This creates the potential for a high impact, but often disastrous, leader.

Wilson was shockingly unprepared. He had never been employed in any kind of business. He had no military experience. His one attempt at real, for-profit activity, had been to try to start a law firm. It went bankrupt in less than a year.

Wilson was the least experienced person ever elected President. When he received the nomination his only political experience was 18 months as Governor of New Jersey. He was a darling of Progressives because of his attempted reforms at Princeton. He passed significant reforms as Governor, but so alienated the legislature’s Democrats — his own party — that they worked to elect Republicans in the 1911 legislative election just to harm Wilson.

His racism and his disregard for individual political liberty made Woodrow Wilson a rockstar among the Progressives and in the Democratic Party. A small handful of Democrats understood Wilson’s lack of leadership skills, but the majority of people in his party were unaware of Wilson’s poor management habits.

Wilson’s rhetorical skills and popularity with Progressives nonetheless made him a candidate for the Democratic nomination. Although he was not expected by anyone — including himself — to win, after 45 ballots a series of backroom maneuvers threw him the nomination.

“The bigotry that stained his presidency” was only one of Wilson’s flaws. “Wilson’s Presidency was tumultuous” and included

raids by his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, which interned thousands of people without trials. The most important events, however, were unquestionably America’s entry into the First World War and Wilson’s role in the peace negotiations afterwards. His failed attempt to secure Senate ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and American entry into the League of Nations crippled the League and the post-war settlement, setting the stage for the Second World War.

Woodrow Wilson was not only a bitter racist; he not only disregarded individual political liberty; he also was temperamental and highly defensive about any form of criticism or dissent regarding his own views or actions. Not only did he reject criticism from the Republican Party, but he reacted in extreme ways to even the slightest questioning from within his own Democratic Party or from within his own Progressivist movement. His ego was large and fragile; he was a “prima donna.”

Not Fast Enough: North American Colonies Want Quicker Action Toward Abolition

By the mid 1600’s, the thirteen British colonies in North America had developed their own identity. From 1607, when Jamestown was founded as an English outpost, and saw itself as nothing more, to the 1650s, when Roger Williams was the leader of the abolitionist colony of Rhode Island, the “colonists” became “Americans.” While they saw themselves as part of the British Empire — indeed, the appeals made to London in the early 1770s were appeals made on the basis of British citizenship — they began also to see themselves as Americans.

From the earliest moments of this identity and its formation, Africans and African-Americans were part of it. Not only were people of African descent, but also, and especially, free Africans were integral to the new concept of “American.”

By 1641, at the latest, free Africans were understood as having a status which was different and separate from enslaved people. The contrast of “free” Africans to enslaved Africans contained within itself the seeds of a powerful anti-slavery movement which would emerge within a decade, as historian Paul Heinegg documents:

When they arrived in Virginia, Africans joined a society that was divided between master and white servant, a society with such contempt for white servants that masters were not punished for beating them to death. They joined the same households with white servants — working, eating, sleeping, getting drunk, and running away together. Some of these first African slaves became free. John Geaween (Gowen), “a negro servant,” was free by 1641. Francis Payne of Northampton County paid for his freedom about 1650 by purchasing three white servants for his master’s use. Emanuell Cambow (Cumbo), “Negro,” was granted fifty acres in James City County in 1667. John Harris, “negro,” was free by 1668 when he purchased fifty acres in York County.

The fact that “free” Africans — and even at this early stage, it is reasonable to speak of them as African-Americans — were able to marry, own land, be named as owners of property in legal documents, and even interact in the larger, English-dominated society, fanned the flames of the abolitionist movement.

The abolitionists pointed to the fact that the free Blacks were acknowledged as having the full legal status of persons. Enslaved Blacks, the abolitionists reasoned, were therefore logically also fully persons in an legal or moral sense, and slavery therefore a violation of their status as persons.

As free Africans grew in number, and further established themselves in society, their very existence was fuel to the anti-slavery movement. Paul Heinegg reports:

A number of men and women of African descent living on the Eastern Shore gained their freedom in the seventeenth century. There were at least thirty-three African Americans in Northampton County in the 1670s who were free, later became free, or had free children. They represented one-third of the taxable African Americans in the county. By the mid-seventeenth century, some free African Americans were beginning to be assimilated into colonial Virginia society. Many were the result of mixed-race marriages. Francis Payne was married to a white woman named Amy by September 1656 when he gave her a mare by deed of jointure. Elizabeth Key, a “Mulatto” woman whose father had been free, successfully sued for her freedom in Northumberland County in 1656 and married her white attorney, William Greensted. Francis Skiper was married to Ann, a African American woman, before February 1667/8 when they sold land in Norfolk County. Peter Beckett, a “Negro” slave taxable from 1671 to 1677 in Northampton County, married Sarah Dawson, a white servant. Hester Tate, an English woman servant in Westmoreland County, had several children by her husband James Tate, “a Negro slave to Mr. Patrick Spence,” before 1690.

Among the thirteen colonies, there were regional variations. While Virginia, generally reckoned to be a “southern” colony, was home to free Blacks by, at the latest, 1641, the northern colonies tended to be more energetic in their abolitionist tendencies than some of the southern colonies, as Paul Heinegg notes:

The history of free African Americans families in colonial New York and New Jersey is quite different from Virginia and North Carolina. Most were descended from slaves freed by the Dutch West India Company between 1644 and 1664 or by individual owners.

The abolitionist movement was not patient. It quickly took action. While seeing themselves as British subjects, the colonists perceived British headway toward ending slavery as too slow. In a truly revolutionary step, Roger Williams, a pastor and theologian, led the Rhode Island colony to abolish slavery, as John Barry explains:

Rhode Island demonstrated that the seeds Williams had planted had taken deep root, and that the plantation believed in freedom as a principle. It outlawed slavery — an extraordinary action, likely the first in the world, and a reflection of the beliefs of both Williams and Gorton. On May 23, 1652, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed the following law.

Roger Williams was involved in a variety of spiritual groups: the Anglican Church, the Puritan Separatists known as Pilgrims, and the Baptists. While he was connected to each of these groups, he was not clearly a member of any of them. Rather, he sought to pursue the clearest form of the Christian faith that he could find.

It was his goal of genuine Christianity that caused Roger Williams to steadfastly oppose slavery. Under his influence, the colony of Rhode Island adopted the following law:

Whereas, there is a common course practiced amongst English men to buy “negers,” to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventing of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no black mankind or white be forced to covenant bond or otherwise to serve any man or his assignes longer than ten years, or until they come to be twenty four years of age if they be taken in under fourteen, from the time of their coming within the liberties of this Colony; and at the end or term of ten years to set them free, as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them go free or shall sell him away elsewhere to that end that they may be enslaved to others for a longer time, he or they shall forfeit to the Colony forty pounds.

As historian John Barry notes, “the law was never repealed.” More than two hundred years before the U.S. Civil War, before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and before the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, free Blacks had established themselves as part of North American society, and their presence had energized the abolitionist movement to the point that it outpaced British steps toward ending slavery.

It is a deep historical irony that the North American colonies, and later the United States, had at first moved faster than England toward abolishing slavery. It is ironic because England later achieved this goal ahead of America: England and the British Empire ended slavery decades before the United States did.

In 1815, the Vienna Congress ended slavery in much of territories controlled by Britain and by various European nations. While slavery was not an institution in Britain, and not an institution in Europe, it existed in other parts of the world where Britain and Europe had influence.

So it was that between 1815 and the final actions taken Prime Minister William Wilburforce, slavery was ended in those parts of the world controlled by European or British interests. Wilburforce had led a series of Parliamentary actions against slavery from 1807 to 1834.

Slavery in the United States did not end until the Emanicpation Proclamation of 1863 and the war’s end in 1865.

The end of slavery in the United States motivated other nations to end slavery: Brazil ended slavery in 1888, Cuba in 1886, Madegascar in 1896, Egypt in 1904, China in 1909, Thailand in 1905, Morocco in 1925, and Yemen in 1962.

Redesigning the Military: America at the Turn of the Century

In the late 1800s, the United States had to choose how much money to spend on its navy, and how much on its army. Did the nation need a large army, or a large navy, or both?

Encouraged by the Monroe Doctrine, America had taken on the role, repeatedly, of defending smaller nations in South America and in Central America from the imperialism of powerful Asian and European nations. Likewise, America defended some islands in the Pacific.

It seemed, therefore, that a large navy was the most useful form of military power. So American political leaders focused on paying for large and powerful fleets of battleships to be built. The following paragraph from a history books talks about this time around the turn of the century:

With uncharacteristic restraint, Theodore Roosevelt assessed American military policy at the dawn of a new century: “I believe we intend to build up a good navy, but whether we build up even a respectable little army or not I do not know; and if we fail to do so, it may well be that a few years hence ... we shall have to learn a bitter lesson....” Even though he had more insight into world politics than most of his countrymen, Roosevelt could not have predicted in 1900 that in less than two decades the United States would be embroiled in a world war or even that the nation would enter that war with standing forces beyond the imagination of policymakers in the nineteenth century.

As military technology modernized, the navy went from wooden ships to steel ships, from medium-sized ships to huge battleships, and from sailing ships to ships with powerful engines. The increased sophistication required “standing” military forces.

A “standing” navy or a “standing” army means having a large number of trained soldiers and sailors, and equipment for them, even during years of peace when there is no warfare. The opposite of a “standing” military is to have very few soldiers and sailors, and very little equipment, and then to try to get all of that together quickly when a war begins.

Because of the increasing complexity of military systems, it was not possible to quickly assemble an army and a navy on short notice. The nation needed to keep soldiers, sailors, and their equipment ready at all times.

The vast distances across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans kept America safe from attacks on the east coast and the west coast. Good relationships with Canada and Mexico kept America safe from the north and the south. Although there had been tensions and brief skirmishes with Mexico, there had been no threat of real war with Mexico for nearly a century. The United States felt that it did not need a large army to defend itself. It would rely on a navy for defense.

Officers in the army and navy gained knowledge about their equipment, and about tactical ways to use that equipment. This required the political leaders to trust the military more, because the politicians could not be expected to understand the technical details about the equipment and its use.

The political leader kept control over when and where the military would be used: this is called “civilian control” because a political leader is not allowed to be a member of the military, and the military leaders are not allowed to be elected to government offices. Military leaders were and are not engaged in the political process, and remain neutral in elections and in debates between political parties. Both Democrats and Republicans can trust the military, because it is neutral. Here's another paragraph from a history book:

However inadequate those forces were, they represented a fundamental change in American policy. The shift in policy produced an essential dependence upon a standing battlefleet to protect the United States from foreign invasion and reduced dependence upon coastal defense artillery and fortifications, backed by military forces. It also increased dependence upon the Navy and the regular Army for military tasks beyond the continental United States. At the same time, the political elite gained increased confidence in the skill and political neutrality of the Army and Navy officer corps and became more willing to institutionalize military advice and accept military professionalism as compatible with civilian control. Both groups shared an interest in the reform of the militia as the nation’s reserve force for land operations and the creation of federal reserve forces for both naval and military mobilization in case of a major war. They also urged the accelerated application of new technology to military operations, especially improved ordnance, the internal combustion engine, the airplane, and electronic communications.

From the early history of the United States, going back to the 1770s, reserve forces called “militias” had been maintained by local governments: by cities, counties, and states. As a result of the higher levels of technology, there was a trend toward having the national government supervise and organize reserve forces. This allowed the reserves to be trained and equipped in the same way across the entire nation, so that when needed, soldiers from Massachusetts could work efficiently with soldiers from Wisconsin, and soldiers from Connecticut could work efficiently with soldiers from Minnesota, for example.

As civilian political leaders trusted military officers, and worked with them, both groups saw that planning and developing for new technology would be an important feature of the military in the future. Horses would be replaced by trucks and tanks. Hand-carried notes would be replaced by telephones, telegraphs, and radio. Airplanes would play an important role in modern warfare.

The United States had no major wars between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the beginning of World War One in 1914. The Spanish-American war had been a small operation. Even though there were no big wars during this era, the American military was redesigned into a more modern organization, both in terms of technology, and in terms of its management, planning, and administration.