1916

Boldini - "La Signora de Rosa." (1916)

__________ 

“Four years ago they sneeringly called Woodrow Wilson the school teacher.…Today…the confines of his schoolroom circle the world.” 

Sen. Ollie James

__________

 

January: “I will not be rushed into war,” President Wilson tells his top aide, Joseph P. Tumulty, “no matter if every last Congressman stands up on his hind legs and calls me a coward. … I believe that the sober-minded people of this country will applaud any efforts I may make without the loss of our honour to keep this country out of war.” (10/24 II)

 

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March 15: Pancho Villa’s men cross the U.S. border, and thirty-five Americans are killed. 

After negotiating a diplomatic agreement with President Venustiano Carranza, President Wilson sends soldiers into Mexico. There were inevitable clashes with Carranza’s troops, and danger of a full-scale war. (10/46 II)

 

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June: The National Defense Act becomes law. Moderate progressives and pacifists feel it provides reasonable protection for the nation, but the act falls far short of what ambitions military men wanted. There were mass meetings and parades under the slogan “America First,” and those who dissented were stigmatized as “subversives” and became objects of derision. (10/49 II)

 

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June 14-16: The Democratic nominating convention is held in St. Louis, and Wilson is chosen for a second term. 

Wilson reiterates his stand, calling for creation of a new world association to keep the peace, before the 1916 convention: 

The time has come when it is the duty of the United States to join with the other nations of the world in any feasible association that will effectively serve those principles, to maintain inviolate the complete security of the highway of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all nations, and to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and frank submission of the provocation and causes to the opinion of mankind. (10/53 II)

 

Sen. Ollie James told the conventioneers: “Four years ago they sneeringly called Woodrow Wilson the school teacher. …Today … the confines of his schoolroom circle the world. His subject is the protection of American life and American rights under international law, the saving of neutral life, the freedom of the seas.” 

The Resolutions Committee included this language, touting Wilson’s success: “the splendid diplomatic victories of our great President, who has preserved the vital interests of our Government and its citizens, and kept us out of war…” Those last five words became the story, the slogan. Wilson worried that his party would forget their duty to prepare the people for a possible war.  (10/54 II )

 

Wikipedia makes note of a protest organized by women’s suffrage activists in Missouri, and staged outside the hall where delegates were meeting.

 

Suffragists Emily Newell Blair and Edna Gellhorn came up with the idea and organized a “walkless, talkless parade,” also called the “Golden Lane.” Around 3,000 suffragists lined twelve blocks of Locust Street in St. Louis, wearing white dresses, “votes for women” sashes and holding yellow umbrellas. Democratic delegates had to walk past the suffragists to reach the convention hall. The demonstration was meant to represent how women were silenced by not being allowed to vote and received national attention in the press. The Democratic delegates did decide to support women's suffrage on a state by state basis.

 

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June 18: Villa is still at large. Carranza accuses Washington of bad faith, keeping Gen. John J. Pershing’s forces in Mexico. 

The War College is drawing up plans for full-scale invasion. Wilson takes advantage of the National Defense act to call out 100,000 National Guardsmen to protect the Mexican border.

 

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June 20: Relations with Mexico continue to deteriorate. Colonel House warns the president that war is “inevitable.” Lansing gives notice to the Mexican government that United States troops will not be withdrawn, and warns that Mexican attacks would “lead to the gravest consequences.” 

Just hours after this warning reached Mexico City, a skirmish near Carrizal resulted in the killing of twelve U.S. soldiers and the capture of twenty-three more by Mexican troops.

 

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September 3: A rail strike is avoided when Wilson convinces Congress to pass the Adamson Act, which decrees an eight-hour day.

 

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October 7: Georgia Tech takes on Cumberland College in football. The score: Georgia Teach 63, Cumberland College 0.

 

At the end of the first quarter!

 

Georgia Tech scores 63 more points before half, 54 in the third quarter, and 41 in the fourth, and holds their opponent scoreless.

 

Final: 222-0.

 

The Tech coach was John Heisman (the man for whom the trophy is named) and Cumberland was stuck playing a game they wanted to cancel. The school had disbanded its team that spring, but Tech had a contract to play, and it would have cost Cumberland to refuse. So a team was organized from scratch.

 

The game was a farce. Tech averaged 17.3 yards per offensive play, running only 29 plays, all on the ground, and gaining 501 yards. Cumberland had zero first downs, ended up with -28 yards offense, lost nine fumbles, and had six passes intercepted.

 

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“To rescue humanity from the scourge of international conflict.” 

We forget that political battles have almost always turned ugly. During the 1916 campaign, Walworth notes,

 

It was gossiped that a pregnant young lady had demanded to see the President at the executive offices and had walked out with a check in her hand; actually, kindly Woodrow Wilson had been generous to a relative who was about to bear a child and lack security.- (10/60 II)

 

Wilson believed he might lose, and devised a plan – to resign immediately, if he lost. 

If Vice President Thomas R. Marshall and Secretary Robert Lansing would agree, Lansing would invite Hughes to become the new Secretary of State. Then Lansing would resign, followed by Marshall, and Charles Evans Hughes, the victorious Republican candidate could take charge at once. 

As Walworth explains, Wilson was clear about his responsibilities. “His essential duty, as he saw it, was to maintain faith with the people who rejoiced because he had kept them out of war and at the same time to rescue humanity from the scourge of international conflict.” (10/70 II) 

It was, surely, a noble ideal.

 

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December 18: President Wilson releases his paper to the State Department, calling on the nations of the world to create a “league of nations” and work for peace. Walworth notes:

 

The manifesto that the President had finally arrived at, after many more changes than he was accustomed to make in his papers of state, stands as a landmark in the diplomacy of this century. The Colonel immediately recognized its immortality. “There are some sentences in it,” House wrote in his diary, “that will live as long as human history.” The message proclaimed:

 

Each side desires to make the rights and privileges of weak peoples and small States as secure against aggression or denial in the future has the rights and privileges of the great and powerful States now at war. Each wishes itself to be made secure in the future, along with all other nations and peoples, against the recurrence of wars like this and against aggression or selfish interference of any kind. … each is ready to consider the formation of a league of nations to ensure peace and justice throughout the world. (10/74-75 II)

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Guy Empey’s great book about trench warfare, Over the Top is published and sells 250,000 copies.

 

Empey is an American who couldn’t wait for the U.S. to join the war and, so, enlisted in the British Army.

 

(See also: 1918, for notes from his second book, First Call, written to encourage other Americans to sign up and fight and full of “tips” on how to survive life under fire.)

Empey mapped out the battlefield below:

 

(See also: 1918, for notes from his second book, First Call, written to encourage other Americans to sign up and fight and full of “tips” on how to survive life under fire.)

 

**I did create a reading for my classes, based on Empey’s first book, which my students found interesting. For sale on TpT, if you ever get far enough in the curriculum to address World War I.