Can Anyone Direct Me To An Objective Book on Woodrow Wilson?

Okay here are the scenarios A. America withholds supplies from Russia and stays out of the war Outcome: Axis Victory B: America supplies Russia but manages to stay out of the war Outcome: All of Continental Europe occupied by Soviets following German defeat at the battle of Kursk shortly followed by Soviet occupation of China. Soviet manpower is largely spent so America is spared any non covert Soviet aggression for a generation. C. Is what actually happened.

28. Woodrow Wilson; 1913-1921; Democratic, New Jersey; won 2 elections.

Although still ranking high in the estimation of most American historians, Wilson was a fool, a bigot, and a failure. The first Southerner (and only the second Democrat) elected President since the Civil War, Wilson immediately set out, purging black postmasters, to bring Southern Segregationism into the Federal government. He ushered in an Era in which the Confederacy was romanticized, rather than despised, by many Northern whites. The term "Great Rebellion," which is what Northerners used to call the Civil War, was no longer heard; and Wilson himself is supposed to have provided the name for D.W. Griffith's ode to the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation (1915) -- which may have inspired the actual revival of the Klan in the same year, by Colonel William Simmons of Atlanta -- in 1920, with advice from an Atlanta advertising agency, the new Klan spread rapidly to North and South. If this was not bad enough, Wilson was also a "Progressive," which meant he favored a powerful, centralized government, run by "experts." What this meant when "he got us into war" in World War I, was the Federal seizure of large parts of the economy, including the railroads, and a virtual total suspension of civil rights, so that people were imprisoned for any public dissent over the war. This might even have been, in a perverse sense, excusable, if Wilson had known what he was doing in the war itself; but he didn't. His naiveté and utopianism in dealing with the aftermath of World War I make Thomas Jefferson's foreign policy look positively Machiavellian. The result was repudiation at home and the seeds of the Third Reich abroad. Nevertheless, Wilson was a Ph.D. and the former President of Princeton University. To historians, he is one of their own; and so all his wickedness, racism, tyranny, and folly is happily overlooked, even when it is, by the way, mentioned.

Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points; why, God Almighty has only ten. -- Georges Clemenceau

Wilson, when he got home from Versailles, was higher in the world than any other American had ever got. Multitudes of his lieges regarded him as the wisest man since Solomon, and there were plenty who suspected that he was actually divine. More than once, in fact, in 1919, I heard bold whispers that the Second Coming, after long delays, was at last upon us. If he had incarcerated himself in the White House, and confined himself to issuing vague bulls in the voluptuous camp-meeting rhetoric of which he was a master, he would have died to the accompaniment of well-authenticated natural portents, and miracles would be worked at his tomb today. But he insisted fatuously upon exposing himself to the plain people, and the result was catastrophe.... When they turned out by the thousands to feast their eyes upon a genius, a superman, an archangel, what they saw was simply a Presbyterian pedagogue in a long-tailed coat, giving his old show for sophomores. It was a bitter disillusion and it cost Wilson a pair of wings -- H.L. Mencken, American Mercury, October 1931

From this site on Presidents.

Great article.

Don't overlook Kissinger's Diplomacy which begins with contrasting the foreign policy of Wilson and T Roosevelt

Hmmm I have that book at home( not on me at college now).

I don't have a breakdown of deaths or casualties by year. It was either the 100,000 killed in the first half-year of war or something like 1,000,000 total casualties in the first year that boggled the mind. I think there were well over 630,000 total casualties (killed, wounded, prisoners, missing) in 1915 on the Eastern front alone, though. Casualties were high enough to feed the desire for victory and revenge. Only victory, it was felt, would justify such sacrifices. If you want to argue that losses weren't unprecedentedly high, then that was all the more reason to fight on.

The example of 1871 wasn't exactly one to make rulers wish for a negotiated settlement. Impose the kind of indemnity Bismarck did on France for a short relatively painless war and what amount of money would be demanded in compensation for a war as bloody as the 1914 war? Plus the French of 1871 really didn't have a choice. Their lines and will were broken. The experience of the Franco-Prussian War and the loss of two provinces stiffened France's will to fight on.

An acceptable peace for the Germans would have meant holding on to the territory they'd won. And an acceptable peace for the allies would have meant the German's leaving France and Belgium. There doesn't seem to have been much room for compromise.

More on the Papal peace plan here and here. It doesn't seem to have had very much in the way of specifics or very much of a chance. Admittedly, had the US not entered the war it would have been more likely it would have been adopted, though I suspect both sides would have fought on until one cracked. Pope Boniface seems to have been more right about the war and its causes than Wilson, who had already blamed Germany alone and was determined to crush her. But it can't be determined if Boniface's plan would have brought the stability that Europe needed and prevented a new war.

BTW, some have seen the Papal note as an influence on Wilson's 14 Points. For all Wilson's moralism and self-righteousness there was a deviousness in him that could play both sides of the fence when he needed to.

Unconditional surrender became a fact in WWI because once the Germans had thrown down their arms the allied blockade could force them to accept any terms offered. I don't know if it was the expressed allied policy all along. I suspect they fudged things, working to crush Germany but always holding out the carrot of a lenient peace if only the Germans would give up. The explicit "unconditional surrender" policy of the allies in WWII was both a continuation and a new departure. A continuation of what the allies wanted to do in WWI, but a refusal to make the kind of promises that they did then, in order to avoid charges of deceit, and to remake Germany in their own image.

I'm not sure that we disagree in the essentials, though we may have a different understanding of some the details. I'll readily concede that my knowledge of the diplomatic manuevering in WWI is deficient and that you may well be right on all points.

However(he said), I do think you tend to overplay the importance of popular sentiment in the continuation of the War, at least on the part of the Central Powers. The rise of Nationalism and Self-Determination did mean that diplomacy (and diplomats) had to emerge periodically from the smokey parlors in order to placate the masses. It complicated matters tremendously, but it also provided the savvier dipomats with new tools. By 1917, we had not yet reached the point where diplomacy had been fully "democratized."

My point--and I intend it to be a modest one--is merely that a peace was possible and that Wilson's actions rendered it impossible. The pragmatic tradition among the European powers was still operative in 1916-17, however emfeebled. The War that no one expected to last more than a year had by then claimed some 1.7 million lives (and countless more casualties). A settlement allowing Germany to retain its captured territories from 1871 could have been imposed upon the French with British and American pressure. The fact that Boniface's plan was endorsed by the Austrians--despite the desperate situation of the Habsburgs was evidence that pragmatism and good sense could still be summoned even in the face of the slaughter.

"Oh? Rebels shelled a United States military installation and forced its surrender. That's PR? If Saudi terrorists did that today, you'd be calling for their swift execution. But somehow its ok, because the perps were American citizens? Am I missing something?"

1. The initial conversion of Federal troops from something that performs the will of the states into one that performs on behalf of an arbitrarily sovereign federal government was a creation of Lincoln. He broke the constitutional contract, not the rebels. Don't you think at least one confederate leader would have been tried for treason after th war if that were the case?
2. as DiLorenzo notes, "the Confederate States...would no more tolerate a Federal Fort within their borders than the Colonials would have tolerated a British fort in Boston or New York Harbor". Fort Sumter was on rebel soil.
3. A Saudi attack would be one by foreign nationals against American soil without us having broken any shared Constitutional agreement with them or having materially provoked them into combat, and therefore rather different.

"The Constitution can only be disolved by the universal agreement of all the states"

Tell me where it is that the Confederates requested the dissolution of the Constitution. Tell me where it says in the Constitution that a state cannot secede, or where that is even implied.
The expressed opinions of nearly all of the FOunding Fathers short possibly of Alexander Hamilton (the original Federalist, who still believed that "to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised") was the threat of secession was the ultimate check on Federal abuses of power, which the tariffs most obviously represented.
New England as a whole contemplated secession after the Louisiana purchase, and at no point was it ever mentioned that that was not within their rights. Aaron Burr's discrediting after he killed Hamilton in a duel was a crucial blow against the secessionists, not any illegality of their position.
Massachussets practically seceded from the nation during the war of 1812 by refusing to send troops and actually planned for an alternate constitution in the event of BRitish victory.

"Yes, in time of National Emergency"

No doubt all those Newspapermen criticizing his handling of the war and/or the government were trying to kill him. And the ten Maryland legislative assembly folks who had just been elected and were merely "feared" to be pro-south (no doubt at least partly true given the overwhelming unpopularity of the war). Or the preacher who neglected to insert a blessing for Lincoln in his sermon as was required by congressional decree. Or the man shot in new orleans after it was conquered for taking down a US Flag.

"Why not?"
Because if you think the civil war is anything like a slave revolt seeking to overthrow the current order and replace it with black rule, then you have a very different picture of reality.

"That's typical Southern propagandistic b.s. Southerners weren't talking up the "gradual" elimination of slavery in 1860, they were opposing efforts to limit its expansion to new territories. Many were even calling for the conquering of Mexico and the extension of slavery to it. Meanwhile, you would have consigned millions to slavery for years, if not decades. Nice."

Utterly nonsensical. Gradual elimination was never proposed not because the South felt one way or another about it; it was because no one actually gave a damn about slavery, northern, western or otherwise. Abolitionists were a minority, and an unpopular one at that, especially the few that dared claim equality between the races.
Most of those people portrayed as "anti slavery" in our whitewashed history based on their opposition to the expansion of slavery into the west were like Lincoln: they simply did not want black people in america in any form.
Lincoln and others' support of the Fugitive Slave law in the 1850's did far more to prolong slavery than the civil war did to end it, unless you seriously want to claim that Reconstruction where the whole of the South was treated as a Slave.

"You made us attack you ! You made me do that! You made us attack you! (Want a little cheese with your whine?)"
Please expand upon the argument contained in this. I can't really figure it out. Are you going to follow it up with "I'm rubber, you're glue..."?

Much as FDR was involved in formulating war policy prior to America's formal entry into WWII, Wilson was conniving with the French and British well before he sent troops to Europe.

But even with his allied sympathies, as the leader of a neutral nation, Wilson was hardly in a position to derail a peace settlement. Of course, I don't remember ever having heard anything about this, so there may be more to your argument than meets the eye.

By means of disclosure, I think the Peace of Versailles was wrong for not being harsh enough. Had the Allies kept up their fall offensive and refused anything but unconditional surrender, I think the German civilians would have gained a firm appreciation of the fact that they were licked fair and square. That realization would have made them far less likely to want to repeat their defeat.

The initial conversion of Federal troops from something that performs the will of the states into one that performs on behalf of an arbitrarily sovereign federal government was a creation of Lincoln.

The central government (first the Continental Congress, later the President) always held ultimate control over the regular Army. This practice dates from the Revolutionary War, well before the ratification of the Constitution. Are you making this up as you go along?

"the Confederate States...would no more tolerate a Federal Fort within their borders than the Colonials would have tolerated a British fort in Boston or New York Harbor".

The parallel is flawed, because Southerners were well represented in both Congress and in the Federal Army. Americans, not Yankees or Northerners, were stationed at Sumter. A better analogy might be "The Confederate States...would no more tolerate a Federal Fort within their borders than the English would have tolerated an English fort in Manchester or Leicester. The attack was unwarranted, unprovoked and baseless.

A Saudi attack would be one by foreign nationals against American soil without us having broken any shared Constitutional agreement with them or having materially provoked them into combat, and therefore rather different

So its better to be stabbed in the back by your own countrymen than it is to wage a conventional war?

Tell me where it is that the Confederates requested the dissolution of the Constitution. Tell me where it says in the Constitution that a state cannot secede, or where that is even implied.

Tell me where it says in the Constitution that a State can secede. The Constitution is a legal contract, just like any other. According to ancient practices of Common Law, unless clearly articulated stipulations exist to the contrary, a contract cannot be abridged without the consent of all parties. Clearly, that was not the case. The rebels wanted to abridge the Constitution by unilateraly ending their contractual arrangement with the Union. That was illegal.

No doubt all those Newspapermen criticizing his handling of the war and/or the government were trying to kill him.

Maryland was in a state of de facto rebellion. That rebellion had to be crushed were the Republic to endure. Yes, Lincoln employed unsavory methods, but there was no alternative. Between the temporary supsension of some liberties and the permanent erosion of all liberties, the former is preferable.

Or the man shot in new orleans after it was conquered for taking down a US Flag.

If you really want to get into details of the conduct of forces during the rebellion, I might be forced to refer you to a Colonel Henry Wirtz.

Because if you think the civil war is anything like a slave revolt seeking to overthrow the current order and replace it with black rule, then you have a very different picture of reality.

Replacing white rule with black rule was not the issue. Next to preserving the Union, ending slavery was the biggest issue in the North.

Gradual elimination was never proposed not because the South felt one way or another about it; it was because no one actually gave a damn about slavery, northern, western or otherwise. Abolitionists were a minority, and an unpopular one at that, especially the few that dared claim equality between the races.

You're either ill-informed or dishonest. A clear majority of Americans opposed slavery. Not all of them did so, granted, out of notions of equality (as true Abolitionists did), and most were Free-Soilish in their attitudes. You think its a freak accident that the 1860 Republican Party Platform lists the ending of slavery as its second biggest objective (after preserving the Union)? Do you think its bizarre that most Northern Democrats were opposed to slavery, with the only debate being over the method of its destruction? What a bizarre debate for a nation supposedly indifferent to the peculiar institution. In 1860, slavery was first, second and third on the national stage. Southern states seceded immediatly after the election not because they were worried that he might trample on "States' Rights" or that he would raise protectionist tariffs, but that he would free the slaves. Clearly, that fear must have come from somewhere.

And in answer to your other point, true Abolitionists may have constituted a minority of the population, but they were a large, vocal and powerful minority.

Lincoln and others' support of the Fugitive Slave law in the 1850's did far more to prolong slavery than the civil war did to end it,

Huh? Maybe you could explain your reasoning. Out of curiosity, I'd be interested in learning how many times you think the Fugitive Slave Act was applied.

unless you seriously want to claim that Reconstruction where the whole of the South was treated as a Slave.

A major rebellion had just been supressed. Of course the South was occupied. Southerners should feel grateful that the rebels weren't summarily executed upon capture, as had been customary throughout most of European history. Instead they were magnanimously allowed to return home to their land.

Please expand upon the argument contained in this. I can't really figure it out. Are you going to follow it up with "I'm rubber, you're glue..."?

It seems that your argument is limited solely to blaming the Federal Government for the actions of Southerners. That's dishonest and cowardly. The South needs to accept responsibility for its actions.

After the revolution there still were British forts in our territory for a little while( no I don't have a link my diplomatic history prof told me this and it doesn't sound like a lie).

Your partially correct about Versailles it was harsh enough to cause resentment( not a magnaimous peace) but if it was a lot harsher( not that I support that I would have supported a magnamimous peace) then the Germans could never have rearmed.

A peace of equals would have preserved the status quo that had already led to the bloodiest war in history. An even worse war could have manifested itself in twenty, thirty or fifty years, as wars have throughout European history. Versailles was a (flawed) attempt to solve that problem. It just didn't go far enough.

After the revolution there still were British forts in our territory for a little while( no I don't have a link my diplomatic history prof told me this and it doesn't sound like a lie).

Its not a lie. Forts Detroit and Mackinac were occupied until 1796, IIRC. I don't recall any other British forts in American territory, unless you count the whole 54'40" or fight business during the Polk administration.

But even with his allied sympathies, as the leader of a neutral nation, Wilson was hardly in a position to derail a peace settlement...

Wilson was intimately involved in the Allied war council. He made it clear that the coming American entry into the war would allow the Allies to achieve the total, unconditional victory they wanted. He vetoed the Papal peace initiative and made his veto palatable to the French and British with promises of overwhelming American assistance.

I wish I could take credit for this argument, as you put it, but it's fairly uncontroversial and unoriginal. For verification, you could consult any number of WWI histories, but I'd recommend either Erich von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Leftism or (if you're inclined to discount the opinions of an Austrian count) AJP Taylor's masterpiece The Struggle for Mastery in Europe.

By means of disclosure, I think the Peace of Versailles was wrong for not being harsh enough

Well, well, well. I'd call you "Attila the Hun" but it seems to miss the mark somehow. ;-)

Actually, I'm ashamed to admit that I've read The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, yet have forgotten much of it. I read his Origins of the Second World War shortly afterwards, and it made me so angry I excised his earlier work from my memory. I'll have to dig it out of the bowels of my library this evening for a refresher...

I loved Struggle for Mastery, even though Taylor tends to favor the British position in the conflicts. I'm an anglophile by temperament and blood, but British conduct in the 19th century was, on the whole, indefensible.

You really would get a kick out of von K-L, too. His books are becoming hard to find, though.

Well, well, well. I'd call you "Attila the Hun" but it seems to miss the mark somehow.

Actually, I do hold a certain fondness for Châlons...

1. There is no similarity between the way the constitutional convention ran the army and the way that dictator Lincoln ran the army.

2. I don't think you're analogy is better. I think your conception of America is that of the modern monolithic 1 state created after Lincoln, NOT the actual Union of States that it was once. If you think that is how it should be, that is your opinion. If you think that is what the original states signed on to be a part of, you are mistaken.

3.Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural address, 1801: "If there be any among us who would wish to DISSOLVE THIS UNION or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which the error of opinion may be tolerated where reason [not guns, ships, troops] is left free to combat it." TJ, 15 years later, discussing the attempted secession of NE Federalists "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation...to a continuance in union...I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate'."

Abraham Lincoln, Jan 12, 1848: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This a most valuable, a most sacred right ... Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole portion of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much the territory as they inhabit."

Declaration of Independence: "To secure these rights [life liberty etc] Governments are instituted among Men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED....Whenever any form of Government becomes ddestructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government."

JQ Adams: "The indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right but in the heart. If the day should come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these states shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interests shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; TO PART IN FRIENDSHIP FROM EACH OTHER, THAN TO BE HELD TOGETHER BY CONSTRAINT.

HAmilton, Federalist PApaers, 81: It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of any individual without its consent. This is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every STATE of the Union....The contracts between a nation and individuals are only binding on the conscience OF THE SOVEREIGN, AND HAVE NO PRETENSIONS TO COMPULSIVE FORCE. THEY CONFER NO RIGHT OF ACTION, independent of the sovereign will. To...authorize suits against States for the debts they owe...could not be done without waging war against the contracting State..., a power whoich would involve sucha consequence, would be altogether FORCED AND UNWARRANTED."===this from the first of the "consolidationists".

If you think your rendition of common law or whatever the heck that is you stated, and your interpretation of the constitution superior to that of the Founders, then far be it for me to visit your planet with their words.

As DiLorenzo notes, the notion of a "perpetual union" is a fiction created by Webster and Lincoln and forced on the states in the civil war. Virginia, he continues, had in its state constitution "the powers granted under the constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression". If that had been in any way in conflict with the Constitution of the US, it would not have been there.

The error of the founders lies in not in making secession an explicit right and assuming that later generations would not ignore the fact that the constitution gives all powers not specifically delineated to Congress and the President and the Courts to the States and the People. One can forgive them their naivete in believing that a nation founded on an act of secession would never be so foolhardy as to pretend its own people were now subjects.

" The Constitution is a legal contract, just like any other. According to ancient practices of Common Law, unless clearly articulated stipulations exist to the contrary, a contract cannot be abridged without the consent of all parties. Clearly, that was not the case. The rebels wanted to abridge the Constitution by unilateraly ending their contractual arrangement with the Union. That was illegal."

That is completely false. If that were the case, you would be unable to quit your job unless your employer fired you as well. Nowhere did the concept of perpetuity enter the Union until Lincoln made it law with war. What is in common law is to include listing of penalties for breach of contract, for secession there are none in either the Declaration or the Constitution. That is because it was the ultimate check on tyranny.

"Yes, Lincoln employed unsavory methods, but there was no alternative. Between the temporary supsension of some liberties and the permanent erosion of all liberties, the former is preferable."

What erosion of liberties was taking place except that being done by the Lincoln administration? Slavery was not a product of erosion, it was there before.

"If you really want to get into details of the conduct of forces during the rebellion, I might be forced to refer you to a Colonel Henry Wirtz."

That is fairly specious, considering that the Union tactics consisted basically of waging a scorched earth war against civilians as much as they did against soldiers.

"Replacing white rule with black rule was not the issue. Next to preserving the Union, ending slavery was the biggest issue in the North."

Give me a Senatorial or Congressional debate addressing the ending of slavery. Or a Presidential address prior to the emancipation proclamation. You just stated the catechism perfectly, unfortunately I do not think the facts support it.

"You're either ill-informed or dishonest....but they were a large, vocal and powerful minority."

Thanks for giving me a clear incentive not to care any further about your arguments. As much as I enjoy ad hominem attacks, I would like to see some citations for what you are saying before you start calling me a liar. I am glad in your mind that the Republican party was running on ending slavery, because the rest of us live in a world where Lincoln said explicitly he would not seek to destroy slavery in his inaugural speech.

"Of course the South was occupied. Southerners should feel grateful that the rebels weren't summarily executed upon capture, as had been customary throughout most of European history. Instead they were magnanimously allowed to return home to their land."

Ah yes....how very generous of them. no doubt that was a result of their endless kindness...or perhaps of the fact that you cannot execute them as traitors if they were not traitors. There were limits to how far Lincoln thought he could go.

"That's dishonest and cowardly"

Again, thanks. I will consider the source of the words and take it as a compliment.

Honestly, if you really want to understand it, page through DiLorenzo's book. I dare you. It might challenge a few thoughts, and it will save me from having to restate it page by page.

I concur on Versailles. If you are going to punish a loser, you had better be willing to occupy them at the very least.