The History Book Club discussion

Indeed, Ann, many industries were owned by foreign companies in the area. It did great create great resentment and entrenched foreign interests.

James Slayden:



a Representative from Texas; born in Mayfield, Graves County, Ky., June 1, 1853; upon the death of his father in 1869 moved with his mother to New Orleans, La.; attended the common schools and Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.; moved to San Antonio, Tex., in 1876; became a cotton merchant and ranchman; member of the State house of representatives in 1892; declined to be a candidate for renomination; engaged in agricultural pursuits and mining; appointed by Andrew Carnegie as one of the original trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in October 1910; president of the American Peace Society for several years; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-fifth and to the ten succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1897-March 3, 1919); declined renomination in 1918; managed an orchard in Virginia, a ranch in Texas, and mines in Mexico; died in San Antonio, Tex., February 24, 1924; interment in Mission Park Cemetery.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)

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United States occupation of the Dominican Republic:



The assassination of Cáceres turned out to be but the first act of a frenzied drama that culminated in the republic's occupation by the United States. The fiscal stability that had resulted from the 1905 receivership eroded under Cáceres's successor, Eladio Victoria y Victoria; most of the increased outlays went to support military campaigns against rebellious partisans, mainly in the Cibao. The continued violence and instability prompted the administration of President William H. Taft to dispatch a commission to Santo Domingo on September 24, 1912, to mediate among the warring factions. The presence of a 750-member force of United States Marines apparently convinced the Dominicans of the seriousness of Washington's threats to intervene directly in the conflict; Victoria agreed to step down in favor of a neutral figure, Roman Catholic archbishop Adolfo Alejandro Nouel Bobadilla. The archbishop assumed office as provisional president on November 30.

Nouel proved unequal to the burden of national leadership. Unable to mediate successfully between the ambitions of rival horacistas and jimenistas, he stepped down on March 31, 1913. His successor, José Bordas Valdés, was equally unable to restrain the renewed outbreak of hostilities. Once again, Washington took a direct hand and mediated a resolution. The rebellious horacistas agreed to a cease-fire based on a pledge of United States oversight of elections for members of local ayuntamientos and a constituent assembly that would draft the procedures for presidential balloting. The process, however, was flagrantly manipulated and resulted in Bordas's reelection on June 15, 1914. Both horacistas and jimenistas took offense at this blatant maneuver and rose up against Bordas.

The United States government, this time under President Woodrow Wilson, again intervened. Where Taft had cajoled the combatants with a clear intimation of military action, Wilson delivered an ultimatum: elect a president or the United States will impose one. The Dominicans accordingly selected Ramón Báez Machado as provisional president on August 27, 1914. Comparatively fair presidential elections held on October 25 returned Jiménez to the presidency. Despite his victory, however, Jiménez felt impelled to appoint leaders and prominent members of the various political factions to positions in his government in an effort to broaden its support. The internecine conflicts that resulted had quite the opposite effect, weakening the government and the president and emboldening Secretary of War Desiderio Arias to take control of both the armed forces and the Congress, which he compelled to impeach Jiménez for violation of the constitution and the laws. Although the United States ambassador offered military support to his government, Jiménez opted to step down on May 7, 1916.

Arias never formally assumed the presidency. The United States government had apparently tired of its recurring role as mediator and had decided to take more direct action. United States forces had already occupied Haiti by this time. The initial military administrator of Haiti, Rear Admiral William Caperton, had actually forced Arias to retreat from Santo Domingo by threatening the city with naval bombardment on May 13. The first Marines landed three days later. Although they established effective control of the country within two months, the United States forces did not proclaim a military government until November. Most Dominican laws and institutions remained intact under military rule, although the shortage of Dominicans willing to serve in the cabinet forced the military governor, Rear Admiral Harry S. Knapp, to fill a number of portfolios with United States naval officers. The press and radio were censored for most of the occupation, and public speech was limited.

The surface effects of the occupation were largely positive. The Marines restored order throughout most of the republic (with the exception of the eastern region); the country's budget was balanced, its debt was diminished, and economic growth resumed; infrastructure projects produced new roads that linked all the country's regions for the first time in its history; a professional military organization, the Dominican Constabulary Guard, replaced the partisan forces that had waged a seemingly endless struggle for power. Most Dominicans, however, greatly resented the loss of their sovereignty to foreigners, few of whom spoke Spanish or displayed much real concern for the welfare of the republic.

The most intense opposition to the occupation arose in the eastern provinces of El Seibo and San Pedro de Macorís. From 1917 to 1921, the United States forces battled a guerrilla movement in that area known as the gavilleros. The guerrillas enjoyed considerable support among the population, and they benefited from a superior knowledge of the terrain. The movement survived the capture and the execution of its leader, Vicente Evangelista, and some initially fierce encounters with the Marines. However, the gavilleros eventually yielded to the occupying forces' superior firepower, air power (a squadron of six Curtis Jennies), and determined (often brutal) counterinsurgent methods.

After World War I, public opinion in the United States began to run against the occupation. Warren G. Harding, who succeeded Wilson in March 1921, had campaigned against the occupations of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In June 1921, United States representatives presented a withdrawal proposal, known as the Harding Plan, which called for Dominican ratification of all acts of the military government, approval of a loan of US$2.5 million for public works and other expenses, the acceptance of United States officers for the constabulary--now known as the National Guard (Guardia Nacional)--and the holding of elections under United States supervision. Popular reaction to the plan was overwhelmingly negative. Moderate Dominican leaders, however, used the plan as the basis for further negotiations that resulted in an agreement allowing for the selection of a provisional president to rule until elections could be organized. Under the supervision of High Commissioner Sumner Welles, Juan Bautista Vicini Burgos assumed the provisional presidency on October 21, 1922. In the presidential election of March 15, 1924, Horacio Vásquez Lajara handily defeated Francisco J. Peynado. Vásquez's Alliance Party (Partido Alianza) also won a comfortable majority in both houses of Congress. With his inauguration on July 13, control of the republic returned to Dominican hands.
(Source: http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/day/...)

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United States occupation of Haiti (1915):

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Increased instability in Haiti in the years before 1915 led to heightened action by the United States to deter foreign influence. Between 1911 and 1915, seven presidents were assassinated or overthrown in Haiti, increasing U.S. policymakers’ fear of foreign intervention. In 1914, the Wilson Administration sent marines into Haiti who removed $500,000 from the Haitian National Bank in December of 1914 for safe-keeping in New York, thus giving the U.S. control of the bank. In 1915, Haitian president Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated and the situation in Haiti quickly became unstable. In response, President Wilson sent the U.S. Marines to Haiti, claiming the invasion was an attempt to prevent anarchy. In reality the Wilson administration was protecting U.S. assets in the area and preventing a possible German invasion.

The invasion ended with the Haitian-American Treaty of 1915. The articles of this agreement created a Haitian gendarmerie, essentially a military force made up of Americans and Haitians and controlled by the U.S. marines. The United States gained complete control over Haitian finances, and the right to intervene in Haiti whenever the U.S. Government deemed necessary. The U.S. Government also forced the election of a new pro-American President, Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave, by the Haitian legislature in August of 1915. The selection of a President that did not represent the choice of the Haitian populace increased unrest in Haiti.

Following the successful manipulation of the 1915 elections, the Wilson Administration attempted to strong-arm the Haitian legislature into adopting a new constitution in 1917. This constitution allowed foreign land ownership, which had been outlawed since the Haitian Revolution as a way to prevent foreign control of the country. The legislature was extremely reluctant to change the long-standing law and rejected the new constitution. Law-makers began drafting a new anti-American constitution, but the United States forced President Dartiguenave dissolve the legislature, which did not meet again until 1929.
(Source: http://history.state.gov/milestones/1...)

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Mary A. Renda
Hans Schmidt

Jones Act (Philippines):

was an Organic Act passed by the United States Congress. The law replaced the Philippine Organic Act of 1902 and acted like a constitution of the Philippines from its enactment until 1934 when the Tydings–McDuffie Act was passed (which in turn led eventually to the Commonwealth of the Philippines and to independence from the United States). The Jones Law created the first fully elected Philippine legislature.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_La...)

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Paul A. Kramer

Bright's Disease:

is a historical classification of kidney diseases that would be described in modern medicine as acute or chronic nephritis. The term is no longer used, as diseases are now classified according to their more fully understood causes.

It is typically denoted by the presence of serum albumin (blood plasma protein) in the urine, and frequently accompanied by edema and hypertension.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright%2...)

Herbert Hoover:



Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874. For the first nine years of his life, he lived in the small town of West Branch, Iowa, the place of his birth. His Quaker father, Jessie Clark Hoover, a blacksmith and farm equipment salesman, suffered a heart attack and died when Herbert was six years old. Three years later, the boy's mother, Huldah Minthorn Hoover, developed pneumonia and also passed away, orphaning Herbert, his older brother Theodore, and little sister Mary. Passed around among relatives for a few years, Hoover ended up with his uncle, Dr. John Minthorn, who lived in Oregon.

The young Hoover was shy, sensitive, introverted, and somewhat suspicious, characteristics that developed, at least in part, in reaction to the loss of his parents at such a young age. He attended Friends Pacific Academy in Newberg, Oregon, earning average to failing grades in all subjects except math. Determined, nevertheless, to go to the newly established Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Hoover studied hard and barely passed the university's entrance exam. He went on to major in geology and participated in a host of extracurricular activities, serving as class treasurer of the junior and senior student bodies and managing the school baseball and football teams. To pay his tuition, Hoover worked as a clerk in the registration office and showed considerable entrepreneurial skill by starting a student laundry service.

Career and Monetary Success

During the summers, Hoover worked as a student assistant on geological survey teams in Arkansas, California, and Nevada. After his graduation in 1895, he looked hard to find work as a surveyor but ended up laboring seventy hours a week at a gold mine near Nevada City, California, pushing ore carts. Luck came his way with an office job in San Francisco, putting him in touch with a firm in need of an engineer to inspect and evaluate mines for potential purchase. Hoover then moved to Australia in 1897 and China in 1899, where he worked as a mining engineer until 1902. A string of similar jobs took him all over the world and helped Hoover become a giant in his field. He opened his own mining consulting business in 1908; by 1914, Hoover was financially secure, earning his wealth from high-salaried positions, his ownership of profitable Burmese silver mines, and royalties from writing the leading textbook on mining engineering.

His wife, Lou Henry Hoover, traveled with him everywhere he went. Herbert and Lou met in college, where she was the sole female geology major at Stanford. He proposed to her by cable from Australia as he prepared to move to China; she accepted by return wire and they married in 1899. The couple was in China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, a time when Lou helped nurse wounded Western diplomats and soldiers while Herbert assisted in the fighting to defend Tianjin, a city near the uprising. By the time the couple returned home to America in 1917, Lou had learned to shoot a gun and had mastered eight languages.

Humanitarian Efficiency

Over the course of his career as a mining engineer and businessman, Hoover's intellect and understanding of the world matured considerably. Hoover was raised a Quaker and although he rarely went to Meeting as an adult, he internalized that faith's belief in the power of the individual, the importance of freedom, and the value of "conscientious work" and charity. Hoover also applied the ethos of engineering to the world in general, believing that scientific expertise, when employed thoughtfully and properly, led to human progress. Hoover worked comfortably in a capitalist economy but believed in labor's right to organize and hoped that cooperation (between labor and management and among competitors) might come to characterize economic relations. During these years, Hoover repeatedly made known to friends his desire for public service.

Politically, Hoover identified with the progressive wing of the Republican Party, supporting Theodore Roosevelt's third-party bid in 1912. World War I brought Hoover to prominence in American politics and thrust him into the international spotlight. In London when the war broke out, he was asked by the U.S. consul to organize the evacuation of 120,000 Americans trapped in Europe. Germany's devastating invasion of Belgium led Hoover to pool his money with several wealthy friends to organize the Committee for the Relief of Belgium. Working without direct government support, Hoover raised millions of dollars for food and medicine to help desperate Belgians.

In 1917, after the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson asked Hoover to run the U.S. Food Administration. Hoover performed quite admirably, guiding the effort to conserve resources and supplies needed for the war and to feed America's European allies. Hoover even became a household name during the war; nearly all Americans knew that the verb "to Hooverize" meant the rationing of household materials. After the armistice treaty was signed in November 1918, officially ending World War I, Wilson appointed Hoover to head the European Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In this capacity, Hoover channeled 34 million tons of American food, clothing, and supplies to war-torn Europe, aiding people in twenty nations.

His service during World War I made Hoover one of the few Republicans trusted by Wilson. Because of Hoover's knowledge of world affairs, Wilson relied him at the Versailles Peace Conference and as director of the President's Supreme Economic Council in 1918. The following year, Hoover founded the Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University as an archive for the records of World War I. This privately endowed organization later became the Hoover Institution, devoted to the study of peace and war. No isolationist, Hoover supported American participation in the League of Nations. He believed, though, that Wilson's stubborn idealism led Congress to reject American participation in the League.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/hoo...)

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George H. Nash

Cecil Spring-Rice:



Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice was born 27 February 1859, son of Charles and Elizabeth Spring-Rice. He was educated at Eton College then Balliol College, Oxford. In 1904 he married Florence Lascelles (daughter of Sir Frank Lascelles), with whom he had one son and one daughter.

In 1882 he entered the Foreign Office and was Assistant Private Secretary to Lord Granville and précis writer for Lord Rosebery. He held a series of diplomatic posts including: Secretary of Legation in Brussels, Washington, Tokyo, Berlin and Constantinople [Istanbul]; Charge d'Affaires Tehran (1900); British Commissioner of the Public Debt in Cairo (1901); 1st Secretary St Petersburg (1903); Minister and Consul General Persia [Iran](1906); Minister in Sweden (1908-1913); and British Ambassador in Washington (1912-1917). Spring-Rice was also a poet and the author of "I vow to thee my country", the famous hymn. He died on 14 February 1918.
(Source: http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xs...)

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David Henry Burton

Sir Edward Grey:



Edward Grey, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel George Henry Grey, and grand-nephew of Earl Grey, was born in 1862. Educated at Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford, he was a strong supporter of the Liberal Party.

In the 1885 General Election Grey was elected to represent Bereick-on-Tweed. Following the 1892 General Election William Gladstone appointed Grey as Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

After the defeat of the Liberal Party in the 1895 General Election, Grey sat on the opposition benches until recalled to the post as Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the government formed by Henry Cambell-Bannerman in 1905.

Grey became concerned by the arms spending of Germany. In 1906 he argued: "The economic rivalry and all that do not give much offence to our people, and they admire (Germany's) steady industry and genius for organization. But they do resent mischief making. They suspect the Emperor of aggressive plans of Weltpolitik, and they see that Germany is forcing the pace in armaments in order to dominate Europe and is thereby laying a horrible burden of wasteful expenditure upon all the other powers."

Kaiser Wilhelm II gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph in October 1908: "Germany is a young and growing empire. She has a world-wide commerce which is rapidly expanding and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that commerce and her manifold interests in even the most distant seas. She expects those interests to go on growing, and she must be able to champion them manfully in any quarter of the globe. Her horizons stretch far away. She must be prepared for any eventualities in the Far East. Who can foresee what may take place in the Pacific in the days to come, days not so distant as some believe, but days at any rate, for which all European powers with Far Eastern interests ought steadily to prepare?"

Grey replied to these comments in the same newspaper: "The German Emperor is ageing me; he is like a battleship with steam up and screws going, but with no rudder, and he will run into something some day and cause a catastrophe. He has the strongest army in the world and the Germans don't like being laughed at and are looking for somebody on whom to vent their temper and use their strength. After a big war a nation doesn't want another for a generation or more. Now it is 38 years since Germany had her last war, and she is very strong and very restless, like a person whose boots are too small for him. I don't think there will be war at present, but it will be difficult to keep the peace of Europe for another five years."

Grey made the defence of France against Germany aggression the central feature of British foreign policy through a number of private pledges but reduced their deterrent value by not making them public at the time. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th July, 1914, brought the crisis to a head. The following month George Buchanan, the British ambassador to Russia, wrote to Grey about the discussions he had following the assassination: "As they both continued to press me to declare our complete solidarity with them, I said that I thought you might be prepared to represent strongly at Vienna and Berlin danger to European peace of an Austrian attack on Serbia. You might perhaps point out that it would in all probability force Russia to intervene, that this would bring Germany and France into the field, and that if war became general, it would be difficult for England to remain neutral. Minister for Foreign Affairs said that he hoped that we would in any case express strong reprobation of Austria's action. If war did break out, we would sooner or later be dragged into it, but if we did not make common cause with France and Russia from the outset we should have rendered war more likely."

Grey replied to Buchanan on the 25th July: "I said to the German Ambassador that, as long as there was only a dispute between Austria and Serbia alone, I did not feel entitled to intervene; but that, directly it was a matter between Austria and Russia, it became a question of the peace of Europe, which concerned us all. I had furthermore spoken on the assumption that Russia would mobilize, whereas the assumption of the German Government had hitherto been, officially, that Serbia would receive no support; and what I had said must influence the German Government to take the matter seriously. In effect, I was asking that if Russia mobilized against Austria, the German Government, who had been supporting the Austrian demand on Serbia, should ask Austria to consider some modification of her demands, under the threat of Russian mobilization."

Grey wrote to on Theobold von Bethmann Hollweg on 30th July, 1914: "His Majesty's Government cannot for one moment entertain the Chancellor's proposal that they should bind themselves to neutrality on such terms. What he asks us in effect is to engage and stand by while French colonies are taken and France is beaten, so long as Germany does not take French territory as distinct from the colonies. From the material point of view the proposal is unacceptable, for France, without further territory in Europe being taken from her, could be so crushed as to lose her position as a Great Power, and become subordinate to German policy. Altogether apart from that, it would be a disgrace to us to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France, a disgrace from which the good name of this country would never recover. The Chancellor also in effect asks us to bargain away whatever obligation or interest we have as regards the neutrality of Belgium. We could not entertain that bargain either."

Grey later wrote in his autobiography, Twenty-five Years (1925) "That, if war came, the interest of Britain required that we should not stand aside, while France fought alone in the West, but must support her. I knew it to be very doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through the whole of this week I had in view the probable contingency that we should not decide at the critical moment to support France. In that event I should have to resign; but the decision of the country could not be forced, and the contingency might not arise, and meanwhile I must go on."

Raymond Gram Swing, a journalist working for the Chicago Daily News, was asked by Theobold von Bethmann Hollweg to go to London to pass a message to Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary. Bethmann-Hollweg warned him: "I must caution you... not a word of this in the newspapers. If it is published, I shall have to say I never said it." Swing wrote about his meeting in his autobiography, Good Evening (1964): "I had little firsthand knowledge of the British at that time. I knew how the Germans regarded them, Sir Edward Grey in particular. He was considered the arch-conspirator, the passionless builder of Germany's ring of enemies, and especially dangerous because of his ability to speak hypocritically about moral virtues - while acting in farsighted national interest. The Sir Edward Grey I met was a revelation. He had the personal appearance of a shaggy ascetic. He was tall, erect, slender, with thin but untidy hair. His clothes were not well pressed. At the time, I knew nothing about Sir Edward Grey, the naturalist, of the breed of Englishmen he represented -sensitive, shy, and complex - or that he was one of the best-educated men in the world. I delivered my message from Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg and ended with the instructions I had received to return to him and repeat what Sir Edward had to say in reply. Sir Edward's face turned crimson when I spoke the word "indemnity." I thought of Baroness von Schroeder's explanation of it and almost blurted it out. But Sir Edward gave me no time to blurt out anything. He ignored what I said about no annexations in Belgium and Belgian independence. He struck at the word "indemnity" with a kind of high moral fury, and launched into one of the finest speeches I had heard. Did not Herr von Bethmann-Holhweg know what must come from the war? It must be a world of international law where treaties were observed, where men welcomed conferences and did not scheme for war. I was to tell Herr von Bethmann-Holhveg that his suggestion of an indemnity was an insult and that Great Britain was fighting for a new basis for foreign relations, a new international morality."

On the outbreak of the First World War Grey believed that he had no alternative but to fulfill Britain's "obligations to honour" by joining France in its war with Germany. Grey's secret diplomacy was strongly criticised by the Labour Party and some members of his own party, including Charles Trevelyan, Secretary of the Board of Education, for these private promises made to the French government. Trevelyan resigned from the government over this issue and joined with E.D. Morel, George Cadbury, Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Ponsonby, Arnold Rowntree and other critics of the Grey's foreign policy to form the Union of Democratic Control (UDC).

Grey was also deeply shocked by how his policies had failed to prevent war and prophesied that: "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them in our lifetime." Grey's Balkan diplomacy was blamed for turning Turkey and Bulgaria against Britain and was excluded by Herbert Asquith from his Inner war cabinet.

Grey, the longest serving Secretary of Foreign Affairs in British history, was removed from office by David Lloyd George in December, 1916. He was granted the title Viscount Grey of Fallodon and became leader of the House of Lords. In retirement, Grey wrote his autobiography, Twenty Five Years (1925) and the best-selling, The Charm of Birds (1927).

Sir Edward Grey died 7th September 1933.
(Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...)

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(no image)Twenty-Five Years, 1892-1916 by Edward Grey

Wilson's Second State of the Union, Part One:

The session upon which you are now entering will be the closing session of the Sixty-third Congress, a Congress, I venture to say, which will long be remembered for the great body of thoughtful and constructive work which it has done, in loyal response to the thought and needs of the country. I should like in this address to review the notable record and try to make adequate assessment of it; but no doubt we stand too near the work that has been done and are ourselves too much part of it to play the part of historians toward it.

Our program of legislation with regard to the regulation of business is now virtually complete. It has been put forth, as we intended, as a whole, and leaves no conjecture as to what is to follow. The road at last lies clear and firm before business. It is a road which it can travel without fear or embarrassment. It is the road to ungrudged, unclouded success. In it every honest man, every man who believes that the public interest is part of his own interest, may walk with perfect confidence.

Moreover, our thoughts are now more of the future than of the past. While we have worked at our tasks of peace the circumstances of the whole age have been altered by war. What we have done for our own land and our own people we did with the best that was in us, whether of character or of intelligence, with sober enthusiasm and a confidence in the principles upon which we were acting which sustained us at every step of the difficult undertaking; but it is done. It has passed from our hands. It is now an established part of the legislation of the country. Its usefulness, its effects will disclose themselves in experience. What chiefly strikes us now, as we look about us during these closing days of a year which will be forever memorable in the history of the world, is that we face new tasks, have been facing them these six months, must face them in the months to come,-face them without partisan feeling, like men who have forgotten everything but a common duty and the fact that we are representatives of a great people whose thought is not of us but of what America owes to herself and to all mankind in such circumstances as these upon which we look amazed and anxious.

War has interrupted the means of trade not only but also the processes of production. In Europe it is destroying men and resources wholesale and upon a scale unprecedented and appalling, There is reason to fear that the time is near, if it be not already at hand, when several of the countries of Europe will find it difficult to do for their people what they have hitherto been always easily able to do,--many essential and fundamental things. At any rate, they will need our help and our manifold services as they have never needed them before; and we should be ready, more fit and ready than we have ever been.

It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe has usually supplied with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of which they are in constant need and without which their economic development halts and stands still can now get only a small part of what they formerly imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all but empty markets. This is particularly true of our own neighbors, the States, great and small, of Central and South America. Their lines of trade have hitherto run chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports but to the ports of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe. I do not stop to inquire why, or to make any comment on probable causes. What interests us just now is not the explanation but the fact, and our duty and opportunity in the presence of it. Here are markets which we must supply, and we must find the means of action. The United States, this great people for whom we speak and act, should be ready, as never before, to serve itself and to serve mankind; ready with its resources, its energies, its forces of production, and its means of distribution.

It is a very practical matter, a matter of ways and means. We have the resources, but are we fully ready to use them? And, if we can make ready what we have, have we the means at hand to distribute it? We are not fully ready; neither have we the means of distribution. We are willing, but we are not fully able. We have the wish to serve and to serve greatly, generously; but we are not prepared as we should be. We are not ready to mobilize our resources at once. We are not prepared to use them immediately and at their best, without delay and without waste.

To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in which we have stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine. And now, when we need ships, we have not got them. We have year after year debated, without end or conclusion, the best policy to pursue with regard to the use of the ores and forests and water powers of our national domain in the rich States of the West, when we should have acted; and they are still locked up. The key is still turned upon them, the door shut fast at which thousands of vigorous men, full of initiative, knock clamorously for admittance. The water power of our navigable streams outside the national domain also, even in the eastern States, where we have worked and planned for generations, is still not used as it might be, because we will and we won't; because the laws we have made do not intelligently balance encouragement against restraint. We withhold by regulation.

I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mistakes and omissions, even at this short session of a Congress which would certainly seem to have done all the work that could reasonably be expected of it. The time and the circumstances are extraordinary, and so must our efforts be also.

Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the one to unlock, with proper safeguards, the resources of the national domain, the other to encourage the use of the navigable waters outside that domain for the generation of power, have already passed the House of Representatives and are ready for immediate consideration and action by the Senate. With the deepest earnestness I urge their prompt passage. In them both we turn our backs upon hesitation and makeshift and formulate a genuine policy of use and conservation, in the best sense of those words. We owe the one measure not only to the people of that great western country for whose free and systematic development, as it seems to me, our legislation has done so little, but also to the people of the Nation as a whole; and we as clearly owe the other fulfillment of our repeated promises that the water power of the country should in fact as well as in name be put at the disposal of great industries which can make economical and profitable use of it, the rights of the public being adequately guarded the while, and monopoly in the use prevented. To have begun such measures and not completed them would indeed mar the record of this great Congress very seriously. I hope and confidently believe that they will be completed.

And there is another great piece of legislation which awaits and should receive the sanction of the Senate: I mean the bill which gives a larger measure of self-government to the people of the Philippines. How better, in this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy, could we show our confidence in the principles of liberty, as the source as well as the expression of life, how better could we demonstrate our own self-possession and steadfastness in the courses of justice and disinterestedness than by thus going calmly forward to fulfill our promises to a dependent people, who will now look more anxiously than ever to see whether we have indeed the liberality, the unselfishness, the courage, the faith we have boasted and professed. I can not believe that the Senate will let this great measure of constructive justice await the action of another Congress. Its passage would nobly crown the record of these two years of memorable labor.

But I think that you will agree with me that this does not complete the toll of our duty. How are we to carry our goods to the empty markets of which I have spoken if we have not the ships? How are we to build tip a great trade if we have not the certain and con,;tpnt means of transportation upon which all profitable and useful commerce depends? And how are we to get the ships if we wait for the trade to develop without them? To correct the many mistakes by which we have discouraged and all but destroyed the merchant marine of the country, to retrace the steps by which we have.. it seems almost deliberately, withdrawn our flag from the seas.. except where, here and there, a ship of war is bidden carry it or some wandering yacht displays it, would take a long time and involve many detailed items of legislation, and tile trade which we ought immediately to handle would disappear or find other channels while we debated the items.

The case is not unlike that which confronted us when our own continent was to be opened up to settlement and industry, and we needed long lines of railway, extended means of transportation prepared beforehand, if development was not to lag intolerably and wait interminably. We lavishly subsidized the building of transcontinental railroads. We look back upon that with regret now, because the subsidies led to many scandals of which we are ashamed; but we know that the railroads had to be built, and if we had it to do over again we should of course build them, but in another way. Therefore I propose another way of providing the means of transportation, which must precede, not tardily follow, the development of our trade with our neighbor states of America. It may seem a reversal of the natural order of things, but it is true, that the routes of trade must be actually opened-by many ships and regular sailings and moderate charges-before streams of merchandise will flow freely and profitably through them.

Hence the pending shipping bill, discussed at the last session but as yet passed by neither House. In my judgment such legislation is imperatively needed and can not wisely be postponed. The Government must open these gates of trade, and open them wide; open them before it is altogether profitable to open them, or altogether reasonable to ask private capital to open them at a venture. It is not a question of the Government monopolizing the field. It should take action to make it certain that transportation at reasonable rates will be promptly provided, even where the carriage is not at first profitable; and then, when the carriage has become sufficiently profitable to attract and engage private capital, and engage it in abundance, the Government ought to withdraw. I very earnestly hope that the Congress will be of this opinion, and that both Houses will adopt this exceedingly important bill.
(Source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/ind...)

Wilson's Second State of the Union, Part Two:

The great subject of rural credits still remains to be dealt with, and it is a matter of deep regret that the difficulties of the subject have seemed to render it impossible to complete a bill for passage at this session. But it can not be perfected yet, and therefore there are no other constructive measures the necessity for which I will at this time call your attention to; but I would be negligent of a very manifest duty were I not to call the attention of the Senate to the fact that the proposed convention for safety at sea awaits its confirmation and that the limit fixed in the convention itself for its acceptance is the last day of the present month. The conference in which this convention originated was called by the United States; the representatives of the United States played a very influential part indeed in framing the provisions of the proposed convention; and those provisions are in themselves for the most part admirable. It would hardly be consistent with the part we have played in the whole matter to let it drop and go by the board as if forgotten and neglected. It was ratified in May by the German Government and in August by the Parliament of Great Britain. It marks a most hopeful and decided advance in international civilization. We should show our earnest good faith in a great matter by adding our own acceptance of it.

There is another matter of which I must make special mention, if I am to discharge my conscience, lest it should escape your attention. It may seem a very small thing. It affects only a single item of appropriation. But many human lives and many great enterprises hang upon it. It is the matter of making adequate provision for the survey and charting of our coasts. It is immediately pressing and exigent in connection with the immense coast line of Alaska, a coast line greater than that of the United States themselves, though it is also very important indeed with regard to the older coasts of the continent. We can not use our great Alaskan domain, ships will not ply thither, if those coasts and their many hidden dangers are not thoroughly surveyed and charted. The work is incomplete at almost every point. Ships and lives have been lost in threading what were supposed to be well-known main channels. We have not provided adequate vessels or adequate machinery for the survey and charting. We have used old vessels that were not big enough or strong enough and which were so nearly unseaworthy that our inspectors would not have allowed private owners to send them to sea. This is a matter which, as I have said, seems small, but is in reality very great. Its importance has only to be looked into to be appreciated.

Before I close may I say a few words upon two topics, much discussed out of doors, upon which it is highly important that our judgment should be clear, definite, and steadfast?

One of these is economy in government expenditures. The duty of economy is not debatable. It is manifest and imperative. In the appropriations we pass we are spending the money of the great people whose servants we are,-not our own. We are trustees and responsible stewards in the spending. The only thing debatable and upon which we should be careful to make our thought and purpose clear is the kind of economy demanded of us. I assert with the greatest confidence that the people of the United States are not jealous of the amount their Government costs if they are sure that they get what they need and desire for the outlay, that the money is being spent for objects of which they approve, and that it is being applied with good business sense and management.

Governments grow, piecemeal, both in their tasks and in the means by which those tasks are to be performed, and very few Governments are organized, I venture to say, as wise and experienced business men would organize them if they had a clean sheet of paper to write upon. Certainly the Government of the United States is not. I think that it is generally agreed that there should be a systematic reorganization and reassembling of its parts so as to secure greater efficiency and effect considerable savings in expense. But the amount of money saved in that way would, I believe, though no doubt considerable in itself, running, it may be, into the millions, be relatively small,-small, I mean, in proportion to the total necessary outlays of the Government. It would be thoroughly worth effecting, as every saving would, great or small. Our duty is not altered by the scale of the saving. But my point is that the people of the United States do not wish to curtail the activities of this Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge them; and with every enlargement, with the mere growth, indeed, of the country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable increase of expense. The sort of economy we ought to practice may be effected, and ought to be effected, by a careful study and assessment of the tasks to be performed; and the money spent ought to be made to yield the best possible returns in efficiency and achievement. And, like good stewards, we should so account for every dollar of our appropriations as to make it perfectly evident what it was spent for and in what way it was spent.

It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should fear being criticized for; not paying for the legitimate enterprise and undertakings of a great Government whose people command what it should do, but adding what will benefit only a few or pouring money out for what need not have been undertaken at all or might have been postponed or better and more economically conceived and carried out. The Nation is not niggardly; it is very generous. It will chide us only if we forget for whom we pay money out and whose money it is we pay. These are large and general standards, but they are not very difficult of application to particular cases.

The other topic I shall take leave to mention goes deeper into the principles of our national life and policy. It is the subject of national defense.

It can not be discussed without first answering some very searching questions. It is said in some quarters that we are not prepared for war. What is meant by being prepared? Is it meant that we are not ready upon brief notice to put a nation in the field, a nation of men trained to arms? Of course we are not ready to do that; and we shall never be in time of peace so long as we retain our present political principles and institutions. And what is it that it is suggested we should be prepared to do? To defend ourselves against attack? We have always found means to do that, and shall find them whenever it is necessary without calling our people away from their necessary tasks to render compulsory military service in times of peace.

Allow me to speak with great plainness and directness upon this great matter and to avow my convictions with deep earnestness. I have tried to know what America is, what her people think, what they are, what they most cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer passions are in my own heart, --some of the great conceptions and desires which gave birth to this Government and which have made the voice of this people a voice of peace and hope and liberty among the peoples of the world, and that, speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at least in part, speak theirs also, however faintly and inadequately, upon this vital matter.

We are at peace with all the world. No one who speaks counsel based on fact or drawn from a just and candid interpretation of realities can say that there is reason to fear that from any quarter our independence or the integrity of our territory is threatened. Dread of the power of any other nation we are incapable of. We are not jealous of rivalry in the fields of commerce or of any other peaceful achievement. We mean to live our own lives as we will; but we mean also to let live. We are, indeed, a true friend to all the nations of the world, because we threaten none, covet the possessions of none, desire the overthrow of none. Our friendship can be accepted and is accepted without reservation, because it is offered in a spirit and for a purpose which no one need ever question or suspect. Therein lies our greatness. We are the champions of peace and of concord. And we should be very jealous of this distinction which we have sought to earn. just now we should be particularly jealous of it because it is our dearest present hope that this character and reputation may presently, in God's providence, bring us an opportunity such as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation, the opportunity to counsel and obtain peace in the world and reconciliation and a healing settlement of many a matter that has cooled and interrupted the friendship of nations. This is the time above all others when we should wish and resolve to keep our strength by self-possession, our influence by preserving our ancient principles of action.

From the first we have had a clear and settled policy with regard to military establishments. We never have had, and while we retain our present principles and ideals we never shall have, a large standing army. If asked, Are you ready to defend yourselves? we reply, Most assuredly, to the utmost; and yet we shall not turn America into a military camp. We will not ask our young men to spend the best years of their lives making soldiers of themselves. There is another sort of energy in us. It will know how to declare itself and make itself effective should occasion arise. And especially when half the world is on fire we shall be careful to make our moral insurance against the spread of the conflagration very definite and certain and adequate indeed.

Let us remind ourselves, therefore, of the only thing we can do or will do. We must depend in every time of national peril, in the future as in the past, not upon a standing army, nor yet upon a reserve army, but upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to arms. It will be right enough, right American policy, based upon our accustomed principles and practices, to provide a system by which every citizen who will volunteer for the training may be made familiar with the use of modern arms, the rudiments of drill and maneuver, and the maintenance and sanitation of camps. We should encourage such training and make it a means of discipline which our young men will learn to value. It is right that we should provide it not only, but that we should make it as attractive as possible, and so induce our young men to undergo it at such times as they can command a little freedom and can seek the physical development they need, for mere health's sake, if for nothing more. Every means by which such things can be stimulated is legitimate, and such a method smacks of true American ideas. It is right, too, that the National Guard of the States should be developed and strengthened by every means which is not inconsistent with our obligations to our own people or with the established policy of our Government. And this, also, not because the time or occasion specially calls for such measures, but because it should be our constant policy to make these provisions for our national peace and safety.
(Source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/ind...)

Wilson's Second State of the Union, Part Three:

More than this carries with it a reversal of the whole history and character of our polity. More than this, proposed at this time, permit me to say, would mean merely that we had lost our self-possession, that we had been thrown off our balance by a war with which we have nothing to do, whose causes can not touch us, whose very existence affords us opportunities of friendship and disinterested service which should make us ashamed of any thought of hostility or fearful preparation for trouble. This is assuredly the opportunity for which a people and a government like ours were raised up, the opportunity not only to speak but actually to embody and exemplify the counsels of peace and amity and the lasting concord which is based on justice and fair and generous dealing.

A powerful navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense, and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or of provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks. When will the experts tell us just what kind we should construct-and when will they be right for ten years together, if the relative efficiency of craft of different kinds and uses continues to change as we have seen it change under our very eyes in these last few months ?

But I turn away from the subject. It is not new. There is no new need to discuss it. We shall not alter our attitude toward it because some amongst us are nervous and excited. We shall easily and sensibly agree upon a policy of defense. The question has not changed its aspects because the times are not normal. Our policy will not be for an occasion. It will be conceived as a permanent and settled thing, which we will pursue at all seasons, without haste and after a fashion perfectly consistent with the peace of the world, the abiding friendship of states, and the unhampered freedom of all with whom we deal. Let there be no misconception. The country has been misinformed. We have not been negligent of national defense. We are not unmindful of the great responsibility resting upon us. We shall learn and profit by the lesson of every experience and every new circumstance; and what is needed will be adequately done.

I close, as I began, by reminding you of the great tasks and duties of peace which challenge our best powers and invite us to build what will last, the tasks to which we can address ourselves now and at all times with free-hearted zest and with all the finest gifts of constructive wisdom we possess. To develop our life and our resources; to supply our own people, and the people of the world as their need arises, from the abundant plenty of our fields and our marts of trade to enrich the commerce of our own States and of the world with the products of our mines, our farms, and our factories, with the creations of our thought and the fruits of our character,-this is what will hold our attention and our enthusiasm steadily, now and in the years to come, as we strive to show in our life as a nation what liberty and the inspirations of an emancipated spirit may do for men and for societies, for individuals, for states, and for mankind.
(Source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/ind...)

Augustus Gardner:



a Representative from Massachusetts; born in Boston, Mass., November 5, 1865; attended St. Paul’s School, Concord, N.H., and was graduated from Harvard University in 1886; studied law in Harvard Law School, but never practiced, devoting himself to the management of his estate; captain and assistant adjutant general on the staff of Gen. James H. Wilson during the Spanish-American War; member of the State senate 1900 and 1901; elected as a Republican to the Fifty-seventh Congress by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of United States Representative William H. Moody, and reelected to the eight succeeding Congresses (November 4, 1902-May 15, 1917); resigned from Congress to enter the Army; chairman, Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions (Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth Congresses); during the First World War served at Governors Island and in Macon, Ga., as colonel in the Adjutant General’s Department, and later was transferred at his own request to the One Hundred and Thirty-first Regiment, United States Infantry, with the rank of major; died at Camp Wheeler, Macon, Ga., January 14, 1918; interment in Arlington National Cemetery.

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Gilbert Hitchcock:



a Representative and a Senator from Nebraska; born in Omaha, Nebr., September 18, 1859; attended the public schools of Omaha and the gymnasium at Baden-Baden, Germany; graduated from the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1881; admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Omaha, Nebr., in 1882; continued the practice of law until 1885, when he established and edited the Omaha Evening World; purchased the Nebraska Morning Herald in 1889 and consolidated the two into the Morning and Evening World Herald; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for election in 1898 to the Fifty-sixth Congress; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1903-March 3, 1905); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1904 to the Fifty-ninth Congress; elected as a Democrat to the Sixtieth and Sixty-first Congresses (March 4, 1907-March 3, 1911); did not seek renomination in 1910, having become a candidate for the United States Senate; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate January 18, 1911; reelected in 1916 and served from March 4, 1911, to March 3, 1923; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922 and for election in 1930; chairman, Committee on the Philippines (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Foreign Relations (Sixty-fifth Congress), Committee on Forest Reservations and Game Protection (Sixty-sixth Congress); resumed newspaper work in Omaha, Nebr.; retired from active business in 1933 and moved to Washington, D.C., where he died on February 3, 1934; interment in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Omaha, Nebr.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)

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http://nebraskahistory.org/lib-arch/r...
(no image)Gilbert Hitchcock Of Nebraska: Wilson's Floor Leader In The Fight For The Versailles Treaty by Thomas W. Ryley

Birth of a Nation:



A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in February, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, but three months later was retitled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted melodramatic staged play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy.

Its release set up a major censorship battle over its vicious, extremist depiction of African Americans, although Griffith naively claimed that he wasn't racist at the time. Unbelievably, the film is still used today as a recruitment piece for Klan membership - and in fact, the organization experienced a revival and membership peak in the decade immediately following its initial release. And the film stirred new controversy when it was voted into the National Film Registry in 1993, and when it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (at # 44) by the American Film Institute in 1998.

Film scholars agree, however, that it is the single most important and key film of all time in American movie history - it contains many new cinematic innovations and refinements, technical effects and artistic advancements, including a color sequence at the end. It had a formative influence on future films and has had a recognized impact on film history and the development of film as art. In addition, at almost three hours in length, it was the longest film to date. However, it still provokes conflicting views about its message.

Director Griffith's original budget of $40,000 (expanded to $60,000) quickly ballooned, so Griffith appealed to businessmen and other investors to help finance the film - that eventually cost $110,000! The propagandistic film was one of the biggest box-office money-makers in the history of film, partly due to its exorbitant charge of $2 per ticket - unheard of at the time. This 'first' true blockbuster made $18 million by the start of the talkies. [It was the most profitable film for over two decades, until Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).]

The subject matter of the film caused immediate criticism by the newly-created National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for its racist and "vicious" portrayal of blacks, its proclamation of miscegenation, its pro-Klan stance, and its endorsement of slavery. As a result, two scenes were cut (a love scene between Reconstructionist Senator and his mulatto mistress, and a fight scene). But the film continued to be renounced as "the meanest vilification of the Negro race." Riots broke out in major cities (Boston, Philadelphia, among others), and it was denied release in many other places (Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis, eight states in total). Subsequent lawsuits and picketing tailed the film for years when it was re-released (in 1924, 1931, and 1938).

The resulting controversy only helped to fuel the film's box-office appeal, and it became a major hit. Even President Woodrow Wilson during a private screening at the White House is reported to have enthusiastically exclaimed: "It's like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all terribly true." To his credit, Griffith later (by 1921) released a shortened, re-edited version of the film without references to the KKK.

In its explicitly caricaturist presentation of the KKK as heroes and Southern blacks as villains and violent rapists and threats to the social order, it appealed to white Americans who subscribed to the mythic, romantic view (similar to Sir Walter Scott historical romances) of the Old Plantation South. Many viewers were thrilled by the love affair between Northern and Southern characters and the climactic rescue scene. The film also thematically explored two great American issues: inter-racial sex and marriage, and the empowerment of blacks. Ironically, although the film was advertised as authentic and accurate, the film's major black roles in the film -- including the Senator's mulatto mistress, the mulatto politican brought to power in the South, and faithful freed slaves -- were stereotypically played and filled by white actors - in blackface. [The real blacks in the film only played in minor roles.]

Its climactic finale, the suppression of the black threat to white society by the glorious Ku Klux Klan, helped to assuage some of America's sexual fears about the rise of defiant, strong (and sexual) black men and the repeal of laws forbidding intermarriage. To answer his critics, director Griffith made a sequel, the magnificent four story epic about human intolerance titled Intolerance (1916). A group of independent black filmmakers released director Emmett J. Scott's The Birth of a Race in 1919, filmed as a response to Griffith's masterwork, with a more positive image of African-Americans, but it was largely ignored. Prolific black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux's first film, the feature-length The Homesteader (1919), and Within Our Gates (1919) more effectively countered the message of Griffith's film.

Its pioneering technical work, often the work of Griffith's under-rated cameraman Billy Bitzer, includes many techniques that are now standard features of films, but first used in this film. Griffith brought all of his experience and techniques to this film from his earliest short films at Biograph, including the following:

-the use of ornate title cards
-special use of subtitles graphically verbalizing imagery
-its own original musical score written for an orchestra
-the introduction of night photography (using magnesium flares)
-the use of outdoor natural landscapes as backgrounds
-the definitive usage of the still-shot
-elaborate costuming to achieve historical authenticity and accuracy
-many scenes innovatively filmed from many different and multiple angles
-the technique of the camera "iris" effect (expanding or contracting circular masks to either reveal and open up a scene, or close down and conceal a part of an image)
-the use of parallel action and editing in a sequence (Gus' attempted rape of Flora, and the KKK rescues of Elsie from Lynch and of Ben's sister Margaret)
-extensive use of color tinting for dramatic or psychological effect in sequences
-moving, traveling or "panning" camera tracking shots
the effective use of total-screen close-ups to reveal intimate expressions
-beautifully crafted, intimate family exchanges
-the use of vignettes seen in "balloons" or "iris-shots" in one portion of a darkened screen
-the use of fade-outs and cameo-profiles (a medium closeup in front of a blurry background)
-the use of lap dissolves to blend or switch from one image to another
-high-angle shots and the abundant use of panoramic long shots
-the dramatization of history in a moving story - an example of an early spectacle or epic film with historical costuming and many historical references (e.g., Mathew Brady's Civil War photographs)
-impressive, splendidly-staged battle scenes with hundreds of extras (made to appear as thousands)
-extensive cross-cutting between two scenes to create a montage-effect and generate excitement and suspense (e.g., the scene of the gathering of the Klan)
-expert story-telling, with the cumulative building of the film to a dramatic climax

The film looks remarkably genuine and authentic, almost of documentary quality (like Brady's Civil War photographs), vividly reconstructing a momentous time period in history - and it was made only 50 years after the end of the Civil War. Its story includes the events leading up to the nation's split; the Civil War era; the period from the end of the Civil War to Lincoln's assassination; the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era detailing the struggle over the control of Congress during Andrew Johnson's presidency and actions of the Radical Republicans to enfranchise the freed slaves, and the rise of the KKK.
(Source: http://www.filmsite.org/birt.html)

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004972/
Thomas Dixon Jr.
Michael R. Hurwitz

Here is the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEznh2...

Thomas Dixon:



Born in the rural North Carolina Piedmont a year before the Civil War ended, Thomas Dixon lived to see the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the end of World War II. Between 1902 and 1939 he published 22 novels, as well as numerous plays, screenplays, books of sermons, and miscellaneous nonfiction. Educated at Wake Forest and Johns Hopkins, Dixon was a lawyer, state legislator, preacher, novelist, playwright, actor, lecturer, real-estate speculator, and movie producer. Familiar to three presidents and such notables as John D. Rockefeller, he made and lost millions, ending up an invalid court clerk in Raleigh, N.C.

Paradoxically, Dixon is among the most dated and most contemporary of southern writers. In genre an early 19th-century romancer, thematically Dixon argued for three interrelated beliefs still current in southern life: the need for racial purity, the sanctity of the family centered on a traditional wife and mother, and the evil of socialism.

In the Klan trilogy—The Leopard's Spots (1902), The Clansman (1905), The Traitor (1907)— and in The Sins of the Fathers (1912), Dixon presents racial conflict as an epic struggle, with the future of civilization at stake. Although Dixon personally condemned slavery and Klan activities after Reconstruction ended, he argued that blacks must be denied political equality because that leads to social equality and miscegenation, thus to the destruction of both family and civilized society. Throughout his work, white southern women are the pillars of family and society, the repositories of all human idealism. The Foolish Virgin (1915) and The Way of a Man (1919) attack women's suffrage because women outside the home become corrupted; with the sacred vessels shattered, social morality is lost. In his trilogy on socialism—The One Woman (1903), Comrades (1909), The Root of Evil (1911)—he attacks populist socialism expressed in such works as Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, arguing that it is impossible for all classes to be equal in a society. Dixon's last novel, The Flaming Sword (1939), written just before he suffered a crippling cerebral hemorrhage, combines the threats of socialism and racial equality, presenting blacks as communist dupes attempting the overthrow of the United States. Through all his work runs an impassioned defense of conservative religious values.

Young Dixon's religious and political beliefs were melded in a crucible shaped by his region's military defeat and economic depression and by the fiercely independent, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian faith of the North Carolina highlands. As a student reading Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, he suffered a brief period of religious doubt. But his faith rebounded stronger than ever, and Dixon sought the grandest pulpit he could find. He abandoned a successful Baptist ministry in New York for the larger nondenominational audience he could reach as a lecturer and, after the success of The Leopard's Spots, as a novelist and playwright. With the movie Birth of a Nation (based on The Clansman), Dixon believed he had found the ideal medium to educate the masses, to bring them to political and religious salvation. Although his work is seldom read today, both in his themes and as a political preacher seeking a national congregation through mass media, Thomas Dixon clearly foreshadowed the politicized television evangelists of the modern South.
(Source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixo...)

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Thomas Dixon Jr.
Michele K. Gillespie
Anthony Slide

Horace Lurton:



was born in Newport, Kentucky, on February 26, 1844, and raised in Clarksville, Tennessee. He attended the University of Chicago in 1860 but joined the Confederate Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. Captured by Union soldiers, he soon escaped, but was recaptured and released from prison just before the War ended. Lurton resumed his studies and was graduated from Cumberland University Law School in 1867. He returned to Clarksville and began the practice of law. In 1875, at the age of thirty-one, he was appointed by the Governor of Tennessee to the Sixth Chancery Division of Tennessee and became the youngest Chancellor in the history of the state. He resigned after three years and resumed his law practice. Lurton was elected to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1886, and became its Chief Judge in 1893. Later that year, President Grover Cleveland appointed Lurton to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where he served for sixteen years. President William H. Taft nominated Lurton to the Supreme Court of the United States on December 20, 1909. The Senate confirmed the appointment on January 3, 1910. Lurton served on the Supreme Court for four years. He died on July 12, 1914, at the age of seventy.
(Source: http://www.supremecourthistory.org/hi...)

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Edith Galt:



Edith Bolling Wilson, Woodrow Wilson's second wife, is sometimes described as America's first woman President because of the role she played after the President's massive stroke in October 1919. Choosing to admit or turn away visitors and deciding what papers Wilson did or did not see, she was a controversial figure at the time and has remained so ever since. For her part, Edith Wilson described her role as that of a steward. She wrote in her 1939 memoirs that as First Lady, she "never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs." In fact, she claimed powers over only "what was important and what was not" and "when to present matters to my husband."

Edith was introduced to the President in early 1915, about six months after the death of Ellen Axson Wilson, his first wife. Wilson liked her at once and began sharing state secrets with her in an effort to charm her. After a brief but passionate courtship, the two became secretly engaged. But Wilson's political advisers felt that his remarriage less than a year after the death of Ellen Wilson would offend the American public and damage his reelection prospects; they even concocted a scheme to prevent him from marrying Edith. Despite their machinations, the couple was married in December 1915.

As First Lady, Edith, far more than Ellen Wilson, invested herself in the President's political affairs. She became his confidante and personal assistant, particularly attempting to break off his relations with those she believed had tried to torpedo her marriage to the President. She was familiar with the pressing issues of the administration, including the war

raging in Europe. Not greatly interested in the traditional role of the First Lady, she hired a secretary to meet the demands of her limited social calendar. She then used the American declaration of war in 1917 as an excuse to eliminate official entertaining altogether. Public tours of the White House ended, the annual Easter Egg Roll and New Year's Day reception ceased, and formal dinners were kept to a minimum.

Throughout the war, the First Lady, who preferred to be called "Mrs. Woodrow Wilson," set an example for economy and patriotism. Like other American housewives, she wore thrift clothing, observed rationing, and "Hooverized" the White House, adopting "meatless Mondays" and "wheatless Wednesdays." Instead of paying a gardening crew to maintain the White House lawn, Edith borrowed twenty sheep from a nearby farm and donated the wool to charitable auctions aiding the American cause -- sales of the auctioned wool ultimately netted $50,000. She knitted trench helmets; sewed pajamas, pillowcases, and blankets; promoted war bonds; responded to soldiers' mail; named thousands of vessels; and volunteered with the Red Cross at Union Station. Unlike the typical American homemaker, however, Edith Wilson also helped the war effort by decoding military messages and giving advice to the President on his dealings with Congress.

At the war's end, the First Lady went to Europe with the President. She urged the President to include more Republicans on the commission, but Wilson demurred. In Europe, some of the President's popularity also rubbed off on the First Lady. She enjoyed her status and spent her time in France touring hospitals and visiting American troops. In February 1919, when Wilson presented the plan for the League of Nations to the peace conference, she persuaded the presiding officer, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, to let her attend the session.

When Wilson decided, in the late summer of 1919, to travel across the country speaking in support of the League of Nations, Edith worried that his health was too frail to stand the strain. As she feared, he collapsed on September 25, and she rushed him back to Washington, where he suffered a massive stroke on October 2. Although the President was paralyzed and unable to carry out the duties of his office, Edith insisted that he must not resign because she believed that losing office would kill him. This was the single most important decision she made during Wilson's illness, and from it followed all the rest -- her concealment of the severity of his debility from the cabinet and the press, her determination that almost no one be admitted to the sickroom, her screening of the papers and issues that would be brought to his attention, and her assumption of the role of secretary, reporting the President's decisions to government officials. Until January 1920, Wilson had almost no contact with anyone outside his circle of family and doctors; he did not meet with his cabinet until April 1920.

Edith Wilson never intended to usurp her husband's power nor to become the "first woman President." As she told Wilson's doctor, "I am not thinking of the country now, I am thinking of my husband." But in seeking to protect the man she loved, she did in fact assume a major political role. In excluding visitors and deciding which issues should be presented to him, she made political decisions without meaning to do so. At bottom, however, the fault was not hers -- she merely loved her husband -- it was a deficiency of the American political system that, until the adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution in 1967, made no provision for the disability of the President.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/wil...)

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Bo...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first...
http://www.firstladies.org/biographie...
(no image)My Memoir by Edith Bolling Wilson
Kristie Miller
Phyllis Lee Levin

Sinking of Lusitania:



The British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, famous for its luxurious accommodations and speed capability, primarily ferried people and goods across the Atlantic Ocean between the United States and Great Britain. On May 1, 1915, the Lusitania left port in New York for Liverpool to make her 202nd trip across the Atlantic. On board were 1,959 people, 159 of whom were Americans.
Since the outbreak of World War I, ocean voyage had become dangerous. Each side hoped to blockade the other, thus prevent any war materials getting through. German U-boats (submarines) stalked British waters, continually looking for enemy vessels to sink.
All ships headed to Great Britain were instructed to be on the lookout for U-boats and take precautionary measures such as travel at full speed and make zigzag movements. Unfortunately, on May 7, 1915, Captain William Thomas Turner slowed the Lusitania down because of fog and traveled in a predictable line.

Approximately 14 miles off the coast of Southern Ireland at Old Head of Kinsale, neither the captain nor any of his crew realized that the German U-boat, U-20, had already spotted and targeted them. At 1:40 p.m., the U-boat launched a torpedo. The torpedo hit the starboard (right) side of the Lusitania. Almost immediately, another explosion rocked the ship.

At the time, the Allies thought the Germans had launched two or three torpedoes to sink the Lusitania. However, the Germans say their U-boat only fired one torpedo. Many believe the second explosion was caused by the ignition of ammunition hidden in the cargo hold. Others say that coal dust, kicked up when the torpedo hit, exploded. No matter what the exact cause, it was the damage from the second explosion that made the ship sink.

The Lusitania sunk within 18 minutes. Though there had been enough lifeboats for all passengers, the severe listing of the ship while it sunk prevented most from being launched properly. Of the 1,959 people on board, 1,198 died. The toll of civilians killed in this disaster shocked the world.

Americans were outraged to learn 128 U.S. civilians were killed in a war in which they were officially neutral. Destroying ships not known to be carrying war materials countered generally accepted international war protocols. The sinking of the Lusitania heightened tensions between the U.S. and Germany and helped sway American opinion in favor of joining the war.

In 2008, divers explored the wreck of the Lusitania, situated eight miles off the coast of Ireland. On board, the divers found approximately four million U.S.-made Remington .303 bullets. The discovery supports the German's long-held belief that the Lusitania was being used to transport war materials. The find also supports the theory that it was the explosion of munitions on board that caused the second explosion on the Lusitania.
(Source: http://history1900s.about.com/cs/worl...)

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_...
http://www.pbs.org/lostliners/lusitan...
http://www.lusitania.net/
http://www.history.com/topics/lusitania
Robert D. Ballard
Daniel Allen Butler
A.A. Hoehling

Robert Lansing:



Robert Lansing was born on October 17, 1864, in Watertown, New York. He attended Amherst College, graduating in 1886, before becoming a lawyer in his father's practice.

Lansing entered the world of diplomacy when his father-in-law, Secretary of State John Foster, brought him along to the Bering Sea Fur Seal Arbitration; Lansing himself would serve as private counsel for the Chinese and Mexican diplomatic delegations. In 1906, Lansing founded the American Society of International Law. and with it, the American Journal of International Law. Four years later, and despite Lansing's affiliation with the Democratic Party, President William Howard Taft named him U.S. counsel for the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration Panel at The Hague.

Having been appointed counselor to the Department of State by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, Lansing took over as secretary of state in June 1915 following the resignation of William Jennings Bryan. Though he was cut out of negotiations involving the House-Grey memorandum, Lansing would be involved in various initiatives, including interventions in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Russia. Wilson asked for his resignation following Lansing's convocation of a cabinet meeting -- without Wilson's approval -- during the period in which Edith Wilson presided over her husband's affairs.

Lansing left the cabinet on February 13, 1920. Thereafter, he would write two books: The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Memoir, and The Big Four and Others of the Peace Conference. Robert Lansing died in Washington, D.C., on October 30, 1928.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/wil...)

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L...
http://history.state.gov/departmenthi...
& (no image)The Big Four And Others Of The Peace Conference by Robert Lansing
(no image)Robert Lansing And American Neutrality, 1914 1917 by Daniel Malloy Smith

I especially enjoyed the information on Edith Wilson and the sinking of the Lusitania. I think your posting really puts Edith's role in government in the proper perspective.

The sinking of the Lusitania was certainly a tragedy for all the innocent victims and a PR disaster for the Germans.

The Pearl Harbor of their generation

Yes, just as 9-11 was for us. I'm sure it had a huge impact. I wonder how much the Germans regretted it later.

Ann wrote: "Yes, just as 9-11 was for us. I'm sure it had a huge impact. I wonder how much the Germans regretted it later."

Good question...I don't know; I do know it created a lot of anti-German feeling in the U.S. Also, the war leaders didn't regret it at the time, probably not after either. You get the impression they had blinders on.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:



Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born to James and Sara Roosevelt in 1882. James was a land-owner and businessmen of considerable, but not awesome, wealth from New York. He likely joined the Democratic Party in the 1850s and identified with the party for the remainder of his life, although he voted for Republicans on a number of occasions. A widower, he married Sara Delano, who was twenty-six years his junior, in 1880. Sara, one of the five beautiful Delano sisters, came from a family of considerable means and was notable both for her aristocratic manner and her independent streak.

Franklin spent his youth near Hyde Park, about fifty miles north of New York City, on a large estate and farm tended by hundreds of workers. Insulated from the outside world and schooled at home by tutors until a teenager, Franklin had limited contact with his peers. Nonetheless, the family atmosphere was one of support and affection for the only child. Sara Roosevelt proved especially dedicated to Franklin, spending almost all of her considerable energies raising him. This unending devotion would continue throughout her long life, although not without deleterious consequences.

An Exclusive Upbringing

When Franklin was 14 years old, Sara and James sent him to the Groton School, his first serious schooling outside the home. Groton was an exclusive private school that educated the sons of some of the most wealthy and powerful American families. It aimed to instill in its students both mental and physical toughness and a desire to serve the public. Franklin's years at Groton were difficult. The school's rigorous social hierarchy rewarded boys who were good athletes or displayed a rebellious streak. FDR had neither quality, and he thus was never among the most popular of Groton boys, although his letters to his parents barely hinted at these failings. During his years at Groton, FDR grew quite admiring of his distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt, a close friend of Groton's rector and a rising political star in the Republican Party.

After graduating from Groton, FDR went to Harvard College in 1900. He had only been in school for a few weeks when his father, who had suffered from a heart ailment for the previous decade, passed away. At Harvard, Roosevelt threw himself into a wide array of extracurricular activities, helping his social standing but hurting his grades, which were mostly average. After receiving his undergraduate degree in 1903 he returned for a year of graduate work; more important, he became editor of Harvard's student newspaper, the Crimson. While at Harvard, FDR apparently declared himself a member of the Democratic Party, although he remained fond of then-President Theodore Roosevelt.

FDR also began paying more attention to members of the opposite sex. In his second year at Harvard, he proposed to a Boston heiress, Alice Sohier, who turned him down. He quickly turned his attentions to his distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (also known as ER). Eleanor was diffident, serious, and intelligent, as well as the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, all qualities that won her several suitors. While they had been admiring acquaintances as children, Franklin and Eleanor fell deeply in love as young adults. One obstacle remained, however: FDR's mother, Sara, was so protective of her son that it is doubtful she would have approved of any possible match. When, in 1904, FDR revealed to his mother that he was in love with Eleanor and that the two planned to marry, Sara—who had not known of the courtship—insisted that they wait one year. Delayed, but not denied, Franklin and Eleanor married on March 17, 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt gave the bride away. Between 1906 and 1916, the Roosevelts had six children, one of whom died as an infant.

A few months before his marriage, Franklin began law school at Columbia University. He attended for two years, never graduated, and displayed neither an aptitude nor a passion for the law. He did pass the bar, though, and worked for a few years at the New York City law firm of Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn. In 1910, however, fellow Democrats from upstate asked Roosevelt to run for political office. He quickly agreed. Although historians are unsure of FDR's precise motives for entering politics, a few reasons seem central. First, FDR truly disliked being a lawyer. Second, he enjoyed meeting new challenges and new people, both of which were integral to political life. Third, politics offered him the opportunity to be a leader, which appealed to his sense of self and conformed to his understanding of his role in the world. Finally, FDR's immense admiration for former President Theodore Roosevelt spurred him to try his hand at politics.

On the Rise

Roosevelt ran for the state senate from Dutchess County in upstate New York, a region dominated by Republicans. He was a good candidate because of his name, his family's wealth, and his seemingly endless reservoir of energy, which allowed him to campaign tirelessly on a clean-up-government platform. FDR won the race by over a thousand votes, the clear beneficiary of his own efforts and a split in the Republican Party between progressives and conservatives.

In the state senate, Roosevelt proved a staunch defender of the farmers in his district, who were mostly Republicans, and a determined opponent of the Tammany Hall political machine that essentially ran New York City's Democratic Party. He even went so far as to oppose Tammany's choice for the U.S. Senate seat, earning him the enmity of that powerful group of politicians. Roosevelt's politics in these years were essentially of the progressive, new nationalist variety. Like his distant relative, former President Teddy Roosevelt, he generally believed that the government had to play a role in creating and maintaining a fair and equitable society, and in protecting individuals from concentrations of economic or political power.

In 1912, FDR won re-election to the state senate and, just as important, forged a friendship with the political journalist Louis Howe, who would become his chief political adviser over the next two decades. FDR did not finish out his term, however. Roosevelt had backed the progressive governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson, in his successful campaign for the presidency in 1912. Wilson noted FDR's support and wanted to find a place for the young Democrat in his administration. When Wilson's secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, asked Roosevelt to serve as his assistant secretary, FDR accepted without hesitation. It was lost on no one that Teddy Roosevelt had been assistant secretary of the Navy in the first McKinley administration.

FDR loved being assistant secretary of the Navy. With Louis Howe as his assistant, Roosevelt oversaw the daily business of the Department of the Navy, including the ceremonial activities that FDR loved. But FDR also tried to shape the development of U.S. naval policy more generally—a prerogative traditionally of the secretary rather than the assistant secretary. Here, FDR emerged as a dogged advocate of a "big Navy," which won him his fair share of supporters among active and retired Navy personnel. During the world war in Europe, FDR consistently argued that the United States needed to improve its military capabilities. This position put him at odds with much of the Wilson administration, which feared any steps that might appear to violate America's declared neutrality. In 1917, FDR emerged as a forceful advocate of U.S. entry into the conflict. Once in the war, FDR supervised much of the Navy's contribution to the American effort.

Politics was never far from FDR's mind while working in Washington. In 1914, he tried (and failed) to win the Democratic nomination for an open New York seat in the U.S. Senate. He learned an important lesson, though: to succeed in New York politics he needed to mend fences with Tammany Hall. During World War I, Roosevelt endangered his political career in one other, much more significant, way as well. During his tenure in the Wilson Administration, FDR began a romantic relationship with Lucy Mercer, who was Eleanor's social secretary. In 1918, ER discovered the affair and offered FDR a divorce. He refused, in large part, because he knew that a divorcee could never succeed in American politics. He promised Eleanor that he would never see Mercer again—a vow he broke repeatedly later in life. While his political career was safe, his personal relationship with ER, already attenuated because she found being his wife stultifying, was further eroded; while they remained partners, they were no longer intimates in a loving and warm marriage. Eleanor set out to construct a life of her own, one in which she could find intellectual and emotional satisfaction with people other than her husband. Eleanor and Franklin's relationship was thereafter more of a political and social partnership than a loving and passionate marriage.

His service in the Wilson administration only augmented FDR's reputation among Democrats, and the party tapped him in 1920 as its vice presidential candidate. Although the ticket of FDR and presidential nominee James Cox lost in a rout to a Republican slate led by Warren Harding, FDR acquitted himself well, and his political future seemed bright. With the Democrats out of power, Roosevelt returned to the private sector, accepting a position as vice president of Fidelity and Deposit Company, a financial firm.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/fdr...)

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presi...
James Tertius de Kay
Kenneth Davis
James MacGregor Burns

SS Arabic & Its Sinking:



A German U-boat sank the British passenger ship Arabic, killing forty-four people, including two Americans. The attack, coupled with the sinking of the Lusitania, created a diplomatic crisis between Germany and the United States that was somewhat defused when Germany issued the Arabic Pledge, renouncing its unannounced attacks on passenger ships.
(Source: http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-...)

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Arabi...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract...
http://www.atlantictransportline.us/c...

Claude Kitchin:



a Representative from North Carolina; born near Scotland Neck, Halifax County, N.C., March 24, 1869; attended the common schools and was graduated from Wake Forest College, North Carolina, in 1888; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1890 and practiced in Scotland Neck; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-seventh and to the eleven succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1901, until his death; chairman, Committee on Ways and Means (Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth Congresses); majority leader (Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth Congresses), minority leader (Sixty-seventh Congress); died in Wilson, N.C., May 31, 1923; interment in the Baptist Cemetery, Scotland Neck, N.C.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_K...
http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/c...

1915 State of the Union, Part One:

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

Since I last had the privilege of addressing you on the state of the Union the war of nations on the other side of the sea, which had then only begun to disclose its portentous proportions, has extended its threatening and sinister scope until it has swept within its flame some portion of every quarter of the globe, not excepting our own hemisphere, has altered the whole face of international affairs, and now presents a prospect of reorganization and reconstruction such as statesmen and peoples have never been called upon to attempt before.

We have stood apart, studiously neutral. It was our manifest duty to do so. Not only did we have no part or interest in the policies which seem to have brought the conflict on; it was necessary, if a universal catastrophe was to be avoided, that a limit should be set to the sweep of destructive war and that some part of the great family of nations should keep the processes of peace alive, if only to prevent collective economic ruin and the breakdown throughout the world of the industries by which its populations are fed and sustained. It was manifestly the duty of the self-governed nations of this hemisphere to redress, if possible, the balance of economic loss and confusion in the other, if they could do nothing more. In the day of readjustment and recuperation we earnestly hope and believe that they can be of infinite service.

In this neutrality, to which they were bidden not only by their separate life and their habitual detachment from the politics of Europe but also by a clear perception of international duty, the states of America have become conscious of a new and more vital community of interest and moral partnership in affairs, more clearly conscious of the many common sympathies and interests and duties which bid them stand together.

There was a time in the early days of our own great nation and of the republics fighting their way to independence in Central and South America when the government of the United States looked upon itself as in some sort the guardian of the republics to the South of her as against any encroachments or efforts at political control from the other side of the water; felt it its duty to play the part even without invitation from them; and I think that we can claim that the task was undertaken with a true and disinterested enthusiasm for the freedom of the Americas and the unmolested Self government of her independent peoples. But it was always difficult to maintain such a role without offense to the pride of the peoples whose freedom of action we sought to protect, and without provoking serious misconceptions of our motives, and every thoughtful man of affairs must welcome the altered circumstances of the new day in whose light we now stand, when there is no claim of guardianship or thought of wards but, instead, a full and honorable association as of partners between ourselves and our neighbors, in the interest of all America, north and south. Our concern for the independence and prosperity of the states of Central and South America is not altered. We retain unabated the spirit that has inspired us throughout the whole life of our government and which was so frankly put into words by President Monroe. We still mean always to make a common cause of national independence and of political liberty in America. But that purpose is now better understood so far as it concerns ourselves. It is known not to be a selfish purpose. It is known to have in it no thought of taking advantage of any government in this hemisphere or playing its political fortunes for our own benefit. All the governments of America stand, so far as we are concerned, upon a footing of genuine equality and unquestioned independence.

We have been put to the test in the case of Mexico, and we have stood the test. Whether we have benefited Mexico by the course we have pursued remains to be seen. Her fortunes are in her own hands. But we have at least proved that we will not take advantage of her in her distress and undertake to impose upon her an order and government of our own choosing. Liberty is often a fierce and intractable thing, to which no bounds can be set, and to which no bounds of a few men's choosing ought ever to be set. Every American who has drunk at the true fountains of principle and tradition must subscribe without reservation to the high doctrine of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which in the great days in which our government was set up was everywhere amongst us accepted as the creed of free men. That doctrine is, "That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community"; that "of all the various modes and forms of government, that is the best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal." We have unhesitatingly applied that heroic principle to the case of Mexico, and now hopefully await the rebirth of the troubled Republic, which had so much of which to purge itself and so little sympathy from any outside quarter in the radical but necessary process. We will aid and befriend Mexico, but we will not coerce her; and our course with regard to her ought to be sufficient proof to all America that we seek no political suzerainty or selfish control.

The moral is, that the states of America are not hostile rivals but cooperating friends, and that their growing sense of community or interest, alike in matters political and in matters economic, is likely to give them a new significance as factors in international affairs and in the political history of the world. It presents them as in a very deep and true sense a unit in world affairs, spiritual partners, standing together because thinking together, quick with common sympathies and common ideals. Separated they are subject to all the cross currents of the confused politics of a world of hostile rivalries; united in spirit and purpose they cannot be disappointed of their peaceful destiny.

This is Pan-Americanism. It has none of the spirit of empire in it. It is the embodiment, the effectual embodiment, of the spirit of law and independence and liberty and mutual service.

A very notable body of men recently met in the City of Washington, at the invitation and as the guests of this Government, whose deliberations are likely to be looked back to as marking a memorable turning point in the history of America. They were representative spokesmen of the several independent states of this hemisphere and were assembled to discuss the financial and commercial relations of the republics of the two continents which nature and political fortune have so intimately linked together. I earnestly recommend to your perusal the reports of their proceedings and of the actions of their committees. You will get from them, I think, a fresh conception of the ease and intelligence and advantage with which Americans of both continents may draw together in practical cooperation and of what the material foundations of this hopeful partnership of interest must consist,-of how we should build them and of how necessary it is that we should hasten their building.

There is, I venture to point out, an especial significance just now attaching to this whole matter of drawing the Americans together in bonds of honorable partnership and mutual advantage because of the economic readjustments which the world must inevitably witness within the next generation, when peace shall have at last resumed its healthful tasks. In the performance of these tasks I believe the Americas to be destined to play their parts together. I am interested to fix your attention on this prospect now because unless you take it within your view and permit the full significance of it to command your thought I cannot find the right light in which to set forth the particular matter that lies at the very font of my whole thought as I address you to-day. I mean national defense.

No one who really comprehends the spirit of the great people for whom we are appointed to speak can fail to perceive that their passion is for peace, their genius best displayed in the practice of the arts of peace. Great democracies are not belligerent. They do not seek or desire war. Their thought is of individual liberty and of the free labor that supports life and the uncensored thought that quickens it. Conquest and dominion are not in our reckoning, or agreeable to our principles. But just because we demand unmolested development and the undisturbed government of our own lives upon our own principles of right and liberty, we resent, from whatever quarter it may come, the aggression we ourselves will not practice. We insist upon security in prosecuting our self-chosen lines of national development. We do more than that. We demand it also for others. We do not confine our enthusiasm for individual liberty and free national development to the incidents and movements of affairs which affect only ourselves. We feel it wherever there is a people that tries to walk in these difficult paths of independence and right. From the first we have made common cause with all partisans of liberty on this side the sea, and have deemed it as important that our neighbors should be free from all outside domination as that we ourselves should be.- have set America aside as a whole for the uses of independent nations and political freemen.

Out of such thoughts grow all our policies. We regard war merely as a means of asserting the rights of a people against aggression. And we are as fiercely jealous of coercive or dictatorial power within our own nation as of aggression from without. We will not maintain a standing army except for uses which are as necessary in times of peace as in times of war; and we shall always see to it that our military peace establishment is no larger than is actually and continuously needed for the uses of days in which no enemies move against us. But we do believe in a body of free citizens ready and sufficient to take care of themselves and of the governments which they have set up to serve them. In our constitutions themselves we have commanded that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," and our confidence has been that our safety in times of danger would lie in the rising of the nation to take care of itself, as the farmers rose at Lexington.

But war has never been a mere matter of men and guns. It is a thing of disciplined might. If our citizens are ever to fight effectively upon a sudden summons, they must know how modern fighting is done, and what to do when the summons comes to render themselves immediately available and immediately effective. And the government must be their servant in this matter, must supply them with the training they need to take care of themselves and of it. The military arm of their government, which they will not allow to direct them, they may properly use to serve them and make their independence secure,-and not their own independence merely but the rights also of those with whom they have made common cause, should they also be put in jeopardy. They must be fitted to play the great role in the world, and particularly in this hemisphere, for which they are qualified by principle and by chastened ambition to play.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/spe...)

1915 State of the Union, Part Two:

It is with these ideals in mind that the plans of the Department of War for more adequate national defense were conceived which will be laid before you, and which I urge you to sanction and put into effect as soon as they can be properly scrutinized and discussed. They seem to me the essential first steps, and they seem to me for the present sufficient.

They contemplate an increase of the standing force of the regular army from its present strength of five thousand and twenty-three officers and one hundred and two thousand nine hundred and eightyfive enlisted men of all services to a strength of seven thousand one hundred and thirty-six officers and one hundred and thirty-four thousand seven hundred and seven enlisted men, or 141,843, all told, all services, rank and file, by the addition of fifty-two companies of coast artillery, fifteen companies of engineers, ten regiments of infantry, four regiments of field artillery, and four aero squadrons, besides seven hundred and fifty officers required for a great variety of extra service, especially the all important duty of training the citizen force of which I shall presently speak, seven hundred and ninety-two noncommissioned officers for service in drill, recruiting and the like, and the necessary quota of enlisted men for the Quartermaster Corps, the Hospital Corps, the Ordnance Department, and other similar auxiliary services. These are the additions necessary to render the army adequate for its present duties, duties which it has to perform not only upon our own continental coasts and borders and at our interior army posts, but also in the Philippines, in the Hawaiian Islands, at the Isthmus, and in Porto Rico.

By way of making the country ready to assert some part of its real power promptly and upon a larger scale, should occasion arise, the plan also contemplates supplementing the army by a force of four hundred thousand disciplined citizens, raised in increments of one hundred and thirty-three thousand a year throughout a period of three years. This it is proposed to do by a process of enlistment under which the serviceable men of the country would be asked to bind themselves to serve with the colors for purposes of training for short periods throughout three years, and to come to the colors at call at any time throughout an additional "furlough" period of three years. This force of four hundred thousand men would be provided with personal accoutrements as fast as enlisted and their equipment for the field made ready to be supplied at any time. They would be assembled for training at stated intervals at convenient places in association with suitable units of the regular army. Their period of annual training would not necessarily exceed two months in the year.

It would depend upon the patriotic feeling of the younger men of the country whether they responded to such a call to service or not. It would depend upon the patriotic spirit of the employers of the country whether they made it possible for the younger men in their employ to respond under favorable conditions or not. I, for one, do not doubt the patriotic devotion either of our young men or of those who give them employment,--those for whose benefit and protection they would in fact enlist. I would look forward to the success of such an experiment with entire confidence.

At least so much by way of preparation for defense seems to me to be absolutely imperative now. We cannot do less.

The programme which will be laid before you by the Secretary of the Navy is similarly conceived. It involves only a shortening of the time within which plans long matured shall be carried out; but it does make definite and explicit a programme which has heretofore been only implicit, held in the minds of the Committees on Naval Affairs and disclosed in the debates of the two Houses but nowhere formulated or formally adopted. It seems to me very clear that it will be to the advantage of the country for the Congress to adopt a comprehensive plan for putting the navy upon a final footing of strength and efficiency and to press that plan to completion within the next five years. We have always looked to the navy of the country as our first and chief line of defense; we have always seen it to be our manifest course of prudence to be strong on the seas. Year by year we have been creating a navy which now ranks very high indeed among the navies of the maritime nations. We should now definitely determine how we shall complete what we have begun, and how soon.

The programme to be laid before you contemplates the construction within five years of ten battleships, six battle cruisers, ten scout cruisers, fifty destroyers, fifteen fleet submarines, eighty-five coast submarines, four gunboats, one hospital ship, two ammunition ships, two fuel oil ships, and one repair ship. It is proposed that of this number we shall the first year provide for the construction of two battleships, two battle cruisers, three scout cruisers, fifteen destroyers, five fleet submarines, twenty-five coast submarines, two gunboats, and one hospital ship; the second year, two battleships, one scout cruiser, ten destroyers, four fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one gunboat, and one fuel oil ship; the third year, two battleships, one battle cruiser, two scout cruisers, five destroyers, two fleet sub marines, and fifteen coast submarines; the fourth year, two battleships, two battle cruisers, two scout cruisers, ten destroyers, two fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one ammunition ship, and one fuel oil ship; and the fifth year, two battleships, one battle cruiser, two scout cruisers, ten destroyers, two fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one gunboat, one ammunition ship, and one repair ship.

The Secretary of the Navy is asking also for the immediate addition to the personnel of the navy of seven thousand five hundred sailors, twenty-five hundred apprentice seamen, and fifteen hundred marines. This increase would be sufficient to care for the ships which are to be completed within the fiscal year 1917 and also for the number of men which must be put in training to man the ships which will be completed early in 1918. It is also necessary that the number of midshipmen at the Naval academy at Annapolis should be increased by at least three hundred in order that the force of officers should be more rapidly added to; and authority is asked to appoint, for engineering duties only, approved graduates of engineering colleges, and for service in the aviation corps a certain number of men taken from civil life.

If this full programme should be carried out we should have built or building in 1921, according to the estimates of survival and standards of classification followed by the General Board of the Department, an effective navy consisting of twenty-seven battleships of the first line, six battle cruisers, twenty-five battleships of the second line, ten armored cruisers, thirteen scout cruisers, five first class cruisers, three second class cruisers, ten third class cruisers, one hundred and eight destroyers, eighteen fleet submarines, one hundred and fifty-seven coast submarines, six monitors, twenty gunboats, four supply ships, fifteen fuel ships, four transports, three tenders to torpedo vessels, eight vessels of special types, and two ammunition ships. This would be a navy fitted to our needs and worthy of our traditions.

But armies and instruments of war are only part of what has to be considered if we are to provide for the supreme matter of national self-sufficiency and security in all its aspects. There are other great matters which will be thrust upon our attention whether we will or not. There is, for example, a very pressing question of trade and shipping involved in this great problem of national adequacy. It is necessary for many weighty reasons of national efficiency and development that we should have a great merchant marine. The great merchant fleet we once used to make us rich, that great body of sturdy sailors who used to carry our flag into every sea, and who were the pride and often the bulwark of the nation, we have almost driven out of existence by inexcusable neglect and indifference and by a hope lessly blind and provincial policy of so-called economic protection. It is high time we repaired our mistake and resumed our commercial independence on the seas.

For it is a question of independence. If other nations go to war or seek to hamper each other's commerce, our merchants, it seems, are at their mercy, to do with as they please. We must use their ships, and use them as they determine. We have not ships enough of our own. We cannot handle our own commerce on the seas. Our independence is provincial, and is only on land and within our own borders. We are not likely to be permitted to use even the ships of other nations in rivalry of their own trade, and are without means to extend our commerce even where the doors are wide open and our goods desired. Such a situation is not to be endured. It is of capital importance not only that the United States should be its own carrier on the seas and enjoy the economic independence which only an adequate merchant marine would give it, but also that the American hemisphere as a whole should enjoy a like independence and self-sufficiency, if it is not to be drawn into the tangle of European affairs. Without such independence the whole question of our political unity and self-determination is very seriously clouded and complicated indeed.

Moreover, we can develop no true or effective American policy without ships of our own,--not ships of war, but ships of peace, carrying goods and carrying much more: creating friendships and rendering indispensable services to all interests on this side the water. They must move constantly back and forth between the Americas. They are the only shuttles that can weave the delicate fabric of sympathy, -comprehension, confidence, and mutual dependence in which we wish to clothe our policy of America for Americans.

The task of building up an adequate merchant marine for America private capital must ultimately undertake and achieve, as it has undertaken and achieved every other like task amongst us in the past, with admirable enterprise, intelligence, and vigor; and it seems to me a manifest dictate of wisdom that we should promptly remove every legal obstacle that may stand in the way of this much to be desired revival of our old independence and should facilitate in every possible way the building, purchase, and American registration of ships. But capital cannot accomplish this great task of a sudden. It must embark upon it by degrees, as the opportunities of trade develop. Something must be done at once; done to open routes and develop opportunities where they are as yet undeveloped; done to open the arteries of trade where the currents have not yet learned to run,-especially between the two American continents, where they are, singularly enough, yet to be created and quickened; and it is evident that only the government can undertake such beginnings and assume the initial financial risks. When the risk has passed and private capital begins to find its way in sufficient abundance into these new channels, the government may withdraw. But it cannot omit to begin. It should take the first steps, and should take them at once. Our goods must not lie piled up at our ports and stored upon side tracks in freight cars which are daily needed on the roads; must not be left without means of transport to any foreign quarter. We must not await the permission of foreign ship-owners and foreign governments to send them where we will.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/spe...)

1915 State of the Union, Part Three:

With a view to meeting these pressing necessities of our commerce and availing ourselves at the earliest possible moment of the present unparalleled opportunity of linking the two Americas together in bonds of mutual interest and service, an opportunity which may never return again if we miss it now, proposals will be made to the present Congress for the purchase or construction of ships to be owned and directed by the government similar to those made to the last Congress, but modified in some essential particulars. I recommend these proposals to you for your prompt acceptance with the more confidence because every month that has elapsed since the former proposals were made has made the necessity for such action more and more manifestly imperative. That need was then foreseen; it is now acutely felt and everywhere realized by those for whom trade is waiting but who can find no conveyance for their goods. I am not so much interested in the particulars of the programme as I am in taking immediate advantage of the great opportunity which awaits us if we will but act in this emergency. In this matter, as in all others, a spirit of common counsel should prevail, and out of it should come an early solution of this pressing problem.

There is another matter which seems to me to be very intimately associated with the question of national safety and preparation for defense. That is our policy towards the Philippines and the people of Porto Rico. Our treatment of them and their attitude towards us are manifestly of the first consequence in the development of our duties in the world and in getting a free hand to perform those duties. We must be free from every unnecessary burden or embarrassment; and there is no better way to be clear of embarrassment than to fulfil our promises and promote the interests of those dependent on us to the utmost. Bills for the alteration and reform of the government of the Philippines and for rendering fuller political justice to the people of Porto Rico were submitted to the sixty-third Congress. They will be submitted also to you. I need not particularize their details. You are most of you already familiar with them. But I do recommend them to your early adoption with the sincere conviction that there are few measures you could adopt which would more serviceably clear the way for the great policies by which we wish to make good, now and always, our right to lead in enterpriscs of peace and good will and economic and political freedom.

The plans for the armed forces of the nation which I have outlined, and for the general policy of adequate preparation for mobilization and defense, involve of course very large additional expenditures of money,-expenditures which will considerably exceed the estimated revenues of the government. It is made my duty by law, whenever the estimates of expenditure exceed the estimates of revenue, to call the attention of the Congress to the fact and suggest any means of meeting the deficiency that it may be wise or possible for me to suggest. I am ready to believe that it would be my duty to do so in any case; and I feel particularly bound to speak of the matter when it appears that the deficiency will arise directly out of the adoption by the Congress of measures which I myself urge it to adopt. Allow me, therefore, to speak briefly of the present state of the Treasury and of the fiscal problems which the next year will probably disclose.

On the thirtieth of June last there was an available balance in the general fund of the Treasury Of $104,170,105.78. The total estimated receipts for the year 1916, on the assumption that the emergency revenue measure passed by the last Congress will not be extended beyond its present limit, the thirty-first of December, 1915, and that the present duty of one cent per pound on sugar will be discontinued after the first of May, 1916, will be $670,365,500. The balance of June last and these estimated revenues come, therefore, to a grand total of $774,535,605-78. The total estimated disbursements for the present fiscal year, including twenty-five millions for the Panama Canal, twelve millions for probable deficiency appropriations, and fifty thousand dollars for miscellaneous debt redemptions, will be $753,891,000; and the balance in the general fund of the Treasury will be reduced to $20,644,605.78. The emergency revenue act, if continued beyond its present time limitation, would produce, during the half year then remaining, about forty-one millions. The duty of one cent per pound on sugar, if continued, would produce during the two months of the fiscal year remaining after the first of May, about fifteen millions. These two sums, amounting together to fifty-six millions, if added to the revenues of the second half of the fiscal year, would yield the Treasury at the end of the year an available balance Of $76,644,605-78.

The additional revenues required to carry out the programme of military and naval preparation of which I have spoken, would, as at present estimated, be for the fiscal year, 1917, $93,800,000. Those figures, taken with the figures for the present fiscal year which I have already given, disclose our financial problem for the year 1917. Assuming that the taxes imposed by the emergency revenue act and the present duty on sugar are to be discontinued, and that the balance at the close of the present fiscal year will be only $20,644,605.78, that the disbursements for the Panama Canal will again be about twenty-five millions, and that the additional expenditures for the army and navy are authorized by the Congress, the deficit in the general fund of the Treasury on the thirtieth of June, 1917, will be nearly two hundred and thirty-five millions. To this sum at least fifty millions should be added to represent a safe working balance for the Treasury, and twelve millions to include the usual deficiency estimates in 1917; and these additions would make a total deficit of some two hundred and ninety-seven millions. If the present taxes should be continued throughout this year and the next, however, there would be a balance in the Treasury of some seventy-six and a half millions at the end of the present fiscal year, and a deficit at the end of the next year of only some fifty millions, or, reckoning in sixty-two millions for deficiency appropriations and a safe Treasury balance at the end of the year, a total deficit of some one hundred and twelve millions. The obvious moral of the figures is that it is a plain counsel of prudence to continue all of the present taxes or their equivalents, and confine ourselves to the problem of providing one hundred and twelve millions of new revenue rather than two hundred and ninety-seven millions.

How shall we obtain the new revenue? We are frequently reminded that there are many millions of bonds which the Treasury is authorized under existing law to sell to reimburse the sums paid out of current revenues for the construction of the Panama Canal; and it is true that bonds to the amount of approximately $222,000,000 are now available for that purpose. Prior to 1913, $134,631,980 of these bonds had actually been sold to recoup the expenditures at the Isthmus; and now constitute a considerable item of the public debt. But I, for one, do not believe that the people of this country approve of postponing the payment of their bills. Borrowing money is short-sighted finance. It can be justified only when permanent things are to be accomplished which many generations will certainly benefit by and which it seems hardly fair that a single generation should pay for. The objects we are now proposing to spend money for cannot be so classified, except in the sense that everything wisely done may be said to be done in the interest of posterity as well as in our own. It seems to me a clear dictate of prudent statesmanship and frank finance that in what we are now, I hope, about to undertake we should pay as we go. The people of the country are entitled to know just what burdens of taxation they are to carry, and to know from the outset, now. The new bills should be paid by internal taxation.

To what sources, then, shall we turn? This is so peculiarly a question which the gentlemen of the House of Representatives are expected under the Constitution to propose an answer to that you will hardly expect me to do more than discuss it in very general terms. We should be following an almost universal example of modern governments if we were to draw the greater part or even the whole of the revenues we need from the income taxes. By somewhat lowering the present limits of exemption and the figure at which the surtax shall begin to be imposed, and by increasing, step by step throughout the present graduation, the surtax itself, the income taxes as at present apportioned would yield sums sufficient to balance the books of the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year 1917 without anywhere making the burden unreasonably or oppressively heavy. The precise reckonings are fully and accurately set out in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury which will be immediately laid before you.

And there are many additional sources of revenue which can justly be resorted to without hampering the industries of the country or putting any too great charge upon individual expenditure. A tax of one cent per gallon on gasoline and naphtha would yield, at the present estimated production, $10,000,000; a tax of fifty cents per horse power on automobiles and internal explosion engines, $15,000,000; a stamp tax on bank cheques, probably $18,000,000; a tax of twenty-five cents per ton on pig iron, $10,000,000; a tax of twenty-five cents per ton on fabricated iron and steel, probably $10,000,000. In a country of great industries like this it ought to be easy to distribute the burdens of taxation without making them anywhere bear too heavily or too exclusively upon any one set of persons or undertakings. What is clear is, that the industry of this generation should pay the bills of this generation.
(Source: millercenter.org/president/speeches/d...)

1915 State of the Union, Part Four:

I have spoken to you to-day, Gentlemen, upon a single theme, the thorough preparation of the nation to care for its own security and to make sure of entire freedom to play the impartial role in this hemisphere and in the world which we all believe to have been providentially assigned to it. I have had in my mind no thought of any immediate or particular danger arising out of our relations with other nations. We are at peace with all the nations of the world, and there is reason to hope that no question in controversy between this and other Governments will lead to any serious breach of amicable relations, grave as some differences of attitude and policy have been land may yet turn out to be. I am sorry to say that the gravest threats against our national peace and safety have been uttered within our own borders. There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue. Their number is not great as compared with the whole number of those sturdy hosts by which our nation has been enriched in recent generations out of virile foreign stock; but it is great enough to have brought deep disgrace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers. America never witnessed anything like this before. It never dreamed it possible that men sworn into its own citizenship, men drawn out of great free stocks such as supplied some of the best and strongest elements of that little, but how heroic, nation that in a high day of old staked its very life to free itself from every entanglement that had darkened the fortunes of the older nations and set up a new standard here,that men of such origins and such free choices of allegiance would ever turn in malign reaction against the Government and people who bad welcomed and nurtured them and seek to make this proud country once more a hotbed of European passion. A little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. Because it was incredible we made no preparation for it. We would have been almost ashamed to prepare for it, as if we were suspicious of ourselves, our own comrades and neighbors! But the ugly and incredible thing has actually come about and we are without adequate federal laws to deal with it. I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own. It is possible to deal with these things very effectually. I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with.

I wish that it could be said that only a few men, misled by mistaken sentiments of allegiance to the governments under which they were born, had been guilty of disturbing the self-possession and misrepresenting the temper and principles of the country during these days of terrible war, when it would seem that every man who was truly an American would instinctively make it his duty and his pride to keep the scales of judgment even and prove himself a partisan of no nation but his own. But it cannot. There are some men among us, and many resident abroad who, though born and bred in the United States and calling themselves Americans, have so forgotten themselves and their honor as citizens as to put their passionate sympathy with one or the other side in the great European conflict above their regard for the peace and dignity of the United States. They also preach and practice disloyalty. No laws, I suppose, can reach corruptions of the mind and heart; but I should not speak of others without also speaking of these and expressing the even deeper humiliation and scorn which every self-possessed and thoughtfully patriotic American must feel when lie thinks of them and of the discredit they are daily bringing upon us.

While we speak of the preparation of the nation to make sure of her security and her effective power we must not fall into the patent error of supposing that her real strength comes from armaments and mere safeguards of written law. It comes, of course, from her people, their energy, their success in their undertakings, their free opportunity to use the natural resources of our great home land and of the lands outside our continental borders which look to us for protection, for encouragement, and for assistance in their development; from the organization and freedom and vitality of our economic life. The domestic questions which engaged the attention of the last Congress are more vital to the nation in this its time of test than at any other time. We cannot adequately make ready for any trial of our strength unless we wisely and promptly direct the force of our laws into these all-important fields of domestic action. A matter which it seems to me we should have very much at heart is the creation of the right instrumentalities by which to mobilize our economic resources in any time of national necessity. I take it for granted that I do not need your authority to call into systematic consultation with the directing officers of the army and navy men of recognized leadership and ability from among our citizens who are thoroughly familiar, for example, with the transportation facilities of the country and therefore competent to advise how they may be coordinated when the need arises, those who can suggest the best way in which to bring about prompt cooperation among the manufacturers of the country, should it be necessary, and those who could assist to bring the technical skill of the country to the aid of the Government in the solution of particular problems of defense. I only hope that if I should find it feasible to constitute such an advisory body the Congress would be willing to vote the small sum of money that would be needed to defray the expenses that would probably be necessary to give it the clerical and administrative Machinery with which to do serviceable work.

What is more important is, that the industries and resources of the country should be available and ready for mobilization. It is the more imperatively necessary, therefore, that we should promptly devise means for doing what we have not yet done: that we should give intelligent federal aid and stimulation to industrial and vocational education, as we have long done in the large field of our agricultural industry; that, at the same time that we safeguard and conserve the natural resources of the country we should put them at the disposal of those who will use them promptly and intelligently, as was sought to be done in the admirable bills submitted to the last Congress from its committees on the public lands, bills which I earnestly recommend in principle to your consideration; that we should put into early operation some provision for rural credits which will add to the extensive borrowing facilities already afforded the farmer by the Reserve Bank Act, adequate instrumentalities by which long credits may be obtained on land mortgages; and that we should study more carefully than they have hitherto been studied the right adaptation of our economic arrangements to changing conditions.

Many conditions about which we have repeatedly legislated are being altered from decade to decade, it is evident, under our very eyes, and are likely to change even more rapidly and more radically in the days immediately ahead of us, when peace has returned to the world and the nations of Europe once more take up their tasks of commerce and industry with the energy of those who must bestir themselves to build anew. just what these changes will be no one can certainly foresee or confidently predict. There are no calculable, because no stable, elements in the problem. The most we can do is to make certain that we have the necessary instrumentalities of information constantly at our service so that we may be sure that we know exactly what we are dealing with when we come to act, if it should be necessary to act at all. We must first certainly know what it is that we are seeking to adapt ourselves to. I may ask the privilege of addressing you more at length on this important matter a little later in your session.

In the meantime may I make this suggestion? The transportation problem is an exceedingly serious and pressing one in this country. There has from time to time of late been reason to fear that our railroads would not much longer be able to cope with it successfully, as at present equipped and coordinated I suggest that it would be wise to provide for a commission of inquiry to ascertain by a thorough canvass of the whole question whether our laws as at present framed and administered are as serviceable as they might be' in the solution of the problem. It is obviously a problem that lies at the very foundation of our efficiency as a people. Such an inquiry ought to draw out every circumstance and opinion worth considering and we need to know all sides of the matter if we mean to do anything in the field of federal legislation.

No one, I am sure, would wish to take any backward step. The regulation of the railways of the country by federal commission has had admirable results and has fully justified the hopes and expectations of those by whom the policy of regulation was originally proposed. The question is not what should we undo. It is, whether there is anything else we can do that would supply us with effective means, in the very process of regulation, for bettering the conditions under which the railroads are operated and for making them more useful servants of the country as a whole. It seems to me that it might be the part of wisdom, therefore, before further legislation in this field is attempted, to look at the whole problem of coordination and efficiency in the full light of a fresh assessment of circumstance and opinion, as a guide to dealing with the several parts of it.

For what we are seeking now, what in my mind is the single thought of this message, is national efficiency and security. We serve a great nation. We should serve it in the spirit of its peculiar genius. It is the genius of common men for self-government, industry, justice, liberty and peace. We should see to it that it lacks no instrument, no facility or vigor of law, to make it sufficient to play its part with energy, safety, and assured success. In this we are no partisans but heralds and prophets of a new age.
(Source: millercenter.org/president/speeches/d...)

U.S. Suffrage in Progressive Era



By the beginning of the 20th century, the efforts of suffragists had begun to bear fruit. Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho had given women full suffrage rights and in many states women were allowed to vote in municipal and school board elections. A women's suffrage amendment was debated nationally for the first time in 1878, and Stanton, Anthony, and other suffragists used civil disobedience -- attempting to vote -- to gain attention for their cause.

During the Progressive Era (1890-1920), women played more active roles in the larger economic, cultural, and political transformation of American society. This growth in women's public roles allowed suffragists to be more aggressive in support of their cause as they developed stronger bases of support in the settlement houses, temperance organizations, labor unions, and reform movements that now sprang up across the country. The National American Women's Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, fought for suffrage using parades, street speakers, petitions, and rallies.

Sixteen states, including New York, had given women the right to vote by 1917, but the U.S. Constitution was not amended to enfranchise women until after World War I. Alice Paul, a founder of the National Woman's Party, led daily marches in front of the White House during the war, using President Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric of democracy and self-government to support the cause. As more and more states endorsed suffrage, so did their representatives in Congress. In 1918 Wilson reluctantly approved a constitutional change, and in 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment made women's suffrage the law of the land.
(Source: http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/conten...)

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Sara M. Evans
Eleanor Flexner (no photo)
Anne Firor Scott
Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (no photo)
Doris Stevens (no photo)

James Hay



Representative from Virginia; born in Millwood, Clark County, Va., January 9, 1856; attended private schools and the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia; was graduated from the law department of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., in 1877; was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Harrisonburg, Va., in 1877; moved to Madison, Va., in June 1879 and continued the practice of law; Commonwealth attorney 1883-1896; member of the State house of delegates 1885-1889; served in the State senate 1893-1897; member of the Democratic State committee in 1888; delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1888; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-fifth and to the nine succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1897, until his resignation on October 1, 1916; chairman, Committee on Military Affairs (Sixty-second through Sixty-fourth Congresses); appointed judge of the United States Court of Claims and served until December 1, 1927, when he resigned; died in Madison, Va., June 12, 1931; interment in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)

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William Stone



a Representative and a Senator from Missouri; born near Richmond, Madison County, Ky., May 7, 1848; attended the public schools of Richmond, Ky.; graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1867; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1869 and commenced practice in Bedford, Ind.; moved to Columbia, Mo., where he was city attorney for a few months in 1870, and later in the same year moved to Nevada, Mo., and continued the practice of law; prosecuting attorney of Vernon County, Mo., 1873-1874; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1876; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-ninth, Fiftieth, and Fifty-first Congresses (March 4, 1885-March 3, 1891); was not a candidate for renomination in 1890; chairman, Committee on War Claims (Fiftieth Congress); Governor of Missouri 1893-1897; moved to Jefferson City, Mo., in 1893; member of the Democratic National Committee 1896-1904, serving as vice chairman 1900-1904; moved to St. Louis in 1897 and continued the practice of law; returned to Jefferson City in 1903; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1902; reelected in 1908 and 1914 and served from March 4, 1903, until his death; chairman, Committee on Additional Accommodations for the Library (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Revolutionary Claims (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Corporations Organized in the District of Columbia (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Foreign Relations (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Indian Affairs (Sixty-third Congress); died in Washington, D.C., April 14, 1918; interment in Deepwood Cemetery, Nevada, Vernon County, Mo.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)

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(no image)Senator William J. Stone and the Politics of Compromise by Ruth Warner Towne (no photo)

Henry "Hal" Flood



a Representative from Virginia; born in “Eldon,” Appomattox County, Va., September 2, 1865; attended the public schools of Appomattox and Richmond, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., and the University of Virginia at Charlottesville; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1886 and commenced practice in Appomattox, Va.; member of the Virginia state house of delegates, 1887-1891; member of the Virginia state senate, 1891-1903; elected prosecuting attorney for Appomattox County, 1891, 1895, and 1899; unsuccessful candidate for election to the Fifty-fifth Congress; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-seventh and to the ten succeeding Congresses and served until his death (March 4, 1901-December 8, 1921); chair, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Sixty-second through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Territories (Sixty-second Congress); author of the resolutions declaring a state of war to exist between the United States and the Imperial German Government and with the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Government; died on December 8, 1921, in Washington, D.C.; interment in a mausoleum on the courthouse green at Appomattox, Va.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)

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Arthur James Balfour



Arthur Balfour was born on the family's Scottish estate in East Lothian in 1848. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he entered the House of Commons in 1874 as the Conservative MP for Hertford.

In 1878 Balfour became private secretary to his uncle, the Marquess of Salisbury, who was Foreign Secretary in the Conservative government headed by Benjamin Disraeli.

In the 1885 General Election Balfour was elected to represent the East Manchester constituency. The Marquess of Salisbury, who was now Prime Minister, appointed him as his Secretary for Scotland. Other posts during the next few years included Chief Secretary of Ireland (1887), First Lord of the Treasury (1892) and leader of the House of Commons (1892).

Balfour replaced his uncle as Prime Minister in 1902. The most important events during his premiership included the 1902 Education Act and the ending of the Boer War. The topic of Tariff Reform split Balfour's government and when he resigned in 1905, Edward VII invited Henry Campbell-Bannerman to form a government. Campbell-Bannerman accepted and in the 1906 General Election that followed the Liberal Party had a landslide victory.

Balfour remained leader of the Conservative Party until he was replaced by Andrew Bonar Law in 1911. He returned to government when in 1915 Herbert Asquith offered him the post of First Lord of the Admiralty in Britain's First World War coalition government. The following year, David Lloyd George, the new Prime Minister, appointed him as Foreign Secretary, and consequently was responsible for the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which promised Zionists a national home in Palestine.

F, who worked for The Times reported: "I saw that Balfour was not a great man. He had charm and wit; he could be energetic when he chose, but he chose very seldom; he had a marvellously acute mind, but he feared the logic of its conclusions. He was truly bored by almost everything, and he was born lazy. I recall one of his official secretaries telling me furiously how Balfour was primed for a critical debate, given sheaves of notes, told what his line of argument must be. And then, spluttered Robert Morant, he stuffed all the papers in his pocket without looking at them, and made a speech that missed all the essential points. After such episodes he would be more than usually charming, and would ask with a smile and a slight lift of his shoulders, What does it matter?"

Balfour left Lloyd George's government in 1919 but returned to office when he served as Lord President of the Council (1925-29) in the Conservative government headed by Stanley Baldwin. Arthur Balfour died in 1930.
(Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...)

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Aristide Briand



(March 28, 1862-March 7, 1932), while at the height of his influence within the League of Nations, attended a dinner in Geneva where the guests were given menu cards on which was printed a cartoon depicting the statesmen of the world smashing a statue of Mars while Briand, alone, talked to the god of war trying to convince him to commit suicide1. The cartoon caught not only Briand's main objective in public life - the elimination of war in international relations - but also his method: his penchant for personal diplomacy, his renowned persuasiveness, and his habit of attacking the heart of a problem rather than its symbols or symptoms.

Born in Brittany, Briand was endowed with a heritage containing something of the peasant, something of the aristocrat, and a good deal of the Breton. His father, a prosperous innkeeper, sent him to school in Saint-Nazaire and then to the Nantes Lycée. There he was warmly befriended by Jules Verne, then rising to fame as a novelist and inventor. In A Long Vacation, a novel for youngsters, Verne describes a thirteen-year-old boy named «» Briant, he says, was audacious, quick at repartee, a good chap, somewhat untidy, « intelligent but so unwilling to waste good time studying that he was usually in the last quarter of his form. Occasionally he would spurt into a period of concentrated work, and then his quick understanding and remarkable memory helped him outstrip the rest.»2. Throughout his life Briand read little but listened intently, never prepared a speech but was, by common acknowledgment, the leading French orator of his generation; he understood everything, so it was said, but knew nothing.

Although Briand studied law and established a practice, he preferred the profession of journalism to that of law. He wrote for Le Peuple, La Lanterne, La Petite République, and collaborated with Jean Jaurès in founding L'Humanité, a socialist paper. A supporter of the labor-union movement, Briand emerged as a leader in the French Socialist Party after a speech at a congress of workingmen at Nantes in 1894. He found his true calling in politics, however, when, at the age of forty, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1902. In the next thirty years he was premier of France and a cabinet minister innumerable times3.

He achieved recognition almost immediately as the moving force of the commission that prepared the law separating church and state. He guided the legislation through the Chamber and in 1906 was appointed to administer the law itself as minister of public instruction and worship in Sarrien's cabinet. He was retained in this post when Clemenceau formed a government later in that year, was given the justice portfolio in Clemenceau's next government, and in 1909 became premier for the first time.

Briand tended to be a political loner. In 1906 when he joined Sarrien's «» government, he was expelled from the Socialist Party. As premier he broke the railway workers' strike in 1910 by the novel expedient of mobilizing the railway workers who were still subject to military service. Since he never formed a political party, he survived because of his power of imagination, his mastery of procedure, his talent in oratory, and his understanding of people, especially of the common man.

Briand, the enemy of war, was forced by the irony of events to lead his nation during World War I for eighteen critical months from October, 1915, to March, 1917. He devised and, despite opposition from the French general staff, resolutely supported a plan, ultimately a successful military venture, to strike Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria through Greece; he strengthened the French high command; he helped to obtain a new ally in Italy.

Briand was not a member of the Clemenceau government which conducted the negotiations for France at Versailles after the war. When he resumed as premier in January of 1921, retaining for himself the portfolio for foreign affairs, he tried to obtain a settlement of the reparations issue; represented France at the Washington Arms Conference; and negotiated a security pact with Lloyd George at Cannes in 1922, resigning when he failed to obtain its ratification.

Recalled to the foreign ministry by Painlevé in 1925, Briand now entered upon five and a half years of highly successful diplomacy. The first success was at Locarno. Briand seized upon Stresemann's offer of a pact of mutual guarantee and nonaggression, showed Austen Chamberlain how this proposal would fit into his concept of regional, collective security pacts, and during the conference itself, established the atmosphere of informal amiability that eventually brought understanding. On October 16, 1925, Briand, as foreign minister, initialled and on December 1, as premier, signed the Locarno Pact, which included various treaties and guarantees: four arbitration treaties between Germany on the one hand and France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia on the other; two treaties between France on the one hand and Poland and Czechoslovakia on the other; Germany's western boundaries were guaranteed, the Rhineland was to be demilitarized, war was renounced except in extraordinary circumstances, and Germany was to join the League of Nations. Locarno embodied the Briand spirit - the humanization of politics.

With Locarno as a model, Briand sought to extend the arbitration concept to the United States, proposing in 1927 that France and the United States join in renouncing war as « instrument of national policy» Frank B. Kellogg countered with the suggestion of a multilateral rather than a bilateral treaty, and on August 27, 1928, at the Quai d'Orsay, fifteen nations signed the Pact of Paris, or Kellogg-Briand Pact, for the renunciation of war. In the next year Kellogg joined Briand in the ranks of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

The last major proposal Briand offered to the world was his sweeping concept of a European Union outlined in a memorandum to twenty-six nations in May, 1930. In September the proposal was presented to the League of Nations, but when Briand was not reappointed to the foreign ministry after Premier Laval's resignation in January, 1932, the proposal languished.

On May 13, 1931, Briand lost his bid for the presidency of France, but with his vital resiliency and equable temperament, he did not lose a day at his office in Quai d'Orsay.

Briand occupied the French foreign office longer than any diplomat since Talleyrand. A moral force in post-World War I politics, he sought to substitute trust for suspicion, law for international disorder, mankind's betterment for human destruction. Yet he tempered his ideals with a Gallic sense of reality; he would, for example, hedge an idealistic conception with precautions in case it should fail.

Briand died quite unexpectedly on March 7, 1932; he was buried at Cocherel, his country retreat.
(Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...)

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Valentine Thomson (no photo)
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Villa's Columbus New Mexico Raid




Angered over American support of his rivals for the control of Mexico, the peasant-born revolutionary leader Pancho Villa attacks the border town of Columbus, New Mexico.

In 1913, a bloody civil war in Mexico brought the ruthless general Victoriano Huerta to power. American President Woodrow Wilson despised the new regime, referring to it as a "government of butchers," and provided active military support to a challenger, Venustiano Carranza. Unfortunately, when Carranza won power in 1914, he also proved a disappointment and Wilson supported yet another rebel leader, Pancho Villa.

A wily, peasant-born leader, Villa joined with Emiliano Zapata to keep the spirit of rebellion alive in Mexico and harass the Carranza government. A year later, though, Wilson decided Carranza had made enough steps towards democratic reform to merit official American support, and the president abandoned Villa. Outraged, Villa turned against the United States. In January 1916, he kidnapped 18 Americans from a Mexican train and slaughtered them. A few weeks later, on this day in 1916, Villa led an army of about 1,500 guerillas across the border to stage a brutal raid against the small American town of Columbus, New Mexico. Villa and his men killed 19 people and left the town in flames.
(Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hi...)

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(no image)Great Pursuit: Pershing's Expedition to Destroy Pancho Villa by Herbert Molloy Mason Jr. (no photo)

John J. Pershing:



John Joseph Pershing (1860-1948) was born on 13 September 1860 in Laclede, Missouri.

After a period spent as a schoolteacher at Prairie Mound, nine miles from Laclede, Pershing (known as 'Black Jack Pershing') entered a competitive examination for an appointment to West Point in spring 1882; his primary aim being to secure further education. Pershing won the exam and went to West Point.

Although not an especially outstanding student (graduating 30th out of a class of 77) he was noted early on by officers for his leadership qualities. He was elected president of the class of 1886, and each year held the highest rank in the Cadet Battalion. Pershing commanded the Corps of Cadets when it crossed the Hudson from West Point to Garrison to stand and present arms while the funeral train of Ulysses S. Grant passed by.

Pershing took up duty as Professor of Military Science and Tactics at the University of Nebraska in September 1891, a post he held for four years.

During his varied military career Pershing performed frontier duty against the Sioux and Apache from 1886-90, where he won the Silver Star Medal; fought in the Cuban War in 1898; in the Philippines in 1903, cleaning up the Moro insurrectionists; and with the Japanese army during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5, as an observer. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1906. This was followed by the Mexican Punitive Expedition (of 10,000 men) to capture Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1915.

Following the U.S. declaration of war against Germany in 1917, Pershing - now a General - was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). At the time of his appointment there was no expeditionary force available as such; the regular army comprised 25,000 men at most, and no effective reserves. Pershing needed to recruit an organised army and get it into the field; 500,000 men. Eventually the National Army grew - over the period of a year and a half - to nearly 3 million men.

Pershing personally led the successful Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918.

In 1921 Pershing became U.S. Army Chief of Staff. He retired from active duty in 1924 at the age of 64, having been awarded the title 'General of the Armies' by Congress, a post previously held only by George Washington (and only then retrospectively awarded in 1976).
(Source: http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/pers...)

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Donald Smythe (no photo)
Frank E. Vandiver (no photo)
John J. Pershing (no photo)
John Perry (no photo)
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Pancho Villa Expedition




On March 15 1916, under orders from President Wilson, U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing launched a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture Villa and disperse his rebels. The expedition eventually involved some 10,000 U.S. troops and personnel. It was the first U.S. military operation to employ mechanized vehicles, including automobiles and airplanes.

For 11 months, Pershing failed to capture the elusive revolutionary, who was aided by his intimate knowledge of the terrain of northern Mexico and his popular support from the people there. Meanwhile, resentment over the U.S. intrusion into Mexican territory led to a diplomatic crisis with the government in Mexico City. On June 21, the crisis escalated into violence when Mexican government troops attacked a detachment of the 10th Cavalry at Carrizal, Mexico, leaving 12 Americans dead, 10 wounded, and 24 captured. The Mexicans suffered more than 30 dead. If not for the critical situation in Europe, war might have been declared. In January 1917, having failed in their mission to capture Villa, and under continued pressure from the Mexican government, the Americans were ordered home.

Villa continued his guerrilla activities in northern Mexico until Adolfo de la Huerta took power over the government and drafted a reformist constitution. Villa entered into an amicable agreement with Huerta and agreed to retire from politics. In 1920, the government pardoned Villa, but three years later he was assassinated at his ranch in Parral.
(Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hi...)

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James W. Hurst (no photo)
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SS Sussex & Sinking



was a cross-English Channel passenger ferry, built in 1896 for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR). After the LBSCR came to a co-operation agreement with the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l'État Français, she transferred to their fleet under a French flag. Sussex became the focus of an international incident when she was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in 1916. Although severely damaged, she was repaired post-war and sold to Greece in 1919, being renamed Aghia Sophia. Following a fire in 1921, the ship was scrapped.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sussex)

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(no image)Outrage at Sea by Tony Bridgland (No photo)

Sussex Pledge

was a promise made in 1916 during World War I by Germany to the United States prior to the latter's entry into the war. Early in 1916, Germany had instituted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare,[1] allowing armed merchant ships – but not passenger ships – to be torpedoed without warning. Despite this avowed restriction, a French cross-channel passenger ferry, the Sussex, was torpedoed without warning on March 24, 1916; the ship was severely damaged and about 50 lives were lost.[2] Although no U.S. citizens were killed in this attack, it prompted President Woodrow Wilson to declare that if Germany were to continue this practice, the United States would break diplomatic relations with Germany. Fearing the entry of the United States into World War I, Germany attempted to appease the United States by issuing, on May 4, 1916, the Sussex pledge, which promised a change in Germany’s naval warfare policy. The primary elements of this undertaking were:

*Passenger ships would not be targeted;
*Merchant ships would not be sunk until the presence of weapons had been established, if necessary by a search of the ship;
*Merchant ships would not be sunk without provision for the safety of passengers and crew.
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League to Enforce Peace (LEP)



was founded in New York City in 1914 by wealthy citizens alarmed at the outbreak of WWI. Its purpose was to work in the U.S. to establish an international organization to ensure world peace. The League's secretary was William H. Short; it's president, former U.S. President William Howard Taft. The League did not associate itself with pacifist opposition to WWI. With the establishment of the League of Nations,the LEP took upon itself organizing political and grassroot support for the association of the U.S. with the League of Nations. The LEP was moribund after the elections of 1920 and ceased to exist in 1923.
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by John Milton Cooper Jr. (no photo)
by William Howard Taft
by Gerry J Simpson (no photo)
by George W. Egerton (no photo)

Louis Brandeis' Supreme Court Confirmation

In 1916, Brandeis became the first Jewish Justice on the high court. But before achieving the distinction, he was forced to endure a bruising confirmation battle with anti-Semitic undertones. Brandeis was an avowed Zionist with progressive leanings, and his nomination by President Woodrow Wilson was assailed by probusiness Senators and corporate titans like J.P. Morgan, who were leery of his crusades for workplace-safety and labor laws. Publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal opposed Brandeis; former President Taft called his nomination "an evil and a disgrace." But at the end of a grueling four-month confirmation process, Brandeis prevailed. He served with distinction until 1939
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by Melvin I. Urofsky
by Henry J. Abraham
by William T. Harper
(no image) Nomination Of Louis D. Brandeis: Hearings Before The Subcommittee Of The Committee On The Judiciary, United States Senate, On The Nomination Of Louis D. ... Court Of The United States ( V.2 ) 1916 by (United States) Congress Senate Committee on the Judiciary (no photo)

Charles Culberson



a Senator from Texas; born in Dadeville, Tallapoosa County, Ala., June 10, 1855; moved to Texas with his parents, who settled first in Gilmer and later in Jefferson; attended the common schools and graduated from the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington in 1874; studied law at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1876 and 1877; admitted to the bar in 1877 and commenced practice in Jefferson, Tex.; moved to Dallas, Tex., in 1887; attorney general of Texas 1890-1894; Governor of Texas 1894-1898; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate January 25, 1899; reelected in 1905, 1911, and again in 1916, and served from March 4, 1899, to March 3, 1923; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922; Democratic caucus chairman 1907-1909; chairman, Committee on Additional Accommodations for the Library (Sixty-first Congress), Committee on Public Health and National Quarantine (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Judiciary (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Private Land Claims (Sixty-sixth Congress); lived in retirement until his death in Washington, D.C. March 19, 1925; interment in East Oakwood Cemetery, Fort Worth, Tex.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)

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Charles Evan Hughes:



Charles Evans Hughes was born in Glens Falls, New York, on April 11, 1862. Educated at Madison (now Colgate) University and Brown University (B.A., 1881), Hughes graduated from Columbia Law School in 1884. He practiced law in New York City and later served as counsel for two joint committees of the New York legislature investigating gas utilities (1905) and insurance company campaign contributions (1906).

Elected governor of New York in 1906 over William Randolph Hearst, Hughes was reelected in 1908. In 1910, President William Howard Taft made him an associate justice on the Supreme Court. Later, Hughes reluctantly accepted a Republican draft as the presidential nominee and lost to Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

Hughes returned the practice of law until 1921, when President Warren Harding named him secretary of state. He was reappointed by President Coolidge and served in that post until 1925. During his tenure, Hughes organized the Washington Conference (1921-1922), pursued the Open Door Policy with China, and sought to guarantee Japanese security in the western Pacific.

President Hoover appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1930, and Hughes made his name as a “swing” justice, voting with both conservative and liberal blocks on the philosophically divided court. Notably, he would lead the fight against Franklin Roosevelt’s “court-packing” plan in 1937. Hughes retired from the court in 1941 and died in New York on August 27, 1948.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/har...)

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by Robert Wesser (no photo)
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(no image)The Autobiographical Notes Of Charles Evans Hughes by Charles Evans Hughes (no photo)
(no image)Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey (no photo)

John Hessin Clarke:



John H. Clarke was born in Lisbon, Ohio, on September 18, 1857. Following graduation from Western Reserve College in 1877, he was tutored in law by his father and was admitted to the bar in 1878. After practicing law with his father’s law firm for two years, Clarke moved to Youngstown, Ohio, and established his own practice, specializing in corporate law. He also acquired an ownership in the local newspaper, which was known for its support of progressive reform. He ran for the United States Senate in 1894 but was defeated by the incumbent. In 1897, Clarke left his practice in Youngstown to join a Cleveland law firm. Clarke had been a practicing attorney for thirty-five years when President Woodrow Wilson appointed him in 1914 to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, where he served for two years. On July 24, 1916, President Wilson appointed Clarke to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Senate confirmed the appointment on October 9, 1916. Clarke resigned from the Supreme Court on September 18, 1922, to promote American participation in the League of Nations. He died on March 22, 1945, at the age of eighty-seven.
(Source: http://www.supremecourthistory.org/hi...)

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by Kermit L. Hall
by Melvin I. Urofsky
by Hoyt Landon Warner (no photo)

1916 Easter Rising




Also known as the Easter Rebellion and referred to erroneously in some contemporary British reports as the Sinn Féin Rebellion, it was an armed insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing an independent Irish Republic at a time when the United Kingdom was heavily engaged in World War I. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798.[2]

Organised by seven members of the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood,[3] the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and lasted for six days. Members of the Irish Volunteers — led by schoolteacher and barrister Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly, along with 200 members of Cumann na mBan — seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic independent of the United Kingdom. There were some actions in other parts of Ireland: however, except for the attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks at Ashbourne, County Meath, they were minor.

The Rising was suppressed after six days of fighting, and its leaders were court-martialled and executed, but it succeeded in bringing physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics. Support for republicanism continued to rise in Ireland as a result of the ongoing war in Europe and the Middle East, especially as a result of the Conscription Crisis of 1918. Revolutions across Europe further emboldened Irish revolutionaries. In December 1918, republicans (then represented by the Sinn Féin party) won 73 Irish seats out of 105 in the 1918 General Election to the British Parliament, on a policy of abstentionism and Irish independence. In January 1919, the elected members of Sinn Féin who were not still in prison at the time, including survivors of the Rising, convened the First Dáil and established the Irish Republic. The British government and Ulster unionists refused to accept the legitimacy of the newly declared republic, precipitating the Irish War of Independence.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_...)

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by Tim Pat Coogan (no photo)
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Roger Casement



Born in Dublin on 1 September 1864 the son of a Protestant father and Catholic mother, Casement served for many years as a distinguished British Consul in Mozambique, Angola, the Congo Free State and Brazil.

He gained international renown for his Consular reports criticising the treatment of native workers in the Congo and Amazon. As a consequence of his reports Belgium notably overhauled its administration of the Congo in 1908. Casement himself was rewarded with a knighthood in 1911, the same year he retired from the diplomatic service in ill-health and established himself in Dublin.

Casement helped to form in 1913 the Irish National Volunteers, a nationalist organisation. The following year, in July 1914, Casement visited New York in an attempt to garner support for the organisation. With the outbreak of war the following month Casement similarly hoped for German assistance in gaining Irish independence from Britain.

With this in mind Casement travelled to Berlin in November 1914; once there however he found the Germans reluctant to undertake the risk of sending forces to Ireland. He was also disappointed in his hopes of recruiting to his cause Irish prisoners taken to Germany.

While in Germany Casement strove in particular to effectively borrow a number of German officers to assist with a planned Easter rising in Dublin; again, he was disappointed. Believing the planned rising unlikely to succeed at that stage Casement arranged to be taken by German submarine to Ireland where he hoped to dissuade nationalist leaders from undertaking rebellion for the present.

Consequently he was landed near Tralee in County Kerry on 12 April 1916. Twelve days later he was arrested by the British, taken to London, and charged with treason. At about this time copies of a diary (the 'Black Diary') reputed to be written by Casement were circulated among government officials, detailing alleged homosexual practices with native boys.

Although clearly an attempt by the British to discredit Casement the diaries' authenticity was verified by an independent panel of scholars in 1959 and, more recently, in 2002. With an appeal dismissed Casement was taken to Pentonville Prison in London where he was hanged on 3 August 1916.

In 1965 Casement's remains were returned to Dublin and afforded a state funeral; they were then re-interred in Dublin.
(Source: http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/case...)

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by Brian Inglis (no photo)
by William Bryant (no photo)
by Roger Casement
by Reinha Doerries (no photo)
by Seamas O. Siochain (no photo)