John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

The ministrations of the mercurial Harvey, which a few short months ago had seemed so congenial, were becoming an embarrassment. There were rumors that Harvey himself, though he pretended to cantankerous independence, shared the misgivings of his financial associates.

Colonel House before enlisting wholeheartedly in the Wilson campaign, had to discover how the winds blew on Franklin Square. A few days after House’s first meeting with Wilson, the two colonels conferred.

Next day House wrote Bryan, undoubtedly coloring his narrative a little to suit the Commoner’s prejudices:

“I took lunch with Colonel Harvey yesterday. It is the first time I have met him. I wanted to determine what his real attitude was towards Governor Wilson, but I think I am left as much in the dark as ever.

“He told me that everybody south of Canal Street was in a frenzy against Governor Wilson and said they were bringing all sorts of pressure upon him to oppose him. He said he told them he had an open mind and that if they would convince him he was a dangerous man he would do so.

“He said that Morgan was particularly virulent …”

House ended diplomatically by asking Mr. Bryan’s advice as how best to meet these attacks from entrenched privilege.

The day after Colonel House left for Texas to make sure of his state delegation, Wilson and Colonel Harvey met at the Manhattan Club as guests of another honorary colonel, a Kentucky one this time, Henry Watterson who edited the Louisville Courier-Journal. Marse Henry, the “grand old man” of Southern journalism, had been a Wilson backer since the early days. The conversation seems to have been about where to go for campaign contributions.

Just as Wilson was leaving, Colonel Harvey, maybe stung by some carefully barbed remark Colonel House dropped on purpose in his ear, or from a tactless communication from a Wilson enthusiast from the literary bureau, asked Wilson whether there was anything left of the cheap talk about Harvey’s promoting him on behalf of the “interests”!

“Yes, there is,” Wilson blurted out sharply: some of his supporters felt that Harvey’s backing was having a bad effect in the West.

Harvey bristled. “Is there anything I can do except to stop advocating your nomination?”

Wilson shook his head. “I think not,” he said.

Harvey replied, “I shall sing low.” According to Harvey, Governor Wilson left the room abruptly.

Next week “For President, Woodrow Wilson” was no longer seen at the head of Harvey’s editorial column. The candidate had switched colonels.

The incident made a great flurry in the press. The Republican papers blew it up as another instance of Wilson’s ingratitude.

On the other hand Tumulty’s publicitymen managed to make political hay by circulating the tale that what had really happened was that Wilson had righteously turned down insidious offers of contributions to his campaign by Thomas Fortune Ryan and other malefactors of great wealth who thought they could buy the Democratic Party. Marse Henry announced that this version was not in accord with the facts. Wilson countered with the statement that Colonel Watterson was “a fine old gentleman,” implying that his memory was not to be trusted, and became touchy with the reporters whenever they brought the subject up.

On the whole the Wilson men had the better of it. The impression left in the public mind was that Wilson had simply told the truth when asked a direct question, like the good honest oldtime Presbyterian schoolmaster that he was.

The loss of the New Jersey colonel as a political handyman made the acquisition of the urbane Texan, with whom Wilson had so much more in common, all the more agreeable. The correspondence between the two became affectionate to a degree.

While House was in Austin laboring to get just the right men picked for the Texas delegation Wilson’s campaign had to take another hurdle. Just before the Jackson Day dinner in Washington in January 1912 a corporation lawyer whom Wilson had tangled with as a Princeton trustee during the quadrangle row, turned over to the New York Evening Sun a letter Wilson had written him five years back (when they were still good friends) suggesting that something be done “at once dignified and effective, to knock Mr. Bryan once for all into a cocked hat.”

Fortunately for Democratic harmony Bryan was stopping off with Josephus Daniels in North Carolina when the reporters poked this bit of news under his nose and asked for comment. Daniels was a liberal newspaper editor who genuinely believed in both Bryan and Wilson. He exuded good nature. His Raleigh home was famous for easy hospitality, good conversation and crisp fried chicken. He urged Bryan not to go off halfcocked and was delighted when the Commoner growled out the comment that the Sun had been trying to knock him into a cocked hat for years and hadn’t succeeded yet.

The “cocked hat” letter threw Wilson’s literary bureau into a panic. Everybody knew that he could never be nominated against Bryan’s opposition. Even Wilson himself felt that his presidential aspirations hung by a thread. On the train down to Washington on his way to the Jackson Day dinner he gave vent to his feelings in a letter to the sympathetic Mrs. Peck:

“… The banquet in the evening is to be a grand dress parade of candidates for the presidential nomination … I hate the whole thing but it is something ‘expected’ of me by my friends and backers … There is a merry war against me. I am evidently regarded as the strongest candidate at present, for all the attacks are directed against me … this rain of small missiles makes me feel like a common target for the malicious (by the way nearly all the darts are supplied by Princetonians who hate me), and somewhat affect my spirits for a day at a time (the strongest nerves wince under persistent spite); but for the most part I go serenely on my way. I believe very profoundly in an overruling Providence and do not believe that any real plans can be thrown off the track. It may not be intended that I shall be President — but that would not break my heart — and I am content to await the event, doing what I honorably can, in the meantime, to discomfort mine enemies.”

That night Wilson discomforted his enemies by a speech which combined candor with tact. He made no attempt to deny that he had disagreed with some of Bryan’s policies in the past, but proclaimed that he had ever been in accord with his underlying principles. He ended by turning to the Commoner, who sat near him at the speaker’s table, with what the politicians round about described as “a chesterfieldian gesture”: “Let us apologize to each other that we ever suspected or antagonized one another; let us join hands once more — all around the circle of community of counsel and of interest which will show us at the last to have been indeed the friends of our country and of mankind.”

Applause drowned out the last words. Bryan’s face, we are told, was “a study.” Afterwards he confided to a friend that it was the greatest speech in American political history. The New York World summed up the situation next day with a headline: WILSON LEADS IN CLASH OF BOOMS.

Three weeks later Wilson won another oratorical victory. At the annual banquet of a publishers’ association in Philadelphia he spoke on the same program with the redoubtable Bob La Follette who for months had been campaigning for the Republican nomination as ardently as Wilson had for the Democratic. Wilson started by poking a little gentle fun at publishers: he used as a writer to be afraid they wouldn’t publish him, and now, as a public figure, he was afraid when they did. He frothily outlined some of the principles of what was soon to be known as the New Freedom, and sat down amid great applause.