Illustrious Men - The Presidents of the United States

Wilson had forced Germany into abandoning the tactic of submarine warfare against American shipping in 1915, but desperation convinced the German military to resume unrestricted submarine activity in January of 1917. On March 1, newspapers released the news of the Zimmerman Telegram, an intercepted communique to the Mexican government intended to align them with Germany in a war against the United States. The revelation proved to be the last straw for the American public.

In his inaugural address as the nation's 29th President, Root stated that Germany's actions were a declaration of war against the United States and that the nation, whether it wanted it or not, was already at war. A flurry of activity accompanied his entry into the White House as he set about reversing Wilson's policy of "neutrality in thought and deed" and fast-tracking military mobilization. Leonard Wood, Chief of Staff of the Army until Wilson replaced him in 1914, was put back in command of the US Army and urged to make haste in preparing his troops for a war that was rapidly surpassing the experience and ability of the US to fight.

On March 10, Root asked for a joint session of Congress to declare war on Germany. The official declaration came three days later, the Senate approving 82 to 6, the House, 373 to 50. The American public, Root knew, was ready for the war. Opposition existed in key groups and was especially prevalent in the West, but the press largely supported the decision, calling it "necessary and sobering". Within months, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, authorizing the creation of a standing army. The US Navy deployed battleships and submarines to join the British Grand Fleet and Marines were sent to join the action in France. Initially, US Army units were split up and assigned to British and French units as reinforcements but as trained American soldiers were ready for deployment in early 1918, this approach was abandoned and all units were deployed as part of the American Expeditionary Forces.

In 1917, Congress also passed the Espionage and Sedition Act, prohibiting "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" by anyone in reference to the United States, its government, or any of its symbols. The Committee on Public Information was established as the United States' first propaganda office, charged with disseminating information and propaganda in favor of the war as well as censoring anti-war sentiments. Efforts to ensure loyalty to the war effort reached beyond lawmaking. President Root frequently worked with the American Federation of Labor and its president, Samuel Gompers, to ensure industrial productivity and to dispel socialist oppositions to the war. The War Industries Board was a result of this effort. Other boards, committees, and agencies were established to ration food supplies, fuel, set war goals, and even introduce daylight savings time. The Root White House became so frequented by prominent businessmen and industry leaders hired on dollar-a-day salaries that he was nicknamed, "America's Boss" and "the CEO of the United States".

Following the German Revolution of 1918, Germany finally signed an armistice with Allied Powers in November, formally putting an end to the war. After initial exuberance in the United States and around the world, the business of negotiating peace brought out frustration and exhaustion in European populations especially. Convening in January of 1919, the Paris Peace Conference set about clarifying demands and establishing peace terms, a process that took almost the entire year.

The White House had taken a toll on the President's aging health and Root was hesitant to leave for the conference in Europe despite his excited commitment to the process. He did attend much of the conference, arguing in favor of a "war without winners", an uphill fight against British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Prime Minister George Clemenceau of France. The negotiations strained Root, as he had feared, and in May, he returned to the United States. He left Secretary of State James Brown Scott to continue in his place.

In fact, President Root was discouraged with the process and dissatisfied with his counterparts. He told Secretary Scott that he felt happy to have left Paris but guilty to have left him. The Treaty of Versailles was rejected by the Senate and the proceedings of the Conference were largely ignored after that point. Root committed himself to negotiating separate peaces with Germany and her allies, culminating in the 1920 Washington Treaties. President Root viewed the European peace agreements with skepticism, predicting (correctly) that they would simply result in another war when Germany failed to meet their many demands.

Following the war's end, the ailing President increasingly delegated matters to his cabinet while he negotiated with the defeated European powers and the plethora of new nations that seemed to endlessly spawn from the Paris negotiations. The last year of his Presidency saw the process of de-mobilization and the creation of the Bureau of Veterans and Pensions, which later became the Department of Veterans Affair's.

As promised, Root refused to be nominated again, though he had become immensely popular as the war ended. In the 1920 elections, Republicans turned to Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood to challenge the Democrats' William Gibbs McAdoo.

Root retired from public life for many years, but became active in his last years in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the American Peace Society, and the Hague Academy of International Law. He died in New York City in 1926. His legacy as President, bolstered by his successful handling not only of World War One, but also of its domestic aftermath - he is especially noted for his care for war veteran's benefits and pensions - is nevertheless tainted by his Espionage and Sedition Act which, though ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, is criticized for its attacks on immigrants, radicals, leftists, and free speech and the "Eye of Root" raids carried out as a result.
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The election of 1860 was a watershed for the United States. It was the culmination of all those that came before it and its impact on elections since is still felt. Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin and living humbly for much of his life was, by 1860, a name instantly recognizable throughout the nation. His inauguration as the 16th President in 1861 forever changed that nation's social and political structure and marched the beginning of the Second American Revolution.

Lincoln's single term in the US House of Representatives was his only time in national office before becoming President, but was hardly responsible for his fame and infamy. His deft politics put him at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement and gave him immediate support in the Republican Party when it forged from remnants of extinct movements in 1854. Lincoln declared he "no more than oppose[d] the extension of slavery" and argued against the label "abolitionist". Nevertheless, his politics and his Republican Party were considered all but treasonous in the southern United States.

It was no surprise then that the response to his apparent victory in the 1860 elections (albeit with only 40% of the popular vote) and his imminent inauguration was the secession of 11 states from the United States. Presented with the constitutional, legal, political, military, and social crises he was, a contemporary of Lincoln would have easily predicted disaster for the President. Yet, Abraham Lincoln is remembered as the greatest man to ever hold the office and few figures of world history are regarded to have been so influential.

When Abraham Lincoln refused to be nominated to a third term, he felt it became his duty, before he could retire from the Presidency, to choose a successor. The Republican Party had no shortage of names for the 16th President to consider; many of its finest members served in his own cabinet. To many in the party, their were really only two candidates, Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward, and his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. While Lincoln avoided showing his support to either individual publicly, behind the scenes it was clear that, between the choices, he supported Seward. In private correspondence though, he lamented that there was a shortage in the Republican Party of like-minded moderates.

The 1868 Republican national convention nominated Seward over Chase due in large part to Lincoln's support, but Chase was also harmed by the depression the United States had entered into since the conclusion of the Civil War. Seward hailed from New York and was a leader of the Radical Reconstructionists. He was balanced on the Republican ticket by David Davis. Davis hailed from Indiana, balancing the ticket East and West, and was considered an invaluable moderate voice in the party and in the nation as a whole. He had served as Lincoln's campaign manager in 1860 and since 1862 had been an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

As President, Seward inherited a recession which, by the time of his inauguration, was already in slow recovery. The first year of his administration was marked by improvements in the economy - an end to the Northern manufacturing slump, a revival of agriculture in the South, expansion westward, and a financial and banking boom beginning in 1870. Inflation had set in during the latter years of the Lincoln administration, spurred largely because of the greenbacks issued during and after the Civil War. In 1869, Seward signed the Public Credit Act, requiring the United States to pay debts in gold, halting much of the problem of inflation. A private bonds crisis also carried over from Lincoln's administration, a result of the poor economy that caused many to default on their debts. With the economic boom of the early 1870s, this crisis evaporated as well.

Seward's first term was one of massive popularity, largely driven by the booming economy and the accompanying political stability. The post-Civil War United States became popularly known as "the New Republic", based on the title of one of President Lincoln's books, which also introduced the term "the Second American Revolution". Popular conceptions of the United States, especially in the North, saw the nation as a beacon of republicanism in the world.

Seward capitalized on this feeling to expand the United States' influence across the Western Hemisphere. As Lincoln's Secretary of State, he had already negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, as President his eyes turned immediately toward Santo Domingo. The eastern half of the island of Hispaniola, Santo Domingo had bounced between being a colony of Spain, annexation by Haiti, and instability as an independent state. In November of 1869, the Treaty to Annex Santo Domingo was signed, which would make Santo Domingo an American colony. Seward recalled the Monroe Doctrine, which said that the United States would not tolerate European colonization in the Americas and expanded upon it, saying that it was the role of the United States to ensure stability and promote republicanism in the region. The treaty was approved by the Senate the following summer, further expanding the US' local colonial empire.

In addition to the newly-acquired Santo Domingo, the United States had effective control over Haiti and Panama (and, across the Atlantic, Liberia), where immigrant businessmen owned and controlled huge swaths of land worked largely by emigrated American freedmen. These colonies were not formally owned by the US, but via corporations tied very closely with Congress.

Inspired by the Suez Canal which, by 1869, was nearly complete, bankers, businessmen, members of Congress, and even Seward himself (and Lincoln before him), all advocated a plan to build a canal in Panama with this freedmen labor. In 1870 however, the colonies and settlements in Panama were abandoned and freedmen, aided in their emigration by the Freedmen's Bureau were removed once again, this time to Santo Domingo. The region's inhospitality to life or to canal ensured that any real plan to build a canal in Panama would be delayed by decades.
Seward's successful and popular first term ensured an easy victory in 1872. The Democrats nominated New York Governor John Hoffman for President and William Evans Arthur, a Representative from Kentucky, for Vice President. At first expected to present significant opposition to Seward for the Presidency, Hoffman's campaign fell apart quickly and dramatically when his connections with New York City's Boss Tweed were revealed. Managing to not win even a half-dozen states, the feeble Democratic opposition to the weighty Republican hegemony permitted Seward to rush into a second term with national support not seen for decades. The President's second term would, ironically, mar the name of the Republican Party and reinvigorate that of the Democratic Party.

The first challenge to Seward's amendment to the Monroe Doctrine came within the first year of his second term. On October 31, a crew of 52 and 108 passengers of the Virginius were captured by Spanish authorities. Accused of piracy for having smuggled supplies into Cuba aiding the revolutionaries there, Spain began executing the crew on November 4. The news spread like wildfire in the US - most newspapers screamed that war was imminent, some of the bolder papers posited that Cuba would be a state within a year. The President, who had declared that he would not tolerate challenges to republicanism in the region, hesitated to react aggressively. A cold realization came that the US was in no position to go to war with Spain. When news of the events reached New York, a Spanish ironclad happened to be anchored in the harbor. The US Navy had no ship capable of challenging it. Tensions remained high, but successful negotiations returned the American prisoners and Spain delivered $100,000 in indemnity for the executions. The next decade would see a complete overhaul and modernization of the US navy, and a return to the question of Spanish colonialism in Cuba.

1873 also brought the "Long Depression" to the United States. Sparked by a sudden deflation of the silver market, bank runs exacerbated the already building debt problems in the US. The 1870 economic boom had infused cash into construction projects across the country, especially railroads in the West and docks on the East coast. With the fall of the silver market, banks and businessmen found themselves suddenly short of capital and with excess bonds now unsellable. The New York stock market closed for ten days on September 20. As huge banks collapsed, railroad companies followed. By 1874, America's economic fortunes stagnated and would remain unstable for over a decade. By 1876, unemployment reached 14%, 18,000 businesses failed, a third of the nation's railroads went bankrupt.

Congress' 1874 Inflation Bill, which released $100,000,000 into the money supply helped to ease the financial panic on Wall Street, but the damage was already done to the nation's economy. As workers fought for a now small market of jobs, riots sparked around the nation. Immigrants were especially hard hit by competition from American workers and by a wave of nativist violence. African-Americans often experienced even greater stigma in finding jobs, especially in the North. Corporate colonies in Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Liberia were abandoned as the economy at home collapsed, driving entire classes of the populations into poverty.


Labor strikes, which had long been a threat, suddenly sparked with especial vigor. The Great Railroad Strike of 1876 halted railroad traffic in Pennsylvania and the railroad hubs of Baltimore, Chicago, and Saint Louis. Local law enforcement largely refused to break the strikes and President Seward eventually dispatched federal troops to suppress the strikes and return normal order to the cities affected. Said Thomas Alexander Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, "let them eat a diet of rifles for a few days and see how they like that bread." The violent clashes resulted in the death of over 200 railroad workers, with many more injured.

The economic troubles that accompanied Seward's second term affected his administration deeply. In the face of massive debts and threatening bankruptcy, companies turned to bribes to secure special treatment from the government. Aware of the bubbling scandals from beneath, and within, his cabinet, Seward was quick to publicly criticize federal officials and forced many to resign. In addition to these contemporary scandals, the Republican Party was hit hard by the revelation of another, the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which had taken place largely during the Lincoln administration.