Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn
By Christopher Cox.
Simon and Schuster, 2024.
Hardcover, 640 pages, $34.99.
Reviewed by John C. “Chuck” Chalberg.
“The light withdrawn . . .” The line is borrowed from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Ichabod.” Woodrow Wilson as Ichabod Crane? The parallel is there, and yet it isn’t. At least not in its entirety. Yes, both were schoolmasters—and driven schoolmasters at that. Yes, both sought to explore enchanted worlds, whether it might be some place called Sleepy Hollow or the streets of Paris, Versailles, and their environs. And yes, both ultimately had their comeuppances. But is Christopher Cox really asking us to take Whittier’s advice as stated in the second stanza of his poem? “Revile him not, the tempter has a snare for all; and pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, befit his fall.”
If Cox began what became a fourteen-year project in a pitying frame of mind about Woodrow Wilson, the end result has led this reader to feel more scorn and wrath than anything approaching sorrowful pity for his beleaguered subject.
Beleaguered? The adjective might suggest that Wilson did deserve to be pitied, that he was often the victim of unfair treatment. But the sense of beleaguerment of our twenty-eighth president was all his own. That is to say, it was often personally manufactured and, therefore, often thoroughly deserved. The synonyms apply as well, since he frequently felt badgered, persecuted, and pestered, not to mention plagued, put upon, and vexed as well. Far more often than not, his own arrogance, stubbornness, and general partisan cussedness contributed to his overwhelming, always-close-to-the-surface sense of beleaguerment.
In other words, while it would not necessarily be fair to conclude that the fictional Ichabod Crane got what he deserved when the light was withdrawn, it would be entirely fair to conclude that Woodrow Wilson did deserve his fate, whether before or after a similar withdrawal of light. Cox may not have thought so when he began his research and writing a good while ago. He might not even have thought so when he had finished. But it’s quite likely that his readers will think so. I know that I did.
Now keep in mind that this is the president, Cox tells us in his epilogue, whom Harvard Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., ranked in 1948 as one of a half dozen “great” chief executives right there with Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR. Nearly a half century later, a similar poll conducted by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., placed Wilson just below the “great” trio of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, or among the “near great,” which also included Jefferson, Jackson, TR, Truman, and Polk.
Cox does not tell us where he would rank Wilson, but he does find it noteworthy that President U. S. Grant, who signed and sought to enforce the “sweeping” Civil Rights Act of 1875, was relegated to the “failure” category by the senior Schlesinger. Why single out Grant? And why mention a single piece of legislation? Because this lengthy book on Woodrow Wilson is something a good deal less than a full biography of the author’s chosen subject.
For that matter, it is hardly a biography at all. If anything, it is a history of the painfully gradual process of finally securing the right to vote for American women. In a sense, there are moments, and even full chapters, when the book is almost as much a biographical account of the likes of Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt, M. Carey Thomas, and others among their suffragist compatriots as it is of Woodrow Wilson.
To be sure, crucial Wilsonian details are recounted in these pages. The southern roots and southern sympathies of young “Tommy” Wilson are explored and accounted for. The ambitions of Thomas Woodrow Wilson, as his youthful calling card read, are duly noted. His single year at Davidson College is briefly chronicled.
Much more attention is given to his Princeton years, whether as a student, professor, or president. The same is true for his years of graduate study at Johns Hopkins, studies that resulted in a somewhat tainted doctorate.
Briefly, the story is this. Teaching at Bryn Mawr, young Professor Wilson was under pressure from Bryn Mawr administrator Carey Thomas to finish his doctorate. In response, Wilson leaned on his mentors at Johns Hopkins, Herbert Baxter Adams and Richard Ely, to grant him a degree without completing the formal examination requirements.
His case came down to what Cox describes as a “nakedly self-centered demand”: “I need a degree now.” His mentors, amazingly enough, complied. Waiving the normal degree requirements, they agreed to administer exams that they assured him he would have “no chance” of failing. Finally, instead of the required dissertation, they accepted his already published Congressional Government, even though it was not grounded in original research.
Questionable degree in hand and “hungry for a class of men,” Wilson soon thereafter escaped Bryn Mawr for Wesleyan College. Princeton was his following and final academic station. From that lofty perch, Wilson then advanced to the governorship of New Jersey, courtesy of more benefactors, specifically Democratic party bosses in need of a clean, corruption-free candidate. And who could possibly be cleaner than a career academic-turned-novice politician? Two years later, Governor Wilson benefited from the savage 1912 split within the Republican party between President William Howard Taft and former president Theodore Roosevelt. The next stop was the presidency, despite having won barely forty percent of the popular vote.
To date, the only American president to hold an allegedly earned doctorate degree, tainted or otherwise, Wilson therefore still stands as an example of sorts. That would be an example of why academicians–and the country–would both be better off if they confined themselves to classrooms rather than attempting to lecture to the country–or the world–at large.
In a sense, however, Wilson never really left the classroom. At least Christopher Cox seems to think that that was the case. President Wilson’s precedent-setting appearances before Congress were occasions for the barely disguised schoolmaster to display his talents. The same might be said of his White House meetings with those who sought an audience with him. He was there to lecture, rather than to listen. And often he would insist that his audiences sit in rows to listen to him as the dutiful, behaving students that he expected them to be.
When it came to the vote for women, Wilson’s stock position was that of a southern states’ rightist. Here he parted company with progressives on both sides of the aisle, including Theodore Roosevelt, who contended that the vote was “like the rifle” in that its use depended entirely on the “character of the user.” Not so for younger–and older–Tommy Wilson, for whom sex and race outweighed character.
Roosevelt is mentioned only briefly in these pages. But the contrast between Wilson and Republican progressives on the suffrage issue is stark. The same might be said of differences between Wilson and Roosevelt when it came to their private dealings with women. More specifically, that would be the difference between a married Woodrow Wilson, who carried on a long term affair with Mary Peck, and who, after his wife died, jettisoned Peck for Edith Bolling Galt, versus Theodore Roosevelt who questioned the morality of marrying a second time after the sudden death of his wife when he was not yet twenty-six.
For that matter, virtually everyone in this combined on-again, off-again Wilson biography and highly detailed, insightful, almost insider accounting of the on-again, off-again, painstakingly slow progress toward ratification of the nineteenth amendment comes off better than either Tommy or Woodrow Wilson. Surely, the leaders of the suffrage movement do, whether or not they were victims of violence and jailing for their efforts to obtain the vote.
Many of those around Wilson qualify here as well, especially White House secretary Joe Tumulty, who was always doing his best to keep lines of communication open between the lecturer and his listeners, especially his Democratic listeners. So do both of his wives and his on-again, off-again confidante, Colonel Edward House.
Given the prominence of the suffrage issue in these pages, one wonders when Wilson found the time to deal with such seemingly minor matters as advancing either his progressive agenda on the domestic front or prosecuting a war in Europe. To be sure, both make their occasional appearances in this book. After all, Cox cannot avoid the irony of a southern states rightist advocating for–and installing–a much expanded federal government in many other areas. Nor does he ignore the irony of a president seeking to make the “world safe for democracy,” while doing his unlevel best to deny and delay democratic opportunities for both American women and American blacks.
To be sure, there are already shelves of books on Wilson, the domestic progressive, and Wilson, the war leader. So why not a book on Wilson and the suffrage movement, especially a book that is as critical of Wilson as this one is?
After all, many recent books on Wilson have already questioned the wisdom and necessity of Wilson’s progressive domestic agenda, as well as the wisdom and necessity of, shall we say, a Wilsonian-style foreign policy. The writings of Ronald Pestritto and Angelo Codevilla come immediately to mind. So why not a book that calls into question one more important legacy of the Wilsonian approach to policy and policy-making?
Who knows, but eventually this might lead to a light going back on. Such a light might one day bring about a deranking of the Wilson presidency. And what then? Maybe one Tommy Wilson might yet wind up right there with U. S. Grant. Then again, maybe not, since Grant would likely have to be elevated in the process.
John C. “Chuck” Chalberg writes from Minnesota. For many years, he performed as both Theodore Roosevelt and H. L. Mencken, neither of whom was exactly a fan of Woodrow Wilson.
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