WI: President Marshall

[kodak]

Suppose that in 1913 Woodrow Wilson dies from a stroke, train crash, assassination attempt, etc, etc, and vice president Thomas Marshall ascends to become the twenty-ninth president of the USA.

Marshall was an Indiana progressive who had passed laws abolishing child labor, fighting corruption, and reforming education, among other things. Most notably, he was opposed to the eugenics movement. Wilson disliked him, and in 1919 he was prevented from becoming president by Wilson's advisors, which played a big part in allowing opponents in the senate to prevent America from joining the league of nations. In 1920 he sent a letter to Calvin Coolidge sympathizing for holding such a useless office.

With an actual social progressive in the white house, how are American domestic and foreign affairs changed during the 1910s?

 

[Derek Jackson]

How racist was Marshall?

 

[1940LaSalle]

Hard to say for sure but my sense is about run of the mill for growing up in the midwest in the mid-to-late 19th century at worst, and quite possibly more enlightened in general. Then again, almost anyone would have been more so than Wilson, who still carried with him the residuals of growing up in the Reconstruction-era South.

 

[kodak]

How racist was Marshall?

Not racist enough to segregate the executive branch or praise 'birth of a nation'.

However, Marshall was underconfident and lacked the skill Wilson had to lobby congress in his favor, so he'd see much less success. Depending on how the term plays out, either party could win in 1916.

 

[Mikestone8]

Not racist enough to segregate the executive branch or praise 'birth of a nation'.

However, Marshall was underconfident and lacked the skill Wilson had to lobby congress in his favor, so he'd see much less success. Depending on how the term plays out, either party could win in 1916.

Or possibly 1918 if he doesn't block the "one six-year-term" Amendment as Wilson did.

 

[cpip]

Not racist enough to segregate the executive branch or praise 'birth of a nation'.

But is he committed enough to civil rights to stand up against other cabinet members who are, and further who wish to bring in segregation as a weapon in the battle over appointed positions? In 1912, black civil servants were overwhelmingly Republican appointees, given the virulent racism that ran through MUCH of the Democratic Party of the period.

As much as Wilson is demonized for being the man at the top, I'm not convinced other Democratic politicians would do much better at that time.

 

[David T]

Not racist enough to segregate the executive branch or praise 'birth of a nation'.

Did Wilson praise "Birth of a Nation"? It seems extremely doubtful.

"The viewing before the president, chief justice and various cabinet members occurred on the evening of February 18. There is a tradition that the President said to Thomas Dixon after the presentation, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The problem is that this quotation first appears in print in 1937 without attribution. Dixon did not quote Wilson to this effect in his memoirs. The only surviving person at the viewing in 1977 told Arthur Link that Wilson seemed lost in thought during the showing, and that he walked out of the room without saying a word when the movie was over." http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=9504&week=c&msg=QpbhmJfJQGQX90GK%2BHvdng&user=&pw=

Richard Schickel in *D. W. Griffith: An American Life*, says on page 619 that while he accepts the attributed quote ("perhaps the most famous words ever spoken about a film"), "Yet no one has been able to fully authenticate it. In print, so far as I can determine, its provenance is based entirely on secondary sources." https://books.google.com/books?id=-YFNfV5fRDgC&pg=PA619

Moreover, three years after the alleged praise, Wilson wrote to Joseph Tumulty that "I have always felt that this was a very unfortunate production and I wish most sincerely that its production might be avoided, particularly in communities where there are so many colored people." https://books.google.com/books?id=4N3EeOX0w44C&pg=PT271

As for segregation in government offices, I think that would *probably* have come about under any Democratic presidency at that time because of the strong southern influence on the party. When segregation was originally suggested by Postmaster General Burleson in 1913, there does not seem to have been a single dissenter in the Cabinet.