Woodrow Wilson lives until 1950
- Thread starter Byzantion
- Start date
He'd hate what happened to the League of Nations in the years leading up to World War II, though he'd appreciate the creation of the U.N. as a similar concept.
Making him live until the age of 93 is highly pushing it.
However he would have strong views on the way the republican's ruined the economy causing a Great Depression following two terms of his progressive legislative policies.
He would be an advocate of war against Hitler, calling on the TTL President, to focus American efforts on diplomacy and financial considerations, similar to his war with the Imperial Germany, by supporting loans to Britain and France but avoiding Soviet Russia.
I could imagine Wilson arming up France in hopes that the strong defended nation would make Nazi Germany attack the Russians more.
However he would have strong views on the way the republican's ruined the economy causing a Great Depression following two terms of his progressive legislative policies.
He would be an advocate of war against Hitler, calling on the TTL President, to focus American efforts on diplomacy and financial considerations, similar to his war with the Imperial Germany, by supporting loans to Britain and France but avoiding Soviet Russia.
I could imagine Wilson arming up France in hopes that the strong defended nation would make Nazi Germany attack the Russians more.
Would a healthier Wilson attempt to get himself a seat within the Leauge of Nations as Secretary‑General?
He Would most likely start a race war by 1948 with his views on the black Race . He was the one that segregated the US Navy in his term of office For the first time in its history .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States_Armed_Forces#World_War_I_2
Would his views of segregation be kept out of the "Northern" public eye.
What about him as Justice on the Supreme Court? Would he want it and if so who would appoint him?
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
a medium-healthy Wilson who largely recovers from his stroke (POD: earlier effective treatment for high blood pressure?)
Does he apologize for his views on race? Or for such a lousy Treaty of Versailles?
Although, as a curious fact of history and human nature, people sometimes apologize for what you don't expect them to.
Does he apologize for his views on race? Or for such a lousy Treaty of Versailles?
Although, as a curious fact of history and human nature, people sometimes apologize for what you don't expect them to.
thorr97
Banned
Woodrow Wilson was a racist and sexist bigot. In this, sadly, he was a man of his times. At least insofar as the Progressive movement went. If you look at his writings and his statements he clearly despised the Federal Republic of the United States and, like far too many "intellectuals" of the day, thought the European parliamentary system was superior. Like too many Progressives, he had nothing but contempt for the majority of the American public and believed that they needed to be led and controlled for their own good as they were too stupid and incapable of leading their own lives.
Everything he touched turned into a disaster. The man lied in order to get elected and then made even bigger lies to get reelected. Look how quickly he went back on his election winning promise to keep the US out of World War One.
If he recovered from his stroke sufficiently to remain an active force in the Democratic Party for decades to come then the nation would've been much the worse for it. Progress on the Civil Rights front for blacks would've been a hopeless cause - at least if Wilson had any say in it. Progress on women's rights would've been another point of opposition for him and thus Women's Suffrage might've been set back for years later than in OTL.
As the Great War's "peace" unraveled, so too would Wilson's reputation were he still alive to endure it. His death absolved him of that blame. If he were still present and still a highly visible figure within the Democratic Party's roster of "elder statesmen" then it'd be one humiliation after another. Also, given the man's bigotries and world view, I could easily see him buying into the National Socialist screed for Germany as being the best solution for those "troubled and abused people so unfairly victimized by the cruel and harsh terms the British and French insisted on..." And like too many Progressives, he'd probably have bought into the lies coming from Moscow as well.
No, the world would not be a better place had that man been around longer to keep fouling it.
Everything he touched turned into a disaster. The man lied in order to get elected and then made even bigger lies to get reelected. Look how quickly he went back on his election winning promise to keep the US out of World War One.
If he recovered from his stroke sufficiently to remain an active force in the Democratic Party for decades to come then the nation would've been much the worse for it. Progress on the Civil Rights front for blacks would've been a hopeless cause - at least if Wilson had any say in it. Progress on women's rights would've been another point of opposition for him and thus Women's Suffrage might've been set back for years later than in OTL.
As the Great War's "peace" unraveled, so too would Wilson's reputation were he still alive to endure it. His death absolved him of that blame. If he were still present and still a highly visible figure within the Democratic Party's roster of "elder statesmen" then it'd be one humiliation after another. Also, given the man's bigotries and world view, I could easily see him buying into the National Socialist screed for Germany as being the best solution for those "troubled and abused people so unfairly victimized by the cruel and harsh terms the British and French insisted on..." And like too many Progressives, he'd probably have bought into the lies coming from Moscow as well.
No, the world would not be a better place had that man been around longer to keep fouling it.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Not sure this is across-the-board true! But if it is, with the resurgence of the Klan in the 1920s (or at least more marches), he might have drawn some interesting distinctions, and potentially helped improve things.
(with a little luck!
)I mean, if he said he was against the Klan for more complicated reasons, other people may have felt comfortable saying they were against the Klan for more straightforward reasons.
The KKK that revived in 1915 was little concerned with the Negro issue. The originators that year were aiming at moral decay among the white races & non Protestant religions. The KKK had a lot of prohibition supporters in its ranks and had antigambling agenda as well. On the religious side the Catholics were a major enemy, & groups like the Eastern Orthadox, Mormons, Mennonites, Quakers, ect... further down on the list. 1915 was at the start of the anti German hysteria & "Nordic" races including Swedes, Danes, Norwegians were seen as needing to be controled, as were Greeks, Turks, Italians, Spainards, Portuguse, Latin Americans, & all those Chinamens from off east somewhere. Actually if you weren't WASP you were on the shit list of the revived KKK.
As the 1920s played out the KKK started fragmenting, new leadership emerged, & membership started thinking excluding 80% of the US population was not conducive to growth or political control. By the 1930s about any 'white' man could join a kalvern if he wanted to. The return of KKK attention to the Negro problem came gradually & did not gel until the 1940s in a few localities & nation wide when the civil rights movement became a mass movement in the 1950s.
I'd recommend 'The Invisible Empire' for a good 500 page outline of the KKK in the 20th Century.
Yet one of their main influences was the openly racist The Birth of a Nation. A film that included a Wilson quote.
True, but in the South, the Klan's heartland, anti-black racism was a mainstay. The 1920 were, for example, the era of the Tulsa race riots, the Duluth lynchings et cetera.
Plus there were the numerpus scandals within the Klan.
Newton's books? Hardly a scholarly effort.
Suppresion of 'Negros' was pretty well handled by ad hoc measures that did not use a formal organization like the Klan. Organization of lynch mobs or race riots had been well accomplished for three decades before the Klan was revived.
many of the Klans leaders 1915-1935 seemed more concerned with making money out of it. The distribution of membership fees resembles a pyramid scheme in some aspects.
Try 'Hooded Americanism' then. By Chalmers. 23 pages of source citations. A bit more difficult read, but another good account of the early to mid 20th Century Klan.
Would Wilson support the New Deal? The Wilson of 1912 might not, but by his second term he had definitely moved to the left on economic issues. Wilson's brother-in-law Stockton Axson recalled that in June 1918 Wilson told him, "Now the world is going to change radically, and I am satisfied that governments will have to do many things which are now left to individuals and corporations. I am satisfied for instance that the government will have to take over all the great natural resources[;] … all the water power; all the coal mines; all the oil fields, etc. They will have to be government-owned.” He then added, “Now if I should say that outside, people would call me a socialist, but I am not a socialist.” The previous February he told House that he liked the new program of the British Labour Party and talked about forming a new party in the United States: "He did not believe the Democratic Party could be used as an instrument to go as far as it would be needful to go largely becuase of the reactionary element in the South." https://books.google.com/books?id=xOZVsyO4K2cC&pg=PA433
Indeed, is it even conceivable that he will forget differences about the War and support La Follette in 1924, because he is dissatisfied by Davis's conservatism (even though he himself had appointed Davis Ambassador to Great Britain)?
He'll probably spend a lot of time writing his memoirs. His biggest regret would probably not be about the War or the League fight but about appointing McReynolds to the Supreme Court...
Indeed, is it even conceivable that he will forget differences about the War and support La Follette in 1924, because he is dissatisfied by Davis's conservatism (even though he himself had appointed Davis Ambassador to Great Britain)?
He'll probably spend a lot of time writing his memoirs. His biggest regret would probably not be about the War or the League fight but about appointing McReynolds to the Supreme Court...
Sounds like Wilson. I suspect that digging into the context of this you'd find the same sort of arrogance & overthinking that led to intervention in Mexican politics and the several US military expeditions into Mexico.
Which said quote was deliberately taken out of context and misquoted him on his position on the orginal KKK of the Reconstruction era.
"Clearly, Griffith believed it in his interest to have the president appear to legitimate the “history” in Birth. This explains both the special showing of the film at the White House and the quotations form Wilson's earlier historical work. An examination of the intertitles and what Wilson had actually written suggests, however, that Griffith was at the very least rather inexact in the quotations he used and that, in each case, his selective excerpts altered to a degree the original meaning...Although Wilson plainly sympathized to a considerable degree with the South (he had grown up in Virginia), his *History* was in reality much more balanced in his discussion of Reconstruction than Griffith would have wished...." Melvyn Stokes, *D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time,* p. 198. https://books.google.com/books?id=fGJFpiTjbKwC&pg=PA198 Stokes continues,
"Where Wilson differed most from Griffith was in his treatment of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had been, Wilson observed, 'a very tempting and dangerous instrument of power for days of disorder and social upheaval.' In the beginning, 'sober men' had advised upon and curbed the activities of the hooded order. As time went on, however, such control proved increasingly impossible to exercise as the Klan was drawn deeper and deeper 'into the ways of violence and outlawry. 'Men of hot passions who could not always be restrained,' Wilson commented, 'carried their plans into effect. Reckless men not of their order, malicious fellows of the baser sort who did not feel the compulsions of honor and who had private grudges to satisfy, imitated their disguises and borrowed their methods.' The number of abuses grew: 'Brutal crimes were committed; the innocent suffered with the guilty; a reign of terror was brought on, and society was infinitely more disturbed than defended.' In contrast with Griffith's later film, which depicted the Klan as rescuing white women from the threat posed by black men, Wilson made it clear that the Klan itself arracked female targets. 'The more ardent regulators,' he wrote, 'made no nice discriminations. All northern white men or women who came into the South to work among the negroes, though they were but school teachers, were in danger of their enmity and silent onset.' According to Wilson, the Klan was deeply unchivalrous. It was also shortlived and relatively unsuccessful. Instead of overthrowing Radical regimes and restoring white suprmeacy by force, as *The Birth of a Nation* suggested, the original Klan had been effectively destroyed by new federal laws of 1870 and 1871 and the determined actions of President Grant.."
https://books.google.com/books?id=fGJFpiTjbKwC&pg=PA200
"Where Wilson differed most from Griffith was in his treatment of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had been, Wilson observed, 'a very tempting and dangerous instrument of power for days of disorder and social upheaval.' In the beginning, 'sober men' had advised upon and curbed the activities of the hooded order. As time went on, however, such control proved increasingly impossible to exercise as the Klan was drawn deeper and deeper 'into the ways of violence and outlawry. 'Men of hot passions who could not always be restrained,' Wilson commented, 'carried their plans into effect. Reckless men not of their order, malicious fellows of the baser sort who did not feel the compulsions of honor and who had private grudges to satisfy, imitated their disguises and borrowed their methods.' The number of abuses grew: 'Brutal crimes were committed; the innocent suffered with the guilty; a reign of terror was brought on, and society was infinitely more disturbed than defended.' In contrast with Griffith's later film, which depicted the Klan as rescuing white women from the threat posed by black men, Wilson made it clear that the Klan itself arracked female targets. 'The more ardent regulators,' he wrote, 'made no nice discriminations. All northern white men or women who came into the South to work among the negroes, though they were but school teachers, were in danger of their enmity and silent onset.' According to Wilson, the Klan was deeply unchivalrous. It was also shortlived and relatively unsuccessful. Instead of overthrowing Radical regimes and restoring white suprmeacy by force, as *The Birth of a Nation* suggested, the original Klan had been effectively destroyed by new federal laws of 1870 and 1871 and the determined actions of President Grant.."
https://books.google.com/books?id=fGJFpiTjbKwC&pg=PA200