Chapter 29: Wilson’s Progressivism in Peace & War

The tumultuous era spanning 1913 to 1920 saw the zenith of Progressive accomplishments under President Woodrow Wilson, who initially focused his domestic agenda on dismantling the "triple wall of privilege" encompassing the tariff, the banks, and the trusts. Key reforms included the Underwood Tariff, which drastically lowered import duties and implemented the new graduated federal income tax authorized by the Sixteenth Amendment. Crucially, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 revamped the antiquated banking system by establishing twelve regional Federal Reserve districts with centralized public control over the nation’s currency supply. Monopolies were targeted through the creation of the Federal Trade Commission and the passage of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, the latter offering long-sought protections for organized labor by legally exempting unions from antitrust prosecution. Despite these widespread domestic advances, Wilson’s progressivism stopped short of addressing systemic racial injustice, notably reinstating segregation within the federal bureaucracy. In foreign policy, Wilson initially rejected "dollar diplomacy" but was reluctantly drawn into interventions in the Caribbean, particularly in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and executed highly controversial "moralistic diplomacy" in revolutionary Mexico, leading to military clashes with leaders like Victoriano Huerta and Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The outbreak of World War I challenged American neutrality, which was increasingly difficult to maintain given strong economic ties to the Allied nations and Germany’s use of devastating U-boat warfare, culminating in tragedies like the sinking of the Lusitania. After Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and the inflammatory Zimmermann note was intercepted, Wilson led the nation into war in April 1917, rallying support by proclaiming the lofty goal of making the world "safe for democracy." The home front saw massive mobilization, orchestrated by the War Industries Board and Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration, which relied on voluntary measures, although civil liberties were severely curtailed by the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which were used to jail antiwar critics like Eugene V. Debs. Wartime social shifts included the Great Migration of African Americans north and crucial contributions by women that paved the way for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing female suffrage. American troops, organized through conscription into the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), decisively participated in late-war offensives, including Chateau-Thierry and the massive Meuse-Argonne campaign. Following the armistice, Wilson became the moral leader at the Paris Peace Conference, fighting for his idealistic Fourteen Points and the establishment of the League of Nations. However, the resulting Treaty of Versailles, dominated by punitive vengeance, faced fatal opposition back home from isolationist "irreconcilables" and Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who added debilitating reservations. Wilson’s refusal to compromise, coupled with his physical collapse, ensured the Senate’s rejection of the treaty, resulting in America’s retreat to isolationism and fatally undermining the stability of the postwar international order.