As the sun rose and set on March 4, 1914, the first anniversary of his inauguration, Wilson took no special note of his year in the White House. He was not given to reflecting on his past, and while he often recognized his mistakes, he was more inclined to move on than pause for a round of self-examination. Like the greatest presidents, he spoke of the future with eloquence and optimism, and he exercised his power in the hope of moving the United States closer to its ideals. The present was not without joy for Woodrow Wilson—he adored his wife and daughters, and they adored him—but for President Wilson, the present was one long vexation. Though he fought hard for his legislation, he did not relish his battles or try to befriend his adversaries, as Theodore Roosevelt had. To Wilson, every victory seemed hard won. He forced himself to stay in the ring, often fell ill when a fight ended, then steeled himself for the next bout.
“Sometimes I get desperately tired, and sometimes deeply discouraged,” he wrote his friend Mary. “But discouragement is weakness and most days—most normal days,—I manage to keep the thing at arm’s length and despise it.” He was also weighed down by an illness in the family. Ellen had taken a fall and been in bed for two weeks. “Coming as it did at the end of an exhausting social season of all sorts of functions and exacting duties, when she was fairly worn out and in sore need of rest, the shock and the effect on her nerves went all the deeper.” The pain had subsided, and it appeared that a long rest would put her to rights. Still, he found the experience unnerving: “work has gone harder than usual with me . . . and sometimes I have gone to bed at night as tired a man as there was, I venture, in all the Republic.”
He still did not feel at home in the White House. In an impromptu visit to the new quarters of the National Press Club, he said he did not recognize the Woodrow Wilson he saw in the papers. The newspaper version was a remote and chilly man with “a thinking machine inside . . . which he does not allow to be moved by any winds of affection or emotion of any kind.” In truth, Wilson said, he expended enormous energy in restraining his emotions: “You may not believe it, but I sometimes feel like a fire from a far from extinct volcano.” He felt passionately connected to the struggles of his fellow Americans, and when he thought of his responsibility for them, he said he trembled—“not only with a sense of my own inadequacy and weakness, but as if I were shaken by the very things that are shaking them, and if I seem circumspect, it is because I am so diligently trying not to make any colossal blunders.” The best safeguard he had found was to listen more than he talked. “That, I dare say, is what gives the impression of circumspectness, and of the ‘velvet slipper.’ I am listening.”
The reporters were touched. President Wilson had climbed down from his plinth and shown them a man of warm blood. With a bit of coaxing, he allowed them to publish his remarks, and the country got a close-up of a Woodrow Wilson it had never seen.
Wilson’s feelings, particularly the feeling that his fellow Americans were not being justly dealt with in the economic sphere, had inspired the New Freedom, but it was Wilson the thinking machine, the political calculator, who had surrendered to the segregationists whose votes he needed to turn his ideas into law. The surrender had given Wilson an excellent year in Congress, and the passage of the new banking and tax laws opened the way for the rest of the New Freedom: a straightforward antitrust act, the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, and the eight-hour workday at companies engaged in interstate commerce. In the twentieth century, only Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal would do more to change the economic arrangements of the United States.
But in foreign affairs, there had been no triumphs. “Watchful waiting” was soon mocked as “deadly drifting,” and Japan, still angry about the administration’s inaction on California’s Alien Land Act, had begun injecting itself into Mexican affairs, selling weapons to Huerta at bargain prices. Wilson doubted that the Japanese would make a lunge at the West Coast of the United States, but he worried that they might be waiting for a moment when Americans were so ensnared in Mexico that they would be powerless to prevent a Japanese raid on one of the U.S. possessions in the Pacific.
In the hope of improving his performance abroad, Wilson rescinded the ban on arms sales to Mexico, arguing that the Mexicans should be left free to settle their own affairs. When the flow of arms failed to produce major gains for Carranza and the Constitutionalists, Lind pressed Wilson for more—a military foray into Mexico City to pry Huerta from his throne, perhaps, or robust support for the Constitutionalists’ plan to capture the oil port of Tampico, two hundred miles up the coast from Veracruz. A rebel victory at Tampico would deprive Huerta of a third of his revenue. Again and again Lind argued that the Constitutionalists would fail unless the president backed his morals with muscle. The president hesitated, but his inexplicable respect for Lind’s judgment contributed not a little to the administration’s first international disaster.
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The trouble began on April 9, 1914, when the USS Dolphin, a cruiser attached to a small squadron near Tampico, sent the ship’s paymaster and seven sailors into port for supplies. Foreign warships were a common sight along the Gulf coast of Mexico during the revolution. Germany and Great Britain occasionally sent cruisers, and the U.S. Navy kept several ships on hand for reasons that might be summed up as glowering at General Huerta.
The men from the Dolphin docked their whaleboat, did their errands, and were loading their cargo when they were arrested by a Mexican colonel. Within ninety minutes, the army’s local commander, General Morelos Zaragoza, had released the Americans and apologized wholeheartedly for his colonel’s ignorance of a point of international protocol: except in war, sailors aboard a vessel flying their nation’s flag were immune to arrest.
Outraged by the arrests, the Dolphin’s commander, Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo, sent an armed officer ashore with an imperious note demanding a formal apology and assurance that the arresting officer would be severely punished. Mayo also demanded that Zaragoza hoist the American flag and give it a twenty-one gun salute. He promised to return the salute from his ship.
Huerta quickly added his apology to Zaragoza’s, put the hapless colonel under arrest, demanded an investigation, and promised a fitting punishment if punishment was in order. But he balked at raising the Stars and Stripes on Mexican soil, saying that it would humiliate all Mexico. Huerta made his case to chargé O’Shaughnessy on Easter Sunday, April 12, and O’Shaughnessy shuttled to and from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, trying to persuade Mexico to make the salute. No humiliation was intended, he explained. The custom was an old one, a gesture of goodwill to ease two nations past an incident that might otherwise fester. On the same day, O’Shaughnessy informed the State Department of two more slights to Americans: the government-owned telegraph company had delayed delivery of a cable for the embassy, and a sailor from the USS Minnesota was arrested when he went into Veracruz to pick up the ship’s mail.
In Washington, Bryan, Daniels, and Garrison spent much of their Easter Sunday and the first hours of Monday piecing together the reports from Mexico. From time to time they telephoned the president, who had taken his family to the hills of West Virginia in the hope that fresh air and a change of scene would speed the first lady’s recovery. It had been six weeks since her fall, and she was unaccountably weak. The president returned alone to the White House at seven-thirty Monday morning, and on Tuesday issued a statement as stiff as Mayo’s. The three incidents were of a piece, Wilson said—a pattern of “ill will and contempt.” He called on the government of Mexico to correct the wrongs in a manner that would satisfy the United States and show the rest of the world “an entire change of attitude.”
On Tuesday, Huerta said he would not authorize a salute because he did not believe the United States would return it. Gamboa suggested to O’Shaughnessy that Mexico and the United States could salute simultaneously. But the custom called for the offending country to fire first. Bryan told O’Shaughnessy to assure the Mexicans that Admiral Mayo had promised a return. With all the bellicosity that his pacific soul could muster, Bryan added that the United States was “disappointed” by Huerta’s refusal. Huerta was indifferent to American disappointment.
On Wednesday, O’Shaughnessy warned Huerta that the time for salutes was running out. Daniels had just ordered all available warships from the Atlantic Fleet to head for Mexico. Huerta expressed puzzlement. He and Zaragoza had fully apologized for the mistake at Tampico, and the other incidents had been quickly sorted out. He could not understand why the apologies did not suffice.
Nor, frankly, could Secretary Daniels, who wished that Admiral Mayo had consulted him before barking orders at the sovereign state of Mexico. As commander in chief, Wilson could have ordered Mayo to back off, but a year’s worth of frustration with Mexico had pushed the president to the brink. After magnifying three trivial mistakes into a grand show of contempt, Wilson persuaded himself that a show of force would speed Huerta’s downfall. He expected no casualties, because the Mexican general in charge of the local garrison had told Lind that in the event of a U.S. attack, he would retreat rather than suffer the heavy losses sure to result from a contest between his light artillery and the big guns of the U.S. Navy’s battleships.
By Saturday, the temper of the United States had worsened from “disappointed” to “greatly disappointed,” and Bryan instructed O’Shaughnessy to deliver an ultimatum: if by six o’clock on Sunday evening Huerta did not announce his intention to comply with Admiral Mayo’s demand, President Wilson would ask Congress for authority to take “such action as may be necessary.” O’Shaughnessy spoke with Gamboa, who floated yet another proposal. Would O’Shaughnessy guarantee in writing that the salute would be returned? O’Shaughnessy said he would—if Huerta and the State Department approved.
The State Department did not approve. Furious, Gamboa accused O’Shaughnessy of duplicity and noted the absurdity of the U.S. demand for a salute from a government it did not recognize.
On Monday, April 20, the president updated the cabinet on events in Mexico and startled them by asking for their prayers. Next he briefed the press. He had no enthusiasm for war, would not ask for a declaration of war, and did not expect one, he said. In his view, the country did not face a war but “a special situation,” and if dealt with firmly and promptly, it would not become a war.
At two o’clock the president met with the chairs and ranking minority members of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees. Lodge routinely composed accounts of his significant meetings, and after this gathering he wrote that Wilson had read a resolution authorizing him to use armed force to secure Huerta’s recognition of American rights. Lodge, pointing out that the resolution was essentially a declaration of war against an individual, said he thought that the United States should act on a higher principle, namely the duty of a government to protect the lives and property of its citizens. Wilson replied that the broader language would lead to war. Lodge thought, but did not say, that it would be war no matter what Wilson called it.
Wilson trumped Lodge with the news that the Ypiranga, a German freighter laden with arms and ammunition, was about to leave Havana for Veracruz, where three long trains waited to carry the cargo to Huerta’s arsenals. Wilson was determined to intercept the ship. Lodge asked how that could be lawfully accomplished if the United States was not officially at war. Wilson said that the U.S. Navy would seize the Veracruz customhouse and impound the cargo as soon as it touched the wharf.
At three o’clock, when the president went to the Capitol to ask Congress to support his resolution, the House galleries were packed. Ellen Wilson, making her first public appearance in weeks, invited several women who were standing to join her in the seats reserved for the White House. The president strode in briskly, showing no sign of strain. In reviewing the Mexican affronts, he said that if they were ignored, they might multiply and grow more serious until they caused a war. The Constitution empowered the president to act on his own in redressing such grievances, he said, but he wished to act with the support of Congress. “I therefore come to ask your approval that I should use the armed forces of the United States in such ways and to such an extent as may be necessary to obtain from General Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States.”
Within hours, the House granted the president’s request with a vote of 337 to 37, but in the Senate, Lodge persuaded the entire Committee on Foreign Relations to reject any resolution targeting an individual. Wilson raced up to the Capitol to press the Senate’s Democratic leaders for speedy acceptance of his version, while McAdoo, Burleson, and Tumulty lobbied the rest of the caucus by telephone. Back at the White House again, the president and his secretaries of state, war, and navy met long into the night with senior officers of the army and navy to complete plans for the intervention.
At two-thirty on Tuesday morning, April 21, the White House telephone operator roused Tumulty at home and connected him with Bryan, who reported that the Ypiranga had left Havana for Veracruz. Daniels and Wilson were patched into the conversation, and as Tumulty sat in his pajamas and listened to their solemn consideration of the orders they were about to give, it occurred to him that all three were pacifists at heart. Wilson and Daniels had painful childhood memories of the Civil War, and while Bryan had served in the army during the Spanish-American War, he had worked assiduously for peace ever since. When Wilson asked Daniels and Bryan what they thought should be done, both said the arms should not be allowed to reach Huerta. Taking the leap, Wilson said, “There is no alternative but to land.” Daniels wired the commander of the navy’s ships in Mexican waters: SEIZE CUSTOMHOUSE. DO NOT PERMIT WAR SUPPLIES TO BE DELIVERED TO HUERTA GOVERNMENT OR ANY OTHER PARTY.
American sailors and marines began piling into small boats and heading for shore at about eleven o’clock in the morning, and at one-thirty the USS Utah stopped the Ypiranga outside the Veracruz harbor’s breakwater. The German cruiser Dresden was on the scene, and its quick-thinking captain told the Americans that the Ypiranga had no orders to unload in Veracruz. He volunteered to take custody of the ship and promised to make it available to transport Americans wanting to return to the United States, offers that were gratefully accepted.
In minutes, the Germans had eliminated the reason for the U.S. Navy’s landing at Veracruz, but a thousand American sailors and marines had gone ashore just before noon, and by four o’clock had taken possession of the customhouse, the telegraph and post offices, the railroad station, and the hotel nearest the harbor. Contrary to Lind’s predictions, the fighting was fierce. The sight of U.S. troops in Mexico had enraged the army as well as the cadets at the naval academy, which was next to the customhouse. The Mexicans started the shooting.
In Mexico City, O’Shaughnessy saw Huerta within hours of the landing. Huerta took the chargé’s hand, called him amigo, and asked how he was holding up. Then the atmosphere turned arctic. “You have seized our port,” Huerta snapped. “You have the right to take it, if you can, and we have the right to try to prevent you. Su Excelencia el Señor Presidente Wilson has declared war, unnecessarily, on a people that ask only to be left alone, to follow out their own evolution in their own way, though it may not seem to you a good way.” Huerta now claimed that he had been willing to give the salute until he concluded that if he had done so, el Señor Presidente would have drummed up some other pretext for the invasion.
Five battleships from the Atlantic fleet reached Veracruz during the night, and with the three thousand reinforcements who went ashore early Wednesday, April 22, the Americans brought the fighting to an end before noon. Nineteen American sailors and marines were dead, 71 wounded. Mexico’s dead numbered 126, its wounded 195. No war had been declared, and the word “invasion” had not been used by the White House, but there had been a battle.
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One of the reporters at the White House press conference on April 23, the day after the fighting ended, described the president as “preternaturally pale, almost parchmenty. . . . The death of American sailors and marines owing to an order of his seemed to affect him like an ailment. He was positively shaken.” Another reporter said he supposed that Huerta would announce that a state of war existed. “Well, will he?” the president asked. “I don’t know whether he will or not.”
None of the correspondents asked if the interdiction of the Ypiranga or the U.S. control of Veracruz would end Huerta’s regime, nor did they ask what the United States planned to do about the salute. Their main concern was a searing message from General Carranza. Although his desire for Huerta’s downfall was at least as fervent as Wilson’s, Carranza did not hesitate to call the U.S. landing an invasion and a violation of Mexican sovereignty. He demanded that the United States evacuate.
The final question was another unsuccessful attempt to get Wilson to call the invasion an act of war. The European press generally insisted that it had been an act of war, and the editors of the New York Evening Post wrote that to call the seizure of the port anything else was to say that “a blow in the face is a love token.”
Years later, recalling a White House meeting a day or two after the casualty reports were in, Lodge wrote, “We found Mr. Wilson in a state of great agitation. . . . He had never meant to have a war. Owing to his misinformation he was taken completely by surprise by the fighting at Veracruz and he was thoroughly alarmed. His one idea seemed to be that there must be no further warlike operations and he was then looking for an escape.” Luckily for Wilson, escape came soon. Acting on a suggestion from Ambassador Jusserand, the ABC Powers of South America—Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—offered to mediate the dispute between Mexico and the United States. Wilson accepted on April 24, Huerta a few days later.
Within hours of Huerta’s decision, Wilson sat down with Samuel G. Blythe, a staff writer for The Saturday Evening Post, to talk about Mexico. They met after dinner in Wilson’s study, and Blythe was struck by the contrast between the pallid Wilson he had seen at the press conference, and the Wilson who sat before him in evening clothes—tan, clear-eyed, aglow with self-assurance. Wilson made a fist and leaned forward, tensing his body. “I could see the cords stand out on the back of his neck,” Blythe wrote. “His eyes were narrowed, his lips slightly parted.” And then “Bang! He hit the desk with that clenched fist. The paper knife rattled against the tray and a few open letters stirred a bit from the jar of the blow.”
“I challenge you to cite me an instance in all the history of the world where liberty was handed down from above,” Wilson said. “Liberty always is attained by the forces working below, underneath, by the great movement of the people. That, leavened by the sense of wrong and oppression and injustice, by the ferment of human rights to be attained, brings freedom.” Wilson relaxed and mused on an irony he had noticed in Mexican affairs: every demand for order in Mexico was a demand for the kind of order desired by those who had caused the disorder—the aristocrats, hidalgos, and overlords who plundered the country’s natural resources and exploited the people. Their idea of order was repression, he said. “My ideal is an orderly and righteous government in Mexico, but my passion is for the submerged eighty-five percent of the people of that Republic, who are now struggling toward liberty.” Coping with the chaos in Mexico had been complicated, Wilson went on. The United States had been forced to wait for an opening, and the incident at Tampico had supplied it. “Really,” he said, “it was a psychological moment, if that phrase is not too trite to be used.”
Wilson hoped that the ABC mediation would succeed, but whether it did or not, he said, he deemed it the duty of the United States to help the Mexican people until peace and constitutional government were restored. And for those who believed that Mexicans were innately unsuited to self-government, Wilson had a message: when properly directed, all peoples were capable of self-government. He would not go so far as to say that Mexico’s submerged 85 percent, almost all of them illiterate, were at that moment ready for democracy, but in his judgment, the idea that they would never be ready was “wickedly false.”
• • •
The ABC Powers selected the neutral ground of Niagara Falls, Ontario, for their conference, which opened on May 20 and lasted six weeks. Bryan and Wilson had one agenda, Huerta another. Carranza, whose armies had advanced to the point where they controlled two-thirds of Mexico, had agreed to take part in the conference, but he refused to send delegates when he learned that the mediators expected a cease-fire and the United States expected a say in Mexico’s future. Closing in on Mexico City, Carranza was determined to have his military victory, and he had no intention of allowing foreigners to interfere in Mexico’s internal affairs.
From first to last, Wilson’s intervention at Veracruz was a fiasco. Although Huerta soon agreed to resign, he did so because of Carranza’s military strength, not because of Wilson or the U.S. Navy. The future of Mexico would be decided by six more years of revolution, not by the ABC Powers or the United States. The Ypiranga, after sailing north to Mobile to drop off American refugees, headed south again, steaming past Admiral Mayo’s flotilla near Tampico, past the American flag flying over Veracruz, and down to the city of Puerto Mexico, where it unloaded its munitions. The United States had assumed that the Ypiranga would return to Germany after leaving Mobile, but when Washington complained to Berlin, Berlin feigned surprise. Admiral Mayo never got his salute.
