The 65th Congress hit the ground running. It had gone into session early; one day after Inauguration Day, March 4th. (January inaugurations did not take place until 1937.) President Wilson had already spoken to the Congress twice in March 1917 to ask it to arm U.S. Merchant vessels against German submarines. Such action had become necessary after Germany announced on January 31 it would once again target neutral ships approaching the British Isles or France.

Germany Reaches Out to Mexico

The Congress already had a full plate. On February 28th, American newspapers printed the Zimmermann telegram. (You can read it here.) The telegram had been sent in code from Berlin on January 19th. Its author, Arthur Zimmermann, was the German Foreign Minister. In it he instructed his ambassador in Mexico City to encourage Mexico to attack the Southwestern United States. However, this was only to be if the U.S. declared war against Germany. Finally, Germany would repay the favor by financing Mexico’s war of reconquest and sending arms.

The interception, decoding and publication of the telegram is a spy story only Ian Fleming could write if it hadn’t really happened. Consequently, it created a firestorm in America. Relations with Mexico could not have been worse in 1917. A sizable U.S. force had just returned from an eleven-month long incursion that took it 400 miles into Mexico. They were seeking to capture revolutionary and bandit Pancho Villa. Villa and his men had raided border towns in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. For example, he attacked Columbus, New Mexico on March 6th, 1916.

The U.S. expedition, led by then Brigadier General John J. Pershing, failed to apprehend Villa. As a result, the entire Southwest was on edge. National Guard units were posted there to meet the threat. The U.S.-Mexico border was becoming militarized.

Suspected Sabotage

The rest of the country, though officially at peace, did not escape violence. On July 30th, 1916 the Black Tom munitions depot in Jersey City exploded. The huge blast damaged the nearby Statue of Liberty and shattered windows in Times Square in Manhattan. Although it was not immediately clear who detonated 100,000 pounds of TNT at Black Tom, the explosion was deliberate. As a result, Americans feared foreign spies, but were already looking to their immigrant neighbors with suspicion.

The hidden hand of sabotage apparently struck again on January 11, 1917 when a munitions factory in present-day Lyndhurst, New Jersey exploded. By the time President Woodrow Wilson asked a special joint session of Congress for a declaration of war against the German empire on April 2, many Americans felt as if the war had already come to them.

What was in 1914 an overwhelmingly neutral American public had in thirty months changed to decidedly pro-war. Fears of hostile saboteurs, a potentially disloyal immigrant population from Middle Europe had many on edge. Furthermore, the loss of Americans aboard the Lusitania had changed public opinion against Germany. Finally, the revelation of the Zimmermann telegram changed things materially.  The possibility of Imperial German bases on the Gulf shore of Mexico and Imperial Japanese bases on the Pacific shore, however remote, had made this far-off war a near thing indeed.

War Declared

The U.S. Senate voted for war on April 4th, with 82 votes in favor. After that the House followed in the early hours on April 6th, with 350 members voting for war against Germany. The threat, even the reality, of hostilities with powers orchestrated by Germany had moved the United States into war. Similarly, some Americans responded to President Wilson’s appeal to a “peace without victory”. More accurately, he appealed to a victory of law, human rights and democracy over aggression, tyranny and empire. It was a significant and fateful moment in the American experiment. (More from journalist David Smith in today’s edition of The Guardian here)

P.S. The telegram the United States didn’t get? The one from Mexico explaining that German telegram…

One Hundred years ago today President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. The war had been raging for more than thirty months across the globe making it, as it was called, the Great War. Or the World War: taking conflict into Southwest Africa then East Africa, to the Sinai Peninsula, the Gallipoli Peninsula and to the Falkland Islands. But so far there was nothing great about it except for its insatiable demand for lives.

It was the loss of life, American lives, which brought Mr. Wilson to the Capitol to speak to Congress for the fourth time in three months. In December 1916 the German High Command debated resuming unrestricted submarine warfare against the Entente Powers. The Entente had its own very effective surface blockade of Germany. Therefore leaving no doubt that if the neutral world wanted to trade, it would trade with Britain and France.

Trade with the Entente, specifically Britain, had brought the United States out of recession by 1915. American ships were plying the waves toward all ports as a neutral nation in the first years of the war. American ships bound for Germany were boarded and turned back by the Royal Navy, which brought friction between the two Atlantic powers. Germany, however, had its submarines. In February 1915, it announced it would use them around the British Isles, even on ships from neutral nations.

Submarines strike

But it was the sinking of a British ship, RMS Lusitania, and the 128 Americans who went down with it that brought America to the brink of war with Germany in May 1915. President Wilson warned Germany that it was the right of Americans, and all neutrals, to travel in commercial vessels without fear of surprise attack by submarines. Likewise, he warned Germany that the next unprovoked attack would signal hostilities. However, it was the loss of another British liner, SS Arabic, and three more American lives that August which caused the U-boats to stand down.

Sixteen months later Germany announced the resumption of submarine attacks effective February 1, 1917. Wilson already spoke in Congress of his resolve to arm American merchant vessels with US Naval gunners. Five American ships were lost in March alone. On just the day before Wilson’s speech, the German submarine U-46 torpedoed another American vessel, SS Aztec, off the French coast. Twenty-eight aboard the Aztec died, including one of the US Navy gunners protecting it, Boatswain’s Mate First Class John Eopolucci. Consequently BM 1CL Eopolucci was the first American serviceman to die in Europe in World War I.

Wilson Addresses Congress

A clearly exasperated President Wilson stood before a joint session in the well of the House on April 2nd. (You can read the speech here.) He laments the innocent lives lost and the degradation of law among nations. We should not be surprised that he thought submarines were an abomination; murderers unwilling to show themselves even as they strike. “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.”

Wilson, before and after the speech, was an idealist. He wants supranational instruments and assemblies to preserve a law-abiding, democratic world. But on April 2 he comes to the conclusion that the world is on fire; and the fire is imperial German aggression. It must be put out. The United States must go to war to put it out.

In asking for war, Wilson is turning his back on a key American principle avoiding European conflicts and alliances. This notion was as old as the republic itself, part of its DNA. (More on that by journalist David M. Shribman here.)

Above all, Wilson is arguing for a new role for America in a new century. Recently the United States had surpassed Great Britain as an industrial power. A transcontinental power, it was building a two-ocean navy with the goal of becoming a Pacific power. Was the United States ready to step up to becoming a world power?

It was up to Congress.

Interestingly, Wilson addressed the room as “Gentlemen”, overlooking Rep. Jeannette Rankin who that year had become the first woman member of Congress. Wilson should have been more inclusive in his remarks. The Republican from Montana voted against the war.