When the United States entered World War I, former President Teddy Roosevelt paid a visit to President Woodrow Wilson. He proposed raising a volunteer unit to join the war. He had done so years earlier during the Spanish American War, when he famously led the Rough Riders on a charge up San Juan Hill. Now, he was looking to give it another go, and join the war in France.
Wilson and Roosevelt had a testy relationship. When a German submarine sank the Lusitania in 1915, Roosevelt stated that Wilson was cowardly for not immediately declaring war on Germany. The following year, he campaigned for Wilson’s opponent in the presidential election. But now that the United States was at war, Roosevelt tried to reconcile with Wilson to get permission to raise a division. Roosevelt told Wilson: “What I have said and thought, and what others have said and thought, is all dust in a windy street if now we can make your message good.”
Roosevelt lobbied Congress, the Secretary of War, and the public. He even lobbied the French envoy. Wilson remained skeptical. He told his secretary, “I really think the best way to treat Mr. Roosevelt is to take no notice of him.” Wilson stood his ground and refused Roosevelt’s request.
Wilson’s refusal caused increased tension between the two men. Roosevelt said Wilson’s New Year’s message to Congress was “a betrayal of democracy” and called it “false and empty rhetoric.”
Despite Roosevelt’s favorable relationship with North Dakota, his remarks were not universally welcomed. On this date in 1918, the Bottineau Courant called Wilson’s message “one of the grandest expressions of true Americanism ever delivered by a president.” It was the newspaper’s humble opinion that “this Roosevelt person is absolutely unfit to preach patriotism.”
The relationship between Wilson and Roosevelt has been described as one of the bitterest presidential rivalries in American history. Neither man enjoyed a long and happy retirement. Roosevelt never recovered from his post-presidential expedition to the Amazon and died in 1919 at the age of sixty. Wilson went on a strenuous tour of the country in support of the League of Nations. It was a grueling trip, and he suffered an incapacitating stroke. Less than three years after he left the White House, Wilson died at the age of sixty-four.
Dakota Datebook by Carole Butcher
Sources:
- Smithsonian Magazine. “Why Teddy Roosevelt Tried to Bully His Way Onto the World War I Battlefield. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-teddy-roosevelt-tried-bully-way-onto-wwi-battlefield-180962840/ Accessed 12/5/2023.
- Grateful American Foundation. “Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson: A Bitter Rivalry.” https://gratefulamericanfoundation.org/roosevelt-wilson-rivalry/ Accessed 12/5/2023.
- Bottineau Courant. “Ruminations of a Rube.” Bottineau ND. 1/17/1918. Page 3.
