The Letter That Made Woodrow Wilson President

Wilson was a lifelong academic and college president. During the first decade of the 20th century, he made the newspapers for his notable reforms at Princeton University and for trying (unsuccessfully) to break up its elite eating clubs. During his years as Princeton president, he had grown increasingly progressive and had come to believe that politics was good and that government could be a constructive and beneficial force. This was an era when reform was in the air, and independent men not beholden to party bosses or special interests were enormously popular, so Wilson’s activities at Princeton led to his name being mentioned as a gubernatorial prospect in New Jersey in 1910.

The Democratic Party could not help but note Wilson’s popularity and grew interested in him. However, the Democrats were as afraid of Wilson’s sidestepping the party or trying to smash its organization as they were impressed by his popularity. For his part, by mid-1910, Wilson was ready to leave Princeton. In June of that year, Jim Smith, the powerful Democratic boss of Essex County, took a trip westward and spoke with Democratic governors along the way. He was surprised to find that they knew of Wilson and shocked that they were actually mentioning him as a potential presidential candidate.

The New Jersey Democratic Party organization was in a quandry; it clearly had a candidate who could get votes, but would he destroy the machine if nominated? It turned to a friend for help in finding out. When Smith reached Chicago, he met with that city’s boss, Roger Sullivan, and another powerful politico, John M. Harlan. Harlan, son of one U.S. Supreme Court Justice and father of another, was an old friend of Wilson from the days they were at Princeton together. According to August Heckscher in his biography Woodrow Wilson, when Smith stated his doubts about Wilson’s intentions, Harlan offered to act as an intermediary. He wrote his friend Wilson and asked if he were elected governor, would he set about “fighting and breaking down the existing Democratic organization and replacing it with one of his own?” Heckscher goes on to quote this letter, stating that Wilson’s response reassured the party organization, leading to his nomination for governor a few months later.

Typed Letter Signed on Princeton University letterhead, June 23, 1910, to John M. Harlan, accommodating the Democratic Party while at the same time staking out a completely independent position and leaving himself free to act. “I owe you an apology for not having replied sooner to yours of June 11th. The Commencement season began, as you know, on June 10th, and ever since it began I have been in the throes of the busiest part of the season.

“I need not say that I read your letter with the greatest interest. I would be perfectly willing to assure Mr. Smith that I would not, if elected Governor, set about ‘fighting and breaking down the existing Democratic organization and replacing it with one of my own.’ The last thing I should think of would be building up a machine of my own. So long as the existing Democratic organization was willing to work with thorough heartiness for such policies as would re-establish the reputation of the State and the credit of the Democratic party in serving the State, I should deem myself inexcusable for antagonizing it, so long as I was left absolutely free in the matter of measures and men. I have been so extremely busy and business has brought me so near the eve of my vacation, that I do not see how it would be quite possible for me to arrange to lunch with Mr. Hurley and Mr. Smith in New York, but I should be very pleased to do so if it should turn out to be possible. My address will be care of Miss Florence Griswold, Lyme, Conn.

“I deeply appreciate your kindness in keeping these political matters in mind. You are certainly most generous and I appreciate your interest and friendship very warmly indeed. It seems to me as if the developments in Princeton make it pretty certain that my duty lies here in the immediate future and not in the political field, but I am as eager as ever to do anything that is possible, consistent with my other obligations, to help forward the rehabilitation of the great party in which I have always believed.”

Here, Wilson does agree to work through the party organization but qualifies it by stating that the organization must “reestablish” its credit (in other words credibility, by becoming more honest and less boss-controlled) and leave him free “as to measures and men” (which amounts to control of appointments and legislation). This letter led to Wilson’s election as governor in November 1910, and less than three years after this letter launched his political career, a college president took the oath of office as president of the United States, a startling rise to power.