Newton Baker becomes US Secretary of War

On 6 March 1916 President Woodrow Wilson announced that the new Secretary of War, the minister responsible for the land army, would be Newton Diehl Baker, the former mayor of Cleveland. Wilson sent the telegram with the offer from the presidential yacht Mayflower. In it he wrote that acceptance of the office would “greatly strengthen” his position. Some sources date the formal nomination to 7 March. Baker took the oath on 9 March in the War Department building in Washington.

Garrison’s departure

The office had been vacant since 10 February. On that day Lindley Garrison, Secretary of War since 1913 and an advocate of a rapid expansion of the armed forces, resigned. In the American debate over “preparedness” for war he had drawn up the so-called Continental Army plan: the regular army was to number about 140,000 men, and alongside it a federal reserve of 400,000 volunteers was to be created. Wilson, who at the turn of January and February toured the country persuading voters to strengthen the nation’s defences, at first supported the plan. But when strong opposition arose in Congress, especially in the House of Representatives, where the chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, James Hay, defended the state-based National Guard, the President made it clear that he would not insist on any particular scheme. Garrison regarded this as abandoning his cause and resigned. His Assistant Secretary, Henry Breckinridge, left with him. Advocates of rearmament took the resignation as proof that the President was not taking the country’s defence seriously.

For several weeks the duties of Secretary were performed by the Army Chief of Staff, General Hugh L. Scott, but the law allowed him to do so for only a month. The press named as candidates the Secretary of Agriculture, David Houston, and Senator George Chamberlain, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Chamberlain, however, was at odds with Hay, so his nomination would only have inflamed the dispute over the defence bill.

“I am an innocent”

Wilson chose a man from outside Washington. Baker was 44 and the youngest member of the cabinet. He was born in 1871 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, studied at Johns Hopkins University, where he attended Wilson’s lectures, and then studied law. He made his career in Cleveland as a progressive Democrat, first as city solicitor and then, in 1912–1915, for two terms as mayor. At the Democratic Party convention in 1912 he helped Wilson win the votes of the Ohio delegates. Wilson wanted him in the government even then, but Baker declined, because he had promised the voters to complete his programme in the city. At the beginning of 1916, after the end of his second term, he returned to the bar.

The nomination surprised many. Baker had no military experience at all. During the war with Spain in 1898 he had been rejected as a volunteer because of poor eyesight. The press wrote that he belonged to three peace societies and portrayed him as a pacifist. Advocates of rearmament concluded that Garrison was being succeeded by someone who would merely carry out the President’s instructions. Baker himself did nothing to dispel these fears. He told journalists that he was “an innocent” who knew nothing about the job, but that for this very reason he had no prejudices either. Asked whether he was a pacifist, he reportedly replied that he was so much of one that he was ready to fight for peace.

First day in office

As Baker was leaving the White House on 9 March to take the oath, journalists gave him news from the Mexican border. During the night a band of Pancho Villa’s men had raided the small town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing American civilians and soldiers. The new Secretary’s first task was therefore to prepare a punitive expedition into Mexico. In June Congress passed the National Defense Act, which expanded the army and the National Guard instead of creating Garrison’s federal reserve. Baker, contrary to the fears of March, remained in office until 1921, and it was he who directed the American army when the United States entered the war in 1917.