Wilson summons Congress

On 21 March 1917 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling Congress into extraordinary session at noon on Monday 2 April. Senators and congressmen were to hear the President’s message “on grave questions of national policy which should be taken immediately under consideration”. The proclamation mentioned neither Germany nor war, but no one in Washington had any doubt what it was about. As recently as 9 March Wilson had summoned the new Congress for 16 April. Now he brought the date forward by two weeks.

A week of sinkings

In the nine days after Congress was summoned, German submarines sank four American ships. On 12 March, the day the State Department notified the world that the government would arm merchant ships, the steamer Algonquin was shelled without warning west of the Scilly Isles. Between 16 and 18 March the Vigilancia, City of Memphis and Illinois were sunk, and 15 men died on the Vigilancia, six of them Americans. In February Wilson had said that he would take further steps only after “overt acts” by the Germans. Now he could no longer claim that none had occurred. On top of this, the Americans had for three weeks known of the Zimmermann Telegram, whose authenticity had been confirmed by the German Foreign Secretary himself. In mid-March the former ambassador James W. Gerard, back from Berlin, visited the President and the Secretary of State. According to The New York Times his accounts confirmed officials in the belief that the German leadership preferred to risk war with America rather than give up submarine warfare.

The cabinet of 20 March

On Tuesday 20 March at half past two in the afternoon Wilson gathered his cabinet. The Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, called this meeting in his note the most important and most historic of all those he had attended. The President asked the ministers what he should do and whether he should call Congress earlier. The first to speak was the Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo. Also in favour of war were the Secretary of Agriculture David Houston, the Secretary of Commerce William Redfield, the Secretary of War Newton Baker, Lansing, the Attorney General Thomas Gregory, the Postmaster General Albert Burleson and the Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane. The Secretary of Labor, William Bauchop Wilson, who as late as 2 February had opposed breaking off relations with Germany, now said slowly and firmly that Germany was already making war on the United States and that Congress must be called as soon as possible. He admitted that he had come to this conviction with great reluctance. The least eager for war seemed to be the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, known for his pacifist convictions. According to Lansing, when he finally came out for war he spoke in a low, trembling voice, and his eyes were full of tears.

Lansing argued that the country should enter the war not only because of the sunken ships. He drew attention to the situation in the belligerent states, above all in Russia, where the revolution had evidently succeeded and overthrown autocracy, and in Germany, where liberals in the Prussian diet were criticising the rulers ever more loudly. The revolution in Russia had, in his view, removed the only obstacle to calling the war in Europe a war of democracy against absolutism. The President replied that he did not see how he could speak before Congress of a war for democracy or of the Russian revolution. When Lansing persisted, the President merely answered: “Possibly.”

The meeting ended without a decision. “Well, gentlemen, I think that there is no doubt as to what your advice is. I thank you,” said Wilson. Lansing noted that the President had not shown at any point what he would do, and no one could be sure that he would follow the ministers’ opinion. Wilson also asked Lansing and Burleson how quickly Congress could be assembled. They decided that the earliest date was Monday 2 April.

The proclamation

The next day Wilson made his decision. The proclamation of 21 March replaced that of 9 March and summoned the newly elected Congress for 2 April. The bill on arming ships had died in the previous Congress through a filibuster in the Senate, but the President no longer had to wait for it, since he was arming ships on his own authority. By the end of March the first ships with guns and navy gunners were on their way to the war zone. Now something more was at stake. According to the Associated Press it was expected in Washington that the President would show that a state of war with Germany already in fact existed, and that Congress would formally declare it, vote credits for defence and authorise the President to use the armed forces.

According to The New York Times the capital received the news calmly. Newspapers with the proclamation sold quickly, but no one was excited, because everyone understood that it meant war. The Republican senator William Borah of Idaho, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised the President for calling Congress early but warned that Congress “cannot and will not merely thunder and go home”. He wanted to know what the country was committing itself to and whether the nation was united. On the evening of the same day, in the North Sea near the Dutch island of Terschelling, a torpedo struck the American tanker Healdton, bound for Rotterdam with oil. Twenty-one men died, seven of them Americans.

The shadow of the Russian revolution

American opinion was strongly influenced by events in Petrograd. On 15 March Nicholas II abdicated, and power was taken over by the Provisional Government, made up largely of liberals. For many Americans the alliance with tsarist Russia had until then been the most serious argument against entering the war on the side of the Entente. It was hard to argue that one was fighting German militarism shoulder to shoulder with the Tsar, whose government Americans associated with pogroms of Jews and police oppression. The fall of tsarism removed this obstacle, and the Entente began to look like an alliance of states with representative governments. On 22 March, the day after the proclamation, the United States recognised the new Russian government.

Wilson, who on 20 March had not wanted to speak of Russia before Congress, changed his mind. On 2 April he addressed both houses about a war to make the world safe for democracy, and said of Russia that after the overthrow of autocracy it had become a fit partner in a “league of honour”. On 6 April 1917 the United States declared war on Germany.