Document – Excerpt from a Campaign Speech by Woodrow Wilson at Indianapolis, October 3, 1912 (“The New Freedom”)

Document:

Mr. Chairman and fellow citizens:…

I believe that there is abroad in this country a very profound interest in the fundamental issues of this campaign. And I do not wonder that that interest is profound, for those issues are the issues of life and of death. I do not believe that any speaker can exaggerate for you the critical character of the present political situation. We talk, and we talk in very plausible phrases, indeed, about returning the government of this country to the people of this country…I esteem it a great privilege, therefore, to have an opportunity to discuss even, with those of you whom my voice can reach, the fundamental things of our present national interest. Because, as I think of the great Democratic party which has entrusted me with the responsibility of leading it, I ask myself what is the thing that is expected by the people of the United States of this great party?

The thing that we are proposing to do, ladies and gentlemen, is, as I have just now said, to restore the government of the United States to the people, and this issue has arisen because it is [sadly true] that the government of the United States has not been under the control of the people in recent decades. We have found something intervening between us and the government which we supposed belonged to us—something intangible, something that we felt we could not grapple with, something that it was impossible to tear away from the spaces that lay between us and the government at Washington. And the thing I want to impress upon your thought tonight is merely this: The Democratic party is the only party that is now proposing to take away the influences which have governed the administration of this country and kept it out of sympathy with the great body of the people.

I want you particularly to notice that there are only two parties in the present campaign, or rather, that there is only one party and two fragments of another party. Because it is not Democrats that have got over into the new party. It is almost exclusively Republicans. And what we are facing, therefore, is two segments of a great disrupted party. And because two segments are made up in this way, you know that on the one hand are those who call themselves the regular Republicans and those on the other hand who try to arrogate to themselves entirely the name of “Progressive.” But what I want you to realize is that those Progressives have not drawn to themselves the old force, the old insurgent force of the Republican party.…

You have, therefore, this extraordinary spectacle of two branches of the Republican party, both of them led by men equally responsible for the very conditions which we are seeking to alter. And the reason that some of the insurgent Republicans are not following Mr. Roosevelt, the reason that men like Mr. La Follette, for example, are not following Mr. Roosevelt, is that they have already tested Mr. Roosevelt when he was President and have found that he was not willing to cooperate with them along any line that would be efficient in the checking of the evils of which we complain. So that the leader of the very movement which is proposed for our emancipation is a man who has been tried in this very matter and not found either willing or competent to accomplish the objects that we now seek.

In order to confirm my view of the matter you have only to read Mr. La Follette’s autobiography—and I advise every man who can lay his hands upon the copies of the American [Magazine] to read that extraordinary narrative. There in detail it is told how Mr. La Follette and others like him carried proposals to the then President, Mr. Roosevelt, which would have made this campaign inconceivable; and, after he had, following his first generous impulse, consented to cooperate with them, he subsequently drew back and refused to cooperate with them—under what influences I do not care to conjecture, because it is not my duty and it would be very distasteful to me to call in question the motives of these gentlemen. That is not my object or my desire. My object is merely to point out the fact that the very conditions we are trying to remedy were built up under these two gentlemen who are the opponents of the Democratic party.

Therefore, to my mind, it is a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee to choose between the leader of one branch of the Republican party and the leader of the other branch of the Republican party. Because what the whole country knows to be true, these gentlemen deny. The whole country knows that special privilege has sprung up in this land. The whole country knows, except these gentlemen, that it has been due chiefly to the protective tariff. These gentlemen deny that special privilege has been caused by the administration of the protective tariff. They deny what all the rest of the country has become convinced is true. And after they have denied the responsibility of the tariff policy for special privilege, they turn about to those creators of special privilege, which we call the trusts, those organizations which have created monopoly and created the high cost of living in this country, and deny that the tariff created them, not only, but deny that it is possible to reverse the processes by which that monopoly was created. Because in the very platform of the third party (if I had thought there would be light enough to read it to you I would have brought it to read it)—in the very platform of the third party, it is not said that they intend to correct the conditions of monopoly, but merely that they intend to assuage them, to render them less severe, to legalize and moderate the processes of monopoly; so that the two things we are fighting against, namely, excessive tariffs and almost universal monopoly, are the very things that these two branches of the Republican party both decline to combat. They do not so much as propose to lay the knife at any one of the roots of the difficulties under which we now labor. On the contrary, they intend to accept these evils and stagger along under the burden of excessive tariffs and intolerable monopolies as best they can through administrative commissions.

I find, therefore, that it is inconceivable that the people of the United States, whose instinct is against special privilege, and whose deepest convictions are against monopoly, should turn to either of these parties for relief when these parties do not so much as pretend to offer them relief. It is this system that puts me in a very sober mood. It is this process that makes me feel that great bodies of men of this sort have come together not in order to “whoop it up” for a party, not in order merely to look at a candidate, but to show that there is a great uprising in this country against intolerable conditions which only the Democratic party proposes to attack and to alter.

Only the Democratic party is ready to attack and alter these things. Do you see any breach anywhere in the Democratic ranks? Don’t you know that, wherever you live, men are coming as voluntary recruits into the ranks of the Democrats? Don’t you know that everywhere that you turn men are taking it for granted that the country must follow this party, or else wander for another four years in the wilderness?

There are some noble people, there are some people of very high principle, who believe that they can turn in other quarters for relief, but they do so simply because there is one of these parties that blows beautiful bubbles for them to see float in the air of oratory; men who paint iridescent dreams of uplifted humanity; men who speak of going to the rescue of the helpless; men who speak of checking the oppression of those who are overburdened; men who paint the picture of the redemption of mankind, and do not admit who they are who are preaching this doctrine. They are men whom we have seen and tested, and their conversion is after the time when they possessed the power to do these things and refused to do them.

Is humanity burdened now for the first time? Are men in need of succor now who were not in need of succor ten years ago? Are men now in need of protection by the government who did not need protection when these gentlemen exercised the tremendous power of the office of President?

Is it not true that when Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States the people of the United States were willing to follow him wherever he led? And where did he lead them? When did he turn in the direction of this great uplift of humanity? How long was the vision delayed? How impossible was it for him to see it when his arm was strong, to come to the succor of the weak? And now he has seen it when he wishes to regain their confidence which, by his failure to act, he had forfeited.

And so, I say it is not as if novices…had come before us. It is not as if men had come before us who had seen these things all of their lives and waited—waited in vain for the opportunity to do them. For we know the men we are dealing with, and we know that there are men in this third party who are following that leader, notwithstanding the fact that they do not believe in him. They simply want a third party because they do not yet find themselves ready to trust the Democratic party, and yet are unwilling to trust the regulars among the Republican party. So that they are hoping that something may happen, even under a leader whom they do not have full confidence in, that will enable mankind to find opportunity to cast its masses against the gates of opportunity, and at last burst them open by the mere reason of their gathering multitudes. They do not look for guidance. They merely hope for the consummation of their united power in a blind effort to escape something that they fear and dread. Ah, gentlemen, shall they go under such shepherds? Shall they go deliberately unshepherded? Shall mankind follow those who could have succored them and did not?

Now, on the other hand, what can we say in all honesty and truth of the Democratic party? Why, gentlemen, the Democratic party was preaching these doctrines and offering you leaders to carry them out before these gentlemen ever admitted that anything was wrong or had any dream of the hopes of humanity. We didn’t wait until the year 1912 to discover that the plain people in America had nothing to say about their government. We have been telling you that for half a generation and more. We have been warning you of the very things that have come to pass, in season and out of season. We have kept a straight course. We have never turned our faces for one moment from the faith that was in us, the faith in the common people of this great commonwealth, this great body of commonwealths, this great nation.

And now, what is happening? Why, with renewed hope, with renewed confidence, with renewed ardor of conviction, under leaders chosen after the freest fashion that our politics has ever witnessed, chosen freely at Baltimore, chosen yesterday freely for the first time in our recollection, in the Empire State of New York, untrammeled leaders, leaders that have no obligations except to those who have trusted and believed in them, are now asked to lead the Democratic party and along those paths of conviction which these other gentlemen so recently found, which they have found only now that they find that these are the paths, perhaps, to a renewal of their power.

I would not speak, I would not feel one word of bitterness, but I do utter my profound protest against the idea that it is possible to do these things through the instrumentality of new converts. I say that those who are rooted and grounded in this faith, those who have been willing to stay out in the cold as minorities through half a generation, are men tried to the bottom of all that is in them. Their stuff is tried out in the furnace, and they are ready now to serve, and they are ready as an absolutely united team. Where will you find any disinclination to take the signals from the leader? Where will you find any clefts in the Democratic ranks? Is it not true that this solid phalanx, now with its banners cast to the wind, is marching with a tread that shakes the earth, to take possession of the government for the people of the United States? This is what heartens the men who are in this fight. This is what quickens their pulses. This is what makes everything worth while that has to be done in the honest conduct of a frank campaign.

For our object, as we call you to witness throughout this campaign, is to discuss not persons but issues; we are not interested in persons. I tell you frankly, I am not interested even in the person who is the Democratic candidate for President. I am sorry for him. I am sorry for him because I believe he is going to be elected, and I believe that there will rest upon him the carrying out of these fundamental tasks. And there will be no greater burden in our generation than to organize the forces of liberty in our time, in order to make conquest of a new freedom for America. It will be no child’s play, but I believe that it will be possible because a man is not as big as his belief in himself; he is as big as the number of persons who believe in him; he is as big as the force that is back of him; he is as big as the convictions that move him; he is as big as the trust that is reposed in him by the people of the country. And with that trust, with that confidence, with that impulse of conviction and hope, I believe that the task is possible, and I believe that the achievement is at hand.

Review

1. 1) According to Wilson, what were the fundamental issues of the 1912 presidential campaign?

2. 2) Why does Wilson critical of Theodore Roosevelt and Robert M. LaFollette? Why does he doubt they are true progressive reformers?

3. 3) Why does he believe the Democrats will win the election?