The American Presidential Election of 1920

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The 34th episode in a very long series about the American presidential elections from 1788 to the present. In 1920, Americans deal with the aftermath of World War 1 and apparently are hungry for a "return to normalcy." Normalcy isn't a real word, though.

The 34th Presidential election in American history took place on November 2, 1920. Remember how Woodrow Wilson got re-elected because he kept the country out of war? Well before he was sworn in for his second term, it was looking like the United States would be entering World War One. The British had intercepted a telegram sent from Germany to Mexico trying to get Mexico to join their side in case the United States entered the war. Not only that, but Germany had begun unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships in the Atlantic Ocean bearing the American flag. Germany did this because Americans were exporting weapons to the Allies, their enemies, of course. This got more Americans to change their minds about neutrality- more and more Americans now wanted to go to war. Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917, and soon American troops were headed to Europe to aid the worn down French and British troops along the Western Front.

Woodrow Wilson wanted this to be the war to end all wars. Sounds good to me. The war ended with an armistice on November 11, 1918, and Wilson spent the remaining two years of his presidency trying to get peace agreements going to prevent something like this from ever happening again. He even had his statement of principles for world peace, which became known as the Fourteen Points.

Wilson worked tirelessly with the Allied leaders to help create the League of Nations, an alliance in which all the countries of the world could work together to work out their issues.

After the League of Nations was proposed as part of the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson went home to promote it and to try to get the United States to join and sign the treaty. I’ll just go ahead and tell you- the United States never signed the Treaty of Versailles and never joined the League of Nations. Congress couldn’t get on board, and Wilson was not getting any love at all toward the end of his Presidency. Not only that, but Wilson suffered a series of horrible strokes that made him unable to do much during that time. His wife, Edith, pretty much ran things while Woodrow rested. This is why some half-joke that she was the first female President of the United States.

Anyway, a ton of people wanted to take Wilson’s spot to run for President. William Gibbs McAdoo, the former Treasury Secretary and Wilson’s son-in-law, was a favorite, but Wilson blocked his nomination hoping that a deadlocked convention would cause him to get to run a third time, despite the fact that he was physically in terrible health. Instead, the Democrats chose James Cox, the Governor of Ohio and founder of a chain of newspapers that today has evolved into Cox Enterprises. They chose Franklin Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as his running mate.

The Republicans all of a sudden had a renewed interest in their party thanks to the backlash against the Treaty of Versailles, but they also had a hard time picking a candidate. Their convention was deadlocked between two candidates- Major General Leonard Wood and Frank Orren Lowden, the Governor of Illinois. Logically, the Republicans picked neither. Instead, in a smoke-filled room at the final hour, they picked Warren Harding, a Senator from Ohio. Harding was well-liked in his party because he never really did much to offend anybody. They nominated Calvin Coolidge, the Governor of Massachusetts, as Harding’s running mate.

Eugene Debs. Yep, he’s back. But this time, he was in prison. That’s right, Debs ran for President despite the fact that he was in prison for trying to get people to resist joining the draft during World War One. Deb talked a lot of trash against the Wilson administration for American involvement in the war, and Wilson called Debs a “traitor to his country.” Debs was arrested and charged with sedition. He still had lots of supporters, though. The Socialist Party gets credit for nominating the first person for President to be locked in a prison cell. They chose a lawyer from Chicago named Seymour Stedman as his running mate.

Also, a new political party called the Farmer-Labor Party came to prominence this election pretty much because of the effect of American entry into the war, which hurt agricultural prices and worker wages. They were pretty much the Populist Party 2.0, nominating Parley Christensen, a former state representative from Utah for President.