Transcript

6.18.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
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Speaker 1: day I will be reading from a special edition of
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Speaker 1: the Smithsonian magazine America two fifty Revolutionary Spark. As a reminder,
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Speaker 1: Radio I is a reading service intended for people who
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Speaker 1: are blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult
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Speaker 1: to read printed material. Please join me now for the
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Speaker 1: first article, which is part two of America's original travel
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Speaker 1: influencer drew up a revolutionary itinerary two hundred years ago.
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Speaker 1: There is still plenty to see along the way by
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Speaker 1: Tony Perrette. In the first part of our story, we
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Speaker 1: explored how Gideon Minor Davison's eighteen twenties guide book The
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Speaker 1: Fashionable Tour, helped define one of the earliest distinctly American
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Speaker 1: travel itineraries, a route from New York City through the
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Speaker 1: Hudson Valley and Saratoga Springs to Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
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Speaker 1: The author explains that the guide book emerged at a
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Speaker 1: moment of growing national confidence after the War of eighteen twelve,
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Speaker 1: when new transportation technologies such as steamships and later the
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Speaker 1: Erie Canal made leisure travel more practical for a rising
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Speaker 1: middle class. Davison's innovation lay in combining practical advice, fairs, schedules,
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Speaker 1: and lodging with patriotic storytelling tied to revolutionary war landmarks,
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Speaker 1: turning travel into both a recreational and nationalistic experience. To
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Speaker 1: test how well Davison's directions still hold up, the author
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Speaker 1: retraces much of the original route in the present day,
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Speaker 1: visiting sites such as Lower Manhattan, West Point, the Catskills, Saratoga,
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Speaker 1: and stretches of the Erie Canal. Along the way, we
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Speaker 1: learn how early tourism blended natural beauty, luxury, resorts, art,
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Speaker 1: and history, helping shape a national identity rooted in American
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Speaker 1: landscapes and revolutionary memory. Even where original hotels, wharves, or
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Speaker 1: canal traffic have disappeared, many views, monuments, and historic sites remain,
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Speaker 1: allowing modern travelers to reconnect with the excitement that made
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Speaker 1: this grand tour so influential two centuries ago. For an
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Speaker 1: experience of the canal itself, the author arranged a rendezvous
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Speaker 1: at its end point in Buffalo. After driving through industrial
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Speaker 1: back blocks, he met members of the city's Maritime center
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Speaker 1: at the ruins of the canal's western terminus, where the
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Speaker 1: seventy three foot long wooden replica of an eighteen twenty
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Speaker 1: five canal boat called the Seneca Chief, painted canary yellow
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Speaker 1: with green and brown trim, was moored here. Now is
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Speaker 1: part two, As we glided. John Montague, the Maritime Center's
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Speaker 1: president emeritus, explained that the Center began rebuilding nineteenth century
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Speaker 1: watercraft to help Buffalo recover its civic pride after a
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Speaker 1: long period of economic depression. Quote there was a tremendous
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Speaker 1: wealth here once, he said, including the world's largest collection
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Speaker 1: of wheat silos and the most millionaires per capita in
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Speaker 1: the early twentieth century. Quote every great American architect built
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Speaker 1: something for Buffalo aristocrats, from Henry Hobson Richardson to Frank
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Speaker 1: Lloyd Wright. The city has been struggling with its identity
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Speaker 1: since the nineteen sixties, when its industry declined and it
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Speaker 1: became part of the rust Belt. But if you look
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Speaker 1: at its flag, the first things you see are a
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Speaker 1: lighthouse and a canal boat. The Erie Canal is what
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Speaker 1: made Buffalo. It was America's real gateway to the West End. Quote.
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Speaker 1: Eight hours later, we floated through the Deep Cut, a
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Speaker 1: seven mile stretch of solid rock that presented the most
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Speaker 1: challenging engineering obstacle when it was dug by hand in
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Speaker 1: eighteen twenty five and into our goal lockport. We were
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Speaker 1: greeted on the dock by an eager crowd of passers
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Speaker 1: by and locals who had spotted the antique looking vessel's arrival,
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Speaker 1: as well as representatives of an artisanal beer company named
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Speaker 1: after one of the canal's fond nineteenth century nicknames, the
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Speaker 1: Big Ditch. From Buffalo, it was only twenty miles to
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Speaker 1: the holy grail for nature lovers in the eighteen twenties,
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Speaker 1: Niagara Falls, which most Americans had seen only in engravings.
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Speaker 1: Travelers could visit the falls during a hectic day trip
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Speaker 1: by stage coach from Buffalo, but most preferred to stay
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Speaker 1: at the newly opened Cataract House. From there, it was
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Speaker 1: a five minute walk to Goat Island, which devised the
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Speaker 1: American Falls from Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. Although
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Speaker 1: Davison warned that the two rickety bridges over the Frightful
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Speaker 1: Abyss could strike terror in the faint hearted, some travelers,
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Speaker 1: he wrote, turned back, but once across a network of stairs,
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Speaker 1: trails and viewing platform afforded breathtaking views. The strategic location
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Speaker 1: also made the Cataract House, a favored stop on the
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Speaker 1: underground railroad. Black white staff helped runaways from the South
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Speaker 1: who were disguised as servants, slip out a side door
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Speaker 1: and row to safety. In Canada, the Cataract House burned
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Speaker 1: down in nineteen forty five, but I pulled up across
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Speaker 1: the street from its old location at the Red Coach Inn,
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Speaker 1: opened in nineteen twenty three and named in honor of
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Speaker 1: the scarlet stage coach the Marquis de Lafayette used In
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Speaker 1: eighteen twenty five during his farewell tour of the United States,
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Speaker 1: the elderly French hero of the Revolutionary War was so
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Speaker 1: awed by the grandeur of the falls that he fantasized
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Speaker 1: about getting a summer cottage there. According to his travel
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Speaker 1: companion and chronicler Andre Nicholas le Vassieu, feeling a light
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Speaker 1: spray on my face, I followed a thunderous roar into
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Speaker 1: Niagara Falls State Park, across a thankfully solid bridge, on
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Speaker 1: to Goat Island and over to Terrapin Point. Confronting the Falls,
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Speaker 1: I took in the sensory assault that the Philadelphia lawyer
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Speaker 1: in Esthete Dilworth Gilpin, a guide book author and Davison
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Speaker 1: imitator described thus, the vast body of water, whirling and
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Speaker 1: fretting and foaming among the rapids. Above, the deep and
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Speaker 1: deathlike stillness with which it approaches the precipice, then, gathering
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Speaker 1: all its mighty force, the plunge which it makes into
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Speaker 1: the abyss, below the vapor clouds, the rainbow, now glowing,
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Speaker 1: now fading away, and above all the ceaseless roar, which
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Speaker 1: diffuses through the mind a feeling of ungovernable awe. As
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Speaker 1: I retraced my route back south, I had one last
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Speaker 1: mission on my grand tour. While my jaunt on the
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Speaker 1: Seneca Chief gave me the experience of being on the
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Speaker 1: Erie Canal, I had found spending time on the once
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Speaker 1: teeming Hudson River difficult, But then I received word from
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Speaker 1: a man named N. D. Austin, an artist, a designer,
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Speaker 1: and of all things, a tug boat captain I had
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Speaker 1: heard about from friends of friends in Brooklyn. He and
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Speaker 1: a vintage tug owned by the non profit tideland Institute
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Speaker 1: Shoe Fly were at an annual tug boat round up
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Speaker 1: up river. Austin suggested I hop aboard in the port
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Speaker 1: of Hudson and return to New York City, one hundred
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Speaker 1: and twenty miles south in traditional maritime style. The following afternoon,
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Speaker 1: we chugged across the mirror flat waters of the Hudson
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Speaker 1: in an inflatable motor boat towards Shoe Fly, whose stately
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Speaker 1: bulk was anchored midway in the river's flow. It's an
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Speaker 1: entirely different experience seeing the Hudson from the water, Austin said,
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Speaker 1: as a blue heron swooped past. To see the river,
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Speaker 1: you've got to be on the river. The only sign
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Speaker 1: of civilization on either of the densely forested rocky shores
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Speaker 1: was a ship's graveyard, with decaying hulls poking from the
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Speaker 1: water line. After we clambered aboard the tugboat, we were
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Speaker 1: joined by other vintage watercraft, a ramshackle house boat, a
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Speaker 1: string of old yachts, and a restored schooner called Apollonia
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Speaker 1: that runs cargo to New York City entirely by sale,
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Speaker 1: each part of a modest and quirky maritime community that
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Speaker 1: still exists along the Hudson. The vessels were lashed together
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Speaker 1: to the tug, creating an improvised platform for around fifty
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Speaker 1: people to enjoy a unique floating social gathering, complete with
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Speaker 1: string musicians performing Herman Melville era sea shanties. It turned
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Speaker 1: out to be a more immersive adventure than expected. After
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Speaker 1: we weighed Anchor the next morning, Austin handed me the
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Speaker 1: wheel so he and two crew members could focus on
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Speaker 1: minor repairs, and so I found myself steering the vessel
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Speaker 1: south along the Hudson, keeping an eye on a navigatational
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Speaker 1: chart that showed the river's depth and location of buoy's
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Speaker 1: and other markers, while Austin blasted opera from a sound
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Speaker 1: system and saluted passing vessels with salvaged ships horns and bells.
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Speaker 1: After sleeping a second night on the floor of the
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Speaker 1: tug's wheelhouse, I awoke to find the river enveloped in
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Speaker 1: a ghostly mist. The sun burned weakly through as I
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Speaker 1: stood on the prow, watching the shapes of ancient trees
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Speaker 1: on the banks drift in and out of the fog.
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Speaker 1: Past and present blurred. It could have been a moody
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Speaker 1: scene painted by Thomas Cole or conjured by James Fenimore Cooper,
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Speaker 1: whose adventures frequently took place along these shores, But more
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Speaker 1: importantly for me, it was a nineteenth century traveler's dream.
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Speaker 1: For two weeks, I had followed the earliest American tourist
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Speaker 1: guide book, and this was precisely the wild Escape. It
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Speaker 1: offered immersion in a distinctive and inspiring American landscape. As
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Speaker 1: Davison promised, I had a taste of the sublime. Accompanying
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Speaker 1: this article key takeaways the first American tourists. Gideon Davison
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Speaker 1: Miner's eighteen twenty two guide book blended of fixed route
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Speaker 1: travel tips and revolutionary history. That same year, America's population
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Speaker 1: surpassed ten million, explaining how a growing middle class enabled
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Speaker 1: a travel market at scale. In eighteen twenty four, the
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Speaker 1: painter Thomas Cole took his first Hudson River steamboat trip,
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Speaker 1: and his subsequent landscape paintings helped transform upstate New York
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Speaker 1: into a travel destination. The Erie Canal opened the next year,
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Speaker 1: providing pleasant and scenic travel from the Hudson to Niagara
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Speaker 1: Falls and the Great Lakes. By the nineteen thirties, Hudson
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Speaker 1: River luxury steamers proliferated. Resorts in the Catskills in Saratoga
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Speaker 1: Springs were major destinations, and copycat guide books were in
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Speaker 1: wide circulation. Next at a pivotal moment of the Civil War,
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Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas delivered a speech that reframed what was at
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Speaker 1: stake if slavery stood in the mission of war. America's
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Speaker 1: incomparable orator helped turn public sentiment in favor of the
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Speaker 1: Union in Abraham Lincoln, beginning the process of national regeneration
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Speaker 1: by David W. Blight. In the cold early months of
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Speaker 1: the election year eighteen sixty four, the abolitionist Frederick Douglas
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Speaker 1: wrote a speech called The Mission of the War and
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Speaker 1: took it on the road, delivering it dozens of times
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Speaker 1: in towns and churches to which he'd been invited across
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Speaker 1: the Northern States. The speech was one of douglas rhetorical
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Speaker 1: masterpieces in a fifty year career as perhaps America's pre
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Speaker 1: eminent orator. In this pivotal moment of the Civil War,
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Speaker 1: Douglas crafted a work that served several purposes, a partisan
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Speaker 1: election campaign address on behalf of Abraham Lincoln, and a
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Speaker 1: war propaganda speech to boost northern morale. It was also
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Speaker 1: a bid to redefine the conflict. The speech forcefully called
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Speaker 1: for an abolition war that would transform the country forever,
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Speaker 1: insisting that moral ends, transcended policy imperatives, and finally, it
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Speaker 1: offered a Bible inspired apocalyptic vision of history as sometimes
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Speaker 1: requiring violent rendings and regenerations. For Douglas, all was at
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Speaker 1: stake in eighteen sixty four whether the American experiment would survive,
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Speaker 1: and even more crucial, whether and how slavery would truly
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Speaker 1: be destroyed and a new country forged from its ashes.
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Speaker 1: Douglas performed his mission speech in the vein of Jeremiah,
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Speaker 1: the Hebrew prophet he most closely emulated. Douglas God's admonition
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Speaker 1: to Jeremiah, I have this day set thee over the
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Speaker 1: nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to
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Speaker 1: pull down, to build, and to plant. According to Douglas,
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Speaker 1: the Civil War was a quote potent teacher end quote,
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Speaker 1: its lessons written in quote characters of blood. For the
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Speaker 1: former slave, the struggle was a holy war, a fight
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Speaker 1: against naked barbarism on behalf of quote, a nobler and
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Speaker 1: grander cause than the world had ever seen. Raining down
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Speaker 1: poignant metaphors and flowing refrains, Douglas personified slavery fourteen times
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Speaker 1: in one paragraph, and warned against a slaveholding peace and
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Speaker 1: against complacency in the coming election. Let but the little
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Speaker 1: finger of slavery get back into this union, he declared,
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Speaker 1: And in one year you shall see its whole body
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Speaker 1: again upon our backs. The speech appealed to his listener's
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Speaker 1: moral hearts. It also marked a new political role for Douglas.
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Speaker 1: No longer casting himself as a reformer or the mere
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Speaker 1: voice of conscience, he was now a radical patriot arguing
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Speaker 1: for revolution. The most hopeful fact of the hour, Douglas announced,
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Speaker 1: is that we are now in a salutary school, the
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Speaker 1: school of affliction. If sharp and signal retribution, long protracted, wide, sweeping,
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Speaker 1: and overwhelming, can teach a great nation respect for the
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Speaker 1: long despised claims of justice, surely we shall be taught
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Speaker 1: now and for all time to come. This was history
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Speaker 1: presented as bloody, bitter instruction, an unfolding tragedy in which Catharsis,
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Speaker 1: Douglas said, offered real hope that winter and summer, neither
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Speaker 1: side was assured victory, and the loss of life had
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Speaker 1: reached a scale no one had foreseen. Lincoln stood for
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Speaker 1: re election to the presidency in what was the first
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Speaker 1: ever gener general election conducted by a republic during a
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Speaker 1: Civil War. He would be opposed by the Democrat George B.
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Speaker 1: Mc clellan, the former commanding general whom Lincoln had fired
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Speaker 1: in great controversy after the Battle of Antietam in eighteen
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Speaker 1: sixty two. Since his emancipation proclamation of January first, eighteen
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Speaker 1: sixty three, Lincoln and the Republicans had been stamped by
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Speaker 1: Democrats as the dangerous party of Black freedom and equality.
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Speaker 1: Democrats ran the most racist campaign on record to that time.
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Speaker 1: They called Lincoln Abraham Africanus the First and even invented
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Speaker 1: the word misagination to argue that electing Republicans would somehow
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Speaker 1: codify forced into racial marriage. That August, Lincoln invited Douglas
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Speaker 1: to the White House. The president needed the most important
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Speaker 1: African American leader on his side at a moment of
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Speaker 1: dire crisis when he believedived he might lose the election.
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Speaker 1: He asked the radical abolitionist if he should back away
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Speaker 1: from the emancipation policy in response to northern public opinion,
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Speaker 1: to which Douglas, as Lincoln expected, delivered an emphatic no. Astonishingly,
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Speaker 1: Lincoln also asked Douglas to organize an effort to funnel
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Speaker 1: as many slaves as possible out of the Upper South
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Speaker 1: before election day in November, in case McLellan and the
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Speaker 1: Democrats won, thwarting emancipation forever, Douglas returned to his home
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Speaker 1: in Rochester, New York, and began to recruit agents for
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Speaker 1: the border state liberation scheme, but he was in effect
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Speaker 1: saved by events. On September two, just days after the
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Speaker 1: Democratic National Convention in Chicago nominated McLellan, news spread across
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Speaker 1: the country that Atlanta had fallen to General William de
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Speaker 1: Cumpsea Sherman after a long siege Confederates. Rising hopes plummeted,
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Speaker 1: and many war weary Northerners suddenly saw victory on the horizon.
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Speaker 1: With morale boosted, Lincoln was re elected with fifty five
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Speaker 1: percent of the popular vote, and the policy of emancipation
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Speaker 1: was reaffirmed even by Union troops, who, in a massive
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Speaker 1: and unprecedented soldier vote, cast seventy six percent of their
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Speaker 1: ballots for the Republican The School of Affliction, though was
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Speaker 1: hardly over, the war still had to be prosecuted to
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Speaker 1: its haunting end, and the long and turbulent aftermath of
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Speaker 1: reconstruction lay ahead. In his extraordinary speech, which undoubtedly helped
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Speaker 1: turn public sentiment. Douglas had announced that the quote mission
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Speaker 1: of this war is national regeneration. The address ended with
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Speaker 1: a peroration that prefigured Martin Luther King Juniors in his
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Speaker 1: I Have a Dream speech ninety nine years later. If
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Speaker 1: remaking the United States on the doctrine of equality before
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Speaker 1: the law could be accomplished, Douglas proclaimed, our glory as
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Speaker 1: a nation will be complete, our peace will flow like
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Speaker 1: a river, and our foundations will be the everlasting rocks.
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Speaker 1: And with this article, did you know Frederick douglas sons
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Speaker 1: fought for the Union. After Douglas campaigned for black enlistment
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Speaker 1: in the Union Army, helping recruit black troops, two of
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Speaker 1: his sons, Lewis Henry and Charles Riemond, served in Massachusetts
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Speaker 1: fifty fourth Infantry Regiment. Louis became a sergeant major and
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Speaker 1: was wounded in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner less
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Speaker 1: than six months before Douglas debuted his Mission of the
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Speaker 1: war speech. The widely publicized bravery of the fifty fourth
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Speaker 1: Massachusetts Infantry Regiment served Douglas and others as a powerful
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Speaker 1: proof of the courage and resourcefulness of black soldiers and
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Speaker 1: Douglas drew on this credibility as he argued for the
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Speaker 1: fuller integration of non white enlistees. A third son, Frederick Junior,
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Speaker 1: helped his father recruit black soldiers and also accompanying this article,
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Speaker 1: feat that fostered freedom for all. Bold inventive abolitionists changed
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Speaker 1: minds and saved families by organizing by tarn White. William Still,
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Speaker 1: born in eighteen twenty one, Still inherited abolitionism from his parents.
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Speaker 1: In eighteen forty four, he moved to Philadelphia and eventually
19:32
Speaker 1: began working at the Pennsylvania Anti Slavery Society. As chairman
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Speaker 1: of the Vigilance Committee. He assisted hundreds of freedom seekers,
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Speaker 1: raising funds, coordinating journeys, and helped finance several of Harriet
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Speaker 1: Tubman's missions to the South. He recorded stories from nearly
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Speaker 1: one thousand of those he'd aided, helping families find loved ones.
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Speaker 1: Still found his own long lost brother when the latter
19:58
Speaker 1: visited the Society after buying his own freedom. He shared
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Speaker 1: his records in eighteen seventy two's The Underground Railroad, Still
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Speaker 1: a vital resource for historians. Mary Anne shad Carey, a
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Speaker 1: pioneering figure in education law, and civil rights. Carrie was
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Speaker 1: born in Wilmington, Delaware, in eighteen twenty three, and founded
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Speaker 1: multiple schools to advance black education. After the passage of
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Speaker 1: the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, Carrie moved to Canada.
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Speaker 1: She was the first black woman in North America to
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Speaker 1: edit and publish a newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. She returned
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Speaker 1: to the United States after the start of the Civil
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Speaker 1: War to recruit black soldiers for the Union Army. In
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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, she enrolled in Howard University and later
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Speaker 1: became one of the first black women in the US
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Speaker 1: to earn a law degree. Angelina Grimka Weld in eighteen
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Speaker 1: o five. Weld grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Her
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Speaker 1: parents were in slavers, and she witnessed the brutality of
21:08
Speaker 1: slavery up close. She moved to Philadelphia in eighteen twenty
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Speaker 1: nine and published an appeal to Christian women of the
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Speaker 1: South in eighteen thirty six, urging her readers to oppose slavery.
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Speaker 1: Less than two years later, she became the first woman
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Speaker 1: to speak before a legislative body in the US, presenting
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Speaker 1: twenty thousand anti slavery petitions. At the Massachusetts State House
21:33
Speaker 1: in Boston. In her powerful address, Weld drew on her
21:37
Speaker 1: family history. I stand before you as a repentant slaveholder.
21:43
Speaker 1: I owe it to the suffering slave and to the
21:45
Speaker 1: deluded master, to my country and the world, to do
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Speaker 1: all that I can to overturn a system of complicated crimes. Next.
21:57
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson's legacy is loaded with good and bad, but
22:01
Speaker 1: his work to even the economic playing field is often overlooked.
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Speaker 1: He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in
22:08
Speaker 1: ending World War One and worked to improve the plight
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Speaker 1: of American workers. Today, his blind spots shrouded most of
22:16
Speaker 1: his accomplishments. By Richard Norton Smith, imagine American democracy as
22:23
Speaker 1: a mountain lake, its waters held back by an earthen
22:26
Speaker 1: dam of legal, constitutional, and cultural restraints. Periodically, the dam's
22:32
Speaker 1: sluice ways become clogged by entrenched interests, concentrated wealth, or
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Speaker 1: fear of the unfamiliar. At such moments, we welcome an
22:41
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson or a Theodore Roosevelt, those improbable champions of
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Speaker 1: the working man, to clear the spillways of our democratic experiment,
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Speaker 1: strengthening the dam and the lake it makes possible Woodrow.
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Speaker 1: Wilson's March nineteen thirteen inauguration heralded just such a repair job.
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Speaker 1: That spring, he became the first president in more than
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Speaker 1: a century to address Congress in person. The next day
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Speaker 1: he returned, operating out of the President's Room in the Capitol,
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Speaker 1: he successfully lobbied members to enact the most significant tariff
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Speaker 1: reductions since the Civil War. This was the opening move
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Speaker 1: in Wilson's campaign to level the economic playing field by
23:25
Speaker 1: strengthening competition against the forces of monopoly. A minister's son
23:31
Speaker 1: reared in the South during and after the Civil War,
23:34
Speaker 1: Wilson may have had dyslexia, and his temperament was judged
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Speaker 1: too remote for mass appeal. He remains the only American
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Speaker 1: president to earn a pH d. Deploying persuasive talents honed
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Speaker 1: as an academic, instructor and administrator, his first term legislative
23:52
Speaker 1: record reflects the progressive agenda. At flood Tide, Wilson created
23:57
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve to reclaim for Washington the fiscal initiative
24:01
Speaker 1: that had been assumed by Wall Street. Consumers as well
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Speaker 1: as small businesses, benefited from his establishment of the Federal
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Speaker 1: Trade Commission, labor unions gained new protections via the Clayton
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Speaker 1: Antitrust Act. Under Wilson's leadership, the federal government worked to
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Speaker 1: curtail child labor in factories and introduced an eight hour
24:23
Speaker 1: work day for railroad employees. Twice, the President vetoed emigration
24:28
Speaker 1: bills because they included literacy tests that he thought unjustly
24:32
Speaker 1: targeted disadvantaged populations. In nineteen sixteen, he appointed Lewis Brandeis
24:38
Speaker 1: as the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court. Admirers
24:43
Speaker 1: hailed Wilson for his eloquence and his commitment to reform.
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Speaker 1: Harry Truman called him the greatest of the greats. In
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, Herbert Hoover wrote a sympathetic memoir biography
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Speaker 1: about Wilson, the visionary who drafted his fourteen Points, hoping
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Speaker 1: to end the First World War and prevent future conflict
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Speaker 1: through a League of Nations. Seven decades on, the mention
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Speaker 1: of Wilson's name evokes a very different consensus. Few historical
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Speaker 1: figures better illustrate what British historian E. P. Thompson labeled
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Speaker 1: the enormous condescension of posterity, with its inherent Biyats toward
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Speaker 1: now Over a less enlightened than scorned on the right
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Speaker 1: as a statist conducting a dress rehearsal for the New
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Speaker 1: Deal and Great Society. Wilson is disparaged by the left
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Speaker 1: for his segregation of the federal workforce and wartime abuses
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Speaker 1: against civil liberties. His diplomatic performance at the Paris Peace
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Speaker 1: Conference is widely panned. His stubborn refusal to compromise with
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Speaker 1: Senate critics of the resulting Versailles Treaty is blamed for
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Speaker 1: the United States failure to join the League. On the
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Speaker 1: eve of his first inauguration, Wilson had mused, it would
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Speaker 1: be an irony of fate if my administration had to
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Speaker 1: deal chiefly with foreign affairs. The remark was sadly prophetic
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Speaker 1: for a while. U S foreign policy ever since has
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Speaker 1: been weighed for its adherents to Wilsonian priorities, and Wilson's
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Speaker 1: own efforts to promote human rights and international cooperation earned
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Speaker 1: him the Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen nineteen. His name
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Speaker 1: is commonly linked with home front intolerance and suppression of dissent.
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Speaker 1: A near fatal stroke effectively ended his presidency seventeen months
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Speaker 1: before he officially left office in March nineteen twenty one.
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Speaker 1: During this period, Wilson's second wife, Edith, functioned in a
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Speaker 1: role somewhere between doorkeeper and deputy president. Today, the sole
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Speaker 1: Democrat to occupy the White House between Grover Cleveland and
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Speaker 1: Franklin Roosevelt, has been air brushed out of his party's history.
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Speaker 1: Other institutions have followed suit. Weeks after George Floyd's death
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Speaker 1: at the hands of white police officers. In May twenty twenty,
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Speaker 1: Princeton University, citing the racist thinking and policies of its
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Speaker 1: one time reformist president, struck Wilson's name from its School
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Speaker 1: of Public Affairs. Ironically, before recent reckonings, the last time
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Speaker 1: anyone had toppled a Wilson statue was in nineteen forty
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Speaker 1: one in Prague, as ordered by the city's Nazi occupiers.
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Speaker 1: Even now, America's twenty eighth president is more highly regarded
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Speaker 1: in Poland and the former Czechoslovakia nations whose establishments he
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Speaker 1: championed at Versailles than among his own compatriots. And yet
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Speaker 1: that we are still debating the Wilsonian legacy a century
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Speaker 1: after his life ended at his house on s Street
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Speaker 1: Northwest in Washington, d c. Testifies to the scale of
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Speaker 1: the man's ambition and the relevance of his ideas. He
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Speaker 1: may be out of fashion, but now as then, Woodrow
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Speaker 1: Wilson matters. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today.
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Speaker 1: Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening,
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Speaker 1: and have a great day.