Focused on american war politics and how the American People experience war in the 20th century. Her research attempts to get to the root of contemporary phenomenon, the disengagement of the u. S. Congress and the American People from war in the 21st century. The research is informing her forthcoming book going to war an American History. You may have seen the New York Times article that discusses the key question at the heart of her research. Today, she will speak about how america was mobilized for world war i by catastrophes of sunken ships and how catastrophes can mobilize americans to engage in distant conflicts. That create physical and emotional distance from death and dying. She is professor of law and director of the project of war and security at emory university. Prior to her position at emory, professor of law and Political Science at the university of southern california. She has also taught at duke, harvard, university of maryland, and university of iowa. She is an expert in constitutional law, legal history, diplomatic history, and civil rights history. Books include overtime, wartime, exploding american dreams, and cold war civil rights. She received her phd from yale university. Her jd from Yale Law School and her a. B. In sociology from university of california berkeley. Most recently, she has been the chair of the american law and governance here. Please join me in welcoming mary dudziak. [applause] dr. Dudziak thank you for that very kind introduction. Thank you all. I am so grateful you took time on such a beautiful afternoon to think about war with me. [laughter] i have many thank yous, which i will try to do more quickly than is appropriate. I want to recognize a couple of really wonderful and important people here today in terms of the future of legal history. The director of the History Office of the federal judicial system clara altman is here. ,and also the historian of the , state department, stephen randolph, and the state Department Historians office has been pivotal in making Foreign Relations history open and accessible so that all of us can do our research and the office has thrived under his leadership and his wonderful staff is just a treasure. Thank you to the National History center for cosponsoring. And dean kennedy. This is a work in progress. If you see any ragged edges and you want to talk to me, that would be great. I have many images in the powerpoint and especially for viewers at home, i found virtually everything on the library of congress website. A couple of the images are National Archives. Which i was able to find online as well. I really encourage you to go to the library of congress website, search the catalog, many things you can find you can use without coming to this amazing and wonderful building, which you should come to anyway. I thought i would say my thank yous to people who have helped with my work by doing credits at the beginning of the lecture. I am sure there are people i have left out, but so many people at the library and also at the National Archives have been really pivotal. One thing you wont see if a lot is a lot of discussion about pacifism. Especially, like jeanette rankin, who are so pivotal in this particular era. I wanted to do a lecture on her. My topic today is on the same chapter but they did not fit in a lecture unless i did a strategy speaking on world war i , speaking for four hours. [laughter] i dont think you will stick around that long. On a rainy evening, april 2, 1917, a somber Woodrow Wilson arrived at the capitol to call upon congress to declare war on germany. He entered the House Chamber where senators, Congress Members, Supreme Court justices, and others knew his purpose, although the words had been crafted by wilson the day before on his typewriter and shared with almost no one. Gathered in the chamber with a was a small group of old soldiers, the Congress Called into session included members of a generation that had seen their own country at the battlefield. 15 members of the 65th congress had fought in the civil war. Others were children of the civil war, like the president himself. Wilsons chief antagonist in the senate grew up playing soldier with other children. These lawmakers brought civil war memories into their political identities and their understanding of war. Senator nelson of minnesota, a civil war veteran, was wounded in the battle and taken prisoner. He carried with him the memory of a severely wounded comrade. His arms separated into three pieces, left to die by wilsons captors. The civil war had more than abstract presence in the House Chamber that night. The senator from west virginia, a union veteran, was plagued by his civil war injuries. He was absent because of them. Still lodged in nelsons thigh in 1917 was a confederate bullet. That had injured him. This is the first bullet in the chamber, the bodily presence in congress in 1917 of the legacy of war. Just a year before the great war began, president wilson led the entire nation in remembering the civil war in the battle of gettysburg. At the 50th anniversary in he 1913. Found hope on that battlefield. The day of our countrys life has been broadened into mourning. He said. Found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms and it is no longer. Wilson, like many others, reimagined the civil war, turning the battle over racial equality into the forgotten on into the quarrel forgotten on the stacks of jim crow america. This reimagining of the war was not wilsons alone, but shared by many veterans. Including nelson would dress in union blue. Senator arm in arm with john hollis bankhead, the last confederate veteran to serve in the senate dressed in gray, leading Congress Members on a march later in the year. Message attimistic gettysburg was delivered before a crowd assembled on a pristine field. It was so different for abraham lincoln, whose gettysburg address in 1863, an unfinished cemetery for more than 12,000 soldiers. Still in the process of being properly reburied. The scene was macabre, covered by makeshift graves. Body parts protruded, a nightmarish scene, the horror of fighting and its aftermath. Wilson could imagine the war in his uplifting way in part because the dead had long been buried. The bones could no longer be seen. Gettysburg had become a shrine and a necropolis. Space of the dead. Spaces of the dead, like cemeteries, do cultural work for the living. Gettysburg was such a place from the beginning of its memorialization. As lincolns address dedicated the living to carry out the principles that soldiers had fought and died for. For wilson, gettysburg was a site where human remains were reimagined to have reconciled a nation, not seen was what political divisions had done to the bodies. Through warfare. If the dead do cultural work for the living, they must also do political work. This provides an important point of departure for understanding the political work of the dead in later years. I should say i never planned to write about world war i, but thinking about the implications for a time when the battleground was elsewhere. It caused me to rethink my project, rollback the timeline, and rethink the entire 20th century. During the civil war, the experience had deep impacts on civil war americans. Intimacy with death and dying which transformed the United States, creating a veritable republic of suffering. You can think of the republic being constituted in relation to this experience of death, dying, and suffering. The history of american war since the civil war, i would argue, has been in part a history of losing this connection with the dead. Americans continue to kill and die in war, but the dying happened elsewhere. Civilians were maimed and perished, but fewer of them were americans. It eventually became a country that could go to war in relative comfort. The loss of a direct connection between american civilians and the experience of violence is thought of a post vietnam story with the demise of the draft. Leading to our contemporary military civilian divide and this data is about war participation and you can see this great spike in world war ii and the trails off and picks up in vietnam and continues to drop down. The most fundamental shift began much earlier than vietnam and requires the rethinking of the most iconic american wars. World war i is a pivotal importance to this history, history of a growing distance between equality in the battlefield. The country get behind a war that was happening somewhere else . How did a groundswell developed that would lead american soldiers to the trenchers of europe there are number of factors that matter to the entry into world war i but one thing is crucial. Bodies in the water. And the stories told about them. Dead american civilians in the Atlantic Ocean and their appearance in the crass politics in the press, politics, and propaganda. In the vast literature, world war i provokes not that much interest. After all, when it came to entering war politics seem to work the way it should. The president asked for a war declaration, congress provided one. Whats the focus of the scholarship is what happens afterwards, especially the violation of civil liberties. But unlike the spanishamerican war, world war i did not encompass territories the u. S. Would lay claim to. When war broke out, americans savored their distance from the conflict. I thank heaven for the Atlantic Ocean, wrote the u. S. Ambassador to the united kingdom. And president wilson reassured the press and the country that the country would stay out. The United States has never attempted to intervene in european affairs, he said. The conflict was remote and for most americans an abstraction. British leaders noticed this. The British Ambassador to the u. S. Complaint that americans thought the war was a bore an immensely interesting spectacle provided for their entertainment. The british work to overcome this. The target of their propaganda was neutral nations. This means that the information americans had about war would sometimes be exaggerated in the hope that the u. S. Would join the war on the side of england. But straightforward reporting sometimes broke through american indifference. Americans were outraged in may, 1915, when a german submarine sunk the luis attaining a the lusitannia. But americans remained reluctant to join the conflict and a year and a half later in the 1916 election, the Democratic Party slogan he kept us out of war helped wilson prevail in a close election. Americans understood the way deaths of american travelers affected the public and some argued that americans should stay home and deaths on ships would not drag us into war. No single citizen should be allowed to run the risk of dredging this nation in blood. Congress members propose to ban passports to americans for travel on ships and sailing on ships carrying contraband but these things did not pass. In an article that probably got more play than anything historians have ever written, Carlton Hayes wrote an essay in early 1917, um, and his proposal then gets picked up later. I will tell you about the armed ship bill that wilson took up. But he says along the way, what purpose would be served by joining this conflict fullfledged . We shall be additional targets for german for funerals german torpedoes. We shall be sacrificing thousands of lives to avenge hundreds. Others are strongly believed in american neutral rights, including the right to travel on the ocean and to sell goods to belligerence. Former president Theodore Roosevelt thought it was a matter of national honor. He was infuriated by wilsons reluctance to fight. And he wrote that dante has reserved a special place in infamy in the inferno for those base angels neither side with evil or with good. Wilson was the prime candidate the internal suspension between heaven and hell where cowardly creatures went naked and were stung by wasps. This is a former president saying this about a sitting president. This would happen it is partly teddy roosevelt, of course but it also revealed the depth of passion and division over american involvement in world war i. In late january 1917, Robert Lansing wrote sooner or later, the die will be cast and we will be at war with germany. He was a supporter of going to war. We must nevertheless wait patiently until the germans do something which will arouse general indignation and make all americans alive to the peril of german success in war. Lansing favored intervention by daniel smith writes he felt little could be done effectively until the germans submarines sank more vessels bearing more civilians thus providing a moral and emotional stimulus. Decide on war and then wait for a catastrophe that will mobilize the American People. This pattern would be repeated over and over again in later wars in the 20th century. Not every war but this is a pattern that happened over and over again. This is what i mean by politics of catastrophe. In a distant war, catastrophe is needed for mobilization. Um, one thing that made world war i different than vietnam was the importance of catastrophe to the president s decision to go to war. As smith put, wilson was so torn over American Intervention that the president also required a submarine issue, more deaths in the water. In order to agree to take the nation to war. And so, on february 17, 1917, two americans set off on a fateful journey. Their plan was to sail from new york city to liverpool and from there to join the rest of their Family Living in london. Instead, their journey would take them into the heart of american war politics in the weeks of turmoil leading up to american entry into world war i. Mary hoye was said to a slandered, grayhaired and refined woman. Elizabeth hoye, her daughter, was slight but extremely vivacious. It was said and devoted to her mother. The family was prominent in society circles in chicago. Um, they intended to join marys son austin who worked in the London Office of a chicago company. They traveled on the british liner laconia along with 300 passengers and crew. The date of their voyage reveals its danger. Only 17 days earlier, germany announced it submarines had attacked without warnings the ships of neutral nations as well as belligerence, including vessels of the United States if they sailed into waters around the british isles. Woodrow wilson responded by severing diplomatic relations with germany, but this did not mean war, at least not yet. Wilson warned that if there were actual overt acts against American Ships or resulting in the deaths of americans, he would ask congress for authority to use any means that may be necessary to protect americans at sea. Wilson, the press, Global Leaders and the American Public then waited for the act, but remained unclear exactly what kind of response wilson had in mind. By the middle of february, they had been over 100 ships as many different nations torpedo and s unk. The First American killed was Richard Wallace of baltimore. Richard wallace of baltimore, and africanamerican merchant seamen on a british ship which sank ver quickly after a uboat torpedoed it. Germany. Sank an American Ship the same day but submarine captain make sure everyone was evacuated safely. On february 7, 41 died on another british ship but none of them were americans. There was speculation that another africanamerican seamen was killed when the british ship went down on february 10, but the press fades out on that one. Um, an american missionary in china, robert hayden, was killed when a french steamer was torpedoed on february 17. This ship was a troop transport. The decision was made that this was not an overt act. There was some bio info about him. There was never any real bio info about the merchant seamen of any race. Also on february 17, an American Ship was torpedoed on its way to sicily with no cavities. But still, all of the newspapers in rome asked whether this was the overt act wilson had spoken of. Rappaport writes, each instant increased british hopes. Any one of them could have served as the overt act. The country was deeply divided. And so, unfortunately, was Woodrow Wilson himself. In the aftermath of the german announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare, wilson was depressed and felt as if the world had suddenly reversed itself and he was off balance. It is impossible to read his correspondence during the february and march 1917 without feeling the darkness that enveloped him. I dont know what will come of us. My thoughts is under siege. His anguish is apparent but it is also important to remember that wilson himself laid the path to his own moment of torture. With my admire the bravery or scorn the foolishness of americans who chose to sail into a war zone, sometimes on belligerent ships with contraband but it was wilson who elevated the importance of their choices to a fate of a nation was at stake in their perilous ocean journeys. And so, although it was not yet apparent, all the worlds eyes were on our travelers as they headed for an ocean war zone on a ship of germanys enemy britain with a gun at the stern and had munitions in its hold. Now, this might be a risky travel choice was not lost on mary hoys son who wired his mother, begging her not to sail, not once but five times. She was willing to risk it, mrs. Hoy wired back you might wonder why anyone would take a trip. But even at this point in the war, in feathery, 1917, german uboat did not in february, 1917, german uboats not have complete control. Ships were torpedoed. But most ships got throu