United States

If Wilson had followed conventional policy and the urgings of Americans with interests in Mexico, he would have recognized Huerta (as most European governments did), who promised to respect and protect all foreign investments and concessions. But Wilson was revolted by Huerta’s bloody rise to power; moreover, he believed that the revolution begun by Madero in 1910 was a glorious episode in the history of human liberty. Wilson thus not only refused to recognize Huerta but also tried to persuade the dictator to step down from office and permit the holding of free elections for a new democratic government. When Huerta refused to cooperate, Wilson gave open support to the Constitutionalists—Huerta’s opponents under Madero’s successor, Venustiano Carranza—and, when it seemed that the Constitutionalists could not themselves drive Huerta from power, Wilson seized the port of Veracruz in April 1914 to cut off Huerta’s supplies and revenues. This stratagem succeeded, and Carranza and his army occupied Mexico City in August.

Venustiano Carranza, c. 1910.Archivo Casasola

The revolutionary forces then divided between Carranza’s followers and those of his chief rival and most colorful general, Pancho Villa, and civil war raged for another year. Wilson refused to interfere. Carranza emerged victorious by the summer of 1915, and Wilson accorded him de facto recognition in October. In January 1916, however, Villa executed about 17 U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel to demonstrate Carranza’s lack of control in northern Mexico. Then, seeking to provoke war between the United States and Mexico, he raided Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, burning the town and killing some 17 inhabitants. Wilson sent a punitive expedition under Gen. John J. Pershing into Mexico in hot pursuit of Villa, but the wily guerrilla eluded Pershing, and, the deeper the U.S. forces penetrated into Mexican territory, the more agitated the Carranza government became. There were two serious skirmishes between regular Mexican and U.S. troops in the spring, and full-scale war was averted only when Wilson withdrew Pershing’s column some months later. Relations between the two governments were greatly improved when Wilson extended de jure recognition to Carranza’s new Constitutional regime in April 1917. Thereafter, Wilson adamantly rejected all further foreign and American suggestions for intervention in Mexico.

Pershing, John J.Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing (centre) inspecting a camp during the U.S. Army expedition into Mexico in search of Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa, 1916.Underwood & Underwood/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-89220)

The struggle for neutrality

The outbreak of general war in Europe in August 1914 raised grave challenges to Wilson’s skill and leadership in foreign affairs. In spite of the appeals of propagandists for the rival Allies and Central Powers, the great majority of Americans were doggedly neutral and determined to avoid involvement unless American rights and interests were grossly violated. This, too, was Wilson’s own feeling, and in August he issued an official proclamation of neutrality and two weeks later appealed to Americans to be “impartial in thought as well as in action.”

Loans and supplies for the Allies

Difficulties arose first with the British government, which at once used its vast fleet to establish a long-range blockade of Germany. The U.S. State Department sent several strong protests to London, particularly against British suppression of American exports of food and raw materials to Germany. Anglo-American blockade controversies were not acute, however, because the British put their blockade controls into effect gradually, always paid for goods seized, argued persuasively that in a total war food and raw materials were as essential as guns and ammunition, and pointed out that they, the British, were simply following blockade precedents established by the United States itself during the American Civil War. As a result of a tacit Anglo-American agreement, the United States soon became the chief external source of supply for the food, raw materials, and munitions that fed the British and French war machines. In addition, and in accordance with the strict rules of neutrality, the Wilson administration permitted the Allied governments to borrow more than $2,000,000,000 in the United States in order to finance the war trade. At the same time, the president resisted all efforts by German Americans for an arms embargo on the ground that such a measure would be grossly un-neutral toward the Allies.

German submarine warfare