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Greer, Carl J.

History

2013

M.A.

Historical narratives that focus on the fight between Woodrow Wilson and Hemy Cabot Lodge over ratification of the Treaty of Versailles tend to explain Lodge's resistance to supporting ratification, which would have resulted in the United States joining Woodrow Wilson's League ofNations, as an attempt by Lodge to control U.S. foreign policy. What is often overlooked, however, is that Lodge's main argument for favoring ratification with reservations was his desire to protect the constitutional powers of the Senate. Henry Cabot Lodge's understanding of theConstitution and the powers that it gave to the Senate formed the foundation of his argument against ratifying the Treaty of Versailles, which would have made the United States a member of the League of Nations, but it was not a new argument for the Massachusetts Senator.
This paper will look at how Lodge first developed his constitutional position during anargument over ratification of a treaty in 1901, and how his defense of the Senate's powers placed him at odds with Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson. Lodge believed that the Senate's constitutional powers had been secured in 1911, but as this paper will show, Wilson's actions before the United States entered the First World War, the President's behavior during the war, and his demand for treaty ratification without Senate reservations, were viewed by Lodge as a threat to the Senate and the Constitution, forcing Lodge once again to fight the same battle that he had fought and won against Wilson's predecessors.