Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)
BOOK REVIEWS - John C. Chalberg: August Heckscher: Woodrow Wilson. Macmillan, 1991. 734 pp
he would tell the soon-to-be second Mrs. Wilson, Edith Boiling Gait, that Ellen Wilson "knew and understood and (had) forgiven" his "folly" with Mary Peck prior to her death from Bright's disease in August of 1914. No more apparently needed to be —or was —said. To Heckscher, Wilson routinely saw himself as "two different men, the one scarcely aware of what the other was thinking." Thus, he, too, seeks to absolve his subject of any responsibility for his behavior. If it was not a case of "dualism," it was simply Wilson's "New Freedom" asserting control of his private life a few years before it would surface as a campaign slogan. Heckscher's penchant for excusing Wilson persists in his treatment of the gubernatorial and presidential Wilson. To Heckscher the New Jersey governorship was not a convenient escape from defeat at Princeton, because Wilson "simply did not see his carreer at Princeton as ending in failure." Nor did Hecksher's Wilson take the support of the New Jersey Democratic machine only to spurn the politicians by becoming a reform-minded governor. Such behavior was beyond the psychological pale for this everrighteous son of Presbyterians. If President Wilson was a reluctant gubernatorial candidate, then Governor Wilson was an equally hesitant presidential aspirant. With a biographer's shrug, Heckscher concludes that an almost apolitical Woodrow Wilson was "inclined to let matters take their course." But such nonchalance did not imply non-interest. Happy or unhappy, Woodrow Wilson was still a man of considerable ambition. Not that ambition ought to require a sacrifice of principle. As early as 1911 Wilson confided to Mary Peck his worry that the South might be too interested in his possible candidacy. In his view the South was conservative and "I am a radical." Given his "hatred" of "false colors," Wilson decided to go before an audience of prominent southern leaders to set the record straight by endorsing the initiative, referendum, and recall, which to Heckscher were then the "very symbols of radicalism in politics." Once again Heckscher is willing to take Wilson at his word —and to note that his "radicalism" cost Wilson significant southern support at the 1912 Democratic convention. To Heckscher the Baltimore gathering was an "irresistible showpiece" of American politics —and one with a "happy 157
