War Message to Congress

Woodrow Wilson: War Message to Congress

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

On the third of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.

That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats.

The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, haven been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meager enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded.

This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world.

I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.

The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.

It is war against all nations.

American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind.

Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.

When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all.

The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs: they cut to the very roots of human life.

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.

What this will involve is clear.

It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs.

It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible.

It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy’s submarines.

It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least five hundred thousand men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training.

It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation.

I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against the very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast loans.

In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdoms of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty -- for it will be a very practical duty -- of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field and we should help them in every way to be effective there.

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive departments of the government, for the consideration of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the Government upon which the responsibility of conducting the war safeguarding the nation will most directly fall.

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third day of February and on the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles.

Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools.

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation’s affairs.

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life.

The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naïve majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor.

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, wit the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States.

Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we know that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors that intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security of the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept a gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power.

We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve.

We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall cheerfully make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and fair play we profess to be fighting for. I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honor.

The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna.

We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck.

We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us -- however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts.

We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship -- exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible.

We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world at last free.

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

修辞分析：Rhetorical Analysis of President Woodrow Wilson’s War Message

With the status of the country’s belligerency heavily in question, an apprehensive President Woodrow Wilson prepared to request from an unmotivated and unprepared country a declaration of war against Germany. After exerting every attempt possible to retain the peace and honor of the United States, the President was finally forced to choose between the two, in which he opted for the latter (Seymour 26). As he sat down to compose his congressional address proposing war, the uncertainty of his decision overwhelmed him. He confided to a member of his cabinet, Frank Cobb, that he had never been as unsure about anything in his life as the judgment he was making for the nation (Baker 506). Through a rhetorical analysis of Wilson’s points of argumentation and his style in the presentation to the war congress, we can gain a better understanding of the president’s purpose tonot only convince the Congress that American belligerency in the final stages of the war would indefinitely shorten it and provide him with the opportunity to organize the peace for Europe as well as the rest of the world (Ferrell 2), but to sway the American people’s opinion to one of non-isolationism, to warn Germany’s government that “America would ultimately wield a powerful sword to deny them victory” (Parsons 2), to compel German citizens to relinquish the submarine attacks and negotiate peace and his terms (Parsons 2), and to calm his own uncertainty about his decision. The need for Wilson’s speech and the current mindset of the American public were a direct result of a succession of antagonistic events in Europe that were rapidly effecting the United States. As the task of remaining neutral became increasingly unfeasible due to numerous insults by the British and German governments, Wilson was forced to shift his foreign policy into a more internationalist scope, a path which the majority of Americans failed to follow (Boyer 791). The same man who was reelected in 1916 on the platform “he kept us out of war”, who delivered the “peace without victory” speech, who urged his country to remain neutral “in action” as well as “in thought” was now asking Congress to approve American entry into the war. As President Wilson confronted the nation on the evening of April 2, 1917, he presented a case of past offenses coupled with present circumstances in hopes of providing a more effective case for leading America into war (Blakey, 2). He employed antecedent-consequence throughout the beginning of his address to warrant his call for belligerency. By recapitulating the events of German abomination as seen most profoundly in the sinking of United States vessels, Wilson let the record speak for itself. He appealed to the sense of compassion in his audience with the mention of “hospital ships as ships carrying aid to the stricken people of Belgium....have been sunk with the same reckless lack of concern or principle” (Baker 510) It was these “hard-hitting charges of outrage and insult by Germany” that stirred Wilson’s listeners (Baker 514). He continued to relate events of the past to his present standpoint by admitting that he was at first “unable to believe that such things could be done by any government” (Safire 110), but as American lives were unjustly taken he realized that the German government had disregarded all respect for international law and had declared war against mankind (Baker 510). This war “against mankind” Wilson defined as the intent of German submarines to take the lives of innocent, uninvolved citizens, whose activities, being supplying aid to bereaved nations or exporting goods on merchant ships, have always been deemed as inoffensive and legitimate pursuits, by no means worthy of assault (Safire 111). Wilson contrasted the British’s interference with neutral trade as slight compared to the immediate and intense conflict with Germany over submarine warfare, illustrated by the comment “Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be” (Safire 111). The President went on to offer another definition in hopes of justifying his call to war. He labeled the conflict as “a war against all nations” exemplifying the distress that other countries have experienced due to the unbiased and relentless bombing of their own neutral ships (Safire 111). By associating the United States with other friendly countries who are also at odds with Germany, Wilson’s cry for war seemed more convincing. He went on to assert that the choice made by the U.S must be befitting to the singular characteristics of the country and that they must be very clear what their motives upon entry into the war were: not vengeance or profession of physical might, but to defend the principles of peace and justice and “to set up amongst the free people of the world an observance of these ideals” (Safire 113). We were entering the war not to battle with the German people, but to combat a greater menace, the system that had impended these violations (Baker 512). The president proceeded with regard to his stance on neutrality. Aware of pacifists like Henry Cabot Lodge in the audience, Wilson appealed to those who had not forgotten his promises of keeping America out of war. He admitted that his assumption that armed neutrality would be adequate in “safeguarding his people from unlawful violence” was in fact impossible and he had failed to “assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence” (Safire 111). Wilson delivered this phrase with the use of the collective pronoun “our” which worked to give the illusion that the country was ununited on this war resolution (Safire 109). The president continued to refute his previous position by pointing out that it is nearly impossible for neutral ships to defend themselves on the open sea without subscribing to the same inhumane measures the Germans have employed,destroying ships before they reveal their intention. “The position of armed neutrality has worked only to produce what it was meant to prevent,” claimed the President with hopes of validating his attitude reversal. The president was certain that armed neutrality would accomplish nothing but bring America into a war that it was unprepared for and the country would consequently, lack effectiveness (Safire 111). Wilson, forced to make a choice for his country as to either maintain its honor or peace, stated “There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making......We will not choose the path of submission” (Low 239). With this sentence, Wilson defined neutrality as being synomous with submission and he refused to allow the rights and or the people of the United States to be violated or ignored(Safire 113). With neutrality voided, the President moved on to address the main concern of his speech. With a solemnity of language, Wilson asked to Congress to declare the recent insults of the German government as “nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States” and he advised that they accept their newfound status of belligerent and work to prepare the country’s resources and people to defeat the evil German empire and resolve the war(Clements 2). The president expressed his regret in having to make such a move but found it as his “constitutional duty” to do no other(Safire 112). Through the use of anaphora for emphasis, he stated the need for an army to be raised through drafting, the levying of taxes, making money readily available to the Allied powers, increasing agricultural and industrial production, and overall commitment by the country to give its all to destroy the “Prussian autocracy” (Clements 140). Wilson was asking for more than had ever been demanded of the country before; requesting not only their loyalty and enthusiasm, but “organization of the nation’s strength to fight the enemies of democracy and reestablish the proper balance of power in Europe” (Blakey2). The President reminded the nation that during the course of the last two months his war objectives had remained unchanged and he proceeded to warn Americans of the nessecity of retaining their virtuous motives and aims as the country mobilized for war(Safire 113). Wilson then called America to war “for the noblest purpose a war has ever been undertaken” (Baker 511). “Our object....is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the word as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of these principles....We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and the individual citizens of civilized states” (Ferrell 2). With this statement, Wilson ruled out any questions as to why he was leading his country into combat and it became evident that “His word pointed to principle, not selfish interest, as the motive for war” (Safire109). Wilson refused to accept a “moral double standard” in international affairs and he recognized the dawning of a new age in which the same principles of conduct and consequences of wrongdoing would be observed by all (Ferrell 2). Then President Wilson went on to address the American position on the German people. He proclaimed America wasn’t fighting against the general public of Germany, but we were engaged in a battle opposing the the government of which the people had no control over. “We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval” (Baker 512). Wilson went on to compare the war declaration of Germany to those of forgotten days when the public was never consulted or made aware of the intentions of a warring nation. Obviously insulting the administration of the Germans, Wilson acknowledged that “self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them the opportunity to strike and make conquest.”--all of these statements implying that if Germany were under democratic rule, the submarine warfare campaign would be non-existent (Safire, 114). One must see the irony in this statement in light of America’s numerous attempts to gain influence in other countries by means of military intervention and economic domination as exemplified during the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, who utilized the Roosevelt Corollary and dollar diplomacy as their tools of expansionism. In order to establish peace and morality in the world, Wilson assert that the world must be governed by the rule of the people. In order to maintain “a steadfast concert for peace”, Wilson concludes that the only answer is democracy (Safire 114). “Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own” (Baker 512). Wilson provided Russia as the prime example of this ideal “League of Honor” by pointing out how the country had prepared itself to join in the “forces fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace” ( Baker 513). The Germans had failed to conform to this Wilsonian view of world peace, and therefore “proved itself a ‘natural foe to liberty’ by its conduct in the war, its subversive activities in the United States, and its intrigues and its plots, as evidenced in the Zimmerman note” (Baker 513). President Wilson called his nation to put forth every effort to halt the power of the German Empire. This sentiment is manifested in his next paragraph as Wilson summarizes his war aims into one all encompassing goal: to make the world safe for democracy (Clements 140). Wilson uses an hyperbole to characterize American’s struggle as one to secure peace for the whole world, one to insure to rights of nations great and small, and one to safeguard the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience (Baker 513). Once again Wilson affirms that the United States upon entry into the war desires “no conquest, no dominion” (Baker 513). The United States is readily willing to make sacrifices without compensation in order to secure the undenible rights of mankind (Safire 115). These statements regarding Wilson’s principles work not only to convince the nation of the obligation America has in guaranteeing freedom, but also to pacify his own reservations as to why he might be leading his country into war. Wilson ended with an apologetic peroration full of regret. He began by admitting the anguish he felt over having to bring this issue before Congress and acknowledged that his was an “oppressive and distressing duty” (Baker 513). The President wearily recognized that the road ahead of the Allies was going to be a long one and he did not attempt to shield the country from the “after-cost in terms of trial and sacrifice to the nation and to civilization” ( Baker 513). Wilson expressed his personal objectives in the final paragraph of his speech (Baker 514). Solemn, though very powerful, Wilson asked his fellow Americans to dedicate their “lives and their fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured,” (Low 239) to the effort of democratizes the world. He ended with, “God helping her she can do no other.” With this closing sentence Woodrow Wilson left with America with no choice but to defend her honor ((Blakey 2). Americans had never before made the sacrifices their country was calling for, but Wilson was confident of the outcome. Two days later Congress voted overwhelming that “the state of war.....which had been thust upon the United States is hereby formally declared” (Bailey 10). In conclusion, after a rhetorical analysis of Woodrow Wilson’s address to the war congress on April 2, 1917 the reader is more aware of all of the opposing factions to which Wilson had to appeal to and the methods he employed to do so. By admitting his own fears about American entry into the Great War, he helped to calm the apprehensions of the American people as he sought to rally them behind his cause to safeguard democracy for the world.