Essay 22-C: The Battle Over The Versailles Treaty And The Founding Documents

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

When President Woodrow Wilson helped negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, he intentionally made the League of Nations the keystone of his vision of post-war peace. However, when he submitted the treaty to the Senate in 1919, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge led an effort to attach reservations that would preserve Congressional authority over war. When Wilson rejected those changes and failed in an unusual public campaign for popular support, the Senate refused the treaty.

The constitutional question over the Treaty of Versailles did not primarily concern the terms of the peace settlement. The chief constitutional controversy that animated the dispute between Wilson and Lodge was over who might legitimately bind the American people in matters of war and peace. The first twenty-six articles of the Treaty formed the Covenant of the League of Nations, including, most controversially for Lodge and Wilson, Article X, which required member nations to protect the territorial integrity and independence of other members of the League. While Wilson believed the Covenant was necessary to make and preserve peace, Lodge feared such a commitment would imperil the principled constitutional process that binds sovereignty and popular consent.

Even a cursory review of our founding documents finds clear guidance and antecedents for the Wilson-Lodge dispute. The Declaration of Independence establishes and testifies to the American regime’s understanding of popular sovereignty in plain language: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The signers of the Declaration had lived with and rejected the remote and unrepresentative institutions that had so often committed them to war, conflict, and other forms of coercion without their influence. The Treaty and Covenant did not open a new conflict in American political practice but rather revived an old and foundational dispute.

Institutionally, the Constitution of the United States gives Congress the power to declare war and fund the armed forces. The Constitution also empowers the president to negotiate treaties “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” Notably, the framers of our Constitution changed “make war” to “declare war” to empower the executive in exigent circumstances, such as invasions, thereby demonstrating careful reflection on the substantive roles of the executive and legislative branches. Though the Constitution clearly provides for direct action and treaty formation in international affairs, those actions are routed through a process clearly designed to fulfill the Declaration’s principle of popular control. 

Other founding texts support a reading of the Constitution that emphasizes not only the role of the Senate, but its necessary participation in matters of war and peace. In an April 1798 letter to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison wrote that, owing to the nature of the Executive as the branch of power “most interested in war, and most prone to it,” they chose to vest “the question of war in the Legislature.” In an earlier letter (September 1789) from Jefferson to Madison, Jefferson suggested that moving the power to declare war from the Executive to the legislative body was an effective check on “the Dog of war.” In Federalist 75, Hamilton argues that “the joint possession of the power in question, by the President and Senate, would afford a greater prospect of security than the separate possession of it by either of them.” The Constitution’s text is, unsurprisingly, consistent with the political theory of its framers, leaving little doubt not only about their principled regard for popular sovereignty but also about the salutary influence of representative institutions in foreign affairs.

The Wilson-Lodge dispute emerged in the context of this constitutional inheritance. Wilson argued in testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that “the unanimous vote of the council is only advice in any case” and that Article X is “a moral, not a legal obligation.” Lodge was not convinced. Invoking George Washington’s warning against permanent foreign alliances, Lodge argued that Article X was an obligation to which the United States would be inextricably bound. Lodge drafted a set of fourteen reservations, the most notable of which was Reservation 2, which declared that “the United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country” or to employ American military forces unless Congress “shall by act or joint resolution so provide.” The core of the disagreement was not over the need for a League of Nations. It concerned whether international commitments could weigh against America’s constitutional institutions. It is through these institutions that the American people consented to war. Wilson thought international peace and prosperity depended, in part, on the Covenant of the League of Nations, which made no formal changes to Congress’s powers. Lodge countered that the entire arrangement improperly constrained popular sovereignty by subjecting it to international entanglements.

The Wilson-Lodge debate demonstrates a recurring theme in American constitutional practice: how can the United States participate in international institutions when that very participation remains subject to constitutional forms and practices that safeguard our enduring commitments to popular sovereignty?

Dr. Eric Schmidt is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kentucky Wesleyan College, specializing in political philosophy and American political institutions. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and a Master’s in Philosophy from Louisiana State University. His current research focuses on the intersection of political philosophy, civics, and the digital transformation. As head of the Political Science and Legal Studies programs at KWC, Dr. Schmidt enjoys serving as an advisor to students interested in law and public service careers. He resides in Owensboro with his wife and daughters.

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