sovereignty and congressional authority to declare war. A dozen or so Republican “Irreconcilables” refused to support it outright, while other Republican senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, insisted on amendments that would preserve U.S. Most importantly, however, was Point 14, which called for a “general association of nations” that would offer “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.” When Wilson left for Paris in December 1918, he was determined that the Fourteen Points, and his League of Nations (as the association of nations was known), be incorporated into the peace settlements.Īlthough many Americans supported the treaty, the president met resistance in the Senate, in part over concern that joining the League of Nations would force U.S.

In his war address to Congress on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke of the need for the United States to enter the war in part to “make the world safe for democracy.” Almost a year later, this sentiment remained strong, articulated in a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, where he introduced his Fourteen Points.ĭesigned as guidelines for the rebuilding of the postwar world, the points included Wilson’s ideas regarding nations’ conduct of foreign policy, including freedom of the seas and free trade and the concept of national self-determination, with the achievement of this through the dismantling of European empires and the creation of new states.

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