The Wabash Wilsonian: George Lewes MacKintosh and His Times
In March of 1916, the President addressed an attentive and enthusiastic crowd concerning America’s role in the world. “It is coming to be a fact,” he said, “that the American people must dominate Mexico. A stronger and more advanced people must take charge of a weaker and less advanced people.” The latter nation, he claimed, was hopeless. “There is in Mexico nothing to regenerate the country,” he asserted. “France regenerated itself by universal education; Mexico is ignorant.” The short and direct speech, according to the local paper, drew “enthusiastic cheers” from the audience.
That audience was a gathering of Wabash men, the paper reporting was The Bachelor, and the man speaking was George Lewes MacKintosh, the sixth president of Wabash College.
MacKintosh and Wison - Photo Courtesy of Beth Swift
It is difficult for a modern student at Wabash to imagine such a call to arms from a college president—Dr. White has yet to issue so much as a press release on the situation in Afghanistan—but such mobilization of the campus was not uncommon in the day. This was the Progressive era, and George MacKintosh was a progressive president.
The Progressive era, once heralded as the golden age of American governance and reform, has taken a beating in recent years, and rightfully so. The era did more to mobilize Americans toward service of the state—morally, financially, and physically—than it did to make positive reform. The Progressive-era-bashing began in earnest back in 2008, with John Goldberg’s controversial book, Liberal Fascism, and quickly expanded to a wider audience via Glenn Beck and his chalkboard scribblings. So toxic has the era become among movement conservatives that the mere mention of Woodrow Wilson’s name drew jeers from the audience at the annual CPAC convention this year—no small feat for a man who has been dead for nearly a century.
President MacKintosh was an admirer of Woodrow Wilson, as is apparent from his many public lectures. The above quotations concerning America’s relationship with Mexico channel Wilson’s views on the subject with near perfection. While mimicking Wilson, MacKintosh remained a Progressive in his own right. Most of his contemporaries saw MacKintosh through a moral and academic lens—so through his strong support of Prohibition, his strict Presbyterian piety, and his stubborn defense of the Classics at Wabash, he often earned the description of “conservative.” But MacKintosh, in fact, was every bit as progressive and political as he was religious. In 1928, following his presidency at Wabash, he launched a bid for the U.S. Congress in Indiana’s ninth district—achieving the Democratic nomination, but losing the general election.
The political matters that MacKintosh took most interest in were those involving foreign relations and war. As we have already seen, he took a hawkish position on America’s relationship with Mexico. It was, in fact, the prospect of war with Mexico, coupled with the ongoing “World War” in Europe, that led MacKintosh to push for compulsory military training at Wabash. In 1915, a committee composed of three Wabash graduates—one of whom was Woodrow Wilson’s sitting Vice President, Thomas Riley Marshall—recommended that military training be a requirement at Wabash, and that an armory be built to store military weaponry. MacKintosh wholeheartedly endorsed the recommendation. Construction of the new armory/gymnasium began almost immediately, and MacKintosh began negotiations to establish a “Department of Military Training” and bring an official military training officer to campus.
The military was initially reluctant to provide Wabash with an official military training officer, but MacKintosh persisted. By 1917, America’s involvement in the European war seemed inevitable. MacKintosh was approached, according to The Bachelor, by “a man high in national affairs” to make a statement of Wabash’s intentions should war arrive. MacKintosh responded enthusiastically and unambiguously. “Wabash College unanimously supports any measure which President Wilson considers necessary for the honor and safety of the nation,” he declared. “We all believe all Americans should stand behind the president in this day of crisis.”
In April of 1917, the United States formally declared war on Germany, and Wabash began preparations for the battle. Athletic programs were cancelled, students enlisted by the dozens, and Wabash men were lectured on the importance of serving. War Department employee and Wabash alumnus A.J. Bundy, according to The Bachelor, used a special Wabash lecture to declare that “it is absolutely essential for the citizens to feel that they owe the government something and to prepare to pay it.”
President MacKintosh began the process of mobilizing a wartime campus. He seemed to delight in the challenge. Under his leadership, the “National Intelligence Committee of Wabash College” was formed for the purpose of “cooperating with the Government at its request” by seeking out current and former Wabash students who were capable of military service. He negotiated a contract with the S.A.T.C. to bring four hundred servicemen to campus—who were trained in two barracks that were built in the lot that is now the Chapel. “I cannot believe that there was any part of Dr. MacKintosh’s administration in which he found greater satisfaction than in the response of everyone connected with the college to the nation’s call in the World War,” said President Louis Hopkins upon MacKintosh’s death in 1932.
MacKintosh also continued to articulate his own views in public speeches. And in these speeches, we see at least one disagreement with President Wilson. Wilson had declared America’s war to be against the German Kaiser, not the German people. MacKintosh saw that view as excessively diplomatic. “The German Imperial Government and the people were inseparable,” he reportedly told the Crawfordsville Presbytery, “insomuch as the people are of the opinion that the government is divine and that they are subject to it to such an extent that they must not ever think for themselves.” Indeed, it was not so much the German Kaiser to be blamed for the violence of war, as it was the German culture he was brought up in. Much like his critique of Mexico, MacKintosh believed that the problem with Germany was lack of education.
The irony of this is that MacKintosh himself, at least during the height of the wartime fervor, seemed to value dedication to the state over education itself. “I would gladly nail up the doors of the college,” he once said, “if it would help in defense of the nation’s cause.” Thankfully, it never came to that—though it did come close. The war created a shortage in faculty that caused MacKintosh to assume the roles of both president and substitute professor.
The intent of this article is not to demonize MacKintosh—he was a man of his times, and he had no shortage of redeeming qualities. Nor is it a critique of America’s involvement in the First World War, or a critique of war in general—both can be seen as necessary. Let this article serve only as a note of caution: to beware calls to serve only the state. Patriotism is service to an American idea, not an American government. President MacKintosh no doubt understood that—but his attempts to throw Wabash College wholeheartedly and without qualifications behind the efforts of the Wilson administration blur that distinction.
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