Re: "I am a most unhappy man."
Misattributed
"It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
Remarks on The Birth of a Nation attributed to Wilson by writer Thomas Dixon, after White House screening of the film, which was based on Dixon's The Clansman. Wilson later said that he disapproved of the "unfortunate film." Wilson aide Joseph Tumulty, in a letter to the Boston branch of the NAACP in response to reports of Wilson's regard for the film wrote: The President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.… We have come to be one of the worst ruled … Governments in the civilized world.…"
Attributed in America : Freedom to Fascism (2006) by Aaron Russo and elsewhere as an expression of regret for creating the Federal Reserve. The quotation is fabricated from out-of-context remarks Wilson made on separate occasions and two leading sentences that have no clear source.
"I have ruined my country."
No known source from Wilson, but possibly a misattribution of remarks by Sidney Sonnino at the Paris Peace Conference (1919), criticizing Wilson's treaty framework as unfair to Italy. See Margaret Macmillan (2002), Paris 1919.
A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.…
"Monopoly, Or Opportunity?" (1912), criticizing the credit situation before the Federal Reserve was created, also in The New Freedom (1913), p. 185
We have come to be one of the worst ruled… Governments….
"Benevolence, Or Justice?" (1912), also in The New Freedom (1913), p. 201
The quotation has been analyzed in Andrew Leonard (2007-12-21), "The Unhappiness of Woodrow Wilson" Salon:
I can tell you categorically that this is not a statement of regret for having created the Federal Reserve. Wilson never had any regrets for having done that. It was an accomplishment in which he took great pride.
John M. Cooper, professor of history and author of several books on Wilson, as quoted by Andrew Leonard
en.wikiquote.org |
