A Foreign Policy of Antinomy: The Wilsonian Moment and the Irish Question

Throughout the early twentieth century, the Irish Question was the burden of the Democratic Party. The Irish Question was the debate originally based in the United Kingdom regarding how to respond to Irish nationalism and enact Irish Home Rule. In theory, it would establish a devolved system of government, in which a Dublin-based parliament manages Irish domestic affairs while the British Parliament retains reserved matters on which they can legislate. As the Irish population increased and became a significant constituency of the Democratic Party with immense political clout, the Wilson administration held a vested interest in Irish home rule. Moreover, a central pillar of Wilson’s liberal internationalism was the notion of national self-determination. Wilson articulated this principle most clearly in the fifth of his “Fourteen Points” speech, which asserted the United States’ war aims. Wilson sought:

A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.¹

The Wilsonian Moment disappointed a great many small nations seeking self-determination. Critics of Wilson’s negotiations in Paris noted that the liberal principles he espoused during the war, specifically self-determination, had been violated repeatedly in the ensuing peace treaties, a development they attributed to Wilson’s attachment of ambiguity to the term.² The case of Ireland, though, is noteworthy primarily for two reasons. First, the American Irish passionately sought presidential action to address Irish independence at a time when they had never held so much power in electoral politics, especially in Northern cities, where Wilson was less popular, and when Wilson still actively considered running for a third term.³

Second, Wilson was an Ulster Presbyterian who used his Irish background to create a rapport with Irish Democrats while still separating himself from the Catholic, nationalist southern counties, which could more accurately be deemed truly Irish.⁴ As Irish opposition assisted the Republican majority in Congress to sink the Treaty that did not provide for Irish home rule, one must investigate Wilson’s relationship to the Irish Question both personally and politically during this critical moment in the history of international relations. Specifically, one must question why Wilson did not raise the issue of Irish home rule and self-determination during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Wilson did not actively engage the Irish Question during the war or the Paris Conference because he interpreted the foreign policy issue through a Presbyterian antinomy, as he reasoned that one may both support Irish home rule while simultaneously maintaining that the issue is a British domestic matter. Thus, Wilson felt emboldened to disregard the desire to manifest Irish self-determination held strongly by American Irish Catholics, a community that could not understand Wilson’s vision of foreign policy, directly informed by his Presbyterian faith that was anathema to Catholic doctrine.

Figure 1. From left, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson – the "Big Four" world leaders – attend the Paris Peace Conference, May 27, 1919. (Photograph from Edward Jackson, From left, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson – the "Big Four" world leaders – attend the Paris Peace Conference, May 27, 1919, May 27, 1919, U.S. Department of Defense, https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001727053/).

Presbyterian Antinomy and Wilson’s Attitude Toward Catholicism

One must note that, indeed, Wilson did give a public answer during his campaign for the Treaty as to why he did not raise the issue of Irish home rule. He said that the Conference had no jurisdiction over any question that “did not affect territories that belonged to the defeated empires” and that his stance on “self-determination for Ireland is expressed in Article XI of the Covenant.”⁵ Yet during the war and into the negotiations, Wilson had maintained that “Ireland is to be left to the mercies of England.”⁶ These seemingly contradictory statements are reconciled through Wilson’s lens of antinomy. While one might see incongruities, in matters of both foreign policy and theology, antinomy directed Wilson toward a truth that necessitated the concurrent maintenance of both points of view.⁷ Wilson once stated his view of antinomy and its stabilizing effect, saying:

I used to wonder vaguely that I did not have the same deepreaching spiritual difficulties that I read of other young men having. I saw the intellectual difficulties, but I was not troubled by them: they seemed to have no connection with my faith in the essentials of the religion I had been taught. Unorthodox in my reading of the standards of the faith, I am nevertheless orthodox in my faith. I am capable, it would seem, of being satisfied spiritually without being satisfied intellectually.⁸

Catholics did not hold the same beliefs about antinomy, as Wilson was aware. Wilson argued in his article, “Self Government in France,” that this inability was to the French Catholics’ detriment as they became hostile toward the liberal governmental virtues of moderation or stability.⁹ He said, “[I]n later French political history, we meet the same violent, ill-controlled humor. In public affairs the grain of the ordinary French mind seems to run at right angles to the law, and parallel with every dangerous extreme.”¹⁰

In a letter to the editor of the North Carolina Presbyterian in 1882, Wilson articulated his thoughts on Catholicism more broadly and its machinations toward the civil institutions of the United States. He said that the Church’s “cardinal tenets are openly antagonistic to the principles of free government—an organization which, whenever and wherever it dares, prefers and enforces obedience to its own laws rather than to those of the state—an organization whose avowed object it is to gain ascendancy over all civil authority.”¹¹ Wilson, thus, presents the Catholic Church as a predatory intruder in the city of Wilmington upon the installation of a Catholic bishop. The audience choice is critical, as well. Wilson addressed his response to the Presbyterian rather than the paper that celebrated the bishop’s arrival, the Morning Star. With the awareness that he was writing to a Presbyterian audience that would agree with his socio-religious views, Wilson intended to inflame sectarian tensions rather than simply neutralize the elation of the Morning Star’s editor. Furthermore, Wilson disavowed the editor of the Morning Star’s suggestion that Catholics are Christian, saying, “[T]here might be no doubt about his [the editor’s] inability to distinguish between a true history of Christianity and a history of Romish organization….”¹² Though this sectarian Christian rhetoric was not uncommon in nineteenth century Protestant America, Wilson’s use of it reinforces what audiences may interpret as prejudice against the Catholic Church and American Catholics.

After Wilson entered politics, he regarded his relationship with American Catholics, a key constituency of the Democratic Party, as more transactional than authentic. His public relations with American Catholics is reflected through his diplomacy with the pope during World War I. In 1917, Pope Benedict XV proposed a peace plan that would largely return Europe to the status quo ante bellum, in which territories would be returned, states disarmed, and freedom of the seas resumed.¹³ Further, he advocated for self-determination in Armenia, the Balkans, and Poland.¹⁴ In response, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, with the authorization of Wilson, stated that such a peace was premature: “But it would be folly to take [the peace plan] if it does not in fact lead to the goal [the pope] proposes. Our response must be based upon the stern facts and upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again….”¹⁵ In December 1918, following the armistice, Wilson initially declined an invitation to visit the Vatican. His personal secretary, Joseph Tumulty, himself an Irish Catholic, urged Wilson to reconsider because of the “influence [the] Pope can wield in favor of your ideals among free peoples of all countries in case an appeal to [the] world [is] necessary to sustain your principles.… While there is political danger in [a] visit, the larger aspects must be considered.”¹⁶ The idea that an audience with the pope could help produce European and American Catholic support for Wilson at the Paris Conference was enough to entice him to reconsider and ultimately relent to a papal audience in 1919.¹⁷ Although Wilson acquiesced in this episode, it displays his inclination that pandering to his Catholic constituency, both at home and abroad, was a bothersome obligation in which Wilson could at times become politically shortsighted.

Figure 2. A Catholic Pope and Presbyterian President: Benedict XV and Woodrow Wilson. (Image from Joseph McAuley, A Catholic Pope and Presbyterian President: Benedict XV and Woodrow Wilson, September 4, 2015, America Magazine, https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2015/09/04/when-presidents-and-popes-meet-woodrow-wilson-a nd-benedict-xv.

Wilson’s Misgivings Toward Irish-American “Hyphenism”

During his campaigns and presidency, Wilson maintained ambivalent views about the Irish-American community and its political interests, especially in regard to foreign policy toward the Irish Question. Further evidencing his transactional relationship with Catholics, Wilson would reference his Irish background in speeches to establish a connection with his Irish Catholic audiences. But Wilson’s background was Ulster Presbyterian, generally considered separate from the Catholic, nationalist southern counties.¹⁸ At a dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, he said, “All the Irish that is in me arises to greet you. My father’s parents were born in Ireland; born farther north, perhaps, than most of you would approve of. But there was no one with more Irish in him than my father.”¹⁹ Though he regarded the Irish-American community in poor terms, Wilson consistently advocated for Irish self-determination. In a campaign speech in 1910, he said, “This voice that has been crying in Ireland, this voice for home rule, is a voice which is now supported by the opinion of the world….”²⁰ Despite his personal misgivings about Irish-Americans, Irish home rule aligned neatly with his liberal internationalism.

Domestically, Wilson viewed Irish character as a trait to be tempered. For himself, the moderation of his “most enjoyable irresponsibility” was achieved through his “Scotch conscience.”²¹ For the American Irish at large, he prescribed the assimilation of American values, which would unshackle them from the bonds of foreign loyalties, hyphenism. Attachment to one’s heritage became Wilson’s test of whether one embraced America, saying in regard to John Barry, an Irish-American,

This man was not an Irish-American; he was an Irishman who became an American. I venture to say if he voted he voted with regard to the questions as they looked on this side of the water and not on the other side; and that is my infallible test of a genuine American—that when he votes or when he acts or when he fights, his heart and his thought are nowhere but in the center of the emotions and the purposes and the policies of the United States.²²

Though this may appear as if Wilson did not maintain antinomy as a viable political principle, this would be mistaken, as Wilson instead thought hyphenism constrained Irish-Americans’ political interests to a single, foreign issue. He envisioned that through his assimilationist program, Irish-Americans would become more like him, i.e., capable of holding antinomy. Wilson’s evaluation of immigrants was whether they would enable “America to live her separate and independent life, retaining our ancient affections, but determining everything that we do by the interests that exist on this side of the sea.”²³ Therefore, Wilson’s vision of Irish-American participation in American civil life was rooted in an antinomian structure.

Only eight days after requesting a declaration of war, Wilson personally wrote to Secretary Lansing suggesting a confidential message be transmitted to Prime Minister Lloyd George pertaining to the Irish Question. Wilson wrote:

[T]he only circumstance which seems now to stand in the way of an absolutely cordial cooperation with Great Britain … is the failure so far to find a satisfactory method of self-government for Ireland.… If the people of the United States could feel that there was an early prospect of the establishment for Ireland of substantial self-government a very great element of satisfaction and enthusiasm would be added to the cooperation now about to be organized between this country and Great Britain.²⁴

Though one may see Wilson’s letter as a policy recommendation driven by realpolitik and an abandonment of assimilation, this would be a mistake. First, Wilson, throughout his presidency, was invariably supportive of Irish home rule, as it was consistent with his liberal internationalism. Second, Wilson hoped war and its unifying effect would eliminate hyphenism more effectively than his domestic assimilationist program had thus far, as he said, “Successful action now would absolutely divorce our citizens of Irish birth and sympathy from the German sympathizers here with whom many of them have been inclined to make common cause.”²⁵ This policy brief sought to manifest a united American force that resembled Wilsonian internationalist ideals. The objective of this letter was ultimately to cement his domestic policy of assimilation, but it also aligned with Wilson’s consistently professed belief in Irish home rule, if not self-determination.

Ireland thus became the standard by which Wilson’s war aims of liberal internationalism, specifically self-determination for the small nations of the world, came to be judged.²⁶ Secretary Lansing presciently prophesied the issues with using the term “self-determination” and the obstacles to realizing it through the peace process: “What effect will it have on the Irish…. The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized.”²⁷ Lansing understood that Wilson’s antinomian foreign policy raised expectations, a realization Wilson seems to have had as well during his voyage to the Paris Conference.²⁸ Erez Manela also notes the ambiguity of Wilson’s multiple meanings of the term “self-determination,” noting its Marxist roots and its use among the Bolsheviks, who explicitly called for “national” self-determination through revolution against imperial rule.²⁹ Wilson’s version of the term was equated with popular sovereignty based on the principle of consent rather than one of ethnic homogeneity.³⁰ For example, Wilson also expressed interest in accepting the mandate over Armenia, even though it appeared contradictory to the concept of national self-determination, because it accorded with his understanding of the term.³¹ During the Paris Conference, Wilson realized the extent of the expectations he had set through his political application of antinomy.

The Pattern of Antinomy at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919

Wilson followed a similar pattern in his exercise of antinomy and responses to accusations of contradiction or hypocrisy. First, he would try to convince his audience of the innate truth of the concept.³² Second, when he met resistance and charges of hypocrisy, Wilson would counter with solutions that, to him, seemed infallible.³³ Finally, when his opinions were challenged, he would become obdurate in defense of his principles, “rejecting compromise or alternatives as not only immoral, but heretical.”³⁴ In line with his character, when called upon by the Irish-American community to produce Irish self-determination at the conference, he became intransigent against the charges of hypocrisy.

Over the course of Wilson’s career in Democratic Party politics, his interaction with the American Irish regarding the Irish Question met all the stages of Wilson’s antinomy pattern. First, Wilson connected self-determination with the Irish Question. His Irish-American audience believed as a result that the Irish case for independence would be put forward at the Paris Conference and managed according to Wilson’s liberal internationalist principles.³⁵ This was a nonstarter to the British Foreign Office, which held that “[a]bsolute independence, is impossible….”³⁶ Furthermore, shortly after the armistice, the Friends of Irish Freedom designated the second week in December 1918 as “Self-determination Week.”³⁷ This amounted to the culmination of the movement to link the Irish Question to the principle of self-determination.³⁸

Next, at the Paris Conference in June, Francis Patrick Walsh, the leader of the American Commission on Irish Independence, questioned Wilson about the lack of action on the Irish Question. Walsh suggested Wilson was hypocritical in his previous wartime statements advocating for self-determination. When Wilson claimed that he had only advocated for self-determination among the small nations created through the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, “Walsh insisted that he had believed, and still believed, that the President had voiced an appeal for justice to all nations, Ireland included.”³⁹ Wilson’s tenor toward the American Irish changed hereafter. He sharply rebuked the commission for a foray to Ireland to stir public opinion toward independence, which generated problematic coverage among the British press and for Wilson’s negotiations with Lloyd George.⁴⁰ Moreover, Wilson’s obstinacy began to take hold, as his concept for the League of Nations subsumed his other priorities at the conference. Wilson started to see it as a blanket solution to all of his political woes, both foreign and domestic:

I firmly believe that when the League of Nations is once organized it will afford a forum not now available for bringing the opinion of the world and of the United States in particular to bear on just such problems [as the Irish Question]. The Republicans will commit another great blunder if they make use of the Irish agitation and will endanger the lining up of the whole country along religious lines.⁴¹

Wilson’s zealous, single-minded advocacy for the League of Nations served to rationalize a solution to the political quandary created by his antinomy. To Wilson, the League would serve as a forum to raise questions of self-determination while maintaining domestic sovereignty until the international community settled the question.

Figure 3. Editorial Cartoon Titled "They Won't Dovetail," Showing Wilson Trying to Fit Together the "Proposed Constitution of the League of Nations" and the "Constitution of the United States" as Uncle Sam Looks on Dissapprovingly. April 1919. (Cartoon from Gustavo A. Bronstrup, Editorial Cartoon Titled "They Won't Dovetail," Showing Wilson Trying to Fit Together the "Proposed Constitution of the League of Nations" and the "Constitution of the United States" as Uncle Sam Looks on Dissapprovingly. April 1919, April 1919, Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2018654004.)

In these last stages of the Paris Conference and Wilson’s subsequent campaign on behalf of the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, he confronted robust opposition among Irish-Americans, leading him to respond even more forcefully and coldly. Following a disastrous meeting with the Commission on Irish Independence, Wilson mused:

I have one weapon I can use against them—one terrible weapon, which I shall not use unless I am driven to it …, unless it appears that the Irish movement has forgotten to be American in its interest in a foreign controversy.… I have only to warn our people of the attempt of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to dominate our public opinion, & there is no doubt about what America will do.⁴²

Wilson’s remarks in support of the Treaty were stated in polemical rhetoric and imbued with socio-religious prejudice. Public support of the Treaty was thus refashioned as a loyalty test that would finally root out hyphenism in the United States.⁴³ To Wilson, there was no possibility in which he could be wrong about the merits of the Treaty and, more specifically, the League of Nations. This fully accords with Magee’s description of Presbyterian resistance to accusations of contradiction or hypocrisy in matters of antinomy, as he writes, “If forced to fight, they [holders of antinomy] would defend their principles as if they were the revealed word of God, rejecting compromise or alternatives as not only immoral, but heretical.”⁴⁴

Wilson continued with this political strategy of sowing ethnic strife along religious lines, saying, “The hyphen is the knife that is being stuck into this document.”⁴⁵ After Wilson’s stroke ended the campaign in support of the Treaty, it was defeated in the Republican-controlled Senate, nominally with the help of Irish-Americans.⁴⁶ Further, in retaliation to Wilson’s Democratic Party, the American Irish supported the Republican presidential candidate, Warren G. Harding, in 1920, though it served little benefit for them, aside from their desire to hurt the Democrats.⁴⁷ Thus, in this final stage of his antinomian pattern, Wilson blended his most reactionary policy positions: his devotion to the League of Nations as the solution to all his political issues, and his program of strict assimilation.

Religion Shaping American Foreign Policy

During World War I and the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson did not raise the issue of the Irish Question because he perceived the foreign policy matter through the lens of Presbyterian antinomy. As a result, where the American Irish saw his idealist principles as hypocritical when tested, Wilson maintained that one could both support Irish home rule and hold that it was ultimately a British domestic matter. The resistance that he faced from the American Commission on Irish Independence, specifically the accusation of hypocrisy, catalyzed Wilson to follow his antinomian pattern of response. Wilson became increasingly obstinate in his devotion to the League of Nations and reactionary in his attacks against hyphenated groups who he felt did not display adequate support for America by opposing the Treaty. Antinomy thus explains Wilson’s politically delusional and counterproductive commitment to the League of Nations, which was opposed by a key constituency and drove that constituency to the Republicans.⁴⁸

This matter of Wilson and the Irish Question offers an example of religion directly shaping foreign policy. Further, it was not simply religious prejudice that guided Wilson’s action toward the Irish Question but Presbyterian doctrine. Indeed, Wilson did harbor anti-Catholic bias and held misgivings against his Irish constituency, from whom he tried to maintain distance, but in the issue of the Irish Question, Wilson was driven by the doctrine of antinomy, the Presbyterian belief that one could maintain two apparently contradictory statements to reveal a higher truth. Wilson’s application of antinomy to international politics thus revealed both the religious and political incongruities between Presbyterian Americans and Irish-Catholic Americans.

                                                         Works Cited

Bronstrup, Gustavo A. Editorial Cartoon Titled "They Won't Dovetail," Showing Wilson Trying to Fit Together the "Proposed Constitution of the League of Nations" and the "Constitution of the United States" as Uncle Sam Looks on Disapprovingly. April 1919. April 1919. Cartoon. Library of Congress. https://lccn.loc.gov/2018654004.

Carroll, Francis M. America and the Making of an Independent Ireland: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2021.

Conroy-Krutz, Emily. Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2024.

Department of State. “Travels of the President - Woodrow Wilson.” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute. Accessed April 24, 2025. https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/president/wilson-woodrow.

Hopkinson, Michael. “President Woodrow Wilson and the Irish Question.” Studia Hibernica, no. 27 (1993): 89–111.

Jackson, Edward. From left, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson – the "Big Four" world leaders – attend the Paris Peace Conference. May 27, 1919. Photograph. U.S. Department of Defense. Paris, France. https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001727053/.

Lansing, Robert. Robert Lansing to Pope Benedict XV, August 27, 1917. The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-reply-the-pope. Lansing, Robert. The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921.

Link, Arthur S., ed. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. 69 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Magee, Malcolm D. What the World Should Be: Woodrow Wilson and the Crafting of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008.

Maloney, William. The Irish Question, 3rd ed. New York: America Press, 1919. Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Maxwell, Kenneth R. “Irish-Americans and the Fight for Treaty Ratification.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 31, no. 4 (1967): 620–41.

McAuley, Joseph. A Catholic Pope and Presbyterian President: Benedict XV and Woodrow Wilson. September 4, 2015. Image. America Magazine. https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2015/09/04/when-presidents-and-pope s-meet-woodrow-wilson-and-benedict-xv.

New York Times. “Assails Hyphenates as Foes of Treaty.” September 26, 1919.

New York Times. “Denies Senators Slurred Wilson.” March 1, 1919.

New York Times. “Text of Pope Benedict's Appeal to Nations Urging an End of War for the World’s Sake.” August 16, 1917.

New York Times. “Wilson Defines Stand on Ireland.” September 18, 1919. Preston, Andrew. Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.

Schmuhl, Robert. Ireland’s Exiled Children: America and the Easter Rising. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Tumulty, Joseph. “Document 125.” In Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Volume I, edited by Joseph V. Fuller. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1942.

Woodward, E. L., and Rohan Butler, eds. Documents of British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, First Series, Vol. V. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1954.

1. Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 45:537.

2. Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 42.

3. Robert Schmuhl, Ireland’s Exiled Children: America and the Easter Rising (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 101, 115.

4. Schmuhl, Ireland’s Exiled Children, 77.

5. “Wilson Defines Stand on Ireland,” New York Times, September 18, 1919.

6. “Denies Senators Slurred Wilson,” New York Times, March 1, 1919; Schmuhl, Ireland’s Exiled Children, 98-9.

7. Malcolm D. Magee, What the World Should Be: Woodrow Wilson and the Crafting of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008), 19.

8. Link, Papers, 6:462.

9. Magee, What the World Should Be, 31.

10. Link, Papers, 1:519.

11. Link, Papers, 2:98.

12. Link, Papers, 2:98.

13. “Text of Pope Benedict's Appeal to Nations Urging an End of War for the World’s Sake,” New York Times, August 16, 1917.

14. Ibid.

15. Lansing to Pope Benedict XV, August 27, 1917, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-reply-the-pope.

16. Joseph Tumulty, “Document 125,” in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Volume I, ed. Joseph V. Fuller (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1942); Schmuhl, Ireland’s Exiled Children, 79.

17. “Travels of the President - Woodrow Wilson,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, accessed April 24, 2025, https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/president/wilson-woodrow; Tumulty, “Document 125.”

18. Schmuhl, Ireland’s Exiled Children, 77.

19. Link, Papers, 24:251.

20. Link, Papers, 21:439.

21. Link, Papers, 19:103.

22. Link, Papers, 30:36.

23. Link, Papers, 30:35.

24. Link, Papers, 42:24.

25. Link, Papers, 42:24.

26. William Maloney, The Irish Issue, 3rd ed. (New York: America Press, 1919), 62; Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 285.

27. Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921), 97.

28. Francis M. Carroll, America and the Making of an Independent Ireland: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2021), 36-7.

29. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, 42.

30. Ibid.

31. Emily Conroy-Krutz, Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2024), 266.

32. Magee, What the World Should Be, 20.

33. Magee, What the World Should Be, 21.

34. Magee, What the World Should Be, 22.

35. Michael Hopkinson, “President Woodrow Wilson and the Irish Question,” Studia Hibernica, no. 27 (1993): 92-3.

36. Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, to Grey, September 9, 1919, E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler, eds., Documents of British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, First Series, Vol. V (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1954), 999.

37. Kenneth R. Maxwell, “Irish-Americans and the Fight for Treaty Ratification,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 31, no. 4 (1967): 622.

38. Maxwell, “Irish-Americans and the Treaty,” 622.

39. Link, Papers, 60:386; Carroll, Making of an Independent Ireland, 53.

40. Carroll, Making of an Independent Ireland, 53.

41. Link, Papers, 61:291; Schmuhl, Ireland’s Exiled Children, 112.

42. Link, Papers, 59:646.

43. Hopkinson, “Wilson and the Irish Question,” 107.

44. Magee, What the World Should Be, 22.

45. “Assails Hyphenates as Foes of Treaty,” New York Times, September 26, 1919.

46. Maxwell, “Irish-Americans and the Treaty,” 635.

47. Hopkinson, “Wilson and the Irish Question,” 108, 111.

48. Hopkinson, “Wilson and the Irish Question,” 104; Preston, Sword of the Spirit, 285.