In April 1917, John Sharp Williams Was Almost Sixty-Three Years Old, and He Could Barely Hear It Thunder
1 OF GENTLEMEN AND SOBs: THE GREAT WAR AND PROGRESSIVISM IN MISSISSIPPI In April 1917, John Sharp Williams was almost sixty-three years old, and he could barely hear it thunder. Sitting in the first row of the packed House chamber, he leaned forward, “huddled up, listening . approvingly” as his friend Woodrow Wilson asked the Congress, not so much to declare war as to “accept the status of belligerent” which Germany had already thrust upon the reluctant American nation. No one knew how much of the speech the senior senator from Mississippi heard, though the hand cupped conspicuously behind the right ear betrayed the strain of his effort. Frequently, whether from the words themselves or from the applause they evoked, he removed his hand long enough for a single clap before resuming the previous posture, lest he lose the flow of the president’s eloquence.1 “We are glad,” said Wilson, “now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations, great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy.” That final pregnant phrase Williams surely heard, for “alone he began to applaud . gravely, emphatically,” and continued until the entire audience, at last gripped by “the full and immense meaning” of the words, erupted into thunderous acclamation.2 Scattered about the crowded chamber were a handful of dissenters, including Williams’s junior colleague from Mississippi, James K.
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