Editing Woodrow Wilson (section)

==== Ratification debate and defeat====
[[File:President Woodrow Wilson - NH 18.jpeg|upright|thumb|Wilson returning from the [[Versailles Peace Conference]] on [[USS George Washington|USS ''George Washington'']], as she steamed up [[New York Harbor]] on July 8, 1919; the [[Weimar National Assembly]] in Germany formally ratified the treaty the following day in a vote of 209 to 116.<ref name=pinson>{{cite book|author=Koppel S. Pinson|title=Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization| edition= 13th printing|year=1964|publisher=Macmillan|location=New York|page=397 f|isbn=0-88133-434-0}}</ref>]]
Ratification of the Treaty of Versailles required the support of two-thirds of the Senate, a difficult proposition given that Republicans held a narrow majority in the Senate after the [[1918 U.S. elections]].<ref name="Clements (1992), pp. 190–191">Clements (1992), pp. 190–191</ref> Republicans were outraged by Wilson's failure to discuss the war or its aftermath with them, and an intensely partisan battle developed in the Senate. Republican Senator [[Henry Cabot Lodge]] supported a version of the treaty that required Wilson to compromise. Wilson refused.<ref name="Clements (1992), pp. 190–191"/> Some Republicans, including former President Taft and former Secretary of State [[Elihu Root]], favored ratification of the treaty with some modifications, and their public support gave Wilson some chance of winning the treaty's ratification.<ref name="Clements (1992), pp. 190–191"/>

The debate over the treaty centered around a debate over the American role in the world community in the post-war era, and senators fell into three main groups. The first group, consisting of most Democrats, favored the treaty.<ref name="Clements (1992), pp. 190–191"/> Fourteen senators, mostly Republicans, were known as the "[[irreconcilables]]" as they completely opposed U.S. entrance into the League of Nations. Some of these irreconcilables opposed the treaty for its failure to emphasize decolonization and disarmament, while others feared surrendering American freedom of action to an international organization.<ref name="herring427430">Herring (2008), pp. 427–430</ref> The remaining group of senators, known as "reservationists", accepted the idea of the League but sought varying degrees of change to ensure the protection of American sovereignty and the right of Congress to decide on going to war.<ref name="herring427430"/>

Article X of the League Covenant, which sought to create a system of [[collective security]] by requiring League members to protect one another against external aggression, seemed to force the U.S. to join in any war the League decided upon.<ref>Berg (2013), pp. 652–653</ref> Wilson consistently refused to compromise, partly due to concerns about having to re-open negotiations with the other treaty signatories.<ref>Clements (1992), pp. 191–192, 200</ref> When Lodge was on the verge of building a two-thirds majority to ratify the Treaty with ten reservations, Wilson forced his supporters to vote Nay on March 19, 1920, thereby closing the issue. Cooper says that "nearly every League advocate" went along with Lodge, but their efforts "failed solely because Wilson admittedly rejected all reservations proposed in the Senate."<ref>{{cite book|last=Cooper|first=John Milton Jr.|year=2001|title=Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations|title-link=Breaking the Heart of the World|location=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|page=283|isbn=0-521-80786-7}}</ref> [[Thomas A. Bailey]] calls Wilson's action "the supreme act of infanticide".<ref>{{cite book|last=Bailey|first=Thomas A.|year=1945|title=Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal|location=New York|publisher=Macmillan|page=[https://archive.org/details/woodrowwilsongre00bailrich 277]}}</ref> He adds: "The treaty was slain in the house of its friends rather than in the house of its enemies. In the final analysis it was not the two-thirds rule, or the 'irreconcilables,' or Lodge, or the 'strong' and 'mild' reservationists, but Wilson and his docile following who delivered the fatal stab."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Ambrosius|first=Lloyd E.|date=February 1987|title=Woodrow Wilson's Health and the Treaty Fight, 1919–1920|journal=The International History Review|publisher=Taylor & Francis|volume=9|issue=1|pages=73–84|doi=10.1080/07075332.1987.9640434 |jstor=40105699}}</ref>