98 ChaPter 2
courts martial. All told, in the largest trials of their kind in U.S. military his-
tory, the army tried 118 men and found 110 of them guilty of charges ranging
from failure to obey a direct order to murder of U.S. citizens in a time of war.
Of those 110 guilty, the courts sentenced 26 to death, and hanged 19, while
7 were commuted to life imprisonment; an additional 63 Black soldiers
received life sentences as well. Men who had earned and sought only respect
for the uniform they wore, from the nation they happily served were execut-
ed on the morning of December 13, 1917, at dawn. The army permitted no
witnesses, and only informed President Wilson after the executions had been
carried out. Clearly, a race war between Black soldiers and their White offi-
cers and Houstonians bore no resemblance to a war to “make the world safe
for democracy.” Race relations were as bad as, if not worse, than ever in the
American South despite Wilson’s words and his crusade to make a better
world. Like African-Americans in the 1770s and 1780s who saw the fight
against the British and the American rhetoric of liberty and freedom as having
meaning in their own lives, Blacks in Houston and elsewhere during the Great
War saw Wilson’s crusade for democracy in their own terms too. But effec-
tive change would not come soon in either case. Wilson’s “democracy” was
specific to his economic liberalism, and he was trying to expand it globally.Versailles, American Power, and Setting the Stage for World War II
The armistice of November 1918 ended the fighting, but the war would have
to be ended with a treaty, and so in January 1919 the leaders of the great
powers went to Paris to hold a peace conference at Versailles Palace, in Paris.
Wilson headed to Paris with a grand vision for a new world, dominated by
the open door, free trade, and an end to imperialism. The other powers—
especially the Europeans who had fought and lost so many men while the
American losses were much lower—were not so enthused about Wilson’s bid
for leadership; “he bought his seat at the peace table at a discount,” as they
described it. The president, however, was not going to be shy or reluctant to
express his views. He sought to create an open door world, an international
economic system where all countries would trade with one another without
barriers like tariffs, because the United States had great economic power but
not equally great military power; in that regard, Wilson was an anti-imperialist,