On July 14, 1918, Congressman Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina stood up before a group of friendly Yankees, convened in Trenton, New Jersey, and waxed eloquent about Americans and World War I. Doughton urged that "grandsons of the men who wore the blue and ...grandsons of the men who wore the grey [were] ... now marching with locked shields and martial step to the mingled strains of Dixie and the Star Spangled Banner." The Congressman failed to note that those same shields, those same steps had been finding a closer and closer harmony since the Spanish-American War. Yet he had the central point. By 1918 the spirit of North-South reconciliation ran deeper than ever before.

A key source of this optimistic nationalism was Woodrow Wilson. This president enjoyed popularity all across the nation, especially in the South which had not been favorably inclined toward the White House since the 1850's. Even though Wilson drew his public philosophy chiefly from the Progressive nationalism of the urban Northeast, he was considered "Southern" by Southerners because of his roots in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Southerners desperately wanted one of their own in the White House, and Wilson encouraged them to think that they had such a leader. To them, Wilsonianism had brought Progressive improvements in commerce, education, and health; and when that reform optimism was also applied to the international scene, they felt encouraged to believe that in great part because of Wilson their Dixie was well on its way to regaining a secure,