At the National World War I Museum‘s “In the Know” speaker series, I recently spoke on the tight race between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes in the presidential election of 1916.

When he was first elected in 1912, Wilson commented to a friend “it would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.” Four years later fate had intervened, and he was running for re-election on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” Spoiler alert: President Woodrow Wilson defeats challenger Charles Evans Hughes in one of the closest elections in American history.

Watch the video here

Dennis Cross is a retired lawyer and amateur historian of World War I. He is a U.S. Navy veteran and a 1962 graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He graduated from New York University Law School in 1969 and served as Assistant General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission from 1977 to 1982. Since his retirement from the practice of law in 2007, he has been a volunteer at the National World War One Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, MO. Beginning in September 2011, he has written a monthly blog about the events of the month one hundred years ago.