Library of Congress
President Woodrow Wilson spoke before a Joint Session in the House Chamber.
On this date, standing at the Clerk’s desk on the rostrum in a crowded House Chamber, President Woodrow Wilson delivered an address outlining his vision for a program for world peace to a Joint Session of Congress in 1918. President Wilson’s bold and idealistic annunciation of his “Fourteen Points” formed the basis of a formula to end World War I and to create a postwar League of Nations to enforce the peace. In one of the monumental power struggles between the executive and legislative branches in American history, Wilson’s efforts to guarantee American participation in the League of Nations failed in late 1919.
