100 years ago in The Record
Monday, April 2, 1917
As President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, Troy’s National Guard troops begin leaving town for their police protective duty assignments in northeastern New York. “Vigorously and yet solemnly Troy to- day demonstrated its cognizance of the significance of the day – the extraordinary session of Congress to meet one of the gravest crises in history, and, incidentally, the departure of Troy’s soldiers,” The Record reports. At noon, when the President is scheduled to speak, and as classrooms in schools throughout the city hold patriotic ceremonies, a crowd waits outside Bolton Hall in Lansingburgh, the temporary base of the Second New York Infantry regiment. “The crowd was patient and waited through the morning and past the noon hour,” our reporter notes, “and there was considerable disappointment when it was learned that there would be no parade of the local battalion through the city prior to its departure.” The first company to leave, Company A, departs from Union Station at 2 p.m. Company B, based in Cohoes, left their Spindle City armory late last night. In Washington, the President tells Congress that “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations.” The Wilson administration broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in February to protest submarine attacks on merchant ships bound for France and Great Britain.
“With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States [and] that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it.”
Later this afternoon, Justice William P. Rudd swears in thirteen new American citizens in his Troy supreme court chamber. Twelve applicants were denied citizenship, including an Austrian native who vowed to fight for the U.S. should it declare war on his fatherland, Germany’s ally.
“At the present time there is a great awakening in this country, and the solemn pledge of loyalty to our government by those seeking its protection has assumed a more binding force,” Rudd tells the new citizens.
Noting that some recent immigrants “think they can maintain a divided allegiance,” Rudd warns that “Such men are going to find out that they cannot serve two masters. The awakening of loyal men throughout the land will show them that.”