Resurgent Republicans.

The election of 1918 was a pivotal contest in American political history. Wilson's efforts to persuade voters to elect Democrats to Congress failed to sway the public and succeeded in alienating Senate Republicans, without whom Wilson's peace plan and the League of Nations were doomed to defeat. For the Sixty-sixth Congress the Republicans regained their majorities in both the House and the Senate. The election was held just prior to the signing of the 11 November 1918 armistice that ended World War I and in the midst a devastating influenza epidemic that killed about five hundred thousand Americans. The campaign was a referendum on Wilson and the Democrats' wartime leadership. Republicans, largely reunited after the collapse of the Progressive Party in 1917, assailed the Democrats' wartime domestic policies and criticized Wilson's wartime diplomacy. Prohibition was also a major issue in the campaign. Most Democrats...