Wilson asked Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory if the federal government could intervene to 'check these disgraceful outrages.' However, on the advice of Gregory, Wilson did not take direct action against the riots.Lynchings against individual blacks averaged about one a week across the South. He argued that the Germans were engaged in 'nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States.' He asked for a military draft to raise the army, increased taxes to pay for military expenses, loans to Allied governments, and increased industrial and agricultural production. The declaration of war by the United States against Germany passed Congress by strong bipartisan majorities on April 6, 1917, with opposition from ethnic German strongholds and remote rural areas in the South.