US statesman and 28th president (191321), born in Staunton, Virginia, USA. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he studied at Princeton and Johns Hopkins, gaining his PhD with the first of his major books on American government, Congressional Government (1885). After teaching at Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan (188590), he moved to Princeton, and as its president (1902) his reforms had a wide impact on American university education.
In 1910 he entered politics as a Democrat, and was elected governor of New Jersey (191113). His liberal reforms brought him national attention and the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912 (although only on the 46th ballot). With the Republicans split between Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson won by a landslide. He effectively continued a reformist programme he called the New Freedom; his initiatives included lowering tariffs, a graduated income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Anti-trust Act, the eight-hour working day, and landmark laws against child labour.
On the international front he was less successful, especially in his attempts to intervene in Mexican politics. He won re-election in 1916 with a pledge to keep America out of the European war, but found the US inexorably drawn in; declaring war on Germany in April 1917, he proposed a peace in the form of the Fourteen Points which brought Germany to the bargaining table in late 1918. Much of the world now hailed him as virtually a saviour, but at the Versailles Peace Conference he was confronted by the compromises of Realpolitik. On his return to America his dream of a League of Nations - largely due to his refusal to compromise - went down to defeat in Congress as his health collapsed. He spent his last months in office incapacitated (his wife served as his intermediary for many decisions) and in 1921 retired to seclusion.
Undeniably one of the most intelligent and high-minded of US presidents, he was also rigid in certain ways and unresolved in others, so that when it came to the climax of his life's work - America's entry into a League of Nations - he was unable to make the appropriate moves.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson|
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| 28th President of the United States | |
|---|---|
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In office March 4, 1913 – March 4, 1921 |
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| Vice President(s) Marshall | |
| Preceded by | William Howard Taft |
| Succeeded by | Warren G. Harding |
| Born |
December 28, 1856 Staunton, Virginia |
| Died |
February 3, 1924 Washington, D.C. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse |
Ellen Axson Wilson Edith Galt Wilson |
| Religion | Presbyterian |
| Signature | |
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States.
Early life, education and family
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856 as the third of four children to Reverend Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson (1822–1903) and Janet Mary Woodrow (1830–1888). Wilson served as the first permanent clerk of the southern church’s General Assembly, was Stated Clerk from 1865-1898 and was Moderator of the PCUS General Assembly in 1879.
Wilson did not learn to read until he was about 12 years old. In 1879, Wilson attended law school at University of Virginia for one year but he never graduated.
Physical Appearance
"As an adult, Wilson was a man of above-average height and weight, standing around six feet four inches tall.
Law Practice
In January 1882, Wilson decided to start his first law practice in Atlanta. One of Wilson’s University of Virginia classmates, Edward Ireland Renick, invited Wilson to join his new law practice as partner. Moreover, Wilson had studied law in order to eventually enter politics, but he discovered that he could not continue his study of government and simultaneously continue the reading of law necessary to stay proficient.
Political writings and academic career
Wilson came of age in the decades after the American Civil War, when Congress was supreme— "the gist of all policy is decided by the legislature" —and corruption was rampant. Instead of focusing on individuals in explaining where American politics went wrong, Wilson focused on the American constitutional structure.
Under the influence of Walter Bagehot's The English Constitution, Wilson saw the United States Constitution as pre-modern, cumbersome, and open to corruption. An admirer of Parliament (though he first visited London in 1919), Wilson favored a parliamentary system for the United States. Writing in the early 1880s, Wilson wrote:
"I ask you to put this question to yourselves, should we not draw the Executive and Legislature closer together?Wilson started Congressional Government, his best known political work, as an argument for a parliamentary system, but Wilson was impressed by Grover Cleveland, and Congressional Government emerged as a critical description of America's system, with frequent negative comparisons to Westminster.
Wilson believed that America's intricate system of checks and balances was the cause of the problems in American governance.
The longest section of Congressional Government is on the United States House of Representatives, where Wilson pours out scorn for the committee system. Power, Wilson wrote, "is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven signatories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court baron and its chairman lord proprietor. Wilson said that the committee system was fundamentally undemocratic, because committee chairs, who ruled by seniority, were responsible to no one except their constituents, even though they determined national policy.
In addition to their undemocratic nature, Wilson also believed that the Committee System facilitated corruption.
By the time Wilson finished Congressional Government, Grover Cleveland was President, and Wilson had his faith in the United States government restored. When William Jennings Bryan captured the Democratic nomination from Cleveland's supporters in 1896, however, Wilson refused to stand by the ticket.
After experiencing the vigorous presidencies from William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson no longer entertained thoughts of parliamentary government at home. In his last scholarly work in 1908, Constitutional Government of the United States, Wilson said that the presidency "will be as big as and as influential as the man who occupies it". By the time of his presidency, Wilson merely hoped that Presidents could be party leaders in the same way prime ministers were. Wilson also hoped that the parties could be reorganized along ideological, not geographic, lines. "Eight words," Wilson wrote, "contain the sum of the present degradation of our political parties: No leaders, no principles;
Academic career
Wilson served on the faculties of Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University (where he also coached the football team) before joining the Princeton faculty as professor of jurisprudence and political economy in 1890.
Wilson delivered an oration at Princeton's sesquicentennial celebration (1896) entitled "Princeton in the Nation's Service".
The trustees promoted Professor Wilson to president of Princeton in 1902. As a long-term objective, Wilson sought $3 million for a graduate school and $2.5 million for schools of jurisprudence and electrical engineering, as well as a museum of natural history. To enhance the role of expertise, Wilson instituted academic departments and a system of core requirements where students met in groups of six with preceptors, followed by two years of concentration in a selected major. West outmaneuvered Wilson and the trustees rejected Wilson's plan for colleges in 1908, and then endorsed West's plans in 1909. The national press covered the confrontation as a battle of the elites (West) versus democracy (Wilson). Wilson, after considering resignation, decided to take up invitations to move into New Jersey state politics. - In 1910, Wilson was elected governor of New Jersey, and served in this office until becoming President in 1913. Wilson experienced early success by implementing his "New Freedom" pledges of antitrust modification, tariff revision, and reform in banking and currency matters.
Campaign for Presidency in 1912
Gov. Wilson ran for President on the Democratic ticket. The Democratic National Committee met in Baltimore in 1912 to select Wilson as their candidate.
In the election Wilson ran against two major candidates, incumbent President William Howard Taft and former president Theodore Roosevelt, who broke with Taft and the Republican Party and created the Progressive Party. And with the Republican Party divided, Wilson captured the presidency handily on November 5. Wilson won with just 41.8% of the votes, but he won 435 electoral votes.
Italic text== Presidency 1913-1921 ==
Terms Served
Wilson served for 2 terms. class="wikitable" |-
| ====Other economic policies==== | ====Antitrust==== | ====War policy—World War I==== |
|} law, it also resulted in civilian deaths.
Election of 1916
Renominated in 1916, Wilson's major campaign slogan was "He kept us out of the war" referring to his administration's avoiding open conflict with Germany or Mexico while maintaining a firm national policy. Wilson, however, never promised to keep out of war regardless of provocation. In his acceptance speech on September 2, 1916, Wilson pointedly warned Germany that submarine warfare that took American lives would not be tolerated:
The nation that violates these essential rights must expect to be checked and called to account by direct challenge and resistance.
Wilson narrowly won the election, defeating Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes. As governor of New York from 1907-1910, Hughes had a progressive record strikingly similar to Wilson's as governor of New Jersey. Wilson ran on his record, and ignored Hughes reserving his attacks for Roosevelt. When asked why he did not attack Hughes directly Wilson told a friend “Never murder a man who is committing suicide.”
The final result was exceptionally close and the result was in doubt for several days. When the early results came in on the evening of election day, it looked as if Hughes would win and both candidates went to bed believing that Wilson had lost. Wilson won California by 3,773 votes out of almost a million votes cast and New Hampshire by 54 votes. In the final count, Wilson had 277 electoral votes vs. Wilson was able to win reelection in 1916 by picking up many votes that had gone to Teddy Roosevelt or Eugene V.
Second term
Decision for War, 1917
When Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 and made a clumsy attempt to enlist Mexico as an ally (see Zimmermann Telegram), Wilson took America into World War I as a war "to make the world safe for democracy."
Wilson had decided by then that the war had become a real threat to humanity. This provided the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points, which were intended to resolve territorial disputes, ensure free trade and commerce, and establish a peacemaking organization, which later emerged as the League of Nations.
To stop defeatism at home, Wilson pushed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 through Congress to suppress anti-British, pro-German, or anti-war opinions. The American Federation of Labor and other 'moderate' unions saw enormous growth in membership and wages during Wilson's administration.
Wilson set up the United States Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel (thus its popular name, Creel Commission), which filled the country with patriotic anti-German appeals and conducted various forms of censorship. American troops in Haiti forced the Haitian legislature to choose the candidate Wilson selected as Haitian president. As Davis and Trani conclude, "Wilson, Lansing, and Colby helped lay the foundations for the later Cold War and policy of containment.
Versailles 1919
After World War I, Wilson participated in negotiations with the stated aim of assuring statehood for formerly oppressed nations and an equitable peace. On January 8, 1918, Wilson made his famous Fourteen Points address, introducing the idea of a League of Nations, an organization with a stated goal of helping to preserve territorial integrity and political independence among large and small nations alike.
Wilson intended the Fourteen Points as a means toward ending the war and achieving an equitable peace for all the nations.
For his peacemaking efforts, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. However, Wilson failed to win Senate support for ratification and the United States never joined the League. Republicans under Henry Cabot Lodge controlled the Senate after the 1918 elections, but Wilson refused to give them a voice at Paris and refused to agree to Lodge's proposed changes. Historians generally have come to regard Wilson's failure to win U.S. entry into the League as perhaps the biggest mistake of his administration, and even as one of the largest failures of any American presidency.
After a series of bombings by radical anarchist groups in several American cities, Wilson again directed his Attorney General to take action.
Wilson broke with many of his closest political friends and allies in 1918-20, including Colonel House.
Suppport of Zionism
President Wilson was a strong supporter of the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Incapacity
On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a serious stroke that almost totally incapacitated him;
Wilson was purposely, with few exceptions, kept out of the presence of Vice President Thomas R. Meanwhile, his second wife, Edith Wilson, served as steward, selecting issues for his attention and delegating other issues to his cabinet heads.
Administration and Cabinet
Wilson's chief of staff ("Secretary") was Joseph Patrick Tumulty 1913-1921, but he was largely upstaged after 1916 by Wilson's wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, who assumed full control of Wilson's schedule after September 1919.
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM |
| President | Woodrow Wilson | 1913–1921 |
| Vice President | Thomas R. Marshall | 1913–1921 |
| Secretary of State | William J. Bryan | 1913–1915 |
| Robert Lansing | 1915–1920 | |
| Bainbridge Colby | 1920–1921 | |
| Secretary of the Treasury | William G. McAdoo | 1913–1918 |
| Carter Glass | 1918–1920 | |
| Houston | 1920–1921 | |
| Secretary of War | Lindley M. Garrison | 1913–1916 |
| Baker | 1916–1921 | |
| Attorney General | James C. McReynolds | 1913–1914 |
| Gregory | 1914–1919 | |
| Mitchell Palmer | 1919–1921 | |
| Postmaster General | Albert S. Burleson | 1913–1921 |
| Secretary of the Navy | Josephus Daniels | 1913–1921 |
| Secretary of the Interior | Franklin K. Lane | 1913–1920 |
| Payne | 1920–1921 | |
| Secretary of Agriculture | David F. Houston | 1913–1920 |
| Meredith | 1920–1921 | |
| Secretary of Commerce | William C. Redfield | 1913–1919 |
| Alexander | 1919–1921 | |
| Secretary of Labor | William B. Wilson | 1913–1921 |
Supreme Court appointments
Wilson appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
James Clark McReynolds – 1914 Louis Dembitz Brandeis – 1916 John Hessin Clarke – 1916Wilson and race
While president of Princeton University, Wilson discouraged blacks from even applying for admission.
Wilson allowed many of his cabinet officials to establish official segregation in federal government offices, for the first time since 1863. Wilson fired many black Republican office holders, but also appointed a few black Democrats. DuBois, a leader of the NAACP, campaigned for Wilson and in 1918 was offered an Army commission in charge of dealing with race relations. (DuBois accepted but failed his Army physical and did not serve.) When a delegation of blacks protested his discriminatory actions, Wilson told them that "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."
Wilson was understandably attacked by African-Americans for his actions, but ironically, he was also attacked by southern hard line racists, such as Georgian Thomas E. The segregation introduced into the federal workforce by the Wilson administration was kept in place by the succeeding Republican administrations and was not finally rescinded until the Truman Administration.
Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People explained the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period.
Wilson's words were repeatedly quoted in the film The Birth of a Nation, which has come under fire for racism. Thomas Dixon, author of the novel The Clansman upon which the film is based, was one of Wilson's graduate school classmates at Johns Hopkins in 1883-1884. Dixon arranged a special White House preview (this was the first time a film was shown in the White House) without telling Wilson what the film was about. Wilson most likely did not make the statement, "It is like writing history with lightning, my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson blocked its showing during the war. In a 1923 letter to Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas Wilson noted of the reborn Klan, “...no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs.”
White ethnics
Wilson had some harsh words to say about immigrants in his history books. However, after he entered politics in 1910, Wilson worked to integrate new immigrants into the Democratic party, into the army, and into American life. Wilson won them over in 1917 by promising to ask Britain to give Ireland its independence. Wilson, in turn, blamed the Irish Americans and German Americans for the lack of popular support for the League of Nations, saying,
"There is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say--I cannot say too often--any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."
Later life
In 1921, Wilson and his wife retired from the White House to a home in the Embassy Row section of Washington, D.C. Mrs. Wilson stayed in the home another 37 years, dying on December 28, 1961.
Mrs. Wilson left the home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to be made into a museum honoring her husband. Woodrow Wilson House opened as a museum in 1964. Wilson was an early
automobile enthusiast, and he took daily rides while he was President. Wilson was an avid fan of the New York Giants and Washington Senators baseball clubs. Wilson (born in Virginia and raised
in Georgia) was the first president from any state that had joined the Confederate States of America to be elected since 1848 (Zachary Taylor, born in Virginia), and the first from there to
take office since 1865 (Andrew Johnson born in North Carolina). Wilson was also the first Democrat elected to the presidency since Grover Cleveland in 1892. One of Wilson's grandsons (The Very
Reverend Francis Sayre, Jr) was Dean of the Washington National Cathedral, where Wilson's tomb is located. (Another grandson, Woodrow Wilson Sayre, climbed Mount Everest in 1962 reaching an
altitude of 25,500 feet.) Wilson was the first President to speak on national radio although he did so in November 1923, after having left office. Wilson appeared on the now-out of print (but
still technically legal tender) $100,000 bill The bill was used only to transfer money between Federal Reserve banks. Wilson is the only U.S. President buried in Washington, D.C. Wilson's first
wife Ellen Louise Wilson was related to Confederate General James Longstreet and Union General/President U.S. Grant;
Wilson's second wife Edith Bolling Wilson was descended from Pocahontas. Wilson was one of only two Presidents (Theodore Roosevelt was the first) to become president of the American Historical
Association. Wilson was president of the American Political Science Association from 1910 to 1911. Sigmund Freud and William Bullitt's Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study is
unsympathetic and was unpublished in the U.S. for 30 years after Freud's death. Wilson was the subject of the 1944 biographical film Wilson, directed by Henry King and starring Alexander
Knox as Wilson.
In Fiction
In Harry Turtledove's "Great War" trilogy of alternate history novels, Wilson is elected 9th President of the Confederate States of America on the Whig ticket in 1910.
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