Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born at home in Staunton, VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, on December 28, 1856; he later dropped his first name. His father, the Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was a Presbyterian minister who taught theology at Columbia Theological Seminary and later at Southwestern Presbyterian Theological University. His mother, Janet Woodrow Wilson, known as Jessie, was born in Carlisle, England, and raised in America; she raised four children.⁠[1][2]

Because of his mother’s birthplace, Wilson was the only president between Andrew JacksonAndrew JacksonAndrew Jackson (1767–1845) was an American soldier and politician who served as President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, after leading U.S. forces to victory at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.Open the full entry and Barack Obama to have a foreign-born parent.⁠[3]

Less than a year after Wilson’s birth the family moved to Augusta, Georgia, where his father was a pastor during the Civil War; in 1870 they moved to Columbia, South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry, where his father was a professor during Reconstruction, and in 1874 to Wilmington, North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry.⁠[1][4]

As a child Wilson saw Union soldiers march into Augusta while his mother tended wounded Confederate soldiers, and he witnessed the poverty of Augusta during Reconstruction. Much of his early schooling took place at home under his father, and weak eyesight and possible dyslexia delayed his learning to read.⁠[1][3]

In 1873, at sixteen, Wilson entered Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina, leaving after one year because of poor health. In 1875 he entered the College of New Jersey, later Princeton University, graduating in 1879 ranked 38th of 167 students. That year he entered the University of Virginia law school.⁠[1][5]

In 1882 Wilson moved to Atlanta, was admitted to the Georgia bar and practiced law for less than a year. In 1883 he entered Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as a graduate student in history and political science, receiving his Ph.D. in 1886; his dissertation, Congressional Government (published in 1885), became a classic of American political science. He is the only U.S. president to have held a Ph.D.⁠[1][6]

From 1885 to 1888 Wilson taught political economy and public law at Bryn Mawr College in PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry; from 1888 to 1890 he was a professor of history at Wesleyan University in Middletown, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, where he published The State and earned tenure. From 1890 he was professor of jurisprudence and political economy at Princeton University, teaching there for twelve years. Wilson wrote nine books.⁠[1][5][6]

On June 24, 1885, in his final year of graduate school, Wilson married Ellen Louise Axson in Savannah, Georgia. Born in Georgia, she was an impressionist artist who had trained at the New York Academy of Design.⁠[7][1][8]

In 1902 the trustees unanimously chose Wilson as Princeton University’s 13th president, the first not trained as a clergyman. He introduced the preceptorial system; after 1906 conflicts over a graduate college and the eating clubs strained his final years there. He resigned in 1910 to run for governor.⁠[1][2][6]

In 1910 New Jersey Democrats asked Wilson to run for governor; he accepted on the condition of “no strings attached” and was nominated on the first ballot. Campaigning as “an unconstitutional governor,” he won by eleven points over his Republican opponent.⁠[3][1]

Wilson took office as the 34th governor of New Jersey on January 17, 1911. As governor he pushed through direct party primaries, a corrupt practices act, a public utility commission and a workers’ compensation law, held daily press conferences and lobbied legislators in person. He resigned on March 1, 1913, having been elected president.⁠[9][10][1][3]

At the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore in June 1912, nomination required two-thirds of the delegates, or 726 votes. Champ Clark led the first fourteen ballots; Wilson took the lead on the 28th and won the presidential nomination on the 46th ballot on July 2, with Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana as his running mate. Wilson ran on the New Freedom platform, which called for lower tariffs, banking and monetary reform and laws to curb abusive corporations.⁠[11][12][3]

In the election of November 5, 1912, the Republicans were split between supporters of President William Howard TaftWilliam Howard TaftWilliam Howard Taft (1857–1930) was an American lawyer, judge and politician who served as the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and as the 10th chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930, the only person to have held both offices.Open the full entry and Theodore RooseveltTheodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an American Republican politician, writer, naturalist, and soldier who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 and received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.Open the full entry’s Progressive Party. Wilson won 6,296,547 popular votes (41.9%) and 435 electoral votes from 40 states; Roosevelt 4,118,571 (27.4%) and 88 electoral votes; Taft 3,486,720 (23%) and 8 electoral votes; and the Socialist Eugene V. Debs 900,672 (6%). Wilson was the first Southerner elected president since before the Civil War.⁠[11][12][8]

Wilson was inaugurated as president of the United States on March 4, 1913, and delivered his inaugural address. He held the first presidential press conference.⁠[12][6]

On May 31, 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the direct election of U.S. senators, was enacted. On October 3 Wilson signed the Revenue Act of 1913, which included the Underwood-Simmons Tariff lowering tariff rates and reestablished a graduated federal income tax.⁠[12][4]

On December 23, 1913, Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, creating the Federal Reserve System. The Miller Center’s essay calls the act perhaps his “greatest achievement,” judging that the system it created still frames U.S. bank regulation, credit and the money supply.⁠[12][3]

Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, died on August 6, 1914, while first lady; she had remained an active artist until her death.⁠[12][8]

On September 26, 1914, Wilson signed the act establishing the Federal Trade Commission, and on October 14 he signed the Clayton Antitrust Act. The Miller Center describes such legislation as imposing new controls on big business and supporting unions.⁠[12][3]

After World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, the United States tried to remain neutral. On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania, killing more than 1,100 people, including 128 Americans. Wilson sent a note to Germany on May 13; on June 9 Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in protest over the administration’s response; and on July 21 Wilson sent another note threatening war.⁠[3][2][12]

On July 28, 1915, after political killings in Haiti, U.S. Marines landed there; on September 16 the two countries signed a treaty that created a Haitian constabulary under Marine control and gave the United States control of Haitian finances. During the Mexican Revolution Wilson also sent the U.S. Army to occupy Veracruz.⁠[12][6]

Wilson promised the Philippines independence and made Puerto Ricans American citizens. The Miller Center’s essay judges that his “moral diplomacy” was often high-handed and that his administration intervened militarily in Latin America more often than any of its predecessors.⁠[3]

On December 18, 1915, Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt at her home in Washington, D.C.⁠[12][7]

On January 28, 1916, Wilson nominated Louis B. Brandeis to the Supreme Court, making him the first Jewish justice. That year Wilson pushed through laws on the regulation of overseas shipping, farm loans, child labor and income and inheritance taxes, and on September 3 he signed the Adamson Eight-Hour Act, establishing an eight-hour workday for interstate railroad workers.⁠[12][2]

On June 15, 1916, the Democratic National Convention in St. Louis renominated Wilson and Thomas R. Marshall on the first ballot; the campaign slogan was “He Kept Us Out of War.” The Republicans nominated Justice Charles Evans Hughes on the third ballot with 949 votes, with Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana as his running mate.⁠[11][12]

In the election of November 7, 1916, Wilson won 9,127,695 popular votes (49.4%) and 277 electoral votes from 30 states to Hughes’s 8,533,507 (46.2%) and 254 electoral votes from 18 states, a margin of 23 electoral votes; the outcome was not clear until two days after the election, when returns from CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry and OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry came in.⁠[11][12]

On February 3, 1917, Wilson announced the severing of diplomatic relations with Germany over its submarine threat to neutral shipping, and a secret German offer of a military alliance to Mexico was uncovered. On April 2 he asked a joint session of Congress to declare war on Germany, saying that “the world must be made safe for democracy”; Congress voted overwhelmingly for war, and Wilson signed the declaration on April 6.⁠[12][3][2]

On May 18, 1917, Wilson signed the Selective Service Act, establishing a federally mandated draft lottery; on June 15 he signed the Espionage Act; and on May 16, 1918, he signed the Sedition Act, which restricted disloyal or abusive speech about the government, the flag and the armed forces.⁠[12]

During the war U.S. industrial production rose 20 percent; measures included daylight saving time, government control of the railroads, large airplane and shipbuilding programs, a new income tax and Liberty Bonds. The Miller Center’s essay judges that the Espionage and Sedition Acts outlawed criticism of the government and the war, that the government imprisoned or fined violators and censored publications, and that these policies foreshadowed the national security state of World War II.⁠[3]

On January 8, 1918, Wilson addressed Congress with his “Fourteen Points” for a postwar peace, calling for a nonpunitive settlement and a league of nations.⁠[12][2][3]

The armistice between the Allies and Germany was signed on November 11, 1918, and that day Wilson addressed Congress, announcing that the war was ending. The 1918 congressional elections gave Republicans control of Congress.⁠[12][2][4]

Wilson was the first sitting president to travel to Europe. From December 14, 1918, to February 24, 1919, he was in Europe for the peace negotiations and to promote the League of Nations, speaking at the opening of the Paris Peace Conference on January 18 and arriving back in Boston on February 24. He returned to Paris from March 15 to July 8; BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry counts seven months of negotiation in all.⁠[3][12][2]

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919; it included the Covenant of the League of Nations, which Wilson considered its most important part. The Miller Center’s essay judges that the treaty departed significantly from the Fourteen Points.⁠[2][3]

On January 16, 1919, the final required state ratified the Eighteenth Amendment, establishing Prohibition. On October 27 Wilson vetoed the Volstead Act, objecting to its wartime prohibition provisions.⁠[12]

Wilson initially delayed a women’s suffrage amendment, but in 1919 he appealed directly to the House of Representatives to pass it. Congress approved the Nineteenth Amendment on June 4, 1919, and it was ratified on August 18, 1920.⁠[6][12]

On July 10, 1919, Wilson submitted the Treaty of Versailles and the League Covenant to the Senate. From September 3 to October 3, against his doctors’ warnings, he travelled some 8,000 miles by rail on a national speaking tour to build support; he collapsed during the tour and, after returning to the White House, suffered a serious stroke on October 2 that left his left side partially paralyzed.⁠[12][6][4][2][3]

For the last seventeen months of his term Wilson was essentially incapacitated, and his aides and his wife, Edith, concealed the extent of his disability. The Miller Center’s essay judges that this created an unprecedented constitutional crisis over presidential disability and that Edith Wilson acted as a kind of surrogate president.⁠[3][2]

The Senate failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles on November 19, 1919; in a second vote on March 19, 1920, it fell seven votes short of the two-thirds majority, 49 to 35. The United States therefore never joined the League.⁠[12][3]

On November 2, 1920, the Republican candidate Warren G. HardingWarren G. HardingWarren G. Harding (1865–1923) was an American newspaper publisher and politician who served as lieutenant governor of Ohio and as a U.S. senator before becoming the 29th president of the United States in March 1921; he died in office in August 1923.Open the full entry defeated the Democrat James M. Cox in the presidential election to succeed Wilson.⁠[12][6]

Wilson was awarded the Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry for peace for 1919 (the Nobel Peace Prize 1919), unshared, “for his role as founder of the League of Nations,” and received it in 1920. The 1919 and 1920 (Léon Bourgeois) peace prizes were presented together at a session of the Norwegian Parliament on December 10, 1920, where its president, Anders Johnsen Buen, handed the diplomas and medals to the diplomatic representatives of the two absent laureates.⁠[13][14]

Wilson left office in March 1921 and retired to his home in Washington, D.C., where he lived for almost three years, remaining a supporter of U.S. membership in the League of Nations.⁠[2][5]

Wilson died in Washington, D.C., on February 3, 1924. He was interred in the National Cathedral in Washington, the only president buried in the capital.⁠[2][7][13]

Wilson and Ellen Louise Axson (1860–1914) had three daughters: Margaret Woodrow Wilson (1886–1944), Jessie Woodrow Wilson (1887–1933) and Eleanor Randolph Wilson (1889–1967). His second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, lived from 1872 to 1961. Wilson was a Presbyterian.⁠[7]

Wilson’s writings include his doctoral dissertation, Congressional Government, and The State, published while he taught at Wesleyan University.⁠[1]

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (the Wilson Center), congressionally chartered, is the official U.S. national memorial to Wilson; it aims to put scholarship at the service of the world’s public life rather than to study Wilson himself. The President Wilson House on S Street in Washington, D.C., a historic landmark and a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, opened to the public in 1963.⁠[6][8]

The Woodrow Wilson Papers in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, about 280,000 documents with the bulk dating from 1876 to 1924, form the largest collection of original Wilson documents in the world. The Library acquired them by gift and purchase between 1938 and 2008; Edith Bolling Galt Wilson agreed in 1929 to deposit the papers there and made them a permanent gift in 1954.⁠[15]

The Miller Center’s essay credits Wilson’s progressive domestic programs with helping to stabilize and humanize a vast industrial system and judges that he made the presidency the intellectual and political center of American government; it also notes that his administration expanded segregation in federal offices and the civil service and ignored the pleas of opponents as violence against African Americans reached new heights.⁠[3]

The President Wilson House describes his two terms as among the most consequential of the past century, listing among his achievements the U.S. victory in World War I and the enactment of women’s suffrage into national law, and among the criticisms segregationist policies in the federal government, wartime restrictions on civil liberties, the Red Summer of 1919 and a new era of strict immigration restriction.⁠[8]

President Wilson House: Official website: https://www.woodrowwilsonhouse.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[16]

Wilson Center: Official website: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]