Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), twenty-eighth president of the United States, led the country into World War I and was a primary architect of the League of Nations.

Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Va., on Dec. 28, 1856. His father, a Presbyterian minister, communicated his moral austerity to his son, resulting in an inflexibility that sometimes revealed itself. Wilson attended Davison University in North Carolina for a brief time but graduated from Princeton in 1879. In his senior year he published an important essay in the International Review, revealing his early interest in American government. He studied law briefly and, though he did not complete the course, practiced for a time in Atlanta, Ga., without much success. He pursued graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, receiving his doctorate in 1886.

In his doctoral thesis Wilson analyzed the American political system, pointing to the fracturing of power that flowed from the committee system in Congress. This thesis foreshadowed his intense belief in the role of the presidency as the only national office and in the duty of the president to lead the nation. He was to put these views into practice when he occupied the White House.

From 1886 to 1910 Wilson was in academic life—as a professor of political science at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton and, after 1902, president of Princeton. A magnificent teacher, Wilson was a strong and imaginative college executive. His establishment of the preceptorial system at Princeton was an important contribution to university education that emphasized intimacy between teacher and student. He also fought for democracy in education.

Governor of New Jersey

By 1910 Wilson had established a wide reputation but had also aroused many enmities at Princeton. Thus he was ready to accept when, in 1910, the Democratic party in New Jersey offered him the nomination for governor. He was elected by a large plurality.

As governor, Wilson demonstrated masterly leadership, pushing through the legislature a direct primary law, a corrupt-practices act, an employers' liability act, and a law regulating the public utilities. His success made him a prominent candidate for the presidency in 1912. He was nominated, after a long convention battle, and easily elected in November. At the same time the Democratic party secured a substantial majority in both houses of Congress.

First Term as President

Once elected, Wilson proceeded to put into practice his theory of presidential leadership. In the first 2 years of his presidency he dominated Congress and secured legislation of long-term historical significance. The tariff was revised downward, initiating a policy which was to be of substantial importance later. The Federal Reserve Act created a banking system under governmental control. The Federal Trade Commission Act, directed against monopoly, created a body which has had an important role in preventing overwhelming concentration of power in industry.

Wilson from the beginning confronted difficult questions of foreign policy. In Mexico a revolution was taking place, but just before Wilson's inauguration a military dictator, Victoriano Huerta, seized the presidency. Wilson refused to recognize Huerta, setting a course sympathetic with the struggle of the Mexican masses for social reform. He prevented Huerta from consolidating power, and in 1914 he ordered the occupation of Veracruz to prevent the dictator from receiving arms from abroad. He was saved from the possibility of war by the proffered mediation of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile; and Huerta was overthrown. But the Mexican question continued causing trouble.

Beginning of World War I

In August 1914 World War I broke out in Europe. The basis of Wilson's policy was the preservation of neutrality. But there can be little doubt that in his heart he sympathized with France and Great Britain and feared the victory of imperial Germany. The warring powers soon began interfering with American trade. The British more and more restricted American commerce, but the Germans proclaimed a new kind of warfare, submarine warfare, with the prospect of American ships being sunk and their passengers and crew being lost. Wilson took German policies more seriously, not only because of his innate partiality for the British, but because German policies involved the destruction of human life, whereas the British interfered only with trade. As early as February 1915, in response to a German declaration instituting the U-boat war, the President declared that Germany would be held to "strict accountability" for the loss of American lives.

For a time thereafter Wilson took no action. But on May 7, 1915, the liner Lusitania was sunk, with over a hundred American lives lost. The President addressed a stiff note to Germany but clung to the hope that the war might be ended by the good offices of the United States. He engaged in a debate with Berlin and, after other painful submarine episodes, got Germany to abandon the U-boat war in 1916.

Wilson then addressed himself to Great Britain but made little headway. In the meantime the presidential campaign of 1916 was approaching. He was renominated virtually by acclamation; the Democratic platform praised him for keeping the country out of war. He won in a very close campaign. It is important to note that though the President profited from his stand in preserving peace, and though the Democratic politicians made the most of the slogan "He kept us out of war," Wilson promised nothing for the future.

Second Term as President

Wilson's efforts to bring the belligerents together were ineffectual. When the German government cast the die for unlimited warfare on the sea, Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Berlin but continued to hope that a direct challenge could be avoided. No president has ever taken more seriously the immense responsibility of leading the American people into war. But on April 2, 1917, Wilson demanded a declaration of war against Germany from Congress, and Congress responded by overwhelming majorities.

There is every reason to regard Wilson as a great war president. He put politics aside, appointing a professional soldier to head American forces in Europe. Fully as important, he appealed to American idealism in a striking way. Though he believed that the defeat of Germany was necessary, he held out hope that at the end of the war a League of Nations might be established which would make impossible the recurrence of another bloody struggle. As early as April 1916 he had begun to formulate his views on this. He advocated an association of nations which would act together against any nation which broke the peace. There was much support for his point of view.

Fourteen Points

Throughout the war Wilson insisted on two things: the defeat of German militarism and the establishment of peace resting on just principles. In January 1918 he gave his speech of the Fourteen Points. In the negotiations that autumn he made the acceptance of these points the primary condition on the part of his European associates and of the Germans as well. Wilson was at the apogee of his career in November 1918, when the armistice was signed. No American president had ever attained so high a position in world esteem, and millions looked to him as the prophet of a new order.

But difficulties loomed. The 1918 elections returned a Republican majority to Congress. The President himself stimulated partisanship by his appeal to elect a Democratic legislature. Though he selected able men for his delegation to the forthcoming peace conference at Paris, he did not think of conciliating the Republican opposition. By insisting on going to Paris in person and remaining there until the treaty was finished, he cut himself off from American opinion.

Versailles and the League Covenant

At the peace conference Wilson strove to realize his ideals. He was able to win the negotiating powers' consent for drafting the Covenant of the League of Nations. This provided for a League Council of the five Great Powers and four elective members and for an Assembly in which every member state would have a vote. The signatories bound themselves to submit disputes to either arbitration or conciliation through the Council. If they failed to do this, they would be subjected to economic and possibly to military sanctions. They were also to agree to respect and preserve the territorial integrity and political independence of the members of the League.

Wilson fought also for what he conceived to be a just peace. On territorial questions he strove to apply the principle of nationality; he fought successfully against French ambitions to detach the Rhineland from Germany and against the Italian desire for Dalmatia, a province peopled by Yugoslavs. Many of the new boundaries of Europe were to be determined by plebiscite. At times, however, the principle of nationality was violated. On the question of reparations Wilson was unsuccessful in limiting German payments in amount and time, and he accepted a formula which was subject to grave criticism. In the Orient, much against his will, he was compelled to recognize the claims of Japan (which had in 1914 entered the war on the side of the Allies) to economic control of the Chinese province of Shantung (formerly in the hands of Germany).

The Treaty of Versailles was not to stand the test of time. In detaching substantial territories from Germany and in fixing Germany with responsibility for the war, it furnished the basis for that German nationalism which was to come to full flower with Adolf Hitler.

Wilson returned to the United States with a political battle ahead. There was much partisanship in the opposition to him but also a genuine dislike of the Treaty of Versailles and honest opposition to "entanglement" in world politics. He erred in demanding ratification of the treaty without modification. He made his appeal in a countrywide tour. He was hailed by tremendous crowds and greeted with immense enthusiasm, but his health gave way, and he was compelled to go back to the White House. A stroke temporarily incapacitated him.

The Senate in November rejected unconditional ratification but adopted the treaty with reservations which the President refused to accept. In January a compromise was attempted. But Wilson spoiled these efforts by taking the issue into the 1920 presidential campaign. That campaign resulted in an overwhelming Republican victory and the election of Warren G. Harding as president. The new chief executive never sought to bring the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate or to bring the United States into the League, which was by now actually in existence. Wilson's presidency ended in a stunning defeat.

Evaluation of Wilson's Policies

Despite his failure to secure American adherence to the League, the long-run judgment on the President must be that he was one of the few great presidents of the United States. In his first term he exerted a presidential leadership that has rarely been equaled and won legislation of far-reaching importance. In his policy toward Germany he faithfully interpreted the majority opinion of the nation, neither rushing passionately into war at the possible cost of national unity nor hesitating to face the issue once it seemed clear. He was a war leader of the first magnitude. In his campaign for a world order, moreover, he has lasting significance. He bequeathed to his generation, and that which followed, a passionate faith in the possibility of such an order.

The Charter of the United Nations reflects in no small degree Woodrow Wilson's aspirations. Whether such an order as he dreamed will ever eventuate in fact is a question that must be left to the prophets. But if a day comes when men seek the means of settling their disputes in international organization, the failure of Woodrow Wilson will appear a transitory thing, and his idealism and his vision will receive their due praise from posterity.

Wilson was twice married. His first wife bore him three daughters. She died in the White House shortly after the outbreak of World War I. In 1916 he married Edith Bolling Galt, who survived him by many years. He died on Feb. 3, 1924.

Further Reading

The foremost biographer of Wilson is Arthur S. Link, whose still uncompleted definitive work, Wilson (5 vols., 1947-1965), takes Wilson's life up to 1917; Link's work is a monumental, detailed record of Wilson's times. The biography by Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson (2 vols., 1958; 2d rev. ed., 2 vols. in 1, 1964), presents a fine understanding of Wilson the man. Henry Wilkinson Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (1967), describes Wilson's years as writer, teacher, and scholar, and George C. Osborn, Woodrow Wilson: The Early Years (1968), relates his prepolitical years generally.

A critical study of Wilson is John M. Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality (1956). Other biographies include William Allen White, Woodrow Wilson (1924); H. Hale Bellot, Woodrow Wilson (1955); John A. Garraty, Woodrow Wilson: A Great Life in Brief (1956); and Silas Bent McKinley, Woodrow Wilson (1957). See also Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, The Woodrow Wilsons (1937). A synoptic view of Wilson's personality emerges from Arthur S. Link, ed., Woodrow Wilson: A Profile (1968), an anthology by persons who knew Wilson or who assessed his impact during their lifetimes. The papers of Wilson's confidant, Edward Mandell House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, arranged by Charles Seymour (4 vols., 1926-1928), provide intimate glimpses of Wilson.

Specialized studies include excellent works by Thomas A. Bailey dealing with the peace treaty and the struggle that followed, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (1944) and Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (1945); Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (1954) and Wilson the Diplomatist (1957); the well-documented study of Wilson's relations with Congress during World War I by Seward W. Livermore, Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916-1918 (1966); and Norman Gordon Levin, Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (1968). The elections of 1912 and 1916 are covered in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971). □

Woodrow Wilson (Thomas Woodrow Wilson), 1856–1924, 28th President of the United States (1913–21), b. Staunton, Va.

Educator

He graduated from Princeton in 1879 and studied law at the Univ. of Virginia. Admitted (1882) to the bar, he practiced in Atlanta, Ga., for a year before going to Johns Hopkins to study political science and jurisprudence. In 1885, he published Congressional Government, a significant work. After receiving (1886) his Ph.D. degree, he taught history and political economy at Bryn Mawr (1885–88) and Wesleyan Univ. (1888–90).

In 1890 he became professor of jurisprudence and political economy at Princeton and gained a reputation for his eloquent orations. Popular with the student body, Wilson, a descendant of Presbyterian ministers on both sides of his family, was elected (1902) president of Princeton, becoming its first nonclerical head. He strove to raise academic standards, reorganized the curriculum, and introduced the preceptorial system of instruction, which provided for more individualized education.

His attempt to change the social and living facilities by eliminating the elite eating clubs for upperclassmen and introducing the quadrangle system, where students from all of the classes would live and eat together, was less successful. It aroused great hostility, which reached a climax in his bitter struggle with the group headed by Dean Andrew F. West. Wilson lost, but with prompting from George B. M. Harvey, a New York publisher with strong connections in the Democratic party, he ran for governor of New Jersey in 1910 soon after resigning his post at Princeton.

Governor of New Jersey

With the aid of the New Jersey Democratic machine, Wilson secured the gubernatorial nomination and, breaking with the machine to espouse progressive policies, went on to win the election. Despite much resistance from the regular Democrats, Wilson forced through the New Jersey legislature such reforms as an employer's liability act, the direct primary, a corrupt-practices act, and revitalization of the state public utilities commission.

Presidency

Wilson's resolute and progressive gubernatorial record brought him to the forefront of national politics. Although Champ Clark was the leading contender for the presidential nomination at the Democratic convention in 1912, he could not muster the necessary two-thirds vote, and after he had exhausted his strength, Wilson won on the 46th ballot. He was helped by the switch to his side of William Jennings Bryan (prompted by Edward M. House ). The split in the Republican party, which divided into the regular Republicans supporting William Howard Taft and the Progressive party backing Theodore Roosevelt , gained the election for Wilson, who captured 435 electoral votes.

Domestic Policy

Wilson revived the custom, abandoned in 1801, of addressing Congress in person and immediately called for a series of reforms, which he had called the "New Freedom" in his presidential campaign. During his administration the tariff was drastically decreased (1913; see Underwood, Oscar Wilder ); the Federal Reserve System was instituted (1913); the La Follette Seamen's Act, regulating labor conditions aboard ship, became law (1915); the Adamson Act, establishing an eight-hour day for railroad employees, was enacted (1916); and the Federal Farm Loan Act, providing for loans to cooperative farm associations, was passed (1916). Wilson continued the policy of curbing monopoly by creating (1914) the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and expose unfair practices of corporations, pushed the passage (1914) of the Clayton Antitrust Act , and instituted antitrust proceedings in 92 cases. The Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the direct popular election of U.S. Senators, the Eighteenth Amendment, which instituted prohibition , and the Nineteenth Amendment, by which women received the vote, were all launched while Wilson was President.

Foreign Policy

In foreign affairs the Wilson administration was faced with mounting difficulties. In Mexico, a revolution brought (Feb., 1913) Victoriano Huerta to the presidency. Wilson refused to recognize Huerta on the grounds that he had gained power by assassinating his predecessor, and instead resorted to a policy of "watchful waiting." In 1914, this policy ended when U.S. marines landed in Veracruz in retaliation for the arrest of U.S. sailors in Tampico. Mediation by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile prevented war but failed to settle the aggravated situation. After Huerta was driven from power, new troubles arose from the internal situation in Mexico. The raid of Francisco ( "Pancho" ) Villa across the U.S. border resulted in the punitive expedition (1916) into Mexico led by John J. Pershing . Border incidents continued, and relations between the two countries remained unfriendly. During this period, Wilson also sent U.S. troops to Haiti (1915), the Dominican Republic (1916), and Cuba (1917), and established protectorates over the first two. In his East Asian policy, notably his refusal (1913) to support loans to China by American bankers, Wilson openly rejected "dollar diplomacy."

World War I

The outbreak of World War I in Europe overshadowed all other problems. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who scrupulously favored neutrality, resigned (1915) and was succeeded by Robert Lansing , who tended to favor intervention on the side of the Allies. Wilson during his first term nevertheless sought by all diplomatic means to maintain an impartial neutrality. American public opinion, however, increasingly mounted against Germany, and the sinking (May 7, 1915) of the Lusitania by a German submarine aroused a storm of protest. After the sinking (Mar. 24, 1916) of the American vessel Sussex, Wilson issued an ultimatum to which Germany responded with a pledge to cease its unrestricted submarine attacks. Trouble over shipping also occurred with Great Britain in its effort to enforce the blockade of Germany. In the 1916 election, the Democratic campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war," helped return Wilson to the White House; Charles Evans Hughes was defeated by a very close margin. Wilson immediately attempted to mediate between the warring nations, but without success. Relations with Germany became more and more tense, especially after the announcement (Jan. 31, 1917) by Germany of a renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare.

On Feb. 3, Wilson broke diplomatic relations with Germany. Several more U.S. vessels were sunk, and on Apr. 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. In his war message Wilson stated that "the world must be made safe for democracy" and that the United States would wage war for liberty and peace. War was declared Apr. 6. Wilson's speeches, elaborating his war aims, did much to consolidate U.S. opinion behind his policies as the country mobilized. In addition to the establishment of a fighting force, war industries were placed under government control and the President was given wide powers over the production and distribution of food and fuel. Late in Dec., 1917, Wilson put the railroads under government operation. The Committee on Public Information was established to propagandize for the war.

The Fourteen Points and the Peace Conference

In Jan., 1918, prompted by the publication by the Bolshevik revolutionary government in Russia of secret treaties that revealed the imperialistic war aims of the Allies, Wilson presented the Fourteen Points to Congress; these outlined the basic provisions that he believed the peace settlement must cover. As the war drew to a close and preparations were begun for a peace conference, Wilson was generally looked upon in Europe as the savior of the future. In the United States, however, he suffered an electoral setback in Nov., 1918, after appealing for the return of a Democratic Congress as an endorsement of his foreign policy; the Republicans captured both houses of Congress.

Shortly afterward (December) Wilson set sail for Europe as head of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference; his attendance broke all American precedents. Angry at Republican criticism, Wilson did not include any active Republican, or any Senator, on the peace commission. Wilson was received in Europe with warm ovations and set about trying to create a new world society, which would be governed by the "self-determination of peoples," which would be free from secret diplomacy and wars, and, most important, which would have an association of nations to maintain international justice.

At the peace conference he became involved in long and bitter wrangles with Georges Clemenceau , David Lloyd George , Vittorio Orlando , and the other representatives of European powers. The resulting treaty (see Versailles, Treaty of ) was far from being the fulfillment of his dream, although he did secure the adoption of the covenant establishing the League of Nations . Wilson accepted the treaty as being the best obtainable.

Disillusionment and Death

At home, opposition to the League had been growing, and when Wilson returned (July, 1919) with the signed treaty, his accomplishments at Paris were received with mixed feelings. In the Senate, quarrels over the ratification of the treaty and the proposed amendments broke out immediately. In the group that emerged as opponents of the League, Henry Cabot Lodge was outstanding. Nevertheless, despite the agitation of a handful of "irreconcilables," the Senate would probably have ratified the treaty if certain reservations protecting U.S. sovereignty had been added. Wilson, however, refused to compromise and sought popular support by making a speaking tour of the United States. He was on his way east from the Pacific coast when fatigue and strain brought on a sudden physical breakdown in Sept., 1919, and forced him to cancel his trip.

On Oct. 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him for several months. He never entirely recovered, and for the remainder of his second term, Wilson, bitterly disillusioned and emotionally unstable, was essentially detached from the political scene. It has been postulated that he was so ill that his wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, made virtually all his political decisions for him. He continued to be uncompromising in his refusal to accept reservations on the League. Three years after the expiration of his term Wilson died. His character and policies have been the subject of acrimonious debate, but even those who have doubted his wisdom have recognized him as one of the pivotal figures of American and world history. In 1920 he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his Fourteen Points and for securing the adoption of the Convenant of the League of Nations as part of the Treaty of Versailles.

Writings

Wilson's writings on history and jurisprudence include Division and Reunion, 1829–1889 (1893), George Washington (1896), A History of the American People (5 vol., 1902), and Constitutional Government in the United States (1908). These books are distinguished by a wide knowledge of constitutional law and by the severe and polished literary style that also characterizes An Old Master and Other Political Essays (1893) and Mere Literature and Other Essays (1893). Wilson's addresses, messages, and speeches, considered among the finest by an American, have been published and republished in various collections; see L. S. Turnbull, Woodrow Wilson: A Selected Bibliography of His Published Writings, Addresses, and Public Papers (1948, repr. 1971). To date, 46 volumes of the definitive edition of the Wilson papers, under the editorship of Arthur S. Link, have been published (1966–84).

Bibliography

The Woodrow Wilsons (1937), by E. W. McAdoo (his daughter) and M. Y. Gaffrey, is an intimate account of his family life. See also biographies by J. M. Blum (1956), S. B. McKinley (1957), H. Hoover (1958), A. Link (5 vol., 1947–65), A. Heckscher (1992), J. W. S. Nordholt (1992), L. Auchincloss (2000), and J. M. Cooper, Jr. (2009); R. S. Baker, Woodrow Wilson and the World Settlement (3 vol., 1922; repr. 1960) and Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (8 vol., 1927–39, repr. 1968); T. A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (1944, repr. 1963) and Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (1945); J. Daniels, The Wilson Era (1946); E. H. Buehrig, Woodrow Wilson and the Balance of Power (1955, repr. 1968) and Wilson's Foreign Policy in Perspective (1957, repr. 1970); H. W. Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (1967); A. Link, ed., Woodrow Wilson: A Profile (1968); L. E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition (1987); J. M. Cooper, Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (2001).

Wilson, Woodrow

WORKS BY WILSON

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), political scientist and 28th president of the United States, made his professional contributions to political science between 1879, when he was a senior at Princeton, and 1908, when he published Constitutional Government in the United States. Between these dates, he also attended the University of Virginia Law School, practiced law for a year in Atlanta, Georgia, and then abandoned the bar for graduate work at Johns Hopkins University, where he received the doctorate of philosophy in 1886. Wilson taught history and political science at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University before he returned to Princeton in 1890 as professor; in 1902 he became president of the university. After his academic career, Wilson had a second distinguished career as governor of New Jersey and president of the United States, the only two political offices for which he ever campaigned.

In the development of political science as a discipline distinct from history and moral philosophy, Wilson’s work is a bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although, like John W. Burgess and Theodore Dwight Woolsey, he was interested in systematic statements about political theory, Wilson, more than they, attempted to build upon empirical evidence. His most important work in this vein, The State (1889), was one of the first books on comparative government written in the United States, although it is not, by twentieth-century standards, a behavioral study and is empirical in only a secondhand sense. Little of The State is based upon direct observation of foreign systems. As Wilson’s Preface indicates, the principal materials for his comparative study were borrowed from a German yearbook on public law (Handbuch des öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart) edited by Heinrich Marquardsen of the University of Erlangen. Insofar as its theory is concerned, The State owes something to the concepts of process and evolution associated with Darwin and to the sociology of Herbert Spencer: for example, Wilson believed that the modern state had emerged from competition between earlier, more primitive forms of social organization, a struggle in which the fittest customs and the best religions had prevailed. [See. the biography of Spencer.]

As a political scientist, Wilson was primarily interested in the study of the government of the United States. Here, as in the field of comparative government, he was a pioneer. An article published when he was a senior in college and titled “Cabinet Government in the United States” (1879) has serious shortcomings as a piece of empirical work, but Wilson seems to have been the first American political scientist to examine critically the functions of Congress and its inner working, although such discussion was not uncommon in the opinion press of the day. Wilson did not obtain his material either by the method of direct observation or by research into original documents; his statements about Congress were based on his insight, now accepted as undeniable, that the American political system cannot operate well without vigorous presidential leadership. Although other sources have been credited with shaping Wilson’s thought on executive leadership through political parties (e.g., Henry Jones Ford, Rise and Growth of American Politics, 1898), his earliest and most enduring debt was to Walter Bagehot, whose work The English Constitution described the model which, in the 1880s, Wilson thought the United States should emulate. Wilson’s argument for cabinet government in the 1879 article was expanded in another article, “Committee or Cabinet Government” (1884), and he then published a book on the roles of Congress and the president in the American system, under the title Congressional Government (1885). In this book Wilson expressed considerable pessimism about the weakening effects on the presidency of the separation of powers, the committee system in Congress, and the nomination of presidential candidates by party convention; eventually, he became less pessimistic, and in the Preface to the fifteenth edition of Congressional Government, published in 1900, he thought that the war with Spain had shown that the president had unique powers. By 1908, in Constitutional Government in the United States, he was sanguine about the capability of a strong man to act as a strong president and no longer felt that the chief executive was doomed to ineffectuality by the limitations of the constitutional system and the political party structure.

Still another field in which Wilson pioneered was public administration. In 1887 he published an article titled “The Study of Administration,” which seems to have attracted little notice at the time but which, some sixty years later, was to be mentioned by Dwight Waldo as “the most distinguished essay —of such brief compass, at least—in the history of American public administration” (Wilson [1887] 1953, p. 64). In this essay Wilson made the distinction, no longer generally accepted, between administration and politics. He acknowledged his indebtedness for this distinction to European writers on politics and law, notably Johann Kaspar Bluntschli. In later statements, Wilson made it clear that although he believed that administrators were not in principle involved in the political process, he was strongly opposed to the creation of a bureaucratic elite not subject to democratic controls.

Although Wilson’s reputation in history as a progressive reformer is well sustained by the domestic programs of the “New Freedom” and by his initiative in the establishment of a permanent League of Nations, he was, paradoxically, quite conservative in temper. He admired Edmund Burke as well as Walter Bagehot, saw political process as organic growth, and showed a sensitivity to the historical aspects of political phenomena. In economic matters, he was for a long time an admirer of the Manchester liberals; in civil rights, he supported segregation; and he was unenthusiastic about extending the franchise to women. In his larger political views, he rejected the Whig theory of politics, which he described in Constitutional Government in the United States as “a sort of unconscious copy of the Newtonian theory of the universe.” The trouble with this theory was that it treated government as a machine, not a living thing. He believed that political theory is “accountable to Darwin,” not to Newton.

Wilson was saved from a passive determinism by his strong religious convictions. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister and his political activism was rooted in the Calvinist drive to serve God and to understand his will through rational effort. According to this religious view of life, God is best served by serving man.

An abiding sense of moral purpose lent energy to the program of domestic reforms which Wilson pressed forward with vigor and skill between 1913 and 1917; to his leadership of the war effort in 1917 and 1918; and to his vision of a moral world in eternal peace in 1919 and 1920. In his administrations as president of the United States, Wilson established the style for the office which subsequent presidents have regarded as the standard for strong leadership. He continued to enact the various presidential roles of the past—those of party leader and voice of the people, for example— and he developed new ones: the president as protector of the peace, as chief legislator and diplomat, as planner of the economy, and as a leader of free nations. As Rossiter has noted, it has been asserted by many historians that in Wilson’s first term the “American Presidency, and with it our whole system of government, reached its highest peak of democracy, efficiency, and morality” ([1956] 1960, p. 104).

Earl Latham

[For the historical context of Wilson’s work, see the biographies ofBagehot; Burke; Spencer. Directly related to Wilson’s interests arePolitics, Comparative; Presidential Government; Public Administration.]

WORKS BY WILSON

(1879) 1925 Cabinet Government in the United States. Volume 1, pages 19-42 in Woodrow Wilson, The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Edited by Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd. New York: Harper.

(1884) 1925 Committee or Cabinet Government. Volume 1, pages 95-129 in Woodrow Wilson, The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Edited by Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd. New York: Harper. → First published in Volume 3, Series 2, of the Overland Magazine.

(1885) 1961 Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics. New York: Meridian.

(1887) 1953 The Study of Administration. Pages 65-75 in Dwight Waldo (editor), Ideas and Issues in Public Administration: A Book of Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill. → See page 64 for Dwight Waldo’s introduction to Wilson’s article.

(1889) 1918 The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics. Boston: Heath.

(1908) 1917 Constitutional Government in the United States. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

A Day of Dedication: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Woodrow Wilson. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Vol 1. Edited by Arthur S. Link. Princeton Univ. Press, 1966. → Additional volumes are in preparation.

The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Edited by Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd. 6 vols. New York: Harper, 1925-1927.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, Ray S. (1922) 1960 Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement: Written From His Unpublished and Personal Material. 3 vols. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith.

Buehrig, Edward H. 1957 Wilson’s Foreign Policy in Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.

Hollingsworth, William W. 1918 Woodrow Wilson’s Political Ideals as Interpreted From His Works. Princeton Univ. Press.

Hoover, Herbert C. 1958 The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kerney, James 1926 The Political Education of Woodrow Wilson. New York and London: Century.

Latham, Earl (editor) 1958 The Philosophy and Policies of Woodrow Wilson. Univ. of Chicago Press.

Link, Arthur S. 1947-1965 Wilson. 4 vols. Princeton Univ. Press.

Rossiter, Clinton L. (1956) 1960 The American Presidency. 2d ed. New York: Harcourt.

Woodrow Wilson: Fourteen Points

By the end of the nineteenth century, U.S. presidents had begun to relax the traditional isolationism of U.S. foreign policy. Nevertheless, when World War I began in 1914, the United States remained aloof from the conflict. President Woodrow Wilson was reelected to a second term in 1916 on the slogan "He kept us out of war." Wilson and U.S. public opinion shifted, however, when Germany announced that it would engage in unrestricted submarine warfare beginning on February 1, 1917. On April 6, 1917, Wilson signed the congressional declaration of war against Germany.

Wilson, who had attempted to negotiate a peace among the belligerents in 1916, renewed his efforts by proposing a new framework for negotiations. On January 8, 1918, he delivered an address to Congress that named fourteen points to be used as the guide for a peace settlement. The speech became known as the Fourteen Points and served as a distillation of Wilson's vision of a postwar world. In the address Wilson said that the secret alliances that triggered the war must be replaced with "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at." He proclaimed the need to demilitarize the ocean and reduce military armaments. He also articulated the desire to end European colonialism and allow the various nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires to create their own states. The most important point was the last, which called for a general association of nations that would guarantee political independence and territorial integrity for all countries.

Following the armistice that ended the war on November 9, 1918, President Wilson led the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Wilson was the only representative of the great powers (which also included Great Britain, France, and Italy) who truly wanted an international organization. His influence was instrumental in persuading the delegates to establish the League of Nations. At home, however, he was unable to secure Senate ratification of the peace treaty that included the league. He was opposed both by Republicans who did not want to commit the United States to supporting the league with financial resources and by isolationists from both major political parties who argued that the United States should not interfere in European affairs.

Woodrow Wilson: Fourteen Points

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view.

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The programme of the world's peace, therefore, is our programme; and that programme, the only possible programme, as we see it, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this programme does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this programme that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world,—the new world in which we now live,—instead of a place of mastery.

Wilson, Woodrow (1856–1924), twenty‐eighth president of the United States.Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, was born in Staunton, Virginia; raised in Georgia and South Carolina; and educated at Davidson College (1873–1874) and the College of New Jersey, later Princeton University (1875–1879). He attended the University of Virginia Law School, was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1882, and practiced law briefly in Atlanta. In 1883 he began graduate study in history and political science at Johns Hopkins University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1886. His first book, Congressional Government (1885), served as his dissertation.

In 1885 Wilson married Ellen Axson (1860–1914); they had three daughters. Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University, and in 1890, having published a second book, The State, returned to Princeton as a professor. His work on public administration, begun in the late 1880s, opened a new field of study. In 1902 he was named president of Princeton.

In that position, Wilson implemented reforms to strengthen the institution academically and proposed to abolish private eating clubs on campus. The suggestion angered alumni but earned Wilson praise as an opponent of privilege. In 1910 New Jersey's Democratic party bosses invited him to run for governor, believing that his reputation as a reformer would make him popular but that his political inexperience would enable them to control him. They were wrong on the second count. Winning the election, Wilson worked closely with both Democratic and Republican reformers to change state laws in ways that helped bring New Jersey into the mainstream of the national Progressive movement.

The Early Presidential Years.

On the strength of his New Jersey record, Wilson captured the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination and, thanks in part to Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive party insurgency, won the election. Again he moved quickly, calling Congress into special session to consider his program. In 1913 he signed into law the Underwood Act reducing the tariff and implementing the first federal income tax under the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. He played a key role in shaping the Federal Reserve Act, which reformed the banking and currency systems. In 1914 he signed the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act to regulate big business practices and encourage competition. Over the next two years, among other reforms, Wilson supported legislation to promote agricultural education, extend credit to farmers, begin a federal highway system, curtail child labor, and establish the eight‐hour day for railroad workers. On racial matters, Wilson shared the prejudices of his time and region, and racial segregation intensified during his administration.

In foreign relations, Wilson at first tried to apply the same principles that shaped his domestic program. Just as he hoped to free Americans from domination by powerful corporations, he envisioned liberating Mexico and the Caribbean from military tyrants and foreign economic domination. His efforts proved largely unsuccessful, however. Well‐intended interventions in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti aroused anti‐Americanism and often substituted one form of military government for another.

World War I.

The outbreak of World War I in Europe in August 1914 confronted Wilson with his greatest challenge. Both the Allies and the Central Powers tried to cut off the flow of American products to the other side. The British blockade of Germany, enforced with surface vessels, cost Americans money, but the German blockade, implemented by U‐boats (submarines), killed innocent people. On 7 May 1915, 128 Americans died when a U‐boat torpedoed the British liner Lusitania off the Irish coast. Wilson demanded that the Germans change their policy. Early in 1916, after sinking another passenger vessel, Germany agreed to halt such attacks. On the strength of this pledge and his strong domestic record, Wilson won reelection in November 1916, running on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.”

As the situation grew more dangerous, Wilson proposed on 22 January 1917 that the belligerents accept a “peace without victory” restoring the prewar status quo. Neither side proved interested, and the Germans, having earlier decided on a last great effort to win, now announced a policy of unrestricted U‐boat warfare. Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on 3 February, and on 2 April asked Congress for a declaration of war.

As the administration struggled with the task of military mobilization and production, it also rallied homefront support for the war through posters, speeches, and bond drives, and suppressed dissident voices by means of postal censorship and the Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Amendment (1918). A wave of intolerance swept the nation and German Americans were harassed and antiwar activists arrested. Socialist Eugene V. Debs and others went to jail for writing and speaking against the war.

Addressing postwar issues, Wilson in January 1918 proposed a statement of Allied war aims, the so‐called Fourteen Points. With the signing of an armistice on 11 November 1918, the president announced that he would personally head the American delegation to the peace conference in Paris.

The Versailles Treaty and the League Fight.

Hailed by ordinary Europeans as a savior, Wilson found the Allied leaders tough negotiators. He proposed self‐determination for European minorities, freedom of trade, and an international organization to keep the peace. They wanted security and revenge. Although the Treaty of Versailles (signed in June 1919) was criticized by the Germans as too severe and by the Allies as too lenient, it did create the League of Nations, which Wilson hoped would secure permanent peace.

When Wilson presented the treaty to the Senate in July 1919 he faced an even tougher fight. Many senators feared that League membership would force the United States to put its armed forces under international command. Wilson argued that the universal nature of the organization would make war impossible, but although he received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the League, he could not win Senate ratification, in part because he adamantly rejected any changes in the League covenant. After an exhausting and futile speaking trip on behalf of the treaty, Wilson suffered a massive stroke on 2 October 1919. A few weeks later the Senate rejected the treaty. Paralyzed and embittered, Wilson served out the remainder of his term as an invalid. Increasingly querulous and emotionally fragile, he was largely isolated from outside contact by his second wife, Edith Galt, whom he had married in December 1915. In late 1919 and early 1920, Wilson's attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, and young J. Edgar Hoover of the Justice Department's countersubversion division, exploiting a Red Scare that swept America after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, organized a series of raids and deportations of alleged radicals and communists, including Emma Goldman. Wilson, leaving the White House in March 1921 as Republican Warren G. Harding took office, lived in seclusion in Washington until his death in 1924.

Assessment.

Wilson followed in Theodore Roosevelt's footsteps in enlarging the power of the presidency in an urban‐industrial age. His domestic record exemplified the emergence of an activist federal government and dramatically demonstrated of how much a president, by focusing public opinion on issues and working closely with Congress, can accomplish. In foreign policy he wielded America's immense economic and military might and served notice that the United States had arrived as a major power with a distinctive global vision. Many Americans shared that vision even if they were not yet ready to accept permanent obligations to achieve it. Wilson's tragedy was that his own intransigence played a major role in his failure to achieve his loftiest vision, American membership in the new world organization for which he had labored so tirelessly
See also Anticommunism; Antitrust Legislation; Antiwar Movements; Banking and Finance; Baruch, Bernard; Economic Regulation; Education: Rise of the University; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: Senate; Federal Regulatory Agencies; Foreign Relations; Internationalism; Isolationism; Political Parties; Progressive Era; Progressive Party of 1912–1924; Racism; War Industries Board.

Bibliography

Ray Stannard Baker , Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, 8 vols., 1927–1939.
Arthur S. Link , Wilson, 5 vols., 1947–1965.
John M. Blum , Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality, 1956.
The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, eds. Arthur S. Link, et al., 69 vols., 1966–1993.
August Heckscher , Woodrow Wilson, 1991.
Kendrick A. Clements , The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, 1992.

Kendrick A. Clements

WILSON, THOMAS WOODROW

Educator, political reformer, and the 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson significantly affected domestic and international affairs during his two terms in office. Wilson made advances in education while he was the president of Princeton University in the early 1900s, before entering politics as the governor of New Jersey in 1910. He was elected president first in 1912 and again in 1916. He emerged from the tragedy of world war i as an international leader who campaigned widely for the creation of the league of nations—the postwar international organization that was the forerunner

of the united nations. But political battles with a reluctant Congress ultimately dashed his hopes of U.S. participation in the League.

Born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia, Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the third of four children of devoutly religious parents, Janet Woodrow Wilson and Joseph Ruggles Wilson. The u.s. civil war prevented him from beginning school until the age of nine, but the intellectual atmosphere fostered largely by his father, a Presbyterian minister, helped him to excel. After graduation from Princeton University in 1879, he studied law at the University of Virginia and became a member of the bar in 1882. He established a law practice in Atlanta, Georgia, but later returned to school to study political science at Johns Hopkins University, earning his doctorate in 1886.

"America was set up and opened her doors, in order that all mankind might come and find what it was to release their energies in a way that would bring them comfort and happiness and peace of mind."
—Woodrow Wilson

Professionally, Wilson worked in the area of education before entering politics. Between 1885 and 1892, he taught history and political economy first at Bryn Mawr College, then at Wesleyan University, and finally at Princeton. As president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910, he became known as an educational reformer. His improvements to teaching were welcomed until he set out on a bold plan to reform the social structure of the school by eliminating class distinctions, an effort that was severely criticized. Elected governor of New Jersey in 1910, Wilson pursued reform policies that won greater approval: he improved worker's compensation and the school system while also providing for better control of public utilities.

In 1912, the strength of Wilson's accomplishments at Princeton and as governor helped to take him to the White House. Running as a Democrat, he also benefited from a rift in the republican party that split votes between theodore roosevelt and william howard taft.

Wilson called his domestic program the New Freedom. It consisted of far-ranging economic and labor reforms. In a dramatic return to an old tradition, he addressed Congress personally, asking for passage of the legislation, and Congress largely complied. In 1913, the Underwood Tariff Act instituted the income tax but decreased the tariff on certain imports. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (38 Stat. 251), which reorganized the national banking system, is regarded as the most important banking reform in history. It gave the federal government control over the federal reserve board while also providing agricultural credits to farmers.

The extent of Wilson's idealism can be seen in other significant reforms. In 1914, the federal trade commission was established to discourage business corruption, and the clayton antitrust act (15 U.S.C.A. § 12 et seq.) was passed in order to restrict businesses from monopolizing—unfairly dominating—individual markets. Three constitutional amendments were ratified during the Wilson administration: the provision for the direct election of U.S. senators in 1913 (seventeenth amendment); the prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor in 1917 (eighteenth amendment); and the granting of the right to vote to women in 1920 (nineteenth amendment).

Wilson's foreign-affairs policies encountered serious difficulties. In Mexico, which was in the throes of upheaval, the arrest of U.S. military personnel precipitated a U.S. invasion. U.S. troops also retaliated when Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa invaded New Mexico. Wilson ordered troops to pursue him into Mexico. Relations between the two nations remained tense throughout the Wilson administration.

World War I and its aftermath tested Wilson. The United States was neutral at the onset of war in 1914. Despite the entreaties of allies, it did not enter the war until nearly two years after Germany had begun attacking ships with submarines. (Germany sank the English ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing more than 100 U.S. passengers.) More German attacks on ships carrying U.S. passengers forced Wilson's hand. In 1917, his war speech included the celebrated phrase, "the world must be made safe for democracy." As the defeat of Germany became imminent in 1918, Wilson put forth his Fourteen Points, a post-war program that he hoped would establish a lasting peace.

Besides economic, political, and geographic proposals, Wilson's plan proposed the creation of an international peacekeeping body to be called the League of Nations. Traveling to Europe in 1918 for the signing of a peace treaty at Versailles, France, Wilson was praised. This acclaim was not heard at home, where domestic criticism of his proposed League of Nations forced him to make concessions. He traveled widely across the nation campaigning on behalf of his plan. Ultimately, however, opposition in the U.S. Senate, based on the conviction that the United States should stay out of European

affairs, scuttled plans for U.S. participation in the League. Wilson also suffered personally at this time. A stroke in 1919 rendered him an invalid for the rest of his life.

History has sometimes judged Wilson to be too much of an idealist, particularly in foreign affairs. The disastrous Versailles Treaty, in particular, sowed the seeds of a second world war. Yet his leadership during the war was inspirational, and his plan for international participation after the war was largely achieved in later decades under the aegis of the United Nations. For these accomplishments, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. He died on February 3, 1924, in Washington, D.C.

further readings

Butler, Gregory S. 1997. "Visions of a Nation Transformed: Modernity and Ideology in Wilson's Political Thought." Journal of Church and State 39 (winter).

Carroll, James Robert. 2001. The Real Woodrow Wilson: An Interview with Arthur S. Link, Editor of the Wilson Papers. Bennington, Vt.: Images from the Past.

Clements, Kendrick A., and Eric A. Cheezum. 2003. Woodrow Wilson. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.

Macmillan, Margaret. 2002. Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World. New York: Random House.

Stid, Daniel D. 1998. The President as Statesman: Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas.

cross-references

"Fourteen Points Speech" (Appendix, Primary Document); League of Nations; Treaty of Versailles.

WILSON, WOODROW 1856-1924

President of the united states, 1913-1921

A Wartime President

At the outset of World War I President Woodrow Wilson believed that the United States had no stake in this conflict of imperialist European rivals and promised to keep America out of the war. Yet he ended up presiding over the first total mobilization of American troops for war and winning a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the peace treaty that ended that war.

Early Life

Born in Staunton, Virginia, on 28 December 1856, Thomas Woodrow Wilson was named after his maternal grandfather, but in his twenties Wilson dropped Thomas from his name. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he grew up in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina and later recalled that one of his earliest memories was of standing outside a gateway in Augusta, Georgia, at the age of four and "hearing someone pass and say that Mr. Lincoln was elected and there was to be war." As a child, Wilson had a learning disability that kept him from reading until age nine, but by seventeen he was possessed of an able intellect. He entered Davidson College in North Carolina in 1873, receiving high marks in all his subjects with the exception of mathematics. He left Davidson after a year, and in 1875 he enrolled at the College of New Jersey (soon thereafter renamed Princeton University), graduating thirty-eighth in the class of 1879. After studying law for two years at the University of Virginia and completing his studies on his own, he was admitted to the bar in 1882 and briefly practiced law in Georgia before entering graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He completed a Ph.D. in political science there in 1886. (He is the only president to have earned a doctorate.) In 1885, the year he married Ellen Axson, he published his highly regarded Congressional Government, the first of seven books on political science and history that he published during his lifetime. After teaching at Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia, and at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut (where for a brief time he coached the football team), he joined the Princeton faculty in 1890. Twelve years later the much-lauded professor of political science and jurisprudence became president of the university. Wilson labored to improve academic life at Princeton, but his efforts to dismantle the elitist eating clubs at the core of school social life and his proposal to restructure the graduate program alienated some alumni and trustees. Wilson resigned in October 1910, having agreed the previous spring to run for the governorship of New Jersey on the Democratic Party ticket.

Governor of New Jersey

Wilson won the general election in November 1910, and during his two years in office he proved to be a moderate reformer. His administration supported enactment of legislation regulating utilities, and he reduced the power of New Jersey political bosses. He championed legislation requiring candidates to file financial statements, pressed for voting reforms (including the direct primary for all elected offices), and instituted the first New Jersey workers' compensation law.

President of the United States

Following a determined fight within Democratic Party ranks, Wilson was nominated for the presidency in 1912. With the Republican Party vote divided between incumbent William Howard Taft and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson won the election by a landslide in the electoral college though he had garnered only a plurality of the popular vote. During his first term as president, Wilson carried out many of the promises of his "New Freedom" campaign policy agenda, sponsoring tariff reduction, increased regulation of business competition, and expanded federal aid to agriculture and education. In fact, Wilson proved one of the most effective legislative leaders in American presidential history, with a record of accomplishments rivaled only by those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.

War and Peace

In foreign affairs Wilson's administration lay the groundwork for home rule in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, came to the brink of war with Mexico, and negotiated improved relations with Japan and China. Beginning in 1914, the war in Europe was the president's major concern. Regarding the war as the result of imperialistic European rivalries, Wilson believed that the United States should remain neutral. In the opening years of the war the president sent his trusted adviser and confidant, Edward M. House, to the capitals of the belligerents in hopes of mediating a settlement. When these efforts failed and when it was clear that the Allies were in desperate trouble on the Western Front in 1917, Wilson, using the provocation of German submarine warfare against U.S. shipping as a reason for his change of attitude, asked Congress to declare war on Germany. After U.S. troops had proved to be the deciding factor in winning the war, Wilson traveled with the U.S. delegation to Paris and headed the talks on the American side. His Fourteen Points and proposal for a League of Nations were central to the peace negotiations. The Republican-controlled Senate, however, refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and to sanction the League of Nations covenant. Wilson began a nationwide tour to promote the treaty and league directly to the people of the nation, but he was forced to cut the trip short after becoming ill on 25 September, and on 2 October he suffered a massive stroke, which paralyzed his left side and caused severe brain damage. Wilson's doctors and his second wife, Edith Boiling Gait Wilson (whom he had married in late 1915, a year and a half after the death of his first wife), restricted access to the president.

The President's Health Declines

For several months Edith Wilson was the de facto acting president. As she wrote later, "I studied every paper sent from the different Secretaries or Senators and tried to digest and present in tabloid form the things that, despite my vigilance, had to go to the President. I, myself never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs. The only decision that was mine was what was important and what was not, and the very important decision of when to present matters to my husband." In 1919 Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at the Versailles treaty negotiations. He did not seek reelection in 1920, and after the expiration of his term in 1921 he lived with his wife in retirement in Washington, D.C., until his death on 3 February 1924.

Sources:

Kendrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992);

Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972);

Gene Smith, When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson (New York: Morrow, 1964);

Arthur Walworth, Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference (New York: Norton, 1986).

Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow (1856–1924) 28th US President (1913–21). As governor of New Jersey (1910–12), he gained a reputation as a progressive Democrat. In 1912, he unexpectedly gained the Democratic nomination. The split in the Republican vote between William Taft's Republican Party and Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party handed Wilson the presidency. His ‘New Freedom’ reforms included the establishment of the Federal Reserve System (1913). Several amendments to the US Constitution were introduced, including Prohibition (18th, 1919) and the extension of the franchise to women (19th, 1920). The Mexican Revolution brought instability to the s border and Wilson ordered John Pershing's intervention. His efforts to maintain US neutrality at the start of World War 1 aided his re-election in 1916. The failure of diplomacy and continuing attacks on US shipping forced Wilson to declare war on Germany (April 1917). His Fourteen Points (January 1918) represented US war aims and became the basis of the peace negotiations at the Versailles peace conference (1919). He was forced to compromise in the final settlement, but succeeded in establishing a League of Nations. Henry Cabot Lodge led domestic opposition to the League, and the Republican-dominated Senate rejected it. In October 1919, Wilson suffered a stroke and became an increasingly marginal figure for the remainder of his term.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents

Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow (1856–1924) US Democratic statesman, 28th President of the USA (1913–21). He was a prominent academic in the field of law and political economy prior to his election victory. As President he carried out a series of successful administrative and fiscal reforms. He initially kept the USA out of World War I, but, following the German reintroduction of unrestricted submarine warfare, entered the war on the Allied side in April 1917. Wilson's conditions for a peace treaty, as set out in his ‘Fourteen Points’ speech (1918), and his plan for the formation of the League of Nations were crucial in the international negotiations surrounding the end of the war, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. However, he was unable to obtain the Senate's ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, his health collapsed, and he retired from politics.