Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, the third child of a religious Virginia family. His father was a minister, his mother a minister's daughter. When he was two, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia .

Wilson was a shy boy and slow to mature. He did not learn to read until he was eleven or twelve. When a subject interested him, however, he was quick to learn about it. At seventeen, Wilson entered Davidson College in North Carolina , where he did well. He finished just one year of college there before his father changed jobs and moved the family to Wilmington, North Carolina. Wilson's parents wanted their son to move with them.

Wilson stayed home for one year and returned to school in 1875, this time at the College of New Jersey (renamed Princeton University in 1896). He excelled in his studies as he overcame his shyness and was elected to student leadership offices, earning a reputation as a gifted public speaker. It was during his Princeton years that young Wilson took an interest in politics and history. By the time of his graduation in 1879, he was one of the most highly respected students on campus.

Enters law school

Following his father's wishes, Wilson began studying law in 1880. He attended the University of Virginia Law School for a year and a half, after which he expressed doubts about pursuing a law career. Again to please his father, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and opened a law practice in 1882.

Unhappy in his profession, in 1883 Wilson entered the graduate program in political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland . Around this same time he met Ellen Louise Axson, and the two exchanged letters and visited one another while Wilson was in school. They married in June 1885. Also that year Wilson published his book Congressional Government, which earned wide acclaim for its analysis of Congress's workings. Wilson took a job teaching history at Bryn Mawr, a women's college in Pennsylvania.

The future president taught at Bryn Mawruntil 1888, when he accepted a position atWesleyan University in Connecticut , where hebecame a very popular professor. In 1890Wilson, then thirty-four years old, left Wesleyan to return to Princeton, becoming a professor of jurisprudence and political economy. He arrived at the university already well known for his book and various articles as well as his teaching style.

Wilson and his wife had three daughters by this time. He published another book in 1893, Division and Reunion, on the Civil War era. The book solidified his reputation as a historian.

Princeton president

Wilson was elected president of Princeton in 1902 and began implementing reforms he hoped would improve the school's performance. He reorganized departments and changed class offerings. One major change he ushered in was the hiring of more than forty young teachers—known as preceptors—to act as informal advisors to the undergraduate students. The preceptorial system is still in place at Princeton in the twenty-first century.

Wilson battled trustees and wealthy alumni (Princeton graduates) in other areas of reform. He was overruled when he tried to reorganize the actual structure of the university. Wilson made powerful enemies in that conflict, but his well-publicized battles brought him to national attention. He was seen as a progressive, someone who fought for the common people. So great was his popularity that he won the Democratic Party's nomination for New Jersey governor in 1910. Wilson won the election and served for two years.

Wilson proved to be a remarkable leader, and his stint as governor earned him the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912. His campaign was based on the promise of national reforms that stressed individualism and states' rights. He called his program the New Freedom, and it helped him beat President William Howard Taft (1857–1930; served 1909–13) and former president Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919; served 1901–9) to win the election and become the twenty-eighth president.

A time of conflict

Wilson stepped into the presidency during a tense time. In February 1913, one month before he was sworn in, a revolution broke out in Mexico. Wilson opposed Mexico's dictator, Victoriano Huerta, and ended the fighting in 1917 by invading Mexico.

World War I broke out in Europe in 1914. It was the first war in which armies used new technology that allowed the killing of enemy soldiers more quickly and in greater number. The war progressed slowly, with unprecedented numbers of men dying in a type of fighting called trench warfare.

Wilson was determined to keep the United States neutral and out of the fighting. His professional life, however, was deeply affected by tragedy in his personal life when his wife died in the summer of 1914. Wilson faced his struggles with courage and managed to keep America from going to war until 1917. He won reelection with the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” but on April 2, 1917, Germany, disregarding the United States's neutrality, sank several American ships. Four days later, America entered World War I. Wilson explained to the nation that American involvement was necessary to “make the world safe for democracy.”

America was not prepared for war. To help mobilize the country, Wilson passed a selective service bill through Congress that led to nearly three million men joining the U.S. Army through a military draft by the end of the war. He appointed General John J. Pershing (1860–1948) to command the country's soldiers.

Even as war was being waged overseas, Wilson searched for ways to make peace. In January 1918 he outlined in a speech to Congress a program he called Fourteen Points. Among his demands were arms (weapons) reduction, open diplomatic and economic relations (as opposed to secret treaties and trade strategies), self-government for certain people, and the establishment of a League of Nations to oversee world affairs. Germany eventually requested peace under the terms of the Fourteen Points later that year.

Postwar America

A cease-fire agreement was signed on November 11, 1918, but the terms of the peace still had to be determined. Wilson traveled to Paris, France, in 1919 to work out the details of what would be known as the Treaty of Versailles . While Wilson wanted the final treaty to follow the Fourteen Points, his allies from Britain, France, and Italy were more interested in seeking vengeance against Germany. In the end, Germany was forced to admit guilt for the war, give up huge amounts of territory, disarm, and pay reparations (payments to the victorious countries to help cover the costs of the war).

Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. At home, however, the Senate was opposed to ratifying the peace treaty. After traveling more than eight thousand miles and delivering forty speeches in just over three weeks, hoping to win public support for the treaty, Wilson's health was failing. After giving a speech in Pueblo, Colorado , on September 25, the president collapsed in his railroad car. The train made its way back to Washington, D.C. , where Wilson suffered a massive stroke on October 2. Unable to rise from his bed because of partial paralysis, Wilson was never able to return full-time to his official duties.

Wilson did not have the strength to fight for passage of the peace treaty, let alone run for reelection. He demanded that the treaty be the main issue in the 1920 election, but the Democratic nominee, James Cox, lost to Republican Warren Harding (1865–1923; served 1921–23), who opposed the treaty. Under Harding's leadership, the country did not join the League of Nations, nor did it sign the Versailles Treaty.

Wilson was cared for by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, until his death on February 3, 1924.