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WILSON, (Thomas) Woodrow
(1856–1924), 28th president of the U.S. (1913–21).
In domestic affairs he enacted significant reform legislation and
set the course of 20th-century liberalism. In foreign affairs he
led the U.S. to victory in World War I, contributing to the movement
toward greater U.S. involvement in world affairs, and he played
a major role in founding the League of Nations.
The son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson was born on Dec.
28, 1856, in Staunton, Va., and grew up in Georgia and South Carolina.
Despite a childhood learning disability, he showed aptitude for
speaking and writing. He attended Davidson College in North Carolina
before going to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University),
from which he graduated in 1879. Ambitious for a political career,
Wilson studied law at the University of Virginia and practiced for
a year in Atlanta, Ga. He married Ellen Axson (1860–1914)
of Rome, Ga., in 1885. They had three daughters, the youngest of
whom, Eleanor (1890–1967), married William Gibbs McAdoo,
secretary of the treasury under Wilson and a Democratic party leader
in the 1920s.
Wilson forsook law in 1883 to study political science at Johns Hopkins
University and received a Ph.D. in 1886. After teaching at Bryn
Mawr College, outside of Philadelphia, and at Wesleyan University
in Connecticut, he joined the Princeton faculty in 1890. His first book, Congressional
Government (1885), became a classic political analysis
and was followed by six other works. Chosen president of Princeton
in 1902, Wilson tried to establish a preceptorial system that would provide
individual instruction for students and to divide the university
into colleges modeled on those at the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge in England. He also deemphasized the role of Princeton’s undergraduate
clubs. His forceful approach and the reforms he proposed aroused
alumni opposition.
After the defeats of both his college scheme and his plan
for a new graduate school, Wilson became disillusioned with Princeton.
When New Jersey’s Democratic party nominated him as its
candidate for governor in 1910, he resigned his university post
and was elected governor of New Jersey. He proved a strong, reformist
governor, breaking the power of party bosses and enacting new laws
to regulate elections and business activity.
Both Wilson’s background and his gubernatorial performance
made him the early favorite for the 1912 Democratic presidential
nomination. His campaign faltered, however, in the face of opposition
by supporters of rival candidates, and he won at the convention only
after a threatened deadlock and tough dealing by his managers, particularly
McAdoo. A Republican split and the candidacy of former president
Theodore Roosevelt on the third-party Progressive ticket virtually assured
a Democratic victory, but Wilson campaigned vigorously, appealing
for fresh reforms to curb big business and usher in what he called
the New Freedom. He outpolled his opponents, Roosevelt and President William
Howard Taft, although he did not win a majority of the popular vote.
During his first term as president, Wilson, acting on his
belief in strong executive leadership, pushed through major domestic
programs. In 1913 and 1914 he carried out his plan for the New Freedom
with the Underwood Tariff Act, which lowered duties for the first
time in 40 years; the Federal Reserve Act, which set up a new system
to back finance and banking; the Clayton Antitrust Act, which strengthened
earlier laws limiting the power of large corporations; and the establishment
of the Federal Trade Commission. In 1916 Wilson secured federal
loans and marketing aid for farmers, an 8-hour day for railroad
workers, and a law prohibiting child labor (later struck down by
the U.S. Supreme Court). His liberalism was epitomized by his appointing
to the Supreme Court the noted reform lawyer Louis D. Brandeis, the
first Jewish member of that body. Wilson’s domestic record
drew heavy farmer, labor, and reform votes in 1916 in his reelection
over the Republican challenger, Charles Evans Hughes. He won by
a narrow margin in the electoral college but had a popular majority.
Foreign affairs demanded Wilson’s attention early
in his administration, when the Mexican revolution became a civil
war in 1913. Wilson’s efforts to influence it led to the
U.S. occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and an expedition against the
Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco (Pancho) Villa in 1916. The
outbreak of World War I in August 1914 coincided with the death
of Ellen Wilson, a heavy blow that was lightened when Wilson was
married again in November 1915, to Edith Bolling Galt (1872–1961),
a Washington widow. The warring nations vexed Wilson continually,
as the British blockade interdicted trade and German submarines
threatened ships and lives. The sinking of the British liner Lusitania in
May 1915, killing 1198 people, including 128 Americans, created
a crisis during which Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan
resigned rather than risk war, while critics such as Theodore Roosevelt denounced
Wilson for not being tougher. Wilson eventually convinced the Germans
to moderate submarine warfare in April 1916, and tensions relaxed
for a time. Meanwhile, he attempted to end the war, first through secret
mediation by his confidant, Col. Edward M. House, and then at the
end of 1916 with a public appeal for peace terms, and finally with
his own call in January 1917 for “peace without victory.” Despite
Wilson’s warnings, Germany resumed submarine attacks in
February. After agonizing and grasping for alternatives, Wilson
asked Congress to declare war on April 2. The U.S. entered World
War I on April 6, 1917.
Wilson mounted the most efficient and corruption-free American
war effort up to that time. A draft was instituted and functioned
smoothly, inducting nearly 3 million of the 5 million men who served
in the armed forces. Large numbers of American troops commanded by
Gen. John J. Pershing went into combat in France during the summer
of 1918, in time to join the counteroffensive that finished the
war that fall. On the home front, new forms of government-directed economic
organization were introduced under the War Industries Board, headed
by Bernard Baruch, while several million dollars were raised through
Liberty loan bond drives. The Committee on Public Information used
advertising and public relations techniques to arouse popular fervor
for the war effort, but espionage and sedition laws also led to
widespread curtailment of civil liberties, including the imprisonment
of the Socialist party leader and war critic Eugene V. Debs.
Wilson diplomatically worked to liberalize Allied war aims, and
in January 1918 he outlined his peace program in the 14 points,
which called for national self-determination, an end to colonialism,
and a League of Nations to maintain peace. The 14 points not only raised
the hopes of liberals around the world but also helped shorten the
war by furnishing the conditions under which Germany sued for the
armistice that ended the fighting in November 1918.
At the war’s end Wilson journeyed to Europe, first
for a triumphal tour of the Allied capitals and then for six months
of grueling negotiations for a peace settlement in Paris. Wilson
was the dominant figure of the peace conference, but he had to agree
to imposing harsher terms than he would have liked on Germany in order
to get the Allies to cooperate in establishing the League of Nations,
which he regarded as indispensable to world peace.
The worst defeat and disappointment of his life awaited Wilson
when he returned home in the middle of 1919. Opposition had already
gathered against the peace treaty, both from those who feared that
joining the League of Nations would plunge the U.S. into future
wars and from those who opposed restrictions on U.S. independence
and military action. Republican senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge
of Massachusetts, threatened either to defeat the treaty by denying
the two-thirds vote necessary for ratification or to attach stringent
limits on participation in the league. Wilson tried to sway public
opinion to his side with a cross-country speaking tour, but his
health, badly strained by the war and the peace negotiations, collapsed,
and he could not finish the tour. In October 1919 he suffered a
severe stroke that nearly killed him and left him partially paralyzed.
For three months, his wife and his doctors effectively functioned
as president. Although Wilson later recovered sufficiently to perform
official duties, he never regained his previous leadership, and
he remained an invalid for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, in November 1919
and March 1920, the peace treaty twice failed to win Senate approval,
as Wilson and his opponents both refused to compromise. The U.S.
never joined the League of Nations. Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel
Peace Prize in December 1920.
Wilson left the White House in March 1921, a broken man. In
the 1920 election a landslide victory was won by the conservative
Republican candidate, Warren G. Harding, who called for a return
to “normalcy” and a repudiation of virtually all
Wilson’s domestic and foreign politics. Wilson lived almost
three years longer, at one time attempting to practice law but not
fit enough for any active work. He died in Washington, D.C., on
Feb. 3, 1924.
Since his death, Wilson has remained a controversial figure,
attracting equally fervent admirers and detractors. For a time after
World War I, he was blamed by many for having plunged the country
into a needless war and for opening the door to repression and reaction.
During World War II, however, he came to be idolized as a prophet
of peace who should have been heeded, and the UN was often viewed
as the fulfillment of Wilson’s dreams. Arguments of more
recent times have focused on the practicality of his policies and
the psychological motivations behind them. Throughout these posthumous oscillations
in his reputation, however, no one has questioned Wilson’s
significance. Of the presidents since the American Civil War, only
Franklin D. Roosevelt rivals him in importance in U.S. and world
history, and both at home and abroad Roosevelt in most ways took
up where Wilson had left off.