The twenty-eighth President of the United States, whose
full name was Thomas Woodrow Wilson, was born on December 28, 1856, in
Staunton, Virginia, to parents Joseph R. Wilson and Janet Woodrow
Wilson. Young "Tommy's" father was a prominent southern Presbyterian
minister and teacher, and his mother was descended from a strong
Presbyterian family as well. Shortly after the boy's birth, the
family moved to Augusta, Georgia, where Tommy spent the majority
of his formative years. When he was fifteen or so, the family moved
again to Columbia, South Carolina. The Civil War deeply ravaged
the South during the 1860s and as a consequence, many of the schools
had been shut down. Ironically, the boy who would one day become
a great scholar, educator, and President therefore did not receive
any formal education until he was nearly in his teenage years.
He did not even have any reading skills until he was nine years
old.
In 1873, when he was seventeen, Woodrow left home and enrolled
in Davidson College in North Carolina, one of the best Presbyterian
colleges in the country. However, after a year he became ill and
returned home to be with his family. By 1875 Wilson had regained
his health and decided to enter Princeton University, then called
the College of New Jersey. Wilson attended the university for four
years where he received good marks and participated in many of
the school's social activities. He graduated from Princeton in 1879.
Since he was a young boy, Wilson had always wanted to
be a great statesman. His particular aspiration for many years
was to become a U.S. Senator from Virginia, the state he considered
his home state even though he had barely lived a year there as
a baby. After Princeton, he decided to enroll at the law school
of the University of Virginia. At the time, Wilson figured that
studying law was the best route to becoming a legislator. He remained
in Virginia for nearly a year and then moved to Atlanta, Georgia,
where he established a law firm with a former classmate, Edward
I. Renick. The two men kept the practice alive for more than a
year despite the paucity of clients. Over 140 other young lawyers
had come to the southern town of 37,000, making work scarce.
Wilson decided to abandon law in 1883 and decided to take some
graduate courses in political science, reasoning that if he could
not become a legislator via law he could do so via education. He
enrolled in the recently founded Johns Hopkins University and studied
there for nearly three years. He published one of his most famous
works, Congressional Government, as his doctoral
dissertation, and the book immediately placed him in the ranks
of the most respected political scientists of the day. He ultimately
received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1886.
In autumn of 1885, Wilson accepted his first teaching
position at Bryn Mawr College for young women and remained there
for two years. He then moved to Connecticut to teach at Wesleyan
University and then moved again back to New Jersey to finally settle
down and teach jurisprudence and political economy at Princeton
University. Students at all thee schools praised Wilson for his
teaching abilities and the quality of his lectures. He continued
to contribute to the study of political science and history with
his publication of The State, a biography of George
Washington, Division and Reunion, and a History
of the American People.
Wilson also found time to start a family. Two days before
leaving for Johns Hopkins, Wilson proposed to Ellen Axson Wilson
of Rome, Georgia. The two were married on June 24, 1885, in Savannah,
Georgia. By 1889, they had three children: Margaret, Jessie, and
Eleanor.
In 1902 Woodrow Wilson was unanimously elected president
of Princeton University, becoming the first man besides a clergyman
to hold the office. As president of the university, Wilson initiated
many education reforms. He devised and implemented the preceptorial system
to replace the large impersonal lectures with smaller, more personal
group teaching. This method of teaching is now standard in many
colleges throughout the country. His quadrangle plan called for
the creation of several campus dormitories that would also house
dining facilities, libraries, and classrooms in an attempt to eliminate
the pretentious eating clubs that dominated the university's social
scene. Although Wilson was unsuccessful in implementing this plan,
many other American universities later used his idea.
Even though Wilson worked over twenty years as an educator,
he had never abandoned his dream of becoming a statesman, and when
he was presented with the opportunity to jump into politics in 1910,
he took it. In 1910, the local New Jersey Democratic political machine
bosses sought an honorable and trustworthy candidate to run for
the state's gubernatorial office. They found Wilson, who agreed
to run for governor as long as he could also run for President of
the United States in the upcoming 1912 national elections. Wilson
won the election by a landslide, and quickly became known as a
progressive Democratic governor for his reform politics. In his campaign
to reform government, he even attacked the same political machines
that had earlier supported him.
His success as Governor gave him national fame as a man
of action, and he was therefore given the Democratic nomination
for President in 1912. Wilson campaigned against Progressive Party candidate
Theodore Roosevelt, Republican President William Howard Taft, and
Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs. Because of the rift within
the Republican Party that year, Wilson received an overwhelming
majority of the Electoral College votes and became the twenty-eighth
President of the United States.
Wilson continued to initiate reforms. His domestic policy reforms
were collectively known as the New Freedom and involved creating
a national banking system, prosecuting the trusts, and reducing
the national tariff. Ironically, however, the man elected for his
progressive thinking spent the majority of his time on foreign affairs
rather than domestic concerns. The Wilson administration saw and
eventually became involved in two bloody civil wars in Mexico.
At one point, it seemed as if relations between the two countries
would collapse entirely when Wilson ordered General John J. Pershing
to invade Mexico with the Punitive Expedition to find Mexican rebel
Pancho Villa. Wilson also authorized the U.S. military occupations
of Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.
When World War I erupted in Europe in 1914 and began spreading
to other continents, Wilson proclaimed that the United States would
not partake in the war but would conduct business as usual as a
neutral nation. Within a few years, however, neutrality became unrealistic
as German U-boats increased their attacks on American shipping.
Wilson sent a series of protests and warnings to the German government,
but they were ignored. The sinking of three American ships without
warning on the same day in March 1917, followed by the discovery
of secret Zimmerman Note to Mexico, prompted the United States
to declare war. Wilson directed the American war effort with a
tight fist under the authority of the Overman Act. He passed the
Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918, as well as
the War Revenue Act, which increased the income tax to its highest
level up to that period in time. He ordered General Pershing to
lead the American troops in Europe.
After the war's end in 1918, Wilson sailed to France to
attend the Paris Peace Conference where over thirty nations planned
to draft a formal peace treaty. Most of the treaty was discussed
by the leaders of the Big Four nations, including the United States.
Wilson aimed to establish a lasting peace based on the principles
laid forth in his Fourteen Points speech that had been delivered
earlier that year. The most important points of the speech called
for self-determination for all peoples of the world and for the
creation of a League of Nations to ensure collective security and
peace. The world leaders drafted the Treaty of Versailles that
included the new charter for Wilson's League of Nations.
To Wilson's dismay, he could not convince enough members
in the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty. Many senators feared that
the League could draw the U.S. into another international war or
violate American sovereignty. To convince these skeptical senators, Wilson
set out on a nationwide campaign to convince the American people
that the treaty and the League were essential for peace. The trip,
however, only added to Wilson's exhaustion, and he collapsed on
September 25, 1919. A week later, he suffered a stroke that left one
side of his body paralyzed for the rest of his life. Wilson spent much
of the remainder of his Presidency in bed, and as a result, the treaty
failed to receive the two-thirds required vote in the Senate.
After Warren G. Harding was elected President in 1920,
Wilson retired to public life in Washington, D.C. That year he
won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at the Paris Peace Conference.
He founded a law firm in the city with one of his former cabinet
members, but never seriously worked on any cases. He lived quietly
until he died in his sleep on February 3, 1924. He was buried two
days later in the Episcopal cathedral in Washington, D.C.
