The President Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virgina on December 28, 1856 as the third of four children to Reverend Dr. Joseph Wilson and Janet Woodrow. His ancestry was Scots-Irish and Scottish. His grandparents immigrated to the United States from Strabane, County Tyrone, in modern-day Northern Ireland while his mother born in London to Scottish parents. Wilson's father was originally from Steubenville, Ohio where his grandfather had been an abolitionist newspaper publisher and his uncles were Republicans. But his parents moved South in 1851 and found the Confederacy. His father defended slavery, owned slaves and set up a Sunday school for the salves. They cared for wounded soldiers at their church. The father also served as a chaplain to the Confederate army. Wilson's father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church, after it split from the northern Presbyterians in 1861. Joseph R. Wilson served as the first permanent clerk of the southern church's General Assembly, was Stated Clerk from 1865-1898 and was Moderator of the PCUS General Assembly in 1879. Wilson spent the majority of his childhood, to age 14, in Augusta, Georgia, where his father was minister of the First Presbyterian Church. During Reconstruction he lived in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1870-1874, where his father was professor at the Columbia Theological Seminary. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%2C_Woodrow#Early_life)

Wilson did not learn to read until he was about 12 years old. His difficulty reading may have indicated dyslexia , but as a teenager he taught himself shorthand to compensate and was able to achieve academically through self-discipline. He studied at home under his father's guidance and took classes in a small school in Augusta. In 1873 he spent a year at Davidson College in North Carolina, then transferred to Princeton as a freshman, graduating in 1879. Beginning in his second year, he read widely in political philosophy and history. He was active in the undergraduate discussion club, and organized a separate Liberal Debating Society. In 1879, Wilson attended law school at University of Virginia for one year but he never graduated. His frail health dictated withdrawal, and he went home to Wilmington, North Carolina where he continued his studies. Wilson was also a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.( n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%2C_Woodrow#Early_life)

In January 1882, Wilson decided to start his first law practice in Atlanta. One of Wilson's University of Virginia classmates, Edward Ireland Renick, invited Wilson to join his new law practice as partner. Wilson joined him there in May 1882. He passed the Georgia Bar on October 19, 1882, he appeared in court before Judge George Hillyer to take his examination for the bar, which he passed with flying colors and he began working on his thesis Congressional Government in the United States. Competition was fierce in the city with 143 other lawyers, so with few cases to keep him occupied, Wilson quickly grew more realistic. Moreover, Wilson had studied law in order to eventually enter politics, but he discovered that he could not continue his study of government and continue the reading of law necessary to stay focus. In April 1883, Wilson applied to the new Johns Hopkins University to study for a Ph.D. in history and political science, which he completed in 1886. In July 1883, Wilson left his law practice to begin his academic career.( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%2C_Woodrow#Early_life)

As president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, Wilson became widely known for his ideas on reforming education. In pursuit of his idealized life for democratically chosen students, he wanted to change the admission system, the pedagogical system, the social system, even the architectural layout of the campus. But Wilson was a thinker who needed to act, so he entered politics and as governor of the State of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 distinguished himself once again as a reformer.(nobelprize.org)

He was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states' rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote. Wilson won the presidential election of 1912 when William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican vote. Upon taking office he set about instituting the reforms he had outlined in his book The New Freedom, including the changing of the tariff, the revising of the banking system, the checking of monopolies and false advertising, the prohibiting of unfair business practices. (nobelprize.org)

Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices. (www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/ww28.html)

But after the election Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On April 2,1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Wilson went before Congress in January 1918, to talk about American war aims--the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish "A general association of nations...affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?" But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate. (www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/ww28.html)

Wilson's early views on international affairs and trade were stated in his Columbia University lectures of April 1907 where he said: "Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down...Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused". -- From Lecture at Columbia University (April 1907). (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson)

Historians agree

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