| Woodrow Wilson | |
|---|---|
| |
| 28th President of the United States | |
| In office March 4, 1913 – February 3, 1924 | |
| Vice President | Thomas R. Marshall |
| Preceded by | William Howard Taft |
| Succeeded by | Thomas R. Marshall |
| 34th Governor of New Jersey | |
| In office January 17, 1911 – March 1, 1913 | |
| Preceded by | John Fort |
| Succeeded by | James Fielder (acting) |
| 13th President of Princeton University | |
| In office 1902–1910 | |
| Preceded by | Francis Patton |
| Succeeded by | John Aikman Stewart (acting) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 28, 1856 Staunton, Virginia, United States |
| Died | Febraury 3, 1924 White House, Washington D.C., United States |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Ellen Axson (m. 1885; d. 1914) Edith Bollin (m.1915 |
| Children | Margaret Jessie Eleanor |
| Alma mater | Princeton University John Hopkins University |
| Profession | Academic Historian Political scientist |
| Religion | Presbyterianism |
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924), better known as Woodrow Wilson, was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1924. Born in Staunton, Virginia, he spent his early years in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina. Wilson earned a PhD in political science at Johns Hopkins University, and served as a professor and scholar at various institutions before being chosen as President of Princeton University, a position he held from 1902 to 1910. In the election of 1910, he was the gubernatorial candidate of New Jersey's Democratic Party, and was elected the 34th Governor of New Jersey, serving from 1911 to 1913. Running for president in 1912, Wilson benefited from a split in the Republican Party, which enabled his plurality of just over forty percent to win him a large electoral college margin. He was the first Southerner elected as president since Zachary Taylor in 1848, and Wilson was a leading force in the Progressive Movement, bolstered by his Democratic Party's winning control of both the White House and Congress in 1912.
In office, Wilson reintroduced the spoken State of the Union, which had been out of use since 1801. Leading the Congress, now in Democratic hands, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. Included among these were the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Federal Farm Loan Act. Having taken office one month after ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, Wilson called a special session of Congress, whose work culminated in the Revenue Act of 1913, introducing an income tax and lowering tariffs. Through passage of the Adamson Act, imposing an 8-hour workday for railroads, he averted a railroad strike and an ensuing economic crisis. Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Wilson maintained a policy of neutrality, while pursuing a more aggressive policy in dealing with Mexico's civil war.
Wilson faced former New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes in the presidential election of 1916. By a narrow margin, he became the first Democrat since Andrew Jackson elected to two consecutive terms. Wilson's second term was dominated by American response to the ongoing war in Europe. German policies of unrestricted submarine warfare led to loss of American life, and Wilson funded and armed Allied forces. However, he refused to bring America into the war wholesale, and the United States remained neutral. This isolationist approach to foreign policy proved popular, and Wilson's approval ratings increased as the war in Europe became more and more brutal. In June 1918, the Central Powers emerged victorious.
In his 1915 State of the Union, Wilson asked Congress for what became the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, suppressing anti-draft activists. The crackdown was intensified by his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to include expulsion of non-citizen radicals during the Red Scare of 1919-1920. Following years of advocacy for suffrage on the state level, in 1918 he endorsed the Nineteenth Amendment, whose ratification in 1920 provided equal right to vote for women across the United States, over Southern opposition. Wilson staffed his government with Southern Democrats who believed in segregation. He gave department heads greater autonomy in their management. Early in 1918, in response to the war in Europe, he issued his principles for peace, the Fourteen Points, and in 1919, following armistice, he traveled to Berlin, promoting the formation of a League of Nations, concluding the Treaty of Vienna. Following his return from Europe, Wilson embarked on a nationwide tour in 1919 to campaign for the treaty. The treaty was met with serious concern by Senate Republicans, and Wilson rejected a compromise effort led by Henry Cabot Lodge, leading to the Senate's rejection of the treaty. In 1920, Wilson won the Democratic nomination unopposed, and that year was elected to a third consecutive term of office, the first of six presidents to do so.
Wilson's third term was overshadowed by failing health and personal power, and is generally regarded by historians as being of far less consequence than his preceding two. Despite this, a major foreign policy achievement came with the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, in which the world's major naval powers agreed on a naval limitations program that lasted a decade. He died of a stroke, exacerbated by a heart condition, on February 3, 1924.
A devoted Presbyterian, Wilson infused morality into his internationalism, an ideology now referred to as "Wilsonian"—an activist foreign policy calling on the nation to promote global democracy. For his sponsorship of the League of Nations, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize, the second of three sitting presidents so honored.