Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States (1913–1921). A devout Presbyterian, he became a noted historian and political scientist. As a reform Democrat he was elected Governor of New Jersey in 1910 and President in 1912. His first term as president resulted in major legislation including the Federal Reserve System. Reelected in 1916, his second term centered on World War I and his efforts in 1919 to shape the Treaty of Versailles, which was rejected by the Senate.
Early life, education and family
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856 to Reverend Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Janet Woodrow. His ancestry was Scots-Irish, his grandparents immigrating to the US from near Strabane, County Tyrone, in modern-day Northern Ireland. Wilson spent the majority of his childhood, to age 14, in Augusta, Georgia, where his father was minister of the First Presbyterian Church. He lived in the state capital Columbia, South Carolina from 1870-1874, where his father was professor at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Wilson's parents were originally from Ohio where his grandfather had been an abolitionist and his uncles were Republicans. But his parents moved South in 1851 and identified with the Confederacy. They owned slaves and set up a Sunday School for them. They cared for wounded soldiers at their church. The father served as an army chaplain and from 1861 to 1898 was a founder and leader of the Southern Presbyterian church. [1]
Wilson's difficulty in reading may have indicated dyslexia, but he taught himself shorthand to compensate and was able to achieve academically through determination and self-discipline. Wilson attended Davidson College for one year and then transferred to College of New Jersey at Princeton, graduating in 1879. Afterward, he studied law at the University of Virginia and practiced briefly in Atlanta. His graduate study in social science was at the new Johns Hopkins University. After completing and publishing his dissertation, Congressional Government, in 1886, he received his Ph.D. in political science.
Family
Wilson married Ellen Axson on June 24, 1885 in Savannah, Georgia. They had three daughters, Margaret in 1886, Jessie in 1887, and Eleanor in 1889. Jessie married Francis B. Sayre on November 25, 1913, and Eleanor married William G. McAdoo, the Secretary of the Treasury, on May 7, 1914. Ellen died on August 6, 1914 and Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt, a widow, on December 18, 1915.
Political writings and academic career
Wilson came of age in the decades after the Civil War, when the Congress was supreme—"the gist of all policy is decided by the legislature"—and corruption rampant. Instead of focusing on individuals in explaining where American politics went wrong, Wilson focused on the American constitutional structure. [2]
Under the influence of Walter Bagehot's The English Constitution, Wilson saw the American Constitution as pre-modern, cumbersome, and open to corruption. An admirer of Parliament (though he first visited London in 1919), Wilson favored a parliamentary system for the United States. Writing in the early 1880s, Wilson wrote
- "I ask you to put this question to yourselves, should we not draw the Executive and Legislature closer together? Should we not, on the one hand, give the individual leaders of opinion in Congress a better chance to have an intimate party in determining who should be president, and the president, on the other hand, a better chance to approve himself a statesman, and his advisors capable men of affairs, in the guidance of Congress?" [3]
Wilson started Congressional Government, his best known political work, as an argument for a parliamentary system, but Wilson was impressed by Grover Cleveland, and Congressional Government emerged as a critical description of America's system, with frequent negative comparisons to Westminster. Wilson himself claimed, "I am pointing out facts,—diagnosing, not prescribing, remedies.". [4]
Wilson believed that America's intricate system of checks and balances was the cause of the problems in American governance. He said that the divided power made it impossible for voters to see who was accountable for ill-doing. If government behaved badly, Wilson asked,
- "...how is the schoolmaster, the nation, to know which boy needs the whipping? ... Power and strict accountability for its use are the essential constituents of good government.... It is, therefore, manifestly a radical defect in our federal system that it parcels out power and confuses responsibility as it does. The main purpose of the Convention of 1787 seems to have been to accomplish this grievous mistake. The 'literary theory' of checks and balances is simply a consistent account of what our Constitution makers tried to do; and those checks and balances have proved mischievous just to the extent which they have succeeded in establishing themselves... [the Framers] would be the first to admit that the only fruit of dividing power had been to make it irresponsible." [5]
The longest section of Congressional Government is on the United States House of Representatives, where Wilson pours out scorn for the committee system. Power, Wilson wrote, "is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court baron and its chairman lord proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within reach the full powers of rule, may at will exercise an almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself." [6]. Wilson said that the committee system was fundamentally undemocratic, because committee chairs, who ruled by seniority, were responsible to no one except their constituents, even though they determined national policy.
In addition to their undemocratic nature, Wilson also believed that the Committee System facilitated corruption.
- "the voter, moreover, feels that his want of confidence in Congress is justified by what he hears of the power of corrupt lobbyists to turn legislation to their own uses. He hears of enormous subsidies begged and obtained... of appropriations made in the interest of dishonest contractors; he is not altogether unwarranted in the conclusion that these are evils inherent in the very nature of Congress; there can be no doubt that the power of the lobbyist consists in great part, if not altogether, in the facility afforded him by the Committee system. [7]
But by the time Wilson finished Congressional Government, Grover Cleveland was president, and Wilson had his faith in the United States government restored. By the time he became president, Wilson had seen vigorous presidencies from William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson no longer entertained thoughts of parliamentary government at home. In his last scholarly work in 1908, Constitutional Government of the United States, Wilson said that the presidency "will be as big as and as influential as the man who occupies it". By the time of his presidency, Wilson merely hoped that presidents could be party leaders in the same way prime ministers were. Wilson also hoped that the parties could be reorganized along ideological, not geographic, lines. "Eight words," Wilson wrote, "contain the sum of the present degradation of our political parties: No leaders, no principles; no principles, no parties." [8]
Wilson served on the faculties of Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University (where he also coached the football team) before joining the Princeton faculty as professor of jurisprudence and political economy in 1890. A popular teacher and respected scholar, Wilson delivered an oration at Princeton's sesquicentennial celebration (1896) entitled "Princeton in the Nation's Service". (This has become a frequently alluded-to motto of the University, sometimes expanded to "Princeton in the World's Service.") In this famous speech, he outlined his vision of the university in a democratic nation, calling on institutions of higher learning "to illuminate duty by every lesson that can be drawn out of the past".
Prospect House, located in the center of Princeton's campus, was Wilson's residence during his term as President of the University.
The trustees promoted professor Wilson to president of Princeton in 1902. He had bold plans. Although the school's endowment was barely $4 million, he sought $2 million for a preceptorial system of teaching, $1 million for a school of science, and nearly $3 million for new buildings and salary raises. As a long-term objective Wilson sought $3 million for a graduate school and $2.5 million for schools of jurisprudence and electrical engineering, as well as a museum of natural history. He achieved little of that because he was not a strong fund raiser, but he did grow the faculty from 112 to 174 men, most of them personally selected as outstanding teachers. The curriculum guidelines he developed proved important progressive innovations in the field of higher education. To enhance the role of expertise Wilson instituted academic departments and a system of core requirements where students met in groups of six with preceptors, followed by two years of concentration in a selected major. He tried to raise admission standards and to replace the "gentleman C" with serious study. Wilson aspired, as he told alumni, "to transform thoughtless boys performing tasks into thinking men."
In 1906-10 he attempted to curtail the influence of the elitist "social clubs" by moving the students into colleges, meeting with bitter resistance from many alumni. Wilson felt that to compromise "would be to temporize with evil.". [9] Even more damaging was his confrontation with Andrew Fleming West, Dean of the graduate school, and West's ally, former president Grover Cleveland, a trustee. Wilson wanted to integrate the proposed graduate building into the same quadrangle with the undergraduate colleges; West wanted them separated. West outmaneuvered Wilson and the trustees rejected Wilson's plan for colleges in 1908, and then endorsed West's plans in 1909. The national press covered the confrontation as a battle of the elites (West) versus democracy (Wilson). Wilson, after considering resignation, decided to take up invitations to move into New Jersey state politics. [10]
Election of 1912
With the support of William Jennings Bryan, Wilson edged out Champ Clark to win the Democratic presidential nomination in the presidential election of 1912. Theodore Roosevelt ran on a third party ticket, hurting incumbent William Howard Taft, but some analysts argue that Wilson could have defeated either one of them (because Taft supporters would not vote for Roosevelt and vice versa).
Presidency 1913-1921
Policies
Wilson experienced early success by implementing his "New Freedom" pledges of antitrust modification, tariff revision, and reform in banking and currency matters. He discovered the political solution that would allow the anti-bank wing of his party, led by William Jennings Bryan to allow creation of a national banking system, the Federal Reserve System.
Wilson broke with the "big-lawsuit" tradition of his predecessors William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt as "Trustbusters", finding a new approach to encouraging competition through the Federal Trade Commission, which stopped "unfair" trade practices. In addition he pushed through Congress the Clayton Antitrust Act making certain business practices illegal (such as price discrimination, agreements forbidding retailers from handling other companies’ products, and directorates and agreements to control other companies). The power of this legislation was greater than previous anti-trust laws, because individual officers of corporations could be held responsible if their companies violated the laws, bringing the consequences closer to home. More importantly, the new laws set out clear guidelines that corporations could follow, a dramatic improvement over the previous uncertainties. This law was considered the "Magna Carta" of labor by Samuel Gompers because it legally lifted human labor out of the category of "a commodity or article of commerce".
Until Wilson announced his support for the suffrage amendment, a group of women calling themselves the Silent Sentinels protested in front of the White House, holding banners such as "Mr. President—What will you do for woman suffrage?"
War policy - World War I
- Main article: World War I
Wilson spent 1914, 1915, 1916, and the beginning of 1917 trying to keep America out of the War in Europe. He offered to be a mediator, but neither the Allies nor the Central Powers took his requests seriously. Republicans, led by Theodore Roosevelt, strongly criticized Wilson’s refusal to build up the Army in anticipation of the threat of war. Wilson won the support of the US peace element by arguing that an army buildup would provoke war. He vigorously protested Germany’s use of submarines as illegal, causing his Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan to resign, in protest, in 1915. Wilson was able to narrowly win reelection in 1916 by picking up many votes that had gone to Roosevelt or Eugene V. Debs in 1912. His supporters praised him for avoiding war with Germany or Mexico, while maintaining a firm national policy.
When Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 and made a clumsy attempt to get Mexico as an ally (see Zimmermann Telegram), Wilson took America into the Great War as a “war to end all wars." He did not sign any alliance with Britain or France but operated as an independent force. He raised a massive army through conscription and gave command to General John J. Pershing, allowing Pershing a free hand as to tactics, strategy and even diplomacy.
President Wilson before Congress, announcing the break in official relations with Germany. February 3, 1917.
Wilson had decided by then that the war had become a real threat to humanity. Unless the U.S. threw its weight into the war, as he stated in his declaration of war speech, Western civilization itself could be destroyed. His statement announcing a "war to end all wars" meant that he wanted to build a basis for peace that would prevent future catastrophic wars and needless death and destruction. This provided the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points, which were intended to resolve territorial disputes, ensure free trade and commerce, and establish a peacemaking organization, which later emerged as the League of Nations.
To stop defeatism at home, Wilson pushed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 through Congress to suppress anti-British, pro-German, or anti-war opinions. He welcomed Socialists who supported the war, like Walter Lippmann, but would not tolerate those who tried to impede the war efforts, many of whom ended up in prison. His wartime policies were strongly pro-labor, and the American Federation of Labor and other unions saw enormous growth in membership and wages. There was no rationing, so consumer prices soared. As income taxes skyrocketed, white collar workers suffered. Appeals to buy war bonds were highly successful, however. Bonds had the result of shifting the cost of the war to the affluent 1920s.
Wilson set up the United States Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel (thus its popular name, Creel Commission), which filled the country with patriotic anti-German appeals and conducted various forms of censorship..
Other foreign affairs
Between 1914 and 1918, the United States intervened in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama. The U.S. maintained troops in Nicaragua throughout his administration and used them to select the president of Nicaragua and then to force Nicaragua to pass the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty. American troops in Haiti forced the Haitian legislature to choose the candidate Wilson selected as Haitian president.
After Russia left the war following the Bolshevik Revolution, Wilson supported the "White" side of the Russian civil war, with a naval blockade and with ground forces in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Vladivostok.
Versailles 1919
After the Great War, Wilson participated in negotiations with the stated aim of assuring statehood for formerly oppressed nations and an equitable peace. On January 8, 1918, Wilson made his famous Fourteen Points address, introducing the idea of a League of Nations, an organization with a stated goal of helping to preserve territorial integrity and political independence among large and small nations alike.
Wilson intended the Fourteen Points as a means toward ending the war and achieving an equitable peace for all the nations. He spent six months at Versailles for the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (making him the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office). He worked tirelessly to promote his plan. The charter of the proposed League of Nations was incorporated into the conference's Treaty of Versailles.
For his peacemaking efforts, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. However Wilson failed to win Senate support for ratification and the United States never joined the League. Republicans under Henry Cabot Lodge controlled the Senate after the 1918 elections, but Wilson refused to give them a voice at Paris, and refused to agree to Lodge's proposed changes. The key point of disagreement was whether the League would diminish the power of Congress to declare war. Historians in 2006 ranked Wilson's failure as the #4 worst presidential mistake ever made.[1]
Post war
After the war, in 1919, major strikes and race riots broke out. In the Red Scare, his attorney general ordered the Palmer Raids to deport foreign born agitators and jail domestic ones. In 1918, Wilson had the Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs arrested for trying to discourage enlistment in the army. His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Wilson broke with many of his closest political friends and allies in 1918-20. He dreamed of a third term, but his Democratic party was in turmoil, with Irish and German voters outraged at the party for Wilson having entered World War I on the British-French side.
Incapacity
On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a serious stroke that almost totally incapacitated him; he could barely move his own body. The extent of his disability was kept from the public until after his death. Wilson was purposely, with few exceptions, kept out of the presence of Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, his cabinet or Congressional visitors to the White House for the remainder of his presidential term. Meanwhile, his second wife, Edith Wilson, served as steward, selecting issues for his attention and delegating other issues to his cabinet heads. This was, as of 2006, the most serious case of presidential disability in American history, and was later cited as a key example why ratification of the 25th amendment was seen as important.
Significant presidential acts
Administration and Cabinet
Painting of Wilson
Secretary
Joseph Patrick Tumulty 1913-1921
Supreme Court appointments
Wilson appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
Race and Ethnicity
As President, Wilson imposed official segregation in government offices, for the first time since 1863. Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People, which contained praise for the KKK of the 1860s, is repeatedly quoted in the film The Birth of a Nation, although Wilson said at the time he did not approve of the movie. [11]
Wilson had some harsh words to say about immigrants in his history books, although once in office he never repeated these sentiments. Wilson worked hard to integrate new immigrants into the Democratic party, into the army, and into American life. For example the war bond campaigns were set up so that ethnic groups could boast how much money they gave. He demanded in return during the war that they repudiate any loyalty to the enemy, saying, "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."
Later life
In 1921, Wilson and his wife retired from the White House to a home in the Embassy Row section of Washington, D.C. Wilson died there on February 3, 1924. He was buried in Washington National Cathedral. Mrs. Wilson stayed in the home another 37 years, dying on December 28, 1961.
Memorials
Many memorials to Wilson exist:
- The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, established by Congress in 1968 as a "living memorial" to President Wilson, is a leading policy forum in Washington, D.C. and part of the Smithsonian Institution.
- Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is a public policy school at Princeton University.
- Wilson College, one of the five residential colleges at Princeton University
- Wilson House, an undergraduate dormitory at Johns Hopkins University, is named in his honor.
- Wilson Hall, an administrative building at James Madison University, is named in his honor.
- His portrait appeared on the U.S. $100,000 bill, issued in 1934. This bill was used only for transactions between the Federal Reserve and Treasury.
- The city of Bratislava (now capital of Slovakia, Europe) was named "Wilsonovo mesto" (Wilson City) after U.S. President Wilson for a short period of time after World War I. This was to commemorate President Wilson's support for creating the independent state of Czechoslovakia. For the same reason, the central railway station in Prague bears the name "Wilsonovo nádraží" (Wilson station).
- The Avenue du President Wilson in Paris, France, is named in honor of Wilson.
- Boulevard Wilson, a main street in Strasbourg, France, where the European Parliament is located, is named in honor of Wilson. Anyone arriving by train in Strasbourg will cross or travel on Boulevard Wilson, including those traveling to the European Parliament.
- Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac River on the portion of the Capital Beltway which is also Interstate 95 is located in three jurisdictions, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia; more than any other Interstate Highway bridge. It is one of the most heavily-traveled bridges in the world.
- Plac Wilsona, a square in northwestern Warsaw
Trivia
- Wilson remains the only American president to have earned a research doctoral degree.
- His carved initials are still visible on the underside of a table in the History Department at the Johns Hopkins University.
- Wilson was an early automobile enthusiast and, while president, he took daily rides.
- Wilson was an avid fan of the New York Giants baseball club.
- His earliest memory, from age 3, was of hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming.
- Wilson would forever recall standing for a moment at Robert E. Lee's side and looking up into his face.
- Wilson was one of only two presidents (Theodore Roosevelt was the first) to become President of the National Historical Association.
- Wilson has been the subject of books by three noteworthy authors. Herbert Hoover's The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson is extremely sympathetic, and remains the only book written by one ex-President about another one. Sigmund Freud and William Bullitt's Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study is devastatingly unsympathetic, and was unpublished for 30 years after Freud's death.
- Wilson is the only U.S. president buried in Washington, D.C. (Washington National Cathedral)
Media
See also
Notes
- ↑ Walworth ch 1
- ↑ Congressional Government, 180
- ↑ The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, 41–48
- ↑ Congressional Government, 205
- ↑ Congressional Government, 186–7
- ↑ Congressional Government, 76
- ↑ Congressional Government, 132
- ↑ Frozen Republic, 145
- ↑ Walworth 1:109
- ↑ Walworth v 1 ch 6, 7, 8
- ↑ Link vol 2 pp 252-4
- ^ http://www.multied.com/elections/Conventions/1912DEM.html
- ^ Dray, 2002, p. 198.
- ^ Wade, 1987, p. p. 137.
References
Secondary sources
- Bailey; Thomas A. Wilson and the Peacemakers: Combining Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace and Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (1947)
- Brands, H. W. Woodrow Wilson 1913-1921'’ (2003)
- Clements, Kendrick, A. Woodrow Wilson : World Statesman (1999)
- Clements, Kendrick A. The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1992)
- Greene, Theodore P. Ed. Wilson at Versailles (1957)
- Hofstadter, Richard. "Woodrow Wilson: The Conservative as Liberal" in The American Political Tradition (1948), ch. 10.
- Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (1995)
- Link, Arthur Stanley. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (1972)
- Link, Arthur Stanley. Wilson: The Road to the White House (1947), first volume of standard biography (to 1917); Wilson: The New Freedom (1956); Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality: 1914-1915 (1960); Wilson: Confusions and Crises: 1915-1916 (1964); Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace: 1916-1917 (1965), the last volume of standard biography
- Link, Arthur S.; Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies (1957)
- Link, Arthur S.; Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913-1921 (1982)
- Livermore, Seward W. Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916-1918 (1966)
- May, Ernest R. The World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917 (1959)
- Saunders, Robert M. In Search of Woodrow Wilson: Beliefs and Behavior (1998)
- Walworth, Arthur. Woodrow Wilson Vol. 1 (1958), Pulitzer prize winning biography to 1915.
- Arthur Walworth; Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 W. W. Norton, 1986
Primary sources
External links
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