Woodrow Wilson

Like Theodore Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. "No one but the president," he said, "seems to be expected . . . to look out for the general interests of the country." He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy."

Wilson had seen the frightfulness of war. He was born in Virginia on December 28, 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia during the Civil War, and a professor during Reconstruction in Columbia, South Carolina.

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.

Wilson advanced rapidly as a young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902.

His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him presidential timber. First, they persuaded him to run for governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor.

He was nominated for president at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which included tariff reductions, banking reform, and strengthened anti-trust legislation. In a three-way election against President Taft and Former President Roosevelt, he received a plurality of the popular vote, but an overwhelming majority of the electoral votes.

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.

Another burst of new laws followed in 1916. One prohibited child labor; another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won reelection.

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 enunciate 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.

The president, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke in October 1919 and nearly died. He was tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, who kept away most visitors and made a number of key decisions herself. After leaving office, Wilson lived in Washington, D.C., until his death on February 3, 1924.