Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow

I

Introduction

Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow (1856-1924), 28th President of the United States (1913-21). In domestic affairs he enacted significant reform legislation and set the course of 20th-century liberalism. In foreign affairs he led the United States to victory in World War I, contributing to the movement towards greater US involvement in world affairs, and he played a major role in founding the League of Nations.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia, and grew up in Georgia and South Carolina. Despite a childhood learning disability, he showed aptitude for speaking and writing. He attended Davidson College in North Carolina before going to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), from which he graduated in 1879. Ambitious for a political career, Wilson studied law at the University of Virginia and practised for a year in Atlanta, Georgia. He married Ellen Axson of Rome, Georgia, in 1885. They had three daughters, the youngest of whom, Eleanor, married William Gibbs McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury under Wilson and a Democratic party leader in the 1920s.

II

Academic Career

Wilson forsook law in 1883 to study political science at Johns Hopkins University and received a Ph.D. in 1886. After teaching at Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia, and at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he joined the Princeton faculty in 1890. His first book, Congressional Government (1885), became a classic political analysis and was followed by six other works. Chosen president of Princeton in 1902, Wilson tried to establish a tutorial system that would provide individual instruction for students in addition to lecture courses and to divide the university into colleges modelled on those at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England. He also tried to limit the role of Princeton's undergraduate clubs. His forceful approach and the reforms he proposed aroused alumni opposition.

III

New Jersey Governorship

After the defeats of both his college scheme and his plan for a new graduate school, Wilson became disillusioned with Princeton. When New Jersey's Democratic party nominated him as its candidate for governor in 1910, he resigned his university post and was elected Governor of New Jersey. He proved a strong, reformist governor, breaking the power of party bosses and enacting new laws to regulate elections and business activity.

IV

Election to the Presidency

Both Wilson's background and his gubernatorial performance made him the early favourite for the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination. His campaign faltered, however, in the face of opposition by supporters of rival candidates, and he won at the convention only after a threatened deadlock and tough dealing by his managers, particularly McAdoo. A Republican split and the candidacy of former president Theodore Roosevelt on the third-party Progressive ticket virtually assured a Democratic victory, but Wilson campaigned vigorously, appealing for fresh reforms to curb big business and usher in what he called the New Freedom. He outpolled his opponents, Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft, although he did not win a majority of the popular vote.