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.