Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia on December 28, 1856 as Thomas Woodrow Wilson. His father Joseph Ruggles Wilson moved the family many times throughout the South. Joseph Wilson worked as a teacher and a clergyman. Woodrow Wilson’s mother’s name was Janet “Jessie” Woodrow Wilson. She had three other children with Wilson’s father. He had two older sisters named Marion and Annie. He also had a younger brother named Joseph R. Wilson, Jr. Wilson was never very close with any of his siblings.
Early on in life, Wilson suffered from a form of dyslexia, which slowed his learning. He always struggled to read, but he was able to deal with his problem by having strong concentration and a near-photographic memory. This disease hindered Wilson, but it also strengthened him throughout his life.
When he was five years old, the Civil War began. From his young age, Wilson saw wounded soldiers in his father’s church and was terrified hearing about the Union General William T. Sherman’s march through the South. The war helped solidify his faith in the Democratic Party and a hatred of war.
In 1873, Wilson enrolled at Davidson College, which was a Presbyterian institution in North Carolina. Two years later, he entered the College of New Jersey. Instead of training for the clergy as his father had expected, Wilson wanted to enter politics. Therefore, when he graduated from college, he attended the University of Virginia Law School and began practicing law in Atlanta, Georgia but found he hated being a lawyer, so he decided to choose a different profession.
Wilson decided to become a college professor of government and political science. He attended the graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. However, before he began classed that spring, Wilson met a young woman from Savannah, Georgia named Ellen Louise Axson. They fell in love and were engaged by September 1883.
At Johns Hopkins, he participated in many extracurricular activities and wrote a book called Congressional Government. It was published in January 1885, and Wilson married Ellen on June 24, 1885. They went to Arden, North Carolina for their honeymoon that summer.
Soon after that, Wilson got a job at Bryn Mawr, a women’s college near Philadelphia. He and his wife moved there in September. Their first daughter Margaret was born in April 1886, and Wilson was finally independent of his parents. His teaching job at Bryn Mawr was not enjoyable. He was paid very little, and it was difficult to live comfortably. Wilson also preferred to teach men, so he quickly accepted a job at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut after three years. He became the Hedding Professor of History and Political Economy there.
Wilson was happy with his job at Wesleyan University, but he soon received a teaching position at his alma mater, Princeton, which he could not resist. There, students flocked to listen to his lectures. Wilson also became famous nationally after publishing a few more books. Other universities offered him jobs, so the college directors at Princeton raised his salary considerably to keep him there.
Wilson was happy at Princeton with the rest of his family until he suffered a minor stroke in 1896. It forced a lack of flexibility in Wilson’s right hand, but that was the only problem at the time. He continued working at Princeton for twelve years. During this span, he published 35 articles and nine books. Wilson was named president of Princeton University in 1902. He requested great amounts of money from the college trustees, which he used to hire distinguished professors and to improve the classrooms. He also raised entrance requirements significantly.
Wilson’s most important reform was the introduction of preceptorial teaching. In this system, students were divided up into small groups taught by teachers who allowed discussion as a way of learning. However, not all of the reforms were accepted, and Wilson often bickered with the critics. Therefore, when Wilson received a chance to enter politics in 1910, he jumped at it.
One day in October 1902, J.P. Morgan and his friend George Harvey were on a railroad car to Princeton, New Jersey. They heard Wilson deliver his first speech as the president of the school. They were impressed, and Harvey, the editor of a conservative magazine called Harper’s Weekly, worked to get him into politics. He was a conservative man in the Democratic party, and he wanted to weaken William Jennings Bryan. He had run for president three times and lost each time. He was famous for his position against big businesses such as railroads.
Wilson, on the other hand, had displayed his more conservative views through his articles. He showed his low opinion of immigrants and often reflected his support for laissez faire. He also often criticized labor unions. So, in 1910, George Harvey suggested to James Smith, the leader of the New Jersey Democratic party, to run Wilson for governor. He agreed, and Wilson was officially nominated for governor in Trenton, New Jersey at the state Democratic convention in September 1910.
To win, Wilson decided to conduct a campaign pledged to reform. His movement was backed by the liberals in the Democratic party. It called for government control of industry and for regulation of railroads and public utilities. Wilson also wanted adoption of primary elections and the direct election of senators by the popular vote.
He won the election for governor. However, Wilson soon faced a tough decision. The political boss James Smith had helped him win the election, and now he wanted to become a U.S. senator. He expected Wilson to help him in his quest, but Wilson did not because he wanted the support of the progressives. Wilson defied the power of the political machine, and James Martine defeated Smith in the election. Wilson emerged with a reputation for courage and was known for defeating the power of the political machine.
Following this, Wilson became more and more progressive. He forced many reforms such as a corrupt-practices law, strict state regulation of railroads and public utilities, a direct primary, and a law making employers liable for their workers’ on-the-job injuries. During his time as governor, Wilson kept his eyes set on the presidency and received a chance in 1912.
His competitors in the Democratic party for the nomination were formidable, one of them Champ Clark of Missouri, who was the Speaker of the House. In the 1912 Democratic convention in June, Clark defeated Wilson on the first ballot 440-324. However, a two-thirds majority was necessary for the nomination. Eventually, William Jennings Bryan supported Wilson, and he won the nomination.
In the upcoming election, the Republicans nominated the incumbent William Howard Taft. However, Republican progressives held their own convention and nominated Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency once again. Taft did not make an impact, so the major battle was between Roosevelt and Wilson. Both of their platforms were very similar. Wilson campaigned for the “New Freedom.” They both supported women suffrage, direct election of senators, and reducing the power of wealthy industrialists.
To help clarify his position on big business, Wilson consulted with Louis D. Brandeis, a Boston lawyer. Roosevelt called for a government commission to regulate the giant corporations. With Brandeis’s advice, Wilson argued that Roosevelt’s plan would only lead to a larger national government. He proposed to break up corporations to restore competition among smaller businesses.
Election Day was November 5, 1912. Wilson only received 42 percent of the popular vote but won an overwhelming majority of electoral votes. He received 435 to Roosevelt’s 88 and Taft’s eight. The split in the Republican Party greatly aided Wilson’s cause. Wilson was inaugurated March 4, 1913 and began his term as president.
One inevitable choice for his cabinet was William Jennings Bryan; Wilson offered him the job of Secretary of State. However, the rest of the appointments were difficult. Wilson tried to give a job to his closest friend Edward House, but he refused. Nonetheless, he had great influence in Wilson’s decisions during his two terms as president. The secretary of the navy was a newspaper editor named Josephus Daniels from Raleigh, North Carolina. William C. Redfield, a New York congressman, became Wilson’s secretary of commerce. Lindley M. Garrison, a New Jersey judge, accepted Wilson ‘s offer to become secretary of war. William B. Wilson became his choice for the new post of secretary of labor. Wilson ‘s cabinet was announced on March 4, 1913 and accepted with respect by the public. It contained both progressives and conservatives.
As president, Wilson first tried to lower the tariff. The passage of the very high Payne-Aldrich Tariff in 1909 had angered many Americans. However, it was still difficult to lower the tariff. He left the responsibility of writing the bill to Oscar W. Underwood. With hard work, Wilson was able to convince Congress to pass the sharpest tariff decrease since the Civil War. The House of Representatives passed the bill 281 to 139. The Senate was much more difficult because there was only a majority of six Democrats. After a long battle, the bill passed in the Senate 44 to 37, and Wilson signed the bill into law on October 3. To make up for the lost revenue, he imposed a federal tax on all incomes over three thousand dollars.
To solve the currency problem, Wilson favored a Federal Reserve Board. It would be composed of appointed financial experts who would set national interest rates and manage a network of twelve big banks across the nation. These banks would issue currency. Wealthy private bankers attacked his plan. Congress, afraid of the wealthy, worked slowly on the bill. However, Wilson did not allow them to leave for Christmas until they passed the bill. The Senate passed the bill 54 to 34 in another tough battle. Finally, Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913.
On January 16, 1914, Representative A. Mitchell Palmer of Pennsylvania introduced a bill drafted by the National Child Labor Committee, and the same bill was introduced in the Senate by Robert L. Owen. It barred any products manufactured by children under the age of fourteen or by children between fourteen and sixteen who worked more than eight hours a day or forty-eight hours a week from interstate commerce. Products of mines and quarries that used children under sixteen were banned from interstate commerce. When asked about the bill, Wilson stated that it did not seem constitutional to states’ rights. The bill was passed by the House on February 15, 1915. However, the bill only came to the Senate on March 1, when Congress was about to adjourn.
In the next session of Congress beginning in December 1915, the bill was reintroduced as the Keating-Owen bill. The House passed it again on February 2, 1916 by a huge margin- 337 to 46. Both the Republicans and Democrats supported the bill in the presidential conventions, and it passed in the Senate 55 to twelve on August 8. Wilson signed it into law on the first day of September. However, the law was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Hammer v. Dagenhart. This was actually what he had actually believed from the beginning.
The final step in Wilson’s reform plan was the reform of big businesses. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, trusts had been gaining great power. They fixed prices for the public, set wages, and forbid strikes from workers. In January 1914, Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress, asking to turn their efforts toward anti-trust laws. Congress delivered, passing two measures. The first one that passed was the Federal Trade Commission in September 1914. This group was given the authority to order companies to “cease and desist” from engaging in unfair competition. If a company failed to comply with the commission, it would be brought to court.
The second anti-trust law was passed a month later and was called the Clayton act. It outlawed a number of widely practiced business tactics. It was now illegal for companies to fix their prices to drive another company out of business. It was also illegal for a manufacturer to refuse to sell to a dealer who carried a competitor’s products, and it was illegal for businesses to buy controlling stock in their competitor’s companies. The Clayton Act also legalized Union weapons such as strikes and boycotts. With the passing of these two acts, Wilson had upheld the promises made in his inaugural speech.
However, an event in Europe changed everything. On June 28, 1914, a Serbian terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. By August, World War I had begun in Europe. Meanwhile, Wilson wanted to keep the United States out of the war. On August 4, 1914, he issued a proclamation of neutrality. He repeatedly emphasized neutrality but nevertheless sympathized with Great Britain and her allies.
During the outbreak of war, Wilson’s wife Ellen died from tuberculosis. They had been married for 29 years, and Woodrow Wilson was grief-stricken. For eight months, he was lonely and inconsolable after Ellen’s death. However, his friends introduced him to a beautiful widow named Edith Bolling Galt. She had grown up in Virginia and had married a wealthy owner of a jewelry store in Washington, D.C. When her husband died, she was able to run her business successfully. Wilson fell in love with her, and he began to spend time with her daily.
When the Lusitania was sunk by the German, Wilson condemned the assault. Germany replied that it had the right to sink the ship because it had been carrying supplies in a “war zone.” Wilson disagreed, but his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, thought that Germany was correct. He resigned from office, stating that Wilson’s attitude towards Germany hurt their policy of neutrality. Wilson replaced him with Robert Lansing, which was a disaster because he was passionately pro-British, defeating Wilson’s efforts to preserve peace.
In the middle of the war was the election of 1916. Wilson ran for reelection, concentrating on his achievement of progressive reforms and his success in keeping the United States out of the war. Wilson’s opponent was Charles Evans Hughes, an associate Supreme Court justice. The election was very close, but Wilson won 49.3 percent of the vote while Hughes only received 46 percent.
After the election, Wilson attempted to bring peace to Europe, not satisfied with maintaining peace in the U.S. On January 22, 1917, He outlined his plan for “peace without victory.” Wilson believed that the two sides should stop fighting immediately, and everything would return to as it had been before the war. It would not cause bitter feelings, but the plan failed. When the Germans heard the plan, they announced on January 31, 1917 that it would use unrestricted submarine warfare. Wilson was outraged when he heard this, but he still waited on making a declaration of war.
When Wilson had first taken office, Mexican liberals had overthrown a dictatorship, only to have their own constitutional regime ended by a military coup. Wilson refused to recognize the usurper Victoriano Huerta’s new government. Wilson tried to ignore the problem, hoping that Huerta would hold general elections and promise to follow the results. However, Huerta dissolved the legislature and assumed dictatorial powers in October.
Soon, Wilson ordered American sailors at Tampico to land at the east coast port of Veracruz. The Mexicans put up a desperate defense of the city and killed 19 Americans to 126 Mexicans. Wilson accepted the offers of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to mediate the dispute. Over time, the invasion of Veracruz began to take its toll on Huerta and his government. His men ran out of arms and supplies, and he fled to Spain in the middle of the summer.
Instead of peace in Mexico after that, two leaders who had together resisted Huerta, Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa, began to quarrel. Carranza promised constitutionalism, separation of church and state, and public education. On October 19, 1915, Wilson recognized Carranza’s government, angering Pancho Villa. He retaliated by attacking the American town of Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1916. He and five hundred men killed eighteen Americans and wounded eight.
Another event that steered Wilson’s opinion against Mexico and Germany was the Zimmerman Telegram. It was a message from the German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman to the German minister in Mexico that had been intercepted by the British. It stated that if the United States went to war with Germany, Mexico was to attack the United States, and Germany would aid Mexico regain New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Wilson released the message to the public, creating outrage in the American public.
Next, the world learned that Russia’s autocratic tsar had been overthrown. This meant that the Allies no longer included a monarchy. Now the war could clearly just be a battle between tyranny and democracy. American ships continued to be torpedoed by Germany, and on April 6, 1917, war was declared. Wilson promised to go to war to “make the world safe for democracy” and dropped his talk of “peace without victory.
It was estimated that several million men were needed for the upcoming war. However, there were only 375,000 men in total in uniform after only 75,000 enlisted. On May 18, 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service. Of the 9.6 million who registered, 2.2 million were drafted into the army, amounting to more than four million soldiers.
To get the soldiers overseas to the war, the British and American navies used a convoy system. The convoy consisted of a fleet of troops and supply ships surrounded by antisubmarine destroyers. Not a single troopship sank using this method. Later, the navy used airplanes to spot submarines.
The American Expeditionary Force was commanded by General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing. The first American soldiers landed in France in June 1917. By the end of the year, there were 180,000 U.S. troops in France. By the end of the war, two million soldiers had entered through France. Most of their troops were untrained, but they learned quickly on the job.
From April 1917 to the end of the war, Wilson created a powerful new government body called the Council of National Defense. It was made up of cabinet members and civilians, and it directed the operations of the nation. The most powerful of these agencies was the War Industries Board. It controlled American business, setting production and prices. Increased production meant more jobs for workers. It revived the American economy.
To pay for the war, Congress passed the War Revenues Act of 1917. This increased taxes on incomes and wartime profits. In addition, the government used the “Liberty Loan” project, headed by Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo. McAdoo persuaded the public to buy Liberty Bonds. It was a great success, and every bond the government issued was purchased.
In 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act, and the Sedition Act became law a year later. These laws made it illegal to interfere with the draft, hamper the sale of war bonds, or encourage disloyalty. Wilson’s support of these laws disappointed many of his supporters. However, most of the public accepted their loss of civil liberties.
On January 8, 1918, Wilson delivered a historic speech to Congress. He outlined his peace plan, known as the Fourteen Points. Wilson’s first goal was to stop secret diplomacy. His next points were freedom of the seas and the removal of trade barriers. His fourth point was disarmament. Next, he supported the rights of colonial people. Wilson’s last point was the one most important to him. It called for an organization of nations for keeping peace. In other words, he was proposing a League of Nations.
Wilson thought his plan would be a good basis for the end of the war. However, Great Britain and France refused to accept it. However, with pressure from Colonel Edward M. House, the British and French agreed to accept the Fourteen Points, with the exclusion of freedom of the seas. The new German government signed an armistice on November 11.
After the war, Wilson attended the peace conference with Secretary of State Lansing and Colonel House. Lansing did not support his proposal for a League of Nations, and House was far too pro-British and wanted to punish the Germans. Another mistake that Wilson made choosing his men was his failure to take a Republican. This upset a large portion of the American public, and it lost crucial political support for his plan. When Wilson went to Paris for the conference, he was seen as a leader who had lost the support of his country.
The three main foreign leaders at the conference were Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy. Clemenceau especially, after the great suffering of his people, wanted revenge from Germany.
The conference took place at Versailles Palace from January 1919 to June of that same year. In addition to the “Big Four,” 32 other nations were represented at the Peace Conference after helping to defeat the Central Powers. During the conference, Orlando of Italy left the conference after learning that he would not gain the territories promised to him in the secret Treaty of London.
Wilson’s delegate to the conference, known as the American Peace Commission, consisted of 1,300 people. They battled on many subjects with Britain and France, who were seeking revenge. Those two nations wanted Germany to pay for the entire war, a sum that would be around $120 billion. France also wanted huge chunks of German territory, including the coal-rich area of Saar Basin. Also, the newly created Polish nation wanted to annex east Prussia. The most important clause that the other nations wanted was a “war guilt” clause. This would force Germany to admit responsibility for starting the war. This would justify the reparations Germany would have to pay.
Wilson’s Fourteen Points went against almost everything that the Allies wanted. However, Wilson had to make many concessions to get his League of Nations. He agreed to the “war guilt” clause and a fifteen billion dollar levy on Germany. Wilson also made a separate treaty with Clemenceau, promising that the United States would defend France against future attacks.
He drafted a possible league of nations covenant in the summer of 1918. It was a document consisting of thirteen articles. They stated that ambassadors accredited to Holland should form an organization that would guarantee territorial and political integrity, supervise arms reductions, and provide for the investigation and arbitration of disputes. Any member state violating the provisions would by coerced by economic methods.
France and Great Britain wanted to punish Germany with heavy reparations. However Wilson believed that the Allied forces should be more forgiving. However, Clemenceau and Lloyd George had both won elections in the autumn of 1918 after campaigning to punish Germany, so they did not dare to change their position. Therefore, Wilson had to compromise on the issue. He accepted an agreement to include pensions. Also, he accepted a British proposal to create an international reparations commission, which would set the total bill and annual payments. The United States would be a member in the commission.
France also wanted higher protection against Germany. The French wanted Germany unarmed; they also wanted either to occupy the left bank of the Rhine River or to create an independent Rhenish Republic. France also wanted to annex the Saar Valley, punishing Germany for systematically ruining French coal mines in the Nord. When Wilson heard this, he ordered his ship, the George Washington, to come to Brest. Wilson told the members at the conference that he would return to America if they could not find a better solution. Two weeks later, the delegates agreed that France would control the coal mines of Saar for fifteen years, administered by the League of Nations. At the end of the fifteen years, a plebiscite would determine whether it belonged to France or Germany. France would occupy the Rhineland for the same period, and the area would be demilitarized forever.
One main issue during the conference was Germany’s colonies. Wilson wanted to hand them to some of the smaller neutral nations such as Holland and Sweden. He believed that they would by able to guide the colonies toward self-government with the help of the League of Nations. However, Japan and the European Allies wanted to divide the colonies amongst themselves. A compromise was reached with the leadership of South African general Jan Smuts, who proposed to give the colonies to the major powers under Wilson’s mandate system. Wilson did not receive what he wanted, and he would not accomplish many of his goals during the remainder of the conference.
Italy, upset that it did not receive the lands promised in the Treaty of London, left the conference. Upon this, China and Japan refused to be left out. At a meeting of the League of Nations Commission on April 11, the Japanese introduced a racial equality amendment and demanded a vote. The vote was eleven to six in favor of the amendment. However, Wilson ruled that the amendment had failed because the vote had not been unanimous. However, two other amendments had been passed by only a majority vote.
When the Treaty of Versailles was completed, it was officially signed by Germany and the Allies in June 1919. In the treaty, Belgian independence was restored, French lands annexed by Germany were returned to France, an independent Polish state was created, new democratic states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were formed out of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and most importantly to Wilson, an international organization was created. Wilson only agreed to the harsh Treaty of Versailles because he hoped that the Allies would modify some of the tough terms under the League of Nations.
When he returned home, Wilson presented the treaty to the Senate for ratification on July 10. There was strong support for the treaty, so he stated that he would oppose all modifications to the treaty. However, there was also strong opposition to the treaty. Liberals and progressives believed that the treaty was weak because Wilson had failed to achieve all of his Fourteen Points. Also, Germans and Italians in America thought it was too harsh on the losers of the war. Isolationists feared that the treaty would involve the United States too strongly in foreign conflicts.
Unfortunately for Wilson, the Republicans were still upset at his failure to include any of them on the Peace Commission. They controlled the Senate, and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee was Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. He disliked Wilson, so he fought hard to bring down Wilson’s treaty. Nevertheless, the Senate was ready to approve the treaty with a few provisions. However, Wilson did not want anything changed, so he refused to let them. With this refusal, Lodge began his campaign to destroy the treaty.
Wilson decided to go on a nationwide tour to support the treaty. he left Washington on September 3. He traveled eight thousand miles in 22 days and delivered 32 major speeches, telling his audiences that, without a League of Nations, the world would face another world conflict within the next generation. After a speech in Pueblo, Colorado on September 25, Wilson suffered a stroke. He returned to Washington without finishing the tour. On October 2, Wilson suffered another stroke. It was massive, and it paralyzed the left side of his face and body.
By the time the Senate voted on the treaty on November 19, Wilson was recovering. The Senate voted against Lodge’s reservations, but it also voted against ratifying the treaty without the changes. Wilson did not give in to Lodge, and the vote failed. In March 1920, the treaty was introduced once again in the Senate. The vote failed once again, and Wilson’s dream for American participation in a League of Nations was over. Without a treaty, congress passed a joint resolution declaring the war over between the United States and Germany.
He continued to recover from the stroke, but he had difficulty doing his job. Wilson remained in seclusion, only seeing his wife and doctor. Wilson’s wife guided him throughout the rest of his presidency, and some said that his wife had actually become the president of the country.
Wilson lost most of his supporters in America, and he was passed up by the Democratic party in their nomination for the presidency in 1920. They nominated James M. Cox of Ohio, who was easily defeated by the Republican candidate Warren G. Harding. Wilson remained ignored by the public in the final months of his presidency, but he received the Nobel Peace prize in December 1920. Then, on March 4, 1921, Wilson accompanied Harding to the Capitol for his inauguration.
Wilson moved out of the White House and purchased a home in a residential area near Washington. He made a rare appearance on November 11, 1923, the fifth anniversary of the armistice in Europe. Soon afterward, Wilson died on February 3, 1924 at the age of 67.
Works Cited
Clements, Kendrick A. Woodrow Wilson World Statesman. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.
Leavell, Jr., J. Perry. Woodrow Wilson. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
