Woodrow Wilson

Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (Sunday, December 28, 1856–Sunday, February 3, 1924) was the 45th state Governor of New Jersey (1911-1913) and later the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). He was the second Democrat to serve two consecutive terms in the White House after Andrew Jackson.

Early life and education

Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia, to Joseph Wilson and Janet Woodrow. His Scotch-Irish ancestry extends back into Strabane, in modern-day Northern Ireland. He grew up in Augusta, Georgia.

Wilson attended Davidson College for one year and then transferred to Princeton University, graduating in 1879. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternal organization. Afterward, Wilson studied law at the University of Virginia for one year. After completing and publishing his dissertation, Congressional Government, in 1886, he received his Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University. Wilson remains the only American president to have earned a doctoral degree.

Political Writings and Academic Career

Woodrow Wilson came of age in the decades after the Civil War, when Congress was supreme - “the gist all 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. (Congressional Government 180)

“Congressional Government,” Wilson’s best known work, is a critical description of America’s system, with frequent comparisons to Westminster. “Congressional Government,” however, is not an argument for America to become a parliamentary system. Wilson himself claimed “I am pointing out facts, - diagnosing, not prescribing, remedies. (Congressional Government. 205)

Wilson believed that America’s intricate system of checks and balances was the cause of the problems in American governance. Wilson 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 constititution 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.” (ibid, 186-7)

The longest section of “Congressional Government” is on the 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.” (ibid, 76) 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 is, 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. (ibid, 132)

In his earlier life, Wilson had found much to praise in the government of Great Britain.

"I ask you to put this question to yourselves," Wilson wrote, 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 determinig 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? (the Politics of Woodrow Wilson, 41-48) "Eight words," Wilson wrote, "contain the sum of the present degradation of our political parties: No leaders, no principles; no principles, no parties." (Frozen Republic, 145)

But by the time Wilson finished “Congressional Government” Grover Cleveland was president, and Wilson had his faith in the United States government affirmed. By the time he was president, Wilson had seen vigorous presidencies from McKinley and Roosevelt, and Wilson no longer entertained thoughts of parliamentary government at home. By the time of his presidency, Wilson merely hoped that presidents could be party leaders in the same way prime ministers were.

Wilson served on the faculties of Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University 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. 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".

Woodrow Wilson was unanimously elected president of Princeton on Monday, June 9, 1902. In his inaugural address as Princeton's president, Wilson developed these themes, attempting to strike a balance that would please both populists and aristocrats in the audience.

As president, Wilson began a fund-raising campaign to bolster the university corporation. The curriculum guidelines he developed during his tenure as president of Princeton proved among the most important innovations in the field of higher education. He instituted the now common system of core requirements followed by two years of concentration in a selected area. When he attempted to curtail the influence of the elitist "social clubs", however, Wilson met with resistance from trustees and potential donors. He believed the system was smothering the intellectual and moral life of the undergraduates. Opposition from wealthy and powerful alumni further convinced Wilson of the undesirability of exclusiveness and moved him towards a more populist position in his politics.

Political career

Through his published commentary on contemporary political matters, Wilson developed a national reputation and, with increasing seriousness, considered a public service career. In 1910, he received an unsolicited nomination for the governorship of New Jersey, which he eagerly accepted. As governor, he developed a platform of progressive liberalism in matters of domestic political economy.

Presidency

In the election of 1912, the Democratic Party nominated (http://www.multied.com/elections/Conventions/1912DEM.html) Wilson as its presidential candidate — even though Champ Clark was widely expected to get the nomination. William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican Party by running against each other, allowing Wilson's victory.

On the day before Wilson's inauguration in March 1913, members of the Congressional Union, later known as the National Women's Party, organized a suffrage parade in Washington, DC, to siphon attention away from inaugural events. It is said that when Wilson arrived in town, he found the streets empty of welcoming crowds and was told that everyone was on Pennsylvania Avenue watching the parade.

Wilson experienced early success by implementing his "New Freedom" pledges of antitrust modification, tariff revision, and reform in banking and currency matters. His actions led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System and Federal Trade Commission.

Suffrage was only one of the volatile issues Wilson faced during his presidency. Domestically, his generally progressive measures for reform often met with opposition, although he did succeed in passing a bill instituting the Federal Reserve. His attitude to racial issues is generally regarded as a stain on his reputation. His administration instituted segregation in federal government for the first time since Abraham Lincoln began desegregation in 1863 and required photographs from job applicants to determine their race. . Wilson praised the movie Birth of a Nation (based on a book by a former classmate of Wilson, Thomas Dixon), saying:., "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true." Wilson also regarded those whom he termed "hyphenated Americans" (ie, German-Americans, Irish-Americans) with suspicion: "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."

Wilson pushed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 through Congress to suppress socialist, anti-British, pro-Irish, pro-German, or anti-war opinions. He also set up the United States Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel (thus its popular name, Creel Committee), which filled the country with anti-German propaganda and, during the first Red Scare, ordered the Palmer Raids against leftists. Wilson had Eugene V. Debs arrested for attributing World War I to financial interests and criticizing the Espionage Act.

Between 1914 and 1918 the United States invaded or intervened in Latin America many times, particularly in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama. The United States 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 Haiti legislature to choose the candidate Wilson selected as Haitian president. After Haiti refused to declare war on Germany, Wilson had Haiti's government dissolved and then forced a new less democratic constitution on Haiti through a sham referendum. American soldiers also expelled small farmers from their lands to work in chain gangs on public works projects and transferred the land to plantation owners. In 1919, Haitians rose up in rebellion against the Americans, resulting in 3,000 deaths. Gleijesus (1992) notes: "It is not that Wilson failed in his earnest efforts to bring democracy to these little countries. He never tried. He intervened to impose hegemony, not democracy."

Between 1917 and 1920 the US supported the "White" side of the Russian civil war, first monetarily, but later with a naval blockade and ground forces in Murmansk, Archangelsk, and Vladivostok.

World War I

In foreign policy he faced greater challenges than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Determining whether to involve the US in World War I tested his leadership severely.

President Wilson before Congress, announcing the break in the official relations with Germany. February 3, 1917.

He kept the United States neutral in the early years of World War I, which contributed to his popular re-election in 1916. However, with increased pressure, the United States entered the conflict with a formal declaration of war against Germany on Friday, April 6, 1917.

After the Great War, Wilson worked with mixed success to assure statehood for formerly oppressed nations and an equitable peace. On Tuesday, January 8, 1918, Wilson made his famous "Fourteen Points" address, introducing the idea of a League of Nations, an organization that would strive to help preserve territorial integrity and political independence among large and small nations alike.

Post-War

Wilson intended the Fourteen Points as a means toward ending the war and achieving an equitable peace for all the nations. He worked tirelessly to promote his plan at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The charter of the proposed League of Nations was incorporated into the conference's Treaty of Versailles, but most of the other Fourteen Points fell by the wayside.

For his peacemaking efforts, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. Receiving the award was bittersweet, however, because he was unable to convince congressional opponents, such as Henry Cabot Lodge, to support the resolution endorsing US entry into the league. United States membership, Wilson believed, was essential to ensuring lasting world peace.

Incapacity

On Thursday, September 25, 1919, Wilson suffered a mild stroke that went unannounced to the public. A week later, on Thursday, October 2, Wilson suffered a second, far more serious stroke that nearly totally incapacitated him. Although the extent of his disability was kept from the public until after his death, Wilson was purposely 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.

While Wilson was incapacitated, Wilson's second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, served as steward, selecting issues for his attention and delegating other issues to his cabinet heads. This was to date the most serious case of presidential disability in American history, and was cited as a key example why ratification of the 25th amendment was seen as important. The amendment, which provides for installation of the Vice President as Acting President in case of presidential disability, was ratified in 1967.

In 1921, Wilson and his second wife retired from the White House to a home in the Embassy Row section of Washington, DC. Wilson died there on Sunday, February 3, 1924. Mrs Wilson stayed in the home another 37 years, dying on Thursday, December 28, 1961.

Cabinet

Supreme Court appointments

Wilson appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

• James Clark McReynolds (1914)
• Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1916)
• John Hessin Clarke (1916)

Miscellaneous facts

• Woodrow Wilson was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternal organization.
• Woodrow Wilson's ancestral home is at Strabane, Northern Ireland.
• Woodrow Wilson grew up in Augusta, Georgia.
• Woodrow Wilson was president of the American Political Science Association from 1910 to 1911.
• Wilson sailed for Versailles on Wednesday, December 4, 1918 for the World War I peace talks, which made him the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.
• Wilson House, an undergraduate dormitory at Johns Hopkins University, is named in his honor.
• While a student at Hopkins, Wilson carved his initials (WW'86) into the underside of a massive oak table in the History Department. Dark with age, they can still be seen today.
• Wilson's 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).
• Wilson has been the subject of books by two particularly 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.

Related articles

• U.S. presidential election, 1912
• U.S. presidential election, 1916
• History of the United States (1865–1918)
• USS Woodrow Wilson (SSBN-624) (An USN SSBN named after President Wilson.)

External links

• First Inaugural Address (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/wilson1.htm)
• Second Inaugural Address (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/wilson2.htm)
• Woodrow Wilson Biography (http://www.libraryreference.org/wilson.html)

References

• Library of Congress: "Today in History: December 28" (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/dec28.html)
• Library of Congress: "Today in History: June 9" (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jun09.html)
• Gleijesus, Piero. "The other Americas," Washington Post Book World, December 27, 1992, 5.

da:Woodrow Wilson de:Thomas W. Wilson es:Woodrow Wilson eo:Woodrow WILSON fr:Woodrow Wilson it:Woodrow Wilson he:וודרו וילסון nl:Thomas Woodrow Wilson ja:ウッドロウ・ウィルソン pl:Thomas Woodrow Wilson sv:Woodrow Wilson zh-cn:伍德罗·威尔逊

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia article. Browse Wikipedia for more information.