Woodrow Wilson

gigatos | April 1, 2022

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Summary

Woodrow Wilson, born Thomas Woodrow Wilson (Staunton, December 28, 1856 – Washington, February 3, 1924), was an American politician and academic.

He was the 28th president of the United States (also an academic man, he served as chancellor of Princeton University. He became the third U.S. president from the Democratic Party, after Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland, to be re-elected for a second term. In 1919 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wilson is remembered for being the president of the United States in such a turbulent and crucial historical moment as the First World War and the immediate post-war period and for having played an important role in it, especially at the Paris Peace Conference in which he imposed the United States, for so long a second-rate economic and military power, in a dominant role on the international chessboard. Thanks to this new line of U.S. foreign policy, Wilson was the first U.S. president to have a very important weight among the great world leaders of the moment.

However, historiography places Wilson as an ambiguous figure because, if on the one hand he was considered the main promoter of a new peace and stability in Europe, something that earned him the Nobel Prize but that in reality was never fully realized (and this will be one of the many reasons that together will contribute to the outbreak of World War II), On the other hand, he is remembered for his strong incitement to racial segregation and white supremacism and for his pro-imperialist policy towards the weak and backward nations of America such as Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, Panama, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where the U.S. Army was complicit in numerous massacres.

Also read, biographies – Theodoros Kolokotronis

Origins and training

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1856 (he was the last president of the United States to be born in that state): his parents were Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Janet Woodrow. His family was of Scotch-Irish descent and came from Northern Ireland. Wilson grew up in Augusta, in the state of Georgia, and always stated that his first memory was the announcement that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming; Wilson”s father and mother were from Ohio, but sympathized with the Southerners in the U.S. Civil War.

They tended the wounded Confederates in their church; they let their son out to go see Jefferson Davis parade in handcuffs among the victorious Unionist army. Wilson would always remember standing “for a moment by General Lee”s side and looking into his face,” Wilson learned shorthand on his own to compensate for his difficulties and was able to succeed in his studies through determination and discipline, but could not quite overcome it.

He attended Davidson College for one year and then transferred to Princeton University, graduating in 1879; he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi student association. He later studied law at the University of Virginia for a year. After finishing and publishing his dissertation, The Congressional Government, he was awarded the degree of Doctor (Ph.D.) in political science from Johns Hopkins University in 1886 (an engraving of his initials can still be seen on the underside of a table in the History Department). Prior to the presidential appointment of Barack Obama, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991, Woodrow Wilson had been the only U.S. president to earn a doctorate.

Marriage to Ellen Axson

Wilson first met Ellen Axson, the daughter of a minister of religion, in a church: he courted her unrequitedly for several weeks. Months later, in 1883, he met her again by chance in a train station and was more receptive: they married on June 24, 1885 in Savannah, Georgia. They had three daughters, Margaret in 1886, Jessie in 1887, and Eleanor in 1889. None of them were yet married when Wilson entered the White House, but there were rapid changes: Jessie married Francis B. Sayre on November 25, 1913 while Eleanor married William G. McAdoo, the Secretary of the Treasury (i.e., U.S. Secretary of the Treasury) on May 7, 1914.

Political writings and the beginning of the academic career

Wilson”s era was the decades following the War of Secession, when the U.S. Congress was at its most powerful – “the fundamentals of all political activity are decided by the legislature” – and corruption was rampant. Rather than focusing on individuals to explain where the problem was in U.S. politics, Wilson focused on the constitutional structure.

Under the influence of Walter Bagehot”s work The English Constitution, Wilson judged the U.S. Constitution as pre-modern, unwieldy, and permeable to corruption. Before the strong presidencies in the early 20th century, Wilson even favored a parliamentary system for the United States. In the early 1880s, in a journal published by Henry Cabot Lodge, Wilson wrote:

Wilson began Congressionally Administered Government, his most famous work on politics, in support of a parliamentary system, but Wilson was impressed by Grover Cleveland and Congressionally Administered Government came out as a critical description of the U.S. system, with frequent negative comparisons to the British government. Wilson himself pointed out, “I am analyzing facts – diagnosing, not prescribing remedies.” He believed that the intricate American system of checks and balances was the cause of the institutions” problems: he argued that having divided up power made it impossible for voters to recognize who was responsible for mistakes. If the government misbehaved, Wilson demanded,

The longest section of Congressional Government is devoted to the United States House of Representatives, in which Wilson expresses disdain for the committee system. “The power,” he wrote, “is divided, as it once was, into forty-seven lordships, in each of which a standing committee is the court baron and its chairman the proprietary lord. These tiny barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them near enough to the full powers of government, can exercise at will an almost despotic reshuffling of their counties, and may sometimes threaten to go so far as to upset the kingdom itself.” Wilson said the committee system was fundamentally undemocratic because committee chairs, appointed on the basis of seniority, were accountable to no one but their own members, even as they determined the policy of national institutions.

In addition to their undemocratic nature, he also believed that the commission system facilitated corruption.

But at the time the Congressional government ended, Grover Cleveland was president, and Wilson had confidence that the government of the United States would emerge strengthened. Before becoming president himself, Wilson had witnessed the vigorous presidencies of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson no longer dealt with the parliamentary form of government. In his last scholarly work, Constitutional Government of the United States, from 1908, Wilson argued that the presidency “will be as great and as influential as the man who holds the office.” At the time of his presidency, Wilson simply hoped that presidents could be party leaders in the same way as a prime minister. Wilson also hoped that parties could reorganize according to ideological, not geographical, principles. “Eight words,” Wilson wrote, “contain the substance of the present degradation of our political parties: no leader, no principle; no principle, no party.”

Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University before joining Princeton University as professor of law and political economy in 1890. Popular as a teacher and respected as an academic, he delivered a speech at Princeton”s one hundred and fiftieth year celebrations (1896) entitled “Princeton in the Service of the Nation” (this has become a famous motto alluded to by the University, sometimes expanded to “Princeton in the Service of the World”): in this famous speech, he outlined his vision of the university in a democratic nation, calling institutions of higher learning “to the duty of illuminating through every lesson that can be drawn from the past.”

Wilson was unanimously elected chancellor of Princeton University on June 9, 1902: in his inaugural address, he developed these themes, trying to maintain a balance to satisfy both populists and aristocrats in the audience. As rector, he began a fundraising campaign to support the university: the guidelines he maintained during his Princeton rectorate proved to be among the most important innovations in higher education. He instituted a new system of core courses followed by two years of specialization in his chosen field. When he sought to reduce the influence of elitist “social circles,” however, Wilson ran into resistance from administrators and potential funders. He believed that system stifled the intellectual and moral life of students: opposition from wealthy and powerful alumni further convinced him of the undesirability of elitism and pushed him toward a more populist political position.

On June 23, 1918 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin.

Also read, biographies – V. Gordon Childe

Political career

Wilson served as president of the American Political Science Association (“American Political Science Association”) from 1910 to 1911. Through the publication of his commentaries on the political issues of the day, he gained a national reputation and increasingly seriously considered a career as a politician. In 1910 he received an unexpected offer to run for governor of New Jersey, which he gladly accepted: in the election he defeated Republican candidate Vivian M. Lewis by more than 80 000 votes.

Also read, biographies – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Presidency

For the 1912 presidential election, the Democratic Party surprisingly nominated Wilson as its candidate: the big favorite was Champ Clark. William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt divided the Republican Party by both running, allowing Wilson to win.

The day before his inauguration in March 1913, Elizabeth Freeman and other members of the Congressional Union, later called the National Women”s Party, organized a demonstration in favor of women”s suffrage in Washington to divert attention from the inauguration celebrations: when Wilson arrived in the city, it is said, he found the streets with no crowds to greet him and was told that they were all on Pennsylvania avenue watching the demonstration.

Wilson achieved immediate success, turning his promises of “New Freedom” into law in the areas of antitrust changes, tariff revisions, and banking and monetary reforms. His action led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission.

Suffrage was only one of the tricky issues Wilson addressed during his presidency; until Wilson announced his support for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution regarding suffrage, a group of women who called themselves the “silent sentinels” protested in front of the White House, displaying signs with words such as “Mr. President – What will you do about women”s suffrage?” In domestic politics, his reform proposals were often opposed, although he did succeed in getting the Federal Reserve Establishment Act passed.

His attitude toward racial issues is generally considered a stain on his reputation: many argue that he helped create the darkest period of racism in U.S. history and that he was himself a racist. His administration instituted racial segregation in the federal government for the first time since Abraham Lincoln began desegregation in 1863, and required photographs from job applicants to determine their race. Wilson also had a suspicious attitude toward those he called “hyphenated Americans” (German-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc.): “Every man who carries a hyphen, carries a dagger that is ready to plunge into the vital parts of this Republic whenever possible.”

Wilson”s History of the American People is repeatedly referenced in the film Birth of a Nation, which glorifies the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in contrast to radical Republicans during American Reconstruction. The film is based on a trilogy by Thomas Dixon, Wilson”s schoolmate, whose stated goal was “to revolutionize Northern sentiments by presenting a story that would turn every man in my audience into a good Democrat!” Wilson watched the film at a special screening at the White House on February 18, 1915. Director David Wark Griffith reported to the press that Wilson had exclaimed, “It is like writing history with lightning, my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” Yet soon after the screening, Wilson declared his disapproval of that “nefarious production.” Wilson”s right-hand man, Joseph Tumulty, said, “the president was ignorant of the nature of the play before he saw it, and did not for a moment express approval of the same.” Wilson, however, held several private viewings of the film at the White House.

The fact is that Griffith”s statement was widely reported in the media and was immediately discussed: in subsequent correspondence with Griffith, Wilson wrote to him enthusiastically about his filmmaking, without questioning the accuracy of the quote. Given the film”s message, strongly sided for Democrats, and Wilson”s documented views on race, it is not unreasonable to interpret that statement as support for the Klan, and the word “regret” as a reference to the film”s depiction of Reconstruction. Wilson tried to keep himself out of the debate but finally, on April 30, made known a denial that was actually very tenuous. Wilson”s support of the film”s historical accuracy was of great weight and contributed to the film”s popularity: this in turn was one of the main factors that led, in the same year, to the reorganization (at Stone Mountain, Georgia) of the Ku Klux Klan, which had been silent since its outlawing in the 1870s.

In the last year of his first term (1916), Wilson collected an impressive array of reforms, adopting many from Theodore Roosevelt”s 1912 program. Wilson signed the Federal Farm Loan Act, which immediately lowered interest rates for farmers, who accepted it as “the Magna Carta of American farm finance.” Wilson lobbied aggressively and successfully in Parliament for the Keating-Oven Act, which outlawed child labor, the Kern-McGillicuddy Act, which established a workers” compensation insurance system, and the Adamson Act, which improved conditions and wages for railroad workers. To prepare for the possibility of war entry, Wilson enlarged the army and navy through an inheritance tax and a high income tax.

Wilson was able to narrowly win his reelection in 1916, picking up many votes that had gone to Roosevelt and Eugene V. in 1912. Debs. In the years from 1914 to 1917 Wilson always tried to keep the United States out of World War I: he offered himself as a mediator, but neither the Allies nor the Central Powers took his proposals seriously. When Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and made a daring attempt to bring Mexico to its side, through the Zimmermann note, Wilson brought the United States into the war as an “allied belligerent.” In the thirties, the Nye Commission reconstructed the events that led to the entry into the war, emphasizing the role of explosives manufacturers and bankers who were exposed to England for 2.5 billion dollars.

Wilson had Congress pass the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918 to combat socialist, anti-British, pro-Ireland, pro-German, or anti-war views. He also established the United States Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel (hence its popular name, Creel Committee), which filled the country with anti-German propaganda and, during the first wave of fear of communism (1917-1920), organized Palmer”s actions against leftists. Wilson had the socialist leader and presidential candidate Eugene V. arrested. Debs, for accusing the financial powers of being responsible for World War I and for criticizing the Espionage Act. Wilson also supported the American Protective League, a private pro-war organization known for its flagrant violations of civil liberties

Between 1914 and 1918, the United States intervened many times, including with invasions, in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama; also continuing the “dollar diplomacy” inaugurated by William Howard Taft. U.S. troops remained in Nicaragua for the duration of the Wilson administration and were used to choose Nicaragua”s president and then to force Nicaragua to sign the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty. U.S. troops in Haiti forced Haitian politicians to elect Wilson”s chosen candidate as president: when Haiti refused to declare war on Germany, Wilson dissolved the Haitian government and then imposed a new, less democratic constitution through a sham referendum. U.S. soldiers also drove small landowners off their land to work in public works, in confinement and in chains, and transferred their land to landowners; in 1919 Haitians rose up in revolt against the Americans; the rebellion cost 3,000 lives.

Between 1917 and 1920, the U.S. supported the White Russian movement in the Russian Civil War, first financially, but later with a naval blockade and ground troops in Murmansk, Archangel, and Vladivostok.

Also read, biographies – Francisco Goya

The First World War

In foreign policy Wilson faced greater challenges than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Deciding whether to take the country into World War I put his leadership skills to the test. He kept the United States neutral during the early years of the war; this contributed to his 1916 re-election: however, after mounting pressure, the United States entered the conflict with a formal declaration of war on Germany on April 6, 1917; a declaration of war on Austria-Hungary followed on December 7 of the same year.

After the Great War, Wilson committed himself, with varying success, to promoting his idea of rearranging the world on an ethnic basis: on January 8, 1918 Wilson gave his famous Fourteen Points speech, advancing the proposal of a League of Nations, an organization that would aim at maintaining territorial integrity and political independence, both for large nations and for small ones. The most innovative point of Wilson”s proposal was the so-called “right to self-determination” for every people, intended as an ethnic community: according to this principle every ethnic group should have its own national state.

Based on this principle, on September 3, 1918, Secretary of State Robert Lansing delivered to Masaryk a statement from the U.S. government recognizing without reservation the Czechoslovak National Council, led by Masaryk, as a government of a legitimately belligerent nation, effectively making this American recognition more prominent than the earlier French and British statements.

The role in the Paris Peace Treaties

Wilson intended the Fourteen Points as a means to end the war and achieve an equitable peace for all nations. He arrived in Versailles on December 4, 1918 for the 1919 Peace Conference (becoming the first U.S. president to make a trip to Europe while in office), and worked hard to promote his plan. Eventually, the other victorious powers (France and Great Britain in particular) accepted the principles of nationality and self-determination of peoples, and the subsequent dissolution of the multinational empires (Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire). The principle of nationality was the basis for the construction of democratic Europe and the nation states.

These principles were applied mainly to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, to fill the gap left by the simultaneous collapse of the great absolutist empires. To meet the needs of Italy, they were not applied to South Tyrol, which was annexed to it. Despite this, President Wilson was certainly not in favor of the application of the London Pact, by which he did not feel bound, disadvantaging the Italians who lived beyond the borders decided at the end of the Great War.

The statute of the League of Nations was included in the Treaty of Versailles, but only four of the Fourteen Points (in the meantime increased to twenty-three) were fully respected.

For his work on peace treaties, in 1919 Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: the honor balanced the bitterness of having failed to convince his opponents in Congress, such as Henry Cabot Lodge, to support the resolution that committed the United States to join the League of Nations. U.S. participation, according to Wilson, was essential to maintaining lasting world peace. The Treaty of Versailles also caused serious economic problems for Germany, which caused a fall in domestic consumption that would lead to a deep depression: Wilson”s opponents believed that by supporting the treaty, they would cause an economic disaster.

Disability and death

On September 25, 1919, Wilson suffered a mild stroke, which was not made public. A week later, on October 2, Wilson suffered a second and more serious attack that left him almost totally incapacitated. Although the severity of his impairment was kept secret until his death, Wilson was kept away from his vice president Thomas R. Marshall, his cabinet, and congressmen visiting the White House for the remainder of his presidency. John Barry, in The Great Influenza, advances the hypothesis that Wilson”s predisposition to these attacks was a complication derived from the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic that sometimes struck the.

During Wilson”s illness, his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, served as his secretary, choosing issues to bring to his attention and delegating others to cabinet members. This is still the most serious case of presidential incapacity in U.S. history and was cited as a key example of why the 25th Amendment was considered so important. The amendment, which stipulates that the vice president shall perform the duties of the president in the event of his incapacity, was ratified in 1967.

In 1921, at the end of his term, Wilson and his wife retired from the White House and settled in a house in Washington, where he died on February 3, 1924: he is buried in the Washington National Cathedral. His second wife remained in their home for another 37 years, dying on December 28, 1961.

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