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Woodrow Wilson
Twenty-Eighth President
1913-1921
Born: December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia
Died: February 3, 1924 in Washington D.C.
SW Corner of 9th and St. Joseph Streets
Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. "No one but the President," he said, "seems to be expected ... to look out for the general interests of the country."
After graduation from Princeton and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902. He was elected Governor of New Jersey in 1910, and was elected President in 1912.
Wilson maneuvered three major pieces of legislation through Congress. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices. Wilson narrowly won re-election in 1916.
Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On April 2, 1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany and proclaimed the American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy." Wilson went before Congress in January 1918, to enunciate American war aims--the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish "A general association of nations... affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." The massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies.
After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He had developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?" But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.
The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty (it was never enacted). Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died, but served out his term. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.
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