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U.S Presidents — Woodrow Wilson | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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OVERVIEW
Name: Woodrow Wilson
President: # 28 Term Number(s): 32, 33 Term Length: 8 Took Office: March 4, 1913 Left Office: March 4, 1921 Age when Elected: 56 Party: Democratic Also Known As: "Schoolmaster in Politics" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Education: Princeton University (B.A), Johns Hopkins University (PhD)
Occupation: Academic (History, Political science) Other Governmental Position: 34th Governor of New Jersey. Military Service: None Religion: Presbyterianism Spouse(s): Ellen Axson Wilson (June 24, 1885), Edith Bolling Galt Wilson December 18, 1915) Children: Margaret Woodrow Wilson, Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre, Eleanor R. Wilson McAdoo
Birthdate: December 28, 1856
Birthplace: Staunton, Virginia Deathdate: February 3, 1924 Deathplace: Washington, D.C. Age at Death: 67 Cause of Death: stroke Place of Internment: National Cathedral in Washington, DC  Signature FIRST ELECTION
Election Year: 1912
Main Opponent: Theodore Roosevelt Voter Participation: 58.80%
SECOND ELECTION
Election Year: 1916
Main Opponent: Charles Evans Hughes Voter Participation: 61.10%
CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS
Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall
Secretary of State: William Jennings Bryan (1913–1915), Robert Lansing (1915–1920), Bainbridge Colby (1920–1921) Secretary of the Treasury: William Gibbs McAdoo (1913–1918), Carter Glass (1918–1920), David F. Houston (1920–1921) Secretary of War: Lindley M. Garrison (1913–1916), Newton D. Baker (1916–1921) Secretary of the Navy: Josephus Daniels (1913–1921) Secretary of the Interior: Franklin Knight Lane (1913–1920), John Barton Payne (1920–1921) Secretary of Agriculture: David F. Houston (1913–1920), Edwin T. Meredith (1920–1921) Secretary of Commerce: William C. Redfield (1913–1919), Joshua W. Alexander (1919–1921) Secretary of Labor: William B. Wilson (1912–1921) Attorney General: James Clark McReynolds (1913–1914), Thomas W. Gregory (1914–1919), Alexander Mitchell Palmer (1919–1921) Postmaster General: Albert S. Burleson (1913–1921) Supreme Court Assignments: James Clark McReynolds (1914), Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1916), John Hessin Clarke (1916) PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY Wilson had seen the frightfulness of war. He was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina. After graduation from Princeton University (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson. Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton University in 1902. His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor. He was nominated for president at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states' rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote. Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. 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. Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law prohibited child labor, and another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan "He kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won re-election. After the election, however, 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. Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. 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." After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. 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. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924. FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Ellen Axson Wilson Those who knew Mrs. Wilson in the White House described her as calm and sweet, a motherly woman, pretty and refined. Her soft Southern voice had kept its slow drawl through many changes of residence. Ellen Louise Axson grew up in Rome, Georgia, where her father, the Reverend S.E. Axson, was a Presbyterian minister. Thomas Woodrow Wilson first saw her when he was about six and she only a baby. In 1883, as a young lawyer from Atlanta, "Tommy" visited Rome and met "Miss Ellie Lou" again—a beautiful girl now, keeping house for a bereaved father. He thought, "what splendid, laughing eyes!" Despite their instant attraction, they did not marry until 1885, because she was unwilling to leave her heartbroken father. That same year, Bryn Mawr College offered Wilson a teaching position at an annual salary of $1,500. He and his bride lived near the campus, keeping her little brother with them. Humorously insisting that her own children must not be born Yankees, she went to relatives in Georgia for the birth of Margaret in 1886 and Jessie in 1887. But Eleanor was born in Connecticut, while Wilson was teaching at Wesleyan University. Mr. Wilson's distinguished career at Princeton University began in 1890, bringing his wife new social responsibilities. From such demands she took refuge, as always, in art. She had studied briefly in New York, and the quality of her paintings compares favorably with professional art of the period. She had a studio with a skylight installed at the White House in 1913, and found time for painting despite the weddings of two daughters within six months, as well as the duties of hostess for the nation. The Wilsons had preferred to begin the administration without an inaugural ball, and the first lady's entertainments were simple; but her unaffected cordiality made her parties successful. In their first year she convinced her scrupulous husband that it would be perfectly proper to invite influential legislators to a private dinner, and when such an evening led to agreement on a tariff bill, he told a friend, "You see what a wise wife I have!" Descendant of slave owners, Ellen Wilson lent her prestige to the cause of improving housing in the capital's slums. Visiting dilapidated alleys, she brought them to the attention of debutantes and congressmen. Her death spurred passage of a remedial bill she had worked for. Her health failing slowly from Bright's disease, Mrs. Wilson died on August 6, 1914. On the day before her death, she made her physician promise to tell Mr. Wilson "later" that she hoped he would marry again; she murmured at the end, "...take good care of my husband." Struggling to control his grief, Wilson took her to Rome for burial among her kin. FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Edith Bolling Galt Wilson Descendant of Virginia aristocracy, she was born in Wytheville in 1872, seventh among eleven children of Sallie White and Judge William Holcombe Bolling. Until the age of 12 she never left the town. At 15 she went to Martha Washington College to study music, with a second year at a smaller school in Richmond. Visiting a married sister in Washington, pretty young Edith met a businessman named Norman Galt; in 1896 they were married. For 12 years she lived as a contented (though childless) young matron in the capital, with vacations abroad. In 1908 her husband died unexpectedly. Shrewdly, Edith Galt chose a good manager who operated the family's jewelry firm with financial success. By a quirk of fate and a chain of friendships, Mrs. Galt met the bereaved President Wilson, still mourning profoundly for his first wife. A man who depended on feminine companionship, the lonely Wilson took an instant liking to Mrs. Galt, charming and intelligent and unusually pretty. Admiration changed swiftly to love. In proposing to her, he made the poignant statement that, "In this place time is not measured by weeks, or months, or years, but by deep human experiences..." They were married privately on December 18, 1915, at her home; and after they returned from a brief honeymoon in Virginia, their happiness made a vivid impression on their friends and White House staff. Though the new first lady had sound qualifications for the role of hostess, the social aspect of the administration was overshadowed by the war in Europe and abandoned after the United States entered the conflict in 1917. Edith Wilson submerged her own life in her husband's, trying to keep him fit under tremendous strain. She accompanied him to Europe when the Allies conferred on terms of peace. Wilson returned to campaign for Senate approval of the peace treaty and the League of Nations Covenant. His health failed in September 1919; a stroke left him partly paralyzed. His constant attendant, Mrs. Wilson took over many routine duties and details of government. But she did not initiate programs or make major decisions, and she did not try to control the executive branch. She selected matters for her husband's attention and let everything else go to the heads of departments or remain in abeyance. Her "stewardship," she called this. And in My Memoir, published in 1939, she stated emphatically that her husband's doctors had urged this course upon her. In 1921, the Wilsons retired to a comfortable home in Washington, where he died three years later. A highly respected figure in the society of the capital, Mrs. Wilson lived on to ride in President Kennedy's inaugural parade. She died later in 1961: on December 28, her famous husband's birthday. MAJOR EVENTS
1913: Federal Reserve Act.
1913: Seventeenth Amendment calls for direct election of senators.
1914: Clayton Anti-Trust Act.
1914–1918: World War I.
1917: United States enters World War I by declaring war on Germany.
1919: Treaty of Versailles.
1919: Eighteenth Amendment ratified, prohibiting alcoholic beverages.
1920: Nineteenth Amendment ratified, giving women the right to vote.
TRIVIA
1. Woodrow Wilson was the first president to earn a Ph.D., earning his in political science in 1886.
2. A flock of sheep was raised on the White House lawn during Wilson's presidency in order to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I.
3. The only president buried in Washington, D.C., Wilson is interred at the Washington National Cathedral.
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