158 Facts About Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921.

Woodrow Wilson was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches.

Woodrow Wilson served as the governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, during which he broke with party bosses and won the passage of several progressive reforms.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the US declared neutrality as Woodrow Wilson tried to negotiate peace between the Allied and Central Powers.

Woodrow Wilson was narrowly re-elected in the 1916 election, defeating Republican nominee Charles Evans Hughes.

Woodrow Wilson concentrated on diplomacy, issuing the Fourteen Points that the Allies and Germany accepted as a basis for post-war peace.

Woodrow Wilson wanted the off-year elections of 1918 to be a referendum endorsing his policies but instead the Republicans took control of Congress.

Woodrow Wilson successfully advocated for the establishment of a multinational organization, the League of Nations, which was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles that he signed; back home, he rejected a Republican compromise that would have allowed the Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty and join the League.

Woodrow Wilson had intended to seek a third term in office but had a stroke in October 1919 that left him incapacitated.

Into the 21st century, historians have criticized Woodrow Wilson for supporting racial segregation, although they continue to rank Woodrow Wilson as an above-average president for his accomplishments in office.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born to a family of Scotch-Irish and Scottish descent in Staunton, Virginia.

Woodrow Wilson was the third of four children and the first son of Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Jessie Janet Woodrow.

Woodrow Wilson's son Woodrow was born in the Manse, a house in the Staunton First Presbyterian Church where Joseph served.

Woodrow Wilson was one of only two US presidents to be a citizen of the Confederate States of America; the other was John Tyler, who served as the nation's tenth president from 1841 to 1845.

Woodrow Wilson's father identified with the Southern United States and was a staunch supporter of the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Woodrow Wilson's father was one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, later renamed the Presbyterian Church in the United States, following its 1861 split from the Northern Presbyterians.

Woodrow Wilson became minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, and the family lived there until 1870.

From 1870 to 1874, Woodrow Wilson lived in Columbia, South Carolina, where his father was a theology professor at the Columbia Theological Seminary.

In 1873, Woodrow Wilson became a communicant member of the Columbia First Presbyterian Church; he remained a member throughout his life.

Woodrow Wilson was elected secretary of the school's football association, president of the school's baseball association, and managing editor of the student newspaper.

Poor health forced Woodrow Wilson to withdraw from law school, but he continued to study law on his own while living with his parents in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Woodrow Wilson was admitted to the Georgia bar and made a brief attempt at establishing a law firm in Atlanta in 1882.

In late 1883, Woodrow Wilson enrolled at the recently established Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for doctoral studies in history, political science, German, and other fields.

Woodrow Wilson spent much of his time at Johns Hopkins University writing Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, which grew out of a series of essays in which he examined the workings of the federal government.

In 1883, Woodrow Wilson met and fell in love with Ellen Louise Axson.

Woodrow Wilson proposed marriage in September 1883; she accepted, but they agreed to postpone marriage while Wilson attended graduate school.

Woodrow Wilson agreed to sacrifice further independent artistic pursuits in order to marry Wilson in 1885.

From 1885 to 1888, Woodrow Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr College, a newly established women's college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia.

Woodrow Wilson taught ancient Greek and Roman history, American history, political science, and other subjects.

In 1888, Woodrow Wilson left Bryn Mawr College and was not given a farewell.

Woodrow Wilson accepted a position at Wesleyan University, an elite undergraduate college for men in Middletown, Connecticut.

Woodrow Wilson taught graduate courses in political economy and Western history, coached Wesleyan's football team, and founded a debate team.

In February 1890, with the help of friends, Woodrow Wilson was appointed Chair of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at the College of New Jersey, at an annual salary of $3,000.

Woodrow Wilson quickly earned a reputation at Princeton as a compelling speaker.

At Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson published several works of history and political science and was a regular contributor to Political Science Quarterly.

Woodrow Wilson had a considerable reputation as a historian and was an early member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Woodrow Wilson was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society in 1897.

Woodrow Wilson instituted academic departments and a system of core requirements to emphasize the development of expertise.

Woodrow Wilson appointed the first Jew and the first Roman Catholic to the faculty, and helped liberate the board from domination by conservative Presbyterians.

Woodrow Wilson worked to keep African Americans out of the school, even as other Ivy League schools were accepting small numbers of black people.

Indeed, when Woodrow Wilson became president of Princeton in 1902 Hibben was his chief advisor.

In 1912 Hibben stunned Woodrow Wilson by taking the lead against Woodrow Wilson's pet reform plan.

In 1912, two years after Woodrow Wilson left Princeton, Hibben became president of Princeton.

In 1906, Woodrow Wilson awoke to find himself blind in the left eye, the result of a blood clot and hypertension.

Woodrow Wilson began to exhibit his father's traits of impatience and intolerance, which would on occasion lead to errors of judgment.

In 1906, while vacationing in Bermuda, Woodrow Wilson met Mary Hulbert Peck, a socialite.

Woodrow Wilson sent very personal letters to her, which were later used against him by his adversaries.

Woodrow Wilson proposed moving the students into colleges, known as quadrangles, but Wilson's plan was met with fierce opposition from Princeton alumni.

In October 1907, due to the intensity of alumni opposition, Princeton's board of trustees instructed Woodrow Wilson to withdraw his plan for relocating student dormitories.

Late in his tenure, Woodrow Wilson had a confrontation with Andrew Fleming West, dean of Princeton University's graduate school and his ally, ex-President Grover Cleveland, who was a Princeton trustee.

Woodrow Wilson wanted to integrate a proposed graduate school building into the core of the campus, but West preferred a more distant campus site.

Woodrow Wilson became disenchanted with his job as Princeton University president due to the resistance to his recommendations, and he began considering a run for political office.

Woodrow Wilson's campaign focused on his promise to be independent of party bosses.

Woodrow Wilson quickly shed his professorial style for more emboldened speechmaking and presented himself as a full-fledged progressive.

Woodrow Wilson began formulating his reformist agenda, intending to ignore the demands of his party machinery.

Smith asked Woodrow Wilson to endorse his bid for the US Senate, but Woodrow Wilson refused and instead endorsed Smith's opponent James Edgar Martine, who had won the Democratic primary.

Republicans took control of the state assembly in early 1912, and Woodrow Wilson spent much of the rest of his tenure vetoing bills.

Woodrow Wilson nonetheless won passage of various reform laws including ones that restricted labor by women and children and increased standards for factory working conditions.

Shortly before leaving office, Woodrow Wilson signed a series of antitrust laws known as the "Seven Sisters", as well as another law that removed the power to select juries from local sheriffs.

Woodrow Wilson became a prominent 1912 presidential contender immediately upon his election as Governor of New Jersey in 1910, and his clashes with state party bosses enhanced his reputation with the rising Progressive movement.

In July 1911, Wilson brought William Gibbs McAdoo and "Colonel" Edward M House in to manage the campaign.

Woodrow Wilson finally won two-thirds of the vote on the convention's 46th ballot, and Marshall became Woodrow Wilson's running mate.

Woodrow Wilson directed campaign finance chairman Henry Morgenthau not to accept contributions from corporations and to prioritize smaller donations from the widest possible quarters of the public.

Brandeis and Woodrow Wilson rejected Roosevelt's proposal to establish a powerful bureaucracy charged with regulating large corporations, instead favoring the break-up of large corporations in order to create a level economic playing field.

Woodrow Wilson engaged in a spirited campaign, criss-crossing the country to deliver numerous speeches.

Woodrow Wilson's victory made him the first Southerner to win a presidential election since the Civil War, the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland left office in 1897, and the first and only president to hold a Ph.

Woodrow Wilson introduced a comprehensive program of domestic legislation at the outset of his administration, something no president had ever done before.

Woodrow Wilson announced four major domestic priorities: the conservation of natural resources, banking reform, tariff reduction, and better access to raw materials for farmers by breaking up Western mining trusts.

Woodrow Wilson introduced these proposals in April 1913 in a speech delivered to a joint session of Congress, becoming the first president since John Adams to address Congress in person.

Woodrow Wilson met extensively with Democratic senators and appealed directly to the people through the press.

Woodrow Wilson signed the Revenue Act of 1913 into law on October 3,1913.

The policies of the Woodrow Wilson administration had a durable impact on the composition of government revenue, which now primarily came from taxation rather than tariffs.

Woodrow Wilson sought a middle ground between progressives such as Bryan and conservative Republicans like Nelson Aldrich, who, as chairman of the National Monetary Commission, had put forward a plan for a central bank that would give private financial interests a large degree of control over the monetary system.

Woodrow Wilson convinced Democrats on the left that the new plan met their demands.

One month after signing the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, which built on the Sherman Act by defining and banning several anti-competitive practices.

Woodrow Wilson thought a child labor law would probably be unconstitutional but reversed himself in 1916 with a close election approaching.

Woodrow Wilson endorsed the bill at the last minute under pressure from party leaders who stressed how popular the idea was, especially among the emerging class of women voters.

Woodrow Wilson told Democratic Congressmen they needed to pass this law and a workman's compensation law to satisfy the national progressive movement and to win the 1916 election against a reunited GOP.

Woodrow Wilson approved the goal of upgrading the harsh working conditions for merchant sailors and signed LaFollette's Seamen's Act of 1915.

Woodrow Wilson called on the Labor Department to mediate conflicts between labor and management.

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson dispatched soldiers to help bring an end to the Colorado Coalfield War, one of the deadliest labor disputes in American history.

Woodrow Wilson disliked the excessive government involvement in the Federal Farm Loan Act, which created twelve regional banks empowered to provide low-interest loans to farmers.

Woodrow Wilson embraced the long-standing Democratic policy against owning colonies, and he worked for the gradual autonomy and ultimate independence of the Philippines, which had been acquired in 1898.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson purchased by treaty the Danish West Indies, renamed as the United States Virgin Islands.

Immigration from Europe declined significantly once World War I began and Woodrow Wilson paid little attention to the issue during his presidency.

Woodrow Wilson nominated three men to the United States Supreme Court, all of whom were confirmed by the US Senate.

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson nominated sitting attorney general James Clark McReynolds.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis to the Court, setting off a major debate in the Senate over Brandeis's progressive ideology and his religion; Brandeis was the first Jewish nominee to the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, Woodrow Wilson was able to convince Senate Democrats to vote to confirm Brandeis, who served on the court until 1939.

Woodrow Wilson sought to move away from the foreign policy of his predecessors, which he viewed as imperialistic, and he rejected Taft's Dollar Diplomacy.

The Woodrow Wilson administration sent troops to occupy the Dominican Republic and intervene in Haiti, and Woodrow Wilson authorized military interventions in Cuba, Panama, and Honduras.

Woodrow Wilson took office during the Mexican Revolution, which had begun in 1911 after liberals overthrew the military dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

Shortly before Woodrow Wilson took office, conservatives retook power through a coup led by Victoriano Huerta.

Woodrow Wilson rejected the legitimacy of Huerta's "government of butchers" and demanded Mexico hold democratic elections.

Eager to withdraw from Mexico due to tensions in Europe, Woodrow Wilson ordered Pershing to withdraw, and the last American soldiers left in February 1917.

In early 1915, the Germans sank three American ships; Woodrow Wilson took the view, based on some reasonable evidence, that these incidents were accidental, and a settlement of claims could be postponed until the end of the war.

Woodrow Wilson demanded that the German government "take immediate steps to prevent the recurrence" of incidents like the sinking of the Lusitania.

Woodrow Wilson extracted from Germany a pledge to constrain submarine warfare to the rules of cruiser warfare, which represented a major diplomatic concession.

The health of Ellen Woodrow Wilson declined after her husband entered office, and doctors diagnosed her with Bright's disease in July 1914.

President Woodrow Wilson was deeply affected by the loss, falling into depression.

On March 18,1915, Woodrow Wilson met Edith Bolling Galt at a White House tea.

Galt initially rebuffed him, but Woodrow Wilson was undeterred and continued the courtship.

Woodrow Wilson joined John Tyler and Grover Cleveland as the only presidents to marry while in office.

Woodrow Wilson was renominated at the 1916 Democratic National Convention without opposition.

Woodrow Wilson favored a minimum wage for all work performed by and for the federal government.

Nationally, Woodrow Wilson won 277 electoral votes and 49.2 percent of the popular vote, while Hughes won 254 electoral votes and 46.1 percent of the popular vote.

Woodrow Wilson was able to win by picking up many votes that had gone to Roosevelt or Debs in 1912.

Woodrow Wilson swept the Solid South and won all but one Western state, while Hughes won most of the Northeastern and Midwestern states.

Woodrow Wilson's re-election made him the first Democrat since Andrew Jackson to win two consecutive terms.

Woodrow Wilson sought the establishment of "an organized common peace" that would help prevent future conflicts.

On January 8,1918, Woodrow Wilson delivered a speech, known as the Fourteen Points, wherein he articulated his administration's long term war objectives.

Meanwhile, French and British leaders convinced Woodrow Wilson to send a few thousand American soldiers to join the Allied intervention in Russia, which was in the midst of a civil war between the Communist Bolsheviks and the White movement.

Woodrow Wilson called on voters in the 1918 off-year elections to elect Democrats as an endorsement of his policies.

Woodrow Wilson had an illness during the conference, and some experts believe the Spanish flu was the cause.

Unlike other Allied leaders, Woodrow Wilson did not seek territorial gains or material concessions from the Central Powers.

Woodrow Wilson himself presided over the committee that drafted the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Japan proposed that the conference endorse a Racial Equality Proposal; Woodrow Wilson was indifferent to the issue, but acceded to strong opposition from Britain's dominions such as Australia and South Africa.

However, in pursuit of his League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson conceded several points to the other powers present at the conference.

Woodrow Wilson agreed to allowing the Allied European powers and Japan to essentially expand their empires by establishing de facto colonies in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia out the former German and Ottoman Empires; these territorial awards to the victorious countries were thinly disguised as "League of Nations mandates".

Woodrow Wilson was unable to convince the other Allied powers, France in particular, to temper the harshness of the settlement being leveled at the defeated Central Powers, especially Germany.

Woodrow Wilson consistently refused to compromise, partly due to concerns about having to re-open negotiations with the other treaty signatories.

When Lodge was on the verge of building a two-thirds majority to ratify the Treaty with ten reservations, Woodrow Wilson forced his supporters to vote Nay on March 19,1920, thereby closing the issue.

On October 2,1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered a serious stroke, leaving him paralyzed on his left side, and with only partial vision in the right eye.

Woodrow Wilson was confined to bed for weeks and sequestered from everyone except his wife and his physician, Cary Grayson.

Woodrow Wilson's mind remained relatively clear; but he was physically enfeebled, and the disease had wrecked his emotional constitution and aggravated all his more unfortunate personal traits.

In mid-March 1920, Lodge and his Republicans formed a coalition with the pro-treaty Democrats to pass a treaty with reservations, but Woodrow Wilson rejected this compromise and enough Democrats followed his lead to defeat ratification.

Prohibition developed as an unstoppable reform during World War I, but the Woodrow Wilson administration played only a minor role.

In October 1919, Woodrow Wilson vetoed the Volstead Act, legislation designed to enforce Prohibition, but his veto was overridden by Congress.

Woodrow Wilson opposed women's suffrage in 1911 because he believed women lacked the public experience needed to be good voters.

Woodrow Wilson did not speak publicly on the issue except to echo the Democratic Party position that suffrage was a state matter, primarily because of strong opposition in the white South to black voting rights.

Woodrow Wilson continually pressured the Senate to vote for the amendment, telling senators that its ratification was vital to winning the war.

Woodrow Wilson largely stayed out of the campaign, although he endorsed Cox and continued to advocate for US membership in the League of Nations.

Woodrow Wilson met with Harding for tea on his last day in office, March 3,1921.

On December 10,1920, Woodrow Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize "for his role as founder of the League of Nations".

Woodrow Wilson became the second sitting United States president after Theodore Roosevelt to become a Nobel Peace Laureate.

In 1921, Woodrow Wilson opened a law practice with former secretary of state Bainbridge Colby.

Woodrow Wilson showed up the first day but never returned, and the practice was closed by the end of 1922.

On November 10,1923, Woodrow Wilson made his last national address, delivering a short Armistice Day radio speech from the library of his home.

Woodrow Wilson's health did not markedly improve after leaving office, declining rapidly in January 1924.

Woodrow Wilson died on February 3,1924, at the age of 67.

Woodrow Wilson was interred in Washington National Cathedral, being the only president whose final resting place lies within the nation's capital.

Woodrow Wilson was born and raised in the US South by parents who were committed supporters of both slavery and the Confederacy.

Academically, Woodrow Wilson was an apologist for slavery and the Redeemers, and one of the foremost promoters of the Lost Cause mythology.

Woodrow Wilson was the first Southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor in 1848 and the only former subject of the Confederacy.

At Princeton, Woodrow Wilson actively discouraged the admission of African-Americans as students.

Oswald Garrison Villard, who later became an opponent of his, initially thought that Woodrow Wilson was not a bigot and supported progress for black people, and he was frustrated by Southern opposition in the Senate, to which Woodrow Wilson capitulated.

Woodrow Wilson appointed a total of nine African-Americans to prominent positions in the federal bureaucracy, eight of whom were Republican carry-overs.

Since 1863, the US mission to Haiti and Santo Domingo was almost always led by an African American diplomat regardless of what party the sitting president belonged to; Wilson ended this half-century-old tradition but continued to appoint Black diplomats, such as George Washington Buckner, as well as Joseph L Johnson, to head the mission to Liberia.

Woodrow Wilson's administration escalated the discriminatory hiring policies and segregation of government offices that had begun under Theodore Roosevelt and continued under Taft.

Woodrow Wilson did not adopt Burleson's proposal but allowed Cabinet secretaries discretion to segregate their respective departments.

At the suggestion of Oklahoma Senator Thomas Gore, Wilson nominated Adam E Patterson, a Black Democrat from Muskogee, Oklahoma, for the position of Register of the Treasury in July 1913; Patterson withdrew his name from consideration following opposition from Southern Democratic senators James K Vardaman and Benjamin Tillman.

Woodrow Wilson is generally ranked by historians and political scientists as an above average president.

Woodrow Wilson is generally regarded as a key figure in the establishment of modern American liberalism, and a strong influence on future presidents such as Franklin D Roosevelt and Lyndon B Johnson.

Many of Woodrow Wilson's accomplishments, including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the graduated income tax, and labor laws, continued to influence the United States long after Woodrow Wilson's death.

In 2018, conservative columnist George Will wrote in The Washington Post that Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the "progenitors of today's imperial presidency".

Notwithstanding his accomplishments in office, Woodrow Wilson has received criticism for his record on race relations and civil liberties, for his interventions in Latin America, and for his failure to win ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is a non-profit that provides grants for teaching fellowships.

The Woodrow Wilson Foundation was established to honor Wilson's legacy but was terminated in 1993.