Like
Roosevelt before him, 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." He
developed a program of progressive reform and asserted
international leadership in building a new world order. In
1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a
crusade to make the world "safe for democracy."
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 (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 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; 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.
But
after the election 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.
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Woodrow
Wilson