The Biography Of Woodrow Wilso Essay, Research Paper

Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow, 28th president of the United States, enacted significant reform legislation and led the United States during World War I. Wilson’s belief in international cooperation through an association of nations led to the creation of the League of Nations and ultimately to the United Nations. More than any president before him, Wilson was responsible for increasing United States participation in world affairs. A political novice who had held only one public office before becoming president, Wilson possessed considerable political skill. Wilson was born to religious and well-educated people, mainly of Scottish background. Wilson’s father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, studied for the clergy at the Presbyterian-directed College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. There, in 1856 Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born, the first son and third child. Wilson had a good singing voice and played the violin. The Civil War (1861-1865) was difficult for the Wilsons. Dr. Wilson was an ardent Confederate sympathizer, and young Wilson witnessed the ruthless behavior of federal troops who, under General William T. Sherman, invaded Georgia and South Carolina. Wilson remained a Southerner throughout his life. Wilson’s was educated partly at home and partly at private schools in Augusta and, after 1870, in war-ravaged Columbia, South Carolina, to which the Wilsons moved. Like his father, young Wilson had great admiration for English letters and history. The young Wilson took a moral and religious attitude toward society. In 1873, Wilson attended Davidson College, a small Presbyterian school in North Carolina, of which his father was a trustee. Wilson worked less hard at achieving high grades than at deciding upon a career. The essay revealed Wilson’s gift for dramatizing ideas and giving them simple and urgent form. His criticism of the powerful committees that dominated the Congress of the United States was largely a criticism of the Congress that had dictated policy to the defeated Southern states during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, but Wilson’s essay went beyond sectional feelings. Wilson was encouraged by the excellent reception of his essay and decided to become a lawyer and enter politics. In 1883 Wilson abandoned his law career and entered the graduate school of The Johns Hopkins University to study history. Although a candidate for a degree in history, Wilson continued to analyze politics. Influential reviewers found Wilson’s critical attitude toward American democracy novel and stimulating. Cultured and vivacious, Mrs. Wilson proved the perfect mate for her sensitive husband. In 1885 Wilson also accepted a position with the newly opened Bryn Mawr College, a school for women near Philadelphia. In 1888 Wilson left Bryn Mawr for a professorship in history and political economy at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. At Wesleyan, Wilson was a successful lecturer, faculty leader, and football coach. As a historian, Wilson shared the views of American history held by most of his contemporaries. Wilson seemed to abandon hope for a political career, but he continued to follow political affairs. Still responding to strong public demand for his work, Wilson wrote A History of the American People, published in 1902 in five volumes. Wilson’s name became familiar and increasingly respected. When the presidency of the college became vacant in 1902, Wilson was unanimously elected. Two presidents of the United States, Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), attended his inauguration. As president of Princeton, Wilson tried to end practices he believed harmful to education. To Wilson’s deep chagrin the quad plan failed to win the approval of the university’s trustees. Wilson wanted to build the new school on campus, but West planned to set it apart from the university. It was a gift the Princeton trustees were unwilling and Wilson was unable to resist. Such academic battles caused Wilson acute nervous strain and sickness. Wilson’s presidency at Princeton coincided with the first part of the Progressive Era in American history. Although some critics thought that the educational reforms Wilson advocated were too extreme, his social and political outlook remained largely conservative. Although Wilson was dissatisfied with the politics of the period, he did develop some new attitudes. Roosevelt’s activities did, however, inspire Wilson to abandon his earlier attitudes about the presidency. In lectures published in 1907 in Constitutional Government in the United States he stated that the president could be a national voice in affairs. Colonel George B. Harvey, editor of Harper’s Weekly, was instrumental in shifting Wilson’s interests from the academic life to politics. Wilson’s personality and his views as president of Princeton had impressed Harvey, and in 1906 he suggested to other party members that Wilson would make a good Democratic presidential candidate. The idea reawakened Wilson’s political ambitions. Harvey urged the state Democratic leader, James Smith, Jr., to campaign for Wilson’s nomination for the governorship. Wilson took the situation in stride. Wilson proved able to change his political attitudes. Record was the leader of a group of Progressives that included Joseph Tumulty, later Wilson’s private secretary, and Williams McCombs, who was to lead Wilson’s drive for the presidency. In his letter, Wilson stated unequivocally that he was opposed to existing machine politics. The progressive tide of that era, however, was in Wilson’s favor. As one of the architects of Wilson’s triumph he felt every right to the office, especially since Wilson had said nothing to indicate he would oppose this ambition. Wilson knew that it would outrage his progressive allies to endorse Smith, and the result was a bitter fight for leadership. This campaign completed Wilson’s break with the machine. Smith’s accusations of dishonesty and ingratitude failed to impress the people, and Wilson finally won the support of the legislature. Wilson had been educated by his progressive associates and encouraged by the trend toward the Democratic Party throughout the country. Under Wilson’s leadership, New Jersey was rapidly transformed from a conservative state into one of the most progressive in the nation. Wilson worked to consolidate his control of the Democratic Party in New Jersey and to break ground for the coming presidential struggle. Wilson suffered political defeats in 1911 as the Republicans made gains in the New Jersey legislature. Wilson also reassessed his relationship to Colonel Harvey, who continued to line up support for him. In November 1911 he printed a For President: Woodrow Wilson banner on the editorial page of Harper’s Weekly. He also enlisted for Wilson’s candidacy a number of wealthy financiers and other influential people. However, Wilson believed that such backing might taint the progressive image on which he still depended. Wilson alienated Harvey when he told Harvey that his support was hurting Wilson’s chances for the presidency. This letter, made public in January 1912, threatened to end Wilson’s candidacy. A dinner at which Bryan and Wilson were present gave Wilson a chance to put the letter behind him. Wilson was impressed by House’s ideas, especially those expressed in his novel Phillip Dru: Administrator, published anonymously in 1912. Wilson and House soon became close allies. William F. McCombs, Wilson’s manager, came with fewer pledges, but he had raised wide interest in Wilson’s cause. Through 45 ballots, Wilson’s voting strength grew. The Democrats countered with Wilson’s New Freedom, which, they asserted, would free American potential rather than regiment it. Wilson won only 41.85 percent of the popular vote but polled 435 electoral votes, compared with Roosevelt’s 88 and Taft’s 8. World War I began in Europe in 1914. The war eventually became a global war involving 32 nations. The Allies and the Associated Powers eventually had 28 nations, including the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Italy, and the United States. When the war began, Wilson immediately announced that the United States would be neutral in the struggle, and he urged Americans to be neutral in fact as well as in name. The war filled him with genuine horror. The United States had a duty to keep itself intact, for it would have to build up the nations ravaged by war. With British ships in control of the sea lanes, Page defended British policies to Wilson. Colonel House influenced Wilson’s views on the war. Wilson permitted House to travel abroad freely and to discuss issues with high-ranking British and German officials. Wilson now made the crucial distinction that would thereafter dominate U.S. opinion. Wilson warned that he would hold the Germans strictly accountable for their actions. Wilson responded by stressing the need for fair warnings that would preserve lives. Pacifists, those who opposed war or any type of violence on principle, were dissatisfied with Wilson’s unclear policies, but those who embraced the British cause were outraged. Wilson saw no contradiction between his domestic and foreign programs; his intention was to extend the domestic crusade for democracy to foreign shores. In December 1916, Wilson played the role of peacemaker with fresh determination, asking the Allies and the Central Powers to announce their terms to end the war. With Britain in control of most propaganda and all ocean routes to the United States, German leaders concluded that Wilson’s neutrality did not help them. Wilson severed relations with Germany but expressed the hope that U.S. ships would not be attacked. An angry Wilson called them a little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, (who) have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible. Wilson and a vast segment of the American people still hoped to stay out of the war. The night prior to asking Congress to declare war, Wilson spoke with a trusted journalist, Frank L. Cobb of the New York World. Wilson called not only the military but also progressives to join the crusade. George Creel, a progressive journalist, headed the Committee on Public Information, which enlisted progressive writers to explain war aims to the nation. Wilson gave them authority to act, supported them against their critics, and recognized their achievements. The swift conversion from peace to war confirmed Wilson’s conviction that Americans as a nation had joined a crusade. Wilson was not disillusioned to learn that the Allies had been plotting the dissolution of the German Empire. To counter a peace plan suggested by the Bolsheviks, Wilson offered his own plan for peace. Addressing Congress on January 8, 1918, Wilson outlined what he called his Fourteen Points. Wilson’s program imagined open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, freedom of the seas, weapons reduction, territorial adjustments between nations, and Wilson’s dearest cause, the League of Nations:

A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Wilson’s leadership had made him known all over the world. Wilson was at the height of his career. On November 11 Wilson and his discontented Allies, who would have preferred total military victory, signed an armistice. In less than a year, however, Wilson would lose all direct influence on world events. Wilson desperately tried to create fair principles to settle issues from the war, but he found himself caught in a web of trickery and compromise. At Columbus, Ohio, on September 4, 1919, Wilson began the first of his detailed explanations of the league’s operation. Wilson’s stroke left him physically incapacitated but his condition was not made public. The league remained Wilson’s constant preoccupation.