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Woodrow Wilson Facts
- President No.: 28th
- When did Woodrow Wilson serve? 1913-1921
- What was Woodrow Wilson’s party? Democrat
- Where was Woodrow Wilson from? New Jersey
- Who was Woodrow Wilson’s wife? Ellen Wilson, first wife. Edith Wilson, second wife
- When was Woodrow Wilson born? December 29, 1856
- When did Woodrow Wilson die? February 3, 1924
- Which college did Woodrow Wilson attend? Princeton University, University of Virginia Law School, Johns Hopkins University
- What was Woodrow Wilson’s Jobs Before President? College Professor, historian and political scientist, president of Princeton University, Governor of New Jersey
- What was Woodrow Wilson’s height? 5 feet, 11 inches
- What was the population when Woodrow Wilson was president? 106,021,537
- What hobbies did Woodrow Wilson have? Golf, riding, swimming, walking
- What pets did Woodrow Wilson have? Sheep on the White House lawn
- What transportation did Woodrow Wilson use? Car, boat
- How did Woodrow Wilson communicate? Telephone, typed letter. telegram
Woodrow Wilson Biography
Woodrow Wilson was the twenty-eighth President of the United States. He served from 1913-1921. He was born on December 29, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia. His father was a Presbyterian minister. When Wilson was two, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia.
Wilson had childhood memories of the Civil War. Southern schools had been affected by the war and Wilson did not begin his education until he was nine, and could not read well until he was eleven. When he was thirteen, the family moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where his father became a professor in a theological seminary.
Wilson was sent to Davidson College in 1873 when he was sixteen, to prepare for the ministry. He left the next spring because of illness. After a year and a half of convalescence, he went to Presbyterian College of New Jersey in Princeton. It was a solid experience for him. He edited the campus newspaper and debated.
During his time at Princeton, Wilson decided to forsake the ministry, as a career. He decided to become a statesman and went to law school at University of Virginia in 1879. Early in 1881, illness again forced him to leave school, but he was granted his degree in 1882 and admitted to the bar.
Wilson tried to practice law in Atlanta from 1882 to 1883, but the town was full of lawyers. He decided to return to school to ultimately teach. He entered graduate school at Johns Hopkins and after graduating and writing his first book, he took a teaching position at Bryn Mawr, a new women’s college.
He married Ellen Axson in 1885 and in 1886, persuaded the faculty at Johns Hopkins to grant him a Ph.D. He then served as a professor of history and politics at Wesleyan University in Connecticut from 1888 to 1890. In 1890, he accepted a position at Princeton in history and jurisprudence. By this time, the Wilson’s had three daughters.
Wilson published a five volume ‘History of the American People” during his time at Princeton. In 1902, he was chosen to become the president of the University. He was an activist president, raising the standards of scholarship, adding a perceptoral plan, and pushing for graduates to seek opportunities to serve the people. He also accused Protestant churches of “serving the classes and not the masses” and ‘having more regards for pew rents than for men’s souls.”.
After that speech, speculation began about whether Wilson would leave the university for political office. In 1910, he was approached to run for governor of New Jersey and ultimately, the Presidency by a group of prominent Democrats. When nominated, he resigned from Princeton, and won the election as Governor.
As Governor, Wilson pushed hard for reforms. He was successful until, in 1912, the Republicans won control of both Houses. From 1911 onward, Wilson was open in seeking the Democratic nomination for President. While the underdog going into the convention in 1912, Wilson eventually won on the forty-sixth ballot. When Roosevelt decided to run himself, this split the Republican vote between Roosevelt and Taft and Wilson wound up the winner.
Wilson took office in March 1913. At the time, no one was forecasting the coming war in Europe. Wilson’s inaugural address focused his thoughts on the human conditions in the US and the reforms that were needed at all levels to effect change.
Wilson called a press conference two weeks after inauguration, believing the people had a right to know what was going on in the Presidency. He was determined to lead, not follow and pushed for tariff reforms and fought against the business lobbies. He pushed for and got passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, probably the most important domestic legislation of his administration.
Foreign affairs came to dominate his attention. Wilson ordered the Navy into Vera Cruz in 1915 due to the Civil War in Mexico. His troops had to deal with Francisco Villa and he briefly contemplated declaring war on Mexico in 1916.
There had been a neutrality act passed in 1914 in response to the war in Europe. But Germany’s actions caused the pro-allies sentiment to grow in the US. Mrs. Wilson died in August 1914, and after a period of loneliness, he remarried Edith Galt. He was re-elected President in 1916 by a narrow margin.
Again, due to German actions, the US was drawn into the war in 1917. He proved to be a strong leader during the war, and developed his “14 Points” as the program for Europe. He also proposed a League of Nations to prevent future wars. The Republicans had won the mid-term elections and gained a majority in both Houses. They were determined to embarrass Wilson. Trying to rally public opinion, Wilson undertook a long tour with many speeches. On October 2, 1919, he suffered a stroke that left him an invalid.
Wilson did not run in 1920 and was dismayed when Harding won, knowing the League of Nations would die. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in December of 1920. Wilson retired with his wife in Washington. He died in his sleep on February 3, 1924.
Speeches
Woodrow Wilson State of the Union Addresses
Woodrow Wilson Speeches
Woodrow Wilson Quotes
The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.
19th November, 1905. Inter-Church Conference on Federation, New York.
The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow-citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to the air.
Constitutional Government in the United States, Chapter 2.
The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.
Constitutional Government in the United States, Chapter 3.
If it is reorganisation, a new deal, and a change you are seeking, it is Hobson’s choice. I am sorry for you, but it is really vote for me or not vote at all.
24th October, 1910. Camden, New Jersey.
A presidential campaign may easily degenerate into a mere personal contest and so lose its real dignity and significance. There is no indispensable man.
7th August, 1912. Accepting the Democratic nomination for President.
When I resist, therefore, when I as a Democrat resist the concentration of power, I am resisting the processes of death, because the concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human initiative, and, therefore of human energy.
4th September, 1912. New York Speech.
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
9th September 1912, speech to New York Press Club.
And there will be no greater burden in our generation than to organise the forces of liberty in our time, in order to make conquest of a new freedom for America.
3rd October, 1912. Campaign speech in Indianapolis, Indiana.
We shall not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting. And then, when the end comes, we shall hope to see constitutional order restored in distressed Mexico by the concert and energy of such of her leaders as prefer the liberty of their people to their own ambitions.
2nd December, 1913. State of the Union Address.
The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name. … We must be impartial in thought as well as in action.
19th August, 1914. Message to the Senate.
You deal in the raw material of opinion, and, if may convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.
20th April, 1915. Address to the Associated Press.
No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation.
20th April, 1915. New York.
Our whole duty, for the present, at any rate, is summed up in the motto, ‘‘America first.’’
20th April, 1915. New York.
There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight; there is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.
10th May, 1915. Address to Foreign-Born Citizens, Philadelphia.
[The Civil War] created in this country what had never existed before – a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union.
Memorial Day Address, 1915.
We have stoof apart, studiously neutral.
7th December, 1915. Message to Congress.
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to be supplied is light, not heat.
29th January, 1916. Pittsburgh speech.
America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.
1st February, 1916. Speech at Des Moines.
Never . . . murder a man who is committing suicide.
19th August, 1916. Letter to Bernard Baruch.
It must be a peace without victory. … Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common belief.
22nd January, 1917. Address to the Senate.
A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
4th March, 1917. Statement in reference to certain members of the Senate.
Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best.
2nd April, 1917. Address to Congress requesting a declaration of war.
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
2nd April, 1917. Address to Congress requesting a declaration of war.
It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilisation itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts. . . . To such a task we dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of
those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.
2nd April, 1917. Address to Congress.
The program of the world’s peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:
1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private understandings
of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
8th January, 1918. Address to Congress / Fourteen Points.
14. A general association of nations must be formed … for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
8th January, 1918. Address to Congress / Fourteen Points.
Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American.America, my fellow citizens—I do not say it in disaparagement of any other great people—America is the only idealistic Nation in the world.
8th September 1919. Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.
Quoted in Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of War and After (1946)
It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.
18th February, 1915. Attributed. Upon seeing the movie The Birth of a Nation, at the White House by D.W. Griffith.
Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.
‘Mr Wilson’s War’ (1917) by John Dos Passos. Part 3, Chapter 12.
