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Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Va. , on Dec. 28, 1856. He was profoundly influenced by a devoutly religious household headed by his father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, a Presbyterian minister, and his mother, Janet Woodrow Wilson, the daughter of a minister. Woodrow attended (1873 - 74) Davidson College and in 1875 entered the College of New Jersey graduating in 1879. Wilson studied (1879 - 80) at the University of Virginia Law School, briefly practiced law in Atlanta, and in 1883 entered The Johns Hopkins University for graduate study in political science.
His widely acclaimed book, Congressional Government (1885), was published a year before he received the doctoral degree. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Also; they had three daughters. Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr College (1885 - 88) and Wesleyan University in Connecticut (1888 - 90) before he was called (1890) to Princeton as professor of jurisprudence and political economy. A popular lecturer, Wilson also wrote a score of articles and nine books, including Division and Reunion (1893) and his five-volume History of the American People (1902). In 1902 he was the unanimous choice of the trustees to become Princeton's president. His reforms included reorganization of the departmental structure, revision of the curriculum, raising of academic standards, tightening of student discipline, and the still-famous preceptorial system of instruction.
But Wilsons quad plan attempt to create colleges or quadrangles where students and faculty members would live and study together was defeated. Opposed by wealthy alumni and trustees, he also lost his battle for control of the proposed graduate college. The Princeton controversies, seen nationally as a battle between democracy and vested wealth, propelled Wilson into the political arena. George Harvey, editor of Harpers Weekly, with help from New Jerseys Democratic party bosses, persuaded Wilson to run for governor in 1910. After scoring an easy victory, he cast off his machine sponsors and launched a remarkable program of progressive legislation, including a direct-primary law, antitrust laws, a corrupt-practices act, a workmen's compensation act, and measures establishing a public utility commission and permitting cities to adopt the commission form of government. Success in New Jersey made him a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Although Wilson entered the 1912 Democratic National Convention a poor second to Speaker of the House Champ Clark, his strength increased as Clarks faded, and he won the nomination after 46 ballots. Offering a program of reform that he called the New Freedom, Wilson ran against a divided Republican party. In November, with only 42 percent of the popular vote, he won 435 electoral votes to 88 for Progressive candidate Theodore Roosevelt and 8 for the Republican candidate, President William Howard Taft. By presenting his program personally before the Democratically controlled Congress, employing personal persuasion as well as patronage, and appealing to the American public with his stirring rhetoric, Wilson won passage of an impressive array of progressive measures. The Underwood Tariff Act (1913), the first reduction in duties since the Civil War, also established a modest income tax. The Federal Reserve Act (1913) provided for currency and banking reform.
Antitrust legislation followed in 1914, when Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act. In 1915, Wilson supported the La Follette Seamen's bill, designed to improve the working conditions of sailors. The following year he signed the Federal Farm Loan Act, providing low-interest credit to farmers; the Adamson Act, granting an 8 -hour day to interstate railroad workers; and the Child Labor Act, which limited childrens working hours. In foreign policy, Wilson was faced with greater problems than any president since Abraham Lincoln. He attempted to end U.
S. dollar diplomacy and promote the mediation of disputes. He rejected a loan to China on the grounds that it impaired Chinese sovereignty, and he helped thwart Japanese designs on the Chinese mainland. He approved Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan's efforts to minimize the danger of war through a series of conciliation treaties and joined him in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a Pan-American pact guaranteeing the integrity of the Western Hemisphere.
In attempting to deal with revolutionary Mexico, Wilson first sought to promote self-government by refusing to recognize the military capture Victorian Huerta and forcing him to allow free elections. When Huerta resisted, Wilson tried to force him out by ordering (April 1914) limited American intervention at Veracruz and by supporting constitutionalist Venustiano Carranza. Mediation by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile helped to prevent a general conflict and led to Huerta's resignation in July 1914. A year later, Wilson recognized Carranzas provisional government, and in 1916 he intervened again after Carranzas rival, guerrilla leader Pancho Villa, had raided a town in New Mexico, killing several Americans.
In 1915 and 1916 he reluctantly sent troops to Haiti and Santo Domingo to establish U. S. protectorates. After the outbreak of the European war in August 1914, Wilson struggled with considerable success to fulfill the obligations of neutrality, to keep trade channels open, and to prevent any violations of U. S.
rights, all in the face of the British blockade of Germany and the latter introduction of submarine warfare. He warned Germany in February 1915 that it would be held to strict accountability for the loss of American lives in the sinking of neutral or passenger ships. After the Lusitania was sunk in May 1915 (with the loss of 128 Americans), he negotiated with such firmness that Secretary Bryan, fearing a declaration of war, resigned in protest. In September 1915, Wilson won pledges from Germany to provide for the safety of passengers caught in submarine attacks, and in May 1916 the Germans agreed to abandon unrestricted submarine warfare. Running on his record of reform and with the slogan He kept us out of the war, Wilson sought reelection in 1916 against Republican Charles Evans Hughes. The president won a narrow victory, receiving 277 out of 531 electoral votes.
When Germany renewed all-out submarine warfare in 1917, Wilson severed diplomatic relations. In April he asked Congress for a declaration of war, asserting that the world must be made safe for democracy. As war president, Wilson made a major contribution to the modern presidency as he led Americans in a spectacular mobilization of the nations resources. Establishing a series of war agencies, he extended federal control over industry, transportation, labor, food, fuel, and prices. In May 1917 he forced through Congress a Selective Service bill under which 2. 8 million men were drafted by wars end. He sought and received legislative delegation of increased powers, thus leaving for his successors the precedents and tools to meet future crises.
From 1914, Wilson had sought ways to mediate the conflict. In 1915 and 1916 he sent his advisor and confidant, Col. Edward M. HOUSE, to Europe to work toward a negotiated peace and postwar cooperation. In the spring of 1916, Wilson joined the call for a postwar association of nations; on Jan. 22, 1917, he called for a peace without victory and reaffirmed his support for a league of nations.
With the United States in the war, Wilson hoped to have a stronger influence on the peace settlement. On Jan. 8, 1918, he presented his Fourteen Points, a comprehensive statement of war aims. It became at once a war weapon and a peace program, inspiring the peoples of the Allied powers while undermining the confidence of the Germans. Germany made its peace overture in the hope of obtaining just treatment under Wilsons proposals. Wilson headed the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He miscalculated seriously, however, by not developing bipartisan support for his peace plans; he did not appoint a prominent Republican to the delegation, and he called on voters to reelect a Democratic Congress in 1918 as a vote of confidence.
Most contests were decided on local issues, and when Republicans captured both houses of Congress, his leadership seemed repudiated. Wilson was hailed as a hero upon his arrival in Europe. At the conference (January-June 1919) Allied leaders Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, and Vittorio Orlando favored a traditional settlement. Wilson worked tirelessly for a peace along the lines of his Fourteen Points; only his shrewd bargaining prevented even harsher terms from being imposed on Germany.
Wilson characterized the Versailles Treaty as the best obtainable compromise and put his hopes in the League of Nations, an integral part of the treaty, as the institution through which inequities could be later rectified. Senate Republicans, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, refused to approve the peace treaty without significant modifications of the U. S. commitment to the League. Wilson accepted some compromise but then turned to the people.
In a national speaking tour he eloquently defended the League and U. S. membership as essential to lasting world peace. Long months of exhausting labor had weakened the president, however, and he collapsed on Sept. 25, 1919, following a speech in Pueblo, Colo.
A week later Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially incapacitated for the remainder of his life. From his bed he continued to oppose severe restrictions to the League. The Senate, meanwhile, rejected the treaty in November 1919 and March 1920. Wilson urged that the 1920 presidential election be a referendum on the League. Republican Warren G. Harding, who had established a reputation as an opponent of the League, won in a landslide.
In December 1920, Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919. The former president and his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, whom he married in 1915, after the death of his first wife, continued to make their home in Washington, D. C. Wilson died there on Feb. 3, 1924.
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Research essay sample on League Of Nations Declaration Of War
