Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born just a hundred and fifty years ago in Staunton, Va., on Dec, 28, 1856. The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton is celebrating the occasion this year. Historians rank Wilson as among the first of American Presidents as well as an international figure.
Wilson was named Thomas Woodrow, one of the offspring of Joseph Ruggles Wilson. The senior Wilson, a Presbyterian minister with Scots-Irish and Ohio roots, and mother Janet, or Janey, was of English descent and the daughter of another Presbyterian minister. They brought Janet with them from the Old World to the New before she was a teen.
Deeply Presbyterian and concerned for education, the Wilsons brought up their son and other children in a Calvinist atmosphere. Woodrow (he dropped the name Thomas, by the way, in college) lived through the Civil War, remembered his father caring for wounded Confederate soldiers with whose cause he sympathized, as well as taking care of his own family. Young Woodrow moved with his family to Columbia, S.C., where his father taught at Columbia Theological Seminary. A dispute over theology led him to resign and take his family to a church in Wilmington, N.C., where he was pastor.
Woodrow began his higher education at Davidson College, N.C., but ended up at the College of New Jersey in Princeton. There he read widely and studied the lives and works of leading British and American leaders. He became a debater and editor of the Princetonian, the student newspaper. He also made a commendable academic record. After Princeton he attended the University of Virginia Law School, then practiced law in Atlanta, Ga. There he decided the law was not for him, and believed that God intended him to be a teacher not a lawyer. So he went off to Johns Hopkins to study. While there he published Congressional Government (1885), a study that earned him a Ph.D. degree.
Meanwhile, on a trip to Rome, Ga., he met Ellen Louise Axson, the daughter of a Presbyterian pastor, whom he married in 1885. They had three daughters towards whom Woodrow was an affectionate father. He often read to them the works of great authors while they were maturing, works that also enriched his own background. Along the way he also taught at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University. There he published another study entitled The State (1889), covering different types of government, including that of his own country. From there he went on to Princeton where he served as professor of jurisprudence and political economy.
He was on his way. In 1902, Princeton trustees elevated him to the office of president of the institution. During his early experiences there he developed the feeling that the student clubs were undemocratic. As president he attempted to reform the system, a reform that divided the alumni and the trustees. Tension among them and the staff finally led Wilson to leave the institution.
From the college he moved into another phase of his life. He was elected governor of the state of New Jersey by a considerable majority of its citizens. He went on to be a reformer, as well as a national Democratic Party figure.
Wilson was able to replace the “also ran,” the eloquent Presbyterian layman, William Jennings Bryan, a political friend, and went on to win the presidency of the nation in 1912. He won against William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt with a large electoral vote. He did not count on the “patronage of aristocrats” — a “community of interest” created, as he said, by the “combinations of combinations.” He published a number of books, including, The New Freedom: A Call for Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People. He demonstrated his oratorical skills on the campaign trail with these closing words of his book in a campaign for human liberty — “liberty of thought liberty of religion, liberty of residence, liberty of action.”
Wilson is best known because of his role in the First World War, but we ought to recall aspects of his domestic policies. He lowered and removed tariffs on many items. He helped to reform the currency and banking classes, establishing, for example, a Federal Reserve Board. He also increased the power of government to deal with unfair labor practices. This included passage of a Child Labor Act and the establishment of an eight-hour day. He scolded men like J. P. Morgan for interest in the “big borrower” and the rich.
Wilson, with Secretary of State Robert Lansing, made American ships passing through the Panama Canal pay taxes. He promoted the independence of the Philippine Islands. He also had to deal with unrest in Mexico and other Latin American and Caribbean countries including Haiti and the Dominican Republic, areas still on our national agenda.
World War I broke out in 1914. Wilson, with Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, attempted to remain neutral. They were, at first, celebrated for keeping us out of war. But Germans demonstrated their hostility when a submarine sank the British passenger liner, the Lusitania, killing more than 120 Americans. This moved Wilson to action. He negotiated with the Germans, who agreed not to attack passenger ships. Although some labeled Wilson an “icicle” for not taking revenge, most citizens supported his effort to work for peace.
Meanwhile, Woodrow and Ellen lived in the White House with their three daughters, and attempted to preserve some privacy. Ellen Wilson suffered an illness and died, causing Woodrow a deep sadness. Later, in 1915, he married Edith Bolling Galt, a wise and strong-willed woman who restored some happiness to his busy life. He was made even happier when in 1916 he won a second four-year term in the White House. He won more votes than Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, largely on the grounds that Wilson “kept us out of war.” Americans also appreciated the reforms that his administration made during his first term. California gave him his small margin of victory. But he began a second term with a war still on his hands.
In 1917, Germans began attacking American shipping. Such actions stirred and sometimes enraged American citizens. Wilson requested Congress to declare war. He wanted to make the world “safe for democracy,” the battle cry of the war. Congress did vote to declare war with overwhelming support and applause from legislators. [This author’s father was a chaplain. He served in France during the conflict, and left me an old bayonet I still have in my office.]
In 1918, Wilson published his famous “Fourteen Points,” which dealt with German responsibility for ending the conflict and forcing them to pull their troops out of occupied countries. More important, Wilson, an “idealist” in an idealistic country, published his Fourteen Points envisioning a “New World” without War. Several of the points dealt with the German continuing occupation of other countries while others indicated Wilson’s vision for the future. Point fourteen was the most important: “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.”
Each November 11, Veterans’s Day — formerly Armistice Day — we commemorate Wilson’s success in negotiating an armistice in Paris, at a peace conference. When he arrived in Europe he was greeted as a hero in England, even in Buckingham Palace, in Paris, and in Rome where he, a Presbyterian elder, visited with Pope Benedict XV. He was the first U.S. president to have such an audience with a Roman pontiff, while in office.
Wilson’s plans called for the establishment of a League of a Nations to deal with leftover war problems and a future global place. The Treaty and the U.S. Constitution called for two-thirds vote in the Senate of the United States for ratification. Unfortunately for Wilson, his vision was not shared by all on this side of the Atlantic. The Senate experienced a three-way split. Isolationists fought against such a League as not in the nation’s best interest. The president and his supporters argued that the treaty should be accepted with alterations or compromises on the issues. The largest group took middle ground and was ready to ratify with some modifications. Senator William Cabot Lodge wanted to reduce or do away with America’s obligations to such a League. Wilson took his vision to the American people.
During the previous few years, it should be noted, Wilson’s health had not been strong. He was exhausted further by the war effort and negotiations in France. On his nationwide tour, he won support for his vision of a League, but tension and lack of rest caused him to collapse while touring Kansas. He suffered a stroke that paralyzed him. He did not resign his office, but he could not carry on his duties. Edith Boling Wilson cared for him and even performed official business in his name. His cabinet met and also carried out his wishes. Warren Harding, a Republican, won the presidency in 1920. At least as far as the United States was concerned, the League was dead.
In 1920, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919. He declared his support of women’s suffrage in 1917, campaigned for it, and in 1920 the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution became the law of the land. He lived on until 1924 when he died in his sleep. He is buried in the Washington National Cathedral, the only president to be so honored.
Woodrow Wilson deserves to be celebrated on his 150th birthday. He remains one of America’s foremost professors, university presidents, presidents, and statesmen. America’s acceptance of a United Nations and its place in New York City would make him happy. He might not be too happy, however, about how noted American leaders of today care little for the international organization.
Wilson’s papers may be found in sixty-nine (69) volumes, edited by a Presbyterian professor, Arthur S. Link. See also, Link, The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson, and Other Essays (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971); The Greatness of Woodrow Wilson, 1865-1956 (Rinehart & Company: New York, 1956) published on the 100th anniversary of Wilson’s birth; and Link, ed., Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913-1921 (U of North Carolina Press: 1982).
James H. Smylie is professor emeritus of church history at Union Seminary — PSCE in Richmond, Va.
