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Woodrow Wilson

November 11, 2013 by · Comments Off on Woodrow Wilson 

Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States, in office from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. With the Republican Party split in 1912, he was elected President as a Democrat in 1912.

In his first term as President, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass a legislative agenda that few presidents have equaled, remaining unmatched up until the New Deal in 1933. Wilson, at first unsympathetic, became a major advocate for women’s suffrage after public pressure convinced him that to oppose women’s suffrage was politically unwise. Although Wilson promised African Americans “fair dealing…in advancing the interests of their race in the United States”, the Wilson administration implemented a policy of racial segregation for federal employees. Although considered a modern liberal visionary giant as President, in terms of implementing domestic race relations, however, Wilson was “deeply racist in his thoughts and politics, and apparently was comfortable being so.”

Narrowly re-elected in 1916, he had full control of American entry into World War I, and his second term centered on World War I and the subsequent peace treaty negotiations in Paris. He based his re-election campaign around the slogan, “He kept us out of war”, but U.S. neutrality was challenged in early 1917 when the German Empire began unrestricted submarine warfare despite repeated strong warnings and tried to enlist Mexico as an ally. In April 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war. During the war, Wilson focused on diplomacy and financial considerations, leaving the waging of the war itself primarily in the hands of the Army. On the home front in 1917, he began the United States’ first draft since the American Civil War; borrowed billions of dollars in war funding through the newly established Federal Reserve Bank and Liberty Bonds; set up the War Industries Board; promoted labor union cooperation; supervised agriculture and food production through the Lever Act; took over control of the railroads; and suppressed anti-war movements. During his term in office, Wilson gave a well-known Flag Day speech that fueled the wave of anti-German sentiment sweeping the country in 1917-18.

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