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Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson was an unlikely wartime president. He was a pacifist, a high-minded intellectual who had served as the president of Princeton before winning the governor’s chair in New Jersey in 1910. Thanks in large part to the support of influential congressman William Jennings Bryan, Wilson was the Democratic nominee in the 1912 presidential election, and won easily thanks to the split of Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party from the Republicans. While some Democrats expected Wilson to be moderate-to-conservative, he actually enacted a progressive agenda (including the first federal income tax, important antitrust legislation, the implementation of an eight-hour workday and the outlawing of child labor).

Two years into his first term, war broke out in Europe, but Wilson remained committed to American neutrality. When he ran for re-election in 1916, his slogan was, “He kept us out of the war.” Still, that might not have been too popular a position. Wilson was criticized for his handling of the sinking of the ship, the Lusitania, by a German submarine—in fact, Bryan resigned his post as Secretary of State over the Lusitania. In the election, Wilson narrowly beat a challenge by Republican Charles Hughes.

Five months after using America’s neutrality as a campaign pitch, Wilson went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war. Even after the Lusitania, Germany Woodrow Wilson Inaugural Address President Woodrow Wilson giving his inaugural address. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress). continued to assault American ships in the Atlantic, and the interception of the Zimmerman telegram—in which a German official was to offer Mexico an alliance against the United States—fanned American outrage. Congress declared war on April 6, 1917.

Wilson portrayed the switch as an attempt to rescue democracy. “The world must be made safe for democracy,” he said. “Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.”

However unlikely Wilson may have been for the job of wartime president, he took to it quickly. Far removed from the progressive policies of his first term, Wilson became an autocrat. He signed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918, repressive laws that effectively eliminated the right of Americans to criticize the war or the government, with penalties of up to $10,000 in fines or 20 years in prison. He put major industries and the nation’s railroads under federal control. He pushed Congress to pass the Overman Act, which gave Wilson unprecedented power to run the war.

Still, Wilson remained high-minded. In January 1918, he laid out his, “Fourteen Points,” giving the world a framework for lasting postwar peace based on the support of democracy, the abolishment of trade restrictions and an end to Europe’s system of alliances. Most important to Wilson was the establishment of a League of Nations which could mediate international disputes before they ballooned into war. His efforts won him the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize.

However, when the Great War was over, Wilson could not find support for the League of Nations and the Fourteen Points. He traveled to Paris for the peace talks, but the British and the French wanted a punitive settlement to the war, and the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, largely ignored the Fourteen Points. The treaty was unpopular in the Senate, and Wilson embarked on a lengthy speaking tour to win support for the treaty and push the U.S. into the League of Nations. But the tour took a physical and mental toll on Wilson, and in September 1919, he suffered a stroke. He would spend the last 17 months of his term invalided in his room, and would never fully recover.

When Wilson was on his deathbed, his doctor said, “At the time Woodrow Wilson went to Paris he was in excellent shape. He had built himself up from the days of 1913 by proper eating, proper exercise and rest. He was an excellent patient.” But, the doctor noted, the Paris peace conference wore him down, and the speaking tour was too much for him to handle.

Wilson died on February 3, 1924. The Senate twice voted on the Treaty of Versailles, but did not pass it either time. Wilson’s own country, then, did not participate in the League of Nations.

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