Woodrow Wilson, Progressive
In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.
In early 1885, Houghton Mifflin published Wilson's Congressional Government, which was well received with one critic called it "the best critical writing on the American constitution which has appeared since the 'Federalist' papers."
Marriage and family
In September 1883, Wilson proposed to his future wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister in Savannah, Georgia
In 1883, Wilson met and fell in love with Ellen Louise Axson, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister from Savannah, Georgia.[28]
He proposed marriage in September 1883; she accepted, but they agreed to postpone marriage while Wilson attended graduate school.[29]
Axson graduated from Art Students League of New York, worked in portraiture, and received a medal for one of her works from the Exposition Universelle (1878) in Paris.[30]
She agreed to sacrifice further independent artistic pursuits in order to marry Wilson in 1885.[31]
Ellen learned German so she could help translate German-language political science publications relevant to Woodrow's research.[32]
In April 1886, the couple's first child, Margaret, was born.
Their second child, Jessie, was born in August 1887.[33]
Their third and final child, Eleanor, was born in October 1889.[34]
In 1913, Jessie married Francis Bowes Sayre Sr., who later served as High Commissioner to the Philippines.[35]
In 1914, their third child Eleanor married William Gibbs McAdoo, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Woodrow Wilson and later a U.S. Senator from California.[36]
In February 1890, with the help of friends, Wilson was appointed Chair of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at the College of New Jersey, at an annual salary of $3,000 (equivalent to $97,711 in 2022)
In June 1902, Princeton trustees promoted Professor Wilson to president, replacing Patton, whom the trustees perceived to be an inefficient administrator.[51]
Wilson aspired, as he told alumni, "to transform thoughtless boys performing tasks into thinking men."
He tried to raise admission standards and to replace the "gentleman's C" with serious study.
To emphasize the development of expertise, Wilson instituted academic departments and a system of core requirements.
Students were to meet in groups of six under the guidance of teaching assistants known as preceptors.
To fund these new programs, Wilson undertook an ambitious and successful fundraising campaign, convincing alumni such as [Moses Taylor Pyne and philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie to donate to the school.[53]
Wilson appointed the first Jew and the first Roman Catholic to the faculty, and helped liberate the board from domination by conservative Presbyterians.
He also worked to keep African Americans out of the school, even as other Ivy League schools were accepting small numbers of black people.
Democrat Party leaders believed that Wilson's academic reputation made him the ideal spokesman against trusts and corruption, but they also hoped his inexperience in governing would make him easy to influence.[69]
Wilson agreed to accept the nomination (for New Jersey Governor) if "it came to me unsought, unanimously, and without pledges to anybody about anything."[70]
After winning the election, Wilson appointed Joseph Patrick Tumulty as his private secretary, a position he held throughout Wilson's political career.[74]
Wilson began formulating his reformist agenda, intending to ignore the demands of his party machinery.
Smith asked Wilson to endorse his bid for the U.S. Senate, but Wilson refused and instead endorsed Smith's opponent James Edgar Martine, who had won the Democratic primary.
Martine's victory in the Senate election helped Wilson position himself as an independent force in the New Jersey Democratic Party.[75]
By the time Wilson took office, New Jersey had gained a reputation for public corruption; the state was known as the "Mother of Trusts" because it allowed companies like Standard Oil to escape the antitrust laws of other states.[76]
Wilson and his allies quickly won passage of the Geran bill, which undercut the power of the political bosses by requiring primaries for all elective offices and party officials.
A corrupt practices law and a workmen's compensation statute that Wilson supported won passage shortly thereafter.[77]
For his success in passing these laws during the first months of his gubernatorial term, Wilson won national and bipartisan recognition as a reformer and a leader of the Progressive movement.[78]
Republicans took control of the state assembly in early 1912, and Wilson spent much of the rest of his tenure vetoing bills.[79]
In 1916, Wilson purchased by treaty the Danish West Indies, renamed as the United States Virgin Islands.
Immigration from Europe declined significantly once World War I began and Wilson paid little attention to the issue during his presidency.
However, he looked favorably upon the "new immigrants" from southern and eastern Europe, and twice vetoed laws passed by Congress intended to restrict their entry, though the later veto was overridden.
On May 30, 1919, Edward M. House participated in a meeting in Paris which laid the groundwork for establishment of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a private organization based in New York.
Throughout 1919, House urged Wilson to work with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to achieve ratification of the Versailles Treaty, but Wilson refused to deal with Lodge or any other senior Republican.
The conference revealed serious policy disagreements and personality conflicts between Wilson and House.
Wilson became less tolerant and broke with his closest advisers, one after another.
Later, he dismissed House's son-in-law, Gordon Auchincloss, from the American peace commission when it became known the young man was making derogatory comments about him.[22]
In February 1919, House took his place on the Council of Ten, where he negotiated compromises unacceptable to Wilson.
The following month, Wilson returned to Paris.
He decided that House had taken too many liberties in negotiations, and relegated him to the sidelines.
After they returned to the US later that year, the two men never saw or spoke to each other again.[22]
Shortly after returning to Washington, Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke, the extent of which was concealed from the public and the press.
Other than his doctors, direct access to the president was now limited too and controlled by Wilson's wife and Chief of Staff.
Though House continued to send memos and reports to the president during this time, Wilson's wife made sure he did not see any of them.[23]