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biography
| name: |
Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1856–1924)
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| biography:
| US statesman and 28th president (1913–21), born in Staunton, Virginia, USA. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he studied at Princeton and Johns Hopkins, gaining his PhD with the first of his major books on American government, Congressional Government (1885). After teaching at Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan (1885–90), he moved to Princeton, and as its president (1902) his reforms had a wide impact on American university education. In 1910 he entered politics as a Democrat, and was elected governor of New Jersey (1911–13). His liberal reforms brought him national attention and the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912 (although only on the 46th ballot). With the Republicans split between Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson won by a landslide. He effectively continued a reformist programme he called the ‘New Freedom’; his initiatives included lowering tariffs, a graduated income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Anti-trust Act, the eight-hour working day, and landmark laws against child labour. On the international front he was less successful, especially in his attempts to intervene in Mexican politics. He won re-election in 1916 with a pledge to keep America out of the European war, but found the US inexorably drawn in; declaring war on Germany in April 1917, he proposed a peace in the form of the ‘Fourteen Points’ which brought Germany to the bargaining table in late 1918. Much of the world now hailed him as virtually a saviour, but at the Versailles Peace Conference he was confronted by the compromises of Realpolitik. On his return to America his dream of a League of Nations - largely due to his refusal to compromise - went down to defeat in Congress as his health collapsed. He spent his last months in office incapacitated (his wife served as his intermediary for many decisions) and in 1921 retired to seclusion. Undeniably one of the most intelligent and high-minded of US presidents, he was also rigid in certain ways and unresolved in others, so that when it came to the climax of his life's work - America's entry into a League of Nations - he was unable to make the appropriate moves. |
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