Woodrow Wilson

by Kendrick A. Clements, Eric A. Cheezum

Overview

Each volume in the new American Presidents Reference Series is organized around an individual presidency and gathers a host of biographical, analytical, and primary source historical material that will analyze the presidency and bring the president, his administration, and his times to life. The series focuses on key moments in U.S. political history as seen through the eyes of the most influential presidents to take the oath of office. Unique headnotes provide the context to data, tables and excerpted primary source documents. Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856. He taught history and later political science at Bryn Mawr College, Wesleyan University, and Princeton University. In 1902 he was unanimously elected as president of Princeton. In 1910 he was elected governor of New Jersey. On the forty-sixth ballot at the 1912 Democratic National Convention, Wilson was nominated as the party's presidential candidate. Benefiting from Theodore Roosevelt's ticket-splitting third-party nomination, Wilson was elected the twenty-eighth president of the United States. Key events during the Wilson administration include the reduction of the tariff, enactment of the federal reserve system, creation of the Federal Trade Commission, his narrow reelection against Charles Evans Hughes, Wilson's Fourteen Points, and the League of Nations. On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a stroke, which left him incapacitated. Historians have concluded that his wife, Edith, conducted much of the affairs of state on behalf of the invalid Wilson. Woodrow Wilson died on February 3, 1924. This new volume on the presidency of Woodrow Wilson will cover his reformist-natured domestic policies, World War I, the Fourteen Points, and the League of Nations, the role of Edith Bolling Wilson in the Wilson presidency. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568027654
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	07/30/2003
Series:	American Pres Reference Series
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Kendrick A. Clements is professor of history at the University of South Carolina. He has also written William Jennings Bryan and has edited James F. Byrnes and the Origins of the Cold War.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Introduction	3
1.	From Pastor's Son to Nobel Laureate: Biographical Sketch	9
	Childhood, 1856-1873	9
	College Years, 1873-1879	12
	Law and Graduate School, 1879-1886	14
	Academic Life and Family, 1886-1902	16
	President of Princeton, 1902-1910	19
	Governor of New Jersey, 1910-1912	23
	Wilson's First Term, 1912-1916	27
	Wilson's Second Administration, 1916-1920	29
	Retirement	31
	Bibliographic Essay	32
	Documents
1.1	An Imaginary Order	34
1.2	Letter from Joseph Ruggles Wilson to Wilson, March 27, 1877	34
1.3	Wilson on Religion	35
1.4	Letter from Jesse Wilson to Wilson, May 20, 1874	36
1.5	Life at Princeton	36
1.6	Excerpt, "Cabinet Government in the United States," 1879	37
1.7	Critique of Congress, 1881	38
1.8	Two of Wilson's Views on His Career	41
1.9	Letter from Wilson to Ellen Axson, September 18, 1883	42
1.10	Letter from Wilson to Daniel Collamore Heath, March 30, 1886	44
1.11	Excerpt, "The Study of Administration," 1887	45
1.12	Excerpt, "Democracy"	46
1.13	Memorandum, "What Ought We To Do?" circa August 1, 1898	47
1.14	Excerpt, Constitutional Government in the United States, 1908	48
1.15	Report to the Princeton Board of Trustees, October 21, 1902	51
1.16	Report to the Princeton Board of Trustees, June 10, 1907	54
1.17	Speech, George Brinton McClellan Harvey, February 3, 1906	55
1.18	Letter from Edith Bolling Galt to Annie Bolling, March 23, 1915	57
2.	Campaigns and Elections	59
	New Jersey Gubernatorial Election of 1910	59
	Presidential Election of 1912	63
	Congressional Elections of 1914	73
	Presidential Election of 1916	73
	Congressional Elections of 1918	76
	Presidential Election of 1920	78
	Bibliographic Essay	79
	Documents
2.1	Acceptance Speech, Gubernatorial Nomination, September 15, 1910	81
2.2	Response to George Lawrence Record, October 24, 1910	83
2.3	Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention, August 7, 1912	86
2.4	Excerpt, Speech, October 7, 1912	88
2.5	1912 Presidential Election	90
2.6	Letter from Wilson to Powell Evans, October 20, 1914; Letter from Wilson to Mary Allen Hulbert, November 4, 1914; House Diary, November 4, 1914	93
2.7	Excerpts, 1916 Democratic Party National Platform	94
2.8	1916 Presidential Election	98
2.9	Appeal to Voters, October 25, 1918	101
2.10	Memorandum, March 25, 1920	102
3.	Administration Policies	105
	The New Freedom: First Phase	106
	The New Freedom: Second Phase	111
	Expanding the Role of Government, 1914-1916	114
	New Freedom Foreign Policy	126
	Foreign Policy Lessons	134
	Bibliographic Essay	134
	Documents
3.1	Speech before Congress, April 8, 1913	138
3.2	Speech before Congress, June 23, 1913	139
3.3	Speech before Congress, January 20, 1914	141
3.4	Letter from Wilson to Charles Allen Culberson, July 30, 1914	144
3.5	Letter from Wilson to Carter Glass, May 12, 1914	144
3.6	Statement on Signing the Land Bank Bill, July 17, 1916	145
3.7	Wilson and Prohibition	146
3.8	Reply to National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1913	148
3.9	Statement on Woman Suffrage, October 6, 1915	149
3.10	Speech to the Senate, September 30, 1918	150
3.11	A Cabinet Discussion about Segregation in the Government, April 11, 1913	153
3.12	Excerpt, Meeting between Wilson and William Monroe Trotter, November 12, 1914	154
3.13	Diary Entry, Josephus Daniels, April 14, 1920	156
3.14	Diary Entry, Josephus Daniels, March 12, 1913	157
3.15	Twenty-One Demands	158
3.16	Statement on Latin America, March 12, 1913	161
3.17	Wilson on the Veracruz Occupation, November 24, 1914	162
3.18	Speech, October 27, 1913	163
3.19	Wilson and the Caribbean	165
4.	Crises and Flashpoints	169
	Beginning of World War I	170
	Submarine Warfare and the Lusitania	171
	The United States Enters the War	178
	Mobilization	180
	The Fourteen Points	182
	The Peace Conference	183
	Treaty Fight in the United States	189
	Wilson's Health	193
	Bibliographic Essay	195
	Documents
4.1	Press Conference, August 3, 1914	198
4.2	Speech, January 8, 1915	199
4.3	Draft of a Note to Germany about Submarine Warfare, February 6, 1915	199
4.4	Letter from William Jennings Bryan to Wilson, May 12, 1915	201
4.5	The House-Grey Memorandum	202
4.6	American Protest against German Submarine Attack on the Sussex, April 16, 1916	204
4.7	Address to the Senate, January 22, 1917	204
4.8	Request for Declaration of War, April 2, 1917	208
4.9	The Fourteen Points, January 8, 1918	211
4.10	Message from German Government to Wilson, October 6, 1918	215
4.11	Excerpts, League of Nations Covenant	215
4.12	Press Release on Allied Intervention in Russia, August 3, 1918	219
4.13	House and the Treaty of Versailles, November 24 and 27, 1919	220
4.14	Round Robin Resolution, March 3, 1919	222
4.15	Speech to the Senate, July 10, 1919	224
4.16	Wilson's Stroke	226
4.17	Tumulty and Succession	229
5.	Institutional Relations	233
	Relationship with His Cabinet	234
	Relationship with the Military	241
	Relationship with Congress	245
	Relationship with the Supreme Court	249
	Relationship with the Media	255
	Bibliographic Essay	259
	Documents
5.1	Relations with the Cabinet	262
5.2	Cabinet Meetings	262
5.3	Lindley Garrison's Resignation, January 14, 1916	269
5.4	Franklin Lane on the Wilson Administration	271
5.5	David Houston on Wilson	272
5.6	Wilson and Edward M. House	274
5.7	Civilian Control of the Military	276
5.8	Wilson and the Military during World War I	277
5.9	Presidential Leadership in Congress	277
5.10	Working with Congress	279
5.11	Wilson on Capitol Hill	282
5.12	The Overman Act, May 20, 1918	284
5.13	Justice James McReynolds's Opinion in Federal Trade Commission v. Gratz (1920)	286
5.14	Justice Louis Brandeis's Dissent in Hitchman Coal & Coke Company v. Mitchell (1917)	287
5.15	Justice John Hessin Clarke's Opinion in Abrams v. United States (1919)	289
6.	After the White House: Wilson in Retirement	293
	An Inauguration Journey	293
	The Wilson/Colby Law Firm	297
	Politics Public and Private	298
	The Document	301
	The Road away from Revolution	302
	Wilson's Last Days	304
	Legacy	309
	Bibliographic Essay	311
	Documents
6.1	Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech	312
6.2	Wilson's Vision for Reelection, 1924	314
6.3	"The Document"	317
6.4	Draft of a History of the United States, 1922	324
6.5	"The Road away from Revolution," August 1923	327
6.6	Speech, November 10, 1923	331
Appendix A	Notable Figures of the Wilson Presidency	333
Appendix B	Key Events in Wilson's Life	347
Appendix C	Wilson's Cabinet, 1913-1921	358
	Works Cited	359
	Index	365

Editorial Reviews

Deserves to be read...clearly written, well paced, and not afraid to offer opinions of its own.
— Journal of American History

John A. Garraty

An engaging and useful book...a balanced treatment of Wilson's strengths and weaknesses, his triumphs and failures.

Presidential Study Quarterly

YA A well documented and summarized history in which Clements gives the background for and the moral reasons on which Wilson based his decisions. This easily read and understood book presents Wilson as the first president to hold office once most Americans had become aware of their nation's global reach. Wilson, like those who followed him, struggled to balance the protection of national interests, the rights of other peoples, and the promotion of national ideals in a world being radically transformed by war, revolution, and nationalism. This is a brief but excellent book about the period and about the complicated, far-sighted president who tried to establish the first world government, The League of Nations. Barbara Batty, Port Arthur Independent School District

School Library Journal

Deserves to be read...clearly written, well paced, and not afraid to offer opinions of its own.
— John A. Garraty

Journal Of American History

An engaging and useful book...a balanced treatment of Wilson's strengths and weaknesses, his triumphs and failures.

Presidential Studies Quarterly