Woodrow Wilson
Overview
 
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President
President of Princeton University
Princeton University is led by a President selected by the Board of Trustees. Until the accession of Woodrow Wilson, a political scientist, in 1902, they were all clergymen, as well as professors. President Tilghman is a biologist; her two predecessors were economists.-Presidents:# Reverend...

 of Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey
Governor of New Jersey
The Office of the Governor of New Jersey is the executive branch for the U.S. state of New Jersey. The office of Governor is an elected position, for which elected officials serve four year terms. While individual politicians may serve as many terms as they can be elected to, Governors cannot be...

 from 1911 to 1913. Running against Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party
Progressive Party (United States, 1912)
The Progressive Party of 1912 was an American political party. It was formed after a split in the Republican Party between President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt....

 candidate Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 and Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 candidate William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...

, Wilson was elected
United States presidential election, 1912
The United States presidential election of 1912 was a rare four-way contest. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called...

 President as a Democrat
History of the United States Democratic Party
The history of the Democratic Party of the United States is an account of the oldest political party in the United States and arguably the oldest democratic party in the world....

 in 1912.

In his first term as President, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 to pass major progressive reforms. Historian John Cooper argues that in his first term, Wilson successfully pushed a legislative agenda that few presidents have equaled, and remained unmatched up until the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

.
Timeline

1913    President Woodrow Wilson addresses American Civil War veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913.

1913    President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal.

1913    The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve.

1915    William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States' handling of the sinking of the {{RMS|Lusitania}}.

1915    U.S. President Woodrow Wilson marries Edith Bolling Galt Wilson while president of the United States.

1916    President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1916    U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.

1917    World War I: President Woodrow Wilson of the still-neutral United States calls for "peace without victory" in Europe.

1917    The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the ''Asiatic Barred Zone Act'', it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.

1917    World War I: President Woodrow Wilson asks the U.S. Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.

Quotations

The object of education is not merely to draw out the powers of the individual mind: it is rather its right object to draw all minds to a proper adjustment to the physical and social world in which they are to have their life and their development: to enlighten, strengthen and make fit.

"Princeton In The Nation's Service" (21 October 1896)

The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation … until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.

A History of the American People (1901), describing the Klan as a brotherhood of politically disenfranchised white men. Quoted in The Birth of a Nation

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.

Annual address, American Bar Association, Chattanooga (31 August 1910)

Liberty is its own reward.

Speech in New York City (9 September 1912)

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Speech at New York Press Club (9 September 1912), in The papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25:124

Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.

From a letter to Mary Hulbert|Mary A. Hulbert (21 September 1913)

 
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