Woodrow Wilson

C

College Years

In 1873, Wilson attended Davidson College, a small Presbyterian school in North Carolina, of which his father was a trustee. At that time there was some expectation that he might be preparing for the clergy, but the following year he enrolled at the College of New Jersey, a school favored by young Southern gentlemen.

Wilson worked less hard at achieving high grades than at deciding upon a career. He was seriously interested in English literature and read established authors. Politics also interested him, and he studied such classic British orators as Edmund Burke and the techniques of public speech. A leader among the school debaters Wilson, who believed in free trade, refused to defend the case for the government protection of domestic industry even as an exercise in argument. His dream of entering national politics was revealed in his visiting cards, which was written “Thomas Woodrow Wilson, senator from Virginia.”

Wilson worked diligently to improve his writing, examining the styles of famous English essayists and severely criticizing his own. During his last year at college he published an essay, “Cabinet Government in the United States,” in the International Review (August 1879). The essay revealed Wilson's gift for dramatizing ideas and giving them simple and urgent form. His criticism of the powerful committees that dominated the Congress of the United States was largely a criticism of the Congress that had dictated policy to the defeated Southern states during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, but Wilson's essay went beyond sectional feelings. He wanted a more democratically run Congress, and he envisioned a government of strong and competent Cabinet members, actively engaged in the passage of legislation, rather than a strong president.

D

Legal Career

Wilson was encouraged by the excellent reception of his essay and decided to become a lawyer and enter politics. As a student in the University of Virginia law school, however, he became inpatient with the fine points of law and only reluctantly mastered them. Although his work was outstanding, he found public speaking and political history more satisfying. Despite intermittent illness, he received his law degree and in 1882 settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where he opened a law practice with Edward I. Renick, another idealistic young Southerner. Neither of the young lawyers was particularly skilled at the business side of the venture. In 1883 Wilson abandoned his law career and entered the graduate school of The Johns Hopkins University to study history.

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III

Literary and Academic Career

Although a candidate for a degree in history, Wilson continued to analyze politics. His mentor, Professor Herbert Baxter Adams, permitted him to do so. The result was a book-length expansion of his earlier essay on Congress. Accepted and published early in 1885, it sold well. Influential reviewers found Wilson's critical attitude toward American democracy novel and stimulating. Although not strong in scholarship, Congressional Government earned Wilson the Ph.D. degree and enabled him to pursue a literary and academic career.

Wilson had been engaged for several years to Ellen Louise Axson, daughter of a Georgia clergyman, and they were married in June 1885. Cultured and vivacious, Mrs. Wilson proved the perfect mate for her sensitive husband. She gave him unqualified support and helped free his mind from everyday pressures. The couple had three daughters.

In 1885 Wilson also accepted a position with the newly opened Bryn Mawr College, a school for women near Philadelphia. Wilson was not particularly patient with women as intellectual associates and did not enjoy his teaching duties. He was, however, able to pursue his writing.

A

University Professor

In 1888 Wilson left Bryn Mawr for a professorship in history and political economy at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. There, in 1889, he published The State, a lengthy textbook analyzing the political nature of society. It further established his reputation, even though many of his admirers found it less of an intellectual adventure than Congressional Government. At Wesleyan, Wilson was a successful lecturer, faculty leader, and football coach. He was popular with the students and the administration and often spoke to off-campus meetings.

He was offered the presidency of various institutions, including the universities of Virginia and Illinois, and he was also offered professorships at higher salaries. He bided his time, however, until the College of New Jersey, which became Princeton University in 1896, offered him a professorship. The post suited him completely, and he accepted in 1890.

Wilson now began a program of publishing and public appearances, becoming one of the foremost academic personalities of the era. His essays on literary topics as well as on history and political science appeared in many magazines. In his works he deplored what he saw as the merely “scientific” spirit of the age and called for a renewed identity with “the great spirits of the past,” arguing that they were still relevant to modern times and conditions. He thus brought to his academic subject matter an excitement that stirred his students and colleagues as well as his outside readers and audiences. An Old Master and Other Political Essays (1893) and Mere Literature and Other Essays (1896) were welcomed by critics and reinforced his reputation.

As a historian, Wilson shared the views of American history held by most of his contemporaries. His romantic and uncritical George Washington (1896) presented a warm portrait of his great hero. Even so, Wilson tried to persuade readers of his impartiality and hardheadedness. In Division and Reunion, 1829-1889 (1893), which described the differences between the North and South, he agreed that the slavery system was bad in some respects, but he also insisted that as a labor and social system it had worked well. He called President Abraham Lincoln “one of the most singular and admirable figures in the history of modern times” and attempted to distinguish between what he called the “lawyer's facts” and the “historian's facts.” Thus, Wilson concluded, the South had seceded legally, but history had determined secession to be wrong.

Wilson seemed to abandon hope for a political career, but he continued to follow political affairs. He had little regard for grassroots movements and lacked sympathy with the farmer and labor agitation then sweeping the West and South and demanding economic reform (see Populism). His calls for dedicated leaders and inspired slogans reflected his aristocratic attitude toward politics, as did his admiration for Grover Cleveland as a fearless and independent president. But Wilson also wanted “some great orator who could go about and make men drunk with this spirit of self-sacrifice, some man whose tongue might every day carry abroad the golden accents of that creative age in which we were born a nation.”

Still responding to strong public demand for his work, Wilson wrote A History of the American People, published in 1902 in five volumes. Wilson's name became familiar and increasingly respected.

B

University President

When the presidency of the college became vacant in 1902, Wilson was unanimously elected. Two presidents of the United States, Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), attended his inauguration. As president of Princeton, Wilson tried to end practices he believed harmful to education. The student body maintained a club system and separate dining facilities that were undemocratic. They put aside study for what they deemed gentlemanly accomplishments. The university emphasized lectures rather than student-faculty discussion. Wilson had accepted such procedures while establishing himself on campus, but now he prepared for radical departures. He demanded the raising of admission and achievement standards. Following universities in England, he sought to create communities of students, as opposed to exclusive societies. Students were to live and study together in arrangements of four buildings in a rectangle, or quads. Preceptors, rather than lecturers, were to give students personal attention. In a new set of buildings that Wilson proposed to build, the faculty would eat with students and teach them by example as well as by the book.

During his first years as president of Princeton, Wilson enlisted the enthusiasm of his teachers and administrators, and word of his exciting ideas spread. Moreover, he brought to his campus many new young instructors who were eager for innovation and change. Some students and faculty, who preferred the old aristocratic ways and who resented his downgrading of sports and his blunt attacks on student clubs, resisted Wilson. He also displeased alumni, who were fond of their own student days and were generally suspicious of reform. Wilson's quad plan was especially open to criticism because it involved great building expenses and would require wide endorsement by wealthy alumni, who were unwilling to give it. To Wilson's deep chagrin the quad plan failed to win the approval of the university's trustees.

Wilson always found it difficult to work with people who opposed him and was not receptive to the suggestions of friends who approved his ideals but trusted in slower or modified processes. His troubles increased when Wilson proposed to build a new graduate school. The business school dean was Andrew F. West, a classics scholar. Wilson wanted to build the new school on campus, but West planned to set it apart from the university. Wilson sometimes took contradictory steps to control the affair, and failed to explain the underlying differences between West and himself. What he saw as a question of privilege versus democracy came to appear as merely a “real estate” matter, in which he looked stubborn and petty. West was triumphant in 1910 when an enormous gift to the university required that West's program be adopted. It was a gift the Princeton trustees were unwilling and Wilson was unable to resist.

Such academic battles caused Wilson acute nervous strain and sickness. Disheartened and upset, he vacillated between resigning the presidency and staying at Princeton to prevent the total disruption of his designs. He decided to remain.

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