Project Editor: Sarah Dieter

Brief Biography of Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in 1856 in Staunton, Virginia to a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Joseph Wilson, and Janet Woodrow and was the third of four children. His father served in the Civil War as a chaplain with the Confederate army, and during the war, his church was used as a military hospital.

Wilson began his post-secondary education at Davidson College in North Carolina but, after a year, transferred to Princeton where he graduated from in 1879. He attended law school at the University of Virginia for one year but did not graduate and, in 1882, joined a University of Virginia classmate in his newly begun law practice. The practice was unsuccessful, and led Wilson to turn away from a career in law. He returned to school at John Hopkins University and earned his PhD in history and political science in 1886. His doctoral thesis, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, was published in 1885 and challenges the separation of the legislative and executive powers in America by comparing it with parliamentary government. The same year he married Ellen Louise Axson.

He taught at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University before joining, and eventually becoming president of, Princeton University in 1902 where he became known for his ideas on education reform. In 1911 Wilson entered the political sphere as the Governor of New Jersey, bringing him a great deal of political acclaim. He won the 1912 presidential election by a landslide with the Republican ticket split between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1914, his wife Ellen passed away, and Wilson was remarried to Edith Bolling Galt in December 1915. His second Presidential term was won by a much closer margin. He realized that the United States could no longer remain neutral in the war, and the nation officially entered World War I in April of 1917. It consumed his second term as President.

Over the course of his presidency, Wilson passed many significant pieces of legislation, with some of the most notable being the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Underwood Tariff, the Federal Farm Loan Act, and the Federal Reserve System.