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Breakpoint: A Counter-History of Progress
2019
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Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving two terms from 1913 to 1921. While his presidency is often remembered for leading the country through World War I, Wilson was also a progressive reformer who worked to improve the lives of Americans.
All of these ideologies could fall within the “Progressive” umbrella. Woodrow Wilson claimed his place within the Progressive movement with his economic reform package, "the New Freedom." This agenda, which passed Congress at the end of 1913, included tariff, banking, and labor reforms and introduced the income tax.
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- Overview
- Woodrow Wilson’s rise to power
- Woodrow Wilson's first term in office
- Woodrow Wilson’s second term and the First World War
- What do you think?
Wilson campaigned for a second term on the slogan "He kept us out of war." But that wouldn't be true for long.
Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856 to a very religious family. His father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church and Wilson’s religious upbringing shaped his political views and outlook on the world. He grew up in Georgia and South Carolina and was the first Southerner to become president since James Polk in 1848.
Wilson ran on the Democratic ticket in the 1912 presidential election and triumphed. Wilson campaigned on a “New Freedom” platform, which promised banking, tariff, and business reform while pledging to respect individual freedoms and private industry.1
Once in office, Wilson pursued this agenda, lowering tariffs, creating the Federal Reserve System, championing antitrust legislation, improving protections for workers, and establishing the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on monopolistic business practices. These policies reflected Wilson’s faith in the Progressive movement, which sought to harness the power of the federal government to regulate the economy, expose corruption, and improve society by ameliorating the negative effects of industrialization.2
On the civil rights front, the Wilson administration pursued regressive policies, working with Southern Democrats to segregate the federal government. After years of African American advances in the civil service, this represented a huge step backwards for civil rights. During these years, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a major revival. President Wilson aligned himself symbolically with the KKK by ordering a private screening of D.W. Griffith’s notoriously racist film Birth of a Nation, which portrayed African Americans as savage criminals and the KKK as heroic enforcers of a just and humane racial order. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and numerous religious groups, both black and white, stepped forward to condemn Wilson’s segregationist racial agenda.3
Wilson ran unopposed in the Democratic primaries for the 1916 presidential election, on a platform emphasizing Progressive goals such as better protections for female workers, the elimination of child labor, and the establishment of a minimum wage. The campaign was conducted amidst the war in Europe and the Mexican Revolution, and Wilson ran on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” This would prove to be ironic indeed, as in his second term in office, the United States entered World War I. Wilson triumphed over his Republican rival in the 1916 presidential election by a slender margin.4
Wilson’s second term in office was dominated by the First World War. Wilson embraced a policy of neutrality in the European conflict, believing that the war resulted from the corrupt nature of European power politics, but German aggression ultimately made it impossible for the United States to remain on the sidelines. In May 1915, the Germans sunk the British ocean liner Lusitania, which had many Americans on board.5 Early in 1917, the Germans adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, a decision that was almost immediately followed by the revelation of the Zimmermann Telegram. The telegram pledged German support for Mexican recovery of the territories of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona from the United States.6
How would you characterize Wilson’s approach to civil rights?
Was Wilson’s Progressivism at odds with his attitudes toward race?
Why was Wilson ultimately unable to keep the United States out of the First World War?
How would you rate Wilson as a president?
Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into...
Oct 29, 2009 · Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), the 28th U.S. president, served in office from 1913 to 1921 and led America through World War I (1914-1918). Remembered as an advocate for democracy, progressivism...
May 16, 2024 · Former president Theodore Roosevelt ’s bolt to the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party had split the dominant Republican Party, a factor that allowed Wilson to be elected with only 42 percent of the popular vote but with an electoral college landslide of 435 votes to Roosevelt’s 88 and William Howard Taft ’s 8.
In 1886, Wilson was awarded a Ph.D. in history and government from Johns Hopkins University, making him the only U.S. president in the nation's history to possess a Ph.D. In early 1885, Houghton Mifflin published Wilson's Congressional Government, which was well received, with one critic calling it "the best critical writing on the American ...
