Who was he: Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. During his two terms, he instituted various reforms to improve the economy of the United States. Tariff rates were reduced from 41% to 27%.
In addition, on his watch the Federal Reserve System was created to provide banks with loans in order to alleviate the effects of economic turbulence during that time. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act was also passed to support labor rights, such as the right of laborers to picket or boycott.
Wilson fought for a vision of a world peace via the establishment of the United Nations and took profoundly moralistic political stances. Following Wilsonian doctrine, the US has advocated democratic ideals throughout the world over the past several decades.
In a sense, however, Wilson can be seen as a forerunner of the modern technocratic president within the ambit of the Anglosphere empire. A rigid and intemperate thinker, a man controlled – some would say blackmailed – by his most powerful aids such as Colonel Edward Mandell House, revisionist libertarian history shows him to have been a tool of his day's warmongering elite.
Wilson is said to have been a man of peace, but he presided over a genocidal war. He emphasized personal probity but there is some evidence he had a passionate affair before and during office that left him vulnerable to blackmail.
Wilson supposedly wanted the best for his electorate but he fought stubbornly to saddle them with the ineffective, authoritarian League of Nations that set the precedent for the even worse United Nations. He was a vain, stubborn, foolish man, and toward the end of his life he apparenlty regretted many of his actions. By then it was too late. After his stroke the country was run by his wife, Edith Bolling Wilson.
Background: Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia to parents of Scottish descent. Wilson was raised under the Presbyterian faith and had a strongly pious home and academic upbringng.
Wilson attended Davidson College and Princeton University, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in 1879. Wilson then pursued law at the University of Virginia and practiced law for a year after earning his degree. The urge to continue his educational advancement resulted in his entrance into graduate school at Johns Hopkins University. Wilson received his doctorate degree in history and political science in 1886.
Wilson published the scholarly treatise entitled Congressional Government in 1885, which analyzed the effects of separating the legislative and executive powers as dictated by the Constitution. Wilson criticized the disjointed nature of the American system of government and instead advocated elements of the British form of government in which which policies are more centrally unified.
Wilson went on to teach in college, first at Bryn Mawr College for three years, at Wesleyan College for two years, and then at Princeton University. At Princeton, he taught jurisprudence and political economy, a stint which was successful and productive.
Woodrow Wilson became the president of Princeton University, serving from 1902 to 1910, then governor of New Jersey and finally President of the United States. Tragically, Wilson collapsed and suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage after a speech in Colorado on September 25, 1919. He never fully recovered and was an invalid for the rest of his life, although he did manage to complete his term. He died in 1924.