WOODROW WILSON

THOMAS WOODROW WILSON, twenty-eighth President of the United States, was known as a jurist, educator, historian, and man of letters before entering political life. He was born in Staunton, Va., Dec. 28, 1856. His mother, Jessie Woodrow, was a native of Carlisle, England. His father, Joseph R., a well-known minister of the Presbyterian Church South, was born in Steubenville, Ohio, of Scotch ancestry. Woodrow Wilson was educated at Davidson College, in North Carolina, and in the private schools of Augusta, Ga., and Columbia, S. C., and received his collegiate training at Princeton University, where he was graduated in 1879. After a course in law at the University of Virginia he was admitted to the bar and practised before the courts in Atlanta, Ga. (1882-83), and then entered Johns Hopkins University as a special student in history and politics; in 1885 became instructor in history and politics at Bryn Mawr College (Pa.); in 1888 a member of the faculty of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., and in 1890 accepted the chair of jurisprudence at Princeton. Married, June 24, 1885, Helen Louise Axson, of Savannah, Ga. Wilson's eminent scholarship was attested by the degrees A.B. (Princeton, 1879); A.M. (Princeton, 1882); LL.B. (U. of Va., 1882); Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins, 1886); LL.D. (Wake Forest, 1887; Tulane, 1898; Johns Hopkins, 1902; Rutgers, 1902; U. of Pa., 1903; Brown, 1903; Harvard, 1907; Williams, 1908; Dartmouth, 1909); Litt.D. (Yale, 1901). His literary reputation rests upon "Congressional Government: a Study in American Politics," published in 1885, while a student at Johns Hopkins; "The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics," a text-book (1888); "An Old Master, and Other Political Essays" (1889); "Division and Reunion, 1829-1889," a sketch of the history of the United States during the period of its greatest development (1893); “ Mere Literature," a volume of literary and historical papers (1896); “George Washington," a historical and biographical study (1896); "A History of the American People (5) vols., 1902); "The Free Life" (1908); " Constitutional Government in the United States" (1908); "Civic Problems" (1909). In 1890 he was made professor of jurisprudence and politics at Princeton, which position he held until 1902, when he became president of the University. He was elected Governor of New Jersey in 1910. His prominence as a Democratic State Executive won him the nomination at the national convention in 1912 and he was elected President by a popular vote of 6,293,120, against 3,485,082 for President Taft and 4,119,582 for ex-President Roosevelt. The Electoral College vote was 435 for Wilson, 8 for President Taft and 88 for Roosevelt.

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