Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) · CatalogWoodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson (1856-1924) · CatalogTwenty-eighth President; Progressive reformer and World War I leader.
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Woodrow Wilson
1856-1924 · Twenty-eighth President; Progressive reformer and World War I leader
About Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), scholar and New Jersey governor, won the three-way election of 1912. His first inaugural diagnoses the human costs of industrial America and calls for thoughtful reform without hatred of honest success.
“human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through”
Woodrow Wilson took the oath on the East Portico on 4 March 1913, the first Democrat inaugurated since Grover Cleveland in 1893. He had won the 1912 election against a Republican Party split between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive campaign, and his party now controlled both houses of Congress as well.
Wilson delivered his second inaugural on 5 March 1917 from the East Portico; because 4 March fell on a Sunday, he had taken the oath privately the day before. Germany had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February, the United States had broken diplomatic relations, and on 1 March the Zimmermann telegram, a German proposal of alliance to Mexico, had been made public.