Wilson

“Wilson” is a magnificent biography of a prominent, but controversial figure in American history.  Mostly known for being the scholarly President who led his country through World War I but then failed to persuade it to enter the League of Nations, this tome reveals a much broader career more and complex man than the public would imagine.

Born the son of a Presbyterian minister in Staunton, Virginia in 1856, Wilson began life with both a northern heritage and southern experience.  While growing up in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia he saw firsthand the devastation of War and its aftermath.  Although regarding himself as a Southerner for life, he pursued his education at Princeton in New Jersey, Davidson in North Carolina and at the University of Virginia Law School.  Not finding the law to his liking, he segued into the academic world at Cornell, Bryn Mawr and, most significantly, his alma mater, Princeton.  Focusing on political science and jurisprudence Wilson acquired a reputation that resulted in the offer of the presidency of two major universities before accepting that of Princeton.  In that position his vision expanded the scope of the university before a contest with a major donor drove him to run for governor of New Jersey, as he said, “to get out of politics.”  His substantial Progressive record during his two years as governor drew the national spotlight and made him a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 1912.  Facing a Republican party divided between President Taft and former President Roosevelt, Wilson won an easy victory.  Hoping to devote his energies to domestic initiatives, it was his misfortune to preside over an administration confronting great foreign challenges, primarily in Mexico and Europe.  His transition from working for peace to preparation for and prosecution of war, while not as statesman like as Franklin Roosevelt’s would later be, was more self-directed than I had realized.  His intensive involvement in the peace conference shows less of the impractical professor and more of the principled politician.  His battle over the Treaty in the Senate and across the country left him a shrunken figure with the heart, but not the body, to carry on his struggle.

Author A. Scott Berg has succeeded in introducing readers to the contrasts of a man of both ideas and action.  Berg’s presentation of Wilson is generally favorable without ignoring his shortcomings.  Despite their northern and Scottish backgrounds, the Wilsons were family that grafted itself into Southern traditions.  A political scientist who admired the British governmental system, he was a rare example of his profession who had the opportunity to put his beliefs into action, both on the domestic and international scenes.  Berg skillfully advances a more nuanced view of Wilson than I had previously appreciated.  By following a sequence of health problems, Wilson’s stroke is a major event along a continuum rather than a surprising bolt out of the blue.  Relationships with his two wives depict a much more romantical spirit than I had seen in other books.  Accounts of his negotiations with Congress and at the Peace Conference show a more talented politician than I had envisioned.  Berg does not overlook Wilson’s uncompromising devotion to the League of Nations that European powers and Senate Republicans exploited and that, in the end, destroyed both Wilson and the Peace Treaty.  I had long viewed Woodrow as an overrated president whose victory tragically denied the United States another Theodore Roosevelt Administration, and still do, but “Wilson” has educated me to a new respect for its subject.