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Woodrow Wilson : a biography
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2009
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"THIS MAN'S MIND AND SPIRIT" Each year, in the morning on December 28, a military honor guard carrying the American flag presents a wreath that bears the words "The President." Accompanying the honor guard are members of the clergy, who carry a cross and say a prayer. The clergy are present because the wreathlaying ceremony takes place in front of a tomb in the Washington National Cathedral. Since the day is only a week after the winter solstice, the low angle of the morning sun causes bright colors from the stained glass windows to play across the floor of the alcove where the tomb is located, over the stone sarcophagus, and on the words carved on the walls. The alcove contains two flags, the Stars and Stripes and the orange and black--shielded ensign of Princeton University. The wreath laying takes place on the birthday, and at the final resting place, of the thirteenth president of Princeton and twenty-eighth president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. The ceremony and the tomb capture much about this man. The military presence is fitting because Wilson led the nation through World War I. The religious setting is equally fitting because no president impressed people more strongly as a man of faith than Wilson did. His resting place makes him the only president buried inside a church and the  only one buried in Washington. The university flag attests to his career in higher education before he entered public life. Wilson remains the only professional academic and the only holder of the Ph.D. degree to become president. The inscriptions on the alcove walls come from his speeches as president and afterward. Wilson made words central to all that he did as a scholar, teacher, educational administrator, and political leader; he was the next to last president to write his own speeches. No other president has combined such varied and divergent elements of learning, eloquence, religion, and war. In 1927, three years after Wilson's death, Winston Churchill declared, "Writing with every sense of respect, it seems no exaggeration to pronounce that the action of the United States with its repercussions on the history of the world depended, during the awful period of Armageddon, on the workings of this man's mind and spirit to the exclusion of every other factor; and that he played a part in the fate of nations incomparably more direct and personal than any other man." Churchill was referring to the part that Wilson played in World War I and above all, his decision in 1917 to intervene on the side of the Allies. That was the biggest decision Wilson ever made, and much of what has happened in the world since then has flowed from that decision. Unlike the other American wars of the last century, this one came neither in response to a direct attack on the nation's soil, as with World War II and Pearl Harbor and the attacks of September 11, nor as a war of choice, as with the Gulf War and the Iraq War, nor as a smaller episode in a grand global struggle, as with the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Many have argued that the United States joined the Allies in 1917 because great underlying forces and interests involving money, ties of blood and culture, and threats to security and cherished values were "really" at work. Perhaps so, perhaps not, but one incontrovertible fact remains: the United States entered World War I because Woodrow Wilson decided to take the country in. Despite his deep religious faith, he did not go to war in 1917 because he thought God was telling him to do it. When someone telegraphed him to demand, "In the name of God and humanity, declare war on Germany," Wilson's stenographer wrote in his diary that the president scoffed, "War isn't declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely." To Wilson, as an educated, orthodox Christian, the notion that any person could presu Excerpted from Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by John Milton Cooper All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Fiction/Biography Profile
Genre
NonFiction
History
Political
Topics
U.S. presidents
American politics and government
Liberalism
International relations
American foreign relations
American history
World history
World War I
Setting
- United States
Time Period
1924-1956 -- 20th century
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Trade Reviews
New York Times Review
WHEN historians rank the American presidents, Woodrow Wilson almost always secures a place in the top 10. This seems to be an honor accorded successful wartime leaders; in the last C-Span Presidents Day poll, the highest three spots belonged to Lincoln, Washington and Franklin Roosevelt, two war presidents and a general. Yet compared with the reputations of other members of that august pantheon, Wilson's lags far behind. George W. Bush was described as "Wilsonian" after 9/11, but that was hardly meant as a compliment. Barack Obama, like Wilson a scholar, political neophyte and Nobel Peace Prize winner, prefers to be compared to Lincoln and the second Roosevelt, or even to Truman and Reagan - practically any other member of the top ranks. Today, the only major public figure who seems to be interested in Wilson is the Fox News host Glenn Beck, who traces the roots of our current "socialist" predicament back to the dark era of Wilsonian income taxes, war propaganda and obscure monetary symbols. "Woodrow Wilson," John Milton Cooper Jr.'s monumental new biography, seeks to revive Wilson for the 21st century - not simply to narrate a presidential life, but to explain why he deserves our national esteem. A professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Cooper has dedicated a lifetime to studying the Wilson era in its varied dimensions. His first book, "The Vanity of Power," published in 1969, examined American isolationism during World War I. In the decades since, he has written about the League of Nations, Wilson's rivalry with Teddy Roosevelt and nearly every other milestone of Wilson's career. "Woodrow Wilson" belongs securely to that imposing genre known as the definitive biography, the sort of work that it takes a lifetime to achieve and, the biographer hopes, a generation to surpass. So what does Wilson look like from the vantage point of 2009? Not, Cooper writes, like what you might think. He was not a cold intellectual or distant messiah, two stereotypes born in Wilson's failed struggle over the League of Nations. Nor was he even a "Wilsonian" - Cooper argues that like Karl Marx, he would hardly recognize the self-aggrandizing ideals that now bear his name. As Cooper describes him, Wilson was a warm, witty family man with a talent for political hardball and a scholar's love of big ideas: "Behind Woodrow Wilson's distinctive and often caricatured features - his long nose, big jaw and pince-nez eyeglasses - lay one of the deepest and most daring souls ever to inhabit the White House." Wilson at a baseball game, autumn 1915. Such statements set the tone for Cooper's book, an admiring and engaging work of presidential revisionism. According to Cooper, Wilson was a savvy executive whose farsighted decision-making shaped "much of what has happened in the world since." Wilson first showed his political talents as the president of Princeton, where he introduced new intellectual rigor to an ossified, dilettantish curriculum. Next came his two years as New Jersey governor, where his firm progressive stand against the Democratic machine set him on course for the White House. As president, Cooper writes, Wilson assembled a record of legislative efficiency rivaled only by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. In less than two years, he established the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve while reforming trust, tariff and tax law - all stalwart progressive issues. What's more, he made Congress stay for 18 months to do it, the longest working session in Congressional history. Cooper narrates Wilson's rise to power as traditional political history; cabinet appointments and nominating conventions receive far more attention than social movements or grassroots trends. We also learn a great deal about Wilson's astoundingly pleasant daily schedule: he usually arrived at work around 9 a.m., took an hourlong lunch and knocked off by late afternoon for an automobile drive or a game of golf. This schedule changed surprisingly little after 1914, when the outbreak of the Great War in Europe began to subsume all other concerns. The following year, Wilson found time to fall in love, remarry and depart on a three-week honeymoon before returning to address the exigencies of unrestricted submarine warfare. Cooper portrays Wilson as a venerable wartime leader: thoughtful, circumspect, deeply concerned with the war's moral implications. Only after a major stroke in late 1919 did he begin to acquire the characteristics of intransigence, rigidity and self-deception that ultimately shaped his political legacy. Cooper views the stroke, rightly, as the great tragedy of Wilson's life. "Out of a dynamic, resourceful leader emerged an emotionally unstable, delusional creature." The stroke also set off a major crisis of presidential succession, as the debilitated and not entirely lucid president continued to cling to office and plan feebly for re-election. This is an affecting portrait. We can only mourn for Wilson's lost vitality as he lies slack-jawed in bed, wondering if the world has forsaken him. On occasion, though, Cooper's sympathy for Wilson threatens to veer into hagiography. He acknowledges that Wilson was not a perfect president, especially on issues of race and civil liberties. Here, however, he gives Wilson more credit than may be due. Cooper attributes both the viciously racist policies of the Wilson era and the administration's crackdown on political dissidents to the actions of cabinet officials, not to Wilson himself. Nonetheless, the record that Wilson established marks him as the most reactionary president on these issues in the 20th century. At a certain point, one has to wonder if these are exceptions to an otherwise stellar Wilsonian performance, or if they might in fact be the rule. It makes sense that Cooper wants to see the best of Wilson; few historians dedicate a life's work to figures they roundly despise. And yet the attempt to redeem Wilson ultimately makes him a less interesting figure. By beginning with the premise that Wilson was a great man, worthy of 21st-century admiration, Cooper flounders in attempting to explain his subject's less palatable attributes. "It remains a mystery," Cooper concludes of the postwar Red Scare, "why such a farseeing, thoughtful person as Wilson would let any of that occur." He finds Wilson's racial attitudes similarly "puzzling," given the president's alleged sensitivity "to economic, religious and ethnic injustices." A more nuanced approach might have let Wilson stand on his own contradictory terms. Yet this is a luxury not always afforded presidential historians, who must inevitably address how their subjects stack up against the competition. Cooper presents a powerful, deeply researched and highly readable case for keeping Wilson in the top ranks of American presidents, even if history might be better served by doing away with the contest altogether. Woodrow Wilson, Cooper says, was 'one of the deepest and most daring souls ever to inhabit the White House.' Beverly Gage, the author of "The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror," teaches American history at Yale.
Library Journal Review
Cooper (history, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; Breaking the Heart of the World), arguably our leading Wilson authority, offers a comprehensive, felicitously written biography aimed at scholars but accessible to general readers, too. As Cooper notes, this "schoolmaster in politics" transmitted his thoughts on paper-a habit helpful to historians. Cooper mines Wilson's letters as well as the archival materials of Wilson colleagues. He admires Wilson for his faith, learning, eloquence, and executive skill while conceding that he had to learn foreign policy on the job-yet established America as an international player. Cooper considers Wilson hard-headed, with limited goals (World War I concluded not with total victory but with an armistice to save as many lives as possible). Unlike other scholars, Cooper claims that the Virginia-born Wilson was not an "obsessed white supremacist" but that his collegial governing style allowed cabinet members to introduce segregation throughout the federal government. And while his attorneys general violated civil liberties both during and after wartime, Cooper claims that FDR's abuses were even worse. Verdict Highly recommended; readers are invited to wrestle with Cooper's favorable interpretation of Wilson's legacy and arrive at their own conclusions.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
If we must have another presidential biography, best to have one of a figure who hasn't had his life written about at length for two decades. While the Wilson we find here differs little from the man we've known before, Cooper's new book is an authoritative, up-to-date study of the great president. Cooper (Breaking the Heart of the World), a noted Wilson expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offers balanced and judicious assessments of the life and career of one of the nation's most controversial leaders. From his youth in Virginia, through his years at Princeton, then as New Jersey governor and president, Wilson faced thickets of challenges, not all of which he managed effectively. At the end, sick and weakened, characteristically stubborn and moralistic, he notoriously failed to gain American membership in the League of Nations. Yet Cooper, while sympathetic to his subject-a visionary and Progressive reformer in domestic politics-fairly records Wilson's Southern racism along with his keen intellect and political acuity. Wilson would come to be, Cooper concludes, "one of the best remembered and argued over of all presidents." While not stemming any disputes, this book will please and inform all readers. 16 pages of photos. (Nov. 2) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
CHOICE Review
The stereotype is shattered--a prim, precise Woodrow Wilson singing "Oh, You Beautiful Doll," or the libidinous widower engaging (perhaps) in premarital sex with Edith, who becomes his second wife. Cooper (Univ. of Wisconsin; The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, CH, Apr'84) presents Wilson "off the pedestal," human in every respect. Nevertheless, to some, Wilson may remain unlikeable, even too human, held captive by his vindictiveness and inflexibility. Such traits haunted him in academia at Princeton and as New Jersey's governor, and followed him into the White House, where he fought Congress over ratification of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. A latecomer to Progressivism (and women's suffrage), Wilson nevertheless takes his place with Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft as a reformer. He appears to have sought order in all matters, but political dissent and civil liberties were on his back burner during and after WW I. He is plagued by his racist perceptions and aloof from the misery of African Americans who suffered on his watch. This book could be read in conjunction with W. Barksdale Maynard's Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency (CH, Aug'09, 46-7000), but Cooper's biography will remain definitive for years to come. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. P. D. Travis Texas Woman's University
Booklist Review
A meticulously researched life of the Progressive Era president, Cooper's portrait of Woodrow Wilson provides realistic depictions of the person and historical assessments of the politician. Wilson's salient traits included adherence to Presbyterianism, an active libido, and an intellectualized passion for politics. Cooper taps these anecdotal sources over the course of his chronology from Wilson's upbringing in the post-Civil War South to the demise of his presidency as an ineffectual invalid. Wilson's abundant writing, including stacks of love letters, books on government (some still in print), speeches, and state papers, must have posed a formidable challenge; the fluency of Cooper's narrative demonstrates he mastered it. His Wilson is one general-interest readers can understand both sui generis and as a man of his times. Espousing morality in politics, Wilson was indifferent to blacks and sanctioned infringements of civil rights, and although dedicated to peace, he led America into World War I. Capturing Wilson's complexities, Cooper presents the personality behind one of the most consequential presidencies in American history.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A noted Woodrow Wilson expert comprehensively examines the life and career of America's 28th president. Generally acknowledged among the country's great presidents, Wilson's proper placement within the pantheon nevertheless creates more argument among scholars than perhaps any other. While acknowledging Wilson's dismal record on race and civil liberties, Cooper (History/Univ. of Wisconsin; Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson, 2008, etc.) comes down firmly on the president's side, rejecting the caricature of the high-minded intellectual out of his depth in the messy political arena. The author believes, as Wilson himself did, that his academic backgroundfirst as an exceedingly popular professor, then as Princeton's reform-minded presidentprepared him perfectly for the political battles he later faced as New Jersey's governor and, of course, as president. Above all, Cooper stresses, Wilson was a teacher, his goal not so much to inspire the American people in the fashion of his greatest rival, Teddy Roosevelt, but rather to educate them, appealing to public opinion through his writing and oratory. Domestically, he enacted progressive legislation that prefigured some of the New Deal. After maneuvering to keep the country neutral during World War Ihe was narrowly reelected on the slogan, "He kept us out of war"Wilson proved a surprisingly energetic commander in chief. By the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he was arguably the world's most acclaimed leader, but from there his presidency turned tragic. In part because of his disinclination to compromise, but largely because of a debilitating stroke that literally paralyzed his last year and a half in office, Wilson failed to persuade Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or to join the League of Nations. Cooper is especially good on this "worst crisis of presidential disability in American history"; Wilson's uncommonly close attachment to the women in his life; his Civil Warera boyhood in Virginia; the battle for educational reform at Princeton; and the role played by important presidential advisors like Joe Tumulty and Colonel House. Cooper exhibits complete command of his materials, a sure knowledge of the man and a nuanced understanding of a presidency almost Shakespearean in its dimensions. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary
The first major biography of America's twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America's foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars.

A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president--he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR's New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early twenty-first century, including the Federal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilson also steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties.

Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson's domestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious--not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination. As the president of Princeton, his encounters with the often rancorous battles of academe prepared him for state and national politics. Just two years after he was elected governor of New Jersey, Wilson, now a leader in the progressive movement, won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to defeat Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in one of the twentieth century's most memorable presidential elections. Ever the professor, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people.

John Milton Cooper, Jr., gives us a vigorous, lasting record of Wilson's life and achievements. This is a long overdue, revelatory portrait of one of our most important presidents--particularly resonant now, as another president seeks to change the way government relates to the people and regulates the economy.
Table of Contents
Prologue "This Man's Mind and Spirit"p. 3
1Tommyp. 13
2Woodrowp. 33
3Professorp. 56
4Bold Leaderp. 79
5Academic Civil Warp. 102
6Governorp. 120
7Nomineep. 140
8The Great Campaignp. 159
9Preparationp. 182
10Beginningsp. 198
11Taken at the Floodp. 213
12Triumph and Tragedyp. 237
13Irony and the Gift of Fatep. 262
14The Shock of Recognitionp. 285
15Second Flood Tidep. 307
16To Run Againp. 334
17Peace and Warp. 362
18Waring Warp. 390
19Victoryp. 425
20Covenantp. 454
21Peacemaking Abroad and at Homep. 476
22The League Fightp. 506
23Disabilityp. 535
24Downfallp. 561
25Twilightp. 579
Notesp. 601
Sources and Acknowledgmentsp. 669
Indexp. 677
Librarian's View
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