Woodrow Wilson Case

Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States of America. Wilson was born on December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia. The President's father was a Presbyterian minister who during the civil war was a Pastor in Augusta, Georgia. During the Reconstruction after the Civil War his father was a professor in the destroyed city of Columbia, South Carolina. Wilson was raised in a pious and academic household. He had spent one year at Davidson College in North Carolina and three years at Princeton University.

After finishing his three years at Princeton in 1879, he received his baccalaureate degree. Wilson then went on to the Law School of the University of Virginia and graduated. Following that he practiced law for one year in Atlanta Georgia, but it was feeble practice. After Wilson had ended his practice of law in Atlanta he turned to the academic world and found his proper place at Princeton. The majority of his published work was on the United States government and history on the Government in general. Wilson wrote a biography of George Washington it was described as overly laudatory. Wilson was a political scientist who urged fundamental reforms in the American system of government. He argued in his first book, Congressional Government 1885, that instead of balance of powers envisaged by the Founders, American government was dominated by the legislative branch. He was particular to mention that the power was held by a few powerful congressional committees.

After Wilson had a successful term as governor of New Jersey, he ran for president in 1912 on a platform that heeded public demand for reform. Wilson's opponents during this time were the former president Theodore Roosevelt, who ran on a platform even more reformist than Wilson's. Wilson won the presidency with 6,300,000 popular votes and 435 of the 531 electoral votes. He also carried with him Democratic Party majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate.

The Newly elected President had begun his presidency with a bombshell. He called Congress to a special session where he appeared before it to deliver his message orally, which no president had done since John Adams. The domestic programs that were installed as Woodrow Wilson was president was the Federal Reserve System, The Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the income tax act, and a host of other measures. Some of the other ones gave workers a 40-hour work week and made child labor illegal.

The problem of WWI was on the rise for the president. He believed that he should reflect public opinion; Wilson declared that we must be neutral in deed and in thoughts. However Americans living in a British-born culture and composed of immigrants from all the lands of Europe had problems with staying neutral in the war. Fighting tactics increased Americans' lack of neutrality. The new German U-boats unlike the British ships had many targets to take down. They