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US history
Course: US history > Unit 7
Lesson 2: The United States in World War I- The presidency of Woodrow Wilson
- Blockades, u-boats and sinking of the Lusitania
- Zimmermann Telegram
- United States enters World War I
- World War I: Homefront
- The United States in World War I
- Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
- Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles
- More detail on the Treaty of Versailles and Germany
- The League of Nations
- The Treaty of Versailles
- The First World War
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The presidency of Woodrow Wilson
Wilson campaigned for a second term on the slogan "He kept us out of war." But that wouldn't be true for long.
Overview
- Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States. He served two terms in office, from 1913 to 1921.
- Wilson was a Progressive Democrat who believed in the power of the federal government to expose corruption, regulate the economy, eliminate unethical business practices, and improve the general condition of society.
- During Wilson’s years in office, the US federal government was segregated and the Ku Klux Klan experienced a major revival.
- Wilson’s second term in office was dominated by the First World War. Though Wilson campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of war,” escalating German aggression ultimately made it impossible for the United States to stay out of the conflict.
Woodrow Wilson’s rise to power
Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856 to a very religious family. His father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church and Wilson’s religious upbringing shaped his political views and outlook on the world. He grew up in Georgia and South Carolina and was the first Southerner to become president since James Polk in 1848.
Wilson ran on the Democratic ticket in the 1912 presidential election and triumphed. Wilson campaigned on a “New Freedom” platform, which promised banking, tariff, and business reform while pledging to respect individual freedoms and private industry.
Woodrow Wilson's first term in office
Once in office, Wilson pursued this agenda, lowering tariffs, creating the Federal Reserve System, championing antitrust legislation, improving protections for workers, and establishing the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on monopolistic business practices. These policies reflected Wilson’s faith in the Progressive movement, which sought to harness the power of the federal government to regulate the economy, expose corruption, and improve society by ameliorating the negative effects of industrialization.
On the civil rights front, the Wilson administration pursued regressive policies, working with Southern Democrats to segregate the federal government. After years of African American advances in the civil service, this represented a huge step backwards for civil rights. During these years, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a major revival. President Wilson aligned himself symbolically with the KKK by ordering a private screening of D.W. Griffith’s notoriously racist film Birth of a Nation, which portrayed African Americans as savage criminals and the KKK as heroic enforcers of a just and humane racial order. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and numerous religious groups, both black and white, stepped forward to condemn Wilson’s segregationist racial agenda.
Woodrow Wilson’s second term and the First World War
Wilson ran unopposed in the Democratic primaries for the 1916 presidential election, on a platform emphasizing Progressive goals such as better protections for female workers, the elimination of child labor, and the establishment of a minimum wage. The campaign was conducted amidst the war in Europe and the Mexican Revolution, and Wilson ran on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” This would prove to be ironic indeed, as in his second term in office, the United States entered World War I. Wilson triumphed over his Republican rival in the 1916 presidential election by a slender margin.
Wilson’s second term in office was dominated by the First World War. Wilson embraced a policy of neutrality in the European conflict, believing that the war resulted from the corrupt nature of European power politics, but German aggression ultimately made it impossible for the United States to remain on the sidelines. In May 1915, the Germans sunk the British ocean liner Lusitania, which had many Americans on board.
The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. In January 1918, Wilson issued his famous Fourteen Points, which laid out the long-term objectives of US involvement in the war. Wilson envisioned a postwar world in which all nations enjoyed mutual cooperation and respect, and belonged to a League of Nations that would peacefully resolve all international disputes. Due to the opposition of isolationists in Congress, the United States never joined the League of Nations. Wilson died in 1924, with his dreams for the postwar world unrealized. However, many of Wilson’s ideas and principles would be embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, which was founded after the Second World War.
What do you think?
How would you characterize Wilson’s approach to civil rights?
Was Wilson’s Progressivism at odds with his attitudes toward race?
Why was Wilson ultimately unable to keep the United States out of the First World War?
How would you rate Wilson as a president?
Want to join the conversation?
why would they elect him president when he had dealings with the Ku Klux Klan??(16 votes)
Back then, it didn't matter as much. This was a time when African Americans had very little rights, so electing a president with ties to the Klan wasn't that surprising(13 votes)
- Why would he be elected president for a second term if he had some kind of relations with the KKK?(7 votes)
Wilson was elected since he had much of the South's support, most of the Democrat's support and he was facing 2 conservatives that split the Republican's votes in half, allowing Wilson to just get by with a win.(13 votes)
Why did it take two years after the Lusitania attack to declare war?(9 votes)
The US wanted to remain neutral much like Washington's Farewell Address Warns(4 votes)
He didn't seem like a very good person So why would they elect him president especially if there was people that didn't like slavery and he was apart of the ku klutz Klan?(5 votes)
All kinds of "not very good persons" have become president of the United States. A phrase that often guides me when I begin to overly admire someone is, "There is none that is righteous, no, not one." You may have heard it at a synagogue or church at one time or another.(12 votes)
- How old would Woodrow Wilson be today?(3 votes)
Well, he was born in December of 1856, so he'd be 160 years old today.(10 votes)
Wait… if Woodrow Wilson came from a religious family, then why did he affiliate himself with the Klu Klux Klan? I thought religion back then was the only thing that didn’t segregate African Americans.(4 votes)- Religions all around the world encompass people who are not perfect. Wilson's racism was undented by his religious membership and affiliation. Alas, that is true even among the most religious, and the most irreligious people. Racism is like cancer.(2 votes)
- I would simply say that strategy that used to civil rights was characterized as discrimination because he separated the southern state which caused to have KKK and the African Americans considered criminals. As a matter ofa fact, Wilson strongly supported the idea of helping Americans be out of war. Historically, the Germans launched an invasion by sinking the British Marines which the Americans boarded too. Thereafter, it drove Wilson to wage a war the against Germans. Soon afterward, the war was still a remnant. And Wilson died without fulfilling his dream., making the American be out of war.(4 votes)
if Woodrow Wilson was with the KKK and thought that he could make a powerful nation by using the government to expose corruption, then why did he work with an oginization as bad as the Klu Klan Klux?(4 votes)- There's no "if" about it. He WAS on the side of the KKK. His personal racism explains more than a small part of it. Racism blinded him to certain things. It does that to people, even today in 2023.(2 votes)
- So, how come when Wilson aligned himself with the KKK, the people didn't push him out of office? I mean, it said that tons of people didn't like Wilson's decision to join the KKK. Were there enough people that he could have been pushed out?(2 votes)
Wilson did not join the KKK. He aligned himself with the KKK. He was a racist. He implemented segregation practices in the government that were more extreme than previous presidencies, but he did not join the KKK.
There were a lot of people who did support Wilson's position with the KKK, mainly white southerners. There were also a lot of people who were more interested in Wilson's beliefs about other more imminent policies at the time, such as maintaining isolationism and progressive reform for whites, than his position on segregation. It was a very different time than now. Many Americans were worried about job security and felt threatened by immigrants and African Americans who might take their job if they go on strike for better working conditions.(6 votes)
Why did Wilson show a screening of a film? Was this one of the ways he responded to the KKK(5 votes)