By Walker Joyce
Even though our state was one of the original 13 colonies and one of the most important during our nation’s birth, we’ve only sent one man to the White House in our first 250 years. That was Woodrow Wilson, the 28th Chief Executive, and he became one of the most consequential—for better and for worse.
He wasn’t a native Jersey boy. In fact, he was a southerner, born in Virginia, then raised in Georgia and South Carolina. But we get to claim him because he graduated from Princeton, later became its president, and began his political career here.
He’s one-half of a great trivia question: one of only two Commanders-in-Chief who were actually Confederate citizens. Born before the Civil War, he matured under the Stars & Bars, so technically you could argue he was also one of a pair who were once foreigners. The other was John Tyler.
He became a Jerseyan as a college freshman, and for the next 40 years—the bulk of his adult life—he set down roots here.
He distinguished himself as an academic. After his undergrad, he enrolled in law school and passed the bar exam, but his heart was in the university world. He earned a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins (still the first and only president to hold a doctorate) and became a professor.
His main fields were history and political science, though he also taught other subjects and even coached football and debate teams. Princeton recruited him when it acquired its present name and sought to increase its scholarship. Wilson expanded the curriculum, opened new departments, excelled at fundraising, and became a nationally recognized author and speaker.
Though successful as a scholastic reformer, his personal heritage planted a flaw that has greatly diminished his reputation in latter days: he was an unabashed racist.
He actively blocked blacks from admission, though oddly, he did hire the first Jews and Catholics to the faculty.
He also had clay feet when it came to his romantic side. He was an adulterer, despite being a staunch Presbyterian. Attractive women could exert a powerful influence, and this, along with his bigotry, would affect his time in Washington.
Wilson entered politics in 1910. The democrats had been out of power in New Jersey for a long spell, and party bosses recruited him to run for governor as a kind of Hail Mary pass. It worked, and Wilson served until 1913.
He was a reformer in this arena as well, signing several antitrust bills. And though it was the GOP’s Teddy Roosevelt who got the ball rolling, Wilson became the darling of the Progressives, as liberals were then called.
When TR split the republican presidential vote in 1912, running against his hand-picked successor, Taft, Wilson won the three-man race.
Civil Rights was a nascent movement, briefly buoyed when Roosevelt invited the first black person (Booker T. Washington) to a White House dinner. But when Wilson took over, he made segregation the de facto policy of the federal government.
And then Wilson’s other Achilles Heel emerged.
His wife, Ellen, died early in his first term, and less than a year later, Wilson fell for Edith Galt. They were married, and when Wilson suffered a massive stroke, Edith led a conspiracy to conceal its severity.
Thus, many have called Edith the first female president. As she secretly assumed all the duties of the office, this should be stated as fact.
As is her husband’s mixed bag as a leader.
