60 Fun Facts About Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson was which number president of the United States?

He served two full terms and was the only Democrat to hold the office during the Progressive Era.

In which Virginia town was Wilson born, in the manse of his father's Presbyterian church?

His family moved to Augusta, Georgia before he was two, and his earliest memory was hearing that Lincoln's election meant war.

Wilson is the only US president to hold which academic credential?

Johns Hopkins awarded it in 1886 for work that became his book Congressional Government, which one critic ranked with the Federalist Papers.

Wilson was one of only two US presidents to have been citizens of the Confederacy; who was the other?

Wilson's father was a founder of the Southern Presbyterian church and a staunch Confederate supporter during the war.

Wilson's 1887 journal article made him a founding father of which academic field?

The article argued that administrators should be a separate profession, accountable to elected leaders who answer to the people.

Wilson taught at Wesleyan University in Connecticut from 1888, where he also did what for the school?

As an undergraduate he had been secretary of the football association and president of the baseball association.

Wilson served as president of which university from 1902 to 1910?

He tried to replace the 'gentleman's C' with serious study and appointed the university's first Jewish and first Roman Catholic faculty members.

As a university president, Wilson's failed attempt to curb social elites targeted which institutions?

He wanted students housed in quadrangle colleges instead, but alumni fought the plan fiercely.

Wilson served as governor of which state before winning the presidency?

In office he broke with the party bosses who had picked him and signed antitrust laws known as the 'Seven Sisters'.

At the 1912 Democratic convention, Wilson finally secured the nomination on which ballot?

Front-runner Champ Clark faded after Bryan refused to back any candidate supported by Tammany Hall.

Which former president ran against Wilson in 1912 as the 'Bull Moose' third-party candidate?

The Republican split let Wilson carry 40 states with just 41.8 percent of the popular vote.

Wilson won the 1912 election with what share of the popular vote, the lowest for a winner since 1860?

He nonetheless became the first candidate ever to top 400 electoral votes, and the only one to do so without a popular majority.

Socialist Eugene V. Debs won what record share of the popular vote against Wilson in 1912?

It remains the best showing by a Socialist candidate in any American presidential election.

Wilson was the first Southerner elected president since which 1848 winner?

Southern segregationists celebrated his victory, and his administration went on to segregate federal offices.

Which legal scholar helped craft Wilson's 'New Freedom' and later became his Supreme Court nominee?

His 1916 nomination sparked a Senate fight over his progressive views and his religion; he was the first Jewish nominee to the Court.

Which Wilson Secretary of State resigned in 1915 over the response to a liner sinking?

The three-time presidential nominee felt Wilson had put American trade rights ahead of true neutrality.

Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress in person, the first president to do so since whom?

Introducing a full domestic agenda at the start of an administration was itself something no president had done before.

Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law on December 23 of which year?

Congressman Carter Glass and Senator Robert Owen carried the bill that created twelve regional reserve banks.

Which 1914 act created a new antitrust agency independent of the Justice Department?

One month later Wilson signed the Clayton Act, which defined and banned specific anti-competitive practices.

The 1916 Keating–Owen Act, passed with Wilson's belated support, restricted what?

Wilson had thought such a law unconstitutional but reversed himself with a close election looming.

Wilson's first wife Ellen Axson Wilson, who died in the White House in 1914, had trained as what?

She studied at the Art Students League of New York, won a medal at the 1878 Paris Exposition, and learned German to help translate his research.

Which pro-Ku Klux Klan 1915 film was screened at the White House during Wilson's presidency?

Historians have since documented his administration's escalation of segregation in government offices.

Which Mexican city did Wilson order the Navy to occupy in 1914 after an incident at Tampico?

The trigger was the arrest of US sailors who had accidentally landed in a restricted zone.

Which revolutionary did Pershing hunt in Mexico in 1916 after a raid on Columbus?

Wilson had once described him as 'a sort of Robin Hood'; Pershing dispersed his bands but never caught him.

A German submarine sank which British liner in May 1915, killing 128 Americans?

Wilson demanded Germany prevent any recurrence, and afterwards committed himself to the 'preparedness movement'.

Wilson met his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, in March 1915. What was her late first husband's trade?

She rebuffed the president at first, but they were engaged by September and married that December.

Edith Wilson claimed descent from which famous Native American woman?

Through her father she was also related to Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington and Letitia Tyler.

Democrats campaigned for Wilson's 1916 re-election under which slogan?

They warned a Republican win would mean war with Germany; five months after the inauguration the US was at war anyway.

Wilson's 1916 opponent Charles Evans Hughes remains the only person to have done what?

Wilson beat him by fewer than 600,000 votes out of about 18.5 million cast.

The 1916 election came down to which tipping-point state, which Wilson won narrowly?

Nationally Wilson took 277 electoral votes to Hughes's 254.

The Zimmermann Telegram promised Texas, Arizona and which other US state to Germany's would-be ally?

Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted the telegram was genuine on March 3, 1917, enraging Americans further.

In April 1917 Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany chiefly because of which policy?

German U-boats had been sinking American merchant ships; the Cabinet unanimously agreed war was necessary at a March 20 meeting.

On January 8, 1918, Wilson laid out his war aims in a speech known by what name?

The Allies and Germany accepted them as the basis for the post-war peace, and Germany sought its armistice on those terms.

Wilson's 1918 peace programme drew on the research of a secret team of about 150 advisers known as what?

Walter Lippmann drafted the territorial points with colleagues including geographer Isaiah Bowman.

Who headed the Committee on Public Information, Wilson's 1917 propaganda office?

Meanwhile the federal budget ballooned from $1 billion to $19 billion over the war years.

Who commanded the American Expeditionary Forces that arrived in France in mid-1917?

He and Wilson refused to fold American troops into existing Allied units, insisting on a separate command.

Wilson became the first sitting president to travel to Europe when he attended which gathering?

Apart from a two-week trip home, he stayed in Europe for six months negotiating the treaty.

Wilson personally presided over the committee that drafted the Covenant of which organisation?

He called it the keystone of the whole programme and it was written into the Treaty of Versailles.

For his efforts toward a lasting settlement after the war, Wilson received which honour in 1919?

He was the second sitting US president to become a Nobel laureate, after his 1912 rival.

The senators who completely opposed joining Wilson's proposed world body were known by what nickname?

There were fourteen of them, mostly Republicans, and their name distinguished them from those willing to ratify with reservations.

Which Republican senator led the fight to ratify the treaty with reservations, which Wilson refused?

In March 1920 Wilson ordered his supporters to vote no, killing the treaty and US membership of the League.

In October 1919 Wilson suffered a serious stroke that paralysed which part of his body?

He kept only partial vision in his right eye and was sequestered from everyone but his wife, doctor and neurologist.

Who was Wilson's personal physician, part of the tiny circle that hid his condition after the stroke?

Together with private secretary Tumulty and the First Lady he decided what the president read and who could see him.

Edith Wilson later described her role running the president's office after his stroke as what?

Some have called her the first female president; she decided which matters of state were important enough to bring to his bed.

Wilson vetoed which 1919 law designed to enforce Prohibition, only for Congress to override him?

His administration had played only a minor role in Prohibition, which became unstoppable during the war.

Which attorney general launched the 1919-20 raids on radicals that bear his name?

The First Red Scare followed anarchist mail bombs in April 1919; the Wall Street bombing of 1920 killed 40.

Which Republican won the 1920 election in a landslide promising a 'return to normalcy'?

Wilson had wanted a third term despite his incapacity; the Democrats instead ran James Cox with Franklin D. Roosevelt as running mate.

Wilson is the only president whose final resting place is where?

He died on February 3, 1924, at his townhouse in the Kalorama neighbourhood, aged 67.

Which Texan became Wilson's chief adviser and campaign manager, turning down any Cabinet post?

Biographer A. Scott Berg wrote that in access and influence he outranked everybody in Wilson's Cabinet.

Wilson's daughter Eleanor married which member of his own Cabinet in 1914?

The Treasury Secretary later became a US senator; daughter Jessie married a future High Commissioner to the Philippines.

The 1944 Fox biopic 'Wilson', a personal project of Darryl Zanuck, starred which actor as the president?

He earned a Best Actor nomination, but the film flopped so badly Zanuck banned mention of it in his presence.

Which candidate did Wilson back over his party's 1896 nominee, whom he found too radical?

Palmer was the conservative 'Gold Democrat' nominee; Wilson later courted Bryan carefully to win the 1912 nomination.

From which university did Wilson earn his PhD in history and government in 1886?

His dissertation grew into Congressional Government, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1885 and compared favourably to the Federalist papers.

Where did Wilson's family move before he turned two, the city of his earliest memory?

His father became minister of Augusta's First Presbyterian Church; the family lived there until 1870.

Where did Wilson teach from 1885 to 1888, at a newly established women's college?

He moved on to Wesleyan in 1888, then to Princeton, later turning down offers from other universities.

The Revenue Act of 1913 imposed a federal income tax of what rate on incomes above $3,000?

Also called the Underwood Tariff, it was the largest downward tariff revision since the Civil War and hit only the richest three percent.

Which territory did Wilson buy by treaty from Denmark in 1916?

The Danish West Indies were renamed the United States Virgin Islands.

The Jones Act of 1916 committed the United States to the eventual independence of which territory?

It created a Filipino Senate and House, replacing the American-run Philippine Commission.

Who served as Wilson's private secretary throughout his political career?

Tumulty was appointed after the 1910 New Jersey governor's race and remained at Wilson's side through the White House years.

Who wrote the three-volume Wilson biography published in 1922, after Wilson declined to write memoirs?

Wilson met frequently with Baker in retirement; his own attempts at essays after the stroke came only with enormous effort.