Woodrow Wilson

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. With Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt and Republican nominee William Howard Taft dividing the Republican Party vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912. Like his arch-rival Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Wilson is the only president to hold a Ph.D. degree. In his first term as President, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass major progressive reforms including the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and an income tax. Wilson brought many white Southerners into his administration, and tolerated their expansion of segregation in many federal agencies.