Read, and Ferdinand Schevill for reading parts or all of the manuscript or proof of this book, and for giving it the benefit of their criticism. This is not to say that any or all of these gentlemen agree with the social philosophy or the interpretation which run through the book, nor to claim immunity from criticism because of their supposed acquiescence in the validity of the narrative. It is to express the gratitude of the author for a kind of assistance that is often irksome. In a special sense I wish here to record my thanks to Professor Albert H. Tolman, likewise of the University of Chicago, for a careful reading of the proof and for many valuable suggestions as to form and style. It remains to be said that this portrait of Woodrow Wilson is designed to be a brief history of recent times as well as a chronicle of a great career. It aims to set the man in his historical background and to explain the trend of American life during a momentous period of world history. And since there are many and violently hostile views of recent history, it is hoped that readers will consider well the facts and the alternative interpretations before they take offence at what is here set down. I can not hope that all historians will agree with my interpretations, for historians are partisans like the rest of mankind. My chief hope is that some misinformed people may come to a saner view of Woodrow Wilson and a more historical interest in the development of our country along liberal lines. If that should be attained the author will consider himself amply repaid for the two years, and more of labour consumed in the making of this book. University of Chicago, February 12, 1920. WILLIAM E. DODD. Woodrow Wilson and His Work CHAPTER I YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT FEW Americans have had a better lineage than Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States. His father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, born at Steubenville, Ohio, was the tenth child of James Wilson, and his wife, from County Down, Ireland, and of the sturdy Scotch race which still troubles the international waters in more ways than one. The life of James Wilson and his big family was of that hard but wholesome kind which has imparted so much vigour to the whole body of the American national experience. Joseph R. Wilson early showed a bent for books and consequently he was sent to Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1844. After a year of teaching in a Presbyterian school, he went to a theological seminary at Alleghany, Pennsylvania, to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry. In 1847 he went to Princeton for another year of preparation for his chosen calling. But on his return to Steubenville, he again became a teacher, this time in the Steubenville Male Academy, as men were then wont to call a school for boys. Here he met Janet Woodrow, a beautiful young woman, likewise of Scotch parentage, and a dent in a school for girls conducted by Doctor Beattie, other Scotchman turned pedagogue in the backwoods of erica. . 3 Janet Woodrow was the daughter of Thomas Woodrow, graduate of the University of Glasgow, and his wife, a Scotch woman of similar strain who had died on the long journey to "the States."..After a year of missionary work in Canada, the Woodrows settled in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1837, where the head of the house was the pastor of the Presbyterian Church till 1849, when he moved to Columbus to become the minister of the Hogg Presbyterian Church. Thomas Woodrow was already a man of note in Ohio, a devotee of the ancient classics who felt every day poorly spent which did not take him through many pages of the Greek and Latin writers which adorned the shelves of his library. He was likewise a firm believer in that stern Calvinist philosophy of which John Knox had been the best British exponent. His religion, duly burrowed from ancient Greek books and seasoned with the precepts of the Genevan theology, made something more than the mere milk for babes of which we learn in Holy Writ. There was no mistaking the intellectual calibre and the sturdy character of the stocky, full-bearded man who presided with easy dignity over the church at Chillicothe, and then for many years at Columbus. It was his daughter, the fifth child in a family of seven, whom young Joseph Wilson met at Steubenville. They were married in June, 1849, and two weeks later this daughter of a great preacher was the wife of another preacher, for her husband was ordained the following month by the Presbytery of Ohio. The young couple did not enter at once the manse of some western church; they went instead for a short time to Jefferson College, where Wilson was professor of rhetoric, whence they moved again to Hampden Sidney College, Virginia. There Joseph Wilson served the Church for four years as professor of chemistry and natural science, preaching the while to neighbouring congregations that asked his |