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The work of editing these addresses has been a real pleasure. The length of the Introduction is due to an effort to make the setting of the addresses clear to young people who perhaps were not in high school when the war began. The notes are brief, because it has seemed better to let the President speak for himself. The aim of the teacher should be to help the pupil to grasp the real thought of the addresses, to appreciate their clear-cut conciseness, and to arouse a thoughtful, earnest love for the land that fights for no selfish ends.

It may be added that President Wilson has expressly authorized the editor to use these addresses in this manner.

COLUMBUS, OHIO

ARTHUR R. LEONARD

INTRODUCTION

WOODROW WILSON: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth president of the United States, was born at Staunton, Virginia, on December 28, 1856, of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His grandfather, James Wilson, came to Philadelphia from Ireland in 1807 and became the publisher of a chain of newspapers. His wife was Anne Adams, an Ulster girl. Woodrow Wilson's father, Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was the youngest son of James Wilson, and was born in Steubenville, Ohio. He married Janet Woodrow, of Chillicothe, Ohio, daughter of Reverend Thomas Woodrow, a Scotch Presbyterian minister. In 1855 Reverend Joseph Wilson became pastor of a Presbyterian church in Staunton, Virginia, and here Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born.

The Wilson family removed to Augusta, Georgia, before Woodrow was two years old. Thus his childhood was spent in the South during the Civil War. His first teacher was a Confederate veteran who had returned from four years of soldiering. In 1870 the family moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where Woodrow attended a local academy. At the age of seventeen he entered Davidson College, North Carolina, where he remained less than a year, because of ill health. In 1875 he entered Princeton College and graduated in 1879. He was noted in his college days for his debating and literary ability and was editor of the Princetonian. In 1881 he graduated in law from the University of Virginia, and practiced law for a

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