Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856 in Staunton VA and grew up in Georgia and South Carolina. He attended Davidson College before graduating from Princeton University in 1879. He studied law at the University of Virginia and then political science at Johns Hopkins University/Medical, where he obtained his PhD in 1886. He taught successively at Bryn Mawr College, Wesleyan University, and Princeton University. He served as president of Princeton from 1910 to 1910, when he was elected governor of New Jersey.
In the presidential election of 1912, Wilson won because the Republican vote was split between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. As president, he oversaw the creation of the Federal Reserve System and had a reputation as a reformer.
Although he won his narrow victory in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of war," Wilson could not prevent the U.S. being drawn into World War I. After the war, he sought unsuccessfuly to bring the United States into the League of Nations. He died in Washington D.C. on Feb 3, 1924.
