Woodrow Wilson

Target Age: High School and Middle School

Time Period: 20

Century

Featured County: Mercer

NJ 350

Theme: Liberty

Common Core States Standards for English Language Arts:

R.CCR.2- Determine central ideas or themes of a text and

analyze their development; summarize the key supporting

details and ideas.

R.CCR.3- Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas

develop and interact over the course of a text.

W.CCR.2- Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information

clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards:

Social Studies: 6.1.12.A.6.a, 6.3.12.A.1

FOCUS QUESTION:

In what ways did Woodrow Wilson expand the definition of liberty for New Jersey and the nation

at the beginning of the 20

Century?

BACKGROUND:

On March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson became the first governor of New Jersey to take the oath of office

as president of the United States. In the hotly contested national election of 1912, Wilson defeated two

presidents: incumbent William Howard Taft, a Republican, and ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, who

ran as a third-party candidate. He won only 42 percent of the popular vote, but captured 435 votes in

the Electoral College. Wilson became the first Democratic President from the south since before the Civil

War.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was not born in New Jersey; he was born in Staunton, Virginia. He attended

Princeton University as a student, and returned as a professor in 1890. A prolific writer with a national

reputation, Wilson was named president of Princeton in 1902. He then became Governor of New Jersey

in 1910. During his two years as governor, he overcame the political bosses of the day and put forth

progressive reforms such as a Direct Primary, safer working conditions, suppression of political

corruption, and revitalization of the state public utilities commission.

Courtesy of New Jersey State Archives; Department of State.

As president he pushed through more progressive reforms. His New Freedom Platform helped pass

legislation dealing with banking, trusts, taxation, child labor, and workers’ rights. The focus of this

platform centered on individual liberties and freedoms for the common man. He also presided over a

tragic step backwards when he ordered the segregation of the federal government’s workforce and

delayed the women’s suffrage movement, but he is still considered an ardent and successful progressive

politician. Wilson was the only Democrat to serve two consecutive terms as president in a span of nearly

one hundred years.

ACTIVITY:

Place the students into three groups and distribute one of the three excerpts to each group. The

excerpts are drawn from speeches delivered by Woodrow Wilson. The students will read and discuss the

central message of the document and then analyze the historical context of the speech. Each group will

answer the question provided, and then present the assigned speech and their findings to the class.

Each group should also consider the following questions.

 In what ways is liberty an enduring American value?

 Whose responsibility is it to protect liberty for all Americans?

 Does the understanding of liberty change and evolve over time?

Group #1

Address at Independence Hall: "The Meaning of Liberty

July 4, 1914

Liberty does not consist, my fellow-citizens, in mere general declarations of the rights of man. It consists

in the translation of those declarations into definite action. Therefore, standing here where the

declaration was adopted, reading its businesslike sentences, we ought to ask ourselves what there is in

it for us. There is nothing in it for us unless we can translate it into the terms of our own conditions and

of our own lives. We must reduce it to what the lawyers call a bill of particulars. It contains a bill of

particulars, but the bill of particulars of 1776. If we would keep it alive, we must fill it with a bill of

particulars of the year 1914.

Source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65381

According to Woodrow Wilson, what is the meaning of liberty?

Group #2

Address to 4,000 newly naturalized citizens

Philadelphia, May 10, 1915

… And if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your

own hearts a renewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. … You

dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. No

man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.

Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you

brought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are.

Source: http://theamericanscholar.org/a-president-speaks-out-on-immigration/

How does Woodrow Wilson define liberty for new citizens of the United States?

Group #3

Declaration of War

April 2, 1917

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus

addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful

thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars,

civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall

fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts - for democracy, for the right of

those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments for the rights and liberties of

small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and

safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and

our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know

that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles

that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do

no other.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/filmmore/fm_war.html

What actions must be taken in order to protect liberty from threats, both foreign and domestic?

FOLLOW-UP:

For homework, each student will read the 1912 Democratic platform.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/filmmore/fm_platforms.html

Based on the document each student will write a one paragraph answer to the following question,

which will be discussed in class the next day. The students should consider the other candidates in the

election of 1912, the successes and failures of the Progressive movement up until this point, and the

views and attitudes of those who opposed the Progressive movement.

How does Woodrow Wilson’s party’s platform propose greater protections of liberty in the face of an

evolving nation?

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

For More Information

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library Website

http://www.woodrowwilson.org/

American Experience: Woodrow Wilson – PBS

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/

The Papers of Woodrow Wilson at the American Presidency Project

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/woodrow_wilson.php

Woodrow Wilson at the Miller Center

http://millercenter.org/president/wilson

CREDIT INFORMATION:

In Classroom Activity:

Pg. 1: President Wilson delivering his acceptance speech at Shadow Lawn. New Jersey State Archives;

Department of State.

It Happened Here: New Jersey is a program of the New Jersey Historical Commission made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a

state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the program do not necessarily

represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. To access more teaching resources created for this

program visit www.officialnj350.com.