Fourteen Points

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Born in Virginia, he became a professor of political science, then president of Princeton University, and finally governor of New Jersey before his successful presidential run. He helped make the Democrats the party that represented the Progressive Movement. He was the first Southerner elected president since the Civil War, whose devastation he witnessed as a boy.

As an academic, Wilson thought deeply about the principles behind both effective and just government. He embraced the Progressive Movement’s idealism that said the government could be a force for good by upholding the rights of the weak. He carried these ideas into international affairs as the call for justice in the “Fourteen Points” speech clearly shows.

Wilson rose to the presidency in part because people considered him a powerful orator. The fact that he gave this major policy proposal as a speech was no accident. He was conscious of the need to persuade people of his views. In many ways, the Progressive Movement saw itself as a moral crusade, and Wilson’s preferred rhetoric of moral conflict fit that vision. At times, Wilson sounds like a preacher rather than a statesman.