Most Americans think Woodrow Wilson ‘won’ World War I. Historical rankings usually put him in the top ten of American Presidents.
It is remarkable that an admitted racist who had no respect for the working class, women, or anyone who did not share his caste, class and religious conviction, could be hailed as a great leader when he was anything but.
Wilson was born a racist. He grew up in a racist family. His family moved to the South from the North to support Slavery. His family wanted slaves.
Unlike white people who had been born and grown in the South, who depended on slave labour for their cotton or tobacco plantations, and developed beliefs based on what they knew as ‘normal’, Wilson’s family was rabid to own people.
They left the North deliberately to come South so they could own other people.
Wilson embraced racism. When he became President of Princeton University, (Princeton is in New Jersey, a Northern State) no black person could attend.
When he became President of the United States, Segregation was re-introduced and enforced, and the Ku Klux Klan had great power and prestige. There were many lynchings in America and any gain after the Civil War made by African Americans was rescinded.
When it came to women’s rights, Wilson blocked them at every corner. President Wilson had women locked up and tortured for demanding rights.
This went on all through his first and second term as President. It was only pressure from abroad, after World War I, that had him, at the very end of his second term, granting sufferage.
As bad as his local record in denying rights to African Americans and Women, his International performance was even worse.
Woodrow Wilson invaded Mexico. He invaded Haiti. He invaded Panama, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. These countries were invaded to enforce American policies.
In Nicaragua and Haiti, Wilson used the military to overthrow the government and install leaders of his choosing.
In Mexico, American forces spent a year fighting bandits and the Mexican army in a vain search for Pancho Villa.
The image of the United States as a belligerent, invasive power was set by Woodrow Wilson, who looked at those in South America as subhumans.
During World War I, Woodrow Wilson authorised the opening of all mail, restricted free speech, and imprisoned anyone who disagreed with him.
His relationship to democracy and liberty was non-existent.
The terms he imposed on Germany after World War I led directly to World War II so no one can credit him with any kind of victory.
After the War, Woodrow Wilson approved the Palmer Raids. This was a greater denial of liberty and freedom and a suppression of human rights than ever seen before or since.
These Raids, conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1919 and 1920 under the direction of Woodrow Wilson, rounded up people believed to be anarchists, communists, and radical leftists. Those who could be, were deported.
The raids, fueled by social unrest following World War I, were led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, (which is why they are called Palmer Raids).
In Wilson’s world, civil liberties applied only to those that agreed with him. Applied only to upper class white men.
He was a supporter of Prohibition which banned the sale of alcohol and caused more social unrest, the rise of various ‘Mafias’ and bootleggers.
How this man could be considered one of America’s Best Presidents is remarkable.
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Woodrow Wilson was a great and wise president USA and whose achievements cannot be forgotten at any cast. Be was wise, brave and honest of USA. First of all it lays the foundation of press conference on daily basis to update public what the USA president is doing must known to the public. Listen what the history writes about Woodrow Wilson...
His first move—to hold regularly scheduled press conferences with the Washington press corps—was an innovation. Wilson appealed to the reporters assembled in the East Room of the White House for his first press conference, on 22 March 1913, to join him in partnership by interpreting the public opinion of the country to him. Wilson's intentions were, of course, to control the flow of information from the capital to the country and to use it to shape public opinion. And this he did successfully, on the whole. Wilson discontinued the regular press conferences in June 1915 because of increasing diplomatic responsibilities. He held only a few afterward—one in September 1916, a few in late 1916 and early 1917, and the final one on 10 July 1919.
Wilson also sought to educate and shape public opinion through state papers, addresses, and public statements. No president in American history has used these media with such remarkable power and success as Wilson did. He rivaled Jefferson and Lincoln in his mastery of the English language, but he used the spoken and printed word far more than they had done to shape the course of events. On the highest level of discourse—when he sought to end the war in Europe, to enunciate American war aims, or to plead for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles—Wilson claimed to speak not for himself but for the American people. In his annual message of 8 December 1914 he said:
I have tried to know what America is, what her people think, what they are, what they most cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer passions are in my own heart—some of the great conceptions and desires which gave birth to this Government and which have made the voice of this people a voice of peace and hope and liberty among the peoples of the world, and that, in speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at least in part, speak theirs also.
Woodrow Wilson was a racist; he was a member of the elite. He set back Civil Rights to the 1863 level. He barred non-whites from Princeton when he was President of that University. He came into office and benefited the rich. He fought against trade unions. America only entered the war at the very end and took credit for 'winning' when it did very little. When the Veterans protested for money owed them, he sent the National Guard against them.
Women who fought for the right to vote were systematically imprisoned and tortured. It was not until the very last part of his tenure that he gave women the right to vote.
He is no hero.