Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn

“Wilson succeeded as President of the United States with reforms outside of social issues that, then and now, were used to thwart needed change.”

Presidents of the United States, as with people in general, are pretty much what you see. Woodrow Wilson is the most complicated president to understand and explain of those exceptional men, except for Thomas Jefferson. Consequently, a biographer can describe the circumstances and motives of his actions and decisions without understanding the real man.

Christopher Cox sets out to explain Wilson and his complex times in Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn in the context of the president’s blatant racism and sexism. The author adds that he “is enormously consequential,” if not also one of the many accidental leaders of his time.

While populists like Theodore Roosevelt discussed what needed to be done, Wilson signed laws that brought about real action that continues to this day, both on the domestic and foreign fronts, to the benefit of everyone. The author explains that he “had once offered hope” to advocates of Black rights and universal suffrage. Over 2,000 books have been written on the 28th president, but Wilson’s career was never simple.

Cox, however, also argues that Wilson “was superbly unsuited for the moment” about racism and women’s suffrage. Woodrow Wilson begins with a brief chronology of abolition and universal suffrage before the Civil War. In the years afterward, preventing women from having the right to vote became one excuse for denying African American men that privilege.

The later president of the United States was born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1856 and became an adult as the Civil War and Reconstruction formally ended. His staunchly religious family had enslaved people as servants and supported the institution of slavery, and they fully supported the Confederate war effort.

Thomas “Tommy” Woodrow Wilson’s strong opinions of race and women were formed and unchallenged by his environment before he entered New Jersey’s Princeton University in 1875. By the time he became president of that institution, he had published his views of the Ku Klux Klan as “misunderstood romantics” who acted with violence what they were denied the right to do by the ballot.

Cox relates how Wilson’s textbook on governments of the world, used across the United States, was blatantly racist and sexist. Long before then, Wilson ardently believed in government by Anglo-Saxon males, hardened views that were ethnically, racially, and sexually biased.

Without sympathy or excuses for the subject, the author does not paint a portrait of Wilson as having doubts about these matters being debated in another world outside his experience. His wife was of almost identical background and had the same race views. As president of Princeton University, Wilson opposed admitting Black or female students.

Cox writes that the future president early on developed a love of politics and government that was separate, almost incidental, from his views on race, suffrage, etc. While in college, he was a nationally recognized author of a book on American government despite being a mediocre student and hardly any sort of researcher. Wilson succeeded as President of the United States with reforms outside of social issues that, then and now, were used to thwart needed change. The reader can decide when that is good or bad.

Even without considering issues of race and suffrage, Woodrow Wilson was exceptional. He seldom suffered setbacks, giving him confidence that others might find imprudent. For example, he obtained a teaching position at the women’s college at Bryn Mawr and two doctorates, of which he was arguably unqualified. He and others, including the woman dean who hired him, saw something in him that was not justified by his résumé. Time and again, he succeeded despite himself, including his time as president of Princeton.

Cox has pertinent details on the people who shaped the 28th president’s views on African Americans and suffrage. Particularly important is why Wilson finally supported women’s right to vote when he did.

Setting aside the book’s thesis, this book introduces Wilson well. Readers who know little of this President will be surprised at the not generally known facts of his career and life. The historical memory is not the real man.

Unlike so much of Wilson’s career, the reader can form an opinion of the president himself, even a different one than the author intended. A reader may disagree with the author’s views that Wilson’s views on race and suffrage diminish his overall accomplishments and progressivism in other matters.

This thick book is well-written and a fast read, yet it is detailed within the author’s thesis. Sometimes, Cox makes concise, relevant detours to provide background on Black civil rights and women’s suffrage, but the author never gets lost in the details or goes on tangents.

Woodrow Wilson is extensively annotated and has a thorough bibliography. Many of the photographs are in color.