Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921.

Born on December 28, 1856 in Virginia, young Thomas Woodrow Wilson had a firsthand view of the American Civil War. He was present in Georgia when Union troops entered his town, and his mother tended to wounded Confederate soldiers.

After earning a Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University, Wilson taught at various schools before becoming the president of Princeton University. During his tenure at Princeton, the school did not admit any black students.

As governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, Wilson broke with party bosses and won the passage of several progressive reforms.

Wilson's success in New Jersey gave him a national reputation as a progressive reformer, and he won the presidential nomination at the 1912 Democratic National Convention.

With 41.8% of the popular vote, Wilson defeated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft (23.2%), Progressive Party nominee and former president Theodore Roosevelt (27.4%), and Socialist Party nominee Eugene V. Debs (6%) to win the 1912 presidential election, becoming the first Southerner to be elected president since the American Civil War.

With the advent of automobiles imminent, Wilson became the last American president to arrive to his inauguration while being transported by horse-drawn carriage.

His first major priority was the passage of the Revenue Act of 1913, which lowered tariffs and implemented a federal income tax.

Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Wilson maintained a policy of neutrality between the Allied Powers and the Central Powers.

In 1916, Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis to the Court, setting off a major debate in the Senate over Brandeis's progressive ideology and his religion, as he was the first Jewish nominee to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, Wilson was able to convince Senate Democrats to confirm Brandeis, who served on the Supreme Court until 1939.