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4.5 WOODROW WILSON
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
Woodrow Wilson is a complex figure in the development of the progressive movement.
The recent book, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, by Cooper, is a somewhat biased
addition to the wealth of biographies on Wilson. Cooper is one of the class of writers who
approaches Wilson in the somewhat favorable light of a progressive, in fact one may call
Cooper a neo-progressive historian in light of how he develops Wilson's biography. In
contrast to Cooper is Pestritto, who is anything but a neo-progressive. His has written
extensively on Wilson and the Progressives and his writing is brilliantly clear and
comprehensive in coverage. We will follow Pestritto in presenting Wilson.
One should always remember that Wilson was the ultimate opportunist. He was offered
the Governorship of New Jersey just as the Board at Princeton was tiring of his high
handed, arrogant, and almost dictatorial style while its president. He ran for President just
when the political machine that initially supported him in 1910 decides the same in 1912.
Wilson was also a pragmatist. He did what was necessary at the time. Thus as he saw TR
and the Progressive bent he assumed much of the TR Progressive mantle to himself. As
the country tired of TR it accepted the aloofness of Wilson, not knowing what it had
elected.
Wilson was a Virginian by birth and at heart. In 1912 that still meant a level of arrogance
and self importance as well as a strong racist bent. Milkis details the occasion when
Trotter, a black leader and editor of the Boston Guardian, was thrown out of Wilson's
office abruptly because he disagreed with the President's refusal to even discuss the
separate but equal position of the Democrats 103 . Wilson also as a Virginian had strong
ties to the south in many ways and the south was the core to his ongoing efforts. This
truly was a sad day when the President so denigrated such a man as Trotter.
4.5.1 Wilson and Hegel
To understand Wilson one must understand the base of his world view, and that was
Hegel. Strangely in the book by Cooper there is not a reference to Hegel in the index.
Perhaps the reason is the nexus of Hegel and Hitler, the historicism of the Hegelian
conflict if civilizations with a teleological view of a selected end point. For Hegel the
process of history had a deliberate end point. It was not a process for the sake of process,
but process with a conclusion. The winners of the thesis, antithesis, one the ones in the
synthesis, were the better of both prior worlds, and as one reads Wilson one sees this
Hegelian view flow out again and again.
One may ask, besides Wilson's world view, a Hegelian view, why did he become a
progressive or was that part of his evolving character? Cooper states 104 :
103 See Milkis pp 274-275 places Wilson is the poorest of light as he deals with the civil rights of the blacks.
104 Cooper p 106.
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