One of the leaders of the movement was Thomas W. Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924), better known as Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921).
Like Theodore Roosevelt before him, Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. “No one but the President,” he said, “seems to be expected … to look out for the general interests of the country.” That said, Wilson was also an openly racist president. See THIS article.
He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership while trying to build a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world “safe for democracy.”
Wilson was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina.
After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and began an academic career. Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902.
His growing national reputation led some Democrats to consider him Presidential material. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform.
He was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states’ rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral college vote.
In 1916, one new law prohibited child labor and another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the his slogan “He kept us out of war,” Wilson narrowly won re-election. But after the election he concluded that the U.S. could not remain neutral and on April 2, 1917, he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the U.S. Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations. But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans and the Versailles Treaty failed to pass in the Senate by seven votes.
Then President Wilson, against the warnings of his doctors, made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.
In the book Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography, a Supplementary Volume to the Papers of Woodrow Wilson, it describes the household of the young Woodrow Wilson as being like that of most other Presbyterian preachers of that day.
Sundays were strictly observed. Daily prayers and Bible readings took place and were conducted by Wilson’s father when he was home and by Mrs. Wilson when he was away. Mrs. Wilson and Woodrow's sisters played the melodion (a type of keyboard) and the family sang hymns and Scottish ballads.
In spite of their strict Sunday routine, Dr. Wilson, Woodrow’s father, was not otherwise overly strict and although card playing and games of chance were not permitted, when Woodrow was old enough, he and his father played billiards and chess.
The January 5, 1953 edition of Chess Life published the following game attributed to Wilson who was a Princeton University professor at the time. The magazine didn’t give any further details, but it may possibly have been a simultaneous exhibition game. I do not know of any other games attributed to President Wilson and judging by this single game it's hard to say how good he was.
His opponent was Salomon Langleben (1862 - February 8, 1939), a Polish master who lived in the United States before returning to Poland at the end of the 1800s. From 1900 to 1917 he had considerable success in European tournaments. In 1894 he won in Buffalo city championship.
"The magazine didn’t give any further details, but it may possibly have been a simultaneous exhibition game."
ReplyDeleteIf it was a game from a simultaneous exhibition, it is unusual for the "master" to be playing Black.