The Oldest Book at the Woodrow Wilson Archives & Research Center

/ Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library/
The Oldest Book at the Woodrow Wilson Archives & Research Center

Here in the Library and Research Center, we have quite a few books that are older than you might expect. Not only have there been efforts to acquire volumes that represent what President Wilson’s father, Joseph R. Wilson, would have had in the Manse when working as a Presbyterian minister in Staunton in the 1850s, but donations have come in to us from the wider Wilson family and from collectors of anything ever owned by Woodrow Wilson.

Read More

Margaret Wilson’s Spiritual Passage to India

/ Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library/
Margaret Wilson’s Spiritual Passage to India

In 1932, President Wilson’s daughter Margaret discovered Sri Aurobindo’s  Essays on the Gita while browsing through the New York Public Library. She returned daily to read the book in the reading room until she finished it, after which she began corresponding with the author. In 1938 she requested permission to join his ashram in Pondicherry, India despite recurring health problems.

Read More

President Wilson Memorial in Prague, Czech Republic

/ Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum/
President Wilson Memorial in Prague, Czech Republic

Former US Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright had to live in exile with her family when she was a girl during the Nazi occupation of her native city of Prague, Czechoslovakia. Later, when the Communists took over the country’s government after World War II, her father took the family to the United States, where Madeleine became a citizen, raised a family and earned a PhD before joining the Carter administration. She is well aware of the troubled history of the Czech-speaking lands during the 20th century and before. And the Secretary of State knows very well the role that Woodrow Wilson played in creating the state of Czechloslovakia out of the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the Great War.

Read More

Prohibition: The Volstead Act

/
Prohibition: The Volstead Act

In 1919 the United States was technically still at war because Congress rejected the famed Versailles Treaty, which Wilson had worked so hard to pass. So when the Volstead Act was passed by the House and Senate and set before Wilson in October of 1919, it contained two sections: one that provided for the enforcement of the new Constitutional Amendment, and one that sought to enforce Wartime Prohibition, even though most Americans considered the war over.

Read More

Prohibition: Early Days

/
Prohibition: Early Days

In the first decades of the eighteenth century, people in the United States drank more than a bottle and a half of hard liquor each week, far more than today. They recognized that drinking added to numerous social problems, and it came to be seen as an enemy to the moral rectitude of the American home.

Read More

Armistice

/
Armistice

The timing of the end of the war still remained uncertain as the week began, one hundred years ago.  In a letter to his cousin on November 5, Woodrow Wilson wrote, “I am constantly fearful lest mistakes be made in these tremendous matters with which we are dealing, and it is an immense comfort to think of the friends who are helping me with their thoughts and prayers.”

Read More

Final Days

/ Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum/
Final Days

One hundred years ago, the American president still faced uncertainties about how the Germans were going to surrender and how the Allied Powers would negotiate the peace. As Woodrow Wilson wrote to one of his advisers, Colonel House, on October 30, 1918, “We are pledged to fight not only to do away with Prussian militarism but with militarism everywhere.” Wilson insisted that any settlement include the establishment of a League of Nations.

Read More