Woodrow Wilson
From Turtledove
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Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924), was the twenty-eighth President of the United States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he was elected on the Democratic ticket in 1912. He proved highly successful in leading a Democratic Congress to pass major legislation, and was narrowly re-elected in 1916, his second term centered on World War I.
Woodrow Wilson in The Man With the Iron Heart
Diana McGraw harkened back Woodrow Wilson's stated goal that World War I would be the war to end all wars when she began calling for the withdrawal of American forces from Germany after World War II
Woodrow Wilson in Southern Victory
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) served as the ninth President of the Confederate States from 1910-1916, and led the country at the beginning of the Great War.
Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856 to Reverend Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Janet Woodrow. His ancestry was Scots-Irish, his grandparents emigrating to the US from near Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland. Wilson spent the majority of his childhood in Augusta, Georgia. He always claimed that his earliest memory was of hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming. Wilson's father and mother were originally from Ohio, but sympathized with the South in the War of Secession. They cared for wounded Confederate soldiers at their church.
Wilson travelled to Rome, Georgia in 1883. There he was reunited with Ellen Louise Axson, whom he had originally met in 1863 when he was six and she was three. The two were instantly attracted to each other but did not marry until 1885 as Ellen was reluctant to leave her father behind. They were married for just nine years before Ellen's death in 1894, though in that time the couple had three children. As of the beginning of the Great War, twenty years later, Wilson had never remarried, though he was known to "smile" at attractive women such as Anne Colleton.
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, President Wilson affirmed the CSA's commitment to the Quadruple Entente, describing the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia as a case of oppression of a smaller nation by a larger one. In his speech rallying the nation to war, Wilson reminded the Confederate people of the importance of Britain and France to the CSA's birth and continued survival. He called upon the C.S. to stand with its allies against the "tyrannical" Germany and the "bitter" United States, reminding the crowd that the U.S. had followed a "dark" path, and that it was the CSA's duty to be a continuing source of freedom for the world by entering the war.
Wilson clung to his idealistic view of the war for the remainder of his term. He sincerely believed that the Entente and the CS in particular represented "civilization" and "progressivism" against "oppression", a view he shared with Anne Colleton during an impromtu visit to her plantation. He was pained by the price in lives such a defense needed, but paid it readily.
By the middle of 1915, the Great War, expected to be over by the previous Christmas, had settled into a bloody stalemate all over the globe. With a few months before the C.S. presidential elections, Wilson was now a lame-duck. He continued to rally the Confederate people, but he also began campaigning for his Vice President, Gabriel Semmes, the Whig presidential candidate. By this time, certain quarters were of the opinion that Wilson had not prosecuted the war as vigorously as he could have.
Wilson left office in 1916. Semmes was elected, and just over a year later, the Great War ended with the CSA's defeat. Wilson had retired to obscurity, privately anguished by his country's defeat at the hands of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom Wilson shared a passionate and mutual hatred. Ironically, the two died within months of each other.
| Preceded by Unknown; last known is James Longstreet | President of the Confederate States (Southern Victory) 1910-1916 | Succeeded by Gabriel Semmes |
| Preceded by William Howard Taft | President of the United States (OTL) 1913-1921 | Succeeded by Warren G. Harding |
