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The Woodrow Wilson Administrations

Wilson's presidency was dominated by World War I (1914–18), a fact that he himself found ironic given his preference for domestic affairs. Early on he stressed U.S. nonintervention and sought to mediate the conflict, but his efforts were rebuffed by both sides. After taking the United States into the war in 1917, he raised an army of more than four million people and a powerful navy. He sought a just peace at the conference table after the war, but was frustrated when his high ideals came up against the hard reality of international diplomacy and politics and his plans, as well as his health, collapsed. Domestically, Wilson expanded the scope and reach of the federal government more than any president since Abraham Lincoln, instituting the Federal Reserve Board, the first peacetime income tax, and other progressive legislative initiatives.