December 27, 2006 By Andrew Bell A hundred-and-fifty years ago
today, an obscure Presbyterian minister named Joseph Wilson
welcomed the arrival of his third child, Thomas Woodrow. As he
cradled the infant in his arms, Reverend Wilson must have
wondered what his son would be when he grew up. Of course, he
could have scarcely imagined the impact young Woodrow would have
on both the country and the world, for better and worse, during
the early twentieth century. Most of us are familiar with
Woodrow Wilson’s major accomplishments—the governorship of New
Jersey, the presidencies of Princeton and the United States, the
creation of the Federal Reserve Act, and the development of the
League of Nations. But how many of us knew he was once president
of the AHA? Unfortunately, Wilson’s term in office was neither
lengthy nor glorious. When the Association’s governing council
offered him the position in January of 1924, the response came
not from the former president, who had been incapacitated by a
stroke five years earl