Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn

by Christopher Cox

A timely reassessment of Woodrow Wilson and his role in the long national struggle for racial equality and women’s voting rights.More than a century after he dominated American politics, Woodrow Wilson still fascinates. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality and women’s suffrage. The Wilson that emerges is a man superbly unsuited to the moment when he ascended to the presidency in 1912, when the struggle for women’s voting rights in America had reached the tipping point. The first southern Democrat to occupy the White House since the Civil War era brought with him to Washington like-minded men who quickly set to work segregating the federal government. Wilson’s own sympathy for Jim Crow and states’ rights animated his years-long hostility to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which promised universal suffrage backed by federal enforcement. Women demonstrating for voting rights found themselves demonized in government propaganda, beaten and starved while illegally imprisoned, and even confined to the insane asylum. When, in the twilight of his second term, two-thirds of Congress stood on the threshold of passing the Anthony Amendment, Wilson abruptly switched his position. But in sympathy with like-minded southern Democrats, he acquiesced in a “race rider” that would protect Jim Crow. The heroes responsible for the eventual success of the unadulterated Anthony Amendment are brought to life by Christopher Cox, an author steeped in the ways of Washington and political power. This is a brilliant, carefully researched work that puts you at the center of one of the greatest advances in the history of American democracy.

Genres: Biography, History, Presidents, Nonfiction, American History, Biography Memoir, Politics

640 pages, Hardcover

Published November 5, 2024

About the author

Christopher Cox is a Senior Scholar in Residence at the University of California, Irvine, a Life Trustee of the University of Southern California, Chair of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee for Southern California and the Pacific, and a member of several nonprofit and for-profit boards. Between two decades as a practicing lawyer, he served as chair of the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives, chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and senior associate counsel to the President. He has written for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, The Detroit News, The Denver Post, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and dozens of other publications.

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

No book I've read in my entire life has made me this angry.

The "Woodrow Wilson" taught in schools when I was being taught was that he was the intellectual president, not a politician, a man who sought Peace above all else, and who, by the way, finally broke down seemingly insurmountable barriers to get Women the right to vote.

All bullshit.

He was, first and foremost, a racist, a white supremacist. This is not a guess. He was Southern, from a family that had slaves. Religious, too, from a family of ministers. From his earliest utterances, he defended slavery, preached segregation, and exalted white males. Here, a mere sampling:

-- As a middle-aged professor at Princeton, ten years before becoming president of the United States: The backers of the 13th Amendment "who saw the Rights of Man involved" did not realize, he insisted, that "the great mass of negro people" had been better off when "under slavery they had been shielded" from "the rough buffets of freedom."

-- Again, as president of Princeton: The war had been, he said, a matter of "conscience," making it imperative that the South express its convictions "in terms of blood." He went so far as to say that even if he had seen "the end from the beginning" --even if he had known then what everyone knew: that the war would kill more than a half-million Americans, and bring about the utter destruction of the rebel government--he still would have opted "for spending his people's blood and his own." It was all worth it, he concluded, because the South had "retained her best asset, her self-respect."

-- Fifty years after the 14th Amendment gave citizenship to all persons regardless of race, Wilson thought this "extraordinary," "radical," and "revolutionary" in that it would "give negroes political privilege" while subjecting "the white men of the South" to "utter humiliation."

-- This is what Wilson taught as a professor at John Hopkins: Slavery "has done more for the negro in two hundred and fifty years than African freedom had done since the building of the pyramids."

He was not alone, of course. Three-time failed presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan said, "Anyone who will look at the subject without prejudice will know that white supremacy promotes the highest welfare of both races." Without prejudice.

Wilson was irremediable on questions of Race. Virtually every cabinet position he filled with former slaveholders, Klan supporters, men who felt like him.

His best friend made the movie The Birth of a Nation, aka The Clansman, as if that made it more palatable. In the pre-talkie movie, Wilson is quoted twice, one more nauseating than the other. His larger than life words described Reconstruction as a malignant scheme "to put the white South under the heel of the black South."

And, he was no intellectual. His attempt to get a graduate degree failed when he couldn't find the energy to take a test. He tried law school, but they required tests as well. One could apprentice to a lawyer, but that too required effort. So, with a friend, he put up a shingle down South. He and his buddy brought in furniture, put their feet up on the desks, and wrote political tracts. They had one client: Woodrow's mother, who wanted a power of attorney drafted. He went back to see his two white supremacist teachers. They said, come talk to us for an hour, we'll give you a doctorate. Done. The only school before that who would hire him as a teacher was Bryn Mawr, a women's college. He refused to engage with his students, and as soon as he got another gig, teaching men, he fled. He used one connection after another to get to Princeton, first as a professor, then as President. He wrote constantly, never scholarly. Most submissions were rejected because they were so outlandishly racist.

He bristled at women. Inferiors, in his mind, fit to keep house. He opposed woman suffrage, steadfastly: if women got the vote, "it is the home that will be disastrously affected." After all, housework must be done, "and who is going to do it if women won't?"

Wilson's catalogue of reasons why a man might threaten, even strike his wife: if she was "an exasperating woman"; "a silly rattle-pate" who talked too much; "an icy prude" who denied him sex; or if she just be "worldly", "frivolous", or a "sullen virago" --a woman presuming to act like a man.

Yet, it became a question, a real question: could there be female suffrage without including Black women? And, shame on you, this was not just white men twisted over this; white female suffragists would have willingly given up their Black sisters.

The Amendment came before Congress over and over. In 1917, with Wilson's nudge, his congressional friend John Sharp Williams moved to restrict the Amendment to "white citizens" which would have excluded Black women. Williams stood, in open House, and said the purpose of his amendment was to "declare this to be a white man's Government" . . . A " white man's country, governed by white men," he argued, must not "be interfered with by Chinese and Japanese," or "by n*****s." He knew from experience, he said, that "the n***** in Louisiana is a good deal like the n***** in Africa." Nothing he said would be gaveled down, fifty-two years after the end of the Civil War.

Wilson asked for a declaration of war three weeks after winning election as a Peace candidate. Then used his war powers to stifle the protests of women suffragists. The details herein are absolutely shocking, and must be read!

I saw parallels. Wilson's convenient rationalization for not supporting a Female Suffrage Amendment was that it should be a matter of individual states' rights. He ran, the first time for president, on a trope that corporations need to pay their fair share. And he preached neutrality under the slogan America First. The second time he ran for president, the top income tax rate was 77%, inflation was at 18%, food prices were drastically up and, oh, there was a world-wide pandemic. His indifference, and ignoring medical advice, greatly exacerbated the spread of flu.

So, yes, I'm angry.

I had a few minor issues with the writing of this history, but I won't (as I usually do) mention them, because I wouldn't want anyone to not read this.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this:

There are plenty of photographs of people in this book, once old grainy black and whites. The author, in acknowledgements, gives props to "the European digital artist know professionally as Jecinci, who is responsible for bringing the ancient photographs in this book to life." What was done here was unbelievable. If my review hasn't moved you, go nevertheless to a real live bookstore, pick up this book and thumb through it to the pictures. I promise you will want to take it home.

[David Eppenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would think if this book were to be placed in a category it would be under history that we were never taught and therefore could never learn from. It was probably never taught because it is rather ugly and holds a former president in a very poor light. I have read other histories that have treated Wilson and his administration as it should have been treated. Two of those books that will probably never leave my memory are The World Remade by G.J. Meyer and The Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming. This biography continues the unveiling of the life and behavior of this man and it should be read by all Americans but especially by the women of America.

I suggest that women read this book because in addition to giving the reader a thorough history of this man it also reports a very good legislative history of the constitutional amendment that finally gave women the right to vote. The book also informs us of everything Wilson did to prevent the passage of that amendment until its passage would have become an inevitable political victory for the Republicans. In addition to illustrating Wilson's paternalistic and misogynistic attitude toward women the book also reveals Wilson's unapologetic racism when he immediately after his first inauguration he segregates the entire federal civil service. If that wasn't enough he played a significant part in reinvigorating the emergence of the KKK and all the violence associated with that organization. After learning about all of that then you will also read about his administration's conduct during WWI and its blatant disregard for constitutional and civil rights across the nation. It was a crime to criticize the president or to demonstrate against him or the war as this would be an aid to the enemy. Prison sentences were imposed for picketing at the White House based on the municipal offense of obstructing traffic while standing on a 40 foot wide sidewalk. The legislation that his administration passed to curtail such activity is still on the books and is presently being used by the current president. No surprise there is there?

Yes, this is not a history you will enjoy reading but read it you should. If you think Trump is bad it's only because you don't know much about Wilson. Maybe, just maybe, had we had the opportunity to learn about Wilson we might possibly have had a better chance at avoiding Trump. I know that it's not supposed to be polite to air our dirty laundry in public but sometimes the laundry just has to be cleaned and dried for our own good. After Trump leaves office I think our pile of dirty laundry is going to be quite high and airing it will require significant exposure and all because we didn't learn our history. Read this book.

[David Crumm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Correcting the record on Woodrow Wilson

More than once, while reading this book, my audible reactions of disgust spilled out, which is very rare for me while reading and evaluating books. But, I was responding to the urgency of this book as racism and sexism seem to be rising again in America—and that's also why I felt moved to post this early review in Goodreads.

Christopher Cox's new history of Woodrow Wilson's disastrous opposition to Black and to women's civil rights is both startling and timely.

My surprise at this book starts with the author himself. He's mainly known as a relatively minor Republican politician. For example, Cox served in the U.S. House for 17 years and worked in the Reagan administration as a legal advisor on a number of key policy initiatives. Now, since retiring from active politics, he is working in the nonprofit sector. I had not even known his name until an early copy of this much-heralded biography of Wilson arrived from Simon & Schuster.

So, as a good journalist, I began by digging into Cox's life and career and I also fact-checked passages in the book that I already know a good deal about from my own half-century of reporting on issues of diversity in America. As a result, I can tell you: This book stands up. Cox has done his research effectively and has shaped this book as a powerful indictment of the ways that racism and sexism can wreak havoc in Washington D.C.

In fact, the timeliness of what Cox has written is clearly emphasized in the choice of chapter titles, like one called "Lock them up"—about Wilson's despicable attempts to physically punish women who campaigned for the right to vote.

From the outset, Cox explains that this research project and resulting book was not intended as a new "definitive" biography of Wilson's entire life. Cox says that about 2,000 books have been published about Wilson over the past century or so. Cox decided to write this new biography because he (and other historians in recent years) recognized a gaping hole in a lot of the existing literature about Wilson. Most of the previous biographies tried to emphasize his seeming heroism, his famous eloquence and his nobler international ideals. As surprising as this may seem, and I did check this claim myself: The majority of earlier Wilson biographers paid either no attention—or very little—to Wilson's deep racism and sexism and its impact on the nation.

How could other historians ignore the record that Cox has documented in great detail? One key lies in the conclusion of another historian, Adriane Lentz-Smith: "Wilson did not preach white supremacy; he practiced it."

Indeed, he did, as Cox explains. "As the first southern Democrat to occupy the White House since the Civil War era, he was superbly unsuited for the moment. The white supremacists Wilson recruited for his administration moved quickly to segregate offices and facilities across the federal government."

Another fascinating insight Cox shares with us is how deeply Wilson's racism was interwoven with his distrust—verging on hatred—of women's rights advocates. These rights issues were unfolding together in that era and Wilson responded in reprehensible ways to both.

As Cox painstakingly documents, Wilson grew up as a nostalgic Southerner who, throughout his life, acted as an apologist for the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, and I have reported on this chapter of American history myself so I know Cox has his facts straight: Wilson chose to promote D.W. Griffith's 1915 feature, "Birth of a Nation," with a first-of-its-kind White House showing plus a personal endorsement that he allowed Griffith to display with the film. As a result, the Klan—which had been dormant—was reborn. As a "movie tie in" the Klan began burning crosses, an idea promoted in the film itself. (For much more detail on this tragic chapter of American history, I also can recommend Dick Lehr's 2014, Birth of a Nation. Plus, I also can recommend Kerri Greenridge's 2019, Black Radical, a biography of William Munroe Trotter.)

So, why should you read this corrective biography?

Well, as Cox himself argues, if you don't understand this major aspect of Wilson's life and legacy, then you will be puzzled when we see the heads of public institutions removing Wilson's name from honored positions. For example, in 2020, Princeton removed his name from its School of Public and International Affairs.

I am posting this review not as a partisan for one party over another. I am writing here as a journalist who began reporting in the mid 1970s near the end of the Vietnam War. I have always understood my role in journalism as questioning men and women in power—and reporting fairly the news that arises. Until recent years, the shared "romantic narrative" about Wilson's life focused almost exclusively on his brilliance, eloquence, international vision and then the personal tragedies he suffered. This corrective effort by historians is long overdue.

Christopher Cox's new biography is a timely "cautionary tale" that I hope lots of Americans will read and then discuss with friends.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am torn on what I think about this book.

Christopher Cox has written a marvelous critical biography on Wilson and I appreciate reading very good books.

However, what I learned from the book was neither positive nor encouraging. I expected Mr. Cox to paint a dark portrait of Wilson and I was not disappointed. Where to begin?

The first thing I learned from Cox’s bio is that however bad I thought US politics were, our current electoral problems fit squarely into a long sordid tradition of electoral messes. The elections that brought Wilson to the presidency twice were every bit as disgusting and depressing as our recent elections have been. If anything, Wilson’s elections were worse in that the fundamental voting rights of over half the population were restricted and the dark consequences of campaign promises and slogans (entry into the Great War; beginnings of the national security state, imprisoning enemies, etc.) were more immediate and pronounced.

Wilson himself was an academic - a Ph.D.and administrator. I had increasingly come to the conclusion that Woodrow Wilson was proof that Ph.Ds should never be President. Cox’s biography is not only consistent with this, but shows how limited an academic Wilson actually was. Without his friends, he might never have received a doctorate. I won’t go into details but it is clear to me that he was a politician from the start and that academia did not seriously suffer as a field once Wilson left it to become NJ Governor and then US President.

I first learned about Wilson in the context of his internationalism and his articulation of the “14 points” that have become so tied to the Versailles Peace Conference and to the interwar League of Nations (which the US never joined). Wilson was also hugely influential in reshaping the US Federal Government through such actions as the creation of the Federal Reserve system and the Federal Trade Commission and the initiation of the US income tax.

Wilson was effective at managing his image, the effects of which continued after his death. In 1948, he was ranked as the fourth greatest US president, behind Lincoln, Washington, and Roosevelt. Since then, however, Wilson’s reputation and legacy have suffered pronounced declines. His current ranking among presidents is more in the middle of the pack than at the top. Since the end of WW2, huge areas of research have developed around Wilson, WW1, the Versailles Peace Conference, and the general legacy of Wilson for American foreign policy. The results of this work, often critical, have moderated prior judgments regarding Wilson’s legacy and reduced efforts at hagiography.

To me, the more serious attacks on Wilson’s legacy have come more recently and have focused on Wilson’s identity as an unreconstructed southerner, who was both a racist and a misogynist. This is the clear focus of Mr. Cox’s biography. Wilson vehemently opposed granting suffrage to African-Americans and in fact segregated the US Federal Government, which had not been segregated prior to his administration. Wilson delayed his support for the constitutional amendment giving women the vote (The Susan B. Anthony amendment) until the very end of his second term. Cox’s analysis of the links between these policy stances is a highlight of his book.

History has not been kind to Wilson but Christopher Cox’s book is well worth reading.

[George Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read. Highly recommended.

[Mary Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew! I finally finished this book early this morning while it was still dark. The 4-star rating is for Christopher Cox's excellent, lucid writing style, exhaustive and meticulous research, the organization of the content, and its factual, objective tone. It is certainly not for the subject. Woodrow Wilson has for decades been one of my least admired and most disliked American presidents, and Cox's biography only deepened my dislike. His paternalism toward women and racism have been the basis of my opinion, but I had an inadequate perception of the total pervasiveness of his commitment to white male supremacy prior to reading this book. Cox details the history of the suffrage movement, and the treatment in the legal system of the female leaders of the movement and their adherents is truly harrowing. Cox also details Wilson's lifelong support of legal segregation and Jim Crow as well as his disdain for the interpretation of the 15th Amendment to include Black and Asian Americans.
For a much more comprehensive review, I recommend that of my friend David Eppenstein, April 26, 2025.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I agree with David that women should read this book, and I, too, was struck by the parallels that may be drawn with our current political/social climate, especially the Executive's selective ignoring of long-established Constitutional civil liberties and protections for those who oppose him and his not always tacit approval of civil violence by his supporters.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best biography I have read in a decade! This meticulously researched, beautifully written biography of Woodrow Wilson as seen through the lens of his misogynist patriarchy and racism is a revelation into his life and times. Christopher Cox deserves a Pulitzer for the book, which took him 14 years to write. Enriched with hundreds of pages of notes and bibliography the book contains a QR code that provides readers with even more material. A must read for presidential historians, scholars of the suffrage movement, and students of Black history. Although I read a library copy, I am going to purchase my own hard cover and add this to my personal library!

[Elizabeth Schroeder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, extremely well-written biography of Wilson. I was engaged by this book from the beginning.

The book delves in most detail on the women's suffrage movement, and Wilson's proactive obstruction to giving women the right to vote. It's hard to distinguish whether he was more racist or more sexist; his disdain for everyone who wasn't a white straight man -- well, to be honest, he was such a narcissist, anyone who wasn't him -- was the defining characteristic of his entire personality.

We are taught so little about women's suffrage -- "the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote." Maybe, depending on where we live and who's teaching, we're informed that this only applied to white women. Cox goes into unapologetic detail at how intentionally and shamelessly white women demanded Black women to "wait their turn" on voting rights. He also documents the cruel treatment of women suffragists who exercised their first amendment right to protest not having the right to vote. These "Silent Sentinels" simply stood outside of the White House with banners reading, "How long will we have to wait?" so that Wilson would see them. They were arrested for blocking the sidewalk -- even though they did no such thing -- and after being fined or spending a day or two in county jail, were later sentenced to months and months of solitary confinement in a workhouse.

In response, Alice Paul and others went on a hunger strike -- the response to which was brutal, cruel force-feedings that caused internal injuries to her and others. They were not permitted to see their lawyers; they were not permitted to see their families. And Wilson knew about all of this.

I was struck as I read this book how similar Wilson was to DJT. Wilson insisted on playing golf nearly every single day (more than Tr**p, but not by much). He lied about his academic background, even going so far as to getting people to give him honorary degrees and easy tests so he could pass his actual doctorate. He appointed people with no background in various areas to cabinet and other positions, and took time away from the White House whenever he wished. His hubris and ego were unparalleled in a president, until 2016.

The one heads up I will give is that the book goes into very little detail about World War I. If you're interested in reading more about the Great War, you'll need another book. But if you're more interested in Wilson the person and the connection with women's suffrage, written by a really strong researcher and writer, you'll really appreciate this book.

[Don Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're looking for a comprehensive biography on Woodrow Wilson, this is not that book. What Christopher Cox does do here is 1) Put the world that Wilson was born and raised in into historic context and 2) Uses that context to explain and expose Wilson's actions before and during his presidency that seemed to be either forgotten or purposely swept under to rug for the last 100 years.

Hailed as a "defender" of democracy at home during World War I, Mr. Cox dives into two major issues, Wilson's uber racism and his extreme misogyny. On the racism side, the author writes how Wilson resegregated the civil service in Washington, DC after decades of desegregation following the Civil War. Other "highlights" included Wilson being enamored with D.W. Griffith's film "Birth of a Nation", a film that helped usher in the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan is the US in the 1920's.

The main crux of the book exposes his misogyny, mainly toward the movement to give women the right to vote. Cox goes into extreme detail on how many of the movers and shakers in the movement were treated, especially during war time where Wilson abused his presidential power to go after the most active leaders in the suffrage movement.

This detailed, well-researched book was a 14 year effort by the former Congressman and should be held as a standard for studying the American Era of c 1910 to 1920. Christopher Cox also goes into detail on why America failed to join the League of Nations, which he shows was totally preventable if Wilson could have gotten out of his own way.

Lots more in this book, but you'll have to read it for yourself. The photographs used to show who all the players were are given a terrific treatment to make them look fresh and real as possible, a wonderful touch. And for research geeks, you will love the extended footnote, bibliography and index sections.

This book is not to be missed!

[Bargain Sleuth Book Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

For this and other book reviews, visit www.bargain-sleuth.com and subscribe to my updates.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Several years ago, I saw a documentary about World War I that concentrated on the United States’ involvement, and the show provided some backstory on Woodrow Wilson that seemed glossed over in the biography I had read about him: he was a massive racist, a product of the South who lived through the Civil War. He was also sexist as all hell, which is important because of the strength of the women’s suffrage movement during his time as President. Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn focuses on the fight for racial equality and women’s suffrage, first providing backstory to the movements, and then providing a biography of Wilson within the context of those two factors.

This was a fascinating and at the same time a horrifying look at the United States a century ago and how history books just glossed over the fact that Wilson did so much that was detrimental to blacks and women. He resegregated the federal government, so thousands of black people lost their jobs. He lauded the film, Birth of a Nation, which depicted life as if the South had won the Civil War, and had it shown at the White House. Despite the fact that he had three daughters and was a highly educated man, he held women back in every way possible, that is, until it was politically advantageous to him.

Overall, this was a very sobering read leading up to this year’s presidential election.

[Earl Ecklund III · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is not a traditional biography of Woodrow Wilson but rather an examination of Wilson's life alongside the rise of the women's suffrage movement that ultimately resulted in the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920. As Cox shows in great detail the woman's suffrage movement had no greater opponent than Woodrow Wilson himself who believed that women were incapable of understanding and participating in the political process. Wilson's prejudices weren't just against women but also against black people of both sexes. Wilson was born in the South and spent his formative years in Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina during the civil War and Reconstruction, both of which deeply imprinted on Wilson. Wilson believed the the 14th & 15th Amendments had been added illegally by the Republican Party and that blacks were not capable of being equal to white people in any way.

Cox writes a very highly readable book and provides great detail on the woman's suffrage movement from it's earliest days in 1848 and its many leaders including Alice Paul, Lucretia Mott, And Carrie Chapman Catt and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Cox also is unsparing in being critical Wilson's racist & sexist views and how they hindered his ability to provide leadership to those who looked up to him for the active progressive leadership he embodied in so many other areas.

An excellent read, it won't endear Woodrow Wilson to anyone but it does offer an important counterpoint to the past studies of Wilson that minimized his views on the issues addressed.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has led me to want to find a book written in the early to mid 20th century on Wilson. This book feels like I am viewing history through the lens of today...which isn't always the best way to really figure out the true impact of a historical figure. While by today's standards Wilson would be considered a misogynistic racist, it is clear that many people back then did not view him as such. So much so that even after leaving office, Cox very briefly mentions that some believed Wilson to be one of the best American presidents. I do not agree with Wilson's efforts to stall women's suffrage and his southern Democratic beliefs in slavery, but I am going to research his legacy a little further to determine his true effect on the period. I will say that this book is extremely well written and obviously well researched. While creating anger on a routine basis throughout due to Wilson's behavior, it was a compelling read.

[Andy]

DNF.

[Steven Stokes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not like Woodrow Wilson before I read this book.

I did not know the possible depths of dislike.

A good book about a horrid man.

[Mr. Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at my blog, Mr. Book's Book Reviews.

Thank you, Simon & Schuster, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn, by Christopher Cox.

The book concentrates on two areas of Woodrow Wilson’s life: his opposition to women voting and his terrible record on racial issues.

Even as president of Princeton, Wilson showed that he didn’t see anything wrong with slavery. He said, “Slavery itself was not so dark a thing as it was painted:, the slaves “were happy and well care for” and “were little worse off” for it. He even opposed abolition, since that just “invade[d] the privileges of self-government.” As a professor at Princeton, he claimed that black were better off under slavery than they were as free. His views on the 14th Amendment were identical to the opponents of the amendment at the time of ratification. But, the 15th Amendment, granting blacks the right to vote (at least on paper) was the one that he found the most offensive.

Wilson’s time as president, when he had the power to implement his views, was even worse. A study of civil service records during Wilson’s presidency showed demotions that allowed “white supremacists in the Democratic Party to institutionalize segregation” and there was “segregation of the entire federal civil service under President Woodrow Wilson.”

Wilson’s views on both women’s suffrage and rights were also repulsive. As a presidential candidate, one friend, who was also the editor of the New York Evening Post, thought Wilson would rather lose the election than support the issue. And, as a candidate, he supported only one right for women: “the right of women to bear children.” In his first term in the White House, his party, following his leadership, defeated attempts at a constitutional amendment.

It was only when Wilson decided to get remarried late in his first term that he made any effort to move on the issue. He thought that would “lessen political reaction to his second marriage.” But, even then, all he would do was support individual states being able to amend their constitutions to allow women to vote: a measure that would be far less effective than a constitutional amendment. It was until the amendment was on the brink of being approved in the House, in a razor-thin vote, that Wilson supported it, and even then, just barely. He did nothing to help it pass in the House and when it went to the Senate, he did nothing there either until he made one speech, appearing on the floor of the Senate, very late in the process.

By the time that the amendment had passed the Senate and was sent to the states. Wilson was too single-focused on getting the Treaty of Versailles approved that he had no interest in the amendment. And, eventually, after his stroke, he was president in name only.

Just like the Wilson administration had a terrible record in accepting dissenting opinions against World War I, many pro-suffrage protestors were being arrested under his watch. People were arrested just for carrying signs in front of the White House. In the fall of 1917, when pro-suffrage protestors were arrested, they were being threatened in prison. One prison warden, heard descriptions of anti-Wilson protests and told the prisoners, “You must not speak against the President. You know you will be thrashed if you say anything more about the President. And don’t forget you’re on Government property and may be arrested for treason if it happens again.”

The book did an excellent job of looking at providing background coverage of what was happening, both at the time and in history, on racial issues and women’s suffrage.

Prior to Wilson’s presidency, the book focused more on Wilson’s racial attitudes than on suffrage. Once he took office, suffrage was what dominated the book. I would liked to have hade more on his racist presidential policies. It was already a very long book (39 chapters) so what’s a little longer. But, that criticism doesn’t prevent the book from receiving an A+ and being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

After finishing the book, I preordered the audioversion, which I will be able to listen to when it, as well as the printed/ebook versions are released on November 5.

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on July 24, 2024.

[Terry Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unprecedented powerhouse of a book, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn packs a historical punch. Cox’s ability to viscerally and intellectually contextualize Wilson’s world leads the reader on a satisfying journey that far outweighs thousands of dry historical reports that preceded it. The Light Within is meticulously researched, including background information leading up to Wilson's birth. For example, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner’s condemnation of the brutal slaveholders and politicians who laid waste to the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas, and his lengthy speech that “extolled the self-sacrifice of the women fighting against slavery in Kansas.” For his efforts, Sumner was beaten nearly to death in the Senate chambers by three Democratic members of the House of Representatives. Despite witnesses, none of the politicians were ever charged. These passages include dramatic details such as, “…a man hovered over him, partially blotting out the light from the large brass chandelier overhead, while shafts of the springtime sun, glinting intermittently through the circle of skylights, threw winking reflections from his mahogany desk.” The description of the horrific beating carries brutal detail.
This is the world into which Woodrow Wilson is born in December of 1856. Influenced heavily by his parents, particularly his father, a Presbyterian minister who claimed in a sermon that “the bible brings human slavery underneath the sanction of divine authority,” Tommy, as Thomas Woodrow was called, came of age as a “traditional” Southerner.
Educated in political science and law, Wilson’s career began as a professor of political science at Princeton University. He rose to the role of university president then governor of New Jersey. Conservative Democrats convinced him to run for president, and he took office on the cusp of WWI. The machinations and twists of the election are compelling reading.
Over 2,000 books have been written about Woodrow Wilson in English, but none contain the newly colored photos within nor the details of or descriptions in this amazingly researched tome (640 pp. including footnotes). Even the gavel slammed by Vice President William Marshall at the defeat of a counterfeit Susan B. Anthony bill in 1919 is described. “A two-and-one-half-inch, hour-glass-shaped piece of ivory that had survived since the days when the husband of suffrage supporter Abigal Adams wielded it.”
Cox describes the depraved conditions of suffragists in jail with the same meticulous detail as his attention to the exact time a bill is killed and the name of Wilson’s bodyguard in Pueblo, Colorado a week before Wilson’s stroke and death. Cox creates exacting scenarios that has readers fuming, for example, while Wilson first claims that states rights are sufficient to handle women’s rights to vote then later has the gall to address female visitors in his office as very slow students, while he wears the not-so-deceptive mask of a naïve observer who is “just now learning” of the suffragist movement.
While Wilson’s consequential presidency is touted for his signatures on legislation of the progressive income tax, the creation of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission, the National Park Service and the Clayton Antitrust Act, his vision of the League of Nations, (and successor, the United Nations), as well as leading a country into and out of the first World War, his racism and sexism haunts his legacy in the 21st century. (Princeton University removed Wilson’s name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges in 2020 due to Wilson’s stubborn adherence to his belief in slavery and its laws.) While Wilson devoutly believed in the superiority of the white male, he was all-but cornered into supporting the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Outwardly, Wilson painted himself as a progressive, but he was a shallow academic who was ill-suited for the societal upheavals into which he was cast.
Cox brings history alive in a way that is simultaneously compelling and scholarly. Names, dates, hours of the day, congressional records, analyzed photographs and added bibliography lay the groundwork, while facial expressions, echoes in corridors, rustling fabric, and suffocating cigarette and cigar smoke make the reader feel as they are sitting in the Senate chambers or standing next to Wilson as he flounders during an asthma attack.
This book is a must-have for any serious reader of history and should be assigned reading for college students. I recommend it as well for anyone who loves non-fiction, for we should all know just how difficult it was for our forefathers and especially foremothers to create a more just country.

[Urey Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woodrow Wilson is the exemplar for bad Presidents. He was the archetype to which progressive Presidents to follow aspired. Wilson was virulently racist, hubristic, autocratic, thin-skinned and egotistic. He believed that the Declaration of Independence was merely a statement of grievances, and that the first two paragraphs should be redacted, ignored – you know, that part that says all men are created equal. He thought the Constitution was an archaic relic that had outlived its purpose. He belittled our system of government, separation of powers – extolling parliamentarian systems as superior and worthy of emulation, and he acted accordingly as President. He initiated relentless segregation throughout the federal government, approved of and applauded the Ku Klux Klan – indeed, giving it new life. He locked up his critics, he refused to be responsive to press or public, he approved of and supported Jim Crow laws throughout the South. He acted as he wished, ignoring Constitutional limits upon his powers as President. For those who believe in our Constitution, limited representative government, separation of powers, and individual liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, he was the most destructive influence on the American way of government in our history... not least because he set the example for activist Progressive Presidents to come (think FDR and his admirers LBJ, Obama, and Biden).

Cox only touches on this in passing in this biography – focusing instead on Wilson’s determined and unrelenting opposition to women’s suffrage. Women’s suffrage was indeed a huge issue at the time, commanding national attention year in and year out, even commanding headlines during the war years. Notably, in a survey at the end of the 20th Century, when asked to rank the importance of events of the century, women’s suffrage was ranked #2, only WWII ranked higher.

Wilson was not misogynist, he loved women in their place and he had illicit love affairs, but he did diminish and demean those women who did not recognize and accept their place. He was an unrepentant, unpersuadable old south chivalric, believing women’s place was in the home, family, children and supportive of their men... certainly not in public life, and certainly not capable of the serious reasoning and informed thought necessary to exercise the vote. The years of delay in the establishment of national women’s suffrage can be laid at his feet.

Cox gives us great insight and understanding of Wilson’s character, his many and manifold flaws. He does this by relating Wilson’s early life, his academic career (greatly inflated – Wilson never finished any of his courses of study). His early career as an academic and his time as President of Princeton. It all serves to illustrate exactly who he was and how he looked upon issues such as race, women’s right, civil rights and principles of government. He was not a nice man. He became President because Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft split the Republican vote, allowing Wilson to win with a minority share of the vote.

Cox primarily focusses on the suffrage movement and Wilson’s unending opposition to it over the course of his eight years in office. Secondarily, he highlights Wilson’s inseparable toxic views on race and his pernicious effects on civil rights and race relations. In the process, he alludes in greater and lesser detail to many of the other events and issues involving President Wilson – the Sedition Act, the economic depression and recessions, the Spanish flu, the series of events preceding our actual entry into WWI, the imprisonment of his critics and opponents (other than the suffragists, who he also locked up illegally and in great numbers), his stroke and total incapacity, and so much more... putting Wilson in context, but not in great detail.

Yet Wilson’s lifelong opposition to women’s rights coupled with his venomous racial policies and beliefs opens a deeply revealing window into him and his character. It is unfortunate that Cox passes up so much else that Wilson did that was also deplorable, and also had lasting effects on the welfare and development of the nation, but then it is understandable too – such inclusion expanded enough to do justice would have doubled or tripled the length of the book.

[Paul Sand · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author of this Woodrow Wilson biography, Christopher Cox, went literary with his subtitle; it's from the John Greenleaf Whittier poem "Ichabod", which (it says here) was intended as an attack on Daniel Webster, and his advocacy of the Fugitive Slave Law. And (further) "Ichabod" means "inglorious" in Hebrew. I did not know that!

I would have gone with something more concrete subtitle-wise: maybe "Raging Racist, Sexist Scumbag".

Cox had a long career in politics, including a 17-year stint as a GOP CongressCritter from California. His Wikipedia page goes into the details, mentioning his successful 1980 appearance on the game show Password Plus, but not, as I type, his authorship of this book.

A major theme of the book is Wilson's reluctance to support women's suffrage. He offered a number of excuses for his opposition; later, when that opposition became politically unpopular, he offered excuses for keeping his support merely tepid. But it seems that he was simply disdainful of the ladies intruding on a male bastion of power and privilege.

There are a number of "the more things change…" moments here. For example, there was a massive pro-suffrage demonstration the day before Wilson's 1913 inauguration. Which recalled this and (of course) this.

Another major theme was his undimmed, virulent, apparently lifelong, racism. He was a child of the Confederacy, despised Reconstruction, and was a big fan of the KKK. He was a good buddy of Thomas Dixon, author of (most notably) The Clansman, a novel that formed the basis of the classic pro-Klan silent movie The Birth of a Nation. Which featured Wilson quotes in intertitles. And was the first movie ever screened at the White House.

But the suffrage struggle takes center stage in Cox's telling. Unfortunately, to the exclusion of (in my opinion) matters of equal or greater importance. Cox goes into great detail on the trampling of the suffragists' civil liberties, which (among other things) involved sending off lady protestors to a rural Virginia prison/workhouse/hellhole for daring to unfurl banners in front of the White House.

But this was just one example of Wilson's suppression of dissent. For example, Eugene Debs goes unmentioned here except for being one of the presidential candidates in 1912. Reader, the Wilson Administration had him jailed for making rabble-rousing speeches.

Also unmentioned by Cox (unless I missed something): the infamous Palmer Raids; the mass deportation of left-wingers, including Emma Goldman.

Other topics are mentioned, but woefully unexplored. Wilson's re-election campaign in 1916 pictured him as a peacenik: "He kept us out of war", while his GOP opponent, Charles Evans Hughes, was pictured as a warmonger. This, while Wilson privately acknowledged that, yeah, we were gonna get into the war. And we did; Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany only a month after his 1917 inauguration.

World War I was also the excuse for Wilson to assume control of large swaths of the domestic economy. The Federal income tax was barely out of diapers; originally aimed at "the rich", the brackets multiplied, raised, and were unindexed for inflation, which raged. Price controls generated scarcity.

And Wilson demanded, and got, the power to deny any person to depart the US.

So, in short, this book is a very good resource if you want to know (roughly) everything about the campaign for the (eventual) 19th Amendment, and Wilson's interactions with that campaign. Beyond that, you might want to get some supplementary texts.

[Corey Trowbridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

A President in Eclipse: The Moral Failure of Woodrow Wilson

Christopher Cox’s Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn is a meticulously researched and long-overdue indictment of the 28th president. It methodically dismantles the progressive hagiography that has long insulated Wilson from serious moral scrutiny. Cox focuses his sharp legal and historical lens on Wilson’s most glaring sins—his vehement opposition to women's suffrage and his appalling record on racial equality—presenting them not as unfortunate blind spots of his era, but as the very core of his political identity. The result is a portrait of a man whose intellectual pride laid the groundwork for a legacy of division and whose vision for the world was built on a corrupted understanding of humanity.

Modern historiography has often graded Wilson on a curve, celebrating his lofty internationalist rhetoric and domestic legislative programs while treating his overt racism as a regrettable but common prejudice. Cox will have none of it. He presents an Everest of evidence to demonstrate that Wilson’s policies were the deliberate implementation of a malicious ideology. From the segregation of the federal workforce to his academic writings that justified slavery and denigrated Black Americans, Wilson was a reactionary force against the nation’s founding ideals. Cox convincingly argues that Wilson's "progressivism" was exclusively reserved for a select class of citizens, predicated on the subjugation of others. This selective application of principle is the height of intellectual dishonesty, revealing a worldview where "equality" is a gift to be bestowed by an enlightened elite rather than a right endowed by God.

The book is equally damning in its chronicle of Wilson’s crusade against the women's suffrage movement. The activists who picketed his White House were met not with reasoned debate but with imprisonment, brutality, and attempts to have them declared insane. Wilson’s resistance was rooted in a rigid, paternalistic view of the social order that saw no place for women in the public square. His years-long intransigence, followed by a politically expedient and lukewarm reversal, exposes a man driven by expediency and personal conviction, not by a coherent set of principles. His actions reveal a deep-seated contempt for the very concept of government by consent of the governed, preferring instead a government of the wise, where he, naturally, was the chief arbiter of wisdom.

What emerges from Cox's work is the portrait of a man undone by his own titanic pride. Wilson, the academic president, was so thoroughly convinced of his own righteousness that he became blind to his own profound moral failings. His political project was not one of liberation but of control. He sought to reorder society according to his own abstract, academic theories, using the levers of federal power to impose his will. This is the great temptation of the modern technocrat: the belief that humanity can be perfected through grand, centrally planned designs, a notion that inevitably requires the suppression of individual liberty.

The book’s title, The Light Withdrawn, is poignantly apt. Wilson’s final years, marked by a debilitating stroke that left him incapacitated and hidden from public view, serve as a tragic metaphor for his entire project. Having sought to remake the world in his own image, he was left a shattered man, his grand vision for a League of Nations rejected and his body broken. It is a somber testament to the end that awaits all projects animated by hubris rather than humility. His physical collapse mirrored a deeper spiritual darkness, a consequence of a life spent in service to a self-centered intellect rather than to timeless truths.

Cox has not simply written a biography; he has delivered a moral verdict. He exposes Woodrow Wilson as a man whose celebrated "light" of progress was, in reality, a profound and damaging shadow that fell across the nation. This book is an essential corrective, forcing a reappraisal of a president whose ideas, tragically, continue to animate much of our political discourse.

[John Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Woodrow Wilson was lionized throughout much of the 20th century, Christopher Cox paints a dastardly picture of a man who was manipulative, petty, prejudiced, conniving, and vindictive. Biographers mostly have portrayed Wilson as a heroic visionary, yet Cox--who spent 14 years researching and writing the book--convincingly focuses on Wilson's lifelong patterns of racism and sexism.
Wilson led the way in setting back Black rights for a couple of generations. Once elected president, he swiftly segregated federal offices and facilities. He never wavered from his beliefs in the inferiority of African Americans. Wilson's father, a Southern Presbyterian who owned slaves, preached that slavery was divinely authorized and to be cherished because the institution enriched the "superior race."
After an undistinguished performance as a student, Wilson could find no other job than teaching at Bryn Mawr, which was ironic given his beliefs in the intellectual inferiority of women. Through questionable favors from high-placed friends and academic shortcuts, Wilson eventually managed to earn a doctorate and found a teaching position at Princeton University. As president of the school, he insisted that the family's slaves "were happy to be well cared for." Wilson made sure no Black or women students were admitted to the university during his tenure.
Currying favor with Democratic Party bosses, Wilson won election as New Jersey governor and only two years later, in 1912, won the presidency of the United States on anti-Black, anti-women, anti-immigrant platform. For years, under Republic administrations, Blacks had been working side by side with white officials. The federal government had become the nation's largest employer of African Americans. But Wilson oversaw the methodical removal of Blacks from posts and the implementation of separate (and inferior) restrooms, eating facilities, and office spaces. The Ku Klux Klan had all but died out in 1915 when the film "The Birth of a Nation" came out. The movie contained several quotes from Wilson regarding the supposed inferiority of Blacks. Before the end of his term, the hate organization had revived around the nation.
During World War I, Wilson created a government censorship agency that quashed any public dissent on war policies. Suffragists who peacefully demonstrated outside the White House were repeatedly arrested and jailed in squalid conditions. Activist Alice Paul, for one, endured forced feedings, sleep deprivation, and being held incommunicado. Throughout his presidency, Wilson worked to keep women from gaining the right to vote.
Cox provides plenty of fodder to further despise Wilson. He was the first president to use the Secret Service for the purpose of spying on enemies, convincing Congress to appropriate a whopping $100 million to use at his discretion. He ordered a blackout of the Spanish flu epidemic that killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. And he spent six months in Europe after World War I advocating the the League of Nations, refusing his constitutional duties to negotiate treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate.

[Allan Nemer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many years ago I started to think about reading on Woodrow Wilson. I knew nothing about him but realized that there was a great deal written about him. Where to start? In my research I came across an article that stated, in effect, that Blacks were, before Wilson became President, starting to make some good inroads into employment in the Federal Government. However once Wilson got into office that all changed as the vast majority of them were forced out of federal employment in a blatant display of racism. I was determined to not read anything about him till I came across an author that was willing to deal with the subject.

Woodrow Wilson by Christopher Cox is the book I determined to wait for. It is not a biography in the traditional sense, from birth to death, but instead deals specifically with the man in his youth as well as in his adulthood on specific subjects particularly ones that many others have only touched on.

Without getting into too much detail so as not to spoil it for others I found Wilson the man, as the book states, supremely unfit to lead the country in many areas. He was a white supremacist, a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, believed blacks were better off as slaves, I could go on and on. The book shows him as stubborn, obstinate, intellectually lazy, and almost completely unwilling to listen to others let alone take their advice. In short, it was either his way or you can all jump off a cliff. He seemed almost completely unable to see things from any point of view other than his own. His stubbornness and bigotry affected large portions of his decision-making while President. As you will see by the end of the book his faults created big problems for the country as well. In my opinion the problems and defeats he received at the end of his second term of office are to some extent his own fault.

Though the book is good it does have some problems. The middle section of the book super-focuses on the ongoing battles of women getting the right to vote, black and white. I am not saying the author should ignore the issue, rather it seems as if it goes on and on. It focuses on the subject to the point where I found it hard to read. Hence, the amount of time it took for me to read the book. I personally believe that the problems Wilson caused on women’s suffrage are in large part similar to the way he handled other issues: economics, World War 1, League of Nations. His faults in most of these areas are, to me, part of the same issue. His personal inability to see things from any point other than his own as well as his bigotry and racism made him unable to deal with a wide range of issues. I would have preferred the author tied it all together a little better.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, Simon & Schuster, for providing this book for review via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Excellent Historical Biography

Christopher Cox navigates this biography with poise and intellect!
Well-researched and insightful, this is much more than I had read before about his resistance to the women's suffrage fight and the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, as well as his racial ambiguity.

As the 28th President of the United States, Wilson's tenure was characterized by significant legislative achievements that aimed to reshape the American economic landscape. He was instrumental in maneuvering three major pieces of legislation through Congress early in his presidency. First, the Underwood Act lowered tariffs while introducing a graduated federal income tax, a move that aimed to create a more equitable financial system. Following this, the Federal Reserve Act was enacted, establishing a central banking system to ensure a more flexible money supply—an essential reform given the financial uncertainties of the time.
In 1914, Wilson's administration introduced antitrust legislation that formed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), designed to curb unfair business practices and promote fair competition. His progressive stance was further evidenced in 1916, with laws prohibiting child labor and ensuring an eight-hour workday for railroad workers. These reforms not only exemplified Wilson's commitment to social justice but also helped secure his narrow re-election under the slogan "he kept us out of war."
With the onset of World War I. Despite his earlier assertion of neutrality, on April 2, 1917, he urged Congress to declare war on Germany, believing that America could no longer stand by as global conflicts escalated. This marked a pivotal moment in Wilson's presidency, as he endeavored to shape a new world order.
In January 1918, he presented the Fourteen Points, a vision for post-war peace that included the establishment of "a general association of nations" to protect the political independence and territorial integrity of all states, large and small. This ambitious plan laid the groundwork for what would later become the League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations.
Woodrow Wilson's legacy is undeniably complex, marked by both significant contributions to American progressivism and a tumultuous foreign policy that would resonate for decades.

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want a bio that doesn’t make the subject a hero, give this readout on Wilson a spin. A president who, upon his death in 1924, came across as perhaps one of the strongest presidents in history, the century since has seen his fortunes ebb and flow. Particularly in the last decade, the name Wilson is synonymous with racism and a messiah complex. This work looks as the flaws of Wilson, from his ingrained racism from being a scion of the Confederacy to his varying degrees of misogyny as a professor and politician. In particular, Cox discusses the rise of the suffragette movement in the 19th and 20th century in parallel with Wilson’s rise to power. Somehow, women did manage to get the right to vote, but it took a lot of back and forth, and Wilson, as president, did as much to help and hurt that effort. Ultimately, it came down to allowing white women to vote, while not disrupting the “need” for segregation. For Wilson, maintaining Jim Crow was far more important than putting “white women in their place.”

Along with the drive for women’s suffrage, Cox examine other aspects of Wilson’s life and actions. The racism is brutal, but all too true. It was Wilson that brought segregation into the government, and his historical analysis of the US as a professor did much to inspire Birth of a Nation, the first blockbuster movie, but also perhaps the most racist film ever created, which Wilson did endorse. Also, Cox harps on Wilson’s arrogance, especially his all-consuming effort to drive the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations down Washington’s throat. If he had only brought a senator or two from his party (Democrat) and the opposition (Republican), he might have gotten there. Also, there are the various affairs of Wilson, but Cox doesn’t spend much time discussing Edith Wilson’s controversial role in the post-stroke part of Wilson’s administration.

Perhaps some might decry this work as “woke”, but not a lot of right-wingers I know hold Wilson in all that high regard. Cox takes a decidedly negative tone about Wilson and his policies. Would it be different if Cox didn’t try to intertwine the goal of women’s suffrage into the narrative? Hard to say. Still, a good read, but one that will not help your opinion of Wilson the president or the man after finishing.

[Helynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle The Light Withdrawn is very telling early on in this 2024 biography on the nation’s 28th President (1913-21). Author Christopher Cox’s narrative does not hesitate to focus on how Woodrow Wilson was never really able to pull his ideals and mentality out of the 19th century and function graciously in an era of persistent focus on women’s rights and the stirrings of racial equality. In a recent podcast interview, Cox even suggested those who want to read a more traditional biography on Wilson should not chose his book, which is less a typical life story than it is an honest unveiling of a man and a President who labored for decades in a fog of outdated values, misconceptions, and character flaws.

To be fair, Wilson should be viewed in the context of his time and place, which account for a good amount of his inherent racism, misogyny, and egregious male chauvinism. He was born in Staunton, Virginia on Dec. 28, 1856, grew up mostly in Georgia—“a true son of the South” (39)— and later in South Carolina where the Ku Klux Klan was the most active and dangerous. He was a boy during the Civil War, developed white supremacist arguments, and revered Robert E. Lee. Like most Southerners, he resented the Reconstruction years. He supported Jim Crow laws and he never could not see any reason why such discrimination against Black Americans should not continue indefinitely. As a young professor at Bryn Mawr College, he disliked the new emphasis on higher education for women, resented how he had to teach bright young women students, and, of course, abhorred the thought that the female half of the population of the country could ever be permitted to vote.

Wilson’s outmoded thinking did catch up to him, but his personal values were not studied under a starker light until decades after his death. The last months of his presidency were tragically limiting after he suffered a debilitating stroke. He died in 1924, only a few years after he left office. Wilson was a “defeated man” as Cox states (494) partly due to the lack of success of the League of Nations, his much treasured project, and the fact that the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, despite his years of fighting against women’s suffrage, finally became law in 1920. Nevertheless, in the years after Wilson’s death he steadily grew in stature on the strength of a dozen admiring biographies in the first three decades following his presidency. In 1944, a Hollywood film Wilson “sanctified” him. In 1948, Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger included Wilson as one of only a half dozen of “great” presidents along with Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR. (Ulysses S. Grant was named a “failure” [494]).

As an aside (not mentioned in this book), in 1934, Wilson’s face adorned the now-defunct $100,000 bill, which was legal tender, but never publicly circulated (not that many of us would ever walk around with one of those bills in our wallets anyway). Instead, it was used to transfer funds between Federal Reserve banks.

Indeed, it would take decades for history to unravel such a galvanized profile and to withdraw the light.

Some highlights from Cox’s research:

When urged by his superior at Bryn Mawr (Carey Thomas, a spectacularly bright and educated woman whom he hated) to earn his Ph.D., Wilson fudged the required classes at John Hopkins University and managed an easy way out, persuading old colleagues to give him the degree without him doing any work (88). Later, he was awarded an honorary law degree that he did nothing to earn, and henceforth, always wrote his name as Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D. (97).

In the early years of the 20th century, most American universities—including Yale, Brown and Harvard—were opening their doors to women and Blacks. However, as president of Princeton beginning in 1902, Wilson ignored all pressure for integration claiming that coeducation led to a “degradation of standards” (111). Due to his influence, the faculty and student body at Princeton remained male and Caucasian for decades into the future.

Beginning in 1906, at age 50, while married to his long-time wife, Ellen, Wilson had an ongoing affair with rich, married Mary Peck while they rendez-vous’d often in Bermuda without their spouses (125-27). Later, in 1916, a few months after Ellen’s death, he dismissed the heartbroken Mary and married his much-younger second wife, Edith.

As governor of New Jersey in 1910-13, Wilson did not conceal his hatred of suffragists. “These ladies,” the governor groused, “were totally abhorrent” to him. (142). He refused to receive delegations of women or acknowledge their letters (151).

William Randolph Hearst, a long-time foe of Wilson, hated the governor’s anti-immigrant policies and was appalled by Wilson branding entire classes of immigrants as “shiftless” (158).

During his first year as U.S. President in 1913, Wilson immediately changed the integrated status of government workers; would not let Black and white people work together, eat in the same cafeteria, or use the same restrooms (187). He reversed policy of appointing Blacks to government and other responsible positions. The NAACP stated that the Wilson Administration treated Blacks “like lepers” (189).

Wilson continued to be dismissive of women’s suffragist groups seeking an audience at the White House, saying women’s votes would have unwelcome consequences for the “social fabric ” (207). Stung by Wilson’s snub, suffragists picketed the White House peacefully and silently, standing in the cold for hours (259). Wilson ignored them—and played a lot of golf (260).

Wilson’s lack of empathy and a cruel streak were increasingly evident as he stepped up the arrests of suffragists whose banners quoted his speeches, and had them confined at Occoquan Prison in Virginia where conditions were horrific— diseases, infections, malnutrition, poor ventilation, lack of sanitation, solitary confinement, beatings. The women who went on hunger strikes for their cause were forced-fed with a horrendous feeding tube (Chapter 26).

As World War I ended, Wilson further delayed any action on the Anthony Amendment by leaving for the Paris Peace Conference. He and Edith sailed the Atlantic in luxury, and were feted in Europe as (431) as battles over the Anthony Amendment and civil rights continued back home.

While Wilson focused solely on the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations, the Anthony Amendment was ratified by a one-vote margin, Aug. 18, 1920 (488). Wilson, who had unbent and reluctantly endorsed women’s suffrage in 1918, took credit for the success. “I shall be very much disappointed in [American women] if they have forgotten that they are chiefly indebted to me for the suffrage” (490).

[Cody Bloom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish this book had a different name, Woodrow Wilson and Women’s Suffrage. My biggest complaint about this text is the women’s suffrage movement was at least 3/4 of the book.
Wilson in this book is an utterly despicable human being. An unapologetic unreconstructed southerner growing up in the Jim Crow South Wilson is unabashedly racist and sexist.
As President, Wilson will bring Jim Crow to the Federal Government, segregating the entire organization, and obstructing the women’s suffrage movement at every turn. Arbitrarily jailing women for taking up too much sidewalk and then holding them in a hell hole of a prison, a clear deprivation to 1st and for that matter 8th Amendment rights in order to get them to quit protesting for the franchise.
Wilson was also able to screen the first motion picture at the White House, Birth of a Nation, a depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as a redeemer of the American South (which Wilson Loved.)
During the war, Wilson was able to plunge the American economy into the abyss. Restrict criticism of the government through the Committee of Public Information, painting him as a hero. Wilson was also able to abandon his country and not allow congress to sit while he went to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles where Europeans didn’t want him in the first place.
All in all I learned quite a bit from this book, I wish the reading was more streamlined and it took a wholistic approach to Wilson. Did I mention Wilson was adulterous? Just another character defect of a very defective President .

[Michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn is a powerful and unflinching indictment of one of America’s most mythologized presidents. Far from the saintly academic reformer often depicted in mainstream histories, Wilson is revealed here as a white supremacist, a fraud (his PhD was obtained though old boys' club connections, his career as a lawyer was laughable and his academic papers have been -at best- considered mediocre), and a resolute misogynist who used his power to obstruct the tide of justice.

The book shines in its searing focus on Wilson’s deliberate sabotage of the women’s suffrage movement. His administration’s hostility to equality was not passive—it was active and calculated. While publicly mouthing platitudes, Wilson privately and politically worked to delay, deny, and diminish the rights of half the population. The contrast the author draws between his small, evasive moral vision and the towering courage of women like Lucy Burns is devastating. Burns and her fellow suffragists are the moral giants of this narrative: enduring prison, force-feeding, and public scorn to fight for a cause greater than themselves, while Wilson clung to archaic beliefs and political convenience.

By the end, The Light Withdrawn feels less like a portrait of Wilson than a study in cowardice—illuminated by the fierce glow of the women he tried to silence. In that light, he is exposed completely.

In hindsight, it’s astonishing that his name remained on institutional buildings for so long.

Christopher Cox did a truly superb job. I highly recommend this book.

[Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Cox in this most recent biography of Woodrow Wilson focuses more on Wilson's ingrained racism and his resistance to Women's voting rights instead of the progressive accomplishments he is usually credited for during his Presidency.
Unlike later 20th century Democratic Presidents, who were sympathetic to civil rights, but hamstrung by Southern Democrats, Wilson was quite on board in promoting racial segregation and fighting any civil rights for black Americans.
Cox cradle to grave bio examines where this racism came from and how he never grew out of it. He also examines Wilson's deep-rooted sexism toward women at time when women's suffrage was gaining momentum.
In the end, Wilson reluctantly agreed to support women's right to vote, but never overcame his inherent racism and continued to support Jim Crow laws in the South for the rest of his life.
While reading this account of Woodrow Wilson, at first, I thought Cox wasn't being totally fair with Wilson by not focusing enough on his progressive accomplishments, such as The Federal Reserve Act, The Clayton Antitrust Act, and The Federal trade Commission Act, among others. However, I realized that wasn't Cox's point of writing this biography. It was to expose his racism and sexism, a side that isn't often focused on with previous bios.
As Cox points out, Wilson was racist and sexist who, by his own self-evaluation, was never wrong.
Christopher Cox does a fine job of withdrawing the light on Woodrow Wilson.

[Joseph J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a unique excursion onto the mind and actions of the often (increasingly?) frustrating Woodrow Wilson. Christopher Cox charts Wilson's development, career and Presidency via the twin channels of the Women's Suffrage movement and the aspirations of black Americans for equality and opportunity. In short neither effort was met by Wilson to the hopes and satisfaction of their supporters. Wilson, one of our most educated Presidents and former president of Princeton, was a true son of the post Civil War South, and a man immersed in clergy by family tradition, a tradition which upheld slavery and oppression of black people. These traditionalist attitudes were often realized in his stiff spined opposition to votes for women, an attitude reenforced by his powerful second wife Edith Galt. If you are an admirer of Wilson, in this time of reevaluation, his name removed from Princeton institutions, and his Presidential rank down by many points, these pages will trouble and perhaps at times shock you. But we live in a WORLD Wilson made, even today, on the international stage, and domestically, we feel the effects of the great retreat into segregation Wilson and his administration led. This book is an absorbing history particularly of the push for votes for women, and the many courageous individuals who put their lives at risk. Ultimately, Wilson stands rigid in his grasp onto the past, and in that he reflects the reverse aspirations of many in this country today. Ironically in a recognition of today's technology the photo section is rich and colorful in its update of old faded photographs. The historical figures "pop" in a unique way.

[Joshua Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

10/10 Personal Enjoyment
10/10 Audiobook Narration (As a fan of Star Wars audiobooks, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard him speak.)
8/10 Attempt at being more objective
8/10 Child Appropriateness (Racial slurs from direct quotes have been bleeped out but mature themes are still touched upon)

Look, as a lover of history, there has been no greater disagreement I’ve had with presidential scholars than the praise historically given to Woodrow Wilson. In my view, he is the second worst president for long-term national health. Thankfully, that trend is changing, and Cox’s biography is part of the shift.

Cox charts Wilson’s life and career through two lenses: women’s rights and civil rights—two areas that damn Wilson. If I can reveal my bias, I found this book immensely gratifying, but it falls short of being the magisterial work on Wilson. If you’re familiar with American poetry, you can probably guess the book’s focus from its subtitle. But the book barely covers Wilson’s foreign policy or his handling of the Spanish Flu pandemic. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think those omissions would make Wilson look any better.

I appreciate this book. It is my favorite published source on Wilson that I have read. It might even serve well as your first look at Wilson. Still, I’d encourage you not to make it your only look into Wilson.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher Cox’s recently published book Woodrow Wilson is a timely addition to the body of historical literature, in line with George Santayana’s quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

After reading this book, I cannot decide which I detest most about Woodrow Wilson: 1] fighting AGAINST suffrage, 2] stoking the flames of racism, or 3] taking government censorship to a new level? but 4] Wilson also lied to get elected in 1916 using the slogan “He keep us out of war!” (within 4weeks of his inauguration=> he went to congress to authorize going to war with Germany); 5] Wilson also burdened us with the Espionage Act; 6] Wilson also created a SECRET $100-million fund ($2.3-billion today) for the Secret Service to spy on his friends, supporters, and those he perceived to be enemies.

Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI) that the Biden administration must have modeled its censorship actions after. Wilson used the CPI to suppress ANY dissent regarding his war actions (even targeting those citizens who actively supported his campaign). from pg282: “The sheer volume of material generated by the CPI would distract attention from the committee’s censorship activities.” also pg282: “CPI Chairman George Creel said: ‘..the suppressive features of the work must be overlaid by the publicity policy that they will go unregarded and unresented.’ and from pg 285: “By 1918, (74) newspapers would be denied mailing privileges,” the Wilson Administration determining that these periodicals failed to parrot the government’s propaganda. (remember=> early 1900s newspapers were distributed by mail)

Woodrow Wilson was the beneficiary of Theodore Roosevelt’s 3rd party ‘Bull Moose’ presidential campaign which split the Republican vote, allowing the Democrat Wilson, with only 42% of the popular vote, to net 82% of the electoral college vote. By the way=> we have witnessed the damage caused by 3rd party campaigns, none ever succeeding. In the recent Presidential election, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, to his credit, remembered history and ended his brief 3rd party campaign.

Before writing this review, I researched what the ‘experts’ say about Woodrow Wilson. It is surprising that ‘objective’ historians and educated ‘scholars’ have included Woodrow Wilson in the top ten U.S. Presidents, listing among his accomplishments pressing for passage in 1920 of legislation allowing women the vote=> while failing to report that he AGGRESSIVELY worked against the Suffragettes’ efforts for the preceding six years supporting their persecution and incarceration.

These esteemed sages seem to be silent about Woodrow Wilson’s avowed racist viewpoint. Wilson was a racist, as evidenced a) by his own academic writings; b) while Purdue’s Chancellor he took steps to ensure that no Black students would be admitted; c) he screened the divisive film Birth-of-a-Nation @White House; d) endorsed the KKK; e) instituted policies to bring segregation to federal agencies. In short=> Woodrow Wilson set back racial relations @least 50years to antebellum times.

In my understanding of American history Woodrow Wilson ranks among ten worst U.S. Presidents. While reading “Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn”, I was struck by the similarities of the Wilson administration to the 21st century Biden administration.: fostering disharmony & divisiveness of the electorate by promoting racist & misogynistic policies, active censorship & collusion with journalists to promote its propaganda, selective arrest & prosecution of its political opponents, coopting the federal judicial system to jail those political opponents, blind partisanship, instituting economic policies that adversely impacted the economy & resulted 18% inflation.