Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson worked as a political scientist and university president before serving as governor of New Jersey and the twenty-eighth U.S. president. The New Freedom grew from the reform program he presented during the 1912 presidential campaign. Published by Doubleday, Page in 1913, the book argues against concentrated corporate power and calls for political and economic conditions in which individual initiative can operate more freely. Its full title is The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People. Wilson’s preface credits William Bayard Hale with assembling those speeches into the volume. Wilson’s earlier academic books examined congressional and constitutional government, while his Princeton career joined scholarship to institutional leadership. The New Freedom therefore belongs to both his bibliography and his transition into national executive power. Reading it today requires historical perspective: the reform language captures Progressive Era debates, but Wilson’s record and assumptions remain subjects of substantial criticism rather than a complete definition of freedom.