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Kelsey Lowe
Mr.Parsons
HI­1203 11:30­12:20 MWF
6 March 2016
Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency
“If you want to make enemies, try to change something”. Woodrow Wilson became the
28th President of the United States in 1913. Making him the second Democratic President since before the Civil War. Wilson was a very skilled man as he was a Professor and the President at
Princeton University. Before his presidency he was also elected the Governor of New Jersey in
1910. While Wilson was President many different things were introduced to the United States, but what makes him popular is that he was one of the most interventionist Presidents in the U.S.
A few ways that made Wilson an interventionist president is the United States interventions in
Mexico, in Latin America and in Haiti.
When Wilson first entered office he made it clear that he did not follow the foreign policies that Roosevelt and Taft one followed. Mexico had been in a revolution for quite a while until Wilson stepped in on the situation. At the time Mexico had been going through many years of poverty, war, and revolutions. Their leader during their revolution was a man named
Victoriano Huerta who “clamped a bloody authoritarian rule on the country” http://millercenter .org/president/ biography /wilson­foreign­affairs
. While other countries were okay with this,
Wilson was opposed to the investments that Huerta was offering that wasn’t in favor of the
Mexican people. This continued for a few more years until early 1917 when Wilson realized that he did not want to be in a European war so he withdrew all forces from Mexico. This is one way

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to show that he is an interventionist president because he intervened on a country to try and better it for the people.
Another example would be the interventions Wilson made in Latin America. Prior to
WWI, Latin America had been struggling with many corrupt governments. Wilson wanted to prove that the United States wanted to uphold the Monroe Doctrine so he spent the next several years intervening on Latin America ( www.edsitement.neh.gov/curriculum­unit/ woodrow­wilson­and­foreign­policy ). In his efforts to lend a helping hand to Latin America, not many were successful but one that was is how Wilson persuaded Congress to exempt American ships from paying a toll to pass through the Panama Canal. This repeal was known as the 1912
Panama Canal Act ( https://www.apstudynotes.ord ).
During Taft’s presidency Haiti had been a large target for his “Dollar Diplomacy”. Well once Wilson was in office he started to withdraw American involvement from Haiti, which at the time (and presently) is an extremely poor country. This cause Haiti to revolt against President
Wilson. So Wilson sent troops back in to Haiti to protect American citizens. In the end Wilsin agreed to a treaty with Haiti that started the U.S. would help the nation and supervise their finances. Unfortunately, troops would remaim there another 19 years
(
https://www.apstudynotes.org/us­history/topics/taft­and­wilson/ ). While President Wilson’s time in office he had many successful interventions but like many presidents, he also had failures. But what makes President Wilson one of the most interventionist presidents is how he kept trying and wanted to change countries to where they would work to the peoples likings. In one of his statements after taking office Wilson says while

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he is in office the United States hoped "to cultivate the friendship and deserve the confidence" of
Latin America States ( http://millercenter.org/president/biography/wilson­foreign­affairs ).