Woodrow Wilson, the historian and political scientist, will always be eclipsed by Wilson, the president of Princeton University, the governor of New Jersey, and the twenty-eighth president of the United States. Had he not attained, from 1902 to 1920, positions of educational and political statesmanship, his essays and books, all of which were written between 1877 and 1907, would probably be little read today. His historical and political writings remain essential, however, for interpreting his intellectual evolution and provide significant clues to some of his subsequent successes--and failures--as a skillful practitioner of both the art and the science of political leadership. "Wilson's political thought," commented the editors of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1966- ), "was a continuing stream that expanded as it was fed by new tributaries." The study of government and administration was one major tributary; the study of American history was another.
Had greater opportunities not called Wilson from the professorial life, he might have completed his projected great work on "The Philosophy of Politics" and even achieved the goal that he set for historians in his essay "The Truth of the Matter" of interpreting in a sweeping synthesis the life of the American people.
