1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [138]
Williams, William Carlos (1883–1963) Williams grew up in New Jersey and became a pediatrician, practicing lifelong in Rutherford, New Jersey, while writing a unique body of poems and prose, in which he revealed within the mundane and even the ugly—the detritus of modern civilization—the beauty of vitality and passion. His masterpiece, the five-volume poem Paterson, is a complex vision of this New Jersey industrial city as the embodiment of humankind and of modern man in America.
Wilkie, Wendell (1892–1944) Wilkie left the Democratic Party because he believed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal brought too many government restraints on business. In 1940, as a Republican, he ran unsuccessfully against FDR, who was bidding for his third term. During World War II, he saw himself in the role of the “loyal opposition” and did much to promote the early war effort. In 1943, he wrote One World, a book advocating postwar international cooperation. Wilkie’s view helped prevent the kind of Republican isolationism that had swept the country after World War I.
Wilmot, David (1814–1868) Although he was a Democrat, this Pennsylvania congressman supported abolition, and proposed on August 8, 1846 a proviso (actually originated by Jacob Brinkerhoff of Ohio, but promoted by Wilmot) to outlaw slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico as a result of the U.S.-Mexican War. Wilmot attempted to attach the proviso to various bills, but it was always defeated. Nevertheless, its introduction gave birth to the Free Soil Party, which led to the founding of the antislavery Republican Party.
Wilson, Woodrow (1856–1924) Thomas Woodrow Wilson abandoned the practice of law to become a professor of American history and political science, was a prolific author on these subjects, and rose to the presidency of Princeton University. He was elected governor of New Jersey in 1910 and proved to be such an effective reformer that he earned the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912. He handily defeated both incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and third-party challenger Theodore Roosevelt. During his first term, Wilson introduced a variety of reform legislation, including the Sixteenth Amendment, which provided for a federal income tax. He also steered America on a resolutely neutral course during World War I (the “Great War”), which had begun in Europe in July 1914. Reelected in 1916, however, he led the country into the war (April 1917), in the belief that U.S. participation would give the country (and him) a strong hand in reshaping the world for a lasting peace. After the armistice, Wilson assumed a major guiding role in shaping the Treaty of Versailles, which included the founding of the League of Nations, an international body intended to resolve all future conflicts peacefully (for which Wilson received the 1919 Nobel Prize for Peace). A Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, however, refused to ratify the treaty or the League, Wilson took his case to the public in a cross-country whistle-stop lecture tour, during which he collapsed from exhaustion. After suffering a massive stroke on October 2, 1919, he was severely disabled, leaving his wife, Edith Gault Wilson, to manage many of the affairs of government for the rest of his second term.
Winchell, Walter (1897–1972) Winchell (who originally spelled his name Winchel) was a vaudeville entertainer who became a part-time gossip columnist in 1927. This quickly evolved into a full-time job as people responded to his rapid-fire, telegraphic style, which embodied the latest slang. By the 1930s, Winchell was nationally syndicated in the papers and, beginning in 1932, had a national radio program as well. He delivered news and gossip, was highly opinionated, and had access to all the nation’s movers and shakers. From the 1930s through the 1950s, he wielded tremendous influence. He crusaded for social justice (as in his campaigns against racism and the rise of Hitler), but by the 1950s he became