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Princeton to Presidency
Woodrow Wilson's first public service came as governor of New Jersey
"The rarest thing in public life is courage, and the man who has courage is marked for distinction; the man who has not is marked for extinction..."
-– Woodrow Wilson, farewell address to New Jersey, 1913
The words of conviction that ended Woodrow Wilson's tenure as governor of New Jersey catapulted him to two successful terms as President of the United States. As commander-in-chief, Wilson guided the United States through the turmoil of World War I. As a diplomat, he became a tireless advocate for a League of Nations. And on the home front, the former president of Princeton University expanded the progressive reforms that he had achieved in New Jersey to the entire nation.
Woodrow Wilson purportedly sat in this one-of-a-kind, throne-like armchair. Levis S. Chasey, a carpenter from Red Bank, built the chair from wood samples that he meticulously gathered from the governors of forty-eight states. In 1915, the chair was displayed in the New Jersey Building at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Some accounts suggest that it was acquired by New Jersey Governor James Fielder, Woodrow Wilson's successor, who offered it as a gift to the President of the United States. |