Act I: Foundations and Fault Lines
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in 1856 into a deeply religious Southern Presbyterian family. His father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was a respected minister and educator. His mother, Janet—called Jessie—was a devoted Scottish churchwoman. From the outside, the Wilson home seemed soaked in Scripture and tradition, but beneath the surface, a different foundation was quietly forming.
As a boy, “Tommy” Wilson was clever but struggled to read until age twelve—what today might be considered dyslexia. Still, he grew to admire ideas and institutions more than people. Though he spent his childhood in the Confederate South during the Civil War, the conflict seemed to leave little mark on him emotionally. His loyalties remained Southern, though, and he absorbed the white supremacist thinking that had gripped post-war Democratic circles.