In 1912 Woodrow Wilson was an unlikely Democratic candidate for the presidency, a sometime law professor and president of Princeton who had only served in public office for two years, as governor of New Jersey. But then it would be an unusual election, with a three-way fight. When the incumbent, William Howard Taft, defeated Theodore Roosevelt, his predecessor in the White House, for the Republican nomination, Roosevelt ran as a “Progressive”, splitting the Republican vote and allowing Wilson to win the presidency with little more than two-fifths of the popular vote.

American Paranoia: How the First World War triggered a wave of xenophobia and a Red Scare