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I just finished reading the biography of Woodrow Wilson, a famous lawyer and public servant.

Did you know that Wilson had contemplated going to Princeton University in New Jersey instead of enrolling at The Citadel in South Carolina. This was substantiated by a letter that he wrote to a high school classmate who was attending Harvard.

After graduating from The Citadel in 1878, Wilson received an Army commission and served as a military office until his honorable discharge in 1890. Wilson returned to Virginia and enrolled at the University of Virginia Law School where he graduated in 1893 and began practicing law in Richmond.

When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, Wilson decided to take a hiatus from the legal profession and joined Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Nearly every history textbook shows that famous photograph of Wilson and two other soldiers raising the American flag at San Juan Hill.

Roosevelt went on to be elected Governor of New York later that year. Wilson was elected to Congress and after two terms, he was elected Attorney General of Virginia in 1901. In 1905, he was elected Governor. In 1910, Wilson was elected to the US Senate where he served until his death in 1924. It didn't hurt that newspaper publisher Carter Glass was a big supporter of Wilson.

I wonder what would have happened if Wilson decided to enroll at Princeton. Would his career have ended up the same?

I just cannot imagine anyone with a Princeton education at that time being successful politically in the South.

OOC: If you believe this belong in 18th century alternate history, feel free to move this thread.
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