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BOOK REVIEWS - John C. Chalberg: August Heckscher: Woodrow Wilson. Macmillan, 1991. 734 pp

JOHN C. CHALBERG AUGUST HECKSCHER: WOODROW WILSON Macmillan, 1991, 734 pp. Since the Civil War there have been but seven elected Democratic presidents, nearly half of whom advanced from relative obscurity directly to the White House. The first post-Civil war Democrat to run for and win the presidency was Grover Cleveland, who was the mayor of Buffalo, New York, at the time. Nearly a century later Jimmy Carter set out on his improbable quest for the Oval Office as a former one-term governor of Georgia. Between these two unlikely presidencies looms Woodrow Wilson, who waited until he was fifty-three to place himself before any electorate, and who, a scant two years later, had nearly completed his first term as the Governor of New Jersey when he wrested the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination from a small pack of better known rivals. Cleveland, Carter, and Wilson...three gasping Democrats bobbing for political breath in a sea littered with marauding Republicans. Take away the thirty-six year New Deal interregnum between 1932 and 1968 and they are the only bona fide post-Civil War Democratic presidents (save Andrew Johnson who ran with Lincoln on the Union Party ticket in 1864). Cleveland, Carter, and Wilson...three accidental presidents whose accidental presidencies were not the result of presedential deaths. Cleveland, Carter, and Wilson...three presidential aspirants who were the direct beneficiaries of intra-Republican squabbling. Fights between reformist Mugwumps and stand-pat Stalwarts helped elevate Mayor 151