US Stamps

Handstamp on 1918 cover highlights Woodrow Wilson on education

May 19, 2025, 11 AM
This 1918 cover from a Fort Wayne, Ind., public school official bears a handstamped message from then President Woodrow Wilson on the value of education and its need for public support.

U.S. Stamp Notes by John M. Hotchner

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was the 28th president of the United States, from 1912 to 1921. In recent years, his record has come under criticism regarding statements and actions that arose from his upbringing in the South by parents who were pro-slavery and pro-Confederacy.

He unfortunately took those attitudes into adulthood, and despite major accomplishments in other areas during his time in office, he acted on those childhood beliefs in ways that especially affected disadvantaged African Americans.

The board of trustees of Princeton University, which he served as president from 1902 to 1910, went so far as to remove his name from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs in 2020.

That said, there is no question that Wilson was pro-education, and a cover recently acquired emphasizes this.

The cover, shown nearby, contains a letter from the “FORT WAYNE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, OFFICE OF SUPERINTENDENT” in Indiana, lamenting the departure of a teacher moving on to another career.

The cover is clearly official correspondence canceled Oct. 25, 1918, just as World War I was coming to an end. The cover itself acts as a fit message board for the handstamped words of President Wilson as he comments on the country as it looks to adjust to a post-war world. The lightly handstamped message reads:

“I would therefore urge that the people give generous support to their schools and that the Schools adjust in every way possible to the new conditions so that no boy or girl shall have less opportunity because of the war and that the Nation may be strengthened as it can only be through the right education of all its people.”

Many thanks to my friend Alex Haimann and an artificial intelligence tool he has for deciphering the words that were too light on the cover to be readable.

I don’t know the date that Wilson penned or spoke these words or the precise conditions he refers to, but it is certainly a positive statement on the value of education in our society, and an interesting reflection on the times, made more than a hundred years ago that still remains true today.

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