Wilson was born in Staunton, VA, but his family moved to Georgia when he was very young. He grew up in Georgia and South Carolina. His father was a Confederate chaplain and later a professor at Southwestern Presbyterian College in Clarksville, Tennessee (the college later moved to Memphis and became known as Southwestern at Memphis, and much later was renamed Rhodes College). His brother was an editor for a paper in Nashville. Wilson experienced the Civil War and Reconstruction era as a white Southerner--and thought that the movie
Birth of a Nation accurately portrayed that era.
He was the only President, other than those born before the US became independent, who spent part of his childhood as the citizen of another country...until Barack Obama.