At the time that Wilson's occurred, the term "presidential transition" had yet to be widely applied to the period between an individual's election as president of the United States and their assumption of the office.

[1] Shortly after winning the presidential election, Wilson boarded a ship to begin a month-long vacation in Bermuda.

[2] At the time, it was common for president-elects to take weeks-long vacations following their election, as presidential transitions were longer than they have been more recently.

[3] From mid-December through February, Wilson spent much of his time carrying out on his gubernatorial responsibilities and focusing on selecting appointees for his presidential administration's Cabinet.

[6] Wilson's Cabinet selection process was heavily concealed from both the public, and even most of the Democratic Party's politicians and operatives.

[8] There was great pressure for Wilson to appoint three-time unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan to a position in his Cabinet.

[10] With days left to his inauguration, Wilson accepted a suggestion by Joseph Patrick Tumulty, and chose Lindley Miller Garrison for the position.

[14] During the transition, to learn more about the prospect of granting independence to the Philippines (which was, at the time, a United States territory), Wilson had Henry Jones Ford travel there on a secret fact-finding mission.

[16] During the transition, Wilson largely avoided taking stances on hot-button issues before the lame duck congress.

[7] An exception to Wilson staying removed from hot button issues took place when Wilson wrote a letter in late November that would be privately seen by many Democrats, but kept private from the public, which argued against the idea of creating a term limit on the presidency that would limit occupants to a single six-year term.

Wilson's opposition may have helped to kill any action on moving to put in place an amendment that would create such a term-limit.

[18] Another instance where Wilson chimed in on a hot-button issue was his urging of Republican members of Congress to pass banking and currency reform.

[20] The norm for previous presidential transitions at the time was that the incoming and outgoing administrations had generally had limited relations.