“History doesn’t repeat itself,” said Mark Twain, “but it sometimes rhymes.” Hillary Clinton, the presumptive 2016 presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, stands to become the first woman in the Oval Office in the nation’s history. But, according to many historians, Mrs. Clinton is neither the first woman nor the first First Lady. That honor belongs to Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the second wife of the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.
According to many scholars, Mrs. Wilson assumed the role of president soon after her husband’s incapacitation from a stroke in October 1919.
The White House’s web page on First Ladies tempers the view of Mrs. Wilson’s de facto presidency, however, calling it “a stewardship,” the term Mrs. Wilson had used in her 1939 memoir. “She did not initiate programs or make major decisions, and she did not try to control the executive branch,” the passage says, insisting that her actions consisted of routine chores.
In her memoir, Mrs. Wilson stated, “I studied every paper, sent from the different Secretaries or Senators, and tried to digest and present [the things that in her judgment] had to go to the President, I myself never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs. The only decision that was mine was what was important and what was not, and the very important decision of when to present matters to my husband.”
Howard Merkel, a historian and a physician, is one among many skeptics of this claim.
“[Mrs. Wilson] shielded Woodrow from interlopers and embarked on a bedside government that essentially excluded Wilson’s staff, the Cabinet and the Congress,” he reported on PBS’s News Hour last fall. “Over the last century, historians have continued to dig into the proceedings of the Wilson administration and it has become clear that Edith Wilson acted as much more than a mere ’steward.'”
FirstLadies.org concurs: “[Mrs. Wilson conducted] a disinformation campaign, misleading Congress and the public into believing that the President was only suffering from temporary exhaustion which required extensive rest. She became the sole conduit between the President and his Cabinet, requiring that they send to her all pressing matters, memos, correspondence, questions and requests.” Messages were scribbled in his wife’s handwriting.
John M. Cooper, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, and a Woodrow Wilson scholar, appeared on a C-Span program in 2013, about the 1st and 2nd Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. Ironically, the time of the 2nd Mrs. Wilson’s actions coincided with the enactment of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
Professor Cooper left little doubt that Mrs. Wilson was “essentially” the nation’s chief executive. “She knew his mind better than anybody else. So, if anybody is going to have to act as a substitute in this situation, she was the best person to do it.”
The attendant physician for Mr. Wilson, Professor Cooper told the Epoch Times recently, “advised her that staying on the job would be the best way for Wilson to regain his health. I think that’s something she made up [her stewardship] long afterward. My best guess is that she believed that is what he wanted, and I think she was right.”
“What would surprise most Americans today is how the [extended disability] was shrouded in secrecy,” adds Dr. Merkel.
This was about 50 years before the 25th Amendment, which spelled out presidential succession in times of incapacitation of the president.
Despite only two years of formal schooling, Mrs. Wilson, some argue, had a box full of preparation for her new role. Claiming lineage from Martha Washington and Thomas Jefferson—and Powhatan Princess Pocahontas—she was wealthy from a jewelry business and mingled with Washington’s high and mighty, though she considered herself apolitical.
Her time as First Lady was ever-present at the side of the president, says FirstLadies.org. The president sought her advice on a wide range of issues that included trustworthiness of high level appointees and vetting diplomats. “[S]he would often sit there listening silently as he conducted meetings with political leaders and foreign representatives,” the site claims.
“The worst effect of the stroke on Wilson was really on his emotional balance and his judgment,” stated Prof. Cooper, in the C-Span discussion, which may have additionally motivated the First Lady to step in. “[This was] is a very scary thing she was in and [she had to] make it up as she went along.”
In Mrs. Wilson’s memoir, she admits deciding to let through only what she felt was important enough to trouble her husband about. As her husband began to somewhat recover, she continued to guard access to him from advisors and other political figures.
In 1944, she oversaw the screenplay for the biopic “Wilson.” Nothing untoward her late husband was to get past her.
Mrs. Woodrow Wilson’s niche in lore as de facto president was generations ahead of the new normal of gender egalitarianism of this day and age. If one of the possible outcomes in the 2016 election comes to pass, though history may not exactly be repeating itself, parallels of her story can be drawn of the first and second First Lady who became president, and in a round-about stretch of the mind, to Pocahontas if Elizabeth Warren joins the ticket.
Timothy Wahl’s experience in business, education, the sciences, and the arts gives him a unique platform on a spectrum of subjects.
