I was in the bathtub reading Scott Bergs book WILSON
when I dropped it in the water. It
wasn’t a spasm but a reaction to the line I read that basically said Edith
Wilson was almost the president in 1919. After I hauled the book out of the water with blue ink washing down from the
cover I read on and then on and on until I reached The Papers of Woodrow Wilson
in the Elmhurst Library. There buried in the tombs was a story of a woman who
had only been married to the president of the United States for four years and
had only two years of schooling and was required in the forty sixth year of her
life to take control of the United States government and step in as president.
It is through the correspondence of the day that
this story is told.
There was no email or fax of course so people mailed each
other and sent telegrams or letters. In these letters the power flowed from
Woodrow Wilson to Edith Wilson as she redirected the presidential river to
allow her husband to heal from a massive stroke that made him into a semi invalid
who could only be wheeled out to the South portico or shown movies in the Red
Room or when he was well enough taken for drives. In these dusty books I
discovered that Wilson disappeared for five months and the White House ceased
to function and became more like a haunted Victorian hospice than a functioning
White House.
And at the center was Edith Wilson signing
legislation, making appointments, orchestrating the cover-up, working on
official proclamations while trying to fight the battel of the League of
Nations. By the time I closed the volumes of letters and official correspondence
I had my book and I had my heroine. Her name was Edith Wilson and she was the
first woman president. The title flowed out from that idea, Madam President The
Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson. And as I dug deeper I was surprised to find a
love story.
Edith Wilson was a progressive woman who had buried
one husband, a child , had been homeschooled by her grandmother and had been left a failing jewelry company. By
the time she met a grieving Woodrow Wilson she was a woman of means with the
first drivers license in the District of
Columbia, an electric car,and a
penchant for travel and the good life. The last thing she had on her mind was
marriage but Woodrow Wilson woke from his grief and pursued her like a
Victorian suitor half his age. Wilson for all his academic frigidity was in
reality a sensual man and the love letters would make a woman in 1919 blush.
The romantic won over Edith and then he did a very curious thing. He made his
new wife his partner in the White House.
By the time
they married Edith had been deciphering top secret codes and had become the President’s
closest advisor and effectively began isolating him from the men around him.
Edith was fierce, loyal, protective, aggressive, and smart. The couple navigated through World
War I as Wilsons health deteriorated. The final blow coming outside of Pueblo Colorado
on a whistle-stop tour to promote the League of Nations. When they returned to
Washington the blood clot in his brain squeezed off circulation and Wilson
collapsed, paralyzed on his left side. The Edith Wilson presidency began.
And now
almost a hundred years later we entertain the possibility of our first elected
woman president. The Edith Wilson Presidency has nibbled at the pages of
history for a long time and maybe now with Hillary in the final stretch it is
time to shine the light on the dusty pages that reside in the books never
checked out. But in those pages is the story of Edith Wilson and her secret
presidency. Hillary should take note of the woman who ruled before women even
had the vote. She too, had it all against her.
