Edith Wilsons Love Hate Relationship with the Suffragettes

She really didn't like them. They were pushy and flashed the president as he drove by. They chained themselves to the White House gate and burned Edith's husband in effigy. They put their bodies in front of the presidential  limousine. Then when they were arrested and went on hunger strikes and called her husband foul names. The suffragettes were getting no love from the woman who would take over the White House and run it from 1919 to 1921.

Edith Wilson was from the South and even though she had an electric car, traveled the world, had a somewhat racy affair with a sitting president; she still believed a lady should like a lady. And she didn't particularly care about getting the vote. She was doing just fine and she had made her way after a dead husband and a dead baby and escaped poverty by grit and determination. So why should women need any more power than they already had?

But then the story veers. When Woodrow Wilson was approached to speak to the Senate on behalf of the women's right to vote he said no citing protocol and the Sabbath. But then a sudden switch of heart and he consented. Wilson didn't believe in an amendment giving women the right to vote. He thought of it as a state issue. But within hours after the request he mysteriously changed his mind. All the facts point toward Edith. She was at the bottom practical and saw that the vote would come eventually for women. Woodrow could secure his place in history by pushing it through.

Woodrow  Wilson used Edith as a sounding board and on this issue his young wife certainly had a voice. Edith Wilson was a woman who went her own way and he we can see her dismissing protocol and the sabbath with a snap of her fingers. It is fitting the  First Woman President should have had  a hand in the struggle to get women the vote.

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What You Don't Know About The First Madam President

She was from the South. Her name was Edith Bolling Wilson and married President Woodrow Wilson after his wife Ellen Wilson died. They were only married four years and then Woodrow had a massive stroke and Edith took over the White House. This was in 1919 and from here on Edith Wilson ran the government until 1921. She had only two years of school and had run a successful jewelry company after her first husband died. She owned one of the first electric cars in Washington and was given the first drivers license in the District of Columbia. She was fifteen years younger than Woodrow Wilson and considered very attractive. 

They necked in the presidential limousine when they were courting. Edith deciphered top secret codes for the President. When he had a stroke she controlled who saw him and who didn't.  She oversaw legislation and secured appointments for his cabinet. All this while her husband was on deaths door and many thought he would die. She saw the Vice President only once and told him his services weren't needed. She oversaw the end of World War I and was in the middle of the fight to get the United States into the League of Nations. 

She would show her husband movies and wheel him outside to the South Portico for air. She had him put in the presidential limousine and propped up so people would know he was still alive. She outlived him by forty years and was at John Kennedy's inauguration. She wrote a memoir in 1939 and denied running the White House. In the National Archives are correspondence that was never opened during her Presidency and discovered in the 1950s. She just couldn't get to it. 

She was our first woman President and has never been recognized for her service to the country.


Order from Barnes and Noble Madam President

What You Don't Know About The First Madam President

She was from the South. Her name was Edith Bolling Wilson and married President Woodrow Wilson after his wife Ellen Wilson died. They were only married four years and then Woodrow had a massive stroke and Edith took over the White House. This was in 1919 and from here on Edith Wilson ran the government until 1921. She had only two years of school and had run a successful jewelry company after her first husband died. She owned one of the first electric cars in Washington and was given the first drivers license in the District of Columbia. She was fifteen years younger than Woodrow Wilson and considered very attractive. 

They necked in the presidential limousine when they were courting. Edith deciphered top secret codes for the President. When he had a stroke she controlled who saw him and who didn't.  She oversaw legislation and secured appointments for his cabinet. All this while her husband was on deaths door and many thought he would die. She saw the Vice President only once and told him his services weren't needed. She oversaw the end of World War I and was in the middle of the fight to get the United States into the League of Nations. 

She would show her husband movies and wheel him outside to the South Portico for air. She had him put in the presidential limousine and propped up so people would know he was still alive. She outlived him by forty years and was at John Kennedy's inauguration. She wrote a memoir in 1939 and denied running the White House. In the National Archives are correspondence that was never opened during her Presidency and discovered in the 1950s. She just couldn't get to it. 

She was our first woman President and has never been recognized for her service to the country.

Order Your Copy from Barnes and Noble

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson