Edith Wilson Secret Presidency in Larson's Dead Wake

I am amazed how many people don't know about Woodrow Wilson having a massive stroke and Edith Wilson taking over the White House. Usually when I speak someone will say oh yes I heard about that. And then they say they read about it in Eric Larsons book Dead Wake. I know exactly the passage they are talking about. I am a Eric Larson fan and read Devil in the White City and I devoured Dead Wake. The latest book DW is about the sinking of the Lusitania so how did Woodrow Wilson and Edith play into this?

When the Lusitania slipped under the pearly green ocean Woodrow Wilson was in the middle of courting Edith Wilson. Wilson was writing torrid love letters when he was notified the Germans had sunk the Lusitania with Americans on board. To many this was the tripwire into World War I. Certainly Theodore Roosevelt thought so along with Henry Cabot Lodge. Roosevelt threatened to skin Wilson alive if he didn't declare war against the Germans. He didnt'.

And here is where Larson swerves and gives the story of Woodrow Wilson and the woman fifteen years younger whom he would marry and then would take over the White House with only two years of schooling and no experience at all. Eric Larson goes further and delves into Wilson's stroke and the cover up and Edith's ascension. What is interesting is this is a sideshow to the Lusitania but it really stuck. History is really all about the sideshows and a case could be made that Wilson was severely distracted with his love affair and that this contributed to his reluctance to declare war. His volume of love letters dipped, then resumed.

The Ardent Lover was not be put off and war would not be declared against Germany until 1917. Such are the vagaries of history and the still untold story of Edith Wilson.

Order Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

How Madam President Ran the White House with no Education

She did it by making it up as she went along. Edith Wilson had two years formal education as a child but she was basically home schooled. So when she found herself having to step in for her husband Woodrow Wilson in 1919 as President she had to fall back on some basic coping mechanisms she had discovered in her life. She had survived the death of a husband and child and inherited a failing jewlery company. Edith was nothing if not dogged and she persevered and turned her first husbands struggling jewelry company around in three years and became a lady of means.

She did it by delegating and by dealing with what was in front of her. Same with the White House. When Woodrow became persona non grata behind the presidential bedroom door the first thing Edith did was prioritize. If something did not have to be dealt with immediately then it might not be dealt with at all. Business was conducted by correspondence in 1919 and many letters to the President were never opened and discovered years later in the National Archives. But that doesn't mean Edith was not attending to the business at hand.

Her biggest job was one of making sure essential business was completed. This meant she had to use the men around the president and delegate away from the President who could handle very little. Edith was a gatekeeper and if she needed presidential input then she would present it to Woodrow. Few people actually saw Wilson from 1919 to 1921 who Edith did not deem essential. Think of someone who is running a household with little help. Some of the bills won't get paid. The dog might not get fed. The house might be a wreck. But the mortgage would be paid and the lights kept on and the children fed.

In this way Edith Wilson kept the United States of  American running.

Order Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson