Madam President Ruled in 1919

Whenever I do signings for any book I always sell a lot of Madam President The Secret  Presidency of Edith Wilson. I start by telling people we already had a woman president. Usually people laugh but then I tell them to go to .gov and read about first ladies because there in Edith's bio is the statement that she ran the executive for two years. She did. It was a great cover up of a sitting Presidents inability to govern and his wife taking over and running the United States for two years.

Hard to believe really. The next question is how come I don't know this. A lot of history is papered over with mythology. The facts get lost under agendas and historical bias. Historians are loathe to say that Edith Wilson was President. It does not fit in the Wilson historical context. It is also too fantastic to believe. How could this be pulled off? No radio for one thing. Newspapers were the primary source of news and people were not used to seeing the President.

A press that was complicit in the cover up. Or at least a press that didn't question. Yet there were papers that did speculate that Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and his wife was running the country. But it didn't get much traction. Then Edith herself made sure her tracks were covered in a 1939 memoir where she said she never made any decisions but was just a steward. None of this is true. The fact is Edith Wilson was the President in 1919 albeit unelected and ran the country until 1921. Believe it or not.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

How A Soaked Book Led To Madam President

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. 

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Book Trailer Madam President

Our First Woman President...Edith Wilson

   It is still shocking to the majority of Americans to learn that President Wilson had a massive stroke in office. But to tell people that his wife, Edith Wilson, was the acting President for almost two years is unbelievable. The motivations among historians and the people at the time is simple. If you say Edith Wilson was President from 1919 to 1921,then you diminish the impact Woodrow Wilson had on the country and his legacy.

  Power is given to those who can act upon it, and President Wilson, who remained in bed only to be wheeled out for movies and some fresh air, could not act upon anything. The question then is; who was Edith Bolling Wilson? Was she a woman singularly gifted enough to run the country and nurse her husband back to health; or was she a woman doing the best she could in a world of men who saw women as little more than second citizens?  Now almost a hundred years later, we ponder the very relevant impact of our First Woman President again. 

Excerpt

She was from the South and had two years of formal schooling and wrote like a child.  She married a quiet man from Washington and her baby died after three months. Her husband then died and left her with a failing jewelry company that was severely in debt. She turned the company around while taking almost no salary. She bought an electric car and was issued the first driver’s license given to a woman in the District of Columbia.  She married a President who had been recently widowed. In four years, the President would have a severe stroke, and leave her to run the Unites States Government and negotiate the end of World War I.

 She was our First Woman President. 

Madam President--The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson