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

Those Tough as Nails Feminists

They were tough. When I was growing up in Baltimore the feminist movement was in full flower. My mother was on board as were many East Coast Kennedyesque women who were willing to march, lay down in the street and do whatever it took to advance women's right. I hung out with a kid named Matt. He was cool. His parents were real hippies. His brother was a hippy. His father had long hair and his mother...well she drove an VW Micro bus, wore her hair down to her waist, wore high boots, long coats, and did not take anything from anyone. 

She was the activist mom of  the early seventies and had signs in her garage from demonstrations. His mother scared the hell out of me. One time I didn't eat the crusts of my tuna fish sandwich. She turned her dark eyes on me with her peace sign hanging down. Do you know how many kids are starving in China Billy? I did not. Well there are many and they would kill for those crusts. From then on I ate the crusts. 

But I think about my mother and Matt's mom and how they took nothing from anyone. And I think about the women's movement today. They will have to get tough because power is not given up easily and they are facing probably the most hostile administration in history to women's rights. It will be a tough fight...but you know what, I still eat my crusts. 

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

The Secret Presidency of 1919 Could Happen Again

Whenever there is a vacuum of power someone moves in. When Woodrow Wilson fell ill in 1919 Edith Wilson took over and the ran the government for two years. No one knew and most people still don't. I am amazed at how many people know nothing about the Edith Wilson presidency. But lets take our current president. Donald Trump does not read. At all. He does not like complicated facts or data. His attention span is 140 characters. He exists in bytes and television  and delegates off everything except the bold command. That means there is a HUGE power vacuum because after the initial awe inspiring order there are the details. Like the immigration order Bannon worked up. It is just the beginning.

The point is the 25th amendment that calls for the vice president to take over if the president cannot fulfill his duties will never get invoked. Trump will continue to skate on the ice leaving Bannon and others down below to enact policy. It is in the details after all as we can see from this weekends fiasco. The Secret Presidency does not necessarily have to involve someone becoming enfeebled or ill. Someone could have no real interest in the job itself.

And that is Donald. After his game of RISK he grows bored. Make the bold statement. YOU'RE FIRED. A WALL. BAN THE MUSLIMS. Then go play golf or goof around in Trump Towers. Power lies with those who grab it. A short attention span and an addiction to drama is a perfect setup for a man who wants to smash the Means of Power.

 Don't you think so...comrade?   

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

                                                                                                                                                                                

The New Art of Selling Books

Selling books keeps morphing. Before it was the bookstore and then it became the Internet. Authors were the man sitting behind the desk who magically sold books at signings. This was the golden age. The public wanted the book and the author was there to give it to them. We have seen  lots of photos of the dapper author sitting behind a table with one arm up and a book under his pen. Then the Internet came along and knocked that author right on his duff. You now sold books on the net and hours logged on social media hopefully converted to book sales.

Then came the ebook. Game over  or so everyone thought. Surely the Ipod was a cautionary tale and books would soon be devalued as a quaint artifact of the printing press era. Certainly Kindles would rule the day. But then a strange thing happened...readers rebelled. They quit plugging in their Kindles and what do you know a song is different from a book. Something about an intellectual exercise and readers prefer something tangible versus bits and bytes. The ebooks revolution fizzled down into the black screen of an ereader on a bright sunny day.

So people went back to buying books. But there is a different way to sell now. The author cannot sit behind his table any longer. He must get out there and "hand sell" his book. This was the way books were originally sold before conglomeration and mass culture. The bookseller would introduce the customer to a new book and the customer would buy. What a concept. So we are now in a new era. Authors... get out from behind your tables.


Madam, President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

How One Woman Forced the United States to Give Women THE VOTE

We don’t’ hear about Alice Paul. When we think of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States we think of Susan B. Anthony or Carrie Catt. When I asked for books on Alice Paul I found only one and it was a little know history book long forgotten. She predated Martin Luther King by fifty years, but she was the first to use nonviolence in America as a means to augment social change.

   Alice Paul, because of her extreme tactics of confrontation  and the truths she revealed about our police, our penal system, and President Woodrow Wilson, was treated as a non-person after the nineteenth amendment passed giving women the right to vote in the United States. But the truth is Alice Paul forced President Woodrow Wilson and the United States government to pass the nineteenth amendment  giving women the right to vote through demonstrations, hunger strikes, imprisonment, burnings, threats, and an unrelenting  campaign that could only be termed as  modern terrorism against a recalcitrant government.

   Most people associate the suffragette movement with pictures of Victorian women marching in parades with banners across their shoulders. The reality is the government of the United States had no intention of giving women the right to vote when Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912. The only way to make a world of men recognize the injustice of not giving women an equal say in a democracy was to put the issue of women’s suffrage front and center.

    It was through the radical tactics of one woman, Alice Paul, that President Wilson and the government had to finally capitulate and pass the nineteenth amendment in 1920 giving women the right to vote. But this came at a very high price and Alice Paul would be imprisoned, beaten, harassed, threatened, committed to an insane asylum, and force fed in a brutal manner after hunger strikes that left her unable to get out of her bed.

 She would lay siege to the White House for four years with daily demonstrations outside the gates, chaining’s, burning of Wilson in effigy, arrests, beatings, and finally the unrelenting imprisonment and hunger strike that forced Wilson to pardon her and then her refusal to leave prison where the dreaded force feedings began again. 

She understood that change only came through creating dis-ease in the powers that be. Something the  Womens March will attempt to do on Saturday. 

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Selling Books at Barnes and Noble

The first thing you do is find your table. It is by the door which is a good thing. You will be the first person someone sees when they walk in and walk out. Your books are piled up and displayed. Your sign is in place. The Community Relations Coordinator asks if you need anything. No you say. Water. No. Ok. She walks away and you pull out your bookmarks. These are your ammo. They have the name of your book and and the name of your forthcoming book. They are the giveaway. There is a chair behind the table. You won't use it.

You have seen those authors before. They are sitting in stores behind a table with their books piled high. People walk by the oprhan who stares into space. Some stop to ask the author if he or she knows where the bathroom is. Or do they know where they can find the next Harry Potter book. The forlorn author tells them in fact they are an author. People are not quite sure what to make of the them and they go back to being invisible.

In the year 2017 no author can afford to sit back unless you are a runaway bestseller and many are not. So that chair remains empty while you talk to every person who walks in and introduce yourself and your book. People actually like to talk to authors. They have chose a funky career path and that in itself is interesting. Four hours later you leave with your voice hoarse and your brain spent. You have sold seventeen books and handed  out fifty bookmarks. Not bad.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Did We Have A Woman President in 1919? Woodrow Wilson House Presentation American History TV

Presentation on Madam President the Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson American History TV CSPAN
Presentation on The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Edith Wilsons Movie Theatre at the White House

Edith decided that movies might help the President. Since the ravages of the stroke Wilson rarely left his bed and Edith needed to give him something to do. Besides the President had liked silent movies before and this seemed a logical way to entertain him and give some routine to the day. So the rug was pulled back in the Red Room of the White House and a projectionist was brought in. Wilson liked Westerns but he didn't want the accompaniment of a piano which was standard in most theatres. For the Edith  Wilson movie house the clicking of the projector would be the only sound.

So they did it. Wilson's Coney Island wheel chair was wheeled down to the Red Room and the curtains pulled. A sheet from the Lincoln bed was pinned to the wall. The chandeliers sparkled with the movie light as silent riders crossed the screen for the old man wrapped in blankets with his head cocked to one side like an expectant bird. Edith sat with him as they watched the movies in the morning and sometimes she would end up talking with her secretary or one of Wilson's assistants. Wilson didn't like films that were too intense so they had to show "mellow Westerns. During one of these conversations the President fell out of his chair in the darkness.

The projectionists was horrified and was convinced he just saw Woodrow Wilson expire. The question was whether to continue the film or let Edith Wilson know her husband had just died. He decided the film must continue. Edith eventually aw Woodrow on the floor and picked him up with assistance and put his back in his wheelchair. The film played on to the man in the darkness who watched with his head leaning left while the rest of the world galloped away.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

The WGN Rick Kogan Show On a Snowy Night in Chicago

It takes forever to get there but you make it and you are hungry. You duck into Billy Goats and stare at the old journalists on the walls while you eat your two cheeseburgers chips no fries. There is John Belushi on the wall. Hes gone too. But you are there to go on at ten with one of the few real  journalists still left. Rick Kogans show is unique. He reads the books and wants to talk about them. As you emerge from the underground on the slushy sidewalks of Michigan Avenue you can feel Studs Terkel and Nelson Algren maybe Al Capone. They are all there on this cold wintry night.

But you are there to do the show and so you wait across the street  in a Starbucks and kill time. The Tribune Tower is massive and you can see the WGN studio through the window. You used to live not far from the studio in a high rise but that was a long time ago before kids and the suburbs. But the books always pull you back into the city You know you will be up back here one day with all those dead Chicago authors.

So you walk up and down Michigan Avenue and the snow is coming down harder. Not many people out now. It is Sunday night after all. A ten o'clock slot of live radio for thirty minutes is coveted. Especially with a man who can talk books. You finish a cigarette and look at the clock. Its cold. It's time to go into that Chicago night again and fill the air waves. Last of the Mohicans.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

If Women Ruled The World Would Be Better Off

Lets face it, women are better people than men. I know I am a man. If you are married then you know what I am saying. Women are taught and have empathy at a very early age. It is in the genes. But more than that boys are told to act in self interest. Getting ahead and achieving is preeminent. And the guidelines are unclear. If you happen to make the football team by flattening the other kid so much the better. Or if you best the school bully with a punch in the nose even better. Or if you ride down the street with no hands and plow into a car then you are commended for being a daredevil.

Girls are told on the other hand to think of others. To put others before yourself. Ever watch women get together and compliment each other. I like  your dress. That is cute on you. Ever see men do that. Men  stare at each other and rarely give out compliments...they are too busy bragging. Men brag while women give compliments. The world is full of braggarts. In face we are up to the brim with braggarts and now we have a braggart in chief.

So how does this all relate to the world? Well. Wars. The ultimate hubris. Helping the less fortunate. The environment. Human rights. Civil discourse. We just saw a slash and burn campaign of men hacking each other up. Hillary never seemed to have a knack for it. But no. I believe after the Donald tour the world would be better off with those girls who were told to think of others before themselves. Man... do we need that now.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edth 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

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 Tough Was the First Madam President?

Tough. Woodrow Wilson had a massive stroke and left Edith Wilson  to run the White House. She had two years of schooling and no experience in government. But she had the best on the job training with Wilson who treated her as a Co President. Still, the fact remained Wilson was fighting for his life while Edith had to close out World War I and deal with America transitioning back to a peace time economy after World War I. And she was a woman at a time when the vote was still two years off.

Her life had not been easy. Her parents could only afford to send her brother to college and Edith was left to be home schooled by her grandmother. Her first marriage ended when her husband died suddenly and left her with a badly in debt jewelry company. Her first son had died after three days. Edith could have sold off the jewelry company but she dug in and took almost no salary and in a few years turned a profit. She then bought an electric car and met a lonely widower named Woodrow  Wilson.

But when the world turned upside down Edith Wilson had to make it up as she went along. Her husband was barely hanging on while she fought for passage of The League of Nations, handled the cover up of her husbands illness, made appointments, ushered bills through passage, and kept the Wilson White House together through 1921. Suffragettes demonstrating outside the gates of the White House had no idea a woman was now President.

Edith Wilson had to fill the role President except she was a woman who had the backing of no one. As Ann Richards said of Ginger Rodgers, "she did everything Fred Astaire did but she it in heels and she did it backwards." An apt metaphor for the unknown First Woman President.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Madam President Will Need a New Deal

FDR put through the New Deal because he knew the country was about to go into revolution. Doug McArthur had fired on the Bonus Army marchers and there were people who said capitalism didn't work for the many and the Russians had the right idea. Communism was more equitable. Even manufacturing understood this and one of their motivations for giving the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1933 millions of dollars and showcasing their goods was to get the country buying again and to keep it from going "Bolshevik".

The Brits just took a turn to the hard right. Not unlike what the Germans did when a paper hanger failed art student giving speeches in beer halls told them the Jews were to blame for their economic woes and he would give them back their pride and their country. And we have the Donald aping that paper hanger and promising to restore America back to her place. Close the borders and batten down the hatches and the jobs will return.

It doesnt matter if he is wrong Madam President has to recognize the  boat is top heavy and go bold with  New Deal type of programs to get people to not go down Britain's path. There is too much money at the top and it has drained the middle class. The great irony is a man worth ten billion dollars is claiming he can right the ship. A thousand families could live on his fortune for years. If he really wants to make America great, he could give back all that money. Short of that, Madam President should take a page from FDR and take note of a Britain that is no longer Great.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

African American Women Supporting Madam President

It would seem according to the Bernie devotees that the fact a woman could become the first official Woman President in the White House is not that big a deal. What were all those militant suffragettes up to anyway? So what if Alice Paul was imprisoned, force fed and then put in an insane asylum. Writing Madam President I was continually amazed that Edith and Woodrow Wilson could hear the suffragettes out by the White House gates in the dead of winter. Wilson who was not a fan of the vote initially asked the White House butler to see if they wanted some hot tea. The women refused.

A New York Times article says that African American women get it. They want to see the first woman in the White House. Maybe it is because they know how hard these milestones are.  A lot of African American women are familiar with racism and that change is hard fought. They have seen the first African American President and they have seen the struggle for change. They are not deaf to the moment when the glass ceiling can be broken on gender.

And while Sanders may hail a political revolution it is hard to see the revolution when a white Senator of many years is assuming the mantle of white men in power again. The political revolution would actually be electing the first official woman President of the United States. Now that would be revolutionary.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

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