First Lady Edith Wilson and her husband, President Woodrow Wilson
Author of new biography of one of the most influential First Ladies Edith Wilson
Edith Wilson hid Woodrow Wilson's post-stroke health and made decisions for him
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Scott LaMar
First Lady Edith Wilson and her husband, President Woodrow Wilson
Airdate: Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Sometimes it almost feels like a throwaway line when American history is discussed or studied – “President Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith hid the seriousness of her husband’s health after he suffered a stroke and made presidential decisions for him.”
But Rebecca Boggs Roberts’ new book Untold Power – The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson – provides details of just how Edith Bolling Galt Wilson ran the executive branch when Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated.
Rebecca Boggs Roberts appeared on The Spark Tuesday to tell the story,”Wilson, who was never the healthiest man to begin with, had gotten quite sick in Paris during the treaty negotiations at the end of 1918, beginning of 1919. There was a flu epidemic on, and when he got back to the U.S. in the summer of 1919, he was already weak and exhausted. And then he embarked on this completely ill fated train tour to try to sell the League of Nations to the American people. And that really was the proverbial last straw. He collapsed on the train. The tour was canceled. The train came speeding back to Washington, and a week later he suffered a massive stroke. And he was a very, very sick man for a good week. His life really did hang in the balance. But even once he was out of mortal danger, his whole left side was paralyzed. His speech was slurred. He found it hard to follow conversations. And his doctors went to Edith, according to Edith, who is an unreliable narrator. But this is her version. They went to Edith and they said he has to be kept very quiet. He can’t face stress. He can’t face bad news. His brain can’t be taxed. He can’t get out of bed. And what does a president do all day? He gets out of bed and faces stress and makes tough decisions with his brain. And so basically they were saying if he does the things the president is elected to do, he’ll die. But at the same time, he can’t quit because if he quits, he’ll die because the only thing he’s hanging on for is to see this dream of the League of Nations realized. So if he steps down, you’ve taken away his whole motivation to improve. And so, in Edith’s view, the only thing she could do was do his job for him until he was better enough to do it himself, which is preposterous. Right. I mean, no one elected this to anything, but in her view, that was her only option.”
Roberts said Edith Wilson made decisions for her husband,”She decided who saw him. She drafted public statements. She made decisions about cabinet positions. I think the bigger question is, did she do anything differently than he would have done? And I think the answer there is no. She knew his mind pretty well and she didn’t seize power for her own agenda. Her whole motivation was keeping him in power. But, you know, not only was she lying to the public and the press and the Congress and the vice president in the cabinet, she was lying to the president himself. He never knew how sick he was. And so because she was telling him he was getting better, because she was telling him the nation still adored him and telling him he was stronger every day, even if she had been consulting with him with every decision she made. And it’s pretty clear she wasn’t. But even if she had, his judgment at some point became kind of terrible because he lived in this echo chamber and he didn’t know what was going on because she wasn’t telling him.”
Roberts writes that Edith Wilson expanded the role of First Lady and set a precedent for the First Ladies who followed.”Throughout her life, she had the confidence to pull off a lot of things, and she’d sort of wander into situations where she didn’t always know what she was doing and trust her own instincts. And that was absolutely true as First Lady, because she married the president when he was already in the White House. His first wife, Ellen Wilson, died in 1914. Edith and Woodrow met in 1915. Got married in December 1915. So she married a sitting president. And First Lady’s kind of a bananas job to begin with. But to really have no on ramp or training for it whatsoever is difficult. And she decided that she was just going to be the best Mrs. Woodrow Wilson she could be. She actually preferred to be called Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, then the First Lady. They didn’t have kids together. She didn’t have kids of her own. She could devote herself entirely to supporting him. So sometimes just kind of by showing up. She elevated the role of First Lady. She was the first First Lady to stand next to her husband when he took the oath of office to ride with him to the Capitol on the day of his inauguration. But then in 1917, when the U.S. entered World War One and she became a wartime First Lady, she really was good at that kind of public example, part of the role. So she conserved her food and gas and she had sheep mowing the White House lawn and she served at a local Red Cross canteen. And then when he went to Paris to negotiate the peace, she went with him. And that was the first time a First Lady had left the country while serving in the role. And so, you know, obviously the biggest news story anywhere. So she’s on the front page of every paper. She’s up there on the dais with him. She’s staying at Buckingham Palace. She’s there at this incredibly historic moment in a way that First Ladies just hadn’t been. And now we really expect that public diplomacy, especially international diplomacy, role, to be part of the First Lady’s portfolio. But it it just had been First Ladies were barely known outside of Washington, let alone outside of the U.S. And that is definitely thanks to Edith.”
