Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  Yet it is not entirely clear what the relationship amounted to. Nearly all of the testimony about it comes from House’s side, including the “second personality … independent self” remark attributed to Wilson. House’s voluminous and highly informative diary has to be read with caution, particularly regarding his influence on Wilson. Only once did Wilson set down his opinion of House. Two and a half years into his presidency, writing to the woman who would become his second wife, he praised “dear House … for he is capable of utter self-forgetfulness and loyalty and devotion. And he is wise. He can give prudent and far seeing counsel. … But you are right in thinking that intellectually he is not a great man. His mind is not of the first class. He is a counselor, not a statesman. And he has the faults of his qualities.”22 Fond though he obviously was of House, Wilson recognized his friend’s shortcomings—with one exception.

  The flaw in the president’s perceptiveness lay in his thinking that House was “self-forgetful” and gave disinterested advice. In his surreptitious way, the colonel aspired to be more than a “counselor”—he wanted to be a “statesman.” His real reason for shunning office was, as he admitted, his belief that as a “free lance” with a “roving commission” he could have greater influence.23 He began to attempt to exert influence from the outset. Not confining his advice to appointments, he also ventured opinions on policy matters, particularly banking reform. House fancied himself a progressive, but his advice on domestic policy usually had a conservative bent. Early in Wilson’s administration, however, House picked foreign policy as his special bailiwick, and that was where he would seek to exert his greatest influence.

  The colonel also couched his advice on appointments in ways that would promote his own influence. These included not only pushing his protégé Houston and his acquaintances McReynolds and Lane but also giving slanted advice about the men he opposed. His persistent resistance to Brandeis probably did not stem, despite one of his remarks, from anti-Semitism. He had Jewish acquaintances in New York, and he would later become friendly with the journalist Walter Lippmann. Rather, House seems to have wanted to keep Brandeis out of the cabinet because the lawyer was a powerful intellect who struck sympathetic chords with Wilson. He resisted a cabinet post for Page with equal persistence, probably because the energetic, opinionated editor had known Wilson longer than anyone else involved in his presidential bid. (Sending Page abroad was another matter; the idea of an ambassadorial appointment for him would originate with House.) With the top cabinet appointments, Bryan and McAdoo, the colonel bowed to the inevitable, but in succeeding months he would never pass up an opportunity to get in a dig at Bryan.24 Two years later, when Bryan resigned from his post as secretary of state, House would urge Wilson not to replace him with anyone of comparable independence of mind and political stature.

  Few people would be neutral in their opinion of Colonel House and his reputed influence, either during or after Wilson’s presidency. To his admirers, he would become a fount of wisdom and a salutary softener of Wilson’s rigidity and self-righteousness. To his detractors, he would become a sinister player and a subverter of Wilson’s nobler inclinations. Both views would be greatly overdrawn. House would be neither a dispenser of saving grace nor an evil genius. The cabinet appointments that he pushed proved to be a mixed bag, and his views on domestic policy cut little ice. The colonel’s foreign policy influence would be another story, one that would unfold over almost the entire course of the Wilson presidency. House would play his greatest role as a personal, often close, presence. Like Hibben before him, he furnished a soothing companionship and acted as a friend who appeared happy to be dominated by Wilson. Unlike Hibben, he felt no need to get out of Wilson’s shadow. Just the reverse—he played upon his subordination and maintained a façade of what Wilson saw as “loyalty and devotion.” The relationship between these two men would wax early and then wane to a degree, but it would remain a constant until midway through Wilson’s second term. With just one exception, this would be the most important relationship of his presidency.

  For someone who complained about having a one-track mind, Wilson took the multiple demands of preparing for his presidency and completing his governorship in stride. In February, his cousin Helen Woodrow Bones, who had lived with the family in Princeton and would live with them again in the White House, commented to her sister on how little “Cousin Woodrow” had changed: “The nicest thing about this President of ours is that we forget that he is President … because he is so simple and unaffected, so humble, I might almost say. I don’t believe Lincoln could have been any more simple and unpretentious.”25

  Wilson appeared so little changed because he retained not only the manners and working habits he had formed during his years as a professor but also the same basic outlook toward politics. Nothing better illustrated how much he was bringing to the presidency from his study of politics than his response to a vote in the Senate a little more than a month before his inauguration. On February 1, 1913, an odd coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans approved an amendment to the Constitution limiting the president to a single six-year term. Bryan had championed this measure for nearly twenty years, and he had gotten it inserted into the 1912 Democratic platform. Now, in reaction to Roosevelt’s recent bolt and future prospects, Taft threw his weight behind the measure, and his supporters supplied the necessary margin in the Senate. Two days later, Palmer, who still harbored hopes of becoming attorney general, took it upon himself to solicit Wilson’s opinion. The president-elect fired back a ten-page letter in which he not only lambasted the proposed amendment and the reasoning behind it but also stated his view of presidential powers and accountability. In writing this letter, he did not consult with anyone, but it was not a hasty response. Six weeks earlier, he had composed a statement on the subject in his shorthand, and now he had his secretary type a draft of it, which he edited in his own hand.26

  Claiming to come to the issue “from a perfectly impersonal view” and with no thought about a second term for himself, he maintained that a four-year term was too long for a do-nothing president and too short for one who attempted “a great work of reform,” but six years would also be too long for the duds and too short for the reformers. The president was “expected by the nation to be a leader of his party as well as the chief executive officer of the government. … He must be the prime minister, as much concerned with the guidance of legislation as with the just and orderly execution of the law,” as well as the only leader in foreign affairs. The president therefore needed “all the power he can get from the support and convictions and opinions of his countrymen” and should enjoy “that power until his work is done.” Wilson acknowledged the fear of excessive aggrandizement of power, and to avoid that he proposed a solution: “Put the present customary limitation to two terms into the constitution, if you do not trust the people to take care of themselves, but make it two terms.” He ended with a plea: “If we want our Presidents to fight our battles for us, we should give them the means, the legitimate means. … Strip them of everything else but the right to appeal to the people; but leave them that; suffer them to be leaders; absolutely prevent them from being bosses.”27

  Wilson was applying ideas from Congressional Government and Constitutional Government to current affairs, and he was again giving the lie to any notion that he did not fully share progressives’ desires for vigorous, popularly accountable government. The drive to pass the amendment might have been an effort to derail Roosevelt, but Wilson refused to go along with it. Instead, he was promising to be another Roosevelt, if not more so. The only gesture he was willing to make in an anti-Roosevelt direction was the backhanded endorsement of a two-term limit, which would go into the Constitution nearly four decades later in a posthumous slap at another president named Roosevelt.

  This political squall soon blew over. Palmer advised against publication of Wilson’s letter. He thought it might give the impression of a rift with Bryan, but he promised to share it with
Henry D. Clayton, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Meanwhile, at Wilson’s request, House showed a copy of the letter to Bryan, who wrote to Clayton that he would favor postponing application of the amendment until 1921, the end of a possible second term for Wilson. The Judiciary Committee shelved the amendment, and it was not seriously proposed again.28

  Another reason Wilson could seem so little changed was that his wife was managing the practical side of things. Public life had worn on Ellen Wilson. The move to Washington would mark the third time in two years that the family had changed its place of residence, not counting the summer decampments to Sea Girt. In addition to the responsibilities involved in managing the household and the moves, the burden of public appearances, interviews, and correspondence weighed heavily on Ellen. In January, she hired a secretary for the first time—Helen Woodrow Bones. Politically, she continued to advise her husband behind the scenes. Besides pressing him to name Tumulty as his secretary, she appears to have assuaged his doubts about appointing Bryan as secretary of state.

  Help in the upcoming move to the White House came from President Taft, who harbored no hard feelings from the campaign. Early in January, he wrote to Ellen about the domestic staff. He advised the Wilsons to retain Elizabeth Jaffray, a Canadian-born widow, as head housekeeper, and Arthur Brooks, “the most trustworthy colored man in the District of Columbia,” as the president’s valet and personal clerk. “Mrs. Jaffray and Brooks work very well together,” Taft added. “Brooks is especially useful in looking after the wines and cigars to prevent their waste by waiters and others at entertainments.” Taft likewise assured Wilson that the presidential salary and expense allowances were more than adequate: “I have been able to save from my four years about $100,000.” Following Taft’s advice, the Wilsons retained both staff members, and the new president would find that he, too, could save money in the White House.29

  The family had mixed feelings about the impending revolution in their lives. Leaving Princeton was hard for them. The evening before the move, a crowd of more than 1,000 townspeople marched from Nassau Street to the house on Cleveland Lane. They carried torches, a band played, and the president of the local bank presented a silver loving cup to the president-elect of the United States. The Wilsons left Princeton the day before the inauguration. The weather was sunny and not too cold, and the family walked to the railroad station that adjoined the campus at the foot of Blair Arch. Friends and neighbors waved and greeted them along the way. At the station, a crowd gathered around the train, which had added seven cars to transport hundreds of Princeton undergraduates, including the college band, to Washington. As the train pulled out, Wilson stood on the rear platform and joined the crowd in singing “Old Nassau,” waving his silk hat in unison with the crowd. He was leaving the place where he had lived longer than any other place in his life, where he had pursued his first career and begun his second career. Now he was going out, as he said to Mary Peck, “to new adventures amongst strangers.”30

  10

  BEGINNINGS

  The Wilson family arrived in Washington on the afternoon of March 3, 1913. They spent a quiet evening, which included a brief visit to the White House and dinner by themselves in their hotel room. They stayed away from most of the public events of the day, such as a big parade for woman suffrage and a host of parties thrown by jubilant Democrats. The next morning, Wilson met briefly with Bryan and the incoming vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, and at ten o’clock he joined Taft at the White House for the traditional ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. There, the two men went into the Senate chamber for the swearing in of the vice president and then walked outside to the platform erected at the front of the Capitol, on the eastern side, for the main event. After repeated cheers for the new president and his family, Wilson stepped up to take the oath of office from Chief Justice Edward White. After taking the oath, Wilson kissed the Bible that he had put his hand on, the same Bible that he had used two years before when he was sworn in as governor. Woodrow Wilson was now president.1

  He opened his inaugural address with a telling gesture. Noticing that police had cleared a space in front of the platform, he directed, “Let the people come forward.” Those words offered a nice prelude to a carefully crafted speech that balanced partisan and national appeals with a blend of specifics and generalities. “My fellow citizens,” Wilson began, “there has been a change of government.” Democrats now controlled all the elected branches, but, he asserted, “The success of a party means little except when the nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose.” His party’s purpose was “to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good. Our work is a work of restoration.” After that brief bow toward conservatives came a list of progressive priorities—tariff, tax, and banking reform; conservation; agricultural organization and efficiency—all intended to bring justice and protection to ordinary citizens. He closed by proclaiming, “Men’s hearts wait upon us, men’s lives hang in the balance; men’s hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest, all patriotic, all forward-looking men to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me.”2

  Wilson’s inaugural address afforded a national audience its first taste of his eloquence—his blend of stirring appeals, exalted purpose, and divergent ideas—and gave an accurate forecast of the legislative and ideological direction his administration would take. Before he got down to pursuing his goals, however, other matters required his attention. On a practical level, he and Ellen and their daughters needed to settle into their new, though necessarily temporary, home. The new president and First Lady set an unostentatious tone. In keeping with their personal preferences and the incoming administration’s reformist posture, they did not sponsor a ball on the night of the inauguration, although Democrats and wealthy socialites staged another round of private parties. On their first evening in the White House, the couple had a family dinner in the State Dining Room, after which they gathered at the windows to watch a fireworks display on the Mall.3

  Despite her best efforts, Ellen Wilson found herself swept up in a whirl of duties and projects. Official entertaining began the day after the inauguration with a series of receptions, each for several hundred invited guests, together with smaller teas. The next week, the Wilson family and Secretary of State Bryan and his wife received the diplomatic corps. During the three months following the inauguration, the number of official receptions totaled forty-one, with average attendance exceeding 600. In addition, old friends and family members, including Stockton Axson and Wilson’s brother, Josie, came to stay for a few days at a time. One weekend guest in May, at Ellen’s invitation, was Mary Hulbert, as the former Mrs. Peck now called herself. Some of the entertainment included musical performances, and the Wilsons often went to the theater or to one of the new “movie” houses.

  Having three unmarried daughters in their twenties added to the social mix. Margaret was often away, pursuing her singing career, but Jessie and Nell were at home and had serious suitors. Early in 1912, Nell had become engaged to Benjamin (Ben) Mandeville King, an engineer and lumberman. The elder Wilsons liked King, but they asked the couple to keep the engagement secret because the press was poking into their private lives. Later in the year, Jessie met and fell in love with Francis (Frank) Bowes Sayre, a new graduate of Harvard Law School, and they had also become secretly engaged. Between official functions and family affairs, the spring of 1913 was a lively season at the White House. No one could know it then, but those months would mark the social high point of Wilson’s eight years as president.4

  Ellen Wilson occupied herself with more than the social side of presidential life. The White House itself offered an outlet for her talents in art and architecture; she supervised the renovation of the third floor, which was completed during the summer of 1913, while she was away. She chose the decorations and furnishings fo
r the new rooms, particularly favoring fabrics woven by women in the southern Appalachians. Urban renewal also became a cause of hers. Women active in the National Civic Federation interested her in working to clean up the neighborhoods where many of Washington’s African American residents lived, particularly the notorious alleys within a few blocks of the Capitol. The First Lady not only joined a private effort to build better housing but also lobbied Congress for slum-clearance legislation, which was introduced the following year. The pace of these activities took a physical toll, and the navy physician assigned to the White House, Cary T. Grayson, urged her to slow down and leave Washington for the summer.

  Remarkably, Ellen did not let her new activities come between her and her husband. She had been advising Wilson and reading his writings for nearly thirty years, and busy as they both were, they found time for each other. During their first week in the White House, they began to go for late-afternoon rides in the presidential limousine, often staying out as long as two hours. The whole family took one all-day drive on a Saturday, causing a small stir by showing up unannounced for lunch at a Baltimore hotel. Although Wilson never learned to drive, car rides would remain his favorite form of relaxation for the rest of his life.5

  For the new president, settling into work appeared to pose few challenges. Wilson had joked earlier about the presidency being just a magnified governorship, and in that remark he predicted much of the way he would handle the office. Tumulty played the same role in Washington that he had played in Trenton. His title was secretary, rather than chief of staff, because, except for clerks, stenographers, military and naval aides, and Dr. Grayson, Tumulty was the staff. He managed the office and controlled the appointment calendar; no one got to see the president without his clearance. He and Wilson ran a tight schedule, with each caller usually getting no more than fifteen minutes. Tumulty managed party, press, and now congressional relations. Senators, congressmen, reporters, and even cabinet members quickly learned to contact him first. The secretary likewise read and summarized newspaper and magazine stories for the president, clipping items and writing short memoranda to call matters to his attention. Wilson normally arrived at the Oval Office at nine o’clock. As before, he spent the first hour handling the mail, dictating replies to Charles Swem, who had also been his personal stenographer in Trenton, or to another stenographer. The president would then spend three hours with visitors, go upstairs for a private lunch, and resume appointments for another two hours. He usually knocked off work at four in the afternoon, in time for a drive with Ellen or, later, at Dr. Grayson’s suggestion, a game of golf.6