Vice President Marshall showed up at the White House one day, hoping to see the President, but he could not get past Mrs. Wilson. She said she would convey news of his visit, but Marshall was never to hear from the President again. In addition to presiding over the Senate, he continued to make speeches on the after-dinner circuit. He privately believed Wilson should accept mild reservations, but he publicly stood behind the President.
While Marshall was in the middle of a speech on November 23, 1919, under the auspices of the Loyal Order of Moose of Atlanta, a prominent local stepped to his side and delivered the news that President Wilson had died. Marshall bowed his head, as did everyone else who had heard. After a moment, he faced the crowd and said, “I cannot bear the great burdens of our beloved chieftain unless I receive the assistance of everybody in this country.” As men in the auditorium bowed their heads and women cried, the organist in the hall played “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Marshall hastily left the stage to telephone the Associated Press, only to learn the entire story was a hoax. Marshall would later confess to Josephus Daniels that he had been stunned, first by grief and then by “the awful responsibility that would fall upon me. I was resolved to do my duty but I can truly say that I dreaded the great task.”
The incident encouraged nobody at the White House to alter the current protocol. The inner circle closed ranks. Tumulty kept the gate of the West Wing, while Edith controlled access to the bedroom and Grayson constantly observed the President. Because the public would expect a Presidential statement on the first anniversary of the Armistice, Tumulty composed it. While the three paragraphs lacked the President’s eloquence, they spoke of the need to seek peace in international councils. With the Congress set to reconvene on December 2, he also began drafting the Annual Message in the President’s name. Wilson’s inability to deliver (to say nothing of write) the speech himself would be a particular disappointment to the President who had reintroduced the tradition of appearing in person before the Congress. Eventually, relying on contributions of the Cabinet officers and sentences and sentiments from Wilson’s Western tour, Tumulty was able to prepare a draft of Presidential stature. Wilson had the speech read to him, and he offered corrections, which his wife transcribed.
The State of the Union message—generic and bland—touched upon such issues as the need for the executive branch to submit a budget, to simplify the tax code, to achieve a better understanding between capital and labor, and to temper “the widespread condition of political restlessness in our body politic.” Reaction from Congress followed party lines. Democrats praised its call to action, while Republicans issued baiting criticism. George Moses of New Hampshire said it was “a very poor piece of literary mechanics, considering its putative authorship.” Fall of New Mexico said, “The President’s message doesn’t mean anything. I wonder when he wrote it.”
The White House—presumably Tumulty—dealt with the latter issue by talking to The New York Times. The paper ran a page-one item detailing the marked improvement in Wilson’s handwriting, even in the “extremely clear and unwavering” nature of his shorthand notes—when, in truth, the President was still incapable of writing such notes and none existed. Two months after Wilson had disappeared from public view, Congressmen were asserting that “whatever the state of his health it is time that Congress and the country should know the facts.”
“The question as to whether the President is actually and generally performing his official duties and whether he is mentally and physically capable of doing so is growing more and more insistent,” Robert Lansing wrote in a memorandum for his own files. He particularly questioned the authorship of the Annual Message, and was correct in assessing that “the loose stones are there but the cement is not.” Seasoned politico Albert Burleson considered Tumulty’s fabrication of the speech both “a fine piece of political work” and a “deception.” Lansing said, “If it ever gets out it will make a fine scandal.” Short of that, Republicans believed they had found a great potential embarrassment for the President. A chorus of Senators declared that Wilson was constitutionally unable to discharge his duties. Without any substantiation, George Moses announced that Wilson had suffered a brain lesion and was unable to “transact business.”
Two thousand miles away and almost ten years into Mexico’s violent revolution, the Carranza government arrested an American consular official named William O. Jenkins, accusing him of staging his own kidnapping in order to discredit the current regime. The crusty and corrupt Senator from New Mexico, Albert Fall, had been complaining for weeks that the United States had no President. “We have petticoat government,” he said, pounding on a table. “Wilson is not acting. Mrs. Wilson is president.” And now the Senator seized the opportunity to summon Wilson not only to respond with aggressive military action but also to receive a committee, one consisting of Hitchcock and himself. At last, the Republicans would unmask the President. When Dr. Grayson presented the proposition to his patient, Wilson said he was happy to oblige.
Grayson milked the acceptance, telling Fall that the President was “undergoing a rest cure” and that he personally preferred Wilson’s avoiding controversial matters . . . but that he saw no reason why the President could not “transact any business” and meet the Senate’s demands. Fall called the doctor’s bluff and asked when they might visit. Grayson said at 2:30 that very afternoon, a Friday. When Fall suggested the matter could wait until Monday, by which time he could consult his caucus, Grayson insisted there was no reason to delay this visit—which Wilson called “a smelling committee,” one meant to ascertain whether his corpse had begun to rot.
When the two-man delegation arrived at the Executive Mansion, Senator Fall asked Grayson how long they could stay. The doctor dealt the prickly Republican Senator a “staggering blow” when he imposed no time constraints. The three men ascended to the second floor, where the Wilsons awaited in the carefully staged bedroom at the end of the hall.
The President had directed all the lights in his room turned on, to create a bright atmosphere. He remained in bed, his head only slightly elevated, his left arm buried under the covers, while papers were placed on the nightstand to his right—props with which he might demonstrate dexterity. Edith greeted the visitors, a pencil in one hand and a pad in the other—“so I would not have to shake hands with him,” she later wrote of Fall. She sat quietly through the entire meeting, taking notes in her flowery schoolgirl penmanship. “I hope you will consider me sincere,” said the gentleman from New Mexico, by way of opening the meeting. “I have been praying for you, Sir.”
“Which way, Senator?” the President replied, according to Edith, who also recounted Fall’s laughing at the quip. And with that, for all intents and purposes, the meeting was over—as the President revealed that his wit and his wits remained intact. But the visit lasted another forty-five minutes, during which time Wilson displayed a thorough grasp of the Mexican situation, including knowledge of Fall’s investments south of the border. Called to the telephone during the meeting, Grayson learned that Jenkins in Mexico, in fact, had been released the previous night. The doctor interrupted the conference to impart this information, which rendered further discussion pointless. Wilson spoke of getting on his feet again soon, so that he could visit the Capitol “and take up personally problems affecting the Government.” He asked Fall to convey that sentiment to his colleague from New Hampshire, hoping Senator Moses would be “reassured.” When Fall descended in the elevator, Secret Service agent Starling asked how he had found the President. “If there is something wrong with his mind,” said Senator Fall, “I would like to get the same ailment.” Wilson had delivered a consummate performance, conveying a vitality beyond his actual capacity.
That did not, however, put the issue of Presidential inability to rest. The public was willing to overlook Wilson’s condition so long as its limitations remained abstract; but some in the Administration were less sanguine, especially the Secretar
y of State. While Wilson was mentally competent, Lansing wondered how long a physically incapacitated President could run the country. Fall had left the White House having failed to ascertain the extent of Wilson’s paralysis, his nerves, and his overall strength. “I feel that the secrecy which has prevailed should come to an end,” Lansing wrote in a memorandum intended for history’s eyes only. And though he had no intention of exposing his boss, he succinctly stated what he considered a constitutional crisis, one nobody had chosen to address: “It is not Woodrow Wilson but the President of the United States who is ill. His family and his physicians have no right to shroud the whole affair in mystery as they have done.”
• • •
“Things fall apart,” William Butler Yeats wrote that year; “the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” While he was pondering the dissolution of one era with dark visions of the next, he might just as well have been describing the Wilson White House. Although Wilson’s physical condition continued to improve, his mind often raced ahead of his body’s limitations. Post-stroke depression clouded many of his thoughts, some of which were faintly delusional. Frequently petulant because he was stuck in the world of his own mind most of the time, with few stimuli and little information beyond that which his wife and physician spoon-fed, many of Woodrow Wilson’s actions after October 2, 1919, were highly questionable. Unfortunately, nobody but Edith could challenge him; and in her efforts to ensure his health, she had abdicated that responsibility. The country, like its leader, drifted.
After eleven weeks in which Edith had allowed the President to perform the absolute minimum that his job required, the logjam of untended business brought the White House to a virtual standstill. Tumulty wrote Mrs. Wilson on December 18, 1919, listing more than a dozen items that demanded the President’s attention. They were necessary not only to maintain the steady flow of government business but also because failure to address them would highlight the President’s negligence.
Washington has always relied on temporary appointees to administer the nation’s bureaucracies. And at the end of 1919, the Civil Service, Federal Trade, Interstate Commerce, and United States Tariff Commissions all needed positions filled; the Waterways Commission had seven vacancies. Often the bureaucracies themselves, not just the people running them, had term limits, which required Presidential attention.
The Railway Control Act of 1918, for example, had authorized the government to operate America’s railroads for the duration of the war and a “reasonable time” thereafter. Railroad czar McAdoo and his successor, Walker Hines, had run the trains more effectively than private ownership. But now, a year after the Armistice, the future of the system could be delayed no longer. Because of an inevitable drop-off in traffic as the nation retreated to a peacetime economy, a period of losses and liquidation ensued. Many companies made claims against the government for damage to their property. Hines wrote Wilson that “widespread uncertainty” might easily become “the basis of unfair manipulation of the prices of railroad securities,” employees were pressing for increases in wages, and somebody had to take responsibility for maintaining the property currently in the hands of the Railroad Administration. Over the course of a week, the necessary paperwork—which should have required a few hours—passed through a dozen hands, always reverting to Edith and barely averting a crisis.
Equally troublesome, American foreign policy had been rudderless for months. Despite Secretary Lansing’s repeated insistence, Britain’s Ambassador ended his brief posting in Washington without any communication from the President. The snub was not enough to kick off an international incident, but it was an insulting misstep. In the meantime, the diplomatic corps simply floated, with at least eight countries—China, Italy, and the Netherlands among them—without an American Ambassador. In some cases, envoys had been selected but awaited final authorization from the President. One country desperately needed not only an Ambassador but the recognition that might assure its democratic future. Having deposed a military dictator, Costa Rica teetered on the brink of financial ruin and feared the return of the despot as it waited seven months for the United States to recognize its government.
As 1919 saw more changes in the world order than any year in centuries, the White House infrastructure begin to collapse. Upon the death of Virginia Senator Martin in November, Carter Glass surrendered his secretaryship to fill the seat, leaving a vacancy at the Treasury Department. The fourth Sunday into the New Year, David Houston awoke with the grippe, only to receive a call from the White House informing him that Mrs. Wilson wished to see him that afternoon. “Of course, you know that I did not ask you to take the trouble to come merely to drink tea,” she said. While the President upstairs was reluctant to move Houston from the Agriculture Department, she said, “he now needs you more in the Treasury.” After she delivered all her husband’s arguments for his assuming the new position, Houston said, “I am in the harness until March 4, 1921, if he wishes it, and as long as I am with him, I will dig stumps, or act as Secretary of the Treasury, or assume any other task he assigns me.” Edith smiled and said, “That is just what the President said you would say.”
Wilson’s severe mental and physical limitations forced a hurried selection of inferior appointments to his recomposed Cabinet. In discussing Houston’s replacement at Agriculture, for example, Mrs. Wilson said the President had been considering Edwin T. Meredith—a Populist Iowan with a history of newspaper and agricultural publishing and unsuccessful runs for the Senate and the governorship. Houston acknowledged that he had the right background but questioned his intellectual ability and “whether he was Cabinet size or not.” Meredith received the appointment a week later, as the President simply lacked the energy to conduct a thorough search. (Meredith would leave no mark on government that could match his significant legacy in magazine publishing, especially when he changed the name of his periodical from Fruit, Garden and Home to Better Homes and Gardens.)
Interior Secretary Lane had talked of resigning for months, taking issue with the President even before the League fight, over leasing certain oil properties. The deals appeared to be legal, but Wilson—who had maintained a scandal-free administration—told Lane he wanted to study them before releasing government property to private capital. After Wilson fell ill, many such leases came to the President’s desk for signature. Edith studied each such matter, put the papers in neat stacks, and carried them to the Lincoln Bed, where he signed as many documents as possible before tiring. The first time she presented one of these oil leases, however, he said, “That will not be signed, and, please, until I am able to study that situation do not bring me any more of them. It is better to let things wait than do a thing that to my uninformed judgment seems most unwise.” Lane pressured Mrs. Wilson, saying the President’s inaction reflected poorly on his running the Interior Department.
Even before Lane served notice, the President had sought his replacement. Mrs. Wilson told Houston that her husband preferred somebody not from the far West because most of the Department’s problems stemmed from that region and “it was difficult to find a Western man who would take a sufficiently detached or national view.” Within weeks, the White House had announced the appointment of Judge John B. Payne, a powerful attorney and party politician from Chicago who was also a member of the Shipping Board.
Prior to the President’s stroke, Commerce Secretary Redfield had spoken of resigning, and on November 1 he returned to the private sector. Six-term Democratic Congressman Joshua W. Alexander of Missouri—a second choice, but the first in the alphabetical listing on the roster of a Congressional Committee on Commerce—replaced him. Houston thought him “totally unfit.”
And then the Cabinet almost lost Labor Secretary W. B. Wilson as a result of the first serious rupture between two department heads. Management and labor had called a ceasefire during the war, but after the Armistice, each side sought to reclaim its ground. The major struggle w
as between the colliers and mine operators, which sparked a dispute between Secretary Wilson and the President’s old friend Harry Garfield, the acting Fuel Administrator and consumers’ advocate. Miners threatened to strike if they did not receive a pay raise, and Garfield enlisted the help of Attorney General Palmer, who announced that the Cabinet unanimously supported his decision to enjoin the miners, which he said the Lever Act empowered him to do. W. B. Wilson was incensed because he had been negotiating with the miners and because the President had promised Samuel Gompers that the Lever Act would never be used to secure an injunction against labor. Only a hastily assembled bucket brigade of memos between the Cabinet Room and the Lincoln Bed could douse the ire of the Labor Secretary, as the President sided with him. More important, Josephus Daniels convinced the Labor Secretary that in those troubled times, it was “his duty to stick.” He did, and Garfield resigned. “A well Wilson,” Daniels later noted, “would have nipped the injunction in the bud.”
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