Though White-House spouses spend plenty of time in the limelight and even wield soft power,
few would admit they have real sway. Except, perhaps, when it comes to Edith Wilson,
wife of President Woodrow Wilson. Let’s find out what made her such a remarkable First Lady.
The Bolling family and daughter Edith, born in 1872, had a pretty illustrious
Virginian heritage, claiming descent from Pocahontas, Thomas Jefferson,
and Martha Washington. In another era, perhaps, Edith Bolling would have grown up to become a
high-class Southern debutante with a wide range of perks and social connections.
But the country was in the midst of Reconstruction after the brutal Civil War.
Times were tough for Southerners who had previously benefited from the old,
inhumane system, and Edith's grandfather lost control of the family plantation. Her father
then worked as a lawyer supporting the Bolling clan, but now they were living above a store
in Wytheville, Virginia - hardly the palatial estate of a kind enjoyed by other first ladies.
Though she eventually gained a reputation as an intelligent and energetic woman,
young Edith didn't receive much in the way of a formal education.
As the CSPAN series First Ladies reports, this was a bit odd. Her sisters attended school like
any other children of the time, so we can't properly blame prevailing cultural attitudes
or even necessarily the individual quirks of the Bolling family. Instead, it appears that Edith,
along with her family, decided that she wasn't necessarily suited to more formalized education.
Edith, however, was not left to run wild. In return for caring for her paternal
grandmother, Edith got an informal education from her older relative,
covering the basics of math, literacy, and traditional homemaking skills like sewing.
Edith also learned a kind of pidgin French from her grandmother that was mixed with English.
And, while it wasn't a formal skill, Edith soon grew to make strong and quick judgments like her
grandmother, a personality trait that arguably helped her catch the eye of a future president.
Eventually, as Biography points out, Edith enrolled in school,
though it wasn't a wild success. She reportedly dropped out of Martha Washington
College because it was too cold, but it's easy enough to wonder if she simply wasn't
inclined to the structured environment of higher education and finishing schools.
Though her beginnings were rather obscure, Edith eventually managed to find her way into
some pretty powerful circles, as the 1944 film Wilson dramatizes. But it was a long time coming.
Edith didn't even leave her hometown until she was already 12 years old.
Some years later, while visiting one of her married sisters in Washington, DC,
she connected with a wealthy jewelry magnate named Norman Galt, and the pair married in 1896.
During their 12 years of marriage, Edith became a comfortable society wife, though
the two never had children. Biography reports she was barred from true society life, having
gained wealth through the business interests of her husband and not through inheritance.
After Norman died suddenly in 1908 though, Edith was left in charge of the business,
delegating much of the work to a manager while she plotted out her personal ambitions.
Those ambitions included making social connections in the nation’s capital.
According to Biography, she and her friend Altrude Gordon eventually became close with Helen Bones,
President Woodrow Wilson's cousin, who was living with the president as a companion
while Woodrow mourned the death of his first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson. Edith, Altrude, and
Helen returned to the White House one day after a hike, reportedly quite muddy. As the story goes,
President Wilson was captivated by the energetic Edith and pushed to get to know her better.
"Cousin Woodrow, I want you to know my friend Missus Galt."
"I'm delighted, Missus Galt."
The pair embarked on a whirlwind, arguably scandalous, courtship.
Presidential Studies Quarterly notes the two exchanged rather romantic letters and may
have breached rules of state, with Woodrow even sharing official documents with her,
apparently to impress her and get her opinion. And Edith enjoyed it, writing to him:
"Much as I love your delicious love letters, […] I believe I enjoy even
more the ones in which you tell me [...] of what you are working on [...] for then
I feel I am sharing your work and being taken into partnership as it were."
"I need you, Edith. Will you be my wife?"
"Mister President."
The pair married on December 18th, 1915, less than a year after their initial meeting.
Thrust into the role of First Lady rather quickly, Edith apparently
didn't much enjoy the traditional social protocol of being the president's wife,
according to the Miller Center., So, she hired a secretary to manage her social engagements.
When the country entered World War I, she gave a non-traditional,
thrifty example for other Americans. Fluffier aspects of First Ladyship, like the annual Easter
Egg Roll on the White House lawn and seemingly endless dinners and teas, stopped for a while.
Instead, Edith set rationing standards for dinner like, quote, "meatless Mondays," and
allowed sheep to graze on the White House lawn instead of hiring expensive gardeners.
She took on more war-related duties too, knitting and sewing goods for
American soldiers and getting herself out in public to volunteer with the Red Cross,
including at the busy train hub of Union Station.
Even before his stroke, Woodrow Wilson often showed state documents to his
wife and asked her opinion. Edith Wilson even decoded several military messages.
And as the Miller Center reports, some officials thought she had too much influence.
The president’s advisors had initially tried to keep the union from happening,
coming so quickly after the death of Woodrow’s first wife. But the marriage did happen,
and President Wilson started seeking Edith’s opinion on high matters of state.
She also sought to oust those who critiqued her union with Woodrow.
"The first female president of the United States."
According to the National First Ladies' Library, President Wilson shared the key to his private
desk drawer with her, shared wartime codes, and took her advice on how to deal with his
fellow politicians. Edith even sometimes sat in on meetings between Woodrow and top-level officials.
Though she wielded considerable power as a First Lady, Edith Wilson didn’t always
allow for the same freedom in other women. Both she and her husband were skeptical of
the women's suffrage movement that sought to give all American women the right to vote.
Early on in his political life, as Political Science Quarterly relates, Woodrow even wrote that
“[I get a] chilled, scandalized feeling that always overcomes
me when I see and hear women speak in public."
As laid out in Britannica, the president once ordered that suffragists protesting in front
of the White House should be arrested. Edith referred to the women protesters as, quote,
"those devils in the workhouse." Though Woodrow eventually softened his stance by supporting
an amendment granting women the right to vote, there's no evidence that Edith felt the same way.
She could still be progressive in other respects,
however. Edith earned the first driver's license issued to a woman in Washington, DC,
as the Chicago Tribune reports, and could be seen driving about in an electric car.
Though World War I was officially over by 1918,
the stress and anxiety caused by the conflict would affect Edith and Woodrow for years to come.
PBS reports that, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Woodrow spent months overseas
negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. Even though it marked the end of hostilities,
Congress met it with resistance and gave Woodrow a pretty hard time over the matter.
When President Wilson returned to the United States to begin promoting an international
organization of countries in the wake of the war, called the League of Nations,
things got even worse. He went on a nationwide speaking tour to promote the League,
including Edith in his retinue on the three-and-a-half-week venture.
"But I can't stop now. People are beginning to understand."
She found the president in a dire state after a September 1919 engagement in Pueblo, Colorado.
His face was drooping, his muscles were twitching, and he complained of an intense headache.
It appears that this was a mini stroke that preceded an even bigger one the following
month in the White House. Again, Edith found him, got Woodrow back into bed,
and called the White House chief usher, telling him that, quote, "the president is very sick."
That second stroke was debilitating. According to PBS, President Wilson's doctor Cary T. Grayson,
upon seeing him after the October 1919 event, was horrified, diagnosing the president as paralyzed.
And a paralyzed president was no good for governing a nation,
much less promoting his League of Nations idea. Yet, Edith Wilson and a small circle
of officials were determined to keep the truth of Woodrow's condition a secret.
According to Biography, she became her husband’s gatekeeper, carefully screening visitors and
documents while crafting press releases stating he was simply overworked and needed a bit of rest.
And, when Woodrow did have in-person meetings, Edith was often there and
helping her husband to hide the true nature and extent of what had happened to him.
By February 1920, however, news was trickling out. Rumors flew that the president was ill, insane, or
both and that someone else was running the nation in his stead. But, as the Chicago Tribune reports,
in an age without social media and nearly instantaneous reporting, it was hard to get
the exact truth out of the White House. Even the vice president didn't really know what was
going on with his own running mate until more than three weeks after Woodrow Wilson's health crisis.
Later in life, Edith would downplay her power in the White House after her husband's stroke.
She often said she was only acting in Woodrow’s interest,
trying to keep him healthy and stress-free — after all, as she might have rightfully argued,
it was stress that got them into this mess in the first place — rather than trying to take
the reins of power. As quoted in Presidential Studies Quarterly, an older Edith wrote that,
"I myself, never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs.
The only decision that was mine was what was important and what was not,
and the very important decision of when to present matters to my husband."
Edith Wilson didn't exactly become a, quote, "secret president." According to the National
First Ladies' Library, she often let the Cabinet deal with political issues. Yet,
she wasn't above taking more of a leading role when she had a stake in those issues.
Once, she refused to let the government accept a diplomat's credentials until he
dismissed someone who had made jokes at her expense. And no matter what she said, she had
considerable power just by controlling the flow of information to the president after his stroke.
Though he eventually recovered somewhat from his stroke, Woodrow Wilson never
fully regained his strength. Neither did his project of kickstarting the League of Nations.
And, as History reports, the whole situation had more or less become
public knowledge by the early months of 1920, though Edith Wilson's role
in the White House after her husband's stroke apparently wasn’t well understood.
The National First Ladies' Library indicates that Edith might have inadvertently had a hand
in the failed League of Nations proposal, as she could have advised Woodrow to compromise
to get the legislation passed. Yet, it's hard to pin the blame on a single person,
much less someone who was operating in an informal capacity like Edith was.
Either way, she continued to screen documents and visitors for her husband
after they left presidential life. She was even reportedly considered as a vice
presidential candidate in 1928, four years after Woodrow died. That never happened,
but she enjoyed acclaim and recognition nonetheless.
She wrote an autobiography, My Memoir, published in 1938, and in that book she
presented the image of a loving wife to President Wilson who didn’t meddle in political affairs.
But as the record shows, she was more than that. Still active in national politics long
after she left the White House, Edith supported John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign and
lived to attend his inauguration in 1961. It was her last public appearance – and a
fitting end to her trailblazing career as First Lady of the United States.
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