Edith Wilson

Edith Wilson, Woodrow Wilson's second wife, was born in 1872 in the mountains of Virginia and lived in poverty for the beginning of her life. Her family was able to send her to Mary Washington College, but uninterested in a degree, Edith left claiming that her dormitory was too cold. She eventually married into money after following her older sister to Washington DC and falling for an older man, Norman Galt, the owner of the city's oldest jewelry store. After twelve years of marriage, Norman died and Edith found herself very wealthy. An early trendsetter, Edith used her plentiful funds to travel to Europe and bring back haute couture from Paris and was the first woman in Washington to drive her own car.

In the spring of 1915, after a hike with a friend and her friend's boyfriend who was the president's physician, Edith was invited to the White House for tea where she met Wilson. For him, it was love at first sight and they quickly began dating. Wilson sent Edith many love letters that included questions about her opinion on the members of his cabinet and about the war in Europe. After three months of knowing Edith, to her surprise and to the horror of his advisors, Wilson proposed. Worried that marrying this woman after losing his wife only a year earlier would lead to his loss of the upcoming election, his political advisors leaked a series of fake love letters from Wilson to another woman in an attempt to make Edith end her relationship with him, but their plan did not work.

Edith and Wilson were married and he won his second term. By the time the US entered World War 1 in April of 1917, Edith never left his side and while they worked together, Wilson gave her access to classified documents and wartime codes and even let her screen his mail. He also insisted that she sat in on his meetings and allowed her to give her opinions on the foreign representatives and politicians that she met after they left. Edith also had the power to deny Wilson's advisors access to him if she believed that he shouldn't be disturbed.

It was because of this power that Wilson let her have that she was able to pull off keeping the public from knowing of his stroke and paralysis from 1919 until 1921. When Wilson's stroke occurred, during the strenuous trip he took trying to get the American people behind the idea of the League of Nations even though the Senate voted it down, Edith immediately decided that the public should not know of the president's condition and began what she called her "stewardship". She created several medical bulletins that were published stating that Wilson was exhausted and badly needed rest, so he would be working out of his bedroom. Cabinet members and congressmen who came to speak with the president were stopped by Edith who carried their messages on to Wilson so that they would not see him in his near death state. Any documents or decisions for Wilson to review would be read by Edith and then if she considered them important enough, she would pass them on to her husband.

For a year and five months Edith served almost as regent for the president and kept the president's stroke and paralysis a secret from the nation. Some of her decisions had lasting consequences though, such as when she ordered the secretary of state to be fired when she learned that he held a cabinet meeting without Wilson's approval. But through her whole life, Edith continued to claim that she never used the full power of presidency, she only did what she believed her husband would do in order to protect him and the nation during the course of his illness.


Sources
Anthony, Carl. "Edith Wilson." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2016. 
"First Lady Biography: Edith Wilson." Edith Wilson Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2016.