The first lady vs. women’s suffrage
Her own elevated position didn’t ensure her support for suffragists
Edith has been described as the most powerful of all America’s First Ladies, with her stewardship of the administration following her husband’s stroke in 1919. But the ascendancy in public life she had experienced since marrying Woodrow Wilson did not mean she was inclined for other women to occupy such prominent positions in American society. In fact, Edith, who was known for her strong opinions, has been described as an opponent of women’s suffrage movements in the United States. She came into conflict with the matter due to her husband increasingly becoming the target of protests by campaigners, with women frequently picketing the White House. Woodrow began to sympathise with the idea of states being able to decide for or against votes for women, but he was not interested in securing national suffrage for them. Edith, who appeared to particularly dislike Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party, made comments such as describing suffrage campaigners as “despicable”, and she wrote in her diary that she hated the subject with “acute agony”. Though it has to be said that some historians have suggested that Edith’s views were more ambiguous and that she didn’t deny she was a supporter in the face of overwhelming public opinion that she was. It has been argued that the First Lady was concerned about what women’s suffrage would mean for her role as her husband’s champion and protector. Woodrow eventually changed his mind on the matter, partially it seemed because of women’s efforts in World War I, and Edith took the chance to join her husband in voting for the next president in 1920.
for a long time. Eventually the issue was brought before the president and he was able to direct a solution and diffuse the crisis. Edith’s handling of the storm around the United States joining the League of Nations has also been intensely debated, with some commentators theorising that Edith’s failure to bring differing voices before the president – rather than just her own – meant there was less chance of Woodrow offering compromises to his opponents, and therefore the possibility of the country becoming a member of the League was lost.
However the reader stands on the matter of whether Edith was or was not the ‘secret president’, it is clear that her role in controlling access to her husband meant she was able to freeze out those advisors of his she distrusted.
The First Lady’s chief concern was in facilitating the president’s public service by being his closest confidante and adviser; she was fiercely protective and had a long-held hostility towards many politicians in his circle. Woodrow’s adviser, Edward M House, and his Secretary of the Treasury, William G Mcadoo, for example, offended Edith when they encouraged the president to not marry her ahead of the 1916 presidential elections, using a fictional blackmail threat from Mary Hulbert Peck – a woman Woodrow had been close to during his first marriage – to bolster these attempts. Others Edith was suspicious of included Joe Tumulty, her husband’s personal secretary, who also cautioned against the marriage taking place at that time; Secretary of State Robert Lansing – who she saw as a traitor because he held cabinet meetings while Woodrow was ill following his stroke; and Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republican senator who spearheaded the opposition to America approving the Treaty of Versailles – Edith had her revenge on the latter by refusing his request to attend the president’s funeral.
Given the severity of Woodrow’s condition, it seems extraordinary that he remained in post as president. It is unclear how the history of postwar America, which suffered the same economic gloom as Europe, could have been different if vice president Thomas Riley Marshall had taken over and government had been able to operate at its full efficiency. Edith’s denial of reality saw her implore her husband to seek a third term in 1920, when he could not even make it down the corridor to his office. But the Democrats did not renominate him, and Republican Warren G Harding was elected in 1921 on a campaign promising “a return to normalcy”. In March that year the former president and first lady settled into a new home in Washington and Edith cared for her husband until he died in 1924 aged 67.
She devoted the rest of her life to ensuring his legacy lived on – her autobiography ‘My Memoir’ (1938) was a bestseller, she permitted the couple’s love letters to be edited and published after her death, and she assisted Ray Stannard Baker in collating material for his authorised, eight-volume biography of Woodrow, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Edith also donated her husband’s papers to the Library of Congress, aided the establishment of what became the Woodrow Wilson Library and Museum (at the Virginia residence where Woodrow had been born), read, in 1942, the script for the Hollywood movie Wilson, and took part in the Woodrow Wilson Centennial Events in 1956, celebrating 100 years since his birth.
The former First Lady remained relatively active in Democrat Party circles for the rest of her life. She campaigned for Franklin D Roosevelt when he was a nominee for the presidency (Edith was a long-time friend of Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor), took part in party conventions, and in 1961 Edith was invited by John F Kennedy to join his inaugural procession. Typifying her neverending devotion to her husband and his memory, Edith was on the day she died due to attend the unveiling of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, built to link Washington to Maryland and Virginia. This date, 28 December 1961, was the anniversary of her husband’s birth 105 years earlier. The 89-year-old Edith was buried alongside Woodrow at the Washington National Cathedral following her funeral there. She is the only First Lady to have had a funeral held at the cathedral.
Edith’s ‘secret presidency’ has continued to fascinate, and it was brought into the spotlight when Hillary Clinton vied to become the US’S first woman president. As that ultimate glass ceiling continues to elude women, Edith’s unlikely story will surely continue to be debated and enjoyed.
“Edith’s denial of reality saw her implore her husband to seek a third term in 1920, when he could not even make it down the corridor to his office”