History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (51 page)

In 1914, on the very day a global war drew its first breath in Europe, Woodrow Wilson lost his first wife, Ellen. She was only fifty-four, a first lady for only seventeen months, and her passing sent the already emotional and needy Woodrow into a cavernous depression. For months he wallowed in mourning, and he neglected his work. At one point, he mentioned in private that he welcomed the idea of being assassinated.
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When his cousin Helen Bones brought along a friend to the White House, the president’s spirits immediately lifted. Those close to him were guarded. His wife had been dead for less than five months. For him to suddenly develop a giddy fascination with Edith Galt, a forty-three-year-old widow, was potentially dangerous to his public image, if not a sign of erratic behavior. But the love-struck man would not be deterred from his “special gift from Heaven.” The two began exchanging love letters, and he soon proposed marriage. Only the interference from his closest advisers delayed the wedding for several months.
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From then on, Edith spent a great deal of time with him, often going over mails and dispatches in the morning, sharing a working lunch, and taking long breaks for billiards and outings to the theater. Their easy schedule ended with the U.S. entry into the First World War. Thereafter, Edith was the consummate patriot, volunteering for the Red Cross and greeting troops at the Washington rail station. She introduced meatless and heatless days at the White House, hosted bond drives, and kept a herd of twenty sheep on the south lawn, auctioning their wool for the war effort.

She became far more involved after the Armistice. In September 1919, Wilson frantically toured the country to garner support for the Versailles Treaty. While in Colorado, he suffered a mild stroke. Upon his immediate return to Washington, a second stroke occurred, and he was clearly in trouble, ashen, weak, trembling. For fear of placing the country in a panic, his doctors refused to state publicly the extent of his condition. They ordered full rest, no visitors, and an absolute minimum of work. Their first line of defense was the first lady.

Days stretched into weeks. Washington grew suspicious. Letters went unanswered, bills unsigned, appointments placed in limbo. When a few official papers came back with scribbled signatures, some began to wonder if they were forged. No one saw the chief executive, save for his doctors, his personal secretary, and Edith. She took it upon herself to screen every paper that came his way.

The cabinet led the country in the interim, meeting regularly but without their chief member. Several of them had no idea how sick he was. For six months, much of the executive duties went undone. Wilson slowly recovered, but never fully. Capable of working only in ten-minute increments, he lingered through his last year in office and was barely able to attend Warren Harding’s inauguration.
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In shielding her husband from paperwork and outside contact, Edith Wilson contended: “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.” Of course, to filter who and what reached him was a monumental interference, but it spared the nation from seeing their president in the morbid throws of paralysis, and it prevented Woodrow Wilson from being the first president ever to resign from office.
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While Wilson was hidden from public view, a few people saw bars on a White House window and deduced that he had gone insane and was being held captive. The bars were actually installed by Theodore Roosevelt. His kids liked to play ball indoors.

8
. ABIGAIL SMITH ADAMS

(MASSACHUSETTS, 1744–1818)

While John Adams was away in Philadelphia, helping craft a declaration of separation from the British Empire, his wife wrote to him the famous caveat: “Remember the Ladies…Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”
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Abigail Adams is the darling of many historians of the early Republic, and rightly so. She was a true manifestation of the revolutionary ideal. Independent and cerebral, she carried a sense of equality that was centuries before its time. When many women, including first ladies, burned personal correspondence to preserve their privacy, she saved her writings. Alone she authored more than two thousand letters still in existence, offering rare and vivid insights into the world of a fledgling United States. In addition, she could take credit for creating two of its first six presidents.

While John Adams built his career in the Continental Congress, she managed the family and property back in Quincy. Well-read and skilled with money, she was thoroughly aware of the connections between micro-and macroeconomics. Her husband learned to trust her observations and her accounting, as she generally operated in the black, a skill that neither George Washington nor Thomas Jefferson possessed. For years she traveled with John as he acted as the American representative in France and Britain. Thereafter, she became his most trusted adviser on foreign affairs.

As first lady in Philadelphia and later in Washington, she knew her role in political spheres was limited to private interaction—hosting dinners for congressmen, diplomats, and cabinet members, receiving up to sixty callers a day—but that fact did not prevent her from speaking her mind. “I will never consent to have our Sex considered in an inferior point of light…If man is Lord, woman is
Lordess
,” she insisted. Mrs. Adams also displayed an acute awareness of the nation’s worst internal fissures. Repulsed by the prevalence of slave labor in the District of Columbia, she deduced that the institution was the main reason the city perpetually ran behind schedule and overbudget. “I hope we may be held together,” she wrote in 1798, “but I know not how long, for oil and water are not more contrary in their nature than North and South.” Such insightful honesty made her the president’s main political confidant throughout his four years in office.
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Her better nature may have failed her only once, regarding the strained U.S. relations with France. Angered by the bloodshed of their revolution, she pushed her husband to ask for a declaration of war. He instead erred on the side of caution, expanding the navy to protect American interests on the high seas but resisting the popular demand to lunge into the Louisiana Territory or French holdings in the Caribbean or against France itself, for fear of losing too much blood and money against yet another empire.
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The bitter loss of reelection in 1800 left Abigail angrier than her husband, and it placed her once-close relationship with Thomas Jefferson on hiatus for nearly a decade. But it did grant the resolute woman one opportunity she rarely had in thirty-six years of marriage, the chance to spend time in Quincy with the one man who treated her as his equal.

First Lady Abigail Adams was so popular, especially in New England, that she had a company of Massachusetts militia named after her: the “Lady Adams Rangers.”

9
. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

(NEW YORK, 1947–)

It was nothing new for a first lady to be accused of co-opting the office. To pressure cabinet members on whom they hired or promoted, one spouse illegally used War Department stationery and the signature “Mrs. President Lincoln.” The early 1920s saw a White House marriage so dominated by the female half that the couple was known as “The President and Mr. Harding.” Nor was it unusual for wives to remain with their husbands long after the discovery of extramarital affairs, as was the case with Lucretia Garfield, Florence Harding, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, and Lady Bird Johnson.
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But Hillary Clinton was unique in that she was the first wife of a president to ever have a West Wing office. No first lady before her had attained a law degree or had been as professionally independent. None had imposed the level of discipline into her husband’s work as she did. And none had rescued her husband’s career so often.

The fact that Bill Clinton’s career needed rescuing was a testament to his coy nature. While such behavior was marginally survivable in 1980s Arkansas, it was politically unsafe in 1990s Washington. Were it not for Hillary’s diligent defense of his character, especially against allegations that he had a longtime affair with Jennifer Flowers, Clinton might not have been nominated in 1992, let alone elected. In many ways, he operated a generation behind, as if accompanied by the discreet press corps of JFK or LBJ. In contrast, she was a generation ahead, keenly aware that the general public and the media had assumed the role of Big Brother. Proving her point, she would be the subject of more major opinion polls than nearly all of her forerunners combined.

Even in failure she spared his reputation. Heading the administration’s number-one priority of universal health care, she assembled a task force that grew to several hundred people. Relying on a natural ability to stay focused and organized, she engineered a plan that would have provided basic services for the thirty-seven million Americans who had no coverage whatsoever. But the program would have cost in excess of one hundred billion dollars. In addition, she was only the first lady, neither elected nor appointed, and thereby possessed no constitutional authority to dictate policy. Financially, politically, and legally, the plan was bound for failure. Yet it was Hillary who took the brunt of the blame, rather than the man who had promised to deliver universal health care in the first place.
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She was living proof of her gender’s progress in the social and professional worlds, and she had tested the limits more than any of her predecessors. But the presidency still contained its rigid checks and balances. True to her character, Hillary weathered the disappointment and managed to rescue a career. In 2000, she became the first wife of a president to run for political office, winning a seat in the U.S. Senate. In 2008, she nearly won the Democratic nomination for the presidency. And in 2009, she became the sixty-seventh Secretary of State of the United States.

When she was growing up, Hillary Rodham’s parents were devoted Republicans, and she was as well. As a youngster, she supported the 1964 candidacy of Barry Goldwater.

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. LOUISA CATHERINE JOHNSON ADAMS

(ENGLAND, 1775–1852)

For all of its hidden influence, the role of first lady cannot be declined. The duties, obligations, and the burning scrutiny that comes with it are all part of the post. Some have been more involved than others. A select few truly enjoyed their time in service. For the wife of John Quincy Adams, the experience pushed her into physical illness, fragmented her family, and reduced her marriage to a cold obligation. Yet she endured commendably, as the only first lady born outside of the United States.