Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  Instead, he chose to make the most extensive effort any president has ever made to try to educate the public about foreign policy. He was doing the job of democratic leadership that he valued most and did best; he was trying to reach the minds of the people and draw forth thoughtful, considered support from them. He had done this throughout his political career, most notably in his first presidential campaign, and it is interesting to speculate how well he might have done now if he had been younger and more vigorous. It is also interesting to speculate on what he might have accomplished if he had enjoyed the benefit of an impending technological breakthrough. His encounter with the microphone in San Diego presaged the advent of radio. Some interpreters have wondered whether he could have rallied greater support if he had been able to use the radio. Wilson was the kind of speaker who might have developed something akin to Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats and used them with great effectiveness in making his case for the treaty and the League.59

  The League fight marked the last flowering of a great oratorical tradition that had flourished in America in the nineteenth century and again in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Bryan, Roosevelt, La Follette, Albert Beveridge, William Borah, and Hiram Johnson, as well as Wilson, had sought to educate the public about great domestic reform issues. With World War I, those men and others had turned their efforts to foreign policy, thereby ensuring a level of public debate that would never be matched again. Political contests had always featured manipulation and heated emotional appeals, and the rise of marketing and advertising had added to those elements. Moreover, a new oratorical approach borrowed from Protestant evangelism was coming into vogue. Both Bryan and Roosevelt had proudly proclaimed themselves “political evangelists.” Nor was Wilson immune to such evangelism, as he had shown particularly on this speaking tour. Soon, new media—first radio, then newsreels, and finally television—would vastly expand politicians’ reach, but at the price of shorter exposures that offered fewer chances for education and more for exhortation and manipulation. Wilson and his cohorts and adversaries in the League fight were practicing a dying art.60

  Back at the White House, the president went into seclusion. Rest was the only treatment that Grayson or any physician could then prescribe, but as Edith recalled, “My husband wandered like a ghost between the study at one end of the hall and my room at the other. The awful pain in his head that drove him relentlessly back and forth was too acute to permit work, or even reading.” They took short rides in the limousine, and on the third day back, October 1, they watched a movie in the East Room. Edith thought Wilson seemed better, and she took it as a good sign that he insisted on reading aloud from the Bible. The next morning, however, she noticed that his left hand hung limply. “I have no feeling in that hand,” she remembered him saying. “Will you rub it? But first help me to the bathroom.” Edith recalled that he got there with difficulty and pain, and while she went to telephone Grayson, he fell and lost consciousness. Other accounts closer to the time said that when he got up in the morning, he felt numbness and weakness in his left leg and sank to the bedroom floor when he tried to make his way to the bathroom. Either way—as Grayson immediately suspected when he arrived—Wilson had suffered a stroke.61

  After talking with two other physicians who consulted at the White House, Grayson telephoned Francis X. Dercum, a Philadelphia neurologist who was to see the president the next day, and asked him to come at once. When Dercum’s train arrived at Union Station, Grayson met him and briefed him in the car on the way to the White House. Dercum began his examination at four-thirty in the afternoon. He found Wilson’s left arm and leg completely paralyzed and the lower part of the left side of his face drooping. Wilson was conscious but somnolent and answered questions slowly but clearly. Dercum’s diagnosis, which he confirmed after another examination nine days later, “was that of a severe organic hemiplegia, probably due to a thrombosis of the middle right hemisphere.” He ruled out an ingravescent hemorrhage “because of the extremely gradual onset of the symptoms” and because the patient had not lost consciousness or died. That was the neurologist’s way of saying that Wilson had not suffered a stroke caused by a hemorrhage, often called an apoplectic stroke, which has a sudden onset, causes loss of consciousness, and is often fatal. Instead, he had suffered what would later be called an ischemic stroke, one caused by clotting, which has a gradual onset, does not cause loss of consciousness, and is rarely fatal.62

  That was good news, comparatively speaking, and a few other factors also held out hope. Because Wilson was right-handed, a stroke on the right side of the brain would not impair his ability to write or perform tasks with his dominant hand. An ischemic stroke on the right side of the brain does not affect intellectual functioning or speech. Recovery of function is common in the affected leg, but less so in the arm; the degree of recovery depends upon the severity of the brain damage done by the stroke and the patient’s age and physical condition. The bad news was that this kind of stroke usually leaves some physical impairment and can cause other problems. It can affect eyesight by reducing the visual field, as George de Schweinitz, the ophthalmologist, found had occurred when he examined Wilson on October 4. In addition, some of the stroke’s worst consequences can be emotional and psychological, limiting the sufferer’s attention span and ability to adapt to changing circumstances and exercise judgment. How much those consequences would affect Wilson would soon become apparent.

  At first, the president appeared to be bearing up reasonably well. On October 3, Dr. Dercum told reporters, “He is very cheerful and takes an interest in what is going on.” That was true, but Dercum, Grayson, and the other physicians attending Wilson would issue only upbeat statements to the press, never mention or hint at a stroke, and refer only and vaguely to nervous exhaustion. The following day, Wilson said to Grayson, “I’ll show you my temper if you keep me in this bed much longer.” On October 6, when Wilson found out that cabinet members had called a meeting without consulting him, Grayson told the cabinet members, “The President wanted to know why a meeting of Cabinet was held—did not like it.” If the stroke had not dampened Wilson’s temper, it had not stifled his sense of humor either. He recited limericks to the doctors and accused one of them who was drawing blood of doing to him what the Senate wanted to do.63

  Those were good signs and might have pointed to a rapid recovery if another illness had not intervened. The stroke did not threaten to kill Wilson, but a probably unrelated infection of the prostate gland, which he developed on October 14, did put his life in danger. The infection caused an alarming urinary blockage and high fever. Surgery offered the only sure way to relieve the blockage, but it would be dangerous for someone in Wilson’s condition. After hesitating and consulting with other physicians, Grayson called in a leading urologist, who examined the president on October 17 and recommended the continued application of hot compresses. After four days, this treatment succeeded in reducing the swelling and relieving the blockage. Wilson had hovered near death for more than a week, and he emerged from the ordeal more weakened than ever.

  If there had ever been any question about the president’s resuming an active role in the League fight after his return to Washington, the combination of the stroke and this life-threatening illness laid all such notions to rest. Yet the cancellation of Wilson’s speaking tour did not signify the end of his part in this political conflict: he still had a final, decisive role to play. Nevertheless, the train had brought back a sick man who could no longer act as the principal combatant in the League fight or fully function as president. Nearly a year and a half of Woodrow Wilson’s term in the White House remained, but he would never again occupy his office and wield its powers as he had done before.

  23

  DISABILITY

  The stroke and illness Woodrow Wilson suffered in October 1919 brought on the worst crisis of presidential disability in American history. Nothing like it had ever happened before. Five presidents had died in office and had bee
n succeeded by their vice presidents. In all but one of those instances, the fallen president had died within hours, as Lincoln did, or within a few days. The sole exception was in 1881, when James A. Garfield had lingered for two months after a would-be assassin shot him. Though weakened, Garfield had remained alert and in command of his faculties, and little pressing public business had required his attention. Things were totally different now: it was plain from the first that Wilson’s disability was going to create problems and raise questions that the nation had not yet faced.1

  At the outset, the question of whether the president should resign or be removed from office came to several people’s minds. Not surprisingly, the one person who does not seem to have contemplated that prospect was Wilson himself. Just a few times during the rest of his presidency would he mention resigning, and those would be months after he suffered the stroke and had begun to recover. For the first three weeks, the White House head usher recalled, “[h]e just lay helpless. … He was lifted out of bed and placed in a comfortable chair for a short while each day. He gradually seemed to kind of get used to his helpless condition. At times Mrs. Wilson would read to him.”2 The thoughts that passed through Wilson’s mind as he lay in bed in that upper room in the White House almost certainly did not include resignation. He had always dealt with illnesses and obstacles by denying their existence or minimizing their severity. Moreover, he was in the middle of the biggest political fight of his life, and he had resisted abandoning the speaking tour because he did not want his enemies to call him a “quitter.” In that frame of mind, stepping down would never have occurred to him.

  Edith supposedly did think about his resignation. As she later told the story, Dr. Dercum spoke reassuringly about her husband’s condition, citing the scientist Louis Pasteur, “who had been stricken exactly in this way, but had recovered and did his most brilliant work afterwards.” Recovery would depend on relieving the president of stress, the neurologist told her: “But always keep in mind that every time you take him a new anxiety or problem to excite him, you are turning a knife in an open wound.” Edith asked whether he should resign, and the doctor responded with an emphatic no: “He has staked his life and made his promise to the world to do all in his power to get the Treaty ratified and make the League of Nations complete. If he resigns, the greatest incentive to recovery is gone; and as his mind is clear as crystal he can still do more with even a maimed body than any one else.” Edith said Dercum also advised her to act as a clearinghouse and to judge whether matters really needed to come to the president’s attention.3

  That recollection suffered from the embroidery of memory. It is highly unlikely that Dercum or any responsible physician would have talked to Mrs. Wilson that way. None of the doctors’ records of their consultations contains any comment on how resignation might affect the president’s recovery. They did share the diagnosis of a stroke with Edith and with Wilson’s daughter Margaret, but Grayson noted that everyone agreed they should issue “only a general statement regarding the President’s case. … Mrs. Wilson, the President’s wife[,] was absolutely opposed to any other course.” She seems to have latched onto the uncertainty about the extent of her husband’s impairment and the likelihood of some recovery to rule out resignation and forbid any mention of a stroke.4

  Edith Wilson would later come in for harsh criticism for those decisions. Some interpreters would fault her for putting wifely concern about her husband’s health ahead of the good of the country and the world. She probably did think that staying on as president would help him recover, but that was not the main reason why she rejected resignation. She must have believed that she was speaking for him, doing what he wanted to do, and she read his mind right. Edith would receive even harsher criticism for another decision. She had already started to act as the gatekeeper for the president when, two days before the stroke, she had barred Wiseman from seeing Wilson. After the stroke, supposedly on Dercum’s advice, she continued the practice. Her “stewardship,” as she called it, included reading all the papers that came to the office and deciding which ones to pass on to her husband.5

  Except for her, Wilson’s daughters Margaret and Jessie (Nell was on the West Coast and came later), doctors and nurses, and a few White House servants, no one got to see the president for nearly a month after the stroke. Thereafter, Edith continued to act as gatekeeper, restricting access to her husband until well into 1920. Tumulty would not get to see the president until mid-November; afterward, he would gain access only for occasional meetings and would usually go through Edith. In screening Wilson from outside contact the way they did, Edith and Grayson were following the medical thinking of the time about treating stroke patients. Moreover, the life-threatening prostate infection and urinary blockage reinforced the decision to isolate him. Later, physicians would reverse themselves because they would discover that such isolation worsens the psychological impact of a stroke. Patients need the stimulation of outside contacts to recover their capacity for dealing with reality and to keep them from entertaining illusions about how things were before the stroke. Ironically, and with the best intentions, the president’s wife and doctor were doing one of the worst things possible for him.

  In later years, Edith Wilson would defend herself against charges that she had usurped the powers of the presidency. “I, myself, never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs,” she declared. The First Lady did protest too much. In one case, she probably did make an important policy decision. In late October, three weeks after the stroke, Congress passed the Volstead Act, the law to enforce prohibition under the recently ratified Eighteenth Amendment. Most likely with Edith’s consent and without Wilson’s knowledge, Tumulty wrote a veto message, which Secretary of Agriculture Houston revised. This action was consistent with Wilson’s views on prohibition, but given that the measure had passed by big majorities in both houses of Congress, an override seemed foreordained. Nor was Edith’s gatekeeper role as small or benign as she maintained. The person who controls access to the president is, to a degree, president. Many people believed that was just what she was. There were charges that the country had a woman president, that the nation was afflicted with “government by petticoat.” What no one seemed to ask was, if there was going to be a surrogate president, who was better qualified than this woman, who was her husband’s closest confidant, who knew his mind better than anyone else?6

  Whether there should have been a surrogate president at all was a different matter. Many people did not think there should be, and some of them made moves toward removing Wilson from office. The first person to raise the issue was Lansing. On October 3, the day after the stroke, he met for two hours with Tumulty and Grayson in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Before Grayson joined them, Lansing asked Tumulty what was the matter with the president. Lansing would later write, “He did not answer me in words, but he significantly put his hand to his left shoulder and drew it down along the left side. Of course the indication was that the President had had a shock [a stroke] and was paralyzed.” When Grayson came, he would say little about what ailed Wilson. They discussed the possibility of the vice president filling in temporarily, which infuriated Tumulty. They did agree that the cabinet should discuss the situation, and Lansing talked afterward with Secretary of War Baker, who concurred. Over the weekend, Lansing discussed the situation with Secretary of the Interior Lane as well.7

  The following Monday, October 6, the cabinet met and had a brief discussion. Lansing raised the question of calling on the vice president to fill in and referred “to the Constitutional provision ‘in case of the inability of the President.’” Further, he asked, “What constitutes ‘inability’ & who is to decide it[?]” He was referring to Article II, Section 1: “In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President”—which was all the Constitution had to say about a situation like this
one. Grayson then joined the meeting, and, he recorded, “Secretary Lansing asked me the direct questions as to what was the matter with the President, what was the exact nature of the President’s trouble, how long he would be sick and was his mind clear or not. My reply was that the President’s mind was not only clear but very active, and that he clearly showed that he was very much annoyed when he found out that [the] Cabinet had been called and that he wanted to know by whose authority the meeting had been called and for what purpose. Secretary Lansing was somewhat astounded when I spoke thus.” Secretary of War Baker thereupon broke in to assert that the cabinet had “only met as a mark of affection” and said, “Please convey our sympathy to the President and give him our assurance that everything is going all right.”8

  Lansing’s motives in raising the question of presidential disability are open to question. The recent brouhaha over Bullitt’s testimony and his tepid response had left him sore and resentful toward the president. Stories were circulating in Washington that Lansing was anxious to have the vice president take over, and even before the stroke he had told a Republican lawyer that cabinet members had conferred and agreed to go about their business “without attempting to consult with the President.” That seems doubtful, because no one else left any record of such conferring, but Colonel House learned from State Department sources that in calling the cabinet meeting on October 6, “Lansing had in mind more than the interchange of ideas on departmental matters.”9